the-ingestion-fluorescent-magnetic-nanoparticles-for-determining

The Ingestion of Fluorescent, Magnetic Nanoparticles for Determining Fluid-uptake Abilities in Insects

Fluid-feeding insects ingest a variety of liquids, which are present in the environment as pools, films, or confined to small pores. Studies of liquid ...

ir-tex-an-open-source-data-integration-tool-for-big-data

IR-TEx: An Open Source Data Integration Tool for Big Data Transcriptomics Designed for the Malaria Vector <em>Anopheles gambiae</em>

IR-TEx is an application written in Shiny (an R package) that allows exploration of the expression of (as well as assigning functions to) transcripts ...

Kent State University at Stark

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

liverpool school of tropical medicine

Source data verification (SDV) is a data monitoring procedure which compares the original records with the Case Report Form (CRF). Traditionally, on-site SDV relies on monitors making multiples visits to study sites requiring extensive resources. The Cooking And Pneumonia Study (CAPS) is a 24- month village-level cluster randomized controlled trial assessing the effectiveness of an advanced cook-stove intervention in preventing pneumonia in children under five in rural Malawi (www.capstudy.org). CAPS used smartphones to capture digital images of the original records on an electronic CRF (eCRF). In the present study, descriptive statistics are used to report the experience of electronic data capture with remote SDV in a challenging research setting in rural Malawi.

The Cooking and Pneumonia Study (CAPS) in Malawi: Implementation of Remote Source Data Verification.

Fluid-feeding insects, such as butterflies, moths and flies (20% of all animal species), are faced with the common selection pressure of having to remove and feed on trace amounts of fluids from porous surfaces. Insects able to acquire fluids that are confined to pores during drought conditions would have an adaptive advantage and increased fitness over other individuals. Here, we performed feeding trials using solutions with magnetic nanoparticles to show that butterflies and flies have mouthparts adapted to pull liquids from porous surfaces using capillary action as the governing principle. In addition, the ability to feed on the liquids collected from pores depends on a relationship between the diameter of the mouthpart conduits and substrate pore size diameter; insects with mouthpart conduit diameters larger than the pores cannot successfully feed, thus there is a limiting substrate pore size from which each species can acquire liquids for fluid uptake. Given that natural selection independently favoured mouthpart architectures that support these methods of fluid uptake (Diptera and Lepidoptera share a common ancestor 280 Ma that had chewing mouthparts), we suggest that the convergence of this mechanism advocates this as an optimal strategy for pulling trace amounts of fluids from porous surfaces.

Andrew Bennett

Department of Biological Sciences

Kent State University at Stark

The Ingestion of Fluorescent, Magnetic Nanoparticles for Determining Fluid-uptake Abilities in Insects

IR-TEx: An Open Source Data Integration Tool for Big Data Transcriptomics Designed for the Malaria Vector Anopheles gambiae

Andrew Bennett

.css-o250i3{font-size:18px;font-family:Open Sans,sans-serif;line-height:21.6px;}Department of Biological Sciences

Kent State University at Stark

The Ingestion of Fluorescent, Magnetic Nanoparticles for Determining Fluid-uptake Abilities in Insects

IR-TEx: An Open Source Data Integration Tool for Big Data Transcriptomics Designed for the Malaria Vector Anopheles gambiae

Department of Biological Sciences