Western flower thrips (WFT), Frankliniella occidentalis, is one of the most destructive pests of vegetables, fruits and ornamental crops worldwide, causing extensive damage by direct feeding of the crop and transmitting economically important viruses. Despite the successes of biocontrol agents to control WFT, more efficient and cost-effective ways must be found to encourage grower adoption of integrated pest management. A sustainable fungal treatment was developed to preserve fungal inoculum in potting soil and reduce thrips populations. Combining cooked, oven-dried millet with BotaniGard® (a commercial form of Beauveria bassiana strain GHA) to potting soil increased spore production and persistence of the fungus in the soil. In treated pots with millet, spore concentrations were 3–4 times greater after 30 days compared with spore yields at 10 days. The number of WFT adults was significantly lower in the marigold pots treated with GHA mix + millet than untreated controls, 12% and 10% in treated pots and 70% and 68% in untreated pots in sterile and non-sterile soil, respectively. Incorporation of millet in the potting mix enhanced the effect of the fungal treatments by providing a nutritive substrate on which the fungus could become established. This method is relatively inexpensive and easy for growers to use in greenhouses because granular formulations of B. bassiana are not commercially available.

Over the past decade, the World Health Summit (WHS) has provided a global platform for policy-makers and decision-makers to interact with academics and practitioners on global health. Recently the WHS adopted health security into their agenda for transnational disease risks (eg, Ebola and antimicrobial resistance) that increasingly threaten multiple sectors. Global health engagement (GHE) focuses efforts across interdisciplinary and interorganizational lines to identify critical threats and provide rapid deployment of key resources at the right time for addressing health security risks. As a product of subject matter experts convening at the WHS, a special side-group has organically risen with leadership and coordination from the German Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies in support of GHE activities across governmental, academic, and industry partners. Through novel approaches and targeted methodology that maximize outcomes and streamline global health operational process, the Global Health Security Alliance (GloHSA) was born. This short conference report describes in more detail the GloHSA.

The persistence of interpretations that view Dürer’s 1500 Self-Portrait as a Christlike image in spite of the issue of blasphemy it raises is due in large part to the lack of a competing historical narrative, one that accounts for the unusual aspects of the painting without recourse to religious imagery. In this article, Dürer’s motivation in creating this unprecedented painting and the strategies he used in constructing it are analyzed from the perspective of his contemporaries. In this alternative view, the humanist context is crucial, with Dürer emulating the greatest artist of the ancient world by composing the 1500 Self-Portrait in ways that accord with Apelles’s art, practice, and reputation as it was transmitted through the literature of the ancient world.

The Swedish Twin Registry was first established in the late 1950s. Today it includes more than 170,000 twins — in principle all twins born in Sweden since 1886. In this article we describe some ongoing and recently completed projects based on the registry. In particular, we describe recent efforts to screen all twins born between 1959 and 1985, and young twin pairs when they turn 9 and 12 years of age. For these studies, we present initial frequencies of common conditions and exposures.

Since the June 1995 ICES Symposium on Fisheries and Plankton Acoustics in Aberdeen (MacLennan and Holliday, 1996) the use of acoustics for studying zooplankton has seen important advances. Acoustical monitoring of small-scale zooplankton distributions can now be done at intervals of a fraction of a minute. Resolution at vertical spatial scales of tens of centimeters is now easily achieved with commercially available sensors. Multiple-frequency echo-ranging sensors (TAPS™) have been deployed in an up-looking mode on the bottom, and on moorings looking up, down and horizontally. Real-time telemetry provides data on plankton distributions at ranges up to tens of meters from the sensors for periods of weeks to months. These sensors allow one to estimate total zooplankton biomass and the size-abundance spectrum of the animals in the water column at different depths and times. When a profiling CTD and multi-spectral optical sensors were used to define the physical environment and phytoplankton distributions near an acoustical zooplankton profiler, bold relationships were observed between measured spatial and temporal patterns. New methods in zooplankton acoustics are illustrated with data collected from these sensors while monitoring thin, sub-meter thick layers of plankton and diel migrations of benthopelagic crustaceans.

Four dimensions of motor competence were evaluated in 4-year-old term and preterm children and were related to academic achievement and use of school services at age 8 years. The objective of the study was to evaluate a graduated ‘stair-step’ effect between perinatal morbidity, mild motor delay, and later school outcomes in 168 children (88 females, 80 males) stratified into four study groups: 134 healthy term infants [ges ] 37 weeks' gestation, birthweight [ges ] 2500g); 134 preterm infants [les ]37 weeks' gestation divided into healthy preterm (n=41), clinically ill preterms (n=59), and preterm infants with neurological illness (n=34). Significant differences were found in total, fine and gross motor performance, and visual–motor integration at age 4 years. Scores for the preterm groups decreased with increasing morbidity. At age 4 years, mild motor delay was found in all preterm groups. Children with mild motor delay had lower academic achievement scores (Wide Range Achievement Test-3) and higher rates of school service use at age 8 years. Perinatal morbidity and compromised motor performance are important precursors of educational underachievement.

This study seeks to demonstrate that the timing, subject, and audience for the art of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien all argue against the view that the witches in their prints and drawings were a reaction to actual witch-hunts, trials, or malevolent treatises such as the Malleus maleficiarum. The witch craze did not gain momentum until late in the sixteenth century while the witches of Dürer and Hans Baldung Grien belong to an earlier era. They are more plausible as a response to humanist interest in the poetry and satire of the classical world, and are better understood as poetic constructions created to serve artistic goals and satisfy a humanist audience.