Generic cabling is a key component for multiplex cable wiring. It is one of the basic foundations of intelligent buildings. Using operation flow in generic cabling, the index constraints affecting generic cabling have been evolved in this paper. A mathematical model is built based on the ant colony algorithm with multiple constraints, and improvements were made on the original basis to extend t...

Ant algorithms are well-known metaheuristics which have been widely used since two decades. In most of the literature, an ant is a constructive heuristic able to build a solution from scratch. However, other types of ant algorithms have recently emerged: the discussion is thus not limited by the common framework of the constructive ant algorithms. Generally, at each generation of an ant algorit...

Trophic cascades exist in numerous terrestrial systems, including many systems with ants as the top predator. Many studies show how behavioral modifications of herbivores are especially important in mediating species interactions and trophic cascades. Although most studies of trophic cascades focus on predator-herbivore-plant links, the trophic cascades concept could be applied to almost any le...

The extraordinary progress in the computer sciences field has made Nearest Neighbor techniques, once considered impractical from a standpoint of computation (Dasarathy et al., 2003), became feasible for realworld applications. In order to build an efficient nearest neighbor classifier two principal objectives have to be reached: 1) achieve a high accuracy rate; and 2) minimize the set of instan...

The Argentine ant is well known for its affinity for honeydew and is often associated with hemipteran outbreaks in agricultural and urban environments. It has been suggested that Argentine ants may be controlled by restricting access to honeydew, thereby forcing the ants to move or by encouraging increased liquid toxicant intake. We tested this possible control strategy by restricting Argentine...

Invasive species displace native species and potentially alter the structure and function of ecological communities. In this study, we compared the generic composition of intact and invaded ant communities from 12 published studies and found that invasive ant species alter the phylogenetic structure of native ant communities. Intact ant communities were phylogenetically evenly dispersed, sugges...

As flower visitors, ants rarely benefit a plant. They are poor pollinators, and can also disrupt pollination by deterring other flower visitors, or by stealing nectar. Some plant species therefore possess floral ant-repelling traits. But why do particular species have such traits when others do not? In a dry forest in Costa Rica, of 49 plant species around a third were ant-repellent at very clo...

The control of cell proliferation during organogenesis plays an important role in initiation, growth, and acquisition of the intrinsic size of organs in higher plants. To understand the developmental mechanism that controls intrinsic organ size by regulating the number and extent of cell division during organogenesis, we examined the function of the Arabidopsis regulatory gene AINTEGUMENATA (AN...

Social insect societies and more specifically ant colonies, are distributed systems that, in spite of the simplicity of their individuals, present a highly structured social organization. As a result of this organization, ant colonies can accomplish complex tasks that in some cases exceed the individual capabilities of a single ant. The study of ant colonies behavior and of their self-organizin...

Here, we describe the isolation of adenine nucleotide translocase-1 (ANT-1) in a screen for dominant, apoptosis-inducing genes. ANT-1 is a component of the mitochondrial permeability transition complex, a protein aggregate connecting the inner with the outer mitochondrial membrane that has recently been implicated in apoptosis. ANT-1 expression led to all features of apoptosis, such as phenotyp...