BACKGROUND Aedes aegypti mosquito is responsible for transmitting human diseases like dengue and chikungunya. Personal or space protection with insect repellents is a practical approach to reducing human mosquito contact, thereby minimizing disease transmission. Essential oils are natural volatile substances from plants used as protective measure against blood-sucking mosquitoes. METHODS Twen...

BACKGROUND Many behavioral responses to odors are synergistic, particularly in insects. In beetles, synergy often involves a pheromone and a plant odor, and pest management relies on them for the use of combined lures. To investigate olfactory synergy mechanisms, we need to distinguish synergistic effects from additive ones, when all components of the mixture are active. RESULTS As versatile ...

Surface modifications using responsive polymers give access to biomedical applications that rely on switchable properties, such as smart sensors and actuator systems. In this work, thermoresponsive polymer coatings are synthesized silicon oxide surfaces a facile effective two-step grafting-to strategy. Briefly, the substrates first functionalized with poly(dopamine) (poly(DA)) primer layer. Sub...

Conductive polymers are promising for application in the medical and sport sectors, e.g. thin wearable health monitoring systems. While many today’s electrodes contain either carbon or metals as electrically conductive filler materials, product design manufacturing has an increasing interest development of metal free free, purely polymer based electrode materials. conducting have generally rath...

BACKGROUND The psocids Liposcelis bostrychophila Badonnel and L. entomophila (Enderlein) (Liposcelididae) are emerging pests of stored products. Although their behavior, particularly their high mobility, may contribute to the reported relatively low efficacy of insecticides against them, studies to investigate this have not been conducted. The present study aimed to assess the label rate effica...

With millions of years of natural evolution, organisms have achieved sophisticated structures, patterns or textures with complex, spontaneous multifunctionality. Among all the fascinating characteristics observed in biosystems, self-cleaning ability is regarded as one of the most interesting topics in biomimicry because of its potential applications in various fields such as aerospace, energy c...

The efficacy of a new virulent Metarhizium anisopliae strain (SRRC 2558) obtained from Coptotermes formosanus in China was evaluated against the eastern subterranean termite, Reticulitermes flavipes and the Formosan subterranean termite, C. formosanus, in the laboratory. This new strain was compared with three other virulent M. anisopliae strains and was found to be highly infectious against te...