The direct negative effects of invasive plant species on agriculture and biodiversity are well known, but their indirect effects on human health, and particularly their interactions with disease-transmitting vectors, remains poorly explored. This study sought to investigate the impact of the invasive Neotropical weed Parthenium hysterophorus and its toxins on the survival and energy reserves of...

The social, economic, and environmental impacts of invasive plants are well recognized. However, these variable impacts are rarely accounted for in the spatial prioritization of funding for weed management. We examine how current spatially explicit prioritization methods can be extended to identify optimal budget allocations to both eradication and control measures of invasive species to minimi...

Historically, pasture breeders have not considered environmental weed risk in species selection and assessment. Consequently several pasture or former pasture species are now problematic environmental weeds in Australia. The CRC for Plant-Based Management of Dryland Salinity (CRC) has taken a pro-active approach to prevent further introduction or promotion of weedy pasture species by developing...

Weedy and invasive plants cost Americans billions of dollars annually in crop damage and lost earnings. Various Western states have reported annual weed control costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Herbicides account for more than 72 per cent of all pesticides used on agricultural crops. $4 billion was spent herbicides in the US in 2006 and 2007 (Grube, et al, 2011). The USDA Economic ...

The term weed is referring to plants used as culinary herbs and medicinal plants as well as ecologically adaptive and invasive segetal plants. In Europe, pollen of ragweed, mugwort, English plantain and pellitory are the main elicitors of weed pollen allergies. Presently, 35 weed pollen allergens have been identified. The most relevant belong to the protein families of pectate lyases, defensin-...

How to select the suitable parameters and kernel model is a very important problem for Twin Support Vector Machines (TSVMs). In order to solve this problem, one solving algorithm called Invasive Weed Optimization Algorithm for Optimizating the Parameters of Mixed Kernel Twin Support Vector Machines (IWO-MKTSVMs) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, introducing the mixed kernel, the twin support ...

A novel approach to broadband log-periodic antenna design is presented, where some of the most powerful evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are applied and compared for the optimal design of wire log-periodic dipole arrays (LPDA) using NEC (Numerical Electromagnetics Code). The target is to achieve an optimal antenna design with respect to maximum gain, gain flatness, Front to Rear ratio (F/R) and SW...

In this paper, Invasive Weed Optimization (IWO) algorithm is used to find the optimum solution of Combined Economic Emission Dispatch (CEED) problem. The main objective is to minimize the fuel cost as well as emission level, while satisfying the power demand and associative operational constraints. The bi-objective problem is made to a single objective function using the price penalty factor. S...

In this paper a new Modified Invasive Weed Optimization is proposed to find a parameters of fuzzy PID controller as a stabilizer in multi-machine power system. Actually, IWO is a bio-inspired numerical algorithm which is inspired from weed colonization and motivated by a common phenomenon in agriculture that is colonization of invasive weeds. Also, finding the parameters of PID controller in po...

Canada thistle is the most invasive and challenging weed in grazing systems in the Upper Midwest (Doll, personal observation) and its membership on the noxious weed lists of many states demonstrates its tenacity against conventional control tactics. The resilience of this weed can be credited to its ability to effectively reproduce through both seed production/dispersal and its extensive root s...