Effect of grain type on the insecticidal efficacy of Paya® against Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

The objective of the current study was to determine the insecticidal effectiveness of diatomaceous earth formulation (DE) Paya®. The effects of grain commodity (wheat, barley, maize and rice), exposure times and dose rates were evaluated. The efficacy of diatomaceous earth (DE) against 1–7 days old adults of Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) was evaluated on wheat, rice, maize and barley at 26±1 °C and 60±5% RH in darkness. The mortality of adults was tested at five concentrations: 0.125, 0.25, 0.5, 1 and 1.5 g/kg of grain and different exposure times (24, 48 h, 7 and 14 d). To evaluate the progeny production, dead and alive adults were removed from containers after 14 days and these containers were kept at above-mentioned conditions for 45 days. The results obtained indicated that the highest adult mortality was observed after the longest exposure period on barley and wheat so that the two highest DE dosages caused 100% mortality of T. castaneum. The efficacy of Paya® on maize and rice was not satisfactory, given that after a 14 days exposure at the highest dose rate the mortality did not exceed 37% and 66% in the case of maize and rice, respectively. The results demonstrated that the mortality increased with rises in concentration and exposure time and also highly affected by grain type

Referential gestures are not ubiquitous in wild chimpanzees : alternative functions for exaggerated loud scratch gestures

Royal Zoological Society of Scotland for providing core funding for Budongo Conservation Field Station. This work was supported by the ERC grant awarded to KS (ERC_CoG 2016_724608).A fundamental aspect of human communication is our ability to refer to external objects and events through both words and gestures (such as pointing), yet the evolutionary origins of such signals remain obscure. Apes, living in their natural environments, rarely or never point, but it has been claimed that male chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, from the Ngogo community, Uganda, habitually use exaggerated loud scratches (ELSs) to refer to specific body locations where they wish to be groomed (Pika & Mitani, 2006, Current Biology, 16(6), 191–192). This study suggested continuity between referential abilities in humans and our closest living relatives, making it an important finding to replicate in other populations. Hence here, we compared whether ELSs are used in a referential manner across four wild communities of eastern chimpanzees (Ngogo, Kanyawara, Sonso and Waibira). Our data show that scratchers were significantly more likely to receive grooming in the scratched location at Ngogo compared to the other three sites. At the latter sites this response occurred at low rates and signallers did not seem to pursue this goal. This suggests that ELSs do not function referentially at these sites, and the published findings from Ngogo were not replicated. Further exploration into alternative functions of ELSs in the Kanyawara community revealed that, in this community, this signal functions to initiate grooming bouts and to reengage partners during grooming pauses. Individuals who produced the signal to initiate grooming were likely to offer grooming. In contrast, during grooming bouts, groomers produced ELSs to request reciprocation of grooming from their partner. Our study demonstrates that chimpanzees do not ubiquitously use the ELS in a referential manner, but that they can use this gesture in a highly flexible fashion, with signal function depending on the intricate details of the social contexts in which they are produced.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Perspectives on conservation impacts of the global primate trade

MFH and DRKN are grateful to Animal Protection Denmark and MFH to the Carlsberg Foundation (grant number CF21-0473). AMM thanks the Whitley Fund for Nature, The Rufford Small Grants, The International Primate Protection League, and Mr. Martin Stanley for their long-term financial support toward night monkey conservation.The global trade in nonhuman primates represents a substantial threat to ecosystem health, human health, and primate conservation worldwide. Most of the primate trade involves trade for pet-keeping, consumption, or biomedical experimentation. We present an overview of international primate trade through five case studies; each describes a different facet of this trade. We draw on published scientific literature, media outlets, and open access datasets, including the CITES Trade Database to build these case studies. Case study 1 describes the role of introduced island populations of Macaca and Chlorocebus in trade for biomedical experimentation; case study 2 covers the global health threats posed by the primate trade, including zoonotic disease transmission once animals enter the trade pipeline; case study 3 addresses the ways that changing patterns of primate trade, from local markets to online, have increased the demand for primates as pets; case study 4 recognizes the role that local environmental activism can play in mitigating trade; and case study 5 shows variation between global regions in their contribution to the primate trade. We recommend greater oversight of primate trade, especially domestic trade within primate range countries, and real-time reporting to CITES to accurately track primate trade. Effective conservation-focused regulations that can minimise the negative effects of primate trade must be tailored to specific regions and species and require transparency, careful regulation, field research, and an understanding of the magnitude of this trade.Peer reviewe

BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene.

MotivationThe BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time series. Our goal is to accelerate and facilitate quantitative analysis of temporal patterns of biodiversity in the Anthropocene.Main types of variables includedThe database contains 8,777,413 species abundance records, from assemblages consistently sampled for a minimum of 2 years, which need not necessarily be consecutive. In addition, the database contains metadata relating to sampling methodology and contextual information about each record.Spatial location and grainBioTIME is a global database of 547,161 unique sampling locations spanning the marine, freshwater and terrestrial realms. Grain size varies across datasets from 0.0000000158 km2 (158 cm2) to 100 km2 (1,000,000,000,000 cm2).Time period and grainBioTIME records span from 1874 to 2016. The minimal temporal grain across all datasets in BioTIME is a year.Major taxa and level of measurementBioTIME includes data from 44,440 species across the plant and animal kingdoms, ranging from plants, plankton and terrestrial invertebrates to small and large vertebrates.Software format.csv and .SQL

Power maximization of variable-speed variable-pitch wind turbines using passive adaptive neural fault tolerant control

Power maximization has always been a practical consideration in wind turbines. The question of how to address optimal power capture, especially when the system dynamics are nonlinear and the actuators are subject to unknown faults, is significant. This paper studies the control methodology for variable-speed variable-pitch wind turbines including the effects of uncertain nonlinear dynamics, system fault uncertainties, and unknown external disturbances. The nonlinear model of the wind turbine is presented, and the problem of maximizing extracted energy is formulated by designing the optimal desired states. With the known system, a model-based nonlinear controller is designed; then, to handle uncertainties, the unknown nonlinearities of the wind turbine are estimated by utilizing radial basis function neural networks. The adaptive neural fault tolerant control is designed passively to be robust on model uncertainties, disturbances including wind speed and model noises, and completely unknown actuator faults including generator torque and pitch actuator torque. The Lyapunov direct method is employed to prove that the closed-loop system is uniformly bounded. Simulation studies are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method

Gas Turbine Engine Control Design Using Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks

This paper presents a successful approach in designing a Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) for a specific Jet Engine. At first, a suitable mathematical model for the jet engine is presented by the aid of SIMULINK. Then by applying different reasonable fuel flow functions via the engine model, some important engine-transient operation parameters (such as thrust, compressor surge margin, turbine inlet temperature, etc.) are obtained. These parameters provide a precious database, which train a neural network. At the second step, by designing and training a feedforward multilayer perceptron neural network according to this available database; a number of different reasonable fuel flow functions for various engine acceleration operations are determined. These functions are used to define the desired fuzzy fuel functions. Indeed, the neural networks are used as an effective method to define the optimum fuzzy fuel functions. At the next step, we propose a FLC by using the engine simulation model and the neural network results. The proposed control scheme is proved by computer simulation using the designed engine model. The simulation results of engine model with FLC illustrate that the proposed controller achieves the desired performance and stability

Referential gestures are not ubiquitous in wild chimpanzees:alternative functions for exaggerated loud scratch gestures

A fundamental aspect of human communication is our ability to refer to external objects and events through both words and gestures (such as pointing), yet the evolutionary origins of such signals remain obscure. Apes, living in their natural environments, rarely or never point, but it has been claimed that male chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, from the Ngogo community, Uganda, habitually use exaggerated loud scratches (ELSs) to refer to specific body locations where they wish to be groomed (Pika & Mitani, 2006, Current Biology, 16(6), 191–192). This study suggested continuity between referential abilities in humans and our closest living relatives, making it an important finding to replicate in other populations. Hence here, we compared whether ELSs are used in a referential manner across four wild communities of eastern chimpanzees (Ngogo, Kanyawara, Sonso and Waibira). Our data show that scratchers were significantly more likely to receive grooming in the scratched location at Ngogo compared to the other three sites. At the latter sites this response occurred at low rates and signallers did not seem to pursue this goal. This suggests that ELSs do not function referentially at these sites, and the published findings from Ngogo were not replicated. Further exploration into alternative functions of ELSs in the Kanyawara community revealed that, in this community, this signal functions to initiate grooming bouts and to reengage partners during grooming pauses. Individuals who produced the signal to initiate grooming were likely to offer grooming. In contrast, during grooming bouts, groomers produced ELSs to request reciprocation of grooming from their partner. Our study demonstrates that chimpanzees do not ubiquitously use the ELS in a referential manner, but that they can use this gesture in a highly flexible fashion, with signal function depending on the intricate details of the social contexts in which they are produced