A Review of the Biology, Ecology, and Management of the South American Locust, Schistocerca cancellata (Serville, 1838), and Future Prospects

In the first half of the twentieth century, the South American Locust (SAL), Schistocerca cancellata (Serville, 1838), was a major pest of agriculture in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil. From 1954–2014, a preventive management program appeared to limit SAL populations, with only small- to moderate-scale treatments required, limited to outbreak areas in northwest Argentina. However, the lack of major locust outbreaks led to a gradual reduction in resources, and in 2015, the sudden appearance of swarms marked the beginning of a substantial upsurge, with many swarms reported initially in Argentina in 2015, followed by expansion into neighboring countries over the next few years. The upsurge required a rapid allocation of resources for management of SAL and a detailed examination of the improvements needed for the successful management of this species. This paper provides a review of SAL biology, management history, and perspectives on navigating a plague period after a 60-year recession.

The Impact of Agricultural Socialized Services to Promote the Farmland Scale Management Behavior of Smallholder Farmers: Empirical Evidence from the Rice-Growing Region of Southern China

Farmland scale management (FSM) is an essential strategy to establish an appropriate management scale for agricultural production, enhance smallholder farmer production efficiency, and improve the utilization rate of farmland. The Chinese government promotes farmland transfer as a tool to establish modern and moderate-scale agriculture. However, farmers remain unable to afford agricultural services and inputs required for appropriate FSM after farmland is transferred-in. This paper aims to examine the impact of agricultural socialized services (ASSs) on the FSM behavior of smallholder farmers through farmland transfer. A theoretical framework for the farmer household production aspect of this relationship is developed. A weighted least squares (WLS) model is applied to empirically examine smallholder farmers’ decisions to expand the scale of farmland induced by the promotion of ASSs based on data collected from 741 households in 2020 in the rice-growing region of southern China. The findings reveal that ASSs have a positive and significant impact on small farmers’ FSM. Small farmers’ behavior regarding farmland transfer is affected positively by the promotion of ASSs. The increase of ASSs encourages small farmers to transfer-in more farmland. However, the impact of ASSs on various steps of agricultural practice varied according to the FSM of smallholder farmers. Our findings imply that the government should take the development of ASSs as one of the main methods for promoting the establishment of moderate and large-scale agriculture and rural revitalization. Strengthening policies and financial support for both private and public ASS providers through financial innovation subsidies and preferential tax policies will help smallholder farmers reduce input costs and increase the scale of production and profits. The findings of this paper will provide a scientific basis and reference for the development of moderate-scale agriculture and rural revitalization.

The Origin of The Soft X-Ray Excess in the Seyfert 1.5 Galaxy ESO 362-G18

We review the Seyfert 1.5 Galaxy ESO 362-G18 for exploring the origin of the soft X-ray excess. The Warm Corona and Relativistic Reflection models are two main scenarios to interpret the soft X-ray excess in AGNs at present. We use the simultaneous X-ray observation data of XMM-Newton and NuSTAR on Sep. 24th, 2016 to perform spectral analysis in two steps. First, we analyze the time-average spectra by using Warm Corona and Relativistic Reflection models. Moreover, we also explore the Hybrid model, Double Reflection model and Double Warm Corona model. We find that both of Warm Corona and Relativistic Reflection models can interpret the time-average spectra well but cannot be distinguished easily based on the time-averaged spectra fit statistics. Second, we add the RMS and covariance spectra to perform the spectral analysis with time-average spectra. The result shows that the warm corona could reproduce all of these spectra well. The the hot, optical thin corona and neutral distant reflection will increase their contribution with the temporal frequency, meaning that the corona responsible for X-ray continuum comes from the inner compact X-ray region and the neutral distant reflection is made of some moderate scale neutral clumps.

Enhancing Client Honeypots with Grid Services and Workflows

<p>Client honeypots are devices for detecting malicious servers on a network. They interact with potentially malicious servers and analyse the Web pages returned to assess whether these pages contain an attack. This type of attack is termed a 'drive-by-download'. Low-interaction client honeypots operate a signature-based approach to detecting known malicious code. High- interaction client honeypots run client applications in full operating systems that are usually hosted by a virtual machine. The operating systems are either internally or externally monitored for anomalous behaviour. In recent years there have been a growing number of client honeypot systems being developed, but there is little interoperability between systems because each has its own custom operational scripts and data formats. By creating interoperability through standard interfaces we could more easily share usage of client honeypots and the data collected. Another problem is providing a simple means of managing an installation of client honeypots. Work ows are a popular technology for allowing end-users to co-ordinate e-science experiments, so these work ow systems can potentially be utilised for client honeypot management. To formulate requirements for management we ran moderate-scale scans of the .nz domain over several months using a manual script-based approach. The main requirements were a system that is user-oriented, loosely-coupled, and integrated with Grid computing|allowing for resource sharing across organisations. Our system design uses Grid services (extensions to Web services) to wrap client honeypots, a manager component acts as a broker for user access, and workflows orchestrate the Grid services. Our prototype wraps our case study - Capture-HPC -with these services, using the Taverna workflow system, and a Web portal for user access. When evaluating our experiences we found that while our system design met our requirements, currently a Java-based application operating on our Web services provides some advantages over our Taverna approach - particularly for modifying workflows, maintainability, and dealing with failure. The Taverna workflows, however, are better suited for the data analysis phase and have some usability advantages. Workflow languages such as Taverna are still relatively immature, so improvements are likely to be made. Both of these approaches are significantly easier to manage and deploy than the previous manual script-based method.</p>

Enhancing Client Honeypots with Grid Services and Workflows

<p>Client honeypots are devices for detecting malicious servers on a network. They interact with potentially malicious servers and analyse the Web pages returned to assess whether these pages contain an attack. This type of attack is termed a 'drive-by-download'. Low-interaction client honeypots operate a signature-based approach to detecting known malicious code. High- interaction client honeypots run client applications in full operating systems that are usually hosted by a virtual machine. The operating systems are either internally or externally monitored for anomalous behaviour. In recent years there have been a growing number of client honeypot systems being developed, but there is little interoperability between systems because each has its own custom operational scripts and data formats. By creating interoperability through standard interfaces we could more easily share usage of client honeypots and the data collected. Another problem is providing a simple means of managing an installation of client honeypots. Work ows are a popular technology for allowing end-users to co-ordinate e-science experiments, so these work ow systems can potentially be utilised for client honeypot management. To formulate requirements for management we ran moderate-scale scans of the .nz domain over several months using a manual script-based approach. The main requirements were a system that is user-oriented, loosely-coupled, and integrated with Grid computing|allowing for resource sharing across organisations. Our system design uses Grid services (extensions to Web services) to wrap client honeypots, a manager component acts as a broker for user access, and workflows orchestrate the Grid services. Our prototype wraps our case study - Capture-HPC -with these services, using the Taverna workflow system, and a Web portal for user access. When evaluating our experiences we found that while our system design met our requirements, currently a Java-based application operating on our Web services provides some advantages over our Taverna approach - particularly for modifying workflows, maintainability, and dealing with failure. The Taverna workflows, however, are better suited for the data analysis phase and have some usability advantages. Workflow languages such as Taverna are still relatively immature, so improvements are likely to be made. Both of these approaches are significantly easier to manage and deploy than the previous manual script-based method.</p>

Factors Influencing the Adoption of Agricultural Machinery by Chinese Maize Farmers

As the major labor force has shifted from rural areas to cities, labor shortages in agricultural production have resulted. In the context of technical progress impact, and depending on farm resource endowments, farmers will choose effective labor saving technology such as machinery to substitute for the missing manual labor. The reasons behind farmers’ adoption of machinery technology are worth exploring. Therefore, this study uses 4165 Chinese maize farmers as the target group. Multivariate probit models were performed to identify the factors that affect maize farmers’ adoption of four machinery technologies as well as the interrelation between these adoption decisions. The empirical results indicate that maize sowing area, arable land area, crop diversity, family labor, subsidy, technical assistance, and economies of scale have positive effects on machinery adoption, while the number of discrete fields in the farm has a negative impact. Maize farmers in the Northeast and North have higher machinery adoption odds than other regions. The adoption of these four machinery technologies are interrelated and complementary. Finally, moderate scale production, crop diversification, subsidizing agricultural machinery and its extension education, and land consolidation, are given as recommendations for promoting the adoption of agricultural machinery by Chinese maize farmers.