Effects of \u3cem\u3eBeauveria bassiana\u3c/em\u3e mycelia and metabolites incorporated into synthetic diet and fed to larval \u3cem\u3eHelicoverpa zea\u3c/em\u3e; and detection of endophytic \u3cem\u3eBeauveria bassiana\u3c/em\u3e in tomato plants using PCR and ITS primers

Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin is an entomopathogenic deuteromycete that has been used in biological control of insect pests. Recent studies have revealed that B. bassiana is an endophyte of corn plants, and that plants colonized by the fungus had a reduction in tunneling from the European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis (Hubner) (Lepidoptera: Crambidae). In addition to corn, B. bassiana has been observed to grow endophytically in potato plants. Beauveria bassiana may also have the ability to colonize closely related plants and potentially reduce insect feeding on them. This study has three objectives. The first was to evaluate the effect of mycelia from the entomopathogenic fungi Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae, when incorporated at different rates into a synthetic diet fed to neonate corn earworm, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) larvae. Larvae fed the highest rates (1 and 5%) of fungal diet experienced delayed development and suffered high mortality. These insects also had lower larval and pupal weights than larvae fed the lower concentrations of mycelia. Insects fed low rates (0.1 and 0.5%) of fungus suffered low mortality and developed at an accelerated rate, compared to fungus free controls, indicating increased nutrition in low rate fungal diets. Insects fed diets containing B. bassiana isolate 11-98 suffered the highest mortality indicating that 11-98 may be more toxic than the other isolates. In the second study, the effect of Beauveria bassiana was evaluated when metabolites were incorporated at different rates into a synthetic diet and fed to neonate corn earworm, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) larvae. All larvae fed diets containing metabolites of B. bassiana experienced low mortality, but had delayed development. Those insects fed the highest rate (0.5%) of metabolite-amended diet had significantly lower percent pupation and developed at a slower rate than those insects fed the 0.1% rate. A third study was designed to establish a technique to detect the presence of endophytic Beauveria bassiana in tomato plants. After seed-treating tomato plants with B. bassiana conidia and allowing them to grow for two weeks in test tubes under gnotobiotic conditions, PCR techniques were used to amplify ITS regions of the plant and fungus from the plant shoot. The presence of B. bassiana in treated plants was confirmed by the PCR amplification of a 550-bp ribosomal RNA gene segment. The amplified product was sequenced using ITS1 and ITS4 primers. The resulting sequence data had 100% homology with a previously published sequence for B. bassiana

Plant improvement for insect resistance: Testing of the candidate organism Beauveria bassiana, transgenic tobacco expressing protease inhibitors, and rapid screen of insect resistance genes in an agroinfiltration transient expression system

This study focused on three aspects of plant improvement for insect resistance including: testing of candidate organisms for their production of insecticidal proteins, testing of transgenic plants expressing insect resistance genes, and testing novel systems for the evaluation of insect resistance genes. In the initial part of this study, the candidate fungus Beauveria bassiana was tested for its production of insecticidal proteins through a series of insect bioassays containing fungal protein extracts. These extracts were shown to be orally toxic to Plutella xylostella (diamondback moth) and Spodoptera frugiperda (fall armyworm). Assays involving protease treatments significantly decreased mortality indicating the presence of a protein based oral toxin. The following research tested transgenic tobacco plants expressing proteinase inhibitors from Brassica oleracea (cabbage) and Manduca sexta (tobacco hornworm) on the insect pests Helicoverpa zea (corn earworm) and Heliothis virescens (tobacco budworm). Insects fed transgenic tobacco were able to adapt to the recombinant proteinase inhibitors to varying degrees and resulted in no major impacts on insect growth and development. The last part of this study tested a novel insect resistance gene screening system. Agroinfiltrated tobacco transiently co-expressing genes encoding GFP with either a known insecticidal protein (Bt Cry1Ac) or a candidate gene (Brassica oleracea proteinase inhibitor, BoPI) were fed to larval H. zea. Insects fed the known insecticidal protein experienced high mortality. Insects fed tobacco expressing GFP and BoPI showed significant decreases in growth compared to those fed GFP only tissue. Insects feeding on GFP only tissue showed unexpected increases in growth and development compared to insects fed control tissue. Agroinfiltration coupled with an insect bioassay constitutes an efficient system for the evaluation of candidate insect resistance genes

Preliminary DIMM and MASS Nighttime Seeing Measurements at PEARL, in the Canadian High Arctic

Results of deploying a Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM) and a DIMM combined with a Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor (MASS/DIMM) are reported for campaigns in 2011 and 2012 on the roof of the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL). This facility is on a 610-m-high ridge at latitude 80 degrees N, near the Eureka weatherstation on Ellesmere Island, Canada. The median seeing at 8-m elevation is 0.85 arcsec or better based on DIMM data alone, but is dependent on wind direction, and likely includes a component due to the PEARL building itself. Results with MASS/DIMM yield a median seeing less than 0.76 arcsec. A semi-empirical model of seeing versus ground wind speed is introduced which allows agreement between these datasets, and with previous boundary-layer profiling by lunar scintillometry from the same location. This further suggests that best 20 percentile seeing reaches 0.53 arcsec, of which typically 0.30 arcsec is due to the free atmosphere. Some discussion for guiding future seeing instrumentation and characterization at this site is provided.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, accepted for PAS

Progress toward developing the TMT adaptive optical systems and their components

Atmospheric turbulence compensation via adaptive optics (AO) will be essential for achieving most objectives of the TMT science case. The performance requirements for the initial implementation of the observatory's facility AO system include diffraction-limited performance in the near IR with 50 per cent sky coverage at the galactic pole. This capability will be achieved via an order 60x60 multi-conjugate AO system (NFIRAOS) with two deformable mirrors optically conjugate to ranges of 0 and 12 km, six high-order wavefront sensors observing laser guide stars in the mesospheric sodium layer, and up to three low-order, IR, natural guide star wavefront sensors located within each client instrument. The associated laser guide star facility (LGSF) will consist of 3 50W class, solid state, sum frequency lasers, conventional beam transport optics, and a launch telescope located behind the TMT secondary mirror. In this paper, we report on the progress made in designing, modeling, and validating these systems and their components over the last two years. This includes work on the overall layout and detailed opto-mechanical designs of NFIRAOS and the LGSF; reliable wavefront sensing methods for use with elongated and time-varying sodium laser guide stars; developing and validating a robust tip/tilt control architecture and its components; computationally efficient algorithms for very high order wavefront control; detailed AO system modeling and performance optimization incorporating all of these effects; and a range of supporting lab/field tests and component prototyping activities at TMT partners. Further details may be found in the additional papers on each of the above topics

FLAMINGOS-2: The Facility Near-Infrared Wide-field Imager & Multi-Object Spectrograph for Gemini

We report on the design and status of the FLAMINGOS-2 instrument - a fully-cryogenic facility near-infrared imager and multi-object spectrograph for the Gemini 8-meter telescopes. FLAMINGOS-2 has a refractive all-spherical optical system providing 0.18-arcsecond pixels and a 6.2-arcminute circular field-of-view on a 2048x2048-pixel HAWAII-2 0.9-2.4 mm detector array. A slit/decker wheel mechanism allows the selection of up to 9 multi-object laser-machined plates or 3 long slits for spectroscopy over a 6x2-arcminute field of view, and selectable grisms provide resolutions from $\sim$ 1300 to $\sim$3000 over the entire spectrograph bandpass. FLAMINGOS-2 is also compatible with the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics system, providing multi-object spectroscopic capabilities over a 3x1-arcminute field with high spatial resolution (0.09-arcsec/pixel). We review the designs of optical, mechanical, electronics, software, and On-Instrument WaveFront Sensor subsystems. We also present the current status of the project, currently in final testing in mid-2006.Comment: Submitted to SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation; 12 pages, incl. color figure

Progress toward developing the TMT adaptive optical systems and their components

Atmospheric turbulence compensation via adaptive optics (AO) will be essential for achieving most objectives of the TMT science case. The performance requirements for the initial implementation of the observatory's facility AO system include diffraction-limited performance in the near IR with 50 per cent sky coverage at the galactic pole. This capability will be achieved via an order 60x60 multi-conjugate AO system (NFIRAOS) with two deformable mirrors optically conjugate to ranges of 0 and 12 km, six high-order wavefront sensors observing laser guide stars in the mesospheric sodium layer, and up to three low-order, IR, natural guide star wavefront sensors located within each client instrument. The associated laser guide star facility (LGSF) will consist of 3 50W class, solid state, sum frequency lasers, conventional beam transport optics, and a launch telescope located behind the TMT secondary mirror. In this paper, we report on the progress made in designing, modeling, and validating these systems and their components over the last two years. This includes work on the overall layout and detailed opto-mechanical designs of NFIRAOS and the LGSF; reliable wavefront sensing methods for use with elongated and time-varying sodium laser guide stars; developing and validating a robust tip/tilt control architecture and its components; computationally efficient algorithms for very high order wavefront control; detailed AO system modeling and performance optimization incorporating all of these effects; and a range of supporting lab/field tests and component prototyping activities at TMT partners. Further details may be found in the additional papers on each of the above topics

Integrated switched capacitor cyclic algorithmic converters

Bibliography: p. 74-75.A switched capacitor cyclic algorithmic converter circuit is presented. The cir­cuit is capable of performing both digital to analog and analog to digital conversions using a number of published algorithms. Error sources that limit converter resolution are investigated and circuit designs that minimize these errors are described. Test re­sults from an integrated CMOS prototype indicate that the simpler algorithms outper­form schemes that attempt to compensate for circuit nonidealities

*WINNER* Ovipositional Preference of Silverleaf Whitefly on Benchmark Acylsugar Tomato Breeding Lines

The silverleaf whitefly (SLW), Bemisia tabaci B biotype is an invasive hemipteran insect which can cause severe losses in tomatoes. Acylsugar (AS)-mediated insect resistance bred from the wild tomato, Solanum pennelli (SP) has been demonstrated to control a variety insect pests. Using SP LA716, the tomato breeding program at Cornell University produced new AS lines. The program recently transferred the CU071026, the first benchmark line, SP genomic regions controlling AS to a new background (CU17NBL) with superior horticultural traits. The goal of this project is to compare the SLW ovipositional preference between young seedlings of CU17NBL and CU071026, to insure that CU17NBL has at least the same resistance as CU071026. These lines were evaluated at the four true leaf stage in choice tests replicated in small greenhouse cage assays. Cages were infested with ~100 SLW and allowed to oviposit for two weeks. Four replicate assays were performed. Insect counts were recorded weekly at leaf positions one and four. Data was analyzed with a mixed model ANOVA. The week two counts revealed a significant ovipositional preference (P<0.0001) for the CU071026 line as it accumulated more than ten times the number of eggs as the CU17NBL. Similar trends were seen for the 1st/2nd instar (P<0.01) and 3rd/4th instars (P=0.004). The findings of this study indicate that the transfer of the SP introgressions from CU071026 into CU17NBL have reduced the SLW preference compared to CU071026. Further characterization will be needed to understand these results