The pine bark beetle, Dendroctonus armandi, is a native pest restricted to forests in the Qinling Mountains in China. There was an outbreak of this species there that affected over 0.36 million hectares of pine forest. We hypothesized that there are differences between the numbers of beetles captured by traps baited with various combinations of candidate semiochemicals extracted from the hindguts of D. armandi. In order to determine whether a better operational lure could be developed for D. armandi, we analyzed the volatiles in extracts of the hindgut of D. armandi and tested various combinations of candidate semiochemicals. The GC-MS and GC-FID analyses of volatiles in the extracts of the hindguts of D. armandi collected at different stages of the attack revealed that they are mainly a-pinene, b-caryophyllene and (+)-3-carene with minor amounts of myrcene, limonene, verbenol and verbenone. We tested various combinations of these candidate semiochemicals in order to determine an optimal blend. Our results suggest that the addition of b-caryophyllene to either a-pinene, or blends of a-pinene and other candidate semiochemicals, significantly enhanced the attractiveness of the lures for D. armandi. Field trapping experiments indicated that the blends that included b-caryophyllene, myrcene and other candidate semiochemicals resulted in significantly higher trap catches (161–243% higher) than a-pinene alone. Therefore, a simple lure consisting of a-pinene and b-caryophyllene would be an optimal blend for D. armandi. We conclude that this blend of semiochemicals may provide a better method of reducing the numbers of D. armandi in forest ecosystem., Shou-An Xie, Shu-Jie LV., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
Adults of the wingless bagworm moth, Eumeta variegata, show remarkable sexual dimorphism. Final-instar larvae of the male have invaginated wing discs, whereas those of the female are rudimentary. To determine the best method for culturing the wing discs of E. variegata, which in both sexes are attached to the larval integument, two methods of culturing the larval wing discs are compared. Initially, a stationary culture was used. In these cultures necrotic cells and degeneration of wing discs of males were sporadically observed. By contrast, many small vacuoles were observed in the female wing rudiment under these conditions. In order to overcome some of the problems associated with stationary culture, rotating culture was used and resulted in the wing discs of males and females remaining in good condition. A histological analysis revealed that the wing disc morphology was normal when they were cultured in this way. These results indicate that rotating the culture medium is the better procedure for studying the action of hormones on the differentiation and metamorphosis of reduced wing rudiments in E. variegata.
A new pre-processing algorithm for improved discrimination of odor samples is proposed. The pre-processed odor sample outputs from two sensors are input using a learning-vector quantization (LVQ) classifier as a means of odor recognition to be employed within electronic nose applications. The proposed algorithm brings out highly scattered classes while minimizing the within-class scatter of the samples given an odor class. LVQ is observed to operate robustly and reliably in terms of variation of parameters of interest, mainly a learning parameter. Due to the increased performance along with computational simplicity and robustness, the scheme is suitable to sample-by-sample identification of olfactory sensory data and can be easily adapted to hierarchical processing with other sensory data in real-time.
The presence of common mode error (CME) in the coordinate displacement time series of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) affects geophysical studies using GNSS observations. In order to investigate the effect of CME on the time series in GNSS networks in Shanxi, this paper proposes an improved superposition filtering method by introducing single-day solution accuracy, correlation coefficient, and spherical distance between stations as weights. The filtering effect is evaluated using the GNSS data in Shanxi. By using the improved stacking filtering method, the root mean square (RMS) values for N, E, U are reduced by approximately 27.8%, 29.0%, and 46.0%, respectively. And compared to the traditional stacking filter, our improved method can achieve better results with CME extraction. We investigate the CME spatial-temporal characteristics and its relationship with environmental loading. The results show that the CME between stations decreases as the distance between stations increases. In addition, we analyze the effect of CME on the noise component and velocity estimates. Results show that removing the CME refines the velocity and leads to a significant reduction in the magnitude of noise, indicating that the CME is dominated by the flicker noise in Shanxi Province.
In the general tropospheric tomography model, the tomographic area is divided into a large number of voxels, which provides convenience for reconstructing tomographic observation equations. However, due to the defect of GNSS acquisition geometry, there are plenty of empty voxels for any tomographic epoch. Moreover, an unreasonable assumption that water vapor density is constant within a voxel was imposed on the tomographic model. In this study, we proposed an improved method based on the dynamic node parameterized algorithm to solve both key problems. The proposed approach first tries to select effective GNSS signals and determines the dynamic scope of the tomographic area using the dynamic algorithm. The parameterization of the tomography model is performed by a cubic spline formula and Gauss weighted function. Additionally, a piecewise linear fitting method based on Newton-Cotes interpolation is introduced to estimate the tomographic observation of slant water vapor (SWV). The experimental results show that the average number of effective signals increased by 32.33 % and the mean RMSE of the tomographic results is decreased by 45 % with the proposed method. Further, compared with the tomographic results of the general method, the improved solutions have a more centralized distribution and a smaller bias., Wenyuan Zhang, Shubi Zhang, Nan Ding and Pengxu Ma., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Suppose that $A$ is an $n\times n$ nonnegative matrix whose eigenvalues are $\lambda = \rho (A), \lambda _2,\ldots , \lambda _n$. Fiedler and others have shown that $\det (\lambda I - A) \le \lambda ^n - \rho ^n$, for all $\lambda > \rho $, with equality for any such $\lambda $ if and only if $A$ is the simple cycle matrix. Let $a_i$ be the signed sum of the determinants of the principal submatrices of $A$ of order $i\times i$, $i = 1,\ldots ,n - 1$. We use similar techniques to Fiedler to show that Fiedler’s inequality can be strengthened to: $\det (\lambda I - A) + \sum _{i = 1}^{n - 1} \rho ^{n - 2i}|a_i|(\lambda - \rho )^i \le \lambda ^n -\rho ^n$, for all $\lambda \ge \rho $. We use this inequality to derive the inequality that: $\prod _{2}^{n}(\rho - \lambda _i) \le \rho ^{n - 2}\sum _{i = 2}^{n}(\rho - \lambda _i)$. In the spirit of a celebrated conjecture due to Boyle-Handelman, this inequality inspires us to conjecture the following inequality on the nonzero eigenvalues of $A$: If $\lambda _1 = \rho (A),\lambda _2,\ldots , \lambda _k$ are (all) the nonzero eigenvalues of $A$, then $\prod _{2}^{k}(\rho - \lambda _i) \le \rho ^{k-2}\sum _{i = 2}^{k}(\rho -\lambda )$. We prove this conjecture for the case when the spectrum of $A$ is real.
In this paper we proposed a fuzzy neural network model which can
einbody a fuzzy Takagi-Sugeno model and carry out fuzzy inference and support structure of fuzzy rules. The algorithm of model properties improvement consists of several new procedures námely input space partition, fuzzy terms number and rule number extending, low-effective fuzzy terms and rules extraction and consequent structure Identification. A fuzzy neural network is constructed based on fuzzy model. By learning of the neural network we can tuně of embedded initial fuzzy model. To show the applicability of new method and to niake a possibility to reál systerns rnodelling, we designed the fuzzy-neural network prograrnrne tool FUZNET. Next, we perforrned numerical experiment to do fuzzy rnodelling for an artifical tirne series and reál non-linear complex systém.
Methotrexate (MTX) was investigated for possible effect on the metabolism of ethoxyresorufin, pentoxyresorufin and ethjxycoumarin, the model substrates of cytochrome P450. The investigation was carried out in liver microsomes of rats pretreated with classical inducers of cytochrome P450 as well as in microsomes of two human livers. Firthermore, we measured the conversion of MTX (100 ^M) to its main metabolite, 7-hydroxymethotrexate (7-OHMTX), in microsomes and cytosolic fractions of rat and human livers. The inhibition of 7-OHMTX formation by menadion (inhibitor of aldehyde oxidase) and allopurinol (inhibitor of xanthine oxidase) was studied in the cytosol of rat and human livers. In both species, MTX in the concentration range 0.5-500 /¿M exerted no inhibitory effect on enzymatic activities associated with cytochrome P450. Moreover, we did not observe any measurable formation of 7-OHMTX in liver microsomes. MTX was metabolized at a similar rate in the cytosol of rat and human liver. Allopurinol (100 /iM) reduced the rate of MTX hydroxylation by 31.5 % in the cytosol of human livers but had no effect in the rat. Menadion (100 y/M) decreased the rate of 7-OHMTX formation in the cytosol of human and rat liver by 69 % and 94 %, respectively. Our results confirmed that MTX is oxidized by a soluble enzymatic system in both the rat and human liver. In human tissues, both aldehyde oxidase and xanthine oxidase may play an important role in the metabolism of MTX. Depression of cytochrome P450 and related enzymatic activities observed in vivo cannot be explained by a direct inhibitory action of MTX on cytochrome P450
The main aim of this paper is to present a new possibility for detection and recognition of different categories of electric and conventional (equipped with combustion engine) vehicles. These possibilities are provided by use of thermal and visual video cameras and two methods of machine learning. The used methods are Haar cascade classifier and convolutional neural network (CNN). The thermal images, obtained through an infrared thermography camera, were used for the training database. The thermal cameras can complement or substitute visible spectrum of video cameras and other conventional sensors and provide detailed recognition and classification data needed for vehicle type recognition. The first listed method was used as an object detector and serves for the localization of the vehicle on the road without any further classification. The second method was trained for vehicle recognition on the thermal image database and classifies a localized object according to one of the defined categories. The results confirmed that it is possible to use infrared thermography for vehicle drive categorization according to the thermal features of vehicle exteriors together with methods of machine learning for vehicle type recognition.
Cortisol is secreted by the central hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis and affects many target organs and tissues, particularly in response to stressor demands and infection. Recent data reporting cortisol synthesis in hair follicles have shown the existence of a parallel “peripheral” HPA-axis. However, although there is evidence from in vitro studies and single-observation comparisons between groups that cortisol from hair follicles reflects endocrine changes associated with stressor demands, there are no reports to date of repeated measurements of in vivo cortisol responsivity in hair to transitory stressors. This issue was investigated with three males who underwent 1 min cold pressor test (CP). Cortisol response in hair to stressor demand appears to be (a) swift but transitory, (b) localized to the site of the demand and (c) independent of central HPA-axis activity., C. F. Sharpley, K. G. Kauter, J. R. McFarlane., and Obsahuje seznam literatury