Evaluating insect-mediated dispersal of Scytalidiumuredinicola for biological control of western gall rust

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (10) ◽  
pp. 1754-1760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron R. Currie ◽  
Yasu Hiratsuka

The potential for augmentative biological control of western gall rust, caused by Endocronartiumharknessii (J.P. Moore) Y. Hiratsuka, on lodgepole pine (Pinuscontorta Dougl. var. latifolia Engelm.) was investigated near Hinton, Alberta. We sought to determine whether a mycoparasite, Scytalidiumuredinicola Kuhlman et al., of western gall rust could be enhanced through releases of a beetle, Epuraeaobliquus Hatch, which can serve as a vector for the mycoparasite. Mycoparasites parasitized increasing proportions of the sporulating tissue on older galls, so that most galls 10 years or older had more than 95% of their sporulating surface parasitized. Scytalidiumuredinicola was the most common mycoparasite in the sporulating tissue of western gall rust, was present early in the season, and appeared to overwinter inside the tissue of the gall. Adults and larvae of E. obliquus were important in spreading the mycoparasite across the surface of galls, especially on galls younger than 10 years. From a mark recapture experiment and sticky-trap sampling, it was determined that E. obliquus is strongly attracted to western gall rust and therefore is a promising candidate to disseminate the mycoparasite. In a small-scale release experiment, beetles inoculated with S. uredinicola did not successfully initiate significant numbers of infections. However, of the few infections initiated under experimental conditions, all occurred in the treatment providing beetle access.

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (14) ◽  
pp. 7590
Author(s):  
Liza Vinhoven ◽  
Frauke Stanke ◽  
Sylvia Hafkemeyer ◽  
Manuel Manfred Nietert

Different causative therapeutics for CF patients have been developed. There are still no mutation-specific therapeutics for some patients, especially those with rare CFTR mutations. For this purpose, high-throughput screens have been performed which result in various candidate compounds, with mostly unclear modes of action. In order to elucidate the mechanism of action for promising candidate substances and to be able to predict possible synergistic effects of substance combinations, we used a systems biology approach to create a model of the CFTR maturation pathway in cells in a standardized, human- and machine-readable format. It is composed of a core map, manually curated from small-scale experiments in human cells, and a coarse map including interactors identified in large-scale efforts. The manually curated core map includes 170 different molecular entities and 156 reactions from 221 publications. The coarse map encompasses 1384 unique proteins from four publications. The overlap between the two data sources amounts to 46 proteins. The CFTR Lifecycle Map can be used to support the identification of potential targets inside the cell and elucidate the mode of action for candidate substances. It thereby provides a backbone to structure available data as well as a tool to develop hypotheses regarding novel therapeutics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hirofumi Niiya ◽  
Kenichi Oda ◽  
Daisuke Tsuji ◽  
Hiroaki Katsuragi

Abstract The formation of aggregates consisting of snow, water, and tephra has been reported in small-scale experiments on three-phase flows containing tephra, water, and snow, representing lahars triggered by snowmelt. Such aggregates reduce the mobility of mud flow. However, the formation mechanism of such aggregates under various conditions has not been investigated. To elucidate the formation conditions and mechanical properties of the aggregates, we performed mixing experiments with materials on a rotating table and compression tests on the resulting aggregates with a universal testing machine in a low-temperature room at $$0\,^{\circ }\text {C}$$ 0 ∘ C . From experiments with varying component ratios of the mixture and tephra diameter, the following results were obtained: (i) the aggregate grew rapidly and reached maturity after a mixing time of 5 min; (ii) the mass of aggregates increased with snow concentration, exhibiting an approximately linear relationship; (iii) single aggregates with large mass formed at lower and higher tephra concentrations, whereas multiple aggregates with smaller mass were observed at intermediate concentrations; (iv) the shape of the aggregate satisfied the similarity law for an ellipsoid; (v) the compressive mechanical behavior could be modeled by an empirical nonlinear model. The obtained mechanical properties of the aggregates were independent of the experimental conditions; (vi) scaling analysis based on the Reynolds number and the strength of the aggregates showed that the aggregates cannot form in ice-slurry lahars. Our findings suggest that low-speed lahars containing snow and ice are likely to generate aggregates, but snow and ice in the ice-slurry lahars are dispersed without such aggregates.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isam M. Arafa ◽  
Mazin Y. Shatnawi ◽  
Yousef N. Obeidallah ◽  
Ahmed K. Hijazi ◽  
Yaser A . Yousef

Abstract Four transition metal borohydrides (MTBHs, MT = Ni, Fe, Co, and Cu) were prepared by sonicating a mixture of the desired MT salt with excess NaBH4 in a nonaqueous DMF/CH3OH media. The process afforded bimetallic (Ni-BH4), trimetallic (Fe-BH4, Co-BH4), and mixed-valence (Cu-H, Cu-BH4) amorphous, ferromagnetic nanoparticles as identified by thermal, ATR-IR, X-Ray diffraction, and magnetic susceptibility techniques. The electrical conductivity (σ) of cold-pressed discs of these MTBHs shows a nonlinear increase while their thermal conductivity (κ) decreases in the temperature range of 303 ≤ T ≤ 373 K. The thermal energy transport occurs through phonon lattice dynamics rather than electronic. The σ/κ ratio shows a nonlinear steep increase from 9.4 to 270 KV-2 in Ni-BH4, while a moderate-weak increase is observed for Fe-BH4, Co-BH4, and Cu-BH4. Accordingly, the corresponding thermoelectric (TE) parameters S, PF, ZT, and η were evaluated. All TE data shows that the bimetallic Ni-BH4 (S, 80 μVK-1; PF, 259 μWm-1K-2; ZT 0.64; η, 2.56%) is a better TE semiconductor than the other three MT-BHs investigated in this study. Our findings show that Ni-BH4 is a promising candidate to exploit low-temperature waste heat from body heat, sunshine, and small domestic devices for small-scale TE applications.


PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e3795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hafiz Sohaib Ahmed Saqib ◽  
Minsheng You ◽  
Geoff M. Gurr

Conservation biological control emphasizes natural and other non-crop vegetation as a source of natural enemies to focal crops. There is an unmet need for better methods to identify the types of vegetation that are optimal to support specific natural enemies that may colonize the crops. Here we explore the commonality of the spider assemblage—considering abundance and diversity (H)—in brassica crops with that of adjacent non-crop and non-brassica crop vegetation. We employ spatial-based multivariate ordination approaches, hierarchical clustering and spatial eigenvector analysis. The small-scale mixed cropping and high disturbance frequency of southern Chinese vegetation farming offered a setting to test the role of alternate vegetation for spider conservation. Our findings indicate that spider families differ markedly in occurrence with respect to vegetation type. Grassy field margins, non-crop vegetation, taro and sweetpotato harbour spider morphospecies and functional groups that are also present in brassica crops. In contrast, pumpkin and litchi contain spiders not found in brassicas, and so may have little benefit for conservation biological control services for brassicas. Our findings also illustrate the utility of advanced statistical approaches for identifying spatial relationships between natural enemies and the land uses most likely to offer alternative habitats for conservation biological control efforts that generates testable hypotheses for future studies.


Author(s):  
John A. Goolsby ◽  
Matthew A. Ciomperlik ◽  
Gregory S. Simmons ◽  
Charles J. Pickett ◽  
Juli A. Gould ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey M. Collins ◽  
Phillip R. Whitworth ◽  
Konstantin I. Matveev

Abstract Hydrodynamic performance of ships can be greatly improved by the formation of air cavities under ship bottom with the purpose to decrease water friction on the hull surface. The air-cavity ships using this type of drag reduction are usually designed for and typically effective only in a relatively narrow range of speeds and hull attitudes and sufficient rates of air supply to the cavity. To investigate the behavior of a small-scale air-cavity boat operating under both favorable and detrimental loading and speed conditions, a remotely controlled model hull was equipped with a data acquisition system, video camera and onboard sensors to measure air-cavity characteristics, air supply rate and the boat speed, thrust and trim in operations on open-water reservoirs. These measurements were captured by a data logger and also wirelessly transmitted to a ground station and video monitor. The experimental air-cavity boat was tested in a range of speeds corresponding to length Froude numbers between 0.17 and 0.5 under three loading conditions, resulting in near zero trim and significant bow-up and bow-down trim angles at rest. Reduced cavity size and significantly increased drag occurred when operating at higher speeds, especially in the bow-up trim condition. The other objective of this study was to determine whether computational fluid dynamics simulations can adequately capture the recorded behavior of the boat and air cavity. A computational software Star-CCM+ was utilized with the VOF method employed for multi-phase flow, RANS approach for turbulence modeling, and economical mesh settings with refinements in the cavity region and near free surface. Upon conducting the mesh verification study, several experimental conditions were simulated, and approximate agreement with measured test data was found. Adaptive mesh refinement and time step controls were also applied to compare results with those obtained on the user-generated mesh. Adaptive controls improved resolution of complex shedding patterns from the air cavity but had little impact on overall results. The presented here experimental approach and obtained results indicate that both outdoor experimentation and computationally inexpensive modeling can be used in the process of developing air-cavity systems for ship hulls.


2019 ◽  
Vol 132 ◽  
pp. 89-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley B.C. Goode ◽  
Carey R. Minteer ◽  
Philip W. Tipping ◽  
Brittany K. Knowles ◽  
Ryann J. Valmonte ◽  
...  

1988 ◽  
Vol 127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans G. Scheibel ◽  
V. Friehmelt ◽  
H. Froehlich

ABSTRACTThe fracture and release mechanism of radioactive aerosols of HLW glass and HLW canisters are studied experimentally by laboratory scale and full scale drop tests. The experimental conditions model the conditions of accidental drops in a deep salt repository. The laboratory scale drop tests have a scaling factor of 1:10. Accelerated probes of simulated HLW glass impact on a ground plate and the size distributions of broken fines and released aerosols are measured by sieving and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of aerosol samples.The impact velocity is determined as the dominating impact parameter. Further parameters tested, such as waste glass composition, cooling time (residual thermal stresses), probe temperature at impact, and ground characteristics, show no measurable influence. Source terms of released respirable aerosols are evaluated for two reference cases, borehole drop (impact velocity v = 80 m/s) and reloading hall drop (v = 14 m/s), the values being 0.1 % and to 2.10-4 % respectively of the glass probe mass. The full scale drop tests are performed with European Standard HLW canisters. The canisters keep their integrity in all tests up to drop heights of 14 m. On opening the canisters, the broken fines are analyzed by sieving. The results are in good agreement with the small scale tests and confirm their acceptability for use in a safety analysis.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sun ◽  
Shang ◽  
Luo ◽  
Lu ◽  
Wu ◽  
...  

Unmanned marine equipment has been increasingly developed for open seas. The lack of efficient and reliable power supply is currently one of the bottlenecks restricting the practical application of these devices. In order to provide a viable power supply method for unmanned marine equipment, such as sonic buoys and sea robots, we originally propose a novel small-scale flexible blade wave energy converter (WEC) based on self-adaptable counter-rotating operation mechanism. The flexible blade WEC is designed on the basis of the rigid blade WEC with the caging device. This paper identifies the key factors affecting WEC performance through theoretical analysis. According to the numerical simulation analysis, the output mechanical power of the double-layer absorber is 12.8 W, and the hydraulic efficiency is 36.3%. The results of the verification experiment show that the peak power of WEC is 5.8 W and the average power is 3.2 W. The WEC with 65Mn flexible blade under most experimental conditions has the best performance when the blade thickness is 0.10 mm. The study shows that the new generation WEC can effectively overcome the excessive fluctuation of the output power of the previous generation WEC. The output power curve of the novel WEC is relatively smooth, which is conducive to its smooth operation and subsequent utilization and storage of electrical energy.


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