Chigger mites are parasites of rodents and other vertebrates, invertebrates, and other arthropods, and are the only vectors of scrub typhus, in addition to other zoonoses. Therefore, investigating their distribution, diversity, and seasonal abundance is important for public health. Rodent surveillance was conducted at 6 districts in Shandong Province, northern China (114-112°E, 34-38°N), from J...

Pythium genus includes significant and destructive soil borne plant pathogens causing losses on many plants, especially by root rot damping-off diseases. Like other pathogens, control of the diseases caused this group is rather difficult. Usually fungicides are used against species, but investigations alternative methods chemicals gained importance because harmful effects pesticides human healt...

Scrub typhus is endemic in regions of eastern Asia and the southwestern Pacific (Korea to Australia) and from Japan to India and Pakistan. It is estimated that there are about one million cases of this disease each year (Vas and Gupta, 2006). This illness is caused by Orientia (formerly Rickettsia). Orientia tsutsugamushi, an obligate intracellular Gram negative bacterium, which was first isola...

In 1966, Claude Berge proposed the following sorting problem. Given a string of n alternating white and black pegs on a one-dimensional board consisting of an unlimited number of empty holes, rearrange the pegs into a string consisting of ⌈n 2 ⌉ white pegs followed immediately by ⌊n 2 ⌋ black pegs (or vice versa) using only moves which take 2 adjacent pegs to 2 vacant adjacent holes. Avis and D...

In 2007, 19 cases of a scrub typhus epidemic occurred within a week at a sports school in Mingguang County, Anhui Province, where no previous incidence of this mite borne disease had been reported. Sero-surveillance in 2009 indicated that 10 of the 100 school students possessed anti-Orientia tsutsugamushi antibodies. From 2009 to 2013, 60 small animals and 2250 mites were collected in the vicin...

The genus Liuella Wang et Bai, 1992 is transferred from Trombiculidae to Apoloniinae and a new species Liuella monosetosa sp. n. described from specimens taken in Morocco from the hosts Gerbillus sp. and Meriones libycus Lichtenstein. A new species of Straelensia Vercammen-Grandjean et Kolebinova, 1968, Straelensia variocula sp. n. is described from specimens taken in Morocco and Burkina Faso f...