Looper is a 2012 American science fiction action-thriller film[4] written and directed by Rian Johnson, and produced by Ram Bergman and James D. Stern. It stars Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Emily Blunt. It revolves around "present-day" contract killers called "loopers" sent back through time by criminal syndicates from the future to terminate victims in the past.
In 2044, 25-year-old Joe works for a Kansas City crime syndicate as an assassin, or "looper." Since tracking systems in the future of 2074 have made it nearly impossible to dispose of bodies undetected, the syndicate sends its enemies back in time to be executed. Managed by a man from the future named Abe, loopers kill and dispose of victims whose faces are concealed, recovering silver bars attached to their targets as payment. To hide connections to the syndicate, any loopers who survive until 2074 are sent back and killed by their own younger selves, referred to as "closing the loop." These targets are identified by gold bars instead of silver, marking the end of the looper's contract.
The omnivorous looper (family Geometridae), also called looper or avocado looper, feeds on several dozen plant species. Omnivorous looper occurs in most avocado groves, generally in low numbers, unless natural enemies are disrupted by application of broad-spectrum insecticides.
Young larvae are pale yellow and about 0.06 inch (1.5 mm) long. Mature larvae are 2 to 2.5 inches long and mostly yellow to pale green or pink, with a gold-colored head. Older larvae have variable dark brown, black, green, or orangish lines along their sides. In addition to three pairs of true legs behind the head, avocado looper has two pairs of appendages (prolegs) near its rear on abdominal segments 6 and 10. Larvae travel in a characteristic looping manner, where they extend their body forward, then draw their rear forward to meet their forelegs. This arches their body up into a loop. When disturbed, omnivorous loopers often drop and hang from leaves on a silken thread.
Numbers increase with increasing temperatures in spring. Omnivorous looper typically has four (and perhaps five) generations per year at warmer growing areas. From inland Ventura to San Diego Counties, most adults fly and lay eggs during January through March, May through June, August through September, and October through November. Three generations a year are typical in coastal Santa Barbara County, where moths typically emerge and lay eggs during March through April, June through July, and August through September. Depending on temperature, egg to adult development takes 2 to 5 months.
Spiders are important looper predators, especially in orchards that have not been sprayed with pesticide or recently subjected to a freeze. Assassin bugs, birds, damsel bugs, lacewings, and pirate bugs and predatory insects also prey on caterpillars.
Granulosis virus frequently infects and kills larvae when they become common. A virus epidemic can cause the looper numbers to rapidly decline within 1 to 2 weeks. Virus-killed caterpillars are immobile and range in appearance from white and swollen to brownish and shriveled. Diseased larvae cease feeding, become lethargic, and eventually liquefy and then dry up.
Wasps, especially Trichogramma egg parasites and three larval parasites (family Braconidae), are the most important natural enemies. Apanteles caberatae and Meteorus tersus are solitary internal parasites of larvae. The Apanteles caberatae larva pupates in a 0.1 inch, whitish silken cocoon near its dead host. The Meteorus tersus larva pupates in a brown or yellowish parchmentlike cocoon, which often hangs suspended beneath leaves or twigs on a 1 to 2 inch longthread. One to several pale Habrobracon (=Bracon) xanthonotus larvae feed externally on each looper, then each pupates in a 0.12 inch (3 mm) long white silken cocoon near the shriveled dead caterpillar.
At least five fly species (family Tachinidae) attack omnivorous looper, including Eumea caesar, Hyphantrophaga (=Eusisyropa) virilis, and Nilea erecta. Their black to dark grayish adults are about 0.25 to 0.33 inch long and resemble a common house fly, but have more prominent stout hairs. White tachinid eggs may be observed on or near a caterpillars' head. Brown to reddish, parchmentlike tachinid pupal cases are often found near the larger pupal cases of dead caterpillars.
Trichogramma platneri naturally parasitizes looper eggs, which turn black when parasitized. Where natural biological control is inadequate, omnivorous looper has been controlled by releasing T. platneri in late spring or early summer during peak moth egg laying, as determined by monitoring using commercially available pheromone-baited or black light traps. Until all T. platneri have emerged, protect cards from Argentine ants and other predatory insects. Keep a small portion from any purchase in a shady location in a clear container covered with tightly woven cloth. Observe wasp emergence to assess product quality.
Where caterpillar problems may occur, monitor during the spring and summer, especially after peaks in moth flights. Omnivorous looper is a nocturnal moth. Nocturnal moths are attracted to lights and lay eggs nearby, therefore, monitor areas where bright lights such as security lights are used. Be sure to correctly distinguish the cause of any damage since other insects and certain abiotic disorders cause leaf holes resembling caterpillar chewing. Correctly identify the species of caterpillars. Alternate host plants, damage potential, monitoring methods, and natural enemies vary depending on the species of caterpillar. Look for caterpillar predators and larval diseases and parasitism. Natural enemy prevalence affects treatment decision making.
When inspecting foliage, if 15 healthy omnivorous looper larvae are found per hour of search, treatment may be warranted. Modify this guideline based on orchard history and the extent of biological control. If caterpillar damage has previously been a problem or broad-spectrum pesticides have been applied, it is more likely that treatment will be needed. If natural enemies are increasing, this may indicate treatment can be delayed or avoided. If looper numbers are near the threshold, monitor parasites and other natural enemies several times. With higher levels of larvae, watch for evidence of viral disease. When a nuclear polyhedrosis virus is present, looper numbers will often crash within 2 weeks. Diseased larvae cease feeding, become lethargic, and eventually liquefy and then dry up in their nests. Spraying with malathion often leads to outbreaks of other pests and is not recommended. Bt sprays are the least disruptive to natural enemies.
The key thing to note is to ONLY control the looper using the widgets (and any MIDI device attached to them) and NOT to use the controls within the TH-U plugin window - there is no direct synchronisation and performing an operation directly in TH-U will get the widgets out of sync with what is actually happening. If this happens - simply use the WIDGETS and click CLEAR ALL. This will reset both TH-U and the scriptlet to the same state
Looper is a job submitting engine. Looper deploys arbitrary shell commands for each sample in a standard PEP project. You can think of looper as providing a single user interface to running, monitoring, and managing all of your sample-intensive research projects the same way, regardless of data type or pipeline used.
Looper decouples job handling from the pipeline process. In a typical pipeline, job handling (managing how individual jobs are submitted to a cluster) is delicately intertwined with actual pipeline commands (running the actual code for a single compute job). In contrast, the looper approach is modular: looper only manages job submission. This approach leads to several advantages compared with the traditional integrated approach:
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