Molecular Identification, Phylogenetic Status, and Geographic Distribution of Culicoides oxystoma (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) in Israel

Culicoides oxystoma (Diptera: Ceratopogonidae) is an important vector species, reported mainly from Asia, with high potential to transmit viral diseases affecting livestock. In Japan, many arboviruses have been isolated from C. oxystoma, suggesting it as a key player in the epidemiology of several Culicoides-borne diseases. Over the years, C. oxystoma has also been reported in the Middle East region, including Israel. In this region, however, C. oxystoma cannot be easily distinguished morphologically from its sibling species included in the Culicoides schultzei complex. We therefore used genomic data for species identification and phylogeny resolution. Phylogenetic analyses based on internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS-1) of ribosomal DNA and the mitochondrial gene encoding cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) showed that C. oxystoma from Israel is closely related to C. oxystoma from Japan. Using differential probing PCR, we showed that C. oxystoma is distributed all over the country, especially in Mediterranean climate regions. Culicoides oxystoma is less common or even absent in arid regions, while the other genetic cluster of C. schultzei complex was found only in the east of the country (mostly arid and semiarid regions). The molecular finding of C. oxystoma in wide geographical regions, together with its high proportion in the general Culicoides population and its vectoring potential, imply that it may be an important vector species in the Middle East

Termination of Triangular Integer Loops is Decidable

We consider the problem whether termination of affine integer loops is decidable. Since Tiwari conjectured decidability in 2004, only special cases have been solved. We complement this work by proving decidability for the case that the update matrix is triangular.Comment: Full version (with proofs) of a paper published in the Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV '19), New York, NY, USA, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, 201

Essential self-adjointness of magnetic Schr\"odinger operators on locally finite graphs

We give sufficient conditions for essential self-adjointness of magnetic Schr\"odinger operators on locally finite graphs. Two of the main theorems of the present paper generalize recent results of Torki-Hamza.Comment: 14 pages; The present version differs from the original version as follows: the ordering of presentation has been modified in several places, more details have been provided in several places, some notations have been changed, two examples have been added, and several new references have been inserted. The final version of this preprint will appear in Integral Equations and Operator Theor

A Procedure for Determination of Degradation Acceptance Criteria for Structures and Passive Components in Nuclear Power Plants

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has been collaborating with Brookhaven National Laboratory since 2007 to develop a realistic seismic risk evaluation system which includes the consideration of aging of structures and components in nuclear power plants (NPPs). This collaboration program aims at providing technical support to a five-year KAERI research project, which includes three specific areas that are essential to seismic probabilistic risk assessment: (1) probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, (2) seismic fragility analysis including the effects of aging, and (3) a plant seismic risk analysis. The understanding and assessment of age-related degradations of structures, systems, and components and their impact on plant safety is the major goal of this KAERI-BNL collaboration. Four annual reports have been published before this report as a result of the collaboration research

Essential self-adjointness for combinatorial Schr\"odinger operators II- Metrically non complete graphs

We consider weighted graphs, we equip them with a metric structure given by a weighted distance, and we discuss essential self-adjointness for weighted graph Laplacians and Schr\"odinger operators in the metrically non complete case.Comment: Revisited version: Ognjen Milatovic wrote to us that he had discovered a gap in the proof of theorem 4.2 of our paper. As a consequence we propose to make an additional assumption (regularity property of the graph) to this theorem. A new subsection (4.1) is devoted to the study of this property and some details have been changed in the proof of theorem 4.

Epidemiological Investigation of Bovine Ephemeral Fever Outbreaks in Israel

Outbreaks of bovine ephemeral fever (BEF) occurred in Israel in 1990, 1999, and 2004. The main patterns of BEF spread were similar in the 1990 and in 1999 epidemics, and the BEF virus was probably carried in vectors transported by air streams across the Rift Valley and the Red Sea. In the 2004 outbreak, the primary focus of the disease was the southern Mediterranean coastal plain and the disease agent was apparently brought by infected mosquitoes carried from their breeding site in the Nile Delta by the south-western winds. The disease broke out under optimal ecological conditions, among a vulnerable cattle population and spread rapidly; it showed essentially a spring-summer herd incidence and terminated soon after the night average ambient temperature fell below 16°C in late autumn. The herd incidence of the disease reached 78.4%, 97.7%, and 100% in 1990, 1999, and 2004, respectively. The highest herd incidence, morbidity, and case fatality rates were noted in dairy cattle herds in the Jordan Valley, with morbidity of 20%, 38.6%, and 22.2%, and case fatality rate among affected animals of 2%, 8.6%, and 5.4% in 1990, 1999, and 2004, respectively. The average sero-positivity to BEF in 1999 was 39.5%, which matched the morbidity rate. Comparison among the various age groups showed that the lowest morbidity rates were observed in the youngest age group, that is, heifers up to 1 year, with 3.2%, 3.6%, and 4.2% in 1990, 1999, and 2004, respectively. In heifers from 1 year to calving, the morbidity rates were 13.8%, 14.9%, and 28%, respectively, in first calvers 30.8%, 31.6%, and 28.3%, respectively, and in cows 34.3%, 35.7%, and 27.2%, respectively. All affected cattle were over the age of 3 months. It is hypothesized that mosquitoes and not Culicoides spp. are the vectors of the BEF virus in Israel

A quantum isomonodromy equation and its application to N=2 SU(N) gauge theories

We give an explicit differential equation which is expected to determine the instanton partition function in the presence of the full surface operator in N=2 SU(N) gauge theory. The differential equation arises as a quantization of a certain Hamiltonian system of isomonodromy type discovered by Fuji, Suzuki and Tsuda.Comment: 15 pages, v2: typos corrected and references added, v3: discussion, appendix and references adde

On the six-dimensional origin of the AGT correspondence

We argue that the six-dimensional (2,0) superconformal theory defined on M \times C, with M being a four-manifold and C a Riemann surface, can be twisted in a way that makes it topological on M and holomorphic on C. Assuming the existence of such a twisted theory, we show that its chiral algebra contains a W-algebra when M = R^4, possibly in the presence of a codimension-two defect operator supported on R^2 \times C \subset M \times C. We expect this structure to survive the \Omega-deformation.Comment: References added. 14 page

Piping benchmark problems for the Westinghouse AP600 Standardized Plant

To satisfy the need for verification of the computer programs and modeling techniques that will be used to perform the final piping analyses for the Westinghouse AP600 Standardized Plant, three benchmark problems were developed. The problems are representative piping systems subjected to representative dynamic loads with solutions developed using the methods being proposed for analysis for the AP600 standard design. It will be required that the combined license licensees demonstrate that their solutions to these problems are in agreement with the benchmark problem set