TEMPORAL FOOD PREFERENCE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF SELECTED BAIT PRODUCTS AGAINST \u3ci\u3ePACHYCONDYLA CHINENSIS\u3c/i\u3e (EMERY) (HYMENOPTERA: FORMICIDAE)

Pachycondyla chinensis (Emery), commonly known as the Asian needle ant is a well-established invasive species in urban and woodland areas in South Carolina. Foraging ants are found around or under places such as sidewalks, flowerbeds, mulch, tree bases, stones, and logs where human outdoor activity takes place in urbanized area. It is not an aggressive ant, but it has a powerful sting that causes severe allergic reactions in some people. It also has a negative impact on native ant species in forest environments. Food preference was studied, followed by an evaluation of selected bait products against P. chinensis. Protein, carbohydrate, lipid, and control diets were tested with P. chinensis in the laboratory and field. In the laboratory, P. chinensis showed no significant preference to any of the food choices. In the field, during the early stages of population growth (late May and early June), the ants showed no significant preference for carbohydrate, lipid, or protein, but visited protein significantly more frequently than plain agar (control), which was the food matrix. When the worker population and swarming activity were higher in late summer (July and August), P. chinensis showed a preference for protein over carbohydrate, lipid, and plain agar. These data provided a basis for selection of bait products for efficacy trials. Seven bait products were chosen to evaluate their effectiveness against P. chinensis. In the laboratory, a choice/no choice study was conducted. Advion® fire ant bait, Advance®, and Maxforce® complete achieved 100% mortality in less than one week. Advion® gel reached approximately 90% mortality and was not significantly different from those reaching 100% mortality after 14 days. When a choice of a natural food source was offered, Optigard® was less effective than in the no choice test, the latter was not significantly different from Advion® gel. Optigard® was not significantly different from Maxforce® quantum in the choice test, while Maxforce® quantum achieved a mortality of 40%. Advion® granule was the least effective bait in both choice and no-choice tests and was not significantly different from control when a choice was available. Evaluation of bait products in the field was conducted in urban areas where active foraging ants and potential nesting sites were located. Statistically, there were significant differences between treatments in the mean percentage of P. chinensis population change in week 1 only. Overall, Advion® gel was the only bait resulting in reduced a field population over 10 weeks. Advion® fire ant bait achieved 70% reduction in the field population during the first three weeks and reduced populations after reapplication in week 7. Advance® was effective in the first seven weeks and had no effect on population reduction in the last three weeks even after reapplication. In the field, Maxforce® complete was not as effective as in the laboratory. The field population increased during most weeks of the study. Optigard® and Maxforce® quantum had similar trends in population change over 10 weeks. The population increased during weeks when there was an increase at control sites, and decreased in weeks when there was a decrease in the P. chinensis population at control sites

Competition and subsidies in the deregulated US local telephone industry

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115904/1/rand12109.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/115904/2/rand12109-sup-0001-SupMat.pd

Getting ready for future carbon abatement under uncertainty – key factors driving investment with policy implications

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered a key technology option for abating CO2 emissions in carbon-intensive sectors, e.g. the power sector. However, high investment costs and risk hinder the diffusion of CCS. To avoid stranded assets or high future costs for retrofitting, new plants can be made carbon capture ready (CCR) to enable them to accommodate future CCS retrofitting at low additional costs. Current CCR investment decisions are closely related to future CCS retrofitting and CCS operation decisions in subsequent stages, all of which would be affected by uncertainties. We develop a three-stage CCR investment decision model under multiple uncertainties which allows for investment and especially operating flexibilities. Applying this model to China shows that CCS operating flexibility under the carbon-pricing scheme may actually lower the probability of investing in a CCR plant, and neglecting it may overestimate the propensity for investing in CCR. Moreover, learning effects, which reduce the costs of future CCS retrofitting, may be detrimental to CCR investment, indicating that the policy support for research on, development of, and deployment of CCS to reduce CCS costs should be coordinated with CCR investments. Although higher electricity prices can increase the value of an investment opportunity, it may restrain CCR investment. Finally, CCR investment does not appear to be economically viable under current conditions in China because of low carbon prices, high carbon price risks, high CCR investment costs and the high opportunity costs of CCS operatio

The Influence of Mathematics Attitude on Academic Achievement: Intermediary Role of Mathematics Learning Engagement

Mathematics is one of the most important courses in junior high school. Students' attitude and engagement in mathematics learning will affect their good habits of mathematics learning, and further affect their mathematics academic performance. The method used in this research is quantitative regression method. In this study, 317 students from Guangxi Yulin No.3 junior high school were tested on their mathematical learning engagement, attitude and academic achievement. The relationship between students’ mathematical attitude and their mathematical academic achievement as well as the role of mathematical learning engagement are explored in this research. The results show that mathematics attitude has a positive and direct impact on students’ mathematics academic performance and mathematics learning engagement plays an important role in the relationship between mathematics attitude and academic performance as their intermediary role

Experimental analysis of gene assembly with TopDown one-step real-time gene synthesis

Herein we present a simple, cost-effective TopDown (TD) gene synthesis method that eliminates the interference between the polymerase chain reactions (PCR) assembly and amplification in one-step gene synthesis. The method involves two key steps: (i) design of outer primers and assembly oligonucleotide set with a melting temperature difference of >10°C and (ii) utilization of annealing temperatures to selectively control the efficiencies of oligonucleotide assembly and full-length template amplification. In addition, we have combined the proposed method with real-time PCR to analyze the step-wise efficiency and the kinetics of the gene synthesis process. Gel electrophoresis results are compared with real-time fluorescence signals to investigate the effects of oligonucleotide concentration, outer primer concentration, stringency of annealing temperature, and number of PCR cycles. Analysis of the experimental results has led to insights into the gene synthesis process. We further discuss the conditions for preventing the formation of spurious DNA products. The TD real-time gene synthesis method provides a simple and efficient method for assembling fairly long DNA sequence, and aids in optimizing gene synthesis conditions. To our knowledge, this is the first report that utilizes real-time PCR for gene synthesis

Planar cell polarity signalling controls cell division orientation during zebrafish gastrulation

Oriented cell division is an integral part of pattern development in processes ranging from asymmetric segregation of cell-fate determinants to the shaping of tissues. Despite proposals that it has an important function in tissue elongation, the mechanisms regulating division orientation have been little studied outside of the invertebrates Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster1. Here, we have analysed mitotic divisions during zebrafish gastrulation using in vivo confocal imaging and found that cells in dorsal tissues preferentially divide along the animal–vegetal axis of the embryo. Establishment of this animal–vegetal polarity requires the Wnt pathway components Silberblick/Wnt11, Dishevelled and Strabismus. Our findings demonstrate an important role for non-canonical Wnt signalling in oriented cell division during zebrafish gastrulation, and indicate that oriented cell division is a driving force for axis elongation. Furthermore, we propose that non-canonical Wnt signalling has a conserved role in vertebrate axis elongation, orienting both cell intercalation and mitotic division

The Effect of Radiative Cooling on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Cluster Counts and Angular Power Spectrum: Analytic Treatment

Recently, the entropy excess detected in the central cores of groups and clusters has been successfully interpreted as being due to radiative cooling of the hot intragroup/intracluster gas. In such a scenario, the entropy floors $S_{\rm floor}$ in groups/clusters at any given redshift are completely determined by the conservation of energy. In combination with the equation of hydrostatic equilibrium and the universal density profile for dark matter, this allows us to derive the remaining gas distribution of groups and clusters after the cooled material is removed. Together with the Press-Schechter mass function we are able to evaluate effectively how radiative cooling can modify the predictions of SZ cluster counts and power spectrum. It appears that our analytic results are in good agreement with those found by hydrodynamical simulations. Namely, cooling leads to a moderate decrease of the predicted SZ cluster counts and power spectrum as compared with standard scenario. However, without taking into account energy feedback from star formation which may greatly suppress cooling efficiency, it is still premature to claim that this modification is significant for the cosmological applications of cluster SZ effect.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, uses aastex.cls. ApJ accepte

Editorial: Developmental model 2.0

Human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), including embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), have enabled the modeling of human development and helped to illuminate mechanisms of monogenic disease, complex disease, and cancer. Lately, the striking ability of PSCs to self-organize has engendered three-dimension (3D) models of human development. The 3D embryonic cell models partially reconstruct the complex architecture of mammalian early embryonic structures and therefore hold great potential for stem cell and developmental studies. In this Research Topic, Gordeeva et al. described a 3D embryoid body differentiation model and compared the spatiotemporal growth and patterning dynamics of embryoid bodies formed from different stem cell origins and culture conditions. Min et al. profiled the proteome and the protein phosphorylation of blastoids-blastocyst-like 3D structures derived from extended pluripotent stem cells (EPSC)

The Corelation Of Students’ Mathematics Learning Engagement On Their Academic Performance In Junior High School

In this study, 312 junior high school students are tested on their mathematics learning engagement and achievement. This research will also find out the connection between the students’ mathematics learning engagement with their mathematics academic performance. The results of this research show that junior high school students’ mathematics learning engagement is closely related to their mathematics academic performance in which cognitive engagement has the highest correlation and emotional engagement has the lowest correlation with students’ mathematics academic performance. The result also shows that when there is a higher mathematics academic achievement, the mathematics learning engagement will also be higher. This research also shows that gender factor doesn’t really affects the students’ mathematics learning engagement but their geographic factor does affect the learning engagement

Who are Fans of Facebook Fan Pages? An Electronic Word-of-Mouth Communication Perspective

Given its great business value and popularity, Facebook fan pages have attracted more and more attention in both industry and academia. Fans of Facebook fan pages play an important role in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication. This study focused on the population of fans on Facebook fan pages and examined the differences between fans and non-fans in terms of demographics, social network sites (SNS) use, Internet use, and online shopping behaviors. The results indicated that fans used SNS more frequently than non-fans. Additionally, from the eWOM perspective, the researchers moderated product types in the model of people’s word-of-mouth (WOM) preferences and found that people had different preferences for eWOM and traditional WOM for different products. Traditional WOM is still the most important source of information for people when shopping online