Autonomous robots may some day be able to behave like an animal, be accepted by the animal as a conspecific and influence the individual as well as the collective behaviour of the animal and its conspecifics. With this objective in mind we report here the results of the first step in this direction, making the robot move like an animal. We programmed the Alice (sugar-cube) robot to behave quali...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Resistance to organophosphorous and carbamate insecticides amongst German cockroaches is widely reported. Cyphenothrin EC, a new synthetic pyrethroid was evaluated in cookhouses in an urban area, with the aim of exploring alternate control option against the German cockroach Blatella germanica. METHODS Three cookhouses were selected by simple random sampling method, tw...

BACKGROUND Sensitization to cockroach is one of the strongest identified risk factors for greater asthma morbidity in low-income urban communities; however, the timing of exposures relevant to the development of sensitization has not been elucidated fully. Furthermore, exposure to combustion byproducts, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), can augment the development of allergic s...

German cockroaches are common pests of confined swine production in North Carolina and other southeastern states. Vector competence of German cockroaches for one of the most important porcine bacterial pathogens, verotoxigenic Escherichia coli F18, was evaluated in laboratory bioassays using a culturing approach followed by multiplex PCR. In addition, the populations of fecal coliforms from the...

Chlordimeform is a relatively new acaricide/insecticide, whose mode of action we have investigated. It appears to interfere with amine-mediated control of nervous and endocrine systems in a variety of ways. Specifically, chlordimeform causes a build-up of the amines 5-hydroxytryptamine and to a lesser extent norepinephrine in the rat brain in vivo, antagonizes the in vivo action of reserpine in...

W hich urban pest is the most difficult to control? Most PMPs say ants. But the answer to this question has shifted completely over the past 20 years — from cockroaches to ants. Today, few people consider the German cockroach a difficult pest to manage. What made the change is the invention of highly effective baits, in particular, gel baits. Then, the question is, why is the German cockroach s...

90 he German cockroach, with its long history of close association with humans, is most often regarded as merely an unpleasant pest with the potential to transmit disease-causing microbes. However, recent research has demonstrated that this insidious pest has a much greater impact on public health than was once thought. German cockroaches, first implicated in allergic disease nearly 40 years ag...

The interspecific competition between a new cockroach pest species in Southeast Asia, the Smooth cockroach, Symploce pallens (Stephens) and the ubiquitous German cockroach, Blattella germanica (L.) was studied under different food and water regimes (unlimited food and water [control], limited water, limited food and limited food and water). Both species were found to have equal chances to coexi...

Reliable vision in dim light depends on the efficient capture of photons. Moreover, visually guided behaviour requires reliable signals from the photoreceptors to generate appropriate motor reactions. Here, we show that at behavioural low-light threshold, cockroach photoreceptors respond to moving gratings with single-photon absorption events known as 'quantum bumps' at or below the rate of 0.1...