Biological Control of Rubber Tree Lace Bug by Endophytic Parasitoid in Brazil

The rubber tree is a plant cultivated with the purpose of extraction of the natural rubber (latex), being an important segment of the Brazil economy. Among the main curses that attack the culture, he stands out the tingid, Leptopharsa heveae Drake & Poor (Hemiptera: Tingidae) and among their main natural enemies they stand out the lace wings, the mushroom Sporothrix insectorum and the egg parasitoid Erythmelus tingitiphagus (Soares) (Hymenoptera: Mymaridae). The objective of the work was to report the potential of this natural enemy use, as auxiliary in programs of integrated handling of this pest of rubber plantations. The study was developed in the farm of company Plantações E. Michelin Ltda. , municipality of Itiquira, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, from October 2005 to February 2006 and from August 2006 to January 2007, being collected ripe folioles of five rubber tree clones (RRIM 600, PR 255, PB 235, PB 217 and GT 1), counted the number of eggs by foliole and the number of emerged parasitoid of the same ones. It was verified an average parasitism rate of 18.8% in the first period and 24.2% in the second

Depression: An Epidemic in Sikkim

INTRODUCTION: Depression is a common medical problem which is affecting people of all ages, genders, different socioeconomic groups, and religions in India and all over the world. If left untreated, it can lead to suicidal tendency followed by death. The second leading cause of death today among children and adolescents is suicide and youth suicide has become a significant public health problem. Various kinds of behavioral pattern of the people such as ideation, attempt to suicide can lead to death. So it can be considered as an intricate and multifactorial phenomenon. Along with many of the known risk factors like psychiatric disorders, instability, and drug abuse, depression is the one of the serious mental illnesses which is commonly associated with the suicidal tendency.AIM: To assess the level of prevalence of depression and associated symptoms, this cross-sectional study was done in Sikkim among 982 individuals.MATERIALS AND METHOD: The questionnaire based study consisted of 421 (42.88%) males and 561 (57.12%) females.RESULTS: A statistically significant(p =0.001) relation was found between depressive disorder among males and unemployment. However, Depression among females was attributed to marriage-related problems and affairs.CONCLUSION: There is an urgent need to develop health education packages to avert this public health problem

Beyond population engagement: understanding counterinsurgency

The US military has made considerable progress in developing counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy and doctrine, including the publication of Army Field Manual 3-24 and the military's successes in working with the population to stem the insurgency in Iraq. The short-term goals of COIN are now fairly well understood: engage the population and win their support. Whichever side wins the support of the population--either the host nation (and US forces that support it) or the insurgents--wins the battle. The battle is not the war, however. the long-term goal of a counterinsurgency campaign requires the creation of a functioning state, a government that can stand on its own, provide for its citizens, and promote regional and international stability; this achievement is victory in a counterinsurgency. Transitioning from the short-term success of population engagement to long-term viability of the host nation is far more difficult and less understood

Spatial and temporal variations of mercury in sediments from Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

Author name used in this publication: Carman C. M. IpAuthor name used in this publication: Chole W. Y. Tang2006-2007 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Renewable energy resource self-intervention control technique using Simulink/Stateflow modeling

Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary Systems are gaining popularity as electricity power generation system. The Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary Systems introductory was to overcome the intermittency during the energy harvesting process. Therefore, solar photovoltaic and wind turbine generator has been seen as one of the most promising Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary System to overcome the intermittency compare to a typical Hybrid Renewable Energy System. The integration of solar photovoltaic and wind turbine generator as Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary System can play an important role to reduce the dependency on the fossil fuel for electricity power generation and are seen as a solution to improve the shortage of electricity due to increasing demand. Thus, the advantages of Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary Systems have gained attention from many researchers around the world. Research to improve the complexity complementary system performance is necessary to achieve well design control and autonomous system operation and systematic energy management in the system. With that, this paper presents a new voltage-divider balancing switching technique to control the self-intervention switching for the Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary System. The self-intervention control strategy of the Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary System is coordinated using the Simulink/Stateflow process. The Simulink/Stateflow modelling performs under different preset conditions which are based on the analogue voltage reading from the input of the Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary System resources. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed research to control the self-intervention of the Hybrid Renewable Energy Complementary System under the preset conditions

A SIMPLE FORMULA FOR THE THIRD INTEGRAL OF MOTION OF DISK-CROSSING STARS IN THE GALAXY

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)We present a simple analytical formula for an approximated third integral of motion associated with nearly equatorial orbits in the Galaxy: I-3 = Z Sigma(1/3)(I) I, where Z(R) is the vertical amplitude of the orbit at galactocentric distance R and Sigma(I)(R) is the integrated dynamical surface mass density of the disk, a quantity which has recently become measurable. We also suggest that this relation is valid for disk-crossing orbits in a wide variety of axially symmetric galactic models, which range from razor-thin disks to disks with non-negligible thickness, whether or not the system includes bulges and halos. We apply our formalism to a Miyamoto-Nagai model and to a realistic model for the Milky Way. In both cases, the results provide fits for the shape of nearly equatorial orbits which are better than the corresponding curves obtained by the usual adiabatic approximation when the orbits have vertical amplitudes comparable to the disk's scale height. We also discuss the role of this approximate third integral of motion in modified theories of gravity.7861Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)FAPESP [2010/00487-9

Nitrogen budgets for the areolated grouper Epinephelus areolatus cultured under laboratory conditions and in open-sea cages

The nitrogen budget of grouper Epinephelus areolatus (Forskal) in a culture system can be represented by the mass balance equation: Consumption (C) = feed input (I) - feed wastage (W) = production (P) + mortality (M) + excretion (E) + faecal production (F). A nitrogen budge? was constructed for individual groupers cultured for 1 mo under laboratory condition and an annual nitrogen budget was also constructed for a cohort of E. areolatus cultured in an open-sea-cage farm and fed with trash fish. Consumption was determined independently both by feeding experiments as well as by summation of P, M, E and F, to provide an estimate of the accuracy of the budget equation. In the laboratory budget, 27.5% of N consumed was channelled to growth, while 64.4% was excreted in the form of ammonia and 8.1% lost in faeces. The N-assimilation efficiency was 91.9%. While the net N-retention efficiency was 29.9%. For the annual budget constructed for the open-sea-cage farm, only 8.6% of total N input into the farm was harvested in the form of fish production, while loss to mortality was 3.7%. Ammonia excretion was the most important N loss (46.0%), followed by feed wastage (37.7%) and faecal production (4.0%). 66% of total N input could be accounted for in the laboratory N budget for individual groupers, but only 48% of N input into the culture system could be accounted for in the annual nitrogen budget constructed for open-sea-cage farming. It was estimated that 87.7% of the total N input to the farm was lost to the environment (equivalent to 321 kg N t-1 of fish production). Such a value is almost 3 times as high as N loss from temperate salmonid farms.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Low voltage hybrid renewable energy system management for energy storages charging-discharging

As it is known, Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems (HRESs) development are aimed to increase the productivity and optimize the power generation produced by one or more connected sources. Such HRESs are always integrated with some kind of energy storage systems to satisfy the load demand during the Off-Period condition of the renewable energy sources. Off-Period condition can be categories into two phases: 1) low voltage output/low power and 2) zero voltage output/zero power. During both phases the energy storage systems will be the primary energy supplier to the load. Low voltage output produces a certain amount of voltage by the HRESs but it is insufficient to supply directly to the load. Thus, the low voltage output condition is able to be used to charge the energy storage systems such as the battery storages but not the zero voltage output condition. However, the low voltage output from the HRESs is not given a serious consideration and is always ignored of its importance. Even though the low voltage output is relatively considered unable to charge the energy storage systems but with the advancement of power electronics engineering the low voltage can be used to perform energy storage systems charging. With that, this research proposes to 1) design and develop the Hierarchical Switching and Control Process controller for charging-discharging the Battery Energy Storage System using low voltage output and 2) integrate the DC to DC Boost Converter to step-up the low voltage for Battery Energy Storage System charging using the Simulink/Stateflow in MATLAB software. Based on the results obtained the Hierarchical Switching and Control Process Controller and DC to DC Boost Converter has validated the proposed idea to step-up the low voltage for Battery Energy Storage System charging - discharging

Unifying evolutionary and thermodynamic information for RNA folding of multiple alignments

Computational methods for determining the secondary structure of RNA sequences from given alignments are currently either based on thermodynamic folding, compensatory base pair substitutions or both. However, there is currently no approach that combines both sources of information in a single optimization problem. Here, we present a model that formally integrates both the energy-based and evolution-based approaches to predict the folding of multiple aligned RNA sequences. We have implemented an extended version of Pfold that identifies base pairs that have high probabilities of being conserved and of being energetically favorable. The consensus structure is predicted using a maximum expected accuracy scoring scheme to smoothen the effect of incorrectly predicted base pairs. Parameter tuning revealed that the probability of base pairing has a higher impact on the RNA structure prediction than the corresponding probability of being single stranded. Furthermore, we found that structurally conserved RNA motifs are mostly supported by folding energies. Other problems (e.g. RNA-folding kinetics) may also benefit from employing the principles of the model we introduce. Our implementation, PETfold, was tested on a set of 46 well-curated Rfam families and its performance compared favorably to that of Pfold and RNAalifold

ABORDAGEM ESTÉTICA EM DENTES COM AMELOGENESE IMPERFEITA – RELATO DE CASO

Introdução: Paciente NGA, 18 anos, sexo feminino, compareceu a clinica odontológica da UMESP com a queixa principal de “dentes muito amarelos” (sic). Anamnese: A paciente apresentava boas condições sistêmicas e no exame clinico foi observada a presença de dentes hígidos diagnosticados com amelogênese imperfeita. Procedimentos clínicos