Abstract.  Previous studies have demonstrated that female Callosobruchus maculatus adjust oviposition rates to cope with changes in host availability. A female lays fewer eggs when host availability is low, and hence decreases larval competition. However, females will also dump eggs on unsuitable substrates under conditions of host deprivation. Because the female does not feed as an adult, egg dumping possibly wastes energy and may thus be a maladaptive behaviour. In this study, the effect of mating and age on the egg‐dumping behaviour and the life history strategy of the female are explored. Under host‐deprived conditions, mating is seen to trigger egg‐dumping behaviour. Also, females mated at 6 days dump significantly fewer eggs and live longer than females mated at 0 or 3 days. Thus, a trade‐off between fecundity and longevity is seen among females subjected to different manipulations. In addition, 6‐day‐old virgin females contain more mature eggs than females mated at 6 days can produce when deprived of hosts. This finding indicates that the female reallocates internal energy resources by oosorption in a resource‐limited environment. To test the maladaptive hypothesis, mated females were deprived of a host for 6 days and then given sufficient hosts each day. The results show that the more eggs dumped by a female in the first 6 days, the more eggs are laid later on beans. Egg dumping is thus not maladaptive.

A mathematical model was developed for ionic conduction in amorphous oxide films. The model is based on a hypothesized "defect cluster" mechanism in which both metal and oxygen ions are involved in transport. Defect clusters are created by inward displacement of oxygen ions around an oxygen vacancy-like defect in response to the vacancy's electric field. Metal ions are assumed to migrate easily in the gap between the first and second layer of oxygen ions around the vacancy. The model includes the polarization of the conductive gap in the applied electric field, the exchange of mobile metal ions in the cluster with stationary metal ions in the surrounding oxide, and space charge generated in the film by clusters and oxide nonstoichiometry. The rate-limiting step is the jump of the oxygen vacancy in the cluster. It was found that polarization of the cluster leads to a stoichiometric excess of metal ions in the cluster and that this excess produces a net transport of metal ions due to the motion of the cluster. The metal ion transport number was found to increase with electric field and to depend on the dielectric constant and cluster size. The field dependence follows that found experimentally. The calculated transport numbers are in quantitative agreement with experimental values for tantalum, niobium, and tungsten oxide but smaller than experimental values for aluminum oxide. The field coefficient in the high-field-conduction-rate expression is also predicted and agrees with experimental values to within 10%.

The sodium polysulfide melt has been described by a macroscopic mode_. This model considers the melt to be composed of sodium cations, monosulfide anions, and neutral sulfur solvent. The transport equations of' concentral,_l.solution theory are used to derived the governing equations for this binaryelectrolyte melt model. These equations relate measurable transport propc_es to fundamental _,msport parameters, The focus of this research is to measure the electrical conductivity of sodium polysulfide melts and calculate one of fu,ndamenudtransport parameters from t_e experimental data, The conductance cells used in the conductivity measurements are axisymmetric cylindrical cells with a rrficroelectrcrteo The electrode effects, including double-layer capacity, charge transfer resistance, and concentration overpotential, were minimized by the use of tt_e alternating current at an adequately high frequency. The high cell constants of the conductance cells not only enhanced the experimental accuracy but also made the elecu'ode effects negligible, The elecuical conductivities of sodium poly_ulfide Na2S,_and Na2S5 were measured as a function of temperature (range: 300 to 360°C). Variations between experiments were only up to 2%. The values of the Arrhenius activation energy derived from the experimental data are about 33 kJ/mol. The fundamenta.l transport parameter which quantifies the interaction within sodium cations and monosulfide anions are of interest and expected to be positive. 'Values of it were calculated from the experimental conductivity data and most of them are positive. Some negative values were obtained ,, probably due to the experimental errors of transference number, diffusion coefficient, density or conductivity data.

Abstract. Reactivation of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infectionis common (~20-50%) during cancer chemotherapy. Baseline HBV replication status is an important risk factor for HBV reactivation. To date, data on the baseline HBV DNA level for chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients prior to chemotherapy, particularly for non-hematological malignancies, are limited. A total of 105 consecutive CHB patients with solid tumors who received prophylactic antiviral therapy prior to chemotherapy from November, 2011 to December, 2014, were enrolled in this study. The patients' tumors included: Breast cancer (37.1%), lung cancer (18.1%), colon cancer (17.1%), head and neck cancer (10.5%), other gastrointestinal tract malignancies (8.6%), gynecological cancer (4.8%) and others (3.8%). The mean age of the enrolled patients was 55.2±1.1 years, 48 of the patients were male, 3 were hepatitis B e antigen-positive, and 26.7% had abnormal alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels at baseline. The median HBV DNA level measured by quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay prior to chemotherapy was 3.30 log 10 IU̸ml and 49.5% of the enrolled patients had a baseline HBV DNA level >2,000 IU̸ml. A wide range of HBV distribution was found: <20 IU̸ml (15.2%), 20≤DNA<2,000 IU̸ml (35. 3%), 2 , 0 0 0 ≤ D N A< 2 0, 0 0 0 I U̸ m l (2 6. 6%), 20,000≤DNA<106 IU̸ml (17.2%) and <10 6 IU̸ml (5.7%). Age and baseline ALT level were not strongly associated with virological activity. The mean HBV DNA and the percentage of patients with HBV DNA >2,000 IU̸ml were comparable between different cancer groups. Quantitative HBsAg level was a major determinant of baseline HBV DNA, and a significant correlation was noted between log 10 hepatitis B surface antigen and log 10 HBV DNA levels (γ=0.641, P<0.001). Our study demonstrated a wide distribution of baseline HBV DNA level among CHB patients diagnosed with non-hematological malignancies. Of note, approximately half of the patients (i.e., those with HBV DNA >2,000 IU̸ml) had a higher risk of HBV reactivation if no appropriate antiviral prophylaxis was undertaken.