By Drake Bennett for Bloomberg Businessweek From Mashable

If you’re going to Brazil for the World Cup, don’t forget your insect repellent, and maybe one of these. The country has the highest incidence of dengue fever in the world, with 1.4 million cases reported last year. The disease infects at least 50 million people every year worldwide and kills over a million — the numbers have been rising in recent decades. Severe dengue was first spotted in Southeast Asia in the 1950s; it has now spread throughout Asia and Latin America. Recently it has spread to Europe. There is no cure and no vaccine.

The disease is carried by mosquitoes, mostly the Aedes aegypti. Found in urban areas, Ae. aegypti has proven a particularly difficult mosquito species to control — it has developed a resistance to common insecticides and, because it bites during the day, bed nets are no protection against it. But now Brazilian health officials are running a pilot program using genetically modified mosquitoes to breed the population to death. The mosquitoes are the invention of British biotech company Oxitec, and they’ve had a gene inserted into them that kills them. In the lab, the mosquitoes can be fed a sort of antidote: A supplement that keeps them alive until it’s time to release them. Once they’re released, the clock starts ticking.

Oxitec’s mosquito-suppression solution consists of releasing the modified male mosquitoes into the wild — male mosquitoes don’t bite; it’s the females who do. The Oxitec males mate with female mosquitoes and create progeny that also have the lethal gene. Without the supplement, those progeny die. “By applying the Oxitec Control Programme to an area,” the company’s website says, “the mosquito population in that area can be dramatically reduced or eliminated.”

According to a Public Radio International report, the pilot program is proving enormously popular in the region of northeastern Brazil where it is being run. The trucks driving around releasing the deadbeat mosquito males are emblazoned with “pictures of huge mosquitoes and the word ‘transgenic.’ Health officials hold frequent public meetings and are broadcasting a radio jingle explaining the project.” The biggest factor, however, seems to be that people are desperate for any solution that will help reduce the disease.

PHOTO: The yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti.IMAGE: CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION JAMES GATHANY

For more on this story go to: http://mashable.com/2014/06/11/genetically-modified-mosquitoes/?utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

EDITOR: Oxitec first released genetically modified mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands in 2010. See iNews Cayman story published September 10 2012 “Dengue mosquito population in Grand Cayman suppressed by 80%” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/dengue-mosquito-population-in-grand-cayman-suppressed-by-80/

 

Related story on World Cup using your Blackberry

Enjoy the excitement of the world’s most important football tournament with BBM

From June 12th to July 13th, the world will be all about football, and BBM offers its users new and fun ways to communicate and stay tuned with the great conversations surrounding the tournament.

Support your favourite team with new BBM sticker packs with fun team illustrations. Starting this Thursday, June 12th -throughout the day- when users enter the BBM shop, they will find packs of stickers from the following countries: Brazil, France, United States, England, Colombia, Netherlands, Nigeria, Argentina, Ecuador, Spain, Honduras, Holland, Germany and Australia.

Additionally, as part of this sports celebration, don’t forget the BBM short cuts for traditional flag icons. Users can add a flag icon of their favourite team when writing in the “Write a message” field or in the “profile name”, as well as in “what are you thinking” fields. To do this, you only need to enter the country code in any of the fields listed and it will appear automatically as illustrated:

A few code examples are (all need to include a star at the beginning and at the end): *BR* to get Brazilian flag, *MX* for Mexican flag; *CO* for Colombia, *VE* for Venezuela and *AR* for Argentina. The complete list of country codes can be found in this previous post from the BlackBerry Help Blog.

As the excitement of the big tournament is everywhere, now BBM users can share their PIN and support their team through the BBM PIN Card Creator. BBM PIN Card Creator is a tool that allows you to create BBM contact cards that are as original and creative as you want them to be. This season you’ll be able to personalize your BBM contact card with a country theme. Share your PIN card with friends through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter or via email and add them to BBM.

BBM PIN Card Creator gives you access to the flags of the 32 countries.

BBM is available for free for BlackBerry® users at BlackBerry World; for Android users it can be downloaded from Google Play and iOS users can download it from Apple App Store.

For more information about BBM visit www.BBM.com