Bakgrund: Det konsumenter oftast inte är medvetna om vid deras Internetanvändning är att de iakttas av företag. Företagen samlar avsiktligt in personlig information och spårar vilka hemsidor och produkter eller tjänster de intresserat sig av genom så kallade webb-spårningssystem. I samma takt som tekniker så som webb-spårningssystem börjat användas har också etisk marknadsföring på Internet blivit ett diskuterat och aktuellt ämne. Etisk marknadsföring på Internet handlar om vad som uppfattas som accepterat beteende av konsumenterna och företag måste ta hänsyn till konsumentens etiska koder. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att undersöka konsumenters uppfattningar om webbspårningssystem utifrån etiska koder. Forskningsfråga: Vad är etiskt accepterat användande av webb-spårningssystem från konsumentens perspektiv? Metod: I studien har en kvalitativ forskningsstrategi samt semi-strukturerade intervjuer tillämpats. Slutsats: Slutsatsen i studien är att konsumenters uppfattningar om webb-spårningssystem inte alltid uppfyller konsumentens etiska koder. Konsumenter har generellt sätt en negativ uppfattning om webb-spårningssystem men uppfattningarna skiljer sig beroende på vilken situation som konsumenten påverkas av webb-spårningssystem. Konsumenter har enbart positiva uppfattningar om webb-spårningssystem när tekniken används så att konsumenten gynnas av den.

Lantana camara L. (Verbenaceae) remains a highly invasive and ecologically damaging weed in South Africa, despite some 50 years of biological control efforts. Lack of success has been ascribed to varietal differences, climate and predation of agents but these have not been tested. In this study, the effects of ant predation were tested on populations of three biological control agents for L. camara. Colonies of two species, Crematogaster sp. 1 and 2 were investigated. Crematogaster sp. 1 colonies were offered no choice between immature stages of the agents Hypena laceratalis Walker (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), Falconia intermedia Distant (Hemiptera: Miridae) or Teleonemia scrupulosa Stål (Hemiptera: Tingidae) on lantana shoots. Density-dependent predation on F. intermedia and T. scrupulosa nymphs on lantana shoots was tested using Crematogaster sp. 2 colonies. In choice experiments Crematogaster sp. 2 colonies were offered F. intermedia or T. scrupulosa nymphs on potted lantana plants. Preliminary food trials confirmed that colonies foraged for protein, thereby validating results of no-choice experiments. Crematogaster sp.1 foragers removed 50% of F. intermedia nymphs, followed by 45% of H. laceratalis larvae and only 9% of T. scrupulosa nymphs. Foragers recruited most actively to H. laceratalis larvae and significantly more H. laceratalis biomass was removed than either F. intermedia or T. scrupulosa. A trade-off existed in prey size selection because larger larvae provided considerably more biomass but required forager cooperation and a longer time to subdue than did smaller prey. This increases both forager energy expense and mortality risk by other predators. This study showed that all Crematogaster sp. 1 colonies removed small (≤10mm) H. laceratalis larvae more frequently than larvae larger than 10mm. Thus, of these biological control agents, predators probably prefer small H. laceratalis larvae. Significantly more F. intermedia than T. scrupulosa nymphs were removed by Crematogaster sp. 1, while Crematogaster sp. 2 colonies removed comparable numbers of both agent species. Falconia intermedia nymphs' fast movement triggered a predatory response by these ant species. In contrast, the relatively immobile behaviour of T. scrupulosa nymphs was identified as a highly effective predator avoidance strategy. Since T. scrupulosa nymphs are unable to escape predators by moving, they appear to depend on the presence of alternative prey attracting predator attention. At high agent and/or forager density, T. scrupulosa nymphs attempted escape, but foragers identified them as prey once they moved and caught them. Predation on F. intermedia was also density dependent in that at high nymph and/or forager densities, escape routes were congested and nymphs were more easily caught. Survival of F. intermedia and T. scrupulosa nymphs in particular was low on ant-accessed shrubs in choice experiments and high on ant-excluded shrubs. It is likely that ants significantly depress F. intermedia populations in the field since besides predation, ant foragers probably interrupt F. intermedia feeding and ovipositioning. The combination of parasitism and predation on early instar larvae may explain why H. laceratalis occurs across lantana's range in South Africa but populations remain low. It is unlikely that T. scrupulosa nymphs are habitually preyed on by ant species unless they attract attention by being mobile. Although biological control of L. camara is influenced by climate and physiological defence mechanisms, this study has shown that predation by two ant species severely impacts leaf-feeding agents for L. camara. Thus, it is recommended that future selection of additional agents to control lantana should exclude leaf-feeding .

This thesis has two focuses. The first problem facing the olive industry in the Eastern Cape is the growers’ perceptions of both what the industry will provide them and what a pest management program might entail. The second focus is the biology of olive pests in the Eastern Cape in terms of understanding their populations and their natural enemies on private farms, with future hopes of understanding how Integrated Pest Management strategies can be developed for this crop. Eastern Cape private farmers, small-scale farmers and workers from agricultural training institutions were interviewed regarding the history and cultivation of the local olive crop. Only one commercially viable olive grove was identified; other groves were small, experimental pilot ventures. The introduction of olives to small-scale farmers and agricultural training schools was generally a top-down initiative that led to a lack of sense of ownership and the trees being neglected. Other problems included poor human capital; poor financial capital; lack of adequate support; lack of knowledge transfer and stability; lack of communication and evaluation procedures of the project; miscommunication; and finally, olive pests. Apart from hesitancy to plant at a commercial scale, the main problem facing private farmers (Varnam Farm, Hewlands Farm and Springvale Farm) was pests. Therefore an investigation of pests from private farms was conducted ranging from collection of cultivated and wild olive fruit and flea beetle larvae for parasitism, trapping systems both for fruit flies and olive flea beetle adults. A survey of olive fruits yielded larval fruit flies of the families Tephritidae (Bactrocera oleae (Rossi), B. biguttula (Bezzi) and Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann)) and Drosophilidae (Drosophila melanogaster (Meigen)) from wild olives (O. europaea cuspidata (Wall. ex G. Don) Cif.) but none from cultivated olives (O. e. europaea L.). Braconid wasps (Opiinae and Braconinae) were reared only from fruits containing B. oleae and B. biguttula. This suggests that B. oleae is not of economic significance in the Eastern Cape, perhaps because it is controlled to a significant level by natural enemies, but B. biguttula may be a potential economic pest. A survey of adult fruit flies using ChamP traps baited with ammonium bicarbonate and spiroketal capsules and Sensus trap baited with methyl eugenol and Questlure confirmed the relative importance of B. biguttula over B. oleae. ChamP traps were over 50 times better than Sensus traps for mass trapping of B. biguttula but both were ineffective for trapping B. oleae and C. capitata. Six indigenous flea beetles of the genus Argopistes Motschulsky (Chrysomelidae: Alticinae) were found, three described by Bryant in 1922 and 1944 and three new species. Their morphology was investigated by scanning electron microscopy and mutivariate morphometric analysis. The leaf-mining larvae are pests of wild and cultivated olives in South Africa and threaten the local olive industry. At Springvale Farm, A. oleae Bryant and A. sexvittatus Bryant preferred the upper parts of trees, near new leaves. Pseudophanomeris inopinatus (Blkb.) (Braconidae) was reared from 23 Argopistes larvae. The beetle larvae might not be controlled to a significant level by natural enemies because the rate of parasitism was low. The olive flea beetles showed no attraction to traps containing various volatile compounds as baits. The lace bug, Plerochila australis Distant (Tingidae), was sometimes a pest. It showed a preference for the underside of leaves on the lower parts of the trees. A moth, Palpita unionalis Hübner (Crambidae), was reared in very low numbers and without parasitoids. A twig-boring beetle larva, chalcidoid parasitoids and seed wasps of the families Eurytomidae, Ormyridae and Eupelmidae were also recorded.

Results of water bug sampling ascertained by selected sampling methods (net trapping and different water light traps) were compared in this thesis. Selected ecological characteristic of taxocen, based on data gained by these methods, are calculated and compared. The water light trap with heterochromatic LEDs (white LEDs respectively) was found the most forceable method for sampling of both water bug species and their specimens.

Det här examensarbetet är baserat på idéer ur ett uppdrag från företaget Saab Aerotech men är ett eget arbete. Målet var att undersöka om det finns behov av ett verktyg som statiskt kan detektera dynamiska minneshanteringsproblem, som till exempel minnesläckage, i applikationer skrivna i C/C++. På grund av att minneshanteringsfel i C/C++ länge har varit ett känt problem undersökte vi detta och de befintliga lösningarna till det. Vi fann två metoder till lösningar som de flesta verktyg använde sig av; statisk och dynamisk detektering. De flesta verktyg löste problemet genom att dynamiskt detektera minnesläckor och andra brister som till exempel buffer overflows. Ett verktyg löste dock problemet genom att statisk detektera minneshanteringsfel i källkoden för applikationerna. Eftersom alla befintliga lösningar har någon form av ineffektivitet så har vi undersökt möjligheten att utveckla ett mer effektivt verktyg. Vi har kommit fram till att denna möjlighet finns men det kräver enormt mycket tid och arbete att göra ett komplett verktyg som detekterar minneshanteringsfel statiskt. Vår prototyp detekterar dynamiska minneshanteringsproblem i källkoden statiskt. Vi har använt oss av hjälpverktygen Flex och Bison för att utveckla vår prototyp av verktyget. Prototypen kan analysera källkod skriven i programspråken C och C++ och klarar att detektera minnesläckage, felaktiga avallokeringar av minne, dangling pointers, samt läsning från och skrivning till ogiltiga minnesområden. På grund av tidsbrist har vi i nuläget inte implementerat något stöd för klasser och objekt i prototypen. / This bachelor’s project is our own project, but it is based on ideas from an assignment from the Saab Aerotech company. The goal was to investigate if there is a need for a tool that statically can detect dynamic memory management errors, such as memory leaks, in applications written in C/C++. Since the problem of memory management errors in the C/C++ languages has been known for a long time, we decided to investigate this and the existing solutions. We found that most tools used two methods as solutions; static and dynamic detection. Most of these tools solve the problem by dynamically detecting memory leaks and other deficiencies such as buffer overflows. However, one of these tools used static detection of these deficiencies by scanning the source code of the applications. Since all the existing solutions have some kind of inefficiency, we have investigated the possibility to develop a more efficient tool. We concluded that this is possible but it will take a lot of time and effort to implement a complete tool that statically detects memory management errors. Our prototype statically detects dynamic memory management problems in the source code. We have used the tools Flex and Bison to develop our prototype of a static detection tool. The prototype analyzes source code written in the programming languages C and C++ and is capable of detecting memory leaks, invalid deallocations of memory, dangling pointers and reading from and writing to invalid memory areas. Currently, due to lack of time, we have not implemented any support for classes and objects in the prototype.

Detecting concurrency bugs can be challenging due to the intricacies associated with their manifestation. These intricacies correspond to identifying the methods that need to be invoked concurrently, the inputs passed to these methods and the interleaving of the threads that cause the erroneous behavior. Neither fuzzing-based testing techniques nor over-approximate static analyses are well positioned to detect subtle concurrency defects while retaining high accuracy alongside satisfactory coverage. While dynamic analysis techniques have been proposed to overcome some of the challenges in detecting concurrency bugs, we observe that their success is critically dependent on the availability of effective multithreaded clients. Without a priori knowledge of the defects, manually constructing defect-revealing multithreaded clients is non-trivial. In this thesis, we design an approach to address the problem of automatically generate clients for detecting concurrency bugs in multithreaded libraries. The key insight underlying our design is that a subset of the properties observed when the defects manifest in a concur-rent execution can also be observed in a sequential execution. The input to our approach is a library implementation and a sequential testsuite, and the output is a set of multithreaded clients that can be used to reveal defects in the input library implementation. Dynamic defect detectors can execute the clients and analyze the resulting traces to report various kinds of defects including deadlocks, data races and atomicity violations. Furthermore, the clients can also be used by testing frameworks to report assertion violations. We propose two variants of our design – (a) path-agnostic client generation, and (b) path-aware client generation. The path-agnostic client generation process helps in detection of potential bugs present in the paths executed by the input sequential testsuite. It does not attempt to explore newer paths by satisfying path conditions either by modifying the input or by scheduling the threads appropriately. The generated clients are used to expose deadlocks, data races and atomicity violations. Our analysis analyzes the execution traces obtained from executing the input sequential clients and produces a concurrent client program that drives shared objects via library methods calls to states conducive for triggering deadlocks, data races or atomicity violations. For path-aware client generation, our approach explores newer paths that are not covered by the input sequential testsuite to generate clients. For this purpose, we design a directed, iterative and scalable engine that combines the strengths of static and dynamic analysis to help synthesize both multithreaded clients and schedules that violate complex correctness conditions expressed by the developer. Apart from the library implementation and the sequential testsuite as input, this engine also accepts a specification of correctness as input. Then, it iteratively refines each client from the input sequential testsuite to generate an ex-ecution that can break the input specification. Each step of the iterative process includes statically identifying sub-goals towards the goal of failing the specification, generating a plan toward meeting these goals, and merging of the paths traversed dynamically with the plan computed statically via constraint solving to generate a new client. The engine reports full reproduction scenarios, guaranteed to be true, for the bugs it finds. We have implemented prototypes that incorporate the aforementioned ideas and validated them by applying them on 29 well-tested concurrent classes from popular Java libraries, including the latest version of JDK. We are able to automatically generate clients that helped expose more than 300 concurrency bugs including deadlocks, data races, atomicity violations and assertion violations. We reported many previously unknown bugs to the developers of these libraries resulting in either fixes to the code or changes to the documentation pertaining to the thread-safe behavior of the relevant classes. On average, the time taken to analyze a class and generate clients for it is less than two minutes. We believe that the demonstrated effectiveness of our prototypes in helping expose deep bugs in popular Java libraries makes the design, proposed in this thesis, a vital cog in the future development and deployment of dynamic concurrency bug detectors.

<p>Bed bugs (<i>Cimex lectularius</i> L.) are globally important human ectoparasites. Their management necessitates the use of multiple control techniques. Plant-derived essential oils are extracts from aromatic plants that represent one of the alternative control measures for bed bug control, in addition to mechanical options and synthetic pesticides. However, there is limited information available on the efficacy and toxicology of plant essential oils against bed bugs. This project was designed with the aim to provide in-depth information on efficacy, toxicology and mode-of-action of essential oils and their insecticidal constituents in bed bugs. Initially, I evaluated topical and fumigant toxicity of fifteen essential oil components against adult male bed bugs of the Harlan strain (an insecticide susceptible strain). Neurological effects of the six most toxicologically active compounds were also determined. In both topical and fumigant bioassays, carvacrol and thymol were the most active compounds. Spontaneous electrical activity measurements of the bed bug nervous system demonstrated neuroinhibitory effects of carvacrol, thymol and eugenol, whereas linalool and bifenthrin (a pyrethroid class insecticide) produced excitatory effects. Further, I evaluated the efficacy and neurological impacts of a mixture of three neuroinhibitory compounds; carvacrol, eugenol and thymol in 1:1:1 ratio against adult male bed bugs of the Harlan strain. This mixture of monoterpenoids as well as the mixture of synthetic insecticides exhibited a synergistic affect in topical bioassays. In electrophysiology experiments, the monoterpenoid mixture led to higher neuroinhibitory effects, whereas a mixture of synthetic insecticides caused higher neuroexcitatory effects in comparison to single compounds. </p> <p>In the next objective of my dissertation, I compared the efficacy of five plant essential oils (thyme, oregano, clove, geranium and coriander), their major components (thymol, carvacrol, eugenol, geraniol and linalool) and EcoRaider^® (commercial product) between pyrethroid susceptible (Harlan) and field collected (Knoxville) bed bug populations. Initially, I found that the Knoxville strain was 72,893 and 291,626 fold resistant to topically applied deltamethrin (a pyrethroid class insecticide) compared to the susceptible Harlan strain at the LD₂₅ and LD₅₀ lethal dose levels, respectively. Synergist bioassays and detoxification enzyme assays showed that the Knoxville strain possesses significantly higher activity of cytochrome P450 and esterase enzymes. Further, Sanger sequencing revealed the presence of the L925I mutation in the voltage gated sodium channel gene. The Knoxville strain, however, did not show any resistance to plant essential oils, their major components or EcoRaider^® in topical bioassays (resistance ratios of ~ 1). In the final objective, I evaluated the efficacy of binary mixtures of above-mentioned essential oils or their major components or EcoRaider^® with deltamethrin in susceptible and resistant bed bugs. In topical application bioassays, binary mixtures of essential oils or their major components or EcoRaider^® and deltamethrin at the LD₂₅ dose caused a synergistic increase in toxicity in resistant bed bugs. Further, I studied the inhibitory effects of major essential oil components on detoxification enzyme activities (cytochrome P450s, esterases and glutathione transferases). Detoxification enzyme assays conducted using protein extracts from bed bugs pre-treated with essential oil constituents showed that these compounds significantly inhibited cytochrome P450 activity in the resistant strain, but esterase and glutathione transferase activity were unaffected. No inhibition of detoxification enzyme activities was observed in the Harlan strain bed bugs pre-treated with essential oil constituents.</p> <p>In conclusion, my dissertation research has created the foundation for utilization of natural products for bed bug management by (i) describing the efficacy of plant essential oils and their components against bed bugs, (ii) discovering synergistic interactions between essential oil components at the nervous system level, (iii) determining susceptibility of deltamethrin-resistant bed bugs to plant essential oils and their constituents and (iv) identifying synergistic effects of essential oils or their components on toxicity of pyrethroid insecticides and underlying mechanisms of this synergistic interaction. </p> <br>

Insects have developed many strategies of defence against predators in the course of evolution. The evolutionarily oldest and most widely used type of defence is chemical defence, followed by acoustic or optical defence. However, many species of insects use simultaneously multiple types of warning signals, which affect different sensory receptors of the given predator. Such a complex method of warning signals is called multimodal method. It may consist of a combination of simultaneous chemical and optical signals, or a combination of acoustic and optical signalling. The combination of chemical and optical signalling used against a predator is probably the most common form of multimodal signalling. The presented work deals with the analysis of biologically active substances, which participate in the defence mechanisms of a widespread species of insects - true bugs (Heteroptera). Pterin derivatives represent a large group of natural compounds derived from pteridin, bicyclic heterocycle, and they are found in virtually all living organisms from bacteria to vertebrates. In insects, they primarily serve as pigments, resulting for example in striking coloration of cuticles of Heteroptera. The first part of the dissertation was focused on identification and quantification of pterin derivatives in cuticles...

The complexity associated with development of networked video games creates a need for tools for verifying a consistent player experience. Some networked games achieve consistency through the lockstep protocol, which requires identical execution of sent commands for players to stay synchronised. In this project a method for testing networked multiplayer lockstep games for synchronisation problems related to nondeterministic behaviour is formulated and evaluated. An integrated fuzzing AI is constructed which tries to cause desynchronisation in the tested game and generate data for analysis using log files. Scripts are used for performing semi-automated test runs and parsing the data. The results show that the test system has potential for finding synchronisation problems if the fuzzing AI is used in conjunction with the regular AI in the tested game, but not for finding the origins of said problems. / Komplexiteten förenad med utveckling av nätverksuppkopplade dataspel skapar ett behov av verktyg för att verifiera en konsistent spelarupplevelse. Vissa nätverksspel hålls konsistenta med hjälp av lockstep-protokollet, vilket kräver identisk exekvering av skickade kommandon för att spelarna ska hållas synkroniserade. I detta projekt formuleras och evalueras en metod för att testa om nätverksuppkopplade flerspelarspel lider av synkroniseringsproblem relaterade till ickedeterministiskt beteende. En integrerad fuzzing-AI konstrueras som försöka orsaka desynkronisering i det testade spelet och generera data för analys med hjälp av loggfiler. Skript används för att utföra halvautomatiserade testkörningar och tolka data. Resultaten visar att testsystemet har potential för att hitta synkroniseringsproblem om fuzzing-AI:n används tillsammans med den vanliga AI:n i det testade spelet, men inte för att hitta de bakomliggande orsakerna till dessa problem.

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