Flightless females combat dengue

Using genetics to render female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes flightless could halt dengue fever in its tracks.
The finding is reported in a paper in this week's PNAS on work led by Luke Alphey of Oxford University's Department of Zoology and Oxford spin-out firm Oxitec.
We've previously reported on how the Oxford team investigated inserting a 'dominant lethal' gene into mosquitoes that, when passed on by males, would see the larvae die before they could develop and spread the disease.
As reported in BBC News Online and elsewhere the team's new approach targets females - whose bite is what actually passes on the infection that affects millions of people a year. Their work suggests that male mozzies can be genetically altered to carry a gene that limits wing growth in their female offspring - rendering their daughters flightless.
Not only does it stop these females from infecting humans but, as the researchers write in the paper: 'Flightless females also are effectively sterile, being unable to attract and mate males as courtship and mating depend on the wing oscillations 'song''.
Luke told BBC Online: 'The technology is completely species-specific, as the released males will mate only with females of the same species.'
'Another attractive feature of this method is that it's egalitarian - all people in the treated areas are equally protected, regardless of their wealth, power or education.'
The researchers believe their approach could be extended to other species of mosquito that spread human disease.

Chaitén Volcano Erupts after 6500 years - Scientific Event

Scientists Pierce Veil of Clouds to 'See' Lightning Inside a Volcanic Plume

 

Researchers hit the jackpot in late March, when, for the first time, they began recording data on lightning in a volcanic eruption--right from the start of the eruption.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html 
Using a multi-station, ground-based Lightning Mapping Array, the scientists advanced our understanding of electrical activity during a volcanic eruption.
Portable Lightning Mapping Arrays are now set up in several areas of the country, and are becoming increasingly used by meteorologists to issue weather warnings.
The arrays have been deployed at volcanoes only twice before.
Thousands of individual segments of a single lightning stroke can be mapped with the Lightning Mapping Array, and later analyzed to reveal how lightning initiates and spreads through a thunderstorm, or in a volcanic plume.
When Alaska's Redoubt Volcano started rumbling in January, a team of researchers hurried to set up a series of the arrays.
When the volcano erupted on March 22 and 23, 2009, the arrays returned dramatic information about the electricity created within volcanic plumes, and the resulting lightning.
"For the first time, we had the Lightning Mapping Array on site before the initial eruption," said scientist Sonja Behnke of New Mexico Tech.
"The data will allow us to better understand the electrical charge structure inside a volcanic plume," said scientist Ron Thomas of New Mexico Tech. "That should help us learn how the plume is becoming electrified, and how it evolves over time."
Bradley Smull, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Atmospheric Sciences, which funded the research, said the information will give scientists insights into the electrical mechanisms in both plumes above active volcanoes, and in lightning spawned in thunderstorms.
NSF awarded New Mexico Tech a grant to study volcanic lightning in 2007, with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and the Alaska Volcano Observatory as collaborators.

"With data from the Lightning Mapping Array, new details of volcanic plume lightning will emerge," Smull said. "The opportunity for stand-alone analysis, and comparisons with last year's similar observations of Chaiten Volcano in Chile, will tell us much more about this phenomenon."