Storage and Behavior of Plant and Diet-Fed Adult Cereal Leaf Beetle, Oulema Melanopus (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae)

The univoltine life cycle of the cereal leaf beetle Oulema melanopus (L.) in Michigan (Castro et al. 1965) is similar to that reported by Venturi (1942) in Europe. Adults emerge from pupal cells in the soil in mid-June to early July, feed voraciously for about three weeks, and enter aestivation sites. For the remainder of the summer and early autumn only a few adults can be found feeding on late-maturing native grasses. The beetles overwinter and usually emerge in late March to early April and resume feeding. Mating and oviposition occur, and larval development is usually completed by late June in southern Michigan. Techniques for rearing the cereal leaf beetle on greenhouse-grown small grain seedlings have been developed by Connin, et al. (1968). Maintaining these cultures requires collecting field adults, growing host material, and handling the cultures to insure that all stages will be available for study. In Michigan during July adults can be collected more economically and in greater numbers in the field than by rearing in the laboratory. A summary of collection techniques, laboratory feeding and storage conditions for large numbers of field-collected cereal leaf beetles is presented in this paper. In addition, the mortality during storage of newly emerged field collected beetles fed either barley seedlings or an artificial diet is compared

Discovery of a supernova associated with GRB 031203: SMARTS Optical-Infrared Lightcurves from 0.2 to 92 days

Optical and infrared monitoring of the afterglow site of gamma-ray burst (GRB) 031203 has revealed a brightening source embedded in the host galaxy, which we attribute to the presence of a supernova (SN) related to the GRB ("SN 031203"). We present details of the discovery and evolution of SN 031203 from 0.2 to 92 days after the GRB, derived from SMARTS consortium photometry in I and J bands. A template type Ic lightcurve, constructed from SN 1998bw photometry, is consistent with the peak brightness of SN 031203 although the lightcurves are not identical. Differential astrometry reveals that the SN, and hence the GRB, occurred less than 300 h_71^-1 pc (3-sigma) from the apparent galaxy center. The peak of the supernova is brighter than the optical afterglow suggesting that this source is intermediate between a strong GRB and a supernova.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJ Letter

Stochastic Real-time Optimal Control for Bearing-only Trajectory Planning

A method is presented to simultaneously solve the optimal control problem and the optimal estimation problem for a bearing-only sensor. For bearing-only systems that require a minimum level of certainty in position relative to a source for mission accomplishment, some amount of maneuver is required to measure range. Traditional methods of trajectory optimization and optimal estimation minimize an information metric. This paper proposes constraining the final value of the information states with known time propagation dynamics relative to a given trajectory which allows for attainment of the required level of information with minimal deviation from a general performance index that can be tailored to a specific vehicle. The proposed method does not suffer from compression of the information metric into a scalar, and provides a route that will attain a particular target estimate quality while maneuvering to a desired relative point or set. An algorithm is created to apply the method in real-time, iteratively estimating target position with an Unscented Kalman Filter and updating the trajectory with an efficient pseudospectral method. Methods and tools required for hardware implementation are presented that apply to any real-time optimal control (RTOC) system. The algorithm is validated with both simulation and flight test, autonomously landing a quadrotor on a wire

Storage and Behavior of Plant and Diet-Fed Adult Cereal Leaf Beetle, Oulema Melanopus (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae)

The univoltine life cycle of the cereal leaf beetle Oulema melanopus (L.) in Michigan (Castro et al. 1965) is similar to that reported by Venturi (1942) in Europe. Adults emerge from pupal cells in the soil in mid-June to early July, feed voraciously for about three weeks, and enter aestivation sites. For the remainder of the summer and early autumn only a few adults can be found feeding on late-maturing native grasses. The beetles overwinter and usually emerge in late March to early April and resume feeding. Mating and oviposition occur, and larval development is usually completed by late June in southern Michigan. Techniques for rearing the cereal leaf beetle on greenhouse-grown small grain seedlings have been developed by Connin, et al. (1968). Maintaining these cultures requires collecting field adults, growing host material, and handling the cultures to insure that all stages will be available for study. In Michigan during July adults can be collected more economically and in greater numbers in the field than by rearing in the laboratory. A summary of collection techniques, laboratory feeding and storage conditions for large numbers of field-collected cereal leaf beetles is presented in this paper. In addition, the mortality during storage of newly emerged field collected beetles fed either barley seedlings or an artificial diet is compared

Stable States of Biological Organisms

A novel model of biological organisms is advanced, treating an organism as a self-consistent system subject to a pathogen flux. The principal novelty of the model is that it describes not some parts, but a biological organism as a whole. The organism is modeled by a five-dimensional dynamical system. The organism homeostasis is described by the evolution equations for five interacting components: healthy cells, ill cells, innate immune cells, specific immune cells, and pathogens. The stability analysis demonstrates that, in a wide domain of the parameter space, the system exhibits robust structural stability. There always exist four stable stationary solutions characterizing four qualitatively differing states of the organism: alive state, boundary state, critical state, and dead state.Comment: Latex file, 12 pages, 4 figure

Teachers' classroom feedback: still trying to get it right

This article examines feedback traditionally given by teachers in schools. Such feedback tends to focus on children's acquisition and retrieval of externally prescribed knowledge which is then assessed against mandated tests. It suggests that, from a sociocultural learning perspective, feedback directed towards such objectives may limit children's social development. In this article, I draw on observation and interview data gathered from a group of 27 9- to 10-year olds in a UK primary school. These data illustrate the children's perceived need to conform to, rather than negotiate, the teacher's feedback comments. They highlight the children's sense that the teacher's feedback relates to school learning but not to their own interests. The article also includes alternative examples of feedback which draw on children's own inquiries and which relate to the social contexts within which, and for whom, they act. It concludes by suggesting that instead of looking for the right answer to the question of what makes teachers' feedback effective in our current classrooms, a more productive question might be how a negotiation can be opened up among teachers and learners themselves, about how teachers' feedback could support children's learning most appropriately

Boolean delay equations on networks: An application to economic damage propagation

We introduce economic models based on Boolean Delay Equations: this formalism makes easier to take into account the complexity of the interactions between firms and is particularly appropriate for studying the propagation of an initial damage due to a catastrophe. Here we concentrate on simple cases, which allow to understand the effects of multiple concurrent production paths as well as the presence of stochasticity in the path time lengths or in the network structure. In absence of flexibility, the shortening of production of a single firm in an isolated network with multiple connections usually ends up by attaining a finite fraction of the firms or the whole economy, whereas the interactions with the outside allow a partial recovering of the activity, giving rise to periodic solutions with waves of damage which propagate across the structure. The damage propagation speed is strongly dependent upon the topology. The existence of multiple concurrent production paths does not necessarily imply a slowing down of the propagation, which can be as fast as the shortest path.Comment: Latex, 52 pages with 22 eps figure

Contribution of tropical cyclones to atmospheric moisture transport and rainfall over East Asia

The coastal region of East Asia (EA) is one of the regions with the most frequent impacts from tropical cyclones (TCs). In this study, rainfall and moisture transports related to TCs are measured over the EA, and the contribution of TCs to the regional water budget is compared with other contributors, especially the mean circulation of the EA summer monsoon (EASM). Based on ERA-Interim re-analysis (1979–2012), the trajectories of TCs are identified using an objective feature tracking method. Over 60% of TCs occur from July to October (JASO). During JASO, TC rainfall contributes 10-30% the of monthly total rainfall over the coastal region of EA; this contribution is highest over the south/southeast coast of China in September. TCs make a larger contribution to daily extreme rainfall (above the 95th percentile): 50-60% over the EA coast and as high as 70% over Taiwan island. Compared with the mean EASM, TCs transport less moisture over the EA. However, as the peak of the mean seasonal cycle of TCs lags two months behind that of the EASM, the moisture transported by TCs is an important source for the water budget over the EA region when the EASM withdraws. This moisture transport is largely performed by westward-moving TCs. These results improve our understanding of the water cycle of EA and provide a useful test bed for evaluating and improving seasonal forecasts and coupled climate models