Background: Malaria vector control and research rely heavily on monitoring mosquito populations for the development of resistance to public health insecticides. One standard method for determining resistance in adult mosquito populations is the World Health Organization test (WHO bioassay). The WHO bioassay kit consists of several acrylic pieces that are assembled into a unit. Parts of the kit commonly break, reducing the capacity of insectaries to carry out resistance profiling. Since there is at present only a single supplier for the test kits, replacement parts can be hard to procure in a timely fashion.
Methods: Using computer-aided design software and widely available polylactic acid (PLA) filament as a printing material, we 3D designed and printed replacement parts for the WHO bioassay system. We conducted a comparison experiment between original WHO bioassay kits and 3D printed kits to assess congruence between results. The comparison experiment was performed on two Kenyan laboratory strains of Anopheles gambiae (s.s.), Kilifi and Mbita. Student's t-tests were used to assess significant differences between tube types. Finally, we exposed the PLA filament to common solutions used with the bioassay kit.
Results: We were able to design and print functional replacements for each piece of the WHO bioassay kit. Replacement parts are functionally identical to and interchangeable with original WHO bioassay parts. We note no significant difference in mortality results obtained from PLA printed tubes and WHO acrylic tubes. Additionally, we observed no degradation of PLA in response to prolonged exposure times of commonly used cleaning solutions.
Conclusions: Our designs can be used to produce replacement parts for the WHO bioassay kit in any facility with a 3D printer, which are becoming increasingly widespread. 3D printing technologies can affordably and rapidly address equipment shortages and be used to develop bespoke equipment in laboratories.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13071-019-3789-9 | DOI Listing |
J Dev Biol
December 2024
Comparative Histolab Padova, 35100 Padova, Italy.
The present, brief review paper summarizes previous studies on a new interpretation of the presence and absence of regeneration in invertebrates and vertebrates. Broad regeneration is considered exclusive of aquatic or amphibious animals with larval stages and metamorphosis, where also a patterning process is activated for whole-body regeneration or for epimorphosis. In contrast, terrestrial invertebrates and vertebrates can only repair injury or the loss of body parts through a variable "recovery healing" of tissues, regengrow or scarring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEndocr Metab Immune Disord Drug Targets
January 2025
Endocrine Research Center, Research Institute for Endocrine Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Background: Combination therapy with levothyroxine (L-T4) and slow-release T3 (SRT3) in the treatment of hypothyroidism results in a normal triiodothyronine/thyroxine (T3/T4) ratio above that of L-T4 monotherapy. No clinical study has been reported with SRT3 monotherapy for hypothyroidism.
Methods: This study was conducted in two parts.
Sci Rep
January 2025
College of Big Data Statistics, Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, Guiyang, 550025, China.
Deep learning has achieved significant success in the field of defect detection; however, challenges remain in detecting small-sized, densely packed parts under complex working conditions, including occlusion and unstable lighting conditions. This paper introduces YOLOv8-n as the core network to propose VEE-YOLO, a robust and high-performance defect detection model. Firstly, GSConv was introduced to enhance feature extraction in depthwise separable convolution and establish the VOVGSCSP module, emphasizing feature reusability for more effective feature engineering.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiomed Phys Eng Express
January 2025
Faculty of Information Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
In fundus images, precisely segmenting retinal blood vessels is important for diagnosing eye-related conditions, such as diabetic retinopathy and hypertensive retinopathy or other eye-related disorders. In this work, we propose an enhanced U-shaped network with dual-attention, named DAU-Net, divided into encoder and decoder parts. Wherein, we replace the traditional convolutional layers with ConvNeXt Block and SnakeConv Block to strengthen its recognition ability for different forms of blood vessels while lightweight the model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDev Growth Differ
January 2025
Kenyon College, Molecular Biology, Gambier, Ohio, USA.
Animals vary in their ability to replace body parts lost to injury, a phenomenon known as restorative regeneration. Uncovering conserved signaling steps required for regeneration may aid regenerative medicine. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are necessary for proper regeneration in species across a wide range of taxa, but it is unknown whether ROS are essential for annelid regeneration.
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