Evaluation of an active mating disruption concept against codling moth (Cydia pomonella) under the aspects of different application systems and varieties

Beside standard systems of mating disruption the activity of the product Exosex CM and Exosex 2 CM under the aspect of different application systems and several varieties were tested at the research station of the Federal College and Institute for Viticulture and Pomology Klosterneuburg. Male insects were attracted into the Exosex dispenser by using the appropriate pheromone, which acts on the pheromone receptive sensors on the male so that they cannot locate calling females. Standard mating disruption techniques usually rely on the introduction of amounts of pheromone emitted by natural populations of pest species into the atmosphere. Exosex CM significantly reduces deployment time and labour costs in the orchards, additionally the flexibility to fit in with IPM programmes was tested. The assessments were done visually on windfall fruits, fruits on the tree and on all fruits at harvest followed by statistical evaluation. Among the fruits sprayed with the IPM system there was an infestation rate of the first (Cydia pomonella) generation at the variety Idared of 0,8%, the second generation treated with Exosex showed an infestation of 13%. In the biological trial however the infestation by the first generation was about 4% and the infestation of the second generation about 31%

Regularized Ordinal Regression and the ordinalNet R Package

Regularization techniques such as the lasso (Tibshirani 1996) and elastic net (Zou and Hastie 2005) can be used to improve regression model coefficient estimation and prediction accuracy, as well as to perform variable selection. Ordinal regression models are widely used in applications where the use of regularization could be beneficial; however, these models are not included in many popular software packages for regularized regression. We propose a coordinate descent algorithm to fit a broad class of ordinal regression models with an elastic net penalty. Furthermore, we demonstrate that each model in this class generalizes to a more flexible form, for instance to accommodate unordered categorical data. We introduce an elastic net penalty class that applies to both model forms. Additionally, this penalty can be used to shrink a non-ordinal model toward its ordinal counterpart. Finally, we introduce the R package ordinalNet, which implements the algorithm for this model class

Photophoretic Strength on Chondrules. 2. Experiment

Photophoretic motion can transport illuminated particles in protoplanetary disks. In a previous paper we focused on the modeling of steady state photophoretic forces based on the compositions derived from tomography and heat transfer. Here, we present microgravity experiments which deviate significantly from the steady state calculations of the first paper. The experiments on average show a significantly smaller force than predicted with a large variation in absolute photophoretic force and in the direction of motion with respect to the illumination. Time-dependent modeling of photophoretic forces for heat-up and rotation show that the variations in strength and direction observed can be well explained by the particle reorientation in the limited experiment time of a drop tower experiment. In protoplanetary disks, random rotation subsides due to gas friction on short timescales and the results of our earlier paper hold. Rotation has a significant influence in short duration laboratory studies. Observing particle motion and rotation under the influence of photophoresis can be considered as a basic laboratory analog experiment to Yarkovsky and YORP effects

Edge effects in graphene nanostructures: II. Semiclassical theory of spectral fluctuations and quantum transport

We investigate the effect of different edge types on the statistical properties of both the energy spectrum of closed graphene billiards and the conductance of open graphene cavities in the semiclassical limit. To this end, we use the semiclassical Green's function for ballistic graphene flakes that we have derived in Reference 1. First we study the spectral two point correlation function, or more precisely its Fourier transform the spectral form factor, starting from the graphene version of Gutzwiller's trace formula for the oscillating part of the density of states. We calculate the two leading order contributions to the spectral form factor, paying particular attention to the influence of the edge characteristics of the system. Then we consider transport properties of open graphene cavities. We derive generic analytical expressions for the classical conductance, the weak localization correction, the size of the universal conductance fluctuations and the shot noise power of a ballistic graphene cavity. Again we focus on the effects of the edge structure. For both, the conductance and the spectral form factor, we find that edge induced pseudospin interference affects the results significantly. In particular intervalley coupling mediated through scattering from armchair edges is the key mechanism that governs the coherent quantum interference effects in ballistic graphene cavities

Scanning for melanoma

Non-invasive diagnostic tools aim at increasing accuracy of melanoma diagnosis. Clinical naked eye observation in combination with dermoscopy can be regarded as the practical reference standard to identify lesions for histopathological evaluation. Pigmented lesions need to be evaluated in the context of patient history to identify risk factors for melanoma, followed by a dermoscopically-aided entire skin examination. Patients with identified risk factors should be further examined. Total body photography is widely used in the follow-up of high-risk patients (particularly those with numerous and dysplastic naevi) and can be coupled with digital dermoscopy or videodermoscopy. New noninvasive diagnostic aids comprise multispectral image analysis, reflectance confocal microscopy and computer assisted diagnostic systems. Also, molecular profiling of lesions is an emerging technique under investigation for melanoma diagnosis. © Copyright 2010 National Prescribing Service Ltd

Spectroscopy of electron-induced fluorescence in organic liquid scintillators

Emission spectra of several organic liquid-scintillator mixtures which are relevant for the proposed LENA detector have been measured by exciting the medium with electrons of ~10keV. The results are compared with spectra resulting from ultraviolet light excitation. Good agreement between spectra measured by both methods has been found.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Interfaces within graphene nanoribbons

We study the conductance through two types of graphene nanostructures: nanoribbon junctions in which the width changes from wide to narrow, and curved nanoribbons. In the wide-narrow structures, substantial reflection occurs from the wide-narrow interface, in contrast to the behavior of the much studied electron gas waveguides. In the curved nanoribbons, the conductance is very sensitive to details such as whether regions of a semiconducting armchair nanoribbon are included in the curved structure -- such regions strongly suppress the conductance. Surprisingly, this suppression is not due to the band gap of the semiconducting nanoribbon, but is linked to the valley degree of freedom. Though we study these effects in the simplest contexts, they can be expected to occur for more complicated structures, and we show results for rings as well. We conclude that experience from electron gas waveguides does not carry over to graphene nanostructures. The interior interfaces causing extra scattering result from the extra effective degrees of freedom of the graphene structure, namely the valley and sublattice pseudospins