pest

Ancient olfaction protein is shared by many bugs, offering new pest control target

In the battle against insect pests, new research indicates that it may all come down to the sense of smell. A group of Rockefeller University scientists who had previously identified a key gene essential for the sense of smell in fruit flies now shows that this gene's function appears to be evolutionarily conserved across very different insect species. Research by Leslie Vosshall's laborat...

UCSD discovery may help extend life of natural pesticide

A team led by biologists at the University of California, San Diego has discovered a molecule in roundworms that makes them susceptible to Bacillus thuringiensis toxin, or Bt toxin--a pesticide produced by bacteria and widely used by organic farmers and in genetically engineered crops to ward off insect pests. Their findings should facilitate the design and use of Bt toxins to prevent ins...

Scientists discuss improved biopesticides for locust control in West Africa

Two Virginia Tech scientists contributed by invitation to an international scientific meeting called by Abdoulaye Wade, president of Senegal, to identify strategies for the control of the ongoing locust outbreak in West Africa. Last year, locusts stripped fields of crops and trees of foliage across several countries, causing severe income and food supply loss. Larry Vaughan, associate pro...

Stealth Worms May Improve Insect Pest Control

Nematodes comprise a worm family so large it literally covers the earth. They range in size from less than a micron in length to as much as 26 feet. Worldwide interest has begun to focus on microscopic nematodes that live with symbiotic bacteria. "We study these nematodes -- which are actually insect killers -- not only to understand how diverse they are, but also to use them as biological contro...

UN successfully tests 'green' pesticide against locusts

A new method for manipulating macromolecules has been developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The technique uses double-stranded DNA to direct the behavior of other molecules. In previous DNA nanotechnology efforts, duplex DNA has been used as a static lattice to construct geometrical objects in three dimensions. Instead of manipulating DNA alone into s...

Green catalyst destroys pesticides and munitions toxins, finds Carnegie Mellon University

Results reported at American Chemical Society meetingA chemical catalyst developed at Carnegie Mellon University completely destroys dangerous nitrophenols in laboratory tests, according to Arani Chanda, a doctoral student who is presenting his findings on Sunday, Aug. 28, at the 230th meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Washington, D.C. (Division of Industrial and Engineering Chemi...

Corn grain mould used as pesticide

In the early 1960s more than 100,000 turkeys died in Britain of cancer of the liver. Eventually, researchers identified mouldy peanut flour from Brazil containing large amounts of aflatoxin as the cause of this mysterious 'turkey X' disease. Even today the toxin is regarded as one of the most virulent natural carcinogenic substances. The tasteless toxin is produced by the mould aspergillus...

Techniques available to detect soil that inhibits destructive soybean pest

Identification of soils that inhibit a tiny soybean-destroying organism is an important tool in reducing yield losses, according to a Purdue University plant pathologist. Soybean cyst nematodes cause between $800 million and $1 billion annually in crop losses in the United States, according the American Phytopathological Society. However, techniques are available to find soils that specifi...

New discovery: If it weren't for this enzyme, decomposing pesticide would take millennia

CHAPEL HILL ?An enzyme inside a bacterium that grows in the soil of potato fields can -- in a split second -- break down residues of a common powerful pesticide used for killing worms on potatoes, researchers have found. That may be expensive for farmers but lucky for the environment because University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists have now discovered that if that particular...

Plants give pests sock in the gut

A novel enzyme in corn helps the plants defend themselves from voracious caterpillars by disrupting the insects' ability to digest food, and ultimately killing them, according to researchers. The enzyme could be used in tandem with other biological pesticides such as the Bt toxin to prevent the pests from developing resistance and making the toxin more effective. "The enzyme is found in in...

The world's deepest dinosaur finding - 2256 metres below the seabed

While most nations excavate their skeletons using a toothbrush, the Norwegians found one using a drill. The somewhat rough uncovering of Norway's first dinosaur happened in the North Sea, at an entire 2256 metres below the seabed. It had been there for nearly 200 million years, ever since the time the North Sea wasn't a sea at all, but an enormous alluvial plane. It is merely a coincidence...

New possibilities to fight pests with biological means

Corn plants emit a cocktail of scents when they are attacked by certain pests, such as a caterpillar known as the Egyptian cotton leaf worm. Parasitic wasps use these plant scents to localize the caterpillar and deposit their eggs on it, so that their offspring can feed on the caterpillar. Soon after, the caterpillar dies and the plant is relieved from its attacker. In the case of corn, o...

Pesticides in the nation's streams and ground water

Today, the U.S. Geological Survey released a report describing the occurrence of pesticides in streams and ground water during 1992-2001. The report concludes that pesticides are typically present throughout the year in most streams in urban and agricultural areas of the Nation, but are less common in ground water. The report also concludes that pesticides are seldom at concentrations likely to...

Pest control research leads to pain control discovery

A newly discovered enzyme inhibitor, identified by researchers originally looking for biological pest controls, may lead to pain relief for sufferers of arthritis and other inflammatory diseases, say researchers at the University of California, Davis. The finding, hailed by a noted inflammatory disease expert "as the most important discovery in inflammation in more than a decade," may also reduce...

Biotech cotton provides same yield with fewer pesticides

Arizona farmers receive the same yield/acre, use fewer chemical insecticides and maintain insect biodiversity when they plant the biotech cotton known as Bt cotton, according to new research. "What w...

Most widely used organic pesticide requires help to kill

The world's most widely used organic insecticide, a plucky bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt for short, requires the assistance of other microbes to perform its insect-slaying work, a new study has found. Writing in the Sept. 26 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports that wit...

Pesticides need sunscreen to beat the heat

A pesticide with a new in-built sunscreen will help farmers beat the heat in crop protection. This means that the bug sprays last longer, as they are protected from the strong rays of sunshine, reports Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. This is becoming increasingly important as temperatures rise, with the Met Office announcing that several heat records were broken in the UK this...

Fake pesticides threaten food safety

More than one in 20 pesticides sold in the EU could be fake, potentially endangering food safety and human health, writes Cath O'Driscoll in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. These counterfeits range from sophisticated copies of patented products to low-quality fakes with little or no resemblance to the original. And it is a problem that is getting worse every year, accord...

Tears reveal some of their deepest secrets to researchers

It's no secret why we shed tears. But exactly what our tears are made of has remained a mystery to scientists. A new study sheds some light on the complex design of tears. What we think of as tears, scientists call tear film, which is made up of three distinct, microscopic layers. The middle, watery layer ?what we normally think of as tears when we cry ?is sandwiched between a layer of muc...

Hives ferment a yeasty brew, attract beetle pest

The honeybee's alarm signal may not only bring help, but also attract the small hive beetle. Now, an international team of researchers has found that small hive beetles can detect some alarm pheromones at levels below that detected by honeybees. The beetles associate the alarm chemicals with a good food source and head for the hive. In Africa, where the small hive beetle is a minor honeybe...

100 percent of pregnant women have at least one kind of pesticide in their placenta

Human beings are directly responsible for more than 110,000 chemical substances which have been generated since the Industrial Revolution. Every year, we "invent" more than 2,000 new substances, most of them contaminants, which are emitted into the environment and which are consequently present in food, air, soil and water. Nonetheless, human beings are also victims of these emissions, and involu...

Premature births may be linked to seasonal levels of pesticides and nitrates in surface water

The growing premature birth rate in the United States appears to be strongly associated with increased use of pesticides and nitrates, according to work conducted by Paul Winchester, M.D., professor of clinical pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He reports his findings May 7 at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting, a combined gathering of the American Pediatric S...

NASA-funded robotic sub finds bottom of world's deepest sinkhole

A robotic vehicle designed for underwater exploration plunged repeatedly into the depths of Mexico’s mysterious El Zacatón sinkhole in late May, finding its previously undiscovered bottom 318 meters below the surface and generating a sonar map of its inner dimensions. The vehicle employed autonomous navigation and mapping systems developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.</p...

Pesticides choke pathway for nature to produce nitrogen for crops

Many farmers applying pesticides to boost crop yields may instead be contributing to growth...