New Method to Control Dengue Mosquito Shows Public Health Benefit

In advance of the rainy season, local public health officials sprayed a long-lasting insecticide, safe for indoor use, targeted to areas where the Aedes mosquito prefers to hang out.

A novel disease prevention strategy — targeting a mosquito that spreads the dengue virus — significantly reduces both the mosquito numbers and cases of disease across a community, finds a major new study. New England Journal of Medicine published the results of the large, randomized clinical trial — considered the gold standard for evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention — led by Emory University. 

The research was conducted in Merida, a city of one million in the Mexican state of the Yucatan, through a close collaboration with the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, the Yucatan Ministry of Health and the Federal Ministry of Health of Mexico. 

The project tested an intervention that previous Emory research found promising: Targeted indoor residual spraying of insecticide, or TIRS, conducted before an outbreak occurs. The method is aimed at a particular species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti, that is perfectly adapted to live with humans in an urban setting. 

“Our study showed that the TIRS method reduced numbers of these mosquitos by 6o percent for a period of six months,” says Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, senior author of the study and Emory professor of environmental sciences. “The results also quantified a 24 percent mean reduction community-wide in cases of dengue fever, even in the context of a record-breaking outbreak of dengue in Merida.”

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Emory scientists continue Jane Goodall's legacy

Elizabeth Lonsdorf as a PhD student in 2000, with Jane Goodall in Gombe.

While championing the causes of wildlife and the environment, legendary primatologist Jane Goodall — who passed away Oct. 1 at the age of 91 — also transformed the lives of countless people around the world. They include many Emory students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty members who are carrying on Goodall’s core mission in Tanzania: to study and conserve the chimpanzees and ecosystem of Gombe Stream National Park, while supporting the health and wellbeing of people. 

“Meeting Jane Goodall changed everything for me,” says Elizabeth Lonsdorf, Emory professor of anthropology. “She was an incredible inspiration and mentor.” 

Lonsdorf is co-director of the Jane Goodall Institute’s Gombe Ecosystem Health Project, along with Thomas Gillespie, professor and chair of Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences. The pioneering project developed a “One Health” approach to quantify illness and methods of disease transmission between humans, wildlife and domestic animals at Gombe, to design effective interventions. 

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New methods expand access to molecules key to human health

"I love solving problems, the more challenging the better," says San Pham, first author of the paper. Senior author is Frank McDonald, Emory professor of chemistry and Pham's PhD advisor.

A new approach to an established reaction boosts the ability to synthesize vinylic ethers — key building blocks for many molecules that are important to human health. The American Chemical Society’s Organic Letters published the breakthrough, made by chemists at Emory University. 

“Our method is easy to reproduce and is based on widely available and inexpensive compounds,” says San Pham, an Emory PhD candidate and first author of the paper. “We can apply this method to make multiple natural products, including novel vinylic ethers.” 

Her research improves the reliability, yield and generality of what is known as the Chan-Evans-Lam reaction. These enhancements greatly expand the reaction’s potential for the synthesis of complex, biologically active compounds for drug research.

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AI reveals new physics in dusty plasma

Physicists used a machine-learning method to identify surprising new twists on the non-reciprocal forces governing a many-body system.

The journal PNAS published the findings by experimental and theoretical physicists at Emory University, based on a neural network model and data from laboratory experiments on dusty plasma — ionized gas containing suspended dust particles. 

The work is one of the relatively few instances of using AI not as a data processing or predictive tool, but to discover new physical laws governing the natural world.

"We showed that we can us AI to discover new physics," says Justin Burton, an Emory professor of experimental physics and senior co-author of the paper. "Our AI method is not a black box: we understand how and why it works. The framework it provides is also universal. It could potentially be applied to other many-body systems to open to new routes to discovery."

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Evolving views: A new look at the Scopes Trial

Emory professor of psychology Harold Gouzoules, left, and his son Alexander Gouzoules, an Emory alum who is a legal scholar.

A combination of inherited genes and life experiences led Alexander Gouzoules (a legal scholar) and his father, Harold Gouzoules (an evolutionary biologist), to co-author a book about the 1925 Scopes trial. 

“The Hundred Years’ Trial: Law, Evolution, and the Long Shadow of Scopes v. Tennessee” blends their expertise. Johns Hopkins University Press published the book, marking the centenary of the fierce, public legal battle over the right to teach evolution in a Tennessee high school. 

“We had the ideal meshing of interests to take on the topic in a new way,” says Harold Gouzoules, an Emory professor of psychology who studies the evolution of primate social behavior. “I took on the science and Alex covered the legal ramifications of the trial.”

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