Engaging scientists: An online survey exploring the experience of innovative biotechnological approaches to controlling vector-borne diseases

Synthetic livestock vaccines as risky interference with nature? Lay and expert arguments and understandings of "naturalness"

The article describes how the idea of "naturalness" was used by three different groups in arguments over the risk of livestock vaccines developed in synthetic biology. Based on interviews with two groups of scientific experts and focus groups with lay people in five European countries, and using Toulmin's argument analysis as the analytical tool, the article maps and compares the different ways in which "naturalness" was used as a warrant. Several notions of "naturalness" are involved in lay people's reasoning and several lay people's understandings of risk relied on their perceptions of the "unnaturalness" of the synthetic vaccines. The notion of "naturalness" was used less by synthetic biology experts and not at all by vaccine experts. Lay people see the vaccine as less natural than other vaccines and therefore as a greater risk. In contrast, synthetic biology experts understand synthetic biology as natural, and relate naturalness, unpredictability and risk.

Efficiency of an air curtain as an anti-insect barrier: the honey bee as a model insect

BACKGROUND

Vector-borne diseases are of high concern for human, animal and plant health. In humans, such diseases are often transmitted by flying insects. Flying insects stop their flight when their kinetic energy cannot compensate for the wind speed. Here, the efficiency of an air curtain in preventing insects from entering a building was studied using the honey bee as a model.

RESULTS

Bees were trained to visit a food source placed in a building. The air curtain was tested with strongly motivated bees, when the visiting activity was very high. Airflow velocity was modulated by setting an air curtain device at different voltages. At the nominal voltage, the anti-insect efficiency was 99.9 ± 0.2% compared with both the number of bees at a given time in the absence of the air curtain and the number of bees before the activation of the air curtain. The efficiency decreased as the airflow velocity decreased.

CONCLUSION

The results show that an air curtain operating at an airflow velocity of 7.5 m s^-1 may prevent a strong flyer with high kinetic energy, such as the honey bee, from entering a building. Thus, air curtains offer an alternative approach for combating vector-borne diseases. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry.