A biological control approach to reducing Naupactus godmani (Curculionidae) populations in citrus using entomopathogenic nematodes

Omaleki, Vinton/0000-0003-4639-2241WOS: 000449138500014The presence of eggs of the Fuller rose beetle, Naupactus godmani (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), on fruits are an issue for export of California navel oranges. In an effort to develop a management strategy for this pest, we tested three entomopathogenic nematode species in laboratory, greenhouse and field trials. Steinernema carpocapsae killed all Fuller Rose Beetle adults in laboratory assays, but were unsuccessful in the greenhouse. In field trials, applications of Steinernema riobrave reduced the number of emerging adults caught in Tedder's traps compared to Heterorhabditis bacteriophora and controls. Trees where the soil around the bases were treated with Grub Guard (a product containing, H. bacteriophora and S. carpocapsae) leaf damage caused by adults was 44% less compared to controls. Entomopathogenic nematodes used as a sole method of FRB management are unlikely to provide satisfactory results in the field. Combining entomopathogenic nematodes with other biopesticides may be the best approach to their management.California Citrus Research Board; Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK)Turkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu (TUBITAK)We thank California Citrus Research Board for financial support of the study and Randy Skidgel for allowing us to conduct field experiments in his citrus orchard. Baris Gulcu was supported with 2219-postdoctoral scholarship by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) in this study

Spoligotyping of M. tuberculosis strains from cattle in Turkey [Türkiye’de sığırlardan İzole edilen M. tuberculosis suşlarının spoligotiplendirmesi]

Although it is generally accepted that M. Bovis leads to tuberculosis in cattle, there are statements given from the different regions of the world, referring to the fact that M. tuberculosis, which is known as the human tuberculosis agent, causes tuberculosis in cattle as well. The material of the study consisted of 13 M. tuberculosis isolates which were isolated and identified from the organ pieces of 95 cattle with the culture methods; these organ pieces had been taken from the cattle with granulomatous lesion detection after the slaughtering in slaughterhouses located in Çukurova region and brought to the laboratory under sterile conditions. It was determined in the genotyping conducted by using the Spoligotyping method that 13 of the 55 isolates were M. tuberculosis and they belonged to the T1 family (SIT53) by becoming dense in one cluster (100%). Consequently, it was shown with this study that M. tuberculosis, which leads to tuberculosis in humans, could be transmitted from humans to animals and from animals to humans again, and researching the human and epidemiological tuberculosis cases by using molecular epidemiology-based methods such as spoligotyping might provide useful information about explaining the ways of transmission of tuberculosis. © 2015, Veteriner Fakultesi Dergisi. All rights reserved

The Hitting Set Attack on Anonymity Protocols

A passive attacker can compromise a generic anonymity protocol by applying the so called disclosure attack, i.e. a special traffic analysis attack. In this work we present a more efficient way to accomplish this goal, i.e. we need less observations by looking for unique minimal hitting sets. We call this the hitting set attack or just HS-attack. In general, solving the minimal hitting set problem is NP-hard. Therefore, we use frequency analysis to enhance the applicability of our attack. It is possible to apply highly efficient backtracking search algorithms. We call this approach the statistical hitting set attack or SHS-attack. However, the statistical hitting set attack is prone to wrong solutions with a given small probability. We use here duality checking algorithms to resolve this problem. We call this final exact attack the HS*-attack

Provable anonymity for networks of mixes

Abstract. We analyze networks of mixes used for providing untraceable communication. We consider a network consisting of k mixes working in parallel and exchanging the outputs – which is the most natural architecture for composing mixes of a certain size into networks able to mix a larger number of inputs at once. We prove that after O(log k) rounds the network considered provides a fair level of privacy protection for any number of messages. No mathematical proof of this kind has been published before. We show that if at least one of server is corrupted we need substantially more rounds to meet the same requirements of privacy protection

Designing Optimal Preannounced Markdowns in the Presence of Rational Customers with Multiunit Demands

We analyze the optimal design of a markdown pricing mechanism with preannounced prices. In the presence of limited supply, buyers who choose to purchase at a lower price may face a scarcity in supply. Our focus is on the structure of the optimal markdown mechanisms in the presence of rational or strategic buyers who demand multiple units. We first examine a complete information setting where the set of customer valuations is known but the seller does not know the valuation of each individual customer (i.e., cannot exercise perfect price discrimination). We then generalize our analysis to an incomplete valuation information setting where customer valuations are drawn from known distributions. For both settings, we compare the seller's profit resulting from the optimal markdown mechanism and the optimal single price. We provide a number of managerial insights into designing profitable markdown mechanisms.pricing, markdown, strategic bidding, price discrimination