rohan

Tracking malaria resistant mosquitos: a new tool

IUPAC Symposium 1A – Resistance Management: Insect Disease Vectors & Agricultural Pests Tuesday 2:30pm

Hilary Ranson, The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Pyrethroid insecticides are the front line weapon of choice against malaria-carrying mosquitos.

These are the only class of insecticide that can be used to treat bednets and they are being used extensively for indoor spraying (replacing DDT in many areas). These two interventions are being rolled out on a massive scale across Africa (the goal is to achieve 80% coverage).

[continue reading…]

Putting the spray where you need it

Paul Miller, Waterborne Environmental, Inc

UK scientist Paul Miller will be presenting his work on modelling and thus minimising spray drift.

His work with field trials, wind tunnels and simulations have shown that boom height and the droplet size distribution from the nozzles are the most important variables influencing drift risk with changes in boom height having a greater effect than changes in wind speed.

[continue reading…]

New antibiotics on the way

Designing new dual action antibiotics

RACI Symposium – Antibacterials, Monday 9:00am

John Bremner, University of Wollongong

Matthew Cooper, University of Queensland

Multidrug resistant bacteria are a major health issue around the world and new effective drugs are clearly urgently needed.

John Bremner and his colleagues are presenting their approach to creating new antibiotics to fight against drug resistant strains of golden staph (Staphylococcus aureus) and other pathogens. They’ve created synthetic antibiotics inspired by vancomycin.

And Mathew Cooper and his colleagues at the University of Queensland have developed a novel strategy of linking an out-of-patent antibiotic, vancomycin, to small protein fragments to produce a new class of anti-bacterials.

[continue reading…]

DNA fingerprinting in just two hours

RACI Plenary Two Tuesday 2:15pm

Steve Haswell, University of Hull

A hand-held DNA testing device developed by UK scientists is set to change the way forensic analysis of DNA is conducted.

Normally, DNA samples have to be transported back to the lab and need trained people using expensive instruments to conduct the analysis. Steve Haswell and his team at the University of Hull have developed the lab-on-a-chip technology that will reduce the time it takes to produce results from days to hours.

[continue reading…]