BACKGROUND Experiments under controlled laboratory conditions can produce decisive evidence for testing biological hypotheses, provided they are representative of the more complex natural conditions. However, whether this requirement is fulfilled is seldom tested explicitly. Here we provide a lab/field comparison to investigate the identity of an egg-marking signal of ant queens. Our study was ...

The colony composition and behavioral characteristics of the trap-jaw ants Myrmoteras iriodum and M. jaitrongi were studied in Ulu Gombak, Peninsular Malaysia. The following colony characteristics were common in both species: (1) Colony size was remarkably small, less than 10 workers on average with one mated dealate queen. Alate sexuals were produced in colonies with less than 10 workers. (2) ...

introduction:cats carry a lot of zoonotic parasites such as toxoplasma gondii which causes toxoplasmosis in warm-blooded animals. toxoplasmosis includes wide range of symptoms in its intermediate and definitive hosts but the worst symptoms have been seen in pregnant women and also on immunocompromised hosts. considering the importance of cats as the only definitive host that spread the t. gondi...

OBJECTIVE To report a case of occupational asthma and urticaria due to the queen scallop (Chlamys opercularis) and king scallop (Pectin maximus). BACKGROUND A 40-year-old female worked in a shellfish-processing plant, handling king and queen scallops for 5 years. At the time of investigation, she described a 2-year history of work-related respiratory symptoms. METHODS Serial peak expiratory...

The premature convergence of genetic algorithms (GAs) is the most major factor of slow evolution of GAs. In this paper we propose a novel method to solve this problem through competition of multiple offspring of individuals. Unlike existing methods, each parents in our method generates multiple offspring and then generated multiple offspring compete each other, finally winner offspring become t...

1. Division of Population Health and Immunity, The Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia 2. Department of Medical Biology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia 3. The National Health Training and Research Institute, Ministry of Health, Solomon Islands 4. National Vector Borne Disease Control Program, Ministry of Health, Solomon Islands 5. School of Pop...

In March 2008, the journalist Eliza Griswold described a burgeoning “competition” for believers between Muslims and Christians in the country of Nigeria—“God’s Country” according to the article’s title. The description is tragically ironic in light of the carnage that has accompanied this competition in the form of waves of interreligious violence after the implementation of Sharia criminal law...

ALEXANDRU NEMTOI1, VLAD DANILA2*, ELIZA DRAGAN2, SORIN PASCA3, ANA NEMTOI2, MIHAI CONSTANTIN2, ANCA SAVA1, DANISIA HABA2 1 Gr. T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Department of Anatomy, 16 Universitatii Str., 700115, Iasi, Romania 2 Gr. T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgey, 16 Universitatii Str., 700115, Iasi, Romania 3 Ion Ionescu de...

In the human machine interaction domain adaptive life-like agents are becoming a popular interface. In order to provide a natural conversation such agents should be able to display emotion and to recognize the user’s emotions. This paper describes a computer model for amulti-modal communication system based on the famous Eliza question-answering system. A human user can communicate with the dev...