The literature on community-based environmental management is very extensive and the discussion of the pros and cons is continuing. Presented here is an example of a successful interaction between university-based entomologists and a local rural community, detailing the change in the attitude of the town of Millbank, Jamaica, from a Giant Swallowtail Butterfly collecting site to a model for com...

From *the Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont.; †the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont.; ‡the Health Promotion and Environmental Health Protection Office, Toronto Public Health, Toronto, Ont.; and §the Community Medicine Residency Program, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hami...

Bias is a pervasive problem when characterizing microbial communities. An important source is the difference in lysis efficiencies of different populations, which vary depending on the extraction protocol used. To avoid such biases impacting comparisons between gene and transcript abundances in the environment, the use of one protocol that simultaneously extracts both types of nucleic acids fro...

Long-lasting insecticidal bednets (LLINs) are one of the major ways to control malaria, and they are widely accepted worldwide by communities in areas affected by malaria. One LLIN costs about US$5 to manufacture and is effective for about 5 years. They have two kinds of protective effects—one for the people directly under the nets, and one for the community at large. The second effect is impor...

Over four decades of the development of data protection laws, the world has witnessed data protection regimes finally arriving in Africa. At present, there are eleven African countries out of 54 with comprehensive data protection legislation. These are Cape Verde (22 January 2001), Seychelles (24 December 2003), Burkina Faso (20 April 2004), Mauritius (17 June 2004), Tunisia (27 July 2004), Sen...