The wMelPop strain of Wolbachia is currently being investigated for its potential use as a biological control agent to reduce the ability of Aedes aegypti (L.) mosquitoes to transmit dengue viruses. The survival of a potential wMelPop infected Ae. aegypti strain for field release is important as a higher susceptibility to predation in the wMelPop strain could result in difficulties in achieving...

Infections by multiple parasites are common in nature and may impact the evolution of host-parasite interactions. We investigated the existence of multiple infections involving the DNA virus LbFV and the Drosophila parasitoid Leptopilina boulardi. This vertically transmitted virus forces infected females to lay their eggs in already parasitized Drosophila larvae (a behavior called superparasiti...

Iturin A and its derivatives are lipopeptide antibiotics produced by Bacillus subtilis and several closely related bacteria. Three iturin group operons (i.e., iturin A, mycosubtilin, and bacillomycin D) of those antibiotic-producing strains have been cloned and sequenced thus far, strongly implying the horizontal transfer of these operons. To examine the nature of such horizontal transfer in te...

The direct shear test is a widely used method of determining peak and critical state strength parameters for soil and for soil-manufactured material interfaces. However, stress conditions inside the box during shear are not well known. This paper presents a new micromechanics-based approach that modifies existing relationships between plane strain and direct shear friction angles taking into ac...

A combination of two independent geodetic solutions using data from close to 300 continuous GPS stations covering the central and eastern U.S. shows that surface deformation in the North American plate interior is best fit by a model that includes rigid rotation of North America with respect to ITRF2000 and a component of strain qualitatively consistent with that expected from Glacial Isostatic...

The horizontal transmission ability of fowl adenovirus (FAV) serotype 1 99ZH strain, isolated from chickens exhibiting gizzard erosion, was investigated. Twelve 13-day-old specific pathogen-free chickens were inoculated orally with 10(6) TCID(50)/0.05 ml of the strain. An in-pen contact group (chickens in the same pen with inoculated chickens), hedge contact group (chickens in a pen connected w...

Evidence for the horizontal transfer of a pathogenicity island (PAI) carrying the virulence gene nec1 and flanking sequences among Streptomyces strains in the Diastatochromogenes cluster is presented. Plant-pathogenic, thaxtomin-producing Streptomyces strains, previously classified as S. scabiei based on the conventionally used phenotypic characteristics, were found to be genetically distinct f...

S U M M A R Y In this paper we present a global model (GSRM-1) of both horizontal velocities on the Earth’s surface and horizontal strain rates for almost all deforming plate boundary zones. A model strain rate field is obtained jointly with a global velocity field in the process of solving for a global velocity gradient tensor field. In our model we perform a least-squares fit between model ve...

A 62-day controlled aquifer test was performed at the site of a new municipal well that penetrates a thick sequence of compressible basin-fill deposits in Mesquite, Nevada. Observation data were acquired from a high precision Global Positioning System (GPS) network to accompany the water-level data from the pumped well and a nearby observation well. The purpose of the investigation was to quant...