Olive Landscape Affects Bactrocera oleae Abundance, Movement and Infestation

The economic importance of Bactrocera oleae (Rossi) and the problems associated with insecticides make necessary new management approaches, including deeper biological knowledge and its relationship with landscape structure. Landscape complexity reduces B. oleae abundance in late summer–autumn in areas of high dominance of olive groves, but the effect of landscape structure in spring and in areas less dominated by olive groves has not been studied. It is also unknown whether the insect disperses from olive groves, using other land uses as a refugee in summer. This work evaluates the effect of landscape structure on olive fruit fly abundance and movement in spring and autumn, and infestation in autumn, in central Spain, an area where the olive crop does not dominate the landscape. A cost–distance analysis is used to evaluate the movement of the fly, especially trying to know whether the insects move away from olive groves in summer. The results indicate that B. oleae abundance is consistently lower in complex landscapes with high scrubland area (CAS), patch richness (PR) and Simpson landscape diversity index (SIEI), and low olive grove area (CAO). The cost–distance analysis shows that the fly moves mainly in spring, and amongst olive groves, but there is no evidence that land uses other than olive groves serve as a summer refuge. Olive fly infestation decreased with decreasing CAO and increasing CAS and SIEI, accordingly with the effect of landscape on abundance. Thus, mixing olive groves with other land uses, which are not a source of flies, can help improve control of this important pest.

Psychoanalysis comes to China: a discussion of Wang Xiubing’s “Some issues I have encountered on my path to becoming a psychoanalyst”

The author discusses Wang Xiubing’s “Some issues I have encountered in my path to becoming a psychoanalyst”. He applauds her achievement and that of her colleagues in coming into their own as analysts and analytic therapists, and discusses elements of controversy she discussed: distance analysis and differences in culture. He points out that analysis takes place neither in the office nor online, but between two persons and two minds, and most importantly in the mind of the analysand. He concludes that Chinese psychoanalysis is likely to have unique features, just as analysis has in each different locality in the past.

Hepatitis C subtyping assay failure in UK patients born in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications for global treatment and elimination

The newly developed direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) have revolutionised the treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV), where cohort studies have shown that cure rates as high as 98% can be achieved. Whilst genome sequencing has demonstrated that some subtypes of HCV naturally harbour drug resistance associated substitutions (RAS), these have not been considered important as previous molecular epidemiological studies have suggested that such difficult-to-treat subtypes are rare. Therefore, to optimise and streamline molecular detection and sequence-based typing of diverse RAS-containing subtypes, a novel panel of single round PCR assays was applied to HCV derived from 146 individuals, whose likely source of infection was from regions of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Partial NS5A and NS5B sequences were obtained from 135 HCV-positive patients born in 19 different countries from SSA but attending clinics in the UK. Virus subtype assignments were determined by pairwise-distance analysis and compared to both diagnostic laboratory assignments and free-to-use online typing tools. We determined that routine clinical diagnostic methods incorrectly subtyped 59.0% of samples, with a further 6.8% incorrectly genotyped. Of five commonly used online tools, Geno2Pheno performed most effectively in determining a subtype in agreement with pairwise distance analysis. Considering the estimated number of HCV infections to have occurred in across Africa, this study provides a simple low-cost pathway to guide regional therapeutic choice and assist global eradication programmes.

Stage 2: Who Are the Best Candidates for Robotic Gait Training Rehabilitation in Hemiparetic Stroke?

We aimed to compare the effects of robotic-assisted gait training (RAGT) in patients with FAC < 2 (low initial functional ambulation category [LFAC]) and FAC ≥ 2 (high initial functional ambulation category [HFAC]) on sensorimotor and spasticity, balance and trunk stability, the number of steps and walking distance in subacute hemiparetic stroke. Fifty-seven patients with subacute hemiparetic stroke (mean age, 63.86 ± 12.72 years; 23 women) were assigned to two groups. All patients received a 30-min Walkbot-assisted gait training session, 3 times/week, for 6 weeks. Clinical outcomes included scores obtained on the Fugl–Meyer Assessment (FMA) scale, Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), Berg Balance Scale (BBS), trunk impairment scale (TIS), and the number of walking steps and walking distance. Analysis of covariance and analysis of variance were conducted at p < 0.05. Significant main effects of time in both groups on number of walking steps and distance (p < 0.05) were observed, but not in MAS (p> 0.05). Significant changes in FMA, BBS, and TIS scores between groups (p < 0.05) were observed. Significant main effects of time on BBS and TIS were demonstrated (p < 0.05). Our study shows that RAGT can maximize improvement in the functional score of FMA, BBS, TIS, steps, and distance during neurorehabilitation of subacute stroke patients regardless of their FAC level.

A Fault Diagnosis Method Based on EEMD and Statistical Distance Analysis

Serious vibration or wear with large friction usually appear when faults occur, which leads to more serious faults such as the destruction of the oil film, bringing great damages to both the society and economic sector. Therefore, the accurate diagnosis of a fault in the early stage is important for the safety operation of machinery. To effectively extract the fault features for diagnosis, EMD-based methods are widely used. However, these methods spend lots of efforts diagnosing faults and require plenty of professional knowledge of diagnosis. Although many intelligent classifiers can be used to automatically diagnose faults such as wear, a broken tooth and imbalance, the combing EMD-based method, the scarcity of samplings with labels hinder the application of these methods to engineering. It is because the model of the intelligent classifier must be constructed based on sufficient samplings with a label. To solve this problem, we propose a novel fault diagnosis method, which is performed based on the EEMD and statistical distance analysis. In this method, the EEMD is used to decompose one original signal into several IMFs and then the probability density distribution of each IMF is calculated. To diagnose the fault of the machinery, the Euclidean distance between the signal acquired under an unknown fault with the other referenced signals acquired previously under various fault types is calculated. At last, the fault of the signal is the same with the referenced signal when the distance is the smallest. To verify the effectiveness of our proposed method, a dataset of bearings with different faults, and a dataset of 2009 Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) data challenge, including gear, bearing and shaft faults are used. The result shows that the proposed method can not only automatically diagnose faults effectively, but also fewer samplings with a label are used compared with the intelligent methods.

Does the accessibility of a farmer predict the delivery of extension services? Evidence from Rwanda

To determine whether a farmer’s accessibility predicts the delivery of extension services, this study used banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) disease-management advisory as a typical case with which to collect extension-delivery information from 690 farmers, distinguished by their respective accessibility. Cost–distance analysis was applied to define each farmer’s accessibility. The results revealed that a farmer’s accessibility does not predict extension delivery to that farmer in all forms of the examined extension parameters. Significant factors contributing to the delivery of extension services included BXW incidence and membership in Twigire Muhinzi groups. Given the results of this paper, I argue that the nature of the advisory and the type of farmers’ networks are more predictive factors than physical proximity. The findings of this study support the argument that the group-based extension approach is more effective; therefore, the Twigire Muhinzi initiative is recommended as a suitable model for delivering agricultural advisory services. The absence of a significant association between extension delivery and distance (accessibility) suggests that extension agents do not follow the first-reached, first-served rule but instead follow the problem-solving-based approach.

Putative novel avian paramyxoviruses identified from wild bird surveillance (United States, 2016?2018) and retrospective analysis of APMV-2s and APMV-6s in GenBank

Avian paramyxoviruses (APMVs) (subfamily Avulavirinae) have been isolated from over 200 species of wild and domestic birds from around the world. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) currently defines 22 different APMV species, with Avian orthoavulavirus 1 (whose viruses are designated as APMV-1) being the most frequently studied due to its economic burden to the poultry industry. Less is known about other APMV species, including limited knowledge on the genetic diversity in wild birds and there is a paucity of public whole genome sequences for APMV-2 to -22. The goal of this study was to use MinION sequencing to genetically characterize APMVs isolated from wild bird swab samples collected during 2016–2018 in the United States. Multiplexed MinION libraries were prepared using a random strand-switching approach using 37 egg-cultured, influenza-negative, hemagglutination-positive samples. Thirty-five APMV isolates that had complete polymerase coding sequences were speciated using ICTV’s current Paramyxoviridae phylogenetic methodology. Viruses from APMV-1, -4, -6, -8 were classified, one putative novel species (Avian orthoavulavirus 23) was identified from viruses isolated in this study, two putative new APMV species (Avian metaavulavirus 24 and 27) were identified from viruses isolated in this study and from retrospective GenBank sequences, and two putative new APMV species (Avian metaavulavirus 25 and 26) were identified solely from retrospective GenBank sequences. Furthermore, co-infections of APMVs were identified in a subset of the samples. The potential limitations of the branch length being the only speciation criterion and the potential benefit of a group pairwise distance analysis are discussed.

A Study on the Prediction of Hazardous Areas of Sulfuric Acid Leakage

Sulfuric acid is used for various purposes in industry, but research on sulfuric acid accidents is lacking. Thus, to prepare safety measures, it is necessary to analyze the risk distance for such accidents, particularly sulfuric acid leaks. As part of this study, 112 scenarios of varying wind speeds and leakage amounts were prepared and a risk-distance analysis was carried out at an industrial plant. The scenarios were then analyzed based on hazard concentrations. The analysis revealed that if the entire amount of sulfuric acid leaked from the industrial plant, it spread up to 9,978 m at a wind speed of 6 m/s. Residential areas were also included within the maximum diffusion distance, and it was confirmed that the leak also affected neighboring administrative districts. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare a plan to prevent and respond to sulfuric acid leakage accidents in industrial complexes.