A study of the prevalence of ecto and endo parasites of Nile Rat Arvicanthis niloticus Dismarest (1822) in rural areas of Benue State, Nigeria for successful domestication of the species

This study examined the type and abundance of Ecto and Endo parasites of Nile rat (Arvicanthis niloticus) in rural areas of Benue State. A total of 400 rats (average of 100 for each location) were systematically captured from the wild in four locations namely, Makurdi, Gwer West, Guma and Kwande Local Government Areas (L.G.A) of Benue State for the entire studies on the captive rearing of Nile rats. However, only 10 % of the captured rats from each location were subjected to parasite isolation procedures in accordance with standard methods. The number of each parasite isolated and identified from each location were recorded and documented as findings of the study. Results revealed that four ecto parasites (Lice,Termite, Soft Tick and Hard Tick) were prevalent in all the locations considered. Similarly, three endo parasites (Hook Worm, Tape Worm and Myosis) were isolated from the rats in all locations. In general Lice (17%) and Tick (13%) were observed to be dominant ecto parasite for each location, while Tape worm (21%) and Myosis (7%) were observed to be the dominant endo parasites of feral Nile rats in the study area. For successful and healthy domestication of the Nile rats, the present study concludes that adequate attention must be given towards the control of both the ecto and endo parasites of captive reared Nile rats.Keywords: Nile rats, Ecto parasite, Endo parasite, prevalence, wild, Benue stat

Collaborative dynamic decision making: a case study from B2B supplier selection

The problem of supplier selection can be easily modeled as a multiple-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem: businesses express their preferences with respect to suppliers, which can then be ranked and selected. This approach has two major pitfalls: first, it does not consider a dynamic scenario, in which suppliers and their ratings are constantly changing; second, it only addressed the problem from the point of view of a single business, and cannot be easily applied when considering more than one business. To overcome these problems, we introduce a method for supplier selection that builds upon the dynamic MCDM framework of Campanella and Ribeiro [1] and, by means of a linear programming model, can be used in the case of multiple collaborating businesses plan- ning their next batch of orders together.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, under contract CONT DOUT/49/UNINOVA/0/5902/1/200

Evidence for a narrow dip structure at 1.9 GeV/c2^2 in 3π+3π−3\pi^+ 3\pi^- diffractive photoproduction

A narrow dip structure has been observed at 1.9 GeV/c$^2$ in a study of diffractive photoproduction of the $~3\pi^+3\pi^-$ final state performed by the Fermilab experiment E687.Comment: The data of Figure 6 can be obtained by downloading the raw data file e687_6pi.txt. v5 (2nov2018): added Fig. 7, the 6 pion energy distribution as requested by a reade