Oviposition behaviour and life-history performance of Epiphyas postvittana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) on the leaves of Vitis vinifera (Vitales: Vitaceae) infected with Botrytis cinerea (Helotiales: Sclerotiniaceae)

In three-way interaction systems involving an insect and a plant-pathogenic fungus, both occurring on the same plant, the insects generally gain in terms of their growth and metabolism. In this study we have tested how the infection by Botrytis cinerea on the leaves of Vitis vinifera influences the life-history performance of larvae and the oviposition behaviour of Epiphyas postvittana. We conducted free-choice and two-choice experiments to test the oviposition behaviour of gravid E. postvittana. We also characterized the effects of B. cinerea-infected leaves of V. vinifera on the growth and development of E. postvittana. We found that the oviposition preference of E. postvittana was strongly influenced by the olfactory and tactile cues. Volatiles from B. cinerea-infected plants significantly deterred oviposition and in consequence, adult females laid fewer number of eggs on B. cinerea-infected leaves of V. vinifera compared with uninfected leaves. The mortality rate of larvae fed on B. cinerea-infected leaves were not significantly different from the larvae fed on uninfected leaves of V. vinifera. Whereas, the larvae of E. postvittana fed on B. cinerea-infected leaves had significantly shorter developmental period, attained heavier pupal mass, and on becoming adults they laid more numbers of eggs than the larvae that were enabled to feed on uninfected leaves of V. vinifera. We also reared the larvae of E. postvittana on exclusive-fungus diet but all larvae died before pupation indicating that for a better larval performance and adult reproductive output of E. postvittana, the V. vinifera-B. cinerea interacting system is but imperative

Anti-Inflammatory Activity of Calotropis gigantea and Tridax procumbens on Carrageenin-Induced Paw Edema in Rats

The anti-inflammatory activities of extract of Calotropis gigantea R.Br. and Tridax procumbens Linn., were assessed on carrageenin-induced paw edema along with standard drug, Ibuprofen. The Ibuprofen significantly reduced paw edema at the dose of 200mg/Kg bw orally. The oral administration equi-effective dose (ED50) of C. gigantea (600mg/Kg bw) and T. procumbens (400 mg/Kg bw) individually revealed about 20-35% more activity than the one rendered by administration of 50mg/Kg bw of Ibuprofen. The effect of C. gigantea and T. procumbens along with various dose regimen of Ibuprofen showed greater anti-inflammatory activities than the Ibuprofen alone

Artifacts - Anycast Agility: Network Playbooks to Fight DDoS

In this document, we provide datasets and software tools related to our paper “Anycast Agility: Network Playbooks to Fight DDoS”. Our artifact contains several datasets generated from our anycast experiments and analysis. Our datasets provide a snapshot of the results that we generated during our experiments. Some of our experimental results are dependent on the current state of the network interconnections and policies. However, due to the anycast stability, we expect to get similar results if we redo the experiments now. Our published datasets support our key results and are publicly available. We also provide tools and scripts that can be useful for other researchers. We provide datasets and tools for measuring anycast agility against DDoS. Our datasets are available upon request. We provide datasets about the traffic distribution after BGP changes in testbeds, attack data from a DNS root server and from the Dutch National Scrubbing Center, other data related to anycast catchment stability, and other supporting data for our software tools. We provide codes for traffic estimation, for reproducing experiments, and for parsing the collected data.This work is supported, in part, by the DHS HSARPA Cyber Security Division via contract number HSHQDC-17-R-B0004-TTA.02-0006-I and Netherlands Organisation for scientific research (4019020199)

Evaluation and improvement of CDS-based topology control for wireless sensor networks

The connected dominating set (CDS) principle has emerged as the predominant method for energy-efficient discovery and clustering of power-/location-unaware WSN nodes. While many CDS discovery protocols have been proposed recently, a one-to-one comparative evaluation of these protocols has not been performed on judicious metrics. In this paper, we perform a simulation-based evaluation of three prominent CDS based protocols (CDS Rule K, EECDS and A3) on the basis of message and energy overhead, residual energy, number of unconnected nodes, and convergence time. Our analysis shows that the protocols’ performances vary significantly with different maintenance techniques and none of the existing protocols can outperform the others on all metrics. Based on this result, we identify some performance-improving guidelines for CDS-based topology discovery and utilize them to propose a new protocol, clique-based CDS discovery (CCDS). We show that CCDS provides considerably better performance than existing protocols in most operational scenarios

Poly: A Reliable and Energy Efficient Topology Control Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency and reliability are the two important requirements for mission-critical wireless sensor networks. In the context of sensor topology control for routing and dissemination, Connected Dominating Set (CDS) based techniques proposed in prior literature provide the most promising efficiency and reliability. In a CDS-based topology control technique, a backbone – comprising a set of highly connected nodes – is formed which allows communication between any arbitrary pair of nodes in the network. In this paper, we show that formation of a polygon in the network provides a reliable and energy-efficient topology. Based on this observation, we propose Poly, a novel topology construction protocol based on the idea of polygons. We compare the performance of Poly with three prominent CDS-based topology construction protocols namely CDS-Rule K, Energy-efficient CDS (EECDS) and A3. Our simulation results demonstrate that Poly performs consistently better in terms of message overhead and other selected metrics. We also model the reliability of Poly and compare it with other CDS-based techniques to show that it achieves better connectivity under highly dynamic network topologies

Validity of neonatal jaundice evaluation by primary health-care workers and physicians in Karachi, Pakistan

Objective: The Purpose of this study was to validate primary health-care workers\u27 and physicians\u27 visual assessment of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia in Karachi, Pakistan. Study Design: We compared primary health-care workers\u27 and physicians\u27 clinical identification of jaundice in infants = 15 mg per 100 ml (260 mu mol l(-1)) with 83.3% sensitivity and 50.5% specificity, neonates aged 1 to 6 days were identified with 76.2% sensitivity and 60.7% specificity. Physicians identified neonates aged 1 to 20 days with hyperbilirubimemia \u3e= 15 mg per 100 ml (260 mmol l(-1)) with 51.4% sensitivity and 90.7% specificity, and neonates aged 1 to 6 days with 50% sensitivity and 88.5 % specificity. The primary health-care workers\u27 and physicians\u27 assessments showed fair interobserver agreement (k statistic 0.29). Conclusion: Primary health-care workers identified hyperbilirubinemic neonates with adequate sensitivity. With proper training and supervision, their assessment could improve the referral of hyperbilirubinemic neonates in low-resource settings in the developing world