Model selection and averaging in the estimation of population parameters of Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) from stage frequency data in sweet pepper plants

Bemisia tabaci is a significant pest for many crops, but there are few population studies of this insect on sweet pepper ( Capsicum annuum). In this study, stage frequency data were generated with B. tabaci in sweet pepper plants in various situations, and the Bellows and Birley method was used to obtain population parameters from the data. The Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) was used to select the best option of the Bellows and Birley method and, in some cases, to estimate the parameters of the population using model averaging. The ratios estimated/observed for each population parameter were calculated to assess bias and were used to correct the estimations if the ratios were different from 1. The effects of different factors on the estimations of population parameters were analysed. The total duration of development was affected by the experimental conditions (laboratory vs. greenhouse) and temperature, but it had the highest precision. The final survival rate was affected by temperature, and the estimation of individuals entering each stage was affected only by the options included in the Bellows and Birley method. AIC helped to detect differences in the daily survival rate among the different experiments between N1 (first instar) (range 0.842-0.923), and the egg (range 0.989-1.0) and N4 (fourth instar) (0.990). The methodology used can be employed in field population studies. For example, the final survival rate in the greenhouse experiments varied between 0.624 and 0.097, depending on if the parasitoids were present or not, and the total development varied between 420.6 and 440.7 degree days

Forecasting the global extent of invasion of the cereal pest Spodoptera frugiperda, the fall armyworm

This is the final version. Available on open access from Pensoft Publishers via the DOI in this recordData availability statement: Some distribution data from South America analysed during this study are included in the Supplementary Information files. This does not include data from Plantwise clinics in Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru, due to data sharing restrictions. Some other distribution data are available from CABI’s Plantwise programme but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under licence for the current study and so are not publicly available. Data may be available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Plantwise. All other data used are publicly available from the referenced data sources.Fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda, is a crop pest native to the Americas, which has invaded and spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa within two years. Recent estimates of 20-50% maize yield loss in Africa suggest severe impact on livelihoods. Fall armyworm is still infilling its potential range in Africa and could spread to other continents. In order to understand fall armyworm’s year-round, global, potential distribution, we used evidence of the effects of temperature and precipitation on fall armyworm life-history, combined with data on native and African distributions to construct Species Distribution Models (SDMs). We also investigated the strength of trade and transportation pathways that could carry fall armyworm beyond Africa. Up till now, fall armyworm has only invaded areas that have a climate similar to the native distribution, validating the use of climatic SDMs. The strongest climatic limits on fall armyworm’s year-round distribution are the coldest annual temperature and the amount of rain in the wet season. Much of sub-Saharan Africa can host year-round fall armyworm populations, but the likelihoods of colonising North Africa and seasonal migrations into Europe are hard to predict. South and Southeast Asia and Australia have climate conditions that would permit fall armyworm to invade. Current trade and transportation routes reveal Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand face high threat of fall armyworm invasions originating from Africa.Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)UK Department for International Development (DfID

Palynological age constraint of Les Vilelles unit, Catalan Coastal Chain, Spain

Les Vilelles unit is a detrital sequence exposed at the southwestern margin of the Catalan Coastal Chain (CCC), NE Spain, below the Carboniferous turbiditic series. Based on the palynological content, the age of this unit was initially assigned to the Middle-Late Devonian (Eifelian to Famennian). Additional radiolarian and conodont findings were considered to be Early–Middle Mississippian (Tournaisian to early Visean). To clarify this age discrepancy a new and more comprehensive palynostratigraphic analysis has been conducted in the upper part of the section representative of Les Vilelles unit. This has provided an assemblage of miospores, acritarchs, prasinophyta phycomata and chitinozoans that can be confidently assigned to a latest Frasnian interval, in contact with the Frasnian–Famennian boundary. Therefore, the present analysis refines the Middle–Late Devonian age formerly assigned, establishes a latest Frasnian age for the top of the unit, and provides new insights to the better understanding of the unconformity and hiatus separating the pre-Carboniferous and Carboniferous CCC series in the Priorat Massif. The study also includes a systematic section with the description of three newly established miospore species: Dibolisporites coniugatum, Dibolisporites prioratum and Rugospora spinosa

Presence and distribution of current-use pesticides in surface marine sediments from a Mediterranean coastal lagoon (SE Spain)

Postprin

Palynological age constraint of Les Vilelles unit, Catalan Coastal Chain, Spain

Les Vilelles unit is a detrital sequence exposed at the southwestern margin of the Catalan Coastal Chain (CCC), NE Spain, below the Carboniferous turbiditic series. Based on the palynological content, the age of this unit was initially assigned to the Middle-Late Devonian (Eifelian to Famennian). Additional radiolarian and conodont findings were considered to be Early–Middle Mississippian (Tournaisian to early Visean). To clarify this age discrepancy a new and more comprehensive palynostratigraphic analysis has been conducted in the upper part of the section representative of Les Vilelles unit. This has provided an assemblage of miospores, acritarchs, prasinophyta phycomata and chitinozoans that can be confidently assigned to a latest Frasnian interval, in contact with the Frasnian–Famennian boundary. Therefore, the present analysis refines the Middle–Late Devonian age formerly assigned, establishes a latest Frasnian age for the top of the unit, and provides new insights to the better understanding of the unconformity and hiatus separating the pre-Carboniferous and Carboniferous CCC series in the Priorat Massif. The study also includes a systematic section with the description of three newly established miospore species: Dibolisporites coniugatum, Dibolisporites prioratum and Rugospora spinosa

Massive glosso-cervical arteriovenous malformation: the rationale for a challenging surgical resection

Massive arterivenous malformations (AVM) in the cervico-facial area are rare but potentially life-threatening. Treatment protocols are not well-established. A 41-year old man presented large painless rubber-like mass within the entire neck, which also extended intraorally through the floor of the mouth, showing a slow growing pattern for 5 years. Angiography diagnosed it as cervicofacial AVM. Treatment approach consisted on the embolization of the right upper thyroid, lingual and facial arteries under intravenous sedation. Three days later, bilateral radical neck dissection and subtotal glossectomy was performed. A musculo-cutaneous pectoralis major pedicled flap was harvested to reconstruct the floor of the mouth. Treatment of massive AVMs in the cervico-facial area is challenging due to the associated disfigurement and frequent recurrence rate due to incomplete resection. Also, massive bleeding may be present despite pre-operative super-selective embolization. A new case is presented with focus on surgical treatment considerations

Predictability of the resonance frequency analysis in the survival of dental implants placed in the anterior non-atrophied edentulous mandible

Background: Dental primary implant stability is considered essential in the success of the osseointegration process. The recent advent of the resonance frequency analysis (RFA) seems to effectively measure primary implant stability, although its relationship with implant survival has to be further established. Patients and Methods: Seventy patients with complete mandibular edentulism underwent dental implant rehabilitation by means of the placement of 68 dental implants within the interforaminal region and subsequent placement of an overdenture. Primary implant stability was measured by means of RFA and it was expressed in terms of implant stability quotient (ISQ) on the day of the implant insertion and at the time of the healing abutment placement in a conventional implant two-stage surgical procedure. Results: Overall implant survival rate was 97.1% at the end of the follow-up period. The mean ISQ value for 3.75 and 4.25 mm diameter implants was 78.4 ± 5.46 and 80.83 ± 5.35 respectively, at the time of the implant placement; and 76.68 ± 4.34 and 78.22 ± 6.87 respectively, at the second surgical stage. No statistical differences were observed in relation to changes in mean ISQ value along the healing process Conclusions: No statistical differences in terms of primary and secondary implant stability measured by RFA exists between 3.75 mm and 4.25 mm diameter implants in the conventional implant two-stage surgical procedure in patients with non-atrophied edentulous mandible being restored with an overdenture. Furthermore, no statistical association between RFA and the implant insertion torque was observed for endosseous dental implant placement at the first surgical stage. © Medicina Oral

Automatic language identification using deep neural networks

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. I. López-Moreno, J. González-Domínguez, P. Oldrich, D. R. Martínez, J. González-Rodríguez, "Automatic language identification using deep neural networks", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing ICASSP, Florence (Italy), 2014This work studies the use of deep neural networks (DNNs) to address automatic language identification (LID). Motivated by their recent success in acoustic modelling, we adapt DNNs to the problem of identifying the language of a given spoken utterance from short-term acoustic features. The proposed approach is compared to state-of-the-art i-vector based acoustic systems on two different datasets: Google 5M LID corpus and NIST LRE 2009. Results show how LID can largely benefit from using DNNs, especially when a large amount of training data is available. We found relative improvements up to 70%, in Cavg, over the baseline system