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1. Blood‐feeding bugs in the Triatominae are the vectors of Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease. Mepraia is a sylvatic genus endemic to Chile that transmits T. cruzi in the wild cycle. 2. Bloodmeal‐stealing (or 'cleptohaematophagy') is the stealing of a bloodmeal from one bug's gut by another, usually conspecific bug. Bloodmeal‐stealing can result in horizontal transmission of T. cruzi between triatomines; so far, it has been reported only in laboratory‐reared bugs. 3. We performed short laboratory experiments to test whether bloodmeal‐stealing occurs between wild‐caught Mepraia spinolai nymphs. Successful bloodmeal‐stealing was observed in one out of 17 trials (2/102 bugs). Even though bloodmeal‐stealing was not frequent in wild‐caught M. spinolai, this behaviour might contribute to explaining the maintenance of wild T. cruzi cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manufacturing cell design problem (MCDP) aims to minimise the movements of parts between the production cells. The MCDP is an NP‐Hard optimisation problem with a binary domain. For the resolution of the MCDP, the authors employ the firefly algorithm (FA) metaheuristic. FA is a metaheuristic with a real domain; therefore, an efficient method for transfer and discretisation from the real domain to the binary domain has been used. The second metaheuristic used is Egyptian vulture optimisation algorithm (EVOA). EVOA is a recent metaheuristic inspired by the behaviour of the Egyptian vulture bird. EVOA uses a set of operators which must be adapted to the MCDP optimisation problem. Two types of experiments have been performed. The first experiment consists of solving the MCDP with a set of 90 homogeneous incidence matrices. In the tests, FA and EVOA have been used obtaining good results. Subsequently, the obtained results have been compared versus other eight metaheuristics. The second experiment consists in a set of 35 inhomogeneous incidence matrices. The global optimum value for 13 problems has been obtained using constraint programming. Finally, for the other 22 problems, the authors have reported the best values found using FA and EVOA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY A new realizability criterion for the real nonnegative inverse eigenvalue problemis introduced. This criterion is a nontrivial extension of a powerful previous sufficient condition, based on negativity compensation. If the criterion is satisfied, then we can always construct a realizing matrix. It is also proved that this new criterion is easily adaptable to be sufficient for the construction of a symmetric nonnegative matrixwith given spectrum. In a natural way, the criterion extends to a family of sufficient conditions for the problem to have a solution. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The population growth of the freshwater chlorophyte, Scenedesmus acutus and the cladoceran Moina macrocopa cultured in the laboratory and in microcosms of a wastewater treatment plant was studied. S. acutus was cultured in a defined algal medium and mixed with wastewater. On diets of S. acutus cultured using Bold medium or a mixture with wastewater, the peak densities of M. macrocopa were 6-7 ind. mL−1, while on a diet of algae cultured on wastewater alone the cladoceran density fluctuated around 2 ind. mL−1. Population growth rates of M. macrocopa, which ranged from 0.3 to 0.4 d−1, were significantly lower on alga cultured in wastewater alone. The body size structure of M. macrocopa was larger on algae cultured in Bold medium than in wastewater. Peak densities of M. macrocopa were around 700 ind. L−1 when the organic matter in the containers was supplemented with algae but it reached lower densities (400 ind. L−1) when cultured on the organic matter in wastewater alone. Our study indicates that the nutrients in the final stages of wastewater treatment can support the growth of both phytoplankton and zooplankton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a study which examined the outcomes of pneumonectomy after induction chemoradiotherapy in patients with locally advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The study also calculated mutivariate and univariate analyses for clinical factors correlating with toxicity and/or survival. It demonstrated that trimodality therapy including pneumonectomy can be safely accomplished in patients with advanced NSCLC.