Thursday, January 07, 2010
A nearly $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation is enabling a Penn State-led group of researchers to continue studies on the potential effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue. The grant is part of federal stimulus funding authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (more)
Monday, August 03, 2009
Daytime temperature fluctuations greatly alter the incubation period of malaria parasites in mosquitoes and alter transmission rates of the disease. Consideration of these fluctuations reveals a more accurate picture of climate change's impact on malaria. Most studies use average monthly temperatures to study the impact of climate change on the global malaria burden," said Matthew Thomas, professor of entomology, Penn State. "But mosquitoes and the malaria parasites developing within them do not experience average temperatures; they are exposed to temperatures that fluctuate throughout the day." (more)
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Temperature is an important factor in the spread of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases, but researchers who look at average monthly or annual temperatures are not seeing the whole picture. Global climate change will affect daily temperature variations, which can have a more pronounced effect on parasite development, according to a Penn State entomologist."We need higher resolution environmental and biological data to understand how climate change will affect the spread of the malaria parasite," says Matthew Thomas, professor of entomology. We need to understand temperature from the point of view of the mosquito." (more)
