Predation behaviour of Myopopone castaneae SMITH ants against some insect larvae in the laboratory

Myopopone castaneae ants are known to be predators of the larvae of Oryctes rhinoceros. These ants attack their prey alive by biting and stinging them to death before the hemolymph fluid is consumed. Despite the minimal information available, these ants have the potential to prey on 2.8 - 3 larvae for a period of 5 days. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to evaluate the predation behavior of M. castaneae ants against several types of insect larvae in the laboratory. This investigation was performed at the pest laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, North Sumatra University from May to July 2020. The results showed the fastest prey time of 2-3 days on 3 Omphisa fuscidentalis larvae, while the longest was observed against Rhynchophorus ferrugineus species, at 3 larvae for 6-7 days. In addition, the typical predation behavior and symptoms include the presence of scars and gradual blackening on the cuticles. Moreover, ants tend to carry their offspring to the dead larvae of O. rhinoceros and R. ferrugineus, while O. fuscidentalis is conveyed to the nest for consumption by the colony.

Balancing Expressiveness and Inexpressiveness in View Design

We study the design of data publishing mechanisms that allow a collection of autonomous distributed data sources to collaborate to support queries. A common mechanism for data publishing is via views : functions that expose derived data to users, usually specified as declarative queries. Our autonomy assumption is that the views must be on individual sources, but with the intention of supporting integrated queries. In deciding what data to expose to users, two considerations must be balanced. The views must be sufficiently expressive to support queries that users want to ask—the utility of the publishing mechanism. But there may also be some expressiveness restrictions. Here, we consider two restrictions, a minimal information requirement, saying that the views should reveal as little as possible while supporting the utility query, and a non-disclosure requirement, formalizing the need to prevent external users from computing information that data owners do not want revealed. We investigate the problem of designing views that satisfy both expressiveness and inexpressiveness requirements, for views in a restricted information systems - query languages (conjunctive queries), and for arbitrary views.

Current situation of vaccine injury compensation program and a future perspective in light of COVID-19 and emerging viral diseases

Background: Vaccines have had a great impact on disease prevention and reducing mortality. Very rarely, vaccines also can result in serious adverse effects. In consideration of this fact, vaccine injury compensation programs have been implemented in many countries to compensate a vaccinee for associated adverse effects. The existing vaccine injury compensation system addresses routine immunization schemes. However, there are rising concerns about the compensation for adverse effects caused by new vaccines such as those developed for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This review focuses on vaccine injury compensation programs and highlights the necessity to include all upcoming new vaccines for COVID-19 and other emerging viral diseases in the compensation schemes. Methods: Published articles relating to vaccine compensation injury programs, vaccines, injuries, disabilities, illnesses, and deaths resulting from vaccination were searched in data bases. Through a careful review of the abstracts, 25 relevant articles were selected for analysis. Results: We identified 27 countries on four continents with vaccine injury compensation schemes: 17 countries in Europe, 7 countries in Asia, the United States, a Canadian Province and New Zealand. No programs were identified in Africa and in South America. Program design, funding, and eligibility for compensation vary vastly between countries. We identified 17 countries operating well-established vaccine injury compensation programs. However, minimal information is available on numerous other countries. Conclusion: We conclude that the vaccine injury compensation programs are available in limited number of countries across four continents - mostly in Europe. Lack of standard approach and scope of injury prevention and compensation programs across the countries exists. Some important limitations include limited scientific material, which hindered our research. Therefore, additional data concerning payout for each type of injury and the number of claimants related to a specific vaccine injury worldwide could provide a more comprehensive analysis.

Comparative history in humanities’ teaching in Ukraine

History as a Magistra Vitae encompasses a lot of mutually complementing research and teaching subjects. It should be taught step by step from local and simple items up to global generalizations taking into account the age, educational level, and professional interests of audience. The pupils at the primary and secondary schools learn at first about their native towns or districts, later in more detail about their motherland as a whole, and common patterns of Europe with just basic names and data of the World. The higher schools are to combine minimal information of history necessary for any civilized human being with emphasized attention at the respective fields’ past separately for future lawyers, physicians, engineers, etc. In Ukraine as an extremely exhausted nation it is crucially important to break deeply rooted complex of inferiority, to prove indivisibility of domestic history with East-Central and the rest of Europe. We should overcome as soon as possible a situation when large territories had been devastated by Holodomor and colonized by alien settlers from other parts of the Soviet Union after this genocide. The newcomers’ offspring gradually will get accommodated to their new homeland yet during Transition they are an easy target for destructive impacts from abroad. To counteract subversive propaganda, we need highly educated teachers and lecturers. The pro-European liberals in Ukraine had been exterminated by notorious totalitarian purges or forced to exile and replaced by mercenaries of Russian revanchist forces. The huge traditional Universities hardly can be reformed and modernized, as they inherited stereotypes and prejudices from the past. Newly created, seemingly more flexible and certainly less corrupted higher schools attract capable and ambitious people yet their alumni feel temptation of more easy opportunities. Ukraine needs patriots now more than ever desperately fighting for survival against aggressor in current Hybrid war. The prospects look optimistic, yet for the time being it requires a lot of efforts. History teaching becomes still more important to promote unity of interdependent philological, historical, political, and state making generations of national rebirth aimed at the repatriation to modernity.

Visitor’s Perception About Orangutan Conservation In Indonesian Zoos

Zoos have four main roles namely conservation, research, education and recreation. Whether the existence of the zoo has succeeded in increasing or at least influencing people's perceptions of animal conservation should be investigated further. The research aimed to assess the image of the zoos and perception of the visitors about orangutan conservation. This study applied the questionnaire and methods to Indonesia zoo's, and examines the effect of the zoo at changing visitor's conservation awareness. The result showed that there were no significant difference acros the sites and between arrival dan departures. This could be caused by many reasons, for example the short visit time, minimal information obtained during the visit or the background of the visitors themselves.

Fair and Equitable Grading for ALL Students in Inclusive Settings

Grading is a common practice in general education settings. Few teachers, however, are clear about how they should grade students with significant cognitive disabilities when those students are included in the general education classroom. Unfortunately, existing research provides minimal information to aid teachers and education leaders as they consider fair and equitable grading practices for these students. In this article, we examine the four criteria for high-quality inclusive grading outlined by The William & Mary Training & Technical Assistance Center for grading within the inclusive classroom: (a) grades are accurate, (b) grades are meaningful, (c) grades are consistent, and (d) grades are supportive of learning and discuss how these criteria could be applied to provide a more fair and equitable grading system for students with significant cognitive disabilities.

A Novel Approach For Privacy Preservation In Blockchain Network Using Tensor Product And A Hybrid Swarm Intelligence

Therefore, block chain-based technique is developed for privacy protection using tensor product and a hybrid swarm intelligence based coefficient generation. Initially, the block chain data with mixed attributes was subjected to the privacy preservation process, in which the raw data matrix and solitude and utility (SU) coefficient were multiplied through the tensor product. Thus, the derivation of the SU coefficient, which handles both sensitive information and utility, was formulated as a searching problem. Then, the proposed algorithm was introduced to evaluate the SU coefficient. The performance of the developed technique was evaluated by means of accuracy and information loss. The achieved results have shown that the developed hybrid sward intelligence reached a maximal accuracy of 0.840 and minimal information loss of 0.159 using dataset-2, compared to the existing system.