Brown Marmorated Stink Bug Rearing and Nutrition

The brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB), Halyomorpha halys, is an invasive insect from Asia. It has caused millions of dollars in damage to fruit, vegetable, ornamental, and field crops since its arrival in North America, and can be a severe nuisance pest when it congregates on human structures to overwinter. The BMSB caused $37 million of apple crop damage in the Mid-Atlantic Area in 2007. To study the insect, effective rearing methods are needed. Previous research (Funayama 2004 & 2006; Medal et al. 2012) showed that carrot, raw peanut and soybean increased rearing efficiency. Recent lab experience has found good success with sweet pepper. Our objective was to identify combinations of food sources to increase BMSB survival and reproduction. Carrot was used as a common food source across all treatments

Testing Rearing Diets for A New Invasive Insect Pest in Utah, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug

The brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB), Halyomorpha halys, is an invasive insect from Asia. It has caused millions of dollars in damage to fruit, vegetable, ornamental, and field crops since its arrival in North America, and can be a severe nuisance pest when it congregates on human structures to overwinter. The BMSB caused $37 million of apple crop damage in the Mid-Atlantic Region in 2007 to 2010. To study the insect, effective rearing methods are needed. Previous research (Funayama 2004 & 2006; Medal et al. 2012) showed that carrot, raw peanut and soybean increased rearing efficiency. Recent lab experience has found good success with sweet pepper. Our objective was to identify combinations of food sources to increase BMSB survival and reproduction. Carrot was used as a common food source across all treatments. BMSB from the USU colony are used in insect control studies to help combat the pest in Utah

Vice or Virtue? Exploring the Dichotomy of an Offensive Security Engineer and Government “Hack Back” Policies

In response to increasing cybersecurity threats, government and private agencies have increasingly hired offensive security experts: red-hat” hackers. They differ from the better-known “white-hat” hackers in applying the methods of cybercriminals against cybercriminals and counter or preemptively attacking, rather than focusing on defending against attacks. Often considered the vigilantes of the hacker ecosystem, they work under the same rules as would be hackers, attackers, hacktivists, organized cyber-criminals, and state-sponsored attackers—which can easily lead them into the unethical practices often associated with such groups. Utilizing the virtue (ethics) theory and cyber attribution, we argue that there exists a dichotomy among offensive security engineers, one that appreciates organizational security practices, but at the same time violates ethics in how to retaliate against a malicious attacker

Diamond-Coated Carbon Nanotubes for Efficient Field Emission

Field-emission cathodes containing arrays of carbon nanotubes coated with diamond or diamondlike carbon (DLC) are undergoing development. Multiwalled carbon nanotubes have been shown to perform well as electron field emitters. The idea underlying the present development is that by coating carbon nanotubes with wideband- gap materials like diamond or DLC, one could reduce effective work functions, thereby reducing threshold electric-field levels for field emission of electrons and, hence, improving cathode performance. To demonstrate feasibility, experimental cathodes were fabricated by (1) covering metal bases with carbon nanotubes bound to the bases by an electrically conductive binder and (2) coating the nanotubes, variously, with diamond or DLC by plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition. In tests, the threshold electric-field levels for emission of electrons were reduced by as much as 40 percent, relative to those of uncoated- nanotube cathodes. Coating with diamond or DLC could also make field emission-cathodes operate more stably by helping to prevent evaporation of carbon from nanotubes in the event of overheating of the cathodes. Cathodes of this type are expected to be useful principally as electron sources for cathode-ray tubes and flat-panel displays

Occurrence of Larval and Juvenile Fish in Mangrove Habitats in the Sian Ka\u27an Biosphere Reserve, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Mangrove forests are ubiquitous in low lying coastal areas of tropical and subtropical zones of the world, including the lagoons of the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Mangroves are habitat for juvenile fish of both oceanic and estuarine origin (Vásquez-Yoemans 1992, Vásquez-Yoemans et al. 1992, Laegdsgaard and Johnson 1995). Development of the Caribbean coast of Mexico north and south of the Sian Ka’an Reserve is in large part focused on tourism-related endeavors such as destination resorts, scuba diving and fishing. While some of the development is innocuous, land acquisition for development of resorts has fragmented mangrove habitats in the region and likely altered their function. It has been shown in other mangrove estuaries that habitat fragmentation negatively impacts fish assemblages (Layman et al. 2004). Because of the importance of mangrove estuaries as juvenile fish habitat, loss of mangrove habitat may result in noticeable effects on adult recruitment to fisheries in tropical regions. Very little is known about the composition of larval and juvenile fish communities within the reserve. Ichthyofaunal surveys of mangrove-lined estuaries worldwide have shown broadly similar taxonomic composition, including Eleotridae (sleepers), Gerreidae (mojarras), Mugilidae (mullets), Poeciliidae (livebearers), Gobiidae (gobies), Clupeidae (herrings) and Belonidae (needlefish) (Austin 1971, Blaber et al. 1989, Wright 1986, Thayer et al. 1987, Yáñez-Arancibia et al. 1988, Chong et al. 1990, Vásquez-Yoemans 1992; Vásquez-Yoemans and González 1992). In this research, we describe the juvenile fish community of two connected mangrove lagoons within the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve at the end of the dry season (May)

Adaptive processing of thin structures to augment segmentation of dual-channel structural MRI of the human brain

This thesis presents a method for the segmentation of dual-channel structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes of the human brain into four tissue classes. The state-of-the-art FSL FAST segmentation software (Zhang et al., 2001) is in widespread clinical use, and so it is considered a benchmark. A significant proportion of FAST’s errors has been shown to be localised to cortical sulci and blood vessels; this issue has driven the developments in this thesis, rather than any particular clinical demand. The original theme lies in preserving and even restoring these thin structures, poorly resolved in typical clinical MRI. Bright plate-shaped sulci and dark tubular vessels are best contrasted from the other tissues using the T2- and PD-weighted data, respectively. A contrasting tube detector algorithm (based on Frangi et al., 1998) was adapted to detect both structures, with smoothing (based on Westin and Knutsson, 2006) of an intermediate tensor representation to ensure smoothness and fuller coverage of the maps. The segmentation strategy required the MRI volumes to be upscaled to an artificial high resolution where a small partial volume label set would be valid and the segmentation process would be simplified. A resolution enhancement process (based on Salvado et al., 2006) was significantly modified to smooth homogeneous regions and sharpen their boundaries in dual-channel data. In addition, it was able to preserve the mapped thin structures’ intensities or restore them to pure tissue values. Finally, the segmentation phase employed a relaxation-based labelling optimisation process (based on Li et al., 1997) to improve accuracy, rather than more efficient greedy methods which are typically used. The thin structure location prior maps and the resolution-enhanced data also helped improve the labelling accuracy, particularly around sulci and vessels. Testing was performed on the aged LBC1936 clinical dataset and on younger brain volumes acquired at the SHEFC Brain Imaging Centre (Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, UK), as well as the BrainWeb phantom. Overall, the proposed methods rivalled and often improved segmentation accuracy compared to FAST, where the ground truth was produced by a radiologist using software designed for this project. The performance in pathological and atrophied brain volumes, and the differences with the original segmentation algorithm on which it was based (van Leemput et al., 2003), were also examined. Among the suggestions for future development include a soft labelling consensus formation framework to mitigate rater bias in the ground truth, and contour-based models of the brain parenchyma to provide additional structural constraints

Diamond/diamond-like carbon coated nanotube structures for efficient electron field emission

The present invention is directed to a nanotube coated with diamond or diamond-like carbon, a field emitter cathode comprising same, and a field emitter comprising the cathode. It is also directed to a method of preventing the evaporation of carbon from a field emitter comprising a cathode comprised of nanotubes by coating the nanotube with diamond or diamond-like carbon. In another aspect, the present invention is directed to a method of preventing the evaporation of carbon from an electron field emitter comprising a cathode comprised of nanotubes, which method comprises coating the nanotubes with diamond or diamond-like carbon

Pressure fluctuations in the plunge pool of an impinging jet spillway

Abstract available: p. v-vi