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The essential oils of six plant species [peppermint, Mentha piperita, and bergamot mint, Mentha citrata (both, Lamiales: Lamiaceae); blue gum, Eucalyptus globulus (Myrtales: Myrtaceae); lemongrass, Cymbopogon citratus, and khus grass, Vetiver zizanoides (both, Poales: Poaceae), and turmeric, Curcuma longa (Ziniberales: Zingiberaceae)] were screened for repellent, larvicidal and pupicidal activities against the housefly, Musca domestica L. (Diptera: Muscidae). Subsequently, emulsifiable concentrate (EC) formulations of the two most effective oils were prepared and tested in the laboratory as well as in the field. In repellency bioassays, M. piperita (RC(84) , 61.0 µg/cm(2) ) was found to be most effective, followed by E. globulus (RC(84) , 214.5 µg/cm(2) ) and C. citratus (RC(84) , 289.2 µg/cm(2) ). Formulated M. piperita and E. globulus showed RC(84) values of 1.6 µg/cm(2) and 4.1 µg/cm(2) , respectively. Formulated M. piperita and E. globulus achieved larval mortality (LC(50) ) in 72 h at 5.12 µg/cm(2) and 6.09 µg/cm(2) , respectively. In pupicidal bioassays, crude oils of M. piperita and E. globulus suppressed the emergence of adult flies by 100%. Field experiments with the M. piperita formulation showed reductions in fly density (number of flies/h) of 96% on treated cattle and 98% on treated plots. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of EC formulations of selected essential oils in reducing housefly populations in field conditions.

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The results suggest possible therapeutic potential of L. usitatissimum fixed oil in bovine mastitis.

The susceptibility of the adult and larval stage of housefly, Musca domestica L. (Diptera: Muscidae), to two entomopathogenic fungi, Metarhizium anisopliae (Metsch.) Sor. and Beauveria bassiana (Bals.) Vuill., was evaluated under laboratory and simulated field bioassays. Bioassays on adult houseflies were carried out at different conidial concentrations ranging from 10(3) to 10(9) conidia/ml in petri plate and minichamber assays. Absolute mortality was observed within 4-5 days at all the concentrations tested. M. anisopliae was found to be more effective with LC(50) of 6.75 × 10(7) conidia/ml compared with 1.21 × 10(8) conidia/ml of B. bassiana in petri plate bioassay. Similar trend was observed in minichamber bioassay. Larvicidal activity evaluated through petri plate bioassay also indicated that M. anisopliae was more effective larvicide with LC(50) of 4.1 × 10(8) conidia/ml as against 3.31 × 10(9) conidia/ml of B. bassiana. Larvicidal activity was further evaluated in simulated field condition of decaying waste matrix using dry conidial formulations (10(8) conidia/g) of both the fungi. Larval mortality obtained in this assay was 43% (B. bassiana) and 63% (M. anisopliae). Remarkably better performance of M. anisopliae as an adulticidal and larvicidal agent over B. bassiana in laboratory bioassays as well as simulated field conditions suggests that it may have good potential to become part of an integrated housefly control program.

We present an attention-based ranking framework for learning to order sentences given a paragraph. Our framework is built on a bidirectional sentence encoder and a self-attention based transformer network to obtain an input order invariant representation of paragraphs. Moreover, it allows seamless training using a variety of ranking based loss functions, such as pointwise, pairwise, and listwise ranking. We apply our framework on two tasks: Sentence Ordering and Order Discrimination. Our framework outperforms various state-of-the-art methods on these tasks on a variety of evaluation metrics. We also show that it achieves better results when using pairwise and listwise ranking losses, rather than the pointwise ranking loss, which suggests that incorporating relative positions of two or more sentences in the loss function contributes to better learning.

Beauveria bassiana HQ917687 virulence to housefly larvae and adult was assessed at different relative humidity, RH (50, 75, 90, and 100 %) and temperature (15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45°C) conditions at the fungal dose of 10 8 conidia/ml. Depending on the temperature and RH regime tested, difference in mortality rates of housefly adult and larvae were detected. During assay on adult housefly, 100 % mortality was achieved at RH, 90 and 100 % while the temperature of 30°C showed maximum mortality at all the tested humidity conditions. Lethal time, LT 50 was 2.9 days at 100 % RH. Larval mortality at different humidity conditions varied between 30 and 74 %, with maximum mortality at 100 % RH and 30°C. Optimum temperature for B. bassiana virulence to housefly larvae was also found to be 30°C. The interaction between temperature and RH revealed significant effect of RH at moderate temperature range (20-35°C), while such an interaction was not observed at extreme temperatures. The results obtained in this study have useful implications in understanding the pathogen behavior under actual field conditions. This in turn may help devising suitable entomopathogen release schedules for maximum fungal infection.