Capturing natural-colour 3D models of insects for species discovery

Collections of biological specimens are fundamental to scientific understanding and characterization of natural diversity. This paper presents a system for liberating useful information from physical collections by bringing specimens into the digital domain so they can be more readily shared, analyzed, annotated and compared. It focuses on insects and is strongly motivated by the desire to accelerate and augment current practices in insect taxonomy which predominantly use text, 2D diagrams and images to describe and characterize species. While these traditional kinds of descriptions are informative and useful, they cannot cover insect specimens "from all angles" and precious specimens are still exchanged between researchers and collections for this reason. Furthermore, insects can be complex in structure and pose many challenges to computer vision systems. We present a new prototype for a practical, cost-effective system of off-the-shelf components to acquire natural-colour 3D models of insects from around 3mm to 30mm in length. Colour images are captured from different angles and focal depths using a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera rig and two-axis turntable. These 2D images are processed into 3D reconstructions using software based on a visual hull algorithm. The resulting models are compact (around 10 megabytes), afford excellent optical resolution, and can be readily embedded into documents and web pages, as well as viewed on mobile devices. The system is portable, safe, relatively affordable, and complements the sort of volumetric data that can be acquired by computed tomography. This system provides a new way to augment the description and documentation of insect species holotypes, reducing the need to handle or ship specimens. It opens up new opportunities to collect data for research, education, art, entertainment, biodiversity assessment and biosecurity control.Comment: 24 pages, 17 figures, PLOS ONE journa

Neochrysocharis formosa (Westwood) (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae), a newly recorded parasitoid of the tomato moth, tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), in Argentina

We report the first record of Neochrysocharis formosa (Westwood) parasitizing larvae of the tomato moth, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick), in tomato crops in Northern Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Tomato moth larvae were sampled during four consecutive growing cycles, between 2003 and 2005, in 10 sites. Neochrysocharis formosa was present only in organic outdoor and protected crops, and predominantly during the late season. Parasitism rates varied from 1.5% to 5%. The finding of this species is a new record for Argentina and South America, and T. absoluta is a new host record.Centro de Estudios Parasitológicos y de Vectore

Neochrysocharis formosa (Westwood) (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae), a newly recorded parasitoid of the tomato moth, tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), in Argentina

We report the first record of Neochrysocharis formosa (Westwood) parasitizing larvae of the tomato moth, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick), in tomato crops in Northern Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Tomato moth larvae were sampled during four consecutive growing cycles, between 2003 and 2005, in 10 sites. Neochrysocharis formosa was present only in organic outdoor and protected crops, and predominantly during the late season. Parasitism rates varied from 1.5% to 5%. The finding of this species is a new record for Argentina and South America, and T. absoluta is a new host record.Centro de Estudios Parasitológicos y de Vectore

Darboux Transformations, Infinitesimal Symmetries and Conservation Laws for Nonlocal Two-Dimensional Toda Lattice

The technique of Darboux transformation is applied to nonlocal partner of two-dimensional periodic A_{n-1} Toda lattice. This system is shown to admit a representation as the compatibility conditions of direct and dual overdetermined linear systems with quantized spectral parameter. The generalization of the Darboux transformation technique on linear equations of such a kind is given. The connections between the solutions of overdetermined linear systems and their expansions in series at singular points neighborhood are presented. The solutions of the nonlocal Toda lattice and infinite hierarchies of the infinitesimal symmetries and conservation laws are obtained.Comment: 12 pages, infinitesimal symmetries and conservation laws are adde

Collapse in the nonlocal nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation

We discuss spatial dynamics and collapse scenarios of localized waves governed by the nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation with nonlocal nonlinearity. Firstly, we prove that for arbitrary nonsingular attractive nonlocal nonlinear interaction in arbitrary dimension collapse does not occur. Then we study in detail the effect of singular nonlocal kernels in arbitrary dimension using both, Lyapunoff's method and virial identities. We find that for for a one-dimensional case, i.e. for $n=1$, collapse cannot happen for nonlocal nonlinearity. On the other hand, for spatial dimension $n\geq2$ and singular kernel $\sim 1/r^\alpha$, no collapse takes place if $\alpha<2$, whereas collapse is possible if $\alpha\ge2$. Self-similar solutions allow us to find an expression for the critical distance (or time) at which collapse should occur in the particular case of $\sim 1/r^2$ kernels. Moreover, different evolution scenarios for the three dimensional physically relevant case of Bose Einstein condensate are studied numerically for both, the ground state and a higher order toroidal state with and without an additional local repulsive nonlinear interaction. In particular, we show that presence of an additional local repulsive term can prevent collapse in those cases

Long-Term Fluoride Release from Dental Resins Affects STRO-1+ Cell Behavior.

Fluoride-releasing restorative dental materials can be beneficial to remineralize dentin and help prevent secondary caries. However, the effects of fluoride release from dental materials on the activity of dental pulp stem cells are not known. Here we investigate whether different fluoride release kinetics from dental resins supplemented with modified hydrotalcite (RK-F10) or fluoride-glass filler (RK-FG10) could influence the behavior of a human dental pulp stem cell subpopulation (STRO-1(+) cells) known for its ability to differentiate toward an odontoblast-like phenotype. The 2 resins, characterized by similar physicochemical properties and fluoride content, exhibited different long-term fluoride release kinetics. Our data demonstrate that long-term exposure of STRO-1(+) cells to a continuous release of a low amount of fluoride by RK-F10 increases their migratory response to transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) and stromal cell-derived factor 1 (SDF-1), both important promoters of pulp stem cell recruitment. Moreover, the expression patterns of dentin sialoprotein (dspp), dentin matrix protein 1 (dmp1), osteocalcin (ocn), and matrix extracellular phosphoglycoprotein (mepe) indicate a complete odontoblast-like cell differentiation only when STRO-1(+) cells were cultured on RK-F10. On the contrary, RK-FG10, characterized by an initial fluoride release burst and reduced lifetime of the delivery, did not elicit any significant effect on both STRO-1(+) cell migration and differentiation. Taken together, our results highlight the importance of taking into account fluoride release kinetics in addition to fluoride concentration when designing new fluoride-restorative materials

The effect of memory on relaxation in a scalar field theory

We derive a kinetic equation with a non-Markovian collision term which includes a memory effect, from Kadanoff-Baym equations in $\phi^4$ theory within the three-loop level for the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action. The memory effect is incorporated into the kinetic equation by a generalized Kadanoff-Baym ansatz.Based on the kinetic equations with and without the memory effect, we investigate an influence of this effect on decay of a single particle excitation with zero momentum in 3+1 dimensions and the spatially homogeneous case. Numerical results show that, while the time evolution of the zero mode is completely unaffected by the memory effect due to a separation of scales in the weak coupling regime, this effect leads first to faster relaxation than the case without it and then to slower relaxation as the coupling constant increases.Comment: 12 pages, 6 eps figure

Quantum Symmetries and Strong Haagerup Inequalities

In this paper, we consider families of operators $\{x_r\}_{r \in \Lambda}$ in a tracial C$^\ast$-probability space $(\mathcal A, \phi)$, whose joint $\ast$-distribution is invariant under free complexification and the action of the hyperoctahedral quantum groups $\{H_n^+\}_{n \in \N}$. We prove a strong form of Haagerup's inequality for the non-self-adjoint operator algebra $\mathcal B$ generated by $\{x_r\}_{r \in \Lambda}$, which generalizes the strong Haagerup inequalities for $\ast$-free R-diagonal families obtained by Kemp-Speicher \cite{KeSp}. As an application of our result, we show that $\mathcal B$ always has the metric approximation property (MAP). We also apply our techniques to study the reduced C$^\ast$-algebra of the free unitary quantum group $U_n^+$. We show that the non-self-adjoint subalgebra $\mathcal B_n$ generated by the matrix elements of the fundamental corepresentation of $U_n^+$ has the MAP. Additionally, we prove a strong Haagerup inequality for $\mathcal B_n$, which improves on the estimates given by Vergnioux's property RD \cite{Ve}

Brain Changes in Kallmann Syndrome

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Neochrysocharis formosa (Westwood) (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae), a newly recorded parasitoid of the tomato moth, tuta absoluta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), in Argentina

We report the first record of Neochrysocharis formosa (Westwood) parasitizing larvae of the tomato moth, Tuta absoluta (Meyrick), in tomato crops in Northern Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Tomato moth larvae were sampled during four consecutive growing cycles, between 2003 and 2005, in 10 sites. Neochrysocharis formosa was present only in organic outdoor and protected crops, and predominantly during the late season. Parasitism rates varied from 1.5% to 5%. The finding of this species is a new record for Argentina and South America, and T. absoluta is a new host record.Centro de Estudios Parasitológicos y de Vectore