Effect of Different Hosts on the Biology of Trybliographa Daci (Hymenoptera brachonidae) Under Lab Conditions

The present studies on the effect of different hosts on the biology of Aganaspis daci previously known as Trybliographa daci (Weld) (Hymenoptera: Brachonidae now known as Eucoilidae) were carried out in the fruitfly and their parasitoids lab, Plant Protection Division, Nuclear Institute of Agriculture (NIA), Tandojam. Four different kinds of hosts namely, Bactrocera zonata, Bactrocera dorsalis, and Bactrocera cucurbitae and Carpomya vesuviana were used in the experiment. Data on number of un-emerged, parasitized pupae, sex ratio and longevity of the parasitoid were recorded.The different parameters of T. daci were significant (P<0.05) affected by the provision of different hosts. However, maximum mean parasitization was recorded when T. daci were offered with the larvae of B. zonata (11.40±0.96) and minimum in C. vesuviana (4.60±0.96). Moreover, maximum mean emergence was observed when T. daci were offered with the larvae of B. zonata (8.90±0.87) and minimum in C.vesuviana (3.30±0.94). Moreover, maximum male emergence were recorded when T. daci were offered with the larvae of B. zonata (3.70±0.50) and lowest in C. vesuviana (1.00±0.21). Similarly maximum mean female emergence was recorded, when adults T. daci were offered with larvae of B. zonata (5.20±1.45) and maximum in larvae of C. vesuviana (2.00±0.87). Our results established that B. zonata is preferred host of T. daci in term of preference, parasitization, emergence and longevity. These results could be exploited for the mass rearing and management of B. zonata in variety of orchard agro-ecosystem. Keywords: Trybliographa Daci, Hosts, fruit flies and parasitization potentia

SNOMED CT standard ontology based on the ontology for general medical science

Background: Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT, hereafter abbreviated SCT) is acomprehensive medical terminology used for standardizing the storage, retrieval, and exchange of electronic healthdata. Some efforts have been made to capture the contents of SCT as Web Ontology Language (OWL), but theseefforts have been hampered by the size and complexity of SCT. Method: Our proposal here is to develop an upper-level ontology and to use it as the basis for defining the termsin SCT in a way that will support quality assurance of SCT, for example, by allowing consistency checks ofdefinitions and the identification and elimination of redundancies in the SCT vocabulary. Our proposed upper-levelSCT ontology (SCTO) is based on the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS). Results: The SCTO is implemented in OWL 2, to support automatic inference and consistency checking. Theapproach will allow integration of SCT data with data annotated using Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundryontologies, since the use of OGMS will ensure consistency with the Basic Formal Ontology, which is the top-levelontology of the OBO Foundry. Currently, the SCTO contains 304 classes, 28 properties, 2400 axioms, and 1555annotations. It is publicly available through the bioportal athttp://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/SCTO/. Conclusion: The resulting ontology can enhance the semantics of clinical decision support systems and semanticinteroperability among distributed electronic health records. In addition, the populated ontology can be used forthe automation of mobile health applications

Does Demutualization Spur Liquidity?

Purpose: The literature on demutualization is confined to efficiency and social welfare issues. Little empirical literature exists on the effect of demutualization on listed firms. This study examines the impact of demutualization on the liquidity of listed firms’ stocks. Methodology: It empirically investigates how the liquidity of listed firms’ stocks is affected by demutualization. Analyzing data of 137 non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange for 2005 to 2017, we employ fixed effect regression to test the hypotheses. Findings: We find that demutualization has significantly improved liquidity. We analyze all three dimensions of liquidity that are the trading activity, market impact, and transaction cost. We find that demutualization increases trading activity, improve market depth, and has reduced the transaction cost.  Implications: Our findings suggest that demutualization is beneficial not only for listed firms but also for its shareholders as all three dimensions of liquidity are improved by demutualization. Stock exchanges that are not demutualized and are facing liquidity problem, can be improved by changing its structure from mutual to demutualized. Originality: Prior literature focuses on the impact of demutualization on the stock market or social welfare. There is scares research on the effect of demutualization of the listed firm. This study fills this gap by analyzing the impact of demutualization on listed firms' liquidity in a developing economy, such as Pakistan

Studies on Buddleja asiatica antibacterial, antifungal, antispasmodic and Ca++ antagonist activities

Crude extract of Buddleja asiatica Lour and its fractions, chloroform (F1), ethyl acetate (F2) and nbutanol (F3) were evaluated for antibacterial, antifungal, antispasmodic and Ca++ antagonist activities. The antibacterial activity was performed against 11 types of bacteria. The crude extract and fractions F2 and F3 exhibited significant activity, while F1 showed low activity in killing the Shigella flexenari, Sternostoma boydi and Escherichia coli. In the rest bacteria, the crude extract and all the fractions (F1 to F3) revealed minimum to nil inhibitory effect. The fungicidal activity of the crude extract and all the fractions (F1 to F3) was also performed against six different fungi. The crude extract and fractions F1 and F3 displayed significant activity, while fraction F2 showed moderate activity against Fusarium solani. In the case of Microsporum canis, the crude extract and fraction F3 showed high activity but in the other four fungi, the inhibition area exhibited optimum to nil activity in crude extract and all the fractions (F1 to F3). In isolated rabbit jejunum preparations, B. asiatica crude extract caused concentration-dependent (0.03 to 1.0 mg/ml) relaxation of spontaneous and high K+ (80 mM)-induced contractions. The results indicate the antibacterial, antifungal, antispasmodic and Ca++ antagonist potential of B. asiatica Lour

Comparison of mechanical properties of wheat and rice straw influenced by loading rates

This study investigates the comparison of mechanical properties of wheat and rice straw such as shear strength, specific shearing energy and cutting forces. The experiments were conducted at three loading rate of 15, 20 and 25 mm min-1 and three internode positions 70 (N1), 130 (N2) and 190 (N3) mm down from the ear. Results show that by increasing the loading rate, strength of wheat and rice straw changed from 8.12 to 22.94 and 6.06 to 14.33 MPa and specific shear energy was varied from 12.10 to 18.64 and 10.40 to 16.17 mJ mm-2, respectively. Moreover, the values of cutting forces of wheat and rice straw were within the ranges 13.23 to 19.50 and 9.40 to 16.70 N. Whereas the shear strength, specific shearing energy and cutting force were higher at higher loading rate at the third internode of both straw internode positions. The shear strength, specific shearing energy and cutting force of rice straw were significantly higher (p<0.05) than that of wheat straw. With respect to the findings of the present research study, it is concluded that with decreasing loading rate of cutting blade toward the first internode, more energy can be saved by harvesting and threshing machines.Keywords: Cutting force, rice straw, shear strength, specific shearing energy, wheat strawAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(10), pp. 1068-107

Estimating fuel-efficient air plane trajectories using machine learning

Airline industry has witnessed a tremendous growth in the recent past. Percentage of people choosing air travel as first choice to commute is continuously increasing. Highly demanding and congested air routes are resulting in inadvertent delays, additional fuel consumption and high emission of greenhouse gases. Trajectory planning involves creation identification of cost-effective flight plans for optimal utilization of fuel and time. This situation warrants the need of an intelligent system for dynamic planning of optimized flight trajectories with least human intervention required. In this paper, an algorithm for dynamic planning of optimized flight trajectories has been proposed. The proposed algorithm divides the airspace into four dimensional cubes and calculate a dynamic score for each cube to cumulatively represent estimated weather, aerodynamic drag and air traffic within that virtual cube. There are several constraints like simultaneous flight separation rules, weather conditions like air temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction that pose a real challenge for calculating optimal flight trajectories. To validate the proposed methodology, a case analysis was undertaken within Indian airspace. The flight routes were simulated for four different air routes within Indian airspace. The experiment results observed a seven percent reduction in drag values on the predicted path, hence indicates reduction in carbon footprint and better fuel economy

Cloudlet computing : recent advances, taxonomy, and challenges

A cloudlet is an emerging computing paradigm that is designed to meet the requirements and expectations of the Internet of things (IoT) and tackle the conventional limitations of a cloud (e.g., high latency). The idea is to bring computing resources (i.e., storage and processing) to the edge of a network. This article presents a taxonomy of cloudlet applications, outlines cloudlet utilities, and describes recent advances, challenges, and future research directions. Based on the literature, a unique taxonomy of cloudlet applications is designed. Moreover, a cloudlet computation offloading application for augmenting resource-constrained IoT devices, handling compute-intensive tasks, and minimizing the energy consumption of related devices is explored. This study also highlights the viability of cloudlets to support smart systems and applications, such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and applications that require high-quality service. Finally, the role of cloudlets in emergency situations, hostile conditions, and in the technological integration of future applications and services is elaborated in detail. © 2013 IEEE

Co- DLSA: Cooperative Delay and Link Stability Aware with Relay Strategy Routing Protocol for Flying Ad-Hoc Network

A novel ad-hoc network called a flying ad-hoc network (FANET) has recently emerged, in which the flying nodes are referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are operated remotely live from a distance or using some determined approach in perspective of algorithms. Due to their high degree of mobility and flying nature with dynamic topology, the nodes in this network may discontinue their transmission because of transmission loss and unstable links among them. A relay node serves as an intermediary to reduce the distance of the nodes from each other as well as to boost the performance of communication. In this paper, Delay and Link Stability Aware (DLSA) and Cooperative Delay and Link Stability Aware (Co-DLSA) have been proposed as relay strategy routing schemes. Co-DLSA is an extension of the DLSA routing scheme in which the relay strategy has been introduced for cooperative routing with fair-relay-strategy (FRS) and red-black (RB) routing tree to increase the performance of the network. The main focus is to minimize the delay while minimizing transmission loss and lowering the network stability count in terms of discontinuous nodes. Through the simulation results, it has been concluded that the proposed routing protocol performs efficiently in terms of network lifetime, network delay, network packet drops, network throughput, and transmission loss compared to the existing routing protocols in this network. The average results of the simulations recorded a network stability for Co-DLSA of 18, average transmission loss was recorded as 67.72, average network delay was recorded as 23.28, average network throughput was recorded as 95.85, and network packet drop was recorded as 20.85, showing outstanding performance in comparison with all other routing protocols