A new root-knot nematode, Meloidogyne moensi n. sp. (Nematoda : Meloidogynidae), parasitizing Robusta coffee from Western Highlands, Vietnam

A new root-knot nematode, parasitizing Robusta coffee in Dak Lak Province, Western Highlands of Vietnam, is described as Meloidogyne moensi n. sp. Morphological and molecular analyses demonstrated that this species differs clearly from other previously described root-knot nematodes. Morphologically, the new species is characterized by a swollen body of females with a small posterior protuberance that elongated from ovoid to saccate; perineal patterns with smooth striae, continuous and low dorsal arch; lateral lines marked as a faint space or linear depression at junction of the dorsal and ventral striate; distinct phasmids; perivulval region free of striae; visible and wide tail terminus surrounding by concentric circles of striae; medial lips of females in dumbbell-shaped and slightly raised above lateral lips; female stylet is normally straight with posteriorly sloping stylet knobs; lip region of second stage juvenile (J2) is not annulated; medial lips and labial disc of J2 formed dumbbell shape; lateral lips are large and triangular; tail of J2 is conoid with rounded unstriated tail tip; distinct phasmids and hyaline; dilated rectum. Meloidogyne moensi n. sp. is most similar to M. africana, M. ottersoni by prominent posterior protuberance. Results of molecular analysis of rDNA sequences including the D2-D3 expansion regions of 28S rDNA, COI, and partial COII/16S rRNA of mitochondrial DNA support for the new species status

Minority versus majority: the choice of acquisition in Asia-Pacific countries

This paper examines the relationship between the financial constraints of the acquiring firms and their choice of a minority over a majority acquisition. Our findings show that the likelihood of bidders undertaking a minority acquisition increases with financial constraints, including the deviation from target capital structure, and overleverage deficit. We also find that the impacts of leverage deviation on the likelihood of bidders engaging in a minority or majority acquisition is asymmetric for underleveraged and overleveraged firms. In addition, international bidders are less likely to take a minority acquisition if the target is operating in i) countries with a higher degree of Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, ii) countries with higher degree to which individuals are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as having more freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media. Lastly, minority acquisitions are more common in a country with a more developed market. As such, in a fluid social order it looks like acquirers really need majority control

A Template for Implementing Fast Lock-free Trees Using HTM

Algorithms that use hardware transactional memory (HTM) must provide a software-only fallback path to guarantee progress. The design of the fallback path can have a profound impact on performance. If the fallback path is allowed to run concurrently with hardware transactions, then hardware transactions must be instrumented, adding significant overhead. Otherwise, hardware transactions must wait for any processes on the fallback path, causing concurrency bottlenecks, or move to the fallback path. We introduce an approach that combines the best of both worlds. The key idea is to use three execution paths: an HTM fast path, an HTM middle path, and a software fallback path, such that the middle path can run concurrently with each of the other two. The fast path and fallback path do not run concurrently, so the fast path incurs no instrumentation overhead. Furthermore, fast path transactions can move to the middle path instead of waiting or moving to the software path. We demonstrate our approach by producing an accelerated version of the tree update template of Brown et al., which can be used to implement fast lock-free data structures based on down-trees. We used the accelerated template to implement two lock-free trees: a binary search tree (BST), and an (a,b)-tree (a generalization of a B-tree). Experiments show that, with 72 concurrent processes, our accelerated (a,b)-tree performs between 4.0x and 4.2x as many operations per second as an implementation obtained using the original tree update template

Initial trust establishment for personal space IoT systems

© 2017 IEEE. Increasingly, trust has played a crucial role in the security of an IoT system from its inception to the end of its lifecycle. A device has to earn some level of trust even before it is authenticated for admission to the system. Furthermore, once the device is admitted to the system, it may behave maliciously over time; hence its behavior must be evaluated constantly in the form of trust to ensure the integrity of the system. Currently, no mechanism exists to establish an initial trust on a device, without prior knowledge, before its admission to an IoT system. Even when trust is applicable, trust evaluation models require direct/indirect observations over time, historical data on past encounters, or third party recommendations. However, this type of past data is not available in the first encounter between the system and the device. The question is how to establish whether a device can be trusted to a level that merits further evaluation for admission into a mobile and dynamic IoT system when it encounters the system for the first time? This paper addresses this challenge by proposing a challenge-response method and a trust assessment model to establish, without prior knowledge, the initial trust that a device places on another in a mobile and dynamic environment called personal space IoT. The initial trust is established before further interaction can take place and under the assumption that only a limited window of time is available for the trust assessment. The paper describes and evaluates the proposed model theoretically and by simulation. It also describes a practical scheme for realizing the proposed solution

General one-loop formulas for decay h→Zγh\rightarrow Z\gamma

Radiative corrections to the $h\rightarrow Z\gamma$ are evaluated in the one-loop approximation. The unitary gauge gauge is used. The analytic result is expressed in terms of the Passarino-Veltman functions. The calculations are applicable for the Standard Model as well for a wide class of its gauge extensions. In particular, the decay width of a charged Higgs boson $H^\pm \rightarrow W^\pm\gamma$ can be derived. The consistence of our formulas and several specific earlier results is shown.Comment: 33 pages, 3 figures, a new section (V) and references were improved in the published versio

Challenge-response trust assessment model for personal space IoT

© 2016 IEEE. Internet of Things (IoT) embraces the interconnection of identifiable devices that are capable of providing services through their cooperation. The cooperation among devices in such an IoT environment often requires reliable and trusted participating members in order to provide useful services to the end user. Consequently, an IoT environment or space needs to evaluate the trust levels of all devices in contact before admitting them as members of the space. Existing trust evaluation models are based on resources such as historical observations or recommendations information to evaluate the trust level of a device. However, these methods fail if there is no existing trust resource. This paper introduces a specific IoT environment called personal space IoT and proposes a novel trust evaluation model that performs a challenge-response trust assessment to evaluate the trust level of a device before allowing it to participate in the space. This novel challenge-response trust assessment model does not require the historical observation or previous encounter with the device or any existing trusted recommendation. The proposed challenge-response trust assessment model provides a reliable trust resource that can be used along with other resources such as direct trust, recommendation trust to get a comprehensive trust opinion on a specific device. It can also be considered as a new method for evaluating the trust value on a device