Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by the Austrian chemist Othmar Zeidler. DDT's insecticidal action was discovered by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller in 1939. DDT was used in the second half of World War II to limit the spread of the insect-borne diseases malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods".
The Ig Nobel Prize is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name of the award is a pun on the Nobel Prize, which it parodies, and on the word ignoble.
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. Symptoms usually begin ten to fifteen days after being bitten by an infected mosquito. If not properly treated, people may have recurrences of the disease months later. In those who have recently survived an infection, reinfection usually causes milder symptoms. This partial resistance disappears over months to years if the person has no continuing exposure to malaria.
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, commonly known as Barts or BL, is a medical and dental school in London, England. The school is part of Queen Mary University of London, a constituent college of the federal University of London, and the United Hospitals. It was formed in 1995 by the merger of the London Hospital Medical College and the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital .
Maastricht University is a public research university in Maastricht, Netherlands. Founded in 1976, it is the second youngest of the thirteen Dutch universities.
Artemisinin and its semisynthetic derivatives are a group of drugs used in the treatment of malaria due to Plasmodium falciparum. It was discovered in 1972 by Tu Youyou, who shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are now standard treatment worldwide for P. falciparum malaria as well as malaria due to other species of Plasmodium. Artemisinin is extracted from the plant Artemisia annua, sweet wormwood, a herb employed in Chinese traditional medicine. A precursor compound can be produced using a genetically engineered yeast, which is much more efficient than using the plant.
Peter Agre is an American physician, Nobel Laureate, and molecular biologist, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. In 2003, Agre and Roderick MacKinnon shared the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes." Agre was recognized for his discovery of aquaporin water channels. Aquaporins are water-channel proteins that move water molecules through the cell membrane. In 2009, Agre was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and became active in science diplomacy.
The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) is a higher education institution with degree awarding powers and registered charity located in Liverpool, United Kingdom. Established in 1898, it was the first institution in the world dedicated to research and teaching in tropical medicine. The school has a research portfolio of over £220 million, assisted by funding from organisations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and Department for International Development (DFID).
Tropical medicine is an interdisciplinary branch of medicine that deals with health issues that occur uniquely, are more widespread, or are more difficult to control in tropical and subtropical regions.
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) is a student-led organization working to improve access to and affordability of medicines around the world, and to increase research and development of drugs for neglected tropical diseases. Supported by an active board of directors and guided by an advisory board that includes Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer and Nobel Laureate Sir John Sulston, UAEM has mobilized hundreds of students on more than 100 campuses in more than 20 countries. These student advocates have convinced universities worldwide to adopt equitable global access licensing policies for licensing their medical research, in order to make life-saving health innovations affordable and accessible in low and middle income countries. UAEM has published two student-led research projects—the University Report Card, which ranks universities on their contributions to global health and has received coverage in The New York Times and others; and Re:Route, a mapping of biomedical research and development (R&D) alternatives.
Delta Phi Epsilon is an international sorority founded on March 17, 1917 at New York University Law School in Manhattan. It is one of 26 social sororities that form the National Panhellenic Conference. It has 110 active chapters, three of which are located in Canada, making the sorority an international organization.
The United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology(UNU-MERIT) is a research and training institute of the United Nations University which cooperates closely with Maastricht University, based in Maastricht in the southeastern part of the Netherlands.
Unitaid is a global health initiative that works with partners to bring about innovations to prevent, diagnose and treat major diseases in low- and middle-income countries, with an emphasis on tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS and its deadly co-infections. Founded in 2006, the organization funds the final stages of research and development of new drugs, diagnostics and disease-prevention tools, helps produce data supporting guidelines for their use, and works to allow more affordable generic medicines to enter the marketplace in low- and middle-income countries. Hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Unitaid was established by the governments of Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the United Kingdom.
The European Inter-University Association on Society, Science and Technology (ESST) is an association of universities who jointly teach and research in the field of social, scientific and technological developments. Universities from across Europe are members of the association, which was founded in 1991 and is registered as a non-profit organisation in Belgium.
The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination is a cabinet level ministry of the government of Pakistan with responsibility for national public health.
The Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) is a public health research organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C. and New Delhi. Its mission is "to produce independent, multidisciplinary research to advance the health and well-being of human populations in the United States and around the world."
The NIH Public Access Policy is an open access mandate, drafted in 2004 and mandated in 2008, requiring that research papers describing research funded by the National Institutes of Health must be available to the public free through PubMed Central within 12 months of publication. PubMed Central is the self-archiving repository in which authors or their publishers deposit their publications. Copyright is retained by the usual holders, but authors may submit papers with one of the Creative Commons licenses.
The Amazon Malaria Initiative (AMI) is a regional program that was created in 2001 by several countries sharing the Amazon basin with technical support from PAHO/WHO and financial support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and managed by USAID/Peru as part of its South American Regional Infectious Disease Program (SARI). The initiative uses a multi-pronged approach to achieve the overall aims of preventing and controlling malaria and reducing malaria-related morbidity and mortality in countries of the Americas. AMI priorities for malaria prevention are as follows, diagnosis and treatment, drug resistance and epidemiological surveillance, vector control, pharmaceutical management, quality of medicines, communication and networking.
Dominic Kwiatkowski is head of the parasites and microbes programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge and a Professor of Genomics at the University of Oxford. Kwiatkowski applies genomics and computational analysis to problems in infectious disease, with the aim of finding ways to reduce the burden of disease in the developing world.
Fredros Okumu is a Kenyan parasitologist and entomologist, who currently works as director of science at the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI) in Tanzania. His primary research interests concern the interactions between humans and mosquitoes.
