Effect of temperature and humidity on the biology of Attagenus fasciatus (Thunberg) (Coleoptera: Dermestidae)

The effect of temperature and relative humidity (r.h.) on the biology of the carpet beetle Attagenus fasciatus was studied under laboratory conditions. The influence of two temperatures (30 °C and 35 °C) and three humidities (40, 60 and 80% r.h.) on the number, duration, mortality and pupation of larval instars, as well as on the biology of fed and starved adult beetles, was investigated. Attagenus fasciatus larvae were reared on dried milk. The mean duration of each successive larval instar generally increased slightly but there was much fluctuation, particularly for the later instars. The highest mortality was recorded during the first two or three instars. At 30 °C pupal duration decreased with increasing r.h. while at 35 °C there was a slight increase. However, the duration at 35 °C was always shorter than at 30 °C. There was 100% emergence of adults from pupae under all test conditions except 40 and 60% r.h. at 35 °C where it fell to about 90%. Humidity and starvation strongly affected egg hatchability under all conditions tested. At 35 °C, eggs took less time to hatch than at 30 °C and there was a positive correlation between egg duration and r.h. The duration of the egg stage was longer for eggs of starved females than those of fed ones. Adult longevity was longer at higher humidity, females lived longer than males and unmated beetles lived longer than mated ones. Starvation reduced adult longevity in all cases. The sex ratio was male biased at 30 °C except at 80% r.h. but the reverse was true at 35 °C.     

Prioritization of development interventions in Egyptian slums through an urban appraisal index

ABSTRACT

The evident conflict in upgrading policies between several entities necessitates the crucial need to develop a reliable urban appraisal method to ensure successful interventions. The Egyptian initiative, aims at categorizing them into ‘unsafe’ versus ‘unplanned’ areas. Yet, it has ignored some basic socio-spatial and psychological quality of life indicators. Accordingly, the study aims at strengthening the local-level data collection through testing the reliability of the ‘ISDF’ index versus the two other sets of indicators statistically, by conducting an urban socio-economic survey on 30 different Ashwa’iyyat areas in Egypt.     

Feasibility tools for urban animal husbandry in cities: case of greater Cairo

Productive urban landscape is a design concept integrating food growing and animal raising into the design of cities through public and private open spaces in an attempt to support local economic development. This research focuses on farm animals’ husbandry in cities as a type of local food production. Debates about governance tools for sustaining such economic sector arise frequently especially in Egypt, as one of the developing countries, striving to maintain urban quality of life, satisfy the community needs, and compensate the food prices’ increment. Accordingly, field questionnaires for residents of two rapidly expanding informal areas in Cairo (Zabaleen area in Agouza city) and (Masaken Osman in 6th of October city), together with questionnaires for experts and officials who are working in Urban Upgrading Units and those with experiences in the field of upgrading informal settlements were performed. This research thus aims at studying the feasibility and integration of such economic activities informally developing in unplanned areas in Egypt, as ‘new ruralism’, within the strategic and action planning of low-income and informal areas in a legalized regulatory system to tackle their challenges and enhance their economic role. Further, this research ends up with deducing specific values for prioritizing the types of governmental support (financial, space facilitations, social, and medical), as proposed by officials and residents representing the main incorporated stakeholders. This article also highlighted the unwillingness and the on-purpose ignorance of officials to sustain animal husbandry in cities, constituting a challenge that needs to be tackled in all developing countries not only in Egypt.     

Sclerostin Depletion Induces Inflammation in the Bone Marrow of Mice

Romosozumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody specific for sclerostin (SOST), has been approved for treatment of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis at a high risk for fracture. Previous work in sclerostin global knockout (Sost^−/−) mice indicated alterations in immune cell development in the bone marrow (BM), which could be a possible side effect in romosozumab-treated patients. Here, we examined the effects of short-term sclerostin depletion in the BM on hematopoiesis in young mice receiving sclerostin antibody (Scl-Ab) treatment for 6 weeks, and the effects of long-term Sost deficiency on wild-type (WT) long-term hematopoietic stem cells transplanted into older cohorts of Sost^−/− mice. Our analyses revealed an increased frequency of granulocytes in the BM of Scl-Ab-treated mice and WT→Sost^−/− chimeras, indicating myeloid-biased differentiation in Sost-deficient BM microenvironments. This myeloid bias extended to extramedullary hematopoiesis in the spleen and was correlated with an increase in inflammatory cytokines TNFα, IL-1α, and MCP-1 in Sost^−/− BM serum. Additionally, we observed alterations in erythrocyte differentiation in the BM and spleen of Sost^−/− mice. Taken together, our current study indicates novel roles for Sost in the regulation of myelopoiesis and control of inflammation in the BM.     

Deterministic and Stochastic Fractional Order Model for Lesser Date Moth

In this paper, a deterministic and stochastic fractional order model for lesser date moth (LDM) using mating disruption and natural enemies is proposed and analysed. The interaction between LDM larvae, fertilized LDM female, unfertilized LDM female, LDM male and the natural enemy is investigated. In order to clarify the characteristics of the proposed deterministic fractional order model, the analysis of existence, uniqueness, non-negativity and boundedness of the solutions of the proposed fractional-order model are examined. In addition, some sufficient conditions are obtained to ensure the local and global stability of equilibrium points. The occurrence of local bifurcation near the equilibrium points is investigated with the help of Sotomayor’s theorem. Numerical simulations are conducted to illustrate the properties of the proposed fractional order model with respect to the intrinsic growth rate of the LDM larvae, natural enemy’s mortality rate, predation rate, sex pheromone trap parameter, fractional order and environmental noise. The impact of mating disruption on lesser date moth is demonstrated. Also, a numerical approximation method is developed for the proposed stochastic fractional-order model.     

Road traffic density estimation using microscopic and macroscopic parameters

In this paper we present a comparative study of two approaches for road traffic density estimation. The first approach uses the microscopic parameters which are extracted using both motion detection and tracking methods from a video sequence, and the second approach uses the macroscopic parameters which are directly estimated by analyzing the global motion in the video scene. The extracted parameters are applied to three classifiers, the K Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier, the LVQ classifier and the SVM classifier, in order to classify the road traffic in three categories: light, medium and heavy. The methods are compared based on their robustness to the classification of different road traffic states. The goal of this study is to propose an algorithm for road traffic density estimation with a high precision.     

An Efficient Source–Channel Coding for Wireless Image Transmission Over Underwater Acoustic Channel

In this paper, a complete system for image transmission in harsh underwater environment is proposed. The key to increase the performance of the system is the use of an efficient image compression algorithm with a bandwidth-efficient modulation technique. The wavelet packet (WP) decomposition is used to get the best image representation and the set partitioning in hierarchical trees is applied on the WP coefficients. The parental conflicts are resolved, the parent–child relationships are adapted and thus the similarities between cross-subbands are preserved. Reed–Solomon is used for forward error correction to combat with the errors in wireless transmission. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with differential quadrature phase shift keying is used to transmit the generated bit stream. Effective image quality metrics are used for objective evaluation. Results show that the proposed system manages to transmit images over the limited bandwidth, and to effectively minimize the perceptual degradation.     

Design and analysis of a miniaturized band-notched planar antenna incorporating a joint DMS and DGS band-rejection technique for UWB applications

Microsystem Technologies - In this article, a size miniaturized ultra-wideband (UWB) monopole antenna with dual band-notched is presented. By inserting a rectangular slot on the bottom plane, the...     

Secrets of adaptive support weight techniques for local stereo matching

In recent years, local stereo matching algorithms have again become very popular in the stereo community. This is mainly due to the introduction of adaptive support weight algorithms that can for the first time produce results that are on par with global stereo methods. The crux in these adaptive support weight methods is to assign an individual weight to each pixel within the support window. Adaptive support weight algorithms differ mainly in the manner in which this weight computation is carried out.In this paper we present an extensive evaluation study. We evaluate the performance of various methods for computing adaptive support weights including the original bilateral filter-based weights, as well as more recent approaches based on geodesic distances or on the guided filter. To obtain reliable findings, we test these different weight functions on a large set of 35 ground truth disparity pairs. We have implemented all approaches on the GPU, which allows for a fair comparison of run time on modern hardware platforms. Apart from the standard local matching using fronto-parallel windows, we also embed the competing weight functions into the recent PatchMatch Stereo approach, which uses slanted sub-pixel windows and represents a state-of-the-art local algorithm. In the final part of the paper, we aim at shedding light on general points of adaptive support weight matching, which, for example, includes a discussion about symmetric versus asymmetric support weight approaches.     

Suitability of swelling and collapse theory proposed based on virgin compression surface

This study investigates the suitability of the swelling and collapse theory proposed based on a constitutive virgin compression surface (VCS) developed within the modified Monash Peradeniya Kodikara (MPK) framework. The modified MPK approach incorporates net stress, void ratio, and moisture ratio as state variables to interpret the swelling-collapse behavior of unsaturated soils. The soil selected for this research was an expansive Quaternary age basaltic residual clay located in Victoria, Australia. The experimental program included testing on unsaturated compacted clay specimens and clay specimens stabilized with lime at the optimum lime content (OLC). The OLC was obtained based on the swelling potential. Static compaction tests were conducted on untreated and lime-treated samples to establish the VCS and to propose the relationship between moisture ratio and net stress. Next, 1-D compression and consolidation laboratory tests were carried out to investigate and compare the mechanism of collapse and swelling based on well-established suction-based theories and the moisture content-based approach of this research. The swelling and collapse response obtained through both theories were very close which verified the suitability of the moisture content-based approach, being the Modified MPK framework. This study also investigated the application of suction-controlled experimental data extracted from the relevant literature within the modified MPK framework. The novelty of this study is proposing and validating a framework for conversion of the results between two different partial theories to interpret the volumetric behavior of expansive clay. Finally, a new method is proposed to estimate the swelling-collapse state of a sample through wetting without the need to establish the VCS.