Malaria control takes up a substantial slice of India's health budget, largely through buying insecticides.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Fish eat away at malaria in India
For his part, Hackenberg decided that the culprit was a new class of insecticides, called neonicotinoids.
We've tried to kill mosquitoes with insecticides, tried to break that transmission cycle.
And efforts to kill the infected mosquitoes that spread the disease have been hampered by the use of ineffective insecticides.
Random samples of German cockroaches, the common household variety, have turned up some that are resistant to almost all known insecticides, including DDT.
But another key factor was the decision taken in the 1980s to restrict the use of powerful insecticides such as DDT and chlordane.
The CWC would affect U.S. firms that make dyes and pigments, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, nylon, paint and varnish, electronics, textiles, and soap and detergent.
Although Reeves is not in favor of using yard-wide insecticides because they kill beneficial insects as well as the mosquitoes, for special events he relents.
With reluctance, Reeves recommends, "a yard-wide spray with one of the leaf-toxic insecticides that include pyrethrin -- it's considered organic and doesn't smell, " he said.
"We are hypothesising that having these genes expressed in the epidermis will provide a first line of defence as insecticides penetrate the skin, " he explained.
Supplying ponds with guppies is a cheap alternative to buying insecticides.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Fish eat away at malaria in India
Medicines treat the disease and bed nets and insecticides prevent it.
Direct exposure to insecticides - the most widely used are synthetic organic compounds called pyrethroids - was once an effective way to kill off the pests.
Other genes, that either kill the malaria parasite or make the flies susceptible to insecticides, can be tagged onto the modified genes, and will also spread through the population.
Both states grow roughly the same acreage of fresh market tomatoes per year, yet Florida farmers apply eight times more insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides than their counterparts in California.
As plastic is a petroleum based product these small particles act as persistent organic polluters, which means that they form a sponge attracting toxins such as insecticides and pesticides.
The last century saw deployment of anti-malarial drugs and a range of control measures, from marsh drainage to insecticides to bednets, across the tropical regions that are the disease's hinterlands.
Conventional farming is likely to be harder on insects such as bees - which we know are already in trouble in many countries, partly through use of insecticides that organic farming systems should avoid.
Using fish in this way used to be a standard approach to malaria control, but when insecticides like DDT were introduced during the last century with apparently magical success, it fell into disuse.
BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Fish eat away at malaria in India
The first, from a group led by Penelope Whitehorn and David Goulson of the University of Stirling, in Britain, examined the effects these insecticides have on bumblebees, which are closely related to honeybees.
According to Rwangabwoda, malaria rates in Haiti are now under 1%, down from 5% seven years ago, thanks in large part to wide distribution of mosquito nets treated with insecticides by his group.
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After some dramatic successes in Rwanda, Zanzibar and elsewhere, a clear consensus is emerging: an ambitious strategy involving nets impregnated with long-lasting insecticide, indoor spraying of insecticides and pills using artemisinin-combination therapies can slash mortality.
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At that stage Dr Pusztai's research simply looked like a proof of principle checking that the techniques for transplanting and testing lectin genes worked, prior to exploring other, less harmful lectins as built-in insecticides for crops.
According to federal prosecutors, from January 2003 until February 2008, Huang was employed as a research scientist at Dow, where in 2005 he became a research leader in strain development related to unique, proprietary organic insecticides marketed worldwide.
The scientists also believe that unlike with insecticides, where as many as 80% of mosquitoes are no longer killed by the compounds, the insects are unlikely to develop resistance to the fungus as it targets many different genes in the parasite.
In an effort to stick to its locals-know-best philosophy, sometimes Spark even funds projects that it has misgivings about, like a potato cultivation effort in the northern Rwandan village of Nyabageni, where a group of 80 families wanted to use insecticides instead of organic farming methods (chemical insecticides are common in Rwanda, says Lesh).
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