From owner-vectors@net.bio.net Mon Aug 10 23:00:00 1998 Path: biosci!biosci!not-for-mail From: COLIN LEAKE Newsgroups: bionet.biology.vectors Subject: MSc Courses at LSHTM Date: 11 Aug 1998 07:26:48 -0700 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 44 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Approved: vbmod@klab.agsci.colostate.edu Distribution: world Message-ID: <6qpkb8$ve@net.bio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (University of London) MSc Course in Biology & Control of Disease Vectors This course provides comprehensive theoretical and practical training on the vector biology, transmission dynamics, and control of the major vector-borne diseases. It provides vocational training for vector biologists interested in operational vector control, provides an in-depth up-dating for teachers, and also provides training in research methods suitable for students to pursue advanced studies on vectors and vector-borne infectious diseases. WHY NOT VISIT THE LSHTM WEBSITE AT: WWW.LSHTM.AC.UK/PROSPECTUS For more information and an application form contact: The Deputy Registrar, London School of Hygiene &Tropical Medicine, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP. Tel: +44 (0)171 927 2239, Fax +44 (0) 171 323 0638 E-mail: registry@lshtm.ac.uk quoting ref BCDVNA98 or for more details about the course contact Dr Colin Leake, tel: 44 (0)171 927 2461 e-mail C.Leake@lshtm.ac.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (University of London) MSc Course in Medical Parasitology This course provides core training in the theoretical and practical aspects of classical medical parasitology covering the protozoan and metazoan parasites of humans and the vectors which may transmit them. The course provides both vocational training for clinicians/medical parasitologists/teachers and initial training in research for students wishing to pursue research related to field or laboratory aspects of infectious diseases. WHY NOT VISIT THE LSHTM WEBSITE AT: WWW.LSHTM.AC.UK/PROSPECTUS. For more information and an application form contact: The Deputy Registrar, London School of Hygiene &Tropical Medicine, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP. Tel: +44 (0)171 927 2239, FAX +44 (0) 171 323 0638, E-mail: registry@lshtm.ac.uk quoting ref MPNA98 or for more details about the course contact Dr Colin Leake, tel: 44 (0)171 927 2461 e-mail C.Leake@lshtm.ac.uk From owner-vectors@net.bio.net Fri Aug 28 23:00:00 1998 Path: biosci!biosci!not-for-mail From: BIOSCI Administrator Newsgroups: bionet.biology.vectors Subject: BIOSCI/bionet miniFAQ & Fundraiser Date: 29 Aug 1998 06:04:17 -0700 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 234 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Approved: vbmod@klab.agsci.colostate.edu Distribution: world Message-ID: <6s8u8h$hv3@net.bio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net (LAST REVISION: 30-JUL-95) This BIOSCI "miniFAQ" is designed to answer the questions that come up the *most frequently*. The main BIOSCI FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is accessible on the World Wide Web at URL http://www.bio.net/. If you can not find an answer to your question in this or other documentation, the BIOSCI technical support staff answers e-mail queries sent to biosci-help@net.bio.net We can only answer questions about the use of the newsgroups and mailing lists. We unfortunately do not have the staff to do Internet information searches or answer scientific questions. Please post those to the appropriate BIOSCI/bionet newsgroups. Contents: -------- 0) BIOSCI NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!! 1) Using the WWW to access the BIOSCI/bionet newsgroups. 2) What to do about "spams," i.e., junk mail, ads, etc. 3) Examples of subscribing and unsubscribing to the mailing lists. 4) The BIOSCI user address and research interest directory. 0) BIOSCI NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT!! ------------------------------ BIOSCI's government funding has been expended, and we are now operating solely from advertising revenue that we have raised from our Web site at http://www.bio.net/. We need just a few minutes of your time to help us serve you. You can do two important things which will take very little time for you individually and will immensely help us continue to help you. First, please use our WWW system at http://www.bio.net/ to access the archives. You can post or reply to messages via your Web browser as described in item #1 below. Your usage helps attract sponsors. If you contact any of our sponsors, please be sure to thank them for supporting BIOSCI. It is critical for them to get this feedback if they are to continue their sponsorship for the long term. Second, if you work for a company or organization that provides products or services of interest to the biology community, please pass this message on to your marketing or marketing communications department or other appropriate group. Please ask them to help support BIOSCI by sponsoring our Web site and explain the uses and benefits of the system to the biology community. If they are interested, they can then contact us for further information at our tech support address, biosci-help@net.bio.net. 1) Using the WWW to access the BIOSCI/bionet newsgroups. -------------------------------------------------------- As of 10 December 1995, all BIOSCI/bionet full newsgroups are accessible through the World Wide Web (WWW) at URL http://www.bio.net. One can read and reply publicly or privately to both recent postings and archived messages through one's Web browser if it is configured properly to send e-mail. Each newsgroup is equipped with its own WAIS index. The main BIOSCI home page also has access to the BIO-JOURNALS Table of Contents database WAIS index and the BIOSCI user address database described in another item further below. 2) What to do about "spams," i.e., junk mail, ads, etc. ------------------------------------------------------- BIOSCI is a set of parallel USENET newsgroups (the "bionet" groups), mailing lists, and a hypermail archive at URL http://www.bio.net/. The same postings are distributed on all media (except for a small number of mailing-list-only groups at net.bio.net). Unfortunately it is becoming a despicable practice on the Internet (by a few people out to make a fast buck) to do automated mass postings to thousands of newsgroups and mailing lists. These attempts to grab free advertising are refered to as "spams" in the usual, somewhat boneheaded, net terminology. USENET is more susceptible to this practice, and many spams originate on the USENET groups and then are passed on to the mailing lists. However, spammers also get lists of mailing addresses and hit these too, so neither medium is immune. What should you do personally if you get junk mail? --------------------------------------------------- Just delete it and move on without reading it further. Filing a protest is becoming increasingly useless because spammers are often disguising the addresses where the messages are sent from. Unless you really understand Internet mail systems, your attempt at protest by sending replies to the message will often end up being sent to the address of an innocent person that the spammer is victimizing. What can BIOSCI/bionet do to protect its newsgroups? ---------------------------------------------------- The only solution currently available is to moderate the newsgroup. If this newsgroup is already moderated, then you are in good shape. Moderation protects the USENET distribution from about 95% of the spams that are being sent to date and protects the mailing lists completely. Moderation means, however, that someone has to take the time to review each message before it goes out. We have set up software here that simply allows the moderator to forward to an address at net.bio.net messages that (s)he wishes to have distributed. This takes no more time than that needed to read the message and pass it on, say about 1 min. per message. Most newsgroups currently have a discussion leader who is responsible for their newsgroup. The discussions leaders and their e-mail addresses are listed in the BIOSCI Information Sheet which is available on the Web at http://www.bio.net/. If a newsgroup is being hit with too many junk postings, please contact the discussion leader for that group and see if there is interest in moderating the group. Please do not assume that by simply posting a complaint to the newsgroup itself, anyone on the BIOSCI staff will act on your complaint. With close to 100 newsgroups to run, the BIOSCI staff has to rely on the discussion leaders of each newsgroup to report problems directly to us at biosci-help@net.bio.net. We will moderate any of our newsgroups if the discussion leader tells us that the readership of the group wishes to do so and if a moderator is willing to do the work. For most BIOSCI/bionet groups, this entails only a few minutes of work each day. Moderating a newsgroup will resolve probably 95% of the junk postings on the USENET distribution. Unfortunately there are easy ways for determined spammers to override the moderation mechanism on USENET, but we can protect our e-mail subscribers from unwanted postings if the newsgroup is moderated. You can also access our newsgroups over the WWW at URL http://www.bio.net. While this Web interface will not stop spammers from trying to post to the groups, this will give you yet another way, besides using USENET news, to keep the junk out of your personal mail files. For those of you with local USENET news systems, the Web interface will also give you faster access to new newsgroups and recent postings. 3) Examples of subscribing and unsubscribing to the mailing lists. ------------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE NOTE: The BIOSCI management does NOT act on subscription/unsubscription requests that are posted improperly to the newsgroups and mailing lists. People who do this only bother everyone on the lists to no avail. Please be sure to follow the proper procedures below. Gory details are in the BIOSCI Information sheets on the Web at http://www.bio.net. Below we give an example utilizing the METHODS-AND-REAGENTS list at both of our two BIOSCI sites: Users in the Americas and Pacific Rim countries who use the BIOSCI ------------------------------------------------------------------ node at computer net.bio.net: ---------------------------- A) Determine the "listname" which is the <=8 character mail address ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ for the group. These can be found in the BIOSCI Info. Sheet. For the METHODS-AND-REAGENTS group the mailing address is methods@net.bio.net. The listname is the portion of the address to the left of the @ sign, i.e., "methods". The listname is used with the "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" commands illustrated below. B) Mail all commands in the body of a mail message addressed to biosci-server@net.bio.net. Do NOT send commands to the newsgroup posting addresses! Leave the Subject: line blank, any text on it will be ignored. C) In the body of your message put one or more of the following commands with an "end" command on the last line, e.g., subscribe methods unsubscribe methods end Do NOT put your e-mail address or other text on these lines. The server only allows you to cancel your subscription if the address on your mail header matches the address on our mailing list. Please ask for help at biosci-help@net.bio.net if your address has changed, e.g., if you know you are on the list but the server tells you that you are not a member. Users in Europe, Africa, and Central Asia who use the BIOSCI node at -------------------------------------------------------------------- computer daresbury.ac.uk (also known as dl.ac.uk): ------------------------------------------------- To subscribe and unsubscribe to/from the BIOSCI lists, you need to specify the full USENET newsgroup name with "bionet-news." prepended. The USENET newsgroup names are listed in the BIOSCI Information sheet on the Web at http://www.bio.net/. For the METHODS-AND-REAGENTS list the USENET newsgroup name is bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts, thus the appropriate commands are sub bionet-news.bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts unsub bionet-news.bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts These commands are included in a message addressed to mxt@dl.ac.uk, NOT to the newsgroup mailing addresses. As usual, include the text in the body of the message as text on the Subject: line is ignored. To unsubscribe from all the lists at the UK node, use unsub bionet-news Please note that if the address in the list is different than the one in your mail message header, you will not be able to unsubscribe by this method. If you have problems, please mail biosci@daresbury.ac.uk. 4) The BIOSCI user address and research interest directory. ----------------------------------------------------------- Please take this opportunity to add your name, address, and research interest information to the BIOSCI User Address Database if you have not already done so. You can fill out the address form directly through our Web page at URL http://www.bio.net/adrform.html. The address database is reindexed nightly for WWW access (the URL is http://www.bio.net/). If you are not directly on the Internet but can reach it by e-mail, please use our waismail server to access the user directory. waismail use is described above. You can also request a user address form by e-mail from biosci-help@net.bio.net. Please check your database entry from time-to-time to see if your address information is still up-to-date. Because of our limited personnel resources, we ask that you resubmit a *complete* form to revise your entry; we only replace complete entries and do not have resources to edit old forms. From owner-vectors@net.bio.net Sat Aug 29 23:00:00 1998 Path: biosci!biosci!not-for-mail From: Tammy Patton Newsgroups: bionet.biology.vectors Subject: mosquitoes Date: 30 Aug 1998 08:49:14 -0700 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 14 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Approved: vbmod@klab.agsci.colostate.edu Distribution: world Message-ID: <6sbs9q$gku@net.bio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net I am a high school biology teacher looking for some professional input. One of my seniors is interested in examining why certain people seem to be more attractive to mosquitoes than others. She is also interested in looking at natural repellents, or the influence of diet on the attraction level(garlic intake for example). We would welcome any suggestions or references related to this project. If you have related information that may help us, please respond. Thank you, Tammy Patton MHS Science Dept. Moore, OK From owner-vectors@net.bio.net Sun Aug 30 23:00:00 1998 Path: biosci!biosci!not-for-mail From: Jonathan Ross Newsgroups: bionet.biology.vectors Subject: Re: mosquitoes Date: 31 Aug 1998 09:22:52 -0700 Organization: BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology Lines: 166 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Approved: vbmod@klab.agsci.colostate.edu Distribution: world Message-ID: <6seiks$hfu@net.bio.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net Tammy, There has been some work done on this aspect of mosquito attraction, and there does appear to be some differential responses, but the difficult part would be finding an impartial method of measuring this. For example, an article that I provide below lists that a form of lactic acid secreted in sweat is an active attractant. It may be difficult (if it is your student's intention) to determine the levels of lactic acid in your test subjects. Host temperature variation also seems to play a role, and this may be a better way to perform a study (if there are enough volunteers willing to be bitten :-) There are many more references than these which I have provided. I suggest you check MEDLINE or Biological Abstracts on the WWW. I should also point out that I am not an entymologist nor associated with mosquitoes more than the fact that a lab down the hall from mine does some work with the larvae. My real work is in cancer research, so all of my mosquito knowledge (as scant as it is) comes from my undergrad days. I hope it is of some use to you. Good luck and all the best, -Jonathan Jonathan Ross Cancer Research Group, Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre and the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa ________________________ Ciba Found Symp 1996;200:132-144 A search for components in human body odour that attract females of Aedes aegypti. Geier M, Sass H, Boeckh J Universitat Regensburg, Institut fur Zoologie, Germany. In a new type of wind tunnel, mosquitoes fly upwind towards host odour sources and towards human skin wash extracts obtained by rubbing the skin with a pad soaked in ethanol. We used this behavioural response as a bioassay to identify attractants in liquid chromatography fractions of such extracts. L-Lactic acid is a major constituent of skin wash extracts and it is a necessary component for the extract's effectiveness. As a single stimulus, however, L-lactic acid is only slightly effective. This indicates that the extract's high degree of effectiveness is based on a synergism of L-lactic acid and other odour components. The separation of the extract by liquid chromatography revealed three distinct regions of active fractions, only one of which contained L-lactic acid. The components of the other two regions have not yet been determined. A combination of fractions in these two regions together with L-lactic acid is as attractive as the complete extract. Publication Types: Review Review, tutorial PMID: 8894295, UI: 97049567 ____________________________ Ciba Found Symp 1996;200:109-119 The role of mosquito olfaction in oviposition site location and in the avoidance of unsuitable hosts. Pickett JA, Woodcock CM Biological and Ecological Chemistry Department, IACR-Rothamsted, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK. Developments in the exploitation of mosquito olfaction are traced, in collaborative studies with various groups, from the first identification of a mosquito pheromone through to a discussion of non-host avoidance. The characterization of the oviposition pheromone for mosquitoes in the genus Culex, e.g. Culex quinquefasciatus, as a novel chiral lactone ester provided the impetus for a number of sophisticated asymmetric syntheses and economical large-scale routes to racemic products. The latter have provided material for successful field trials in three continents. During the course of this field work, we obtained evidence that semiochemicals originating directly from the oviposition site are essential for activity of the oviposition pheromone. Recent studies are elucidating the nature of these agents and their geographical variability. Initially, we used synthetic oviposition pheromone to attract mosquitoes to sites treated with a biorational larvicide. However, recyclable biological control agents offer better prospects for resource-poor regions. A biotechnological approach to pheromone production has been devised involving the generation of inexpensive starting materials by the cultivation of a higher plant. New studies on dipterous pests feeding on farm animals indicate a semiochemically based mechanism by which unsuitable individuals within the host species are avoided. There appears to be an analogous process in which mosquitoes avoid certain potential human hosts, thereby raising prospects for the development of novel, rationally identified repellents once the semiochemical/olfactory interactions have been fully elucidated. Publication Types: Review Review, tutorial PMID: 8894293, UI: 97049565 ________________________ Indian J Exp Biol 1994 May;32(5):348-350 Biting behaviour of Armigeres subalbatus (Coquillett) with reference to host selection and landing. Srinivas SD, Pandian RS, Dwarakanath SK Department of Zoology, American College, Madurai, India. Armigeres subalbatus (Coquillett), a vicious crepuscular biter, has been selected to study the biting behaviour with reference to factors affecting landing and host selection in the laboratory. The mosquito showed a higher attractancy to relatively warmer skin of human hands. There was also a significant attraction towards the artificially warmed hands than the normal ones, and the mosquitoes avoided the artificially cooled hands. Therefore, host temperature is a factor which influences the attraction and subsequent landings of A. subalbatus. When the mosquitoes were offered animal hosts, the order of host preference by these mosquitoes was hen > rabbit > guinea pig, both in single and two-host combinations thus, showing their preference to avian host. PMID: 7927529, UI: 95012446 __________________________________ Southeast Asian J Trop Med Public Health 1982 Jun;13(2):211-215 Observations on the feeding habits of four species of Mansonia (Mansonioides) mosquitoes in Southern Thailand. Gass RF, Deesin T, Surathin K, Vutikes S, Sucharit S Studies on feeding habits of Mansonia annulata, M. annulifera, M. indiana and M. uniformis were carried out in southern Thailand. This study showed that M. annulata and M. uniformis were both strongly exophagic mosquitoes which avoided approaching and entering human dwellings. The biting frequency on the verandah was considerably higher than indoors. M. indiana was not repelled by houses but avoided biting indoors. M. annulifera was endophagic, it was attracted by houses and bit on the verandah as frequently as indoors. Some species showed differential preference for age- and sex-groups of human hosts: M. annulata was more attracted by adolescents and adults than by children and M. annulifera preferred female hosts. The other species did not distinguish between host groups. PMID: 6128795, UI: 83067716 ___________________________ Tammy Patton wrote in article <6sbs9q$gku@net.bio.net>... > I am a high school biology teacher looking for some professional input. One > of my seniors is interested in examining why certain people seem to be more > attractive to mosquitoes than others. She is also interested in looking at > natural repellents, or the influence of diet on the attraction level(garlic > intake for example). We would welcome any suggestions or references related > to this project. If you have related information that may help us, please > respond. > Thank you, > Tammy Patton > MHS Science Dept. > Moore, OK > > > >