Random Ramblings -- Introductions

Michael Abrash's Ramblings in Realtime

The Ramblings of a Public Health Officer

When I agreed to speak to this association on some of the experiences of my recent leave, I did not realise how impossible it was to give any adequate idea of my ramblings until I had set myself down to the task. I wish, therefore, to state at the commencement, that if my remarks appear to be somewhat disjointed, as I am afraid they will be, this is largely due to the fact that I have been comp...

Mosquito Introductions Worldwide Elucidated

As the threat of invasive species to our economy, environment, human health and even our security unfolds, the importance of understanding emerging disease organisms and their vectors is increasingly clear. In a study reported in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Dina Fonseca, Julie Smith and Robert Fleischer from the National Museum of Natural History Genetics Program, alo...

Ramblings on Some Mathematical Dichotomies and the Concept of Scale

This article looks at the issues relating to and arising out of self similarity of scale with links to "fractal" geometry and more generally investigates the possibility of finding the limit of a dynamical process given an initial generator / set of generators as also the inverse problem of finding the initial image that results in a particular attractor given the process. The latter could also...

Recent FRuit Fly PaRasitoid intRoductions

Fopius ceratitivorus Wharton is the most recently imported parasitoid for biological control of tephritid fruit flies in Hawaii. In this paper we summarize current progress on studies of this parasitoid under quarantine conditions in Hawaii. Tests on its potential target host range reveal that F. ceratitivorus attacks and completes its development only in the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis ...