In the United States, we have been battling the bed bug (Cimex lectularius L.) resurgence for over ten years. Current treatment methods are labor intensive, time consuming, and very expensive. Many studies have evaluated the efficacy of treatment methods, but few have focused on bed bug suppression in multi-unit housing. Low income, multi-unit housing residents lack basic bed bug knowledge and are particulary vulnerable to bed bug infestations because they are unable to afford conventional treatment. In this study, diatomaceous earth (D.E.), an inexpensive desiccant dust labeled for bed bug control, was evaluated for its efficacy in killing bed bugs, and determined to be successful. A proactive bed bug suppression program that included D.E. was implemented in a low-income housing facility in Harrisonburg, VA. The program consisted of inexpensive, low toxicity, integrated bed bug management methods, including a novel strategy for applying a perimeter barrier of D.E. in apartment units (n = 121). Over the course of one year, both the number of initial infestations and the costs associated with bed bug treatments were reduced. Low-income, multi-unit housing residents (n = 479) from three cities (Harrisonburg and Richmond, VA; New Orleans, LA) were surveyed before and after an educational seminar to assess their bed bug. After attending the seminar, residents (n = 112) significantly improved (P < 0.0001) their bed bug knowledge, and were able to correctly answer more bed bug-related questions than they had before the educational seminar. / Master of Science in Life Sciences

Phishing is the use of social engineering and electronic communications such as emails to try and illicit sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and financial information. This form of identity theft has become a rampant problem in today’s society. Phishing attacks have cost financial institutions millions of dollars per year and continue to do so. Today’s defense against phishing attacks primarily consists of trying to take down the phishing web site as quickly as possible before it can claim too many victims. This thesis demonstrates that is possible to track down a phisher to the IP address of the phisher’s workstation rather than innocent machines used as intermediaries. By using web bugs and honeytokens on the fake web site forms the phisher presents, one can log accesses to the web bugs by the phisher when the attacker views the results of the forms.

Le tristement célèbre Ecran Bleu de la Mort de Windows introduit bien le problème traité. Ce bug est souvent causé par la non-terminaison d'un pilote matériel : le programme s'exécute infiniment, bloquant ainsi toutes les ressources qu'il s'est approprié pour effectuer ses calculs. Cette thèse développe des techniques qui permettent de décider, préalablement à l'exécution, la terminaison d'un programme donné pour l'ensemble des valeurs possibles de ses paramètres en entrée. En particulier, nous nous intéressons aux programmes qui manipulent des nombres flottants. Ces nombres sont omniprésents dans les processeurs actuels et sont utilisés par pratiquement tous les développeurs informatiques. Pourtant, ils sont souvent mal compris et, de fait, source de bugs. En effet, les calculs flottants sont entachés d'erreurs, inhérentes au fait qu'ils sont effectués avec une mémoire finie. Par exemple, bien que vraie dans les réels, l'égalité 0.2 + 0.3 = 0.5 est fausse dans les flottants. Non gérées correctement, ces erreurs peuvent amener à des évènements catastrophiques, tel l'incident du missile Patriot qui a fait 28 morts. Les théories que nous développons sont illustrées, et mises à l'épreuve par des extraits de codes issus de programmes largement répandus. Notamment, nous avons pu exhiber des bugs de terminaisons dues à des calculs flottants incorrects dans certains paquets de la distribution Ubuntu. / The infamous Blue Screen of Death of Windows appropriately introduces the problem at hand. This bug is often caused by a non-terminating device driver: the program runs infinitely, blocking in the process all the resources it allocated for its calculations. This thesis develops techniques that allow to decide, before runtime,termination of a given program for any possible value ​​of its inputs. In particular, we are interested in programs that manipulate floating-point numbers. These numbers are ubiquitous in current processors andare used by nearly all software developers. Yet, they are often misunderstood and, hence, source of bugs.Indeed, floating-point computations are tainted with errors. This is because they are performed within a finite amount of memory. For example, although true in the reals, the equality 0.2 + 0.3 = 0.5 is false in the floats. Not handled properly, these errors can lead to catastrophic events,such as the Patriot missile incident that killed 28 people. The theories we develop are illustrated, and put to the test, by code snippets taken from widely used programs. Notably, we were able to exhibit termination bugs due toincorrect floating-point computations in some packages of the Ubuntu distribution.

It is a fact that software has bugs. These bugs can lead to failures. Especially dependability and security failures are a great threat to software users. This thesis introduces four novel approaches that can be used to automatically harden software at the user's site. Automatic hardening removes bugs from already deployed software. All four approaches are automated, i.e., they require little support from the end-user. However, some support from the software developer is needed for two of these approaches. The presented approaches can be grouped into error toleration and bug removal. The two error toleration approaches are focused primarily on fast detection of security errors. When an error is detected it can be tolerated with well-known existing approaches. The other two approaches are bug removal approaches. They remove dependability bugs from already deployed software. We tested all approaches with existing benchmarks and applications, like the Apache web-server.

It is a fact that software has bugs. These bugs can lead to failures. Especially dependability and security failures are a great threat to software users. This thesis introduces four novel approaches that can be used to automatically harden software at the user's site. Automatic hardening removes bugs from already deployed software. All four approaches are automated, i.e., they require little support from the end-user. However, some support from the software developer is needed for two of these approaches. The presented approaches can be grouped into error toleration and bug removal. The two error toleration approaches are focused primarily on fast detection of security errors. When an error is detected it can be tolerated with well-known existing approaches. The other two approaches are bug removal approaches. They remove dependability bugs from already deployed software. We tested all approaches with existing benchmarks and applications, like the Apache web-server.:1 Introduction 1 1.1 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.2 Automatic Hardening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.3 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.4 Theses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2 Enforcing Dynamic Personalized System Call Models 9 2.1 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.2 SwitchBlade Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.3 System Call Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.3.1 Personalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.3.2 Randomization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 2.4 Model Learner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.4.1 Problem: False Positives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.4.2 Data- ow-Based Learner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.5 Taint Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 2.5.1 TaintCheck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 2.5.2 Escaping Valgrind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 2.5.3 Replay of Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 2.6 Model Enforcement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.6.1 Loading the System Call Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.6.2 Checking System Calls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 2.7 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 2.7.1 Synthetic Exploits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 2.7.2 Apache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.7.3 Exploits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.7.4 Micro Benchmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 2.7.5 Model Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.7.6 Stateful Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 2.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3 Speculation for Parallelizing Runtime Checks 43 3.1 Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 3.1.1 Compiler Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.1.2 Runtime Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 3.2 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 3.3 Deterministic Replay and Speculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 3.3.1 Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 3.3.2 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 3.4 Switching Code Bases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 3.4.1 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 3.4.2 Integration with parexc chkpnt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 3.4.3 Code Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 3.4.4 Stack-local Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 3.5 Speculative Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 3.5.1 Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.5.2 Deadlock Avoidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.5.3 Storage Back-ends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.6 Parallelized Checkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.6.1 Out-of-Bounds Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 3.6.2 Data Flow Integrity Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.6.3 FastAssert Checker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 3.6.4 Runtime Checking in STM-Based Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 3.7 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.7.1 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.7.2 Checking Already Parallelized Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 3.7.3 ParExC Overhead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4 Automatically Finding and Patching Bad Error Handling 83 4.1 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 4.2 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 4.3 Learning Library-Level Error Return Values from System Call Error Injection 89 4.3.1 Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 4.3.2 E cient Error Injection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 4.3.3 Obtain OS Error Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 4.4 Finding Bad Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 4.4.1 Argument Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 4.4.2 Systematic Error Injection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 4.4.3 Static Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 4.5 Fast Error Injection using Virtual Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 4.5.1 The fork Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 4.5.2 Virtual Machines for Fault Injection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 4.6 Patching Bad Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 4.6.1 Error Value Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 4.6.2 Preallocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 4.6.3 Patch Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 4.7 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 4.7.1 Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 4.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 5 Robustness and Security Hardening of COTS Software Libraries 117 5.1 Related Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 5.2 Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 5.3 Test Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 5.3.1 Ballista Type System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 5.3.2 Meta Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 5.3.3 Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 5.3.4 Type Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 5.3.5 Type Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 5.3.6 Reducing the Number of Test Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 5.3.7 Other Sources of Test Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 5.4 Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 5.4.1 Check Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 5.4.2 Parameterized Check Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 5.5 Protection Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 5.5.1 Minimizing the Truth Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 5.5.2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 5.6 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 5.6.1 Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 5.6.2 Autocannon as Dependability Benchmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 5.6.3 Protection Hypotheses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 5.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 6 Conclusion 143 6.1 Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 References 147 List of Figures 159 List of Tables 163 Listings 165

Digital video recorders have given a growing number of viewers the ability to skip television commercials. In an effort to combat ad-skipping, television providers and advertisers are looking at ways to embed advertising into the video content; one way this can be accomplished is with graphic overlays known as snipes. Little is known about how content providers use snipes and what research they have conducted. This study is qualitative and uses long telephone interviews with 8 respondents from various cable television network and broadcast affiliate stations; examining the characteristics of innovation, as found in Rogers's (1995) diffussion of innovation theory. One discovery is that some cable networks are taking measures to ensure that snipes do not appear during emotional moments in the narrative. The study is the first piece of academic research dedicated to understanding how snipes are used and stands as a foundation for future research on the subject.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 M43 / Master of Science

Thesis (MScAgric)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The grain chinch bug, Macchiademus diplopterus, is an endemic pest of cultivated grain crops and wild grasses in the south-western Cape region of South Africa. In early summer when host plants dry out, adult grain chinch bugs aggregate in large numbers in shelter sites in surrounding areas and enter into aestivation. These shelter sites sometimes include the stalk or calyx ends of fruit, and shelter-seeking bugs can also contaminate export fruit cartons, consequently posing a phytosanitary/quarantine risk to importing countries. Presently, there are no feasible pre- or post-harvest control measures to manage this quarantine risk. The aggregating behaviour of grain chinch bugs suggests the involvement of pheromones. Therefore, investigating the chemical ecology of grain chinch bugs for potential use in control measures is the focus of the first research chapter of this study. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used to identify headspace volatiles collected from aggregating bugs. Olfactometer bioassays were conducted to assess the attractiveness of each gender to separate sexes, individual compounds and a mixture of the compounds as a formulated lure. The lure was tested in field trapping trials with delta and bucket traps. In the bioassays with the live insects the response of each gender to live females was greater than the responses of each gender to live males, suggesting that females may disseminate the pheromones more efficiently than males. The following eight volatile compounds were indentified from the GC-MS analysis: hexanal, (E)-2-hexenal, (E)-2-hexenol, (E)-2-hexenyl acetate, (E)-2-octenal, (E)-2-octenol, (E)-2-octenyl acetate and tridecane. In the bioassays with individual compounds, three of these eight compounds, hexanal, (E)-2-hexenal, and tridecane, elicited attraction of both females and males. The formulated lure was attractive to both males and females in the laboratory bioassay, but this attraction was not evident in the field. In the field, there was only one occasion when a significantly higher number of bugs were caught in baited traps compared to unbaited traps. Trap catches were very low compared to the actual level of infestation in the field which was evident from corrugated cardboard bands tied around tree trunks which contained many sheltering bugs. The low trap catches seen in the field were partly due to competition between the synthetic pheromone lure and the natural pheromones emitted by aggregating live insects. Also, the characteristic shelter-seeking behaviour of grain chinch bugs influenced trap catches, as more bugs were found in places that provide shelter, like cardboard bands and walls of the delta traps. This behavior of aestivating bugs could be used to the advantage of trapping bugs by integrating sheltering sites into traps in future trials. Also, the lure needs to be improved for optimum efficiency in the field. The second research chapter also addresses the quarantine risk posed by grain chinch bugs, by investigating the thermal biology of bugs to ultimately facilitate the development of effective post-harvest treatments. Critical thermal minimum and maximum temperatures (CTmin and CTmax) of both active and aestivating bugs were subjected to critical thermal limits analysis. The CTmin and CTmax of aestivating bugs were not affected by gender (p > 0.05). There was a decrease in CTmin from the active period into aestivation for both males (2.8°C to 1.0°C (± 0.1)) and females (2.1°C to 0.6°C (± 0.1)). Also, for CTmax there was an increase in tolerance from the active period into the aestivation period for both males (49.9°C to 51.0°C (± 0.1)) and females (49.9°C to 51.5°C (± 0.1)). To determine the plasticity of grain chinch bug thermal tolerance, aestivating bugs at 27 weeks into aestivation, were acclimated at different temperatures and photoperiods [18°C (10L:14D) and 26°C (16L:8D)] for a period of seven days. Both low (18°C) and high (26°C) acclimation temperatures and photoperiods increased CTmin of aestivating grain chinch bugs at 14 weeks from 0.8°C to -1.2°C and -0.1°C (± 0.1) respectively. However, CTmax was not altered by acclimation temperatures (p > 0.82). Field temperatures at collection sites were recorded to compare to grain chinch bugs thermal tolerance levels exhibited in the laboratory. These results, as well as the effects of acclimation treatments on the CTmin of bugs, have implications for post-harvest treatments, and understanding the quarantine risk posed to importing countries. The information generated from this study can be used to further advance the development of both effective pre-harvest and post-harvest control measures to reduce grain chinch bug quarantine risk. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die graanstinkluis, Macchiademus diplopterus, is 'n endemiese plaag van aangeplante graangewasse en wilde grasse in die Suidwes Kaap-provinsie van Suid-Afrika. In die vroeë somer wanneer gasheerplante uitdroog, soek groot getalle volwasse graanstinkluise skuiling in die omliggende gebiede en gaan in ʼn somerrusperiode. Hierdie skuilplekke sluit soms die stam of kelk eindes van vrugte in en graanstinkluise kan ook uitvoer-vrugte kartonne kontamineer. Gevolglik word lande wat vrugte uit Suid-Afrika invoer, aan die fitosanitêre kwarantynrisiko van stinkluisbesmetting blootgestel. Tans is daar nie haalbare voor- of na-oes beheermaatreëls om hierdie kwarantyn risiko te bestuur nie. Die aggregasiegedrag van graanstinkluise dui op die betrokkenheid van ʼn feromoon. ‘n Ondersoek van die chemiese ekologie van die graanstinkluis vir moontlike gebruik in beheermaatreëls is die fokus van die eerste gedeelte van hierdie studie. Gaschromatografie-massaspektrometrie (GC-MS) is gebruik om die vlugtige organiese verbindings in die bodamp van die saamgetrosde stinkluise te identifiseer. Olfaktometriese biotoetse is uitgevoer om die aantreklikheid van die insekte vir die teenoorgestelde geslag te bepaal, asook van die individuele verbindings en 'n mengsel van die verbindings as 'n geformuleerde lokmiddel in lokvalle. Die lokmiddel is getoets in veldproewe met deltatipe en emmertipe lokvalle. In die olfaktometriese biotoetse met die lewende insekte is die reaksie van beide geslagte teenoor lewende wyfies groter as die reaksie van die geslagte teenoor mannetjies, wat daarop dui dat wyfies die feromoon meer doeltreffend as mannetjies versprei. Die volgende agt verbindings is geïdentifiseer met behulp van GC-MS-analise: heksanaal, (E)-2-heksenaal, (E)-2-heksenol, (E)-2-heksenielasetaat, (E)-2-oktenaal, (E)-2-oktenol, (E)-2-oktenielasetaat en tridekaan. In die biotoetse met individuele verbindings het drie van die agt verbindings, hexanal, (E)-2-hexenal, en tridecane, lokaktiwiteit vir beide geslagte getoon. Die geformuleerde lokmiddel was aantreklik vir beide geslagte in laboratorium toetse, maar soortgelyke lok is nie in die veld gevind nie, waar daar net een keer 'n aansienlike groter getal graanstinkluise met lokmiddel gevang is in vergelyking met lokvalle sonder lokmiddel. Die getal graanstinkluise in lokvalle was baie laag in vergelyking met die werklike vlak van besmetting in die veld, wat duidelik geblyk het uit die getalle graanstinkluise wat skuiling gesoek het in die geriffelde karton bande wat om boomstamme vasgemaak was. Die lae lokvalvangste in die veld was deels te wyte aan die kompetisie tussen sintetiese feromoon en die natuurlike feromoon van saamgetrosde insekte. Die kenmerkende aggregasiegedrag van graanstinkluise het lokvalvangste beïnvloed, aangesien meer stinkluise gevind is in plekke wat skuiling bied, soos die kartonbande en die binnekant van die delta-lokvalle. Hierdie skuilings van graanstinkluise kan in toekomstige proewe uitgebuit word deur vir meer skuilplek in lokvalle voorsiening te maak. Die formulering en die aanbieding van die lokmiddle moet ook verbeter word vir 'n optimale doeltreffendheid in die veld. In die tweede hoofstuk word die kwarantynrisiko van die graanstinkluis aangespreek deur die ondersoek van die termiese biologie van stinkluise om uiteindelik die ontwikkeling van doeltreffende na-oes behandelings te fasiliteer. Kritiese termiese minimum en maksimum temperature (CTmin en CTmax) van beide aktiewe en rustende graanstinkluise is bepaal deur analise van die kritiese termiese beperkings van die insek. Die CTmin en CTmax van rustende graanstinkluise is nie geraak deur geslag nie (p > 0.05). Daar was 'n afname in CTmin van die aktiewe tydperk tot in rus, vir beide manlike (2.8°C tot 1.0°C (± 0.1)) en vroulike insekte (2.1°C tot 0.6°C (± 0.1)). Ook vir die CTmax was daar 'n verbetering in toleransie vanaf die aktiewe tydperk tot in die rusperiode vir beide manlike (49.9°C tot 51.0°C (± 0.1)) en vroulike insekte (49.9°C tot 51.5°C (± 0.1)). Om die aanpasbaarheid van die termiese toleransie van die graanstinkluis te bepaal, is graanstinkluise 27 weke na aanvang van die rusperiode geakklimatiseer by verskillende temperature en fotoperiodes [18°C (10L: 14D) en 26°C (16L: 8D)] vir 'n tydperk van sewe dae. Beide lae (18°C) en hoë (26°C) akklimatiseringstemperature en fotoperiodes het onderskeidelik die CTmin van rustende graanstinkluise op 14 weke verhoog van 0.8°C tot -1.2°C en -0.1°C (± 0.1). Daar is egter geen effek op CTmax deur akklimasie temperature nie (p > 0.82). Veldtemperature is ook bepaal om te vergelyk met graanstinkluis termiese toleransie vlakke wat in die laboratorium bepaal is. Hierdie resultate, sowel as die gevolge van die akklimasie behandelings op die CTmin van graanstinkluise, het implikasies vir na-oes behandelings, en begrip van die kwarantyngevaar wat dit inhou vir vrugte-invoerlande. Die inligting wat uit hierdie studie voortvloei, kan gebruik word om die ontwikkeling van beide effektiewe voor-oes en na-oes beheermaatreëls te bevorder en om die kwarantynrisiko wat graanstinkluise inhou, te verminder.

This study examined people’s attitudes towards killing bugs and their bug-killing behaviour in the context of nature vs. nurture explanations of bug killing. Previous research shows that exposure to genetic (i.e., nature) explanations could have undesirable effects on people’s attitudes and behaviour, compared to the exposure to experiential(i.e., nurture) explanations. Genetic explanations for killing may affect attitudes towards killing and killing behaviour, because they suggest that killing behaviour is predetermined or programmed by nature. Such explanations may also be used by individuals to overcome guilt and dissonance from prior killing or killing in which they are about to participate. This study tested the idea that exposure to genetic explanations for bug killing would lead people to view killing bugs as more morally acceptable, as well as lead them to kill more bugs. A sample of university students was randomly assigned into three conditions, in which they read either genetic or experiential explanations for why people kill bugs or read a neutral passage. The study utilised a procedure in which participants were led to believe that they were killing bugs (although in actuality no bugs were killed), to observe their killing behaviour in a self-paced killing task. Half of the participants were also asked to kill a bug prior to the self-paced killing task. Results showed that participants who read genetic explanations viewed bug killing as more morally acceptable, compared to participants who read experiential explanations, and this occurred particularly among those who engaged in the prior killing task. However, no similar effects emerged for the number of bugs killed, though there was a positive correlation between the moral acceptance of bug killing and the number of bugs killed. Implications of genetic explanations with respect to aggression and killing are discussed.

Depuis les années 90, on constate une augmentation mondiale des nuisances par punaises de lits (Cimex lectularius). En 2008 en France, peu d'observations et de recherche sont recensés. Cette thèse a eu pour objectif de mettre en place un groupe de recherche multirégional (Nice, Marseille, Toulon, Montpellier, Bobigny, Créteil) via un Projet Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique (PHRC 09-API-01). Sur le plan entomologique nous avons décrit 81 cas d'infestations, et nous avons récolté sur le terrain 2891 punaises Nous avons mis en place un élevage pérenne en laboratoire de Cimex lectularius nourries sur membrane par sang humain. Des investigations microbiologiques on été mené a partir de 339 punaises collectés précédemment, l'ADN et l'ARN ont été extrait pour évaluer leur portage virologique et bactériologique. En virologie, avec les sondes virales : Flavivirus, Arenavirus, Hantavirus, Phlebovirus aucune positivité a été observée. En bactériologie, 32 punaises ont été positives pour un agent infectieux soit 9.4% des punaises, 29 punaises ont été positives pour Acinetobacter, 3 pour Wolbachia, 3 pour Ehrlichia et 2 pour Coxiella. La sensibilité aux insecticides a été testée lors d'une collecte de 192 appartements de St Ouen (93). Au total 564 punaises ont été recueillies. L'ADN extrait pour 124 spécimens étaient homozygote pour le gène de résistance aux pyréthrinoïdes L925I kdr-gène. Ce taux élevé indique que le phénomène résistance est déjà bien établi. La pertinence de l'utilisation des pyréthrinoïdes pour contrôler les punaises de lit en France doit être discutée. / Since 90's, bed bugs (Cimex lectularius) infestations are increasing all over the world. Upon 2008, in France, very rare informations and researches on bedbugs are investigated. The objectives of this thesis work were to organise and manage a research project (PHRC 09-API-01) with french research laboratories (Nice, Marseille, Toulon, Montpellier, Bobigny, Créteil). About entomological project, we describe 81 infestations and collected 2891 bed bugs. A bed bugs maintenance of laboratory colony has been established without any animals, only on an artificial membrane with human blood. About Infectious research, 339 bedbugs have been studies for their virological and bacteriological pathogens. In virology, with the molecular probes targeted for Flavivirus, Arenavirus, Hantavirus, Phlebovirus no postivity has been observed. In bacteriology, 32 bedbugs have been positive for a bacteria dispatched as follow: 29 bed bugs for Acinetobacter, 3 for Wolbachia, 3 for Ehrlichia and 2 for Coxiella. Resistance to insecticide has been evaluated for 192 apartments in Saint Ouen City (France-93). 534 bed bugs have been collected. A total of 564 bed bugs were collected in the infested units. Bioassays and DNA sequencing showed a high frequency of resistance to pyrethroids; all bed bugs tested (n= 124) had homozygous L925I kdr-like gene mutation. The high levels of pyrethroid resistance indicate that this phenomenon is already established and prompt the need to reevaluate the wide use of pyrethroids to control bed bugs in France. Genetic analysis of french bed bug populations are still ongoing. First steps for biomolecular markers validations are finish.