Ceragon (Israel)

ABSTRACT Alessandro Gigante, 48, teacher of Italian and Latin at a high school in Rome: I took my degree in psychology after undertaking an 8-year psychoanalysis as a patient with Gianni Nebbiosi. I was fascinated by psychoanalysis and I remained very attached to Gianni who, together with Susi, were my teachers during the 4 years of specialization school in psychotherapy at Isispé. I became a psychoanalyst to try to offer others the same opportunities for awareness, freedom, relationship, listening, affection and understanding that I have received.

Descriptions and illustrations of the adult female and first-instar nymph of the kermesid Nidularia balachowskii Bodenheimer, based on the adult female lectotype and paralectotype (here designated), and new material collected from Israel are presented. A key for the identification of first-instar nymphs of Nidularia spp. is offered. Molecular identification of Nidularia balachowskii, using nucleotide sequences from the D2–D3 region of the 28S ribosomal gene, and the mitochondrial Cytochrome Oxidase I (COI) gene, is presented. Morphological and molecular analyses confirm that Nidularia balachowskii is closely related to other species within the Kermesidae. In Israel, this species develops only on Quercus ithaburensis and is univoltine. This is the first detailed report of Nidulariabalachowskii from Israel.

There are a number of measurements which may be used to evaluate the quality of milk, whether in terms of the physiological state of the producing animal, the suitability of the milk for processing, or its hygienic quality. These may be divided broadly into methods that enumerate the somatic cells in milk and those that enumerate the bacteria in milk. In both cases, measurements may count the total cells only (bacterial or somatic) or differentiate into different types (or species, in the case of bacteria) of cell to provide additional diagnostic or discriminatory information. In many countries, based on cutoff levels, which vary from country to country the results of total counts of somatic cells or bacteria may be used in accept or rejecting milk samples for processing or consumption. For all measurements of this type, a range of methods with different advantages and disadvantages have been reported. In addition, alternative surrogate indices that are based on the measurement not of cells directly but of correlated biochemical parameters (e.g., enzyme activity, acute-phase proteins, bacterial DNA) have been reported. In this article, the principal methods for this type of assessment of milk quality are described and compared.