Physiological Age Status of Female Adults and Off-Season Survival of Rice Leaffolder Cnaphalocrocis medinalis in India

Rice leaffolder, Cnaphalocrocis medinalis, is one of the major foliage feeders found in the rice growing regions in India. When the crop was at maturity, numerous adults of rice leaffolder were found in the rice fields though the larval population gradually decreased, and no eggs were found on rice leaves. The population characteristics of C. medinalis were assessed based on the physiological age status of adults at different crop growth stages. Based on egg development within ovarioles, ovariole appearance number and colour of fat bodies, and characteristics of bursa copulatrix, physiological age status of the adults was described, which served as a basis for the determination of age composition. C. medinalis adults were found during the first week of August on rice plants, of which 44% were in Age 0 with immature ovaries, indicating immigrants. However, 28% adults each were at Ages 1-2 with developing ovaries, indicating local breeding population. The carryover and off-season survival of C. medinalis were also studied to determine the contribution of the alternative hosts in the population growth that helped in devising efficient management strategies. Rice was the most preferred host followed by Triticum aestivum, Echinochloa crusgulli and Brachiaria plantaginea. Various routes of the carryover of C. medinalis from season to season were discussed.

A Greener Way to Screen Toothpaste for Diethylene Glycol

A method developed for the screening of diethylene glycol (DEG) in toothpaste was released by the FDA in 2007. This method could not only quantify the DEG but also confirm if any potential interfering peak is pre- sent. However, disadvantages of this method such as intermittent shortages of the key reagent acetonitrile and the shorter than expected column-life issues have prompted a search for alternative solutions. An im- provement with an alternate “greener” extraction solvent is presented, and the method comparison and vali- dation are described in this article. The greener extraction solvent, ethanol with limited water, provided a better efficiency for the toothpaste sampling procedures. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantita- tion (LOQ) are 0.0025% and 0.0084% in (w/w) unit, respectively. The sample recovery is 101.2%.

On the construction of balanced repeated measurements designs with good circular properties

Several fields,such as biological,medical,public health,agricultural sciences,etc.,require circular balanced repeated measurement designs with fewer unequal number of repeated measure-ments than the number of treatments.Also,the availability and high cost of experimental subjects in these fields prefer the design in fewer experimental units.However,balancing the carryover effects of the treatments in minimal experimental subjects is one of the problems in this case.In this paper,several new series of minimal circular nearly strongly balanced RMDs in periods of two and three different sizes are constructed.The proposed construction of designs has high efficiency and,therefore,can save the cost of experimentations due to a fewer exper-imental subjects.Most of the designs are very useful because of the unavailability of strongly balanced RMDs for these combinations of parameters.A list of sets of shifts for the construction of minimal circular nearly SBRMDs has also been mentioned in the Appendix.

Using loose nanofiltration membrane for lake water treatment:A pilot study

Nanofiltration(NF)using loose membranes has a high application potential for advanced treatment of drinking water by selectively removing contaminants from the water,while membrane fouling remains one of the biggest problems of the process.This paper reported a seven-month pilot study of using a loose NF membrane to treat a sand filtration effluent which had a relatively high turbidity(∼0.4 NTU)and high concentrations of organic matter(up to 5 mg/L as TOC),hardness and sulfate.Results showed that the membrane demonstrated a high rejection of TOC(by<90%)and a moderately high rejection of two pesticides(54%–82%)while a moderate rejection of both calcium and magnesium(∼45%)and a low rejection of total dissolved solids(∼27%).The membrane elements suffered from severe membrane fouling,with the membrane permeance decreased by 70%after 85 days operation.The membrane fouling was dominated by organic fouling,while biological fouling was moderate.Inorganic fouling was mainly caused by deposition of aluminum-bearing substances.Though inorganic foulants were minor contents on membrane,their contribution to overall membrane fouling was substantial.Membrane fouling was not uniform on membrane.While contents of organic and inorganic foulants were the highest at the inlet and outlet region,respectively,the severity of membrane fouling increased from the inlet to the outlet region of membrane element with a difference higher than 30%.While alkaline cleaning was not effective in removing the membrane foulants,the use of ethylenediamine tetraacetate(EDTA)at alkaline conditions could effectively restore the membrane permeance.

COORDINATING PRICING, ORDERING AND ADVERTISING FOR PERISHABLE PRODUCTS OVER AN INFINITE HORIZON

Numerous empirical studies show that advertising effort can stimulate demand in both current and future periods, and there is an interaction between pricing, advertising and ordering decisions. How do these decisions interact with each other and what is the effect of advertising on pricing and ordering decisions？ To understand this interaction, we consider a newsvendor-type firm that sells a perishable product in a stable market and dynamically determines the joint ordering, pricing and advertising strategies. The problem is modeled as an infmite horizon newsvendor problem with an advertising carryover effect and price-sensitive demand. We characterize the optimal pricing, advertising and inventory strategies and their comparative statics, and consider how this policy differs from the traditional approach without the advertising effect. We show that the optimal effective advertising level is monotonically increasing with the effective advertising level in the previous period, and hence the optimal strategies （advertising, pricing, inventory level） globally converge to the steady states in the long run. We numerically show that the optimal policy can reap significant profit, which underscores the importance of the advertising-driven ordering and pricing strategies.

Tonal coarticulation patterns in quadrisyllabic words and phrases with normal stress of mandarin

Quadrisyllabic words and phrases with normal stress of Mandarin were used to study the tonal coarticulation. It was firstly found that the F0perturbation at the starting-point and the ending-point of the F0 curve in each syllable caused by tonal coarticulation is larger than the intrinsic F0 difference of vowels at the starting-point and the ending-point of it. As for the tonal coarticulation, it was discovered that tonal coarticulation in word and phrase with normal stress is different to that in the nonsense sequence with even stress, and in word and phrase with normal stress, the tonal coarticulatory effects are unidirectional, and the carryover effect does not extend to the ending-point of tone-section of the following syllable and the anticipatory effect does not extend to the starting-point of tone-section of the preceding one, and the F0 perturbation by tonal coarticulation has its pattern.

Effectiveness analysis and optimum design of the rotary regenerator for thermophotovoltaic （TPV） system

The influence of the period of rotation on the effectiveness of the thermophotovoltaic （TPV） rotary regenerator was theoretically and experimentally investi- gated. It was found that the deviations of the theoretical results from the experimental ones decrease with the increase of the period of rotation. To the TPV system of 10 kW combustion power, the deviation is 3.5% when the rotation period is 3 s; while the deviation decreases to 1.5% when the rotation period increases to 15 s. The deviation could be mainly attributed to the cold and hot fluids carryover loss which was not considered in the model. With a new model taking account of the carryover loss established, the predicted results were greatly improved. Based on the modified model, the influence of geometrical parameters of rotary regenerator on the effectiveness was analyzed for TPV systems of various combustion power. The results demonstrate that the effectiveness increases with the increase of the rotary regenerator diameter and height, while fluid carryover loss increases at the same time, which weakens the impact of geometrical parameters.