Insect bite hypersensitivity (IBH) is an IgE-mediated allergic dermatitis of horses caused by bites of insects such as Culicoides or Simulium spp. The aim of the present study was to compare the IgE-binding pattern of sera of IBH-affected horses to Culicoides nubeculosus and Simulium vittatum salivary gland extracts (SGE). Individual IgE responses to proteins of S. vittatum and C. nubeculosus S...

A new black fly species, Simulium (Gomphostilbia) cauveryense sp. n., is described based on adult female, adult male, pupal and larval specimens collected from Kushalanagar, Karnataka, South India. This new species is placed in the decuplum subgroup of the batoense species-group within the subgenus Gomphostilbia. Keys to the species of the subgenus Gomphostilbia reported from India are provided...

A "cow-type" silhouette trap with "head" and "body" collecting chambers was evaluated for use in monitoring adult populations of Simulium luggeri in Saskatchewan. Ninety-five percent of the black flies taken were S. luggeri. Other species collected included S. vittatum, S. meridionale, S. venustum and S. decorum. Traps baited with CO2 collected significantly more (P less than 0.01) S. luggeri t...

Ceratocystis. Ceratocxstiopsis and Ophiostoma are important pathogens of trees and some agricultural crops and have recently been found on proteas and forest trees in South Africa. Taxonomic controversy exists regarding these genera and ultrastructural studies on the development of asci, uniquely shaped ascospores and centrum structure are inadequate. This rev iew summarises current knowledge o...

It has been recently suggested by Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali that gravity may become strong at energies not far above the electroweak scale and thus remove the hierarchy problem. Such a scenario can be tested at both present and future accelerators since towers of Kaluza-Klein gravitons and associated scalar fields now play an important phenomenological role. In this paper we examine se...

The larva, pupa, male, and female of Simulium bifenestratum n. sp. are described and illustrated. The pupae of the new species have 10 gill filaments, thick at their base and arranged in a three-dimensional way, surrounding the head and thorax. Its pupal cocoon is peculiar, not found in any of the known Brazilian black-fly species; it is very thick and hard with two openings in the anterior reg...

The video stream captured by an in-line holographic microscope can be analyzed on a frame-by-frame basis to track individual colloidal particles' three-dimensional motions with nanometer resolution. In this work, we compare the performance of two complementary analysis techniques, one based on fitting to the exact Lorenz-Mie theory and the other based on phenomenological interpretation of the s...

Calculation of the radiation trapping force in laser tweezers by use of generalized Lorenz-Mie theory requires knowledge of the shape coefficients of the incident laser beam. The localized version of these coefficients has been developed and justified only for a moderately focused Gaussian beam polarized in the x direction and traveling in the positive z direction. Here the localized model is e...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES An alarming rate of deforestation has been reported from Sonitpur district of Assam, India therefore, a study was initiated during 2009 using remote sensing (RS) to assess deforested areas in the district and to study the impact on malaria vectors in order to formulate appropriate control strategy. METHODS RS imageries of 2000 and 2009 were used to assess deforested ar...