Serum samples from 218 small mammals trapped in forest and grassland in the Ardennes region (North-eastern France) were tested for antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii. Using the modified agglutination test, positive results were found in 4/92 Apodemus sp., 3/64 Clethrionomys glareolus, 0/26 Microtus agrestis, 0/4 Micromys minutus, 3/5 Sorex sp., 2/9 Arvicola terrestris, and 7/18 Talpa europaea. Tox...

Two new species of Liocanthydrus Guignot, L. zanclus sp. nov. and L. mecespilus sp. nov., are described and illustrated from the Brazilian states of Goiás and Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, respectively. New records from Brazil are also provided: Liocanthydrus clayae (J. Balfour-Browne) from the state of Pará, L. bicolor (J. Balfour-Browne) from the states of Amazonas and Pará...

Al&art-We have used a modified version of the sp%+ semi-empirical nearest-neighbor tightbinding formalism to compute the bandstructures of the II-VI zincblende compounds ZnTe, ZnSc. ZnS, and HgSc. Our scheme includes the effects of spin-orbit coupling and, in contrast to previous sp?F* schemes which fit differences in diagonal tightbinding matrix elements to atomic energy differences, it fits e...

One new species of the genus Platambus Thomson, 1859 from Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province (P. brancuccii sp. n.) and one from Chengdu, Sichuan Province (P. korgei sp. n.) are described. They belong to the Platambus semenowi-group sensu Nilsson (2000). Important species characters (median lobes and colour patterns) of the two new species are figured, and notes on their dist...

Morimotoidius zhushandong sp. n. is described and illustrated from a limestone cave called Zhushan Dong II in Wanzhai Xian (=County) of western Jiangxi Province, eastern China. This species is the most modified species within the tribe Platynini in China by having very slender body and appendages, extremely elongated head, and especially, narrowed and barrel-liked pronotum which is as wide as h...

The elastic constants of tetrahedral amorphous carbon ~ta-C! and hydrogenated tetrahedral amorphous carbon ~ta-C:H! thin films were determined nondestructively by surface Brillouin scattering. Besides the usual Rayleigh surface mode, we also observe a new pseudosurface acoustic mode of longitudinal polarization, which is a modified version of the longitudinal guided mode usually found in slow-o...

Japanagromyza sasakawai sp. n. is described from the Brazilian Amazon, based on the male, female, third instar larva and puparium. This species is a leaf-miner of Terminalia catappa L. (Combretaceae), which is an introduced plant from the Old World tropics used in Brazil as an ornamental. The male aedeagus of J. sasakawai sp. n. differs from other species mainly in having the mesophallus covere...

Giraffaphaenops yangi n. sp. is described from a limestone cave named Shizikou Dadong, Tianlin County, northwestern Guangxi, China. It is the second species of this genus, which is the most morphologically modified in the tribe Trechini in terms of troglobiomorphy. So far, Giraffaphaenops ranges in a small karstic area in northwestern Guangxi. Of the two known species, G. clarkei Deuve, 2002 wa...