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The interception of exotic ants and termites from stone and lumber imported into Korea is on the rise, including Solenopsis invicta. Currently, a relatively long exposure (24 h) of methyl bromide (MB) fumigation is the only practical disinfestation option for exotic ants and termites on imported stone and lumber. In this study, ethyl formate (EF) wase evaluated as a potential MB alternative to disinfest ants and termites in imported lumber, with a focus on S. invicta. As S. invicta is not established in Korea, we first determined whether Reticulitermes speratus, established in Korea, could be considered as an EF surrogate of S. invicta. From 1 h EF fumigation trials, workers of S. invicta were more sensitive to EF than those of R. speratus based on lethal concentration × time causing 99% mortality (LCt99%), supporting that R. speratus can be used as an EF surrogate of S. invicta. When R. speratus workers were further fumigated with EF for 4 h at four different temperatures, LCt99% values for R. speratus workers were 108.00, 63.31, 77.24, and 67.24 g h/m3 at 2, 5, 13, and 23 °C, respectively. From scale-up (0.65 m3) and commercial scale (76.4 m3) trials containing two infestation-prone lumber species, lauan (Shorea spp.) and acacia (Acacia spp.), 140 g/m3 EF at >5 °C for 4 h resulted in the complete control of R. speratus workers, suggesting that 140 g/m3 4 h-EF-fumigation may be applicable as a potential MB-alternative treatment for disinfestation of invasive S. invicta on imported lumber.

In many insect species including fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae), the behavioral responses to volatiles emitted by their host plants can be modulated by environmental conditions and by the physiological state of the insect. Here, we quantified (1) the effects of female age on the attraction of female melon fly, Zeugodacus cucurbitae (Diptera: Tephritidae) to volatiles emitted by intact and mechanically damaged tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), eggplant (S. melongena), zucchini (Cucurbita pepo), bitter melon (Momordica charantia), and cucumber (Cucumis sativus) fruit, and (2) the influence of time elapsed since fruit damage on the outcome. The investigations were conducted under semi-natural conditions in Hawai’i. Results from the first experiment revealed that, for freshly damaged tomato, eggplant, and zucchini, the level of female response was comparatively low and was not affected by female age. For bitter melon and cucumber, higher levels of response to freshly damaged fruit were documented, and the response levels gradually increased as female age increased from 1 to 4 weeks, reaching 70% for 4-week-old females exposed to cucumber odor. Results from our second experiment indicated that, on average, 56% of the females released responded in 20 min when cucumbers were freshly sliced, and the level of response was reduced 6-fold within a couple of hours. Females did not respond to tomato and cucumber odor when fruits were damaged >8 h before testing. Fruit volatiles involved in female Z. cucurbitae attraction seem to be released shortly upon mechanical damage and they are short-lived. The plasticity of the olfaction-driven behavior observed in Z. cucurbitae depending on female age and on the strength of the olfactory cues associated with preferred and less preferred hosts, adds another dimension to our understanding of the host-seeking behavior of this invasive species.

In this paper, the decentralized dynamic state estimation (DSE) problem is investigated for a class of multi-machine power systems with non-Gaussian noises and measurement outliers. A model decoupling approach is adopted to facilitate the decentralized DSE for large-scale power systems. The particle filtering technique plays a key role in the developed DSE scheme with aim to tackle the nonlinearities and the non-Gaussian noises. To mitigate the negative impact from the measurement outliers on the DSE performance, a novel sliding-window-based online algorithm is proposed to detect and further locate the possible outliers based on the historical measurement data. Specifically, some criteria are constructed to (i) determine whether a newly arriving measurement vector is contaminated by measurement outliers and (ii) locate the abnormal components of such a vector. A conditional posterior Cramér–Rao lower bound is derived to evaluate the estimation performance of the proposed DSE algorithm. Finally, simulation experiments are carried out on the IEEE-39 bus system to verify the effectiveness of the proposed DSE algorithm under the non-Gaussian noises and the measurement outliers. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61933007, U21A2019 and 62273088, the Program of Shanghai Academic/Technology Research Leader of China under Grant 20XD1420100, the Hainan Province Science and Technology Special Fund of China under Grant ZDYF2022SHFZ105, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany .

Spotted wing drosophila, Drosophila suzukii (Diptera: Drosophilidae), is a serious invasive pest of berries and cherries in the U.S. and Europe and has become a major phytosanitary trade barrier. In this pilot study, we explored the potential of using stand-alone ethyl formate (EF) treatment and a combinatory treatment of EF and cold temperature as postharvest control options for D. suzukii in imported blueberries. Stand-alone EF fumigations were effective against D. suzukii with LCt99% of 207.7 and 168.5 g·h·m−3 for eggs, the most tolerant life stage, at 5 and 21 °C, respectively. In a scale-up (10 m3) trial conducted at 5 °C, complete control of D. suzukii eggs placed inside and outside of blueberry boxes was achieved using 70 g·m−3 EF for 4 h with 5% blueberry loading ratio without deleterious impact on blueberry appearance such as soft spot or berry shrivel. In small scale pilot studies, 9-d stand-alone cold treatment at 5 °C was sufficient for complete control of D. suzukii eggs and larvae tested, but not pupae. The efficacy of this cold treatment appeared to be improved when D. suzukii eggs were first treated with low-dose EF (LCt50% level) prior to the cold treatment. The combination treatment resulted in complete mortality of D. suzukii eggs, larvae, and pupae tested after 7, 5, and 9 d of cold treatment, respectively. Together, these results suggest that stand-alone EF treatment, or the combination treatment of low-dose EF and cold as a systems approach may have a potential as postharvest treatments for D. suzukii in blueberries.

Riptortus pedestris (Hemiptera: Alydidae) is a serious pest of soybean and sweet persimmon and uses male produced aggregation pheromone, (E)-2-hexenyl (Z)-3-hexenoate, (E)-2-hexenyl (E)-2-hexenoate, and tetradecyl isobutyrate to facilitate food location and recognition by conspecifics. Using electroantennogram (EAG) and greenhouse bioassay, we determined which antennal segment is involved in the detection of their aggregation pheromone. In the first EAG test using individual antennal segments, significant EAG responses to 1:1:1 mixture of the aggregation pheromone were observed only from the disti-flagellum segments of both male and female antennae at both pheromone doses tested (1 µg and 100 µg). In the following EAG tests using gradually removed antennal segment(s), EAG response was still maintained when the distal half of a disti-flagellum was surgically removed, while EAG response was lost when whole segment of disti-flagellum or other whole segments were gradually removed from intact antenna of both sexes. In greenhouse experiment, removing one or both segment(s) of disti-flagellum from male or female antennae resulted in significant reduction in their attraction to the aggregation pheromone. Together, these findings support that the disti-flagellum of R. pedestris houses olfactory neurons associated with attraction to their aggregation pheromone.

Subjective beliefs in the personality of a dog based on its breed may result in misinterpretation or scientific bias. Because it has been proven that breed can influence the dog's personality, it is important to determine other genetic factors influencing canine behaviors. The present study investigated behavioral differences of the Jindo dogs based on sex. Thirty-three adult Jindo dogs (21 males and 12 females) were tested in 9 different behavioral subtests, and their behavioral responses to the subtests were recorded using two video cameras. A single blinded observer reviewed the videos and scored the dogs' behaviors from 1-5 based on: sociability, fear, aggression, and submission behaviors. Using the score data, a principal component analysis extracted primary factors: “defensive reactivity toward strangers and novel stimuli,” “nonaggressive reactivity toward a dog and humans,” “social reactivity toward friendly humans and novel stimuli,” “offensive reactivity toward fear evoking humans and novel stimuli,” “social reactivity toward fear evoking humans,” and “nonaggressive and social reactivity toward testing stimuli.” The male and female dogs were compared for the extracted six factors using multivariate analysis of variance. Based on the results, the female Jindo dogs, in contrast to the male dogs, exhibited significantly higher intensity of “nonaggressive reactivity to stranger and novel stimuli.” The results of this study could provide objective information for researchers of canine behavior and supplement baseline data on the Jindo breed. In addition, insight into the Jindo's personality could help potential owners and professional breeders to adapt their training method and expectations of their dogs.

BACKGROUND Trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) is a compound that is present in seafood and produced through human gut microbial metabolism of its precursors. Previous studies have suggested that elevated TMAO concentrations are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events. However, the association between diet and TMAO concentrations in free-living adult populations has not been adequately described. OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to identify dietary predictors of plasma TMAO concentrations. METHODS TMAO concentrations were assessed in 2 fasting plasma samples collected 6 mo apart among 620 healthy men. Short-term and long-term dietary intakes were assessed during the same time-frame of blood collections via repeated 7-d dietary records (7DDRs) and a semiquantitative food-frequency questionnaire (SFFQ), respectively. We grouped individual food items into 21 groups and regressed against averaged TMAO concentrations. We also assessed the association between dietary scores and TMAO concentrations. RESULTS In models adjusted for demographic characteristics and mutually adjusted for food groups, SFFQ-assessments of fish and egg intakes were significantly associated with increased TMAO concentration (β = 0.082; 95% CI: 0.021, 0.14; P = 0.009 for fish; β = 0.065; 95% CI: 0.004, 0.13; P = 0.039 for egg). The positive association between fish consumption and TMAO concentration was replicated in the 7DDR-assessments (β = 0.12; 95% CI: 0.060, 0.18; P

Many emerging scientific workflows that target high-end HPC systems require complex interplay with the resource and job management software (RJMS). However, portable, efficient and easy-to-use scheduling and execution of these workflows is still an unsolved problem. We present Flux, a novel, hierarchical RJMS infrastructure that addresses the key scheduling challenges of modern workflows in a scalable, easy-to-use, and portable manner. At the heart of Flux lies its ability to be seamlessly nested within batch allocations created by other schedulers as well as itself. Once a hierarchy of Flux instances is created within each allocation, its consistent and rich set of well-defined APIs portably and efficiently support those workflows that can often feature non-traditional execution patterns such as requirements for complex co-scheduling, massive ensembles of small jobs and coordination among jobs in an ensemble. Our evaluation of Flux on some of the emerging workflow efforts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory indicates that our approach can significantly address major workflow scheduling challenges: job throughput, co-scheduling, job coordination and communication and portability challenges. Further, our performance evaluation on both synthetic and real-world ensemble-based workflows suggest that our solution can improve the job throughput performance of these scientific workflows by a factor of 48.

Different than covalently bonded magnetic multilayer systems, high-quality interfaces without dangling bonds in van der Waals (vdW) junctions of two-dimensional (2D) layered magnetic materials offer opportunities to realize novel functionalities. Here, we report the fabrication of multi-state vertical spin valves without spacer layers by using vdW homo-junctions in which exfoliated Fe3GeTe2 nanoflakes act as ferromagnetic electrodes and/or interlayers. We demonstrate the typical behavior of two-state and three-state magnetoresistance for devices with two and three Fe3GeTe2 nanoflakes, respectively. Distinct from traditional spin valves with sandwich structures, our novel homo-junction-based spin-valve structure allows the straightforward realization of multi-state magnetic devices. Our work demonstrates the possibility of extend multi-state, non-volatile spin information to 2D magnetic homo-junctions, and it emphasizes the utility of vdW interface as a fundamental building block for spintronic devices.

Background Prior retrospective and prospective studies suggest improved survival with the use of stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and bevacizumab in the treatment of limited-volume glioblastoma (GBM) recurrences. Methods We retrospectively reviewed our experience with gamma knife SRS in combination with bevacizumab for the treatment of focal GBM recurrence during 2009–2015. Outcomes include overall survival, progression free survival (PFS), and radiation-related adverse events. Kaplan–Meier methods and multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were performed for survival analysis. Results Within a median of 13.7 months after diagnosis, a total of 45 patients with GBM underwent gamma knife SRS and bevacizumab treatment. Median age was 57 years (range: 20–78 years) and 63.3% were women. The median Karnofsky Performance Score (KPS) at recurrence was 80 (range: 40–100). Sixty-four percent of patients had single radiosurgery target (range: 1–4) and median target volume and margin dose were 2.2 cm3 (range: 0.1–25.2 cm3) and 17.0 gray (Gy) (range: 13–24 Gy), respectively. Median PFS and overall survival were 9.3, 31.0 months following diagnosis, and 5.2, 13.3 months after SRS, respectively. Factors associated with poor outcomes were KPS ≤70, SRS dose Conclusions SRS in combination with bevacizumab can be safely used to treat focal GBM recurrence. KPS, radiation dose, and multi-agent chemotherapy usage prior to SRS demonstrated significant impact on PFS. Bevacizumab may provide clinically relevant radioprotection.

Objective Variance between providers in neurosurgery can lead to inefficiencies and poor patient outcomes. Evidence-based guidelines (EBGs) have been developed; however, they have not been well implemented into the clinician workflow. Therefore, clinicians have been left to make decisions with incomplete information. Equally underused are the electronic health records (EHRs), which house enormous amounts of health data, but the power of that “big data” has failed to be capitalized on. Methods Early attempts at EBGs were rigid and nonadaptive; however, with the current advances in data informatics and machine learning algorithms, it is now possible to integrate “big data” and rapid data processing into clinical decision support tools. We have presented an overview of the background of EHRs and EBGs in neurosurgery and explored the possibility of integrating them to reduce unwanted variance. Results As we strive toward variance reduction in healthcare, the integration of “big data” and EBGs for decision-making will be key. We have proposed that EHRs are an ideal platform for integrating EBGs into the clinician workflow and have presented as an example of a successful early generation model, Neurocore. With this approach, it will be possible to build EBGs into the EHR software, to continuously update and optimize EBGs according to the flow of patient data into the EHR, and to present data-driven clinical decision support at the point of care. Conclusions Variance reduction in neurosurgery through the integration of evidence-based decision support in EHRs will lead to improved patient safety, a reduction in medical errors, maximization of the use of the available data, and enhanced decision-making power for clinicians.

Background Unregulated inflammatory and thrombotic responses have been proposed to be important causes of early brain injury and worse clinical outcomes after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Objective We hypothesize that SAH is characterized by an increased inflammatory and thrombotic state and disruption of associations between these states. Methods This is a retrospective cohort study of 60 patients with SAH. 23 patients with unruptured aneurysms (UA) and 77 patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) were chosen as controls. Plasma cytokine levels were measured using a 41-plex human immunoassay kit, and cytokine patterns associated with SAH, UA and TBI were identified using statistical and informatics methods. Results SAH was characterized by an increase in several cytokines and chemokines, platelet-derived factors, and growth factors. Cluster analysis identified several cytokine clusters common in SAH, UA and TBI groups – generally grouped as platelet-derived, vascular and pro-inflammatory clusters. In the UA group, the platelet-derived cluster had an inverse relationship with the inflammatory cluster which was absent in SAH. Additionally, a cluster comprising of growth and colony stimulating factors was unique to SAH. Conclusions A cluster of cytokines involved in growth and colony stimulation was unique to SAH. Negative associations between the thrombotic and inflammatory molecules were observed in UA but not in SAH. Further studies to examine the pathophysiology behind the cluster unique to SAH and the associations between the thrombotic and inflammatory cytokines are required.

Low-temperature plasma nitriding has been widely studied and applied, in enhancing the wear performance of austenitic stainless steels (ASSs) without losing corrosion resistance. In this work the wear and corrosion behaviours of two specialty ASSs, i.e. Staballoy® AG17 (Fe-17Cr-20Mn-0.5N, in wt%) and RA330® (Fe-19Cr-35Ni-1.2Si, in wt%), were evaluated – and compared to AISI 304 – before and after low-temperature triode plasma nitriding (TPN) at 400 °C and 450 °C. A nitrogen interstitially-supersaturated expanded austenite layer (γN) was developed for all three ASSs after TPN treatment at 400 °C, which led to a) an approximately 4-fold increase in surface hardness, b) a reduction in specific wear rate of at least 2 orders of magnitude in unlubricated dry-sliding, and c) an improved resistance to pitting in 3.5 wt% NaCl aqueous solution. Large numbers of ‘linear defects’ (identified in TEM studies as strips of HCP-εN) were seen in the γN-AG17 layer, that could be correlated to comparatively higher surface hardness and better wear resistance. Several slip/shear bands were also seen in the γN-330 layer, where short-range Cr-segregation could occur, leading to localised corrosion. More importantly, after TPN treatment at 450 °C, alloys AISI 304 and AG17 presented a deterioration in corrosion performance, whereas good corrosion performance was maintained for alloy RA330. Redistribution of Si (in preference to Cr) was revealed in γN-330 after TPN treatment at 450 °C, whereby Si-alloying at a significantly higher level than in the other two alloys investigated appears (in addition to the high Ni content in alloy 330) to be beneficial in delaying CrN precipitation, and thus in maintaining the good corrosion performance of γN after nitriding at low-to-intermediate temperatures.