The biology of Sesamia inferens (Walker) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) on maize in the north western plains of India

The biology of Sesamia inferens (Walker) was studied at 25±1 °C and 70±5 per cent relative humidity on PMH 1 maize hybrid. The incubation period was 6.82±0.05 days. There were six larval instars and the larval development was completed in 29.95±0.16 days. The duration of instars I-VI was 4.17±0.09, 3.60±0.08, 4.47±0.02, 4.40±0.03, 6.18±0.06 and 7.13±0.05 days, respectively. The pre-pupal period was 2.83±0.02 days. The male and female pupa had duration of 8.05±0.12 days and 10.33±0.16 days, respectively. The adult emergence was 93.02±0.01 per cent, with a sex ratio of 1:1.05. The males had shorter longevity of 3.92±0.23 days, while females had 5.05±0.28 days. The pre-oviposition, oviposition and post-oviposition period was 1.11±0.10, 2.96±0.19 and 0.79±0.10 days, respectively. The fecundity was 211.92 ±11.92 eggs with 53.69±10.78 eggs per cluster. The egg hatchability was 92.19±0.01 per cent. The total life cycle was completed in 47.65±0.24 days (Male) and 49.93±0.21 days (female). The observations on the biology will help in developing efficient strategies to manage S. inferens on maize in the north western plains of India

Perception of Simulation‑based Learning among Medical Students in South India

Background: Traditional methods of educating medical students are no longer sufficient in the current era largely influenced by multimedia. Simulation‑based techniques may play a pivotal role in bridging this educational gap.Aim: This study was conducted to explore the perception of medical students towards simulation‑based learning (SBL).Subjects and Methods: This cross‑sectional study was conducted in May 2013 in a private medical college in Mangalore, Karnataka, India. A total of 247 participants from fourth, sixth, eighth semester and internship were chosen by convenience sampling method. Attitudinal data on perception towards SBL were collected using a self‑administered questionnaire with responses in a 5‑point Likert’s scale.Results: The mean age of students was 21.3 (standard deviation 1.9) years, and males constituted 55.5% (137/247). Most participants 72.5% (179/247) had favorable perceptions of SBL, with scores of92–118 out of a possible 118 points. Favorable perception towards SBL was seen significantly more among female students (P = 0.04) and senior MBBS students of sixth and eighth semesters (P = 0.05). Nearly, all students (90.7%; 224/247) agreed that simulation supports the development of clinical skills. As many as 29.6% (73/247) agreed that real patients might be replaced with simulated patients in practical examinations.Conclusion: SBL was perceived as favorable by a large number of participants in this study indicating a bright prospect for its implementation in the medical curriculum. Keywords: Interns, Medical students, Perception, Simulation‑based learnin

Effective Capacity in Broadcast Channels with Arbitrary Inputs

We consider a broadcast scenario where one transmitter communicates with two receivers under quality-of-service constraints. The transmitter initially employs superposition coding strategies with arbitrarily distributed signals and sends data to both receivers. Regarding the channel state conditions, the receivers perform successive interference cancellation to decode their own data. We express the effective capacity region that provides the maximum allowable sustainable data arrival rate region at the transmitter buffer or buffers. Given an average transmission power limit, we provide a two-step approach to obtain the optimal power allocation policies that maximize the effective capacity region. Then, we characterize the optimal decoding regions at the receivers in the space spanned by the channel fading power values. We finally substantiate our results with numerical presentations.Comment: This paper will appear in 14th International Conference on Wired&Wireless Internet Communications (WWIC