Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) crop maturity is delayed by cotton fleahopper (Pseudatomoscelis seriatus Reuter) (fleahopper) feeding on early-season fruit forms which increases vulnerability to late-season pests such as Helicoverpa zea (Boddie) and Heliothis virescens (Fabricius). The objectives of this research were to evaluate methods of screening for resistance to fleahopper and to screen selected genotypes. Six fleahoppers were caged on plants in the insectary for 72 h. Numbers of live fleahoppers and percent square damage were determined 48 h following the removal of fleahoppers. Fleahopper numbers and percent square set were determined on randomly selected plants of 16 genotypes when grown under field conditions in 2002 and 2003. Across multiple sampling dates, the number of fleahoppers per plant was higher (p=0.05) in G. arboreum and Pilose (G. hirsutum), but no consistent differences were observed among the remaining 15 genotypes which represented several germplasm pools across the United States. Field and no-choice feeding tests suggested that Pilose, Lankart 142, Suregrow 747, and Stoneville 474 were more resistant hairy-leaf genotypes and not different (p=0.05) in resistance than the smooth-leaf genotypes, Deltapine 50 and TAM 96WD-69s. Pin-head, match-head, and one-third grown squares were removed from plants and placed on agar in petri-plates. Four fleahoppers were released per plate and allowed to feed for 48 h. Fleahopper damage, brown areas along the anthers and/or brown and shrunken pollen sacs was most evident in pin-head sized squares.

Pine cone beetles (Conophthorus sp.) are serious pests of many forest ecosystems since they burrow into pine cone tissues for egg deposition, causing the death of the seeds. Management of these beetles in natural and commercial stands of pines has been problematic due to lack of understanding about species limits and distribution. This study was conducted to investigate the phylogeography and phylogenetics of the genus. Several species represented by disjunct populations appear to be monophyletic including Conophthorus edulis, C. mexicanus, C. coniperda, and C. conicollens, whereas C. ponderosae is polyphyletic with many distinct clades isolated by geography. This study explored whether host use or geography has played a greater role in the diversification of this genus, focusing on the polyphyletic C. ponderosae and the monophyletic C. edulis. In the first study, 751bp of the mtDNA CO1 gene were sequenced to reconstruct a phylogeny of the genus, and the distribution and host use were compared to investigate whether these factors were significantly associated. The second study addressed population structure and possible historical influences on the C. edulis and C. ponderosae populations using a nested clade analysis of the mtDNA haplotypes. Despite potential limitations due to sampling, several conclusions could be drawn. Three separate haplotype networks were found for the C. ponderosae haplotypes, indicating that there have been at least three lineages that have associated with P. ponderosa. Geography was significantly associated with the phylogeny at greater distances (>900km), but host use was not significant. At the species level, association with geography is variable. Population structure for C. ponderosae at the species level is minimal, and suggests that there has not been much time for lineage sorting of the haplotypes based on the nested clade analysis as compared to C. edulis.

The primary objective of this study was to determine the role of the host community in the marketing of arts festivals with reference to the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. This goal was achieved firstly by analysing the relationship between the events industry and the community. Secondly, a literature study was conducted to explore the role of the community in tourism marketing. Thirdly, a survey was done to determine the perceptions of the community in terms of the marketing of the Festival as well as the social impact thereof. From previous studies it was found that the local community can be seen as a group of people of different gender, race, age and different race and social groups living together in a certain geographic area. The local community is the main suppliers of an event; they provide many of the businesses, public places and hospitality services used by tourists and visitors at an event. Staff, volunteers and many other resources come from the local community. The attitude of the local community towards the Festival is proven to be important. Positive attitudes are associated with economic and social benefits gained from the event. The attitude of the local community can influence their behaviour towards tourists as well as their message spread concerning the event, through word-of-mouth communication. They can influence the buying behaviour of tourists and visitors. Research was undertaking at Grahamstown National Arts Festival to determine the perceptions and attitudes of the local community towards the Festival and the marketing thereof. This was determined by means of a questionnaire as adopted from Fredline, Jago and Deery. It was distributed among the local community according to a stratified random sampling procedure. A total of 265 questionnaires were completed by residents. Firstly, the data was used to compile tables and graphs with a view to interpret the descriptive data: demographic information as well as perceptions and attitudes of the local community towards the Festival and the marketing thereof. It was found that the Festival has a positive impact on their personal lives as well as on the community as a whole. Positive and negative social impacts were identified, which indicates that the community is aware of the impacts: positive, including the range of things to do in Grahamstown has improved (80%), the number of people in the area has increased (80%) and there are more opportunities to meet new people (80%). The highest rated negative social impacts include the fact that the availability of parking has decreased (79%), that the public money spent on the Festival would be better spent on other things (43%) and that ordinary residents get no say in the planning and management of the Festival (50%). In terms of the marketing, the local community markets the Festival verbally by telling friends and family about it and also by attending the Festival themselves. However, the local community feels that they should be more involved in the planning and marketing of the Festival. Secondly, a factor analysis was performed with a view to synthesise the large amount of data concerning the perceptions and marketing of the Festival in smaller, more descriptive factors. These factors were used to determine the role of the community in the marketing of the Festival. The factor analysis yielded a 2-factor solution and the factors were labelled: Factor 1: Verbal marketing of the Festival; Factor 2: Action marketing of the Festival. Thirdly, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to explore the impact of the variables: age, gender, race, income, level of education, attitudes towards continuation of the Festival, attendance of the current festival, attendance of previous festivals, level of interest in the Festival, length of stay in Grahamstown, attitudes towards living in Grahamstown on the dimensions Verbal and Active marketing, as determined in the factor analysis. It was found that a medium effect exists between the middle-aged group and the older-age group on the Verbal marketing dimension. A medium effect also exists between the black and Asian respondents on the dimension Verbal marketing. There is a large effect between attendance of the Festival and Verbal marketing but a medium effect on the dimension Action marketing. A large effect was determined between avid fans and those that are not interested but attend occasionally, between avid fans and those who have no interest in the Festival, between those that are interested and attend some aspects of the Festival and those that are not interested but attend, those that are interested and attend and those that are not interested, on the Verbal marketing dimension. A medium effect was discovered between avid fans of the Festival and those that attended some of the aspects of the Festival, and those that are not interested but attend some aspects, and those that are not interested at all, on the Verbal marketing dimension. On the Verbal marketing dimension a medium effect was determined between the following: A medium effect was determined between avid fans of the Festival and those that attended some of the aspects of the Festival, avid fans and those that are not interested but attend occasionally, those that are interested and attend and those that are not interested, on the Action marketing dimension. This study contributes to the information that already exists concerning the role of the community in the marketing of arts festivals and on marketing communication research / Thesis (M.Com. (Tourism)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-156). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 10, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Ranaviruses are large dsDNA viruses that are considered emerging pathogens, and they are known to cause mortality events in amphibian and fish populations. This research utilizes experimental and genomic data to elucidate the mechanisms driving the evolution and spread of ranaviruses, with a focus on host switching within the genus. In Chapter 1, we utilize virus challenge assays to examine potential transfer of ranaviruses between cultured juvenile largemouth bass (M. salmoides) and bullfrog tadpoles (Rana catesbeiana). Additionally, a commonly used antiparasitic treatment containing malachite green and formalin (MGF) was utilized to suppress the immune system of largemouth bass to assess the susceptibility of immunocompromised fish to ranaviruses. The results indicate that tadpoles are not susceptible to Largemouth Bass Virus (LMBV), but that bass are susceptible to ranaviruses isolated from amphibians. Furthermore, immunocompromised fish were more susceptible to both LMBV and FV3 infections than immunocompetent fish. In Chapter 2, we used eight sequenced ranavirus genomes and two selection-detection methods (site-based and branch-based) to identify genes that exhibited signatures of positive selection, potentially due to the selective pressures at play during host switching. We found evidence of positive selection acting on four genes via the site-based method, three of which are newly-acquired genes unique to ranavirus genomes. Our results suggest that the group of newly acquired genes in the ranavirus genome may have undergone recent adaptive changes that have facilitated interspecies and interclass host switching. In Chapter 3, we annotated and analyzed the nearly complete genomic sequence of LMBV to determine its taxonomic classification. The available genomic content and phylogenetic evidence suggests that LMBV is more closely related to amphibian-like ranaviruses (ALRVs) than grouper ranaviruses, and this is further supported by greater genomic collinearity between LMBV and ALRVs. This data suggests that the classification of LMBV as a ranavirus is warranted. The results presented here will help to clarify the taxonomic relationships of ranaviruses, and will also be useful in developing management strategies to limit interspecific and intraspecific viral spread. The information garnered from this research will have far-reaching implications in studies of amphibian conservation, disease evolution, and virology. / text

With increasing complexity and software content, modern embedded platforms employ a heterogeneous mix of multi-core processors along with hardware accelerators in order to provide high performance in limited power budgets. Due to complex interactions and highly dynamic behavior, static analysis of real-time performance and other constraints is challenging. As an alternative, full-system simulations have been widely accepted by designers. With traditional approaches being either slow or inaccurate, so-called host-compiled simulators have recently emerged as a solution for rapid evaluation of complete systems at early design stages. In such approaches, a faster simulation is achieved by natively executing application code at the source level, abstracting execution behavior of target platforms, and thus increasing simulation granularity. However, most existing host-compiled simulators often focus on application behavior only while neglecting effects of hardware/software interactions and associated speed and accuracy tradeoffs in platform modeling. In this dissertation, we focus on host-compiled operating system (OS) and processor modeling techniques, and we introduce novel dynamic timing model management approaches that efficiently improve both accuracy and speed of such models via automatically calibrating the simulation granularity. The contributions of this dissertation are twofold: We first establish an infrastructure for efficient host-compiled multi-core platform simulation by developing (a) abstract models of both real-time OSs and processors that replicate timing-accurate hardware/software interactions and enable full-system co-simulation, and (b) quantitative and analytical studies of host-compiled simulation principles to analyze error bounds and investigate possible improvements. Building on this infrastructure, we further propose specific techniques for improving accuracy and speed tradeoffs in host-compiled simulation by developing (c) an automatic timing granularity adjustment technique based on dynamically observing system state to control the simulation, (d) an out-of-order cache hierarchy modeling approach to efficiently reorder memory access behavior in the presence of temporal decoupling, and (e) a synchronized timing model to align platform threads to run efficiently in parallel simulation. Results as applied to industrial-strength platforms confirm that by providing careful abstractions and dynamic timing management, our models can achieve full-system simulations at equivalent speeds of more than a thousand MIPS with less than 3% timing error. Coupled with the capability to easily adjust simulation parameters and configurations, this demonstrates the benefits of our platform models for early application development and exploration. / text

Callandrena, a subgenus of 80 described species of bees in the genus Andrena (Hymenoptera: Andrenidae) is shown, via phylogenetic analysis of both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence data, to be polyphyletic. The characters previously uniting this group have likely arisen by convergent evolution among unrelated lineages that have independently specialized on flowers of the Asteraceae for pollen consumption. At this time, we cannot definitively state whether there are two or three clades of bees formerly ascribed to Callandrena, nor whether one clade may belong to the European subgenus Chrysandrena as has been proposed, so we do not erect a new subgenus of Andrena at this time. The limits of Callandrena sensu stricto are provisionally delimited based on a single morphological character. The phylogenetic relationships of the two groups relative to other Andrena subgenera are discussed in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, Clade B, as defined for Callandrena in Chapter 2, is used to investigate the evolution of pollen host choice. Diet breadth is determined by analysis of pollen loads of at least 20 individual females per species. The choice of host and degree of specificity are then mapped onto the molecular phylogeny to investigate the evolution of these traits. Oligolecty appears to be the ancestral state in Andrena; polylecty has evolved several times; and reversals to oligolecty within these lineages have also occurred. Within the oligolectic lineage studied, host shifts were not uncommon. During the course of this study, a number of undescribed species were collected. Five are described in Chapter 4. / text

No description available.