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Will we ever Â get rid of bed bugs? Nothing makes the skin crawl more than the idea that tiny bloodsucking bugs could be living in our bedrooms.

Around the size of a lentil, the common bed bug*,Cimex lectularius, can drink up to seven times its own weight in blood in one feeding,

Since the late 1990s, the bed bug has become an increasingly common urban nuisance in homes and hotels worldwide.

A 2010 survey from the University of Kentucky and the National Pest Management Association found that 95%of US pest control companies had treated a bed bug infestation in the previous year

Only last month, New york's Department of health and Mental hygiene, a resource for other people with bed bug infestations, had to fumigate one of its floors.

According to the survey, the majority of pest control operators from Europe, Africa, Australia and North america said bed bugs were the most difficult insect pest to control, more so than ants, termites and even the formidable cockroach.

bed bug treatments grew by a quarter each year between 2000 and 2006. The worst aspect about this is that we thought we had tackled the bed bug problem before.

Clive Boase a pest management consultant in Suffolk and author of the London survey, says that UK bedbug numbers began decreasing in the 1930s, thanks to changes in social housing and public health policies,

which led to the demolition of old publicly-funded housing and teams of inspectors checking homes for vermin, respectively.

Or, is there any relief to be found in the myriad bed bug products and services on the market, from growth regulators to heat treatments?

an entomologist and bed bug expert from Virginia Tech, are"not practical to use in a widespread way because of the cost.

Because bed bugs live primarily in the bedroom, chemical companies must provide extensive toxicity data to prove it is safe for indoor use,

Even if making a new bed bug insecticide were lucrative, there are other challenges. There is the problem of figuring out how a chemical has to function in order to best kill bed bugs cheaply, efficiently and safely.

This requires intimate knowledge of the bed bug's basic biology. But, because bed bugs were at such low levels for decades,

interest in studying them waned. Starting in the early 2000s, once it was clear the resurgence was real

and that bed bugs weren't going anywhere, scientists had to relearn bed bug basics from scratch, starting with fundamental aspects as how to raise them in a lab. Then there is the problem of paying for the research.

While dozens of labs now work on the basic science of bed bugs worldwide, funding remains low in part

because bed bugs are known not to spread disease. Finally, there is the problem of insecticide resistance. Even DDT, the supposed miracle cure, wasn't immune to this.

Five years after the pesticide was in widespread use in the US, DDT-resistant bed bugs popped up in Hawaii;

in the 1950s and 1960s, resistant strains were found elsewhere in the US and in Japan, Korea, Iran, Israel and French guiana,

to name a few. No chemical insecticide is immune to resistance, particularly if it is overused. Today, roughly 90%of bed bugs have a genetic mutation that makes them resistant to pyrethroids,

a class of insecticides commonly used for bed bugs that work in a similar way to DDT. Stopping spread So,

chemicals are not the sole answer. Neither, it seems, are any other options when used alone."

where they are used sometimes sparingly along with heat treatments (bed bugs die at 45c), desiccants such as silica gel and diatomaceous earth that fatally dry the bugs out,

or IGRS, are chemicals that prevent bed bugs from completing their lifecycle, stunting their growth so they can't reproduce.

In the meantime, public awareness measures can keep bed bugs from spreading. Good practices include: checking hotel room beds before unpacking,

and box springs in encasements specifically intended to keep away bed bugs, which may make the bed easier to treat

Â But, with cheaper tools, we may be able to knock bed bug levels back down everywhere. Or at least, he adds,

Entomologists always use two words for insects that are true to the common name they have oe so for example,

house fly is two words because those are actually flies, but butterfly is one word

But a new report in the August 10th issue of Current Biology, shows that plant-dwelling pea aphids have designed a strategy to help them avoid that dismal fate:

The insects sense mammalian breath and simply drop to the ground. oetiny insects like aphids are not helpless

we suspected that the aphids responded to our own breath, he said. The researchers later used snorkels to keep their own breath from mucking up their experiments.

The researchers allowed a goat to feed on potted alfalfa plants infested with aphids. oestrikingly, 65 percent of the aphids in the colonies dropped to the ground right before they would have been eaten along with the plant,

the researchers write. That mass dropping might have been triggered by many cues: plant shaking, sudden shadowing,

While a quarter of the aphids dropped when plants were shaken, more than half fell to the ground in response to a lambs breath, the researchers report.

Shadows had no effect on the aphids dropping behavior. Ladybugs, an insect enemy of aphids, didnt inspire that kind of synchronous response either.

Further studies with an artificial breath apparatus allowed the researchers to test what it was about the breath that tipped the aphids off.

It turned out it wasnt carbon dioxide or other known chemical ingredients found on mammalian breath. Only when the controlled airstream was both warm and humid did it lead to impressive dropping rates of 87 percent in a room with otherwise low humidity Inbar said that the aphids oeelegant solution to the problem of incidental

predation is practiced likely by other species as well. oethis remarkable response to mammalian-specific cues, in spite of the inherent cost of an aphids dropping off the plant, points to the significance of mammalian herbivory to plant-dwelling insects,

the researchers concluded. oewe predict that this sort of escape behavior in response to mammalian breath may be found among other invertebrates that live on plants

#Aphids Genome Reflects Its Reproductive, Symbiotic Lifestyle Colony of young aphids. Aphids could be considered the oemosquitoes of the plant world,

depending on the oeblood of plants to survive. They live in symbiosis with bacteria that pass from one generation to the next,

Aphids with the same genotype can be winged wingless or. In different seasons, they develop as asexual females who produce offspring with identical genes through parthenogenesis.

The genome of the pea aphid sequenced by the International Aphid Genomics Consortium, reflects these unusual characteristics

and more, said Dr. Stephen Richards, assistant professor in the Baylor College of Medicine Human genome Sequencing Center

The consortium released the 464 megabyte draft genome of the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) in the current issue of PLOS Biology. oebecause this is a different kind of insect not a fruit fly, not a beetle,

said that even though he pushed hard to get the aphid genome sequenced, oeit turned out to be far more interesting than

He agreed with Richards that the aphid presents a special case. oelook at this little insect,

a corresponding author of the paper. oethus it seems that pea aphids (one among the 4,

500 other aphid species on the planet) have duplicated some of their genes, said Dr. Denis Tagu,

It means that the pea aphid probably did a kind of backup of its genetic material.

the pea aphid adapt to its environment. oeanother possibility is that maybe aphids require extra copies of genes

Stern said. oemaybe the aphids need all these to regulate all parts of their life cycles.

Later, Buddhist chants echoed the buzz of cicadas from nearby trees as Abe burned paper inscribed with the names of the dead, a ritual in

and other Superbugs Even more health benefits from honey are being identified. The Guardian reports that Welsh scientists are collecting honey to help identify new antibacterial drugs.

spawning deadly superbugs, #and ultimately making people and animals sick. In other words, if more farmers switch from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOS) to open pastures, there will be no need to grow imitation meat in a lab. Photo credit:

according to APHIS. The program will most certainly be more timely and efficient, #for a biotech industry that has gained 7 million acres of crop cultivation in two years,

Aphids and flea beetles are the two most common insect pests when growing peppers. While both can be controlled with insecticidal soap,

A tomato leaf spray will get rid of aphids, and garlic/hot pepper spray works very well on a flea beetle infestation. 7. Beets Beets are a great two-fer#crop#you can harvest the beet roots, of course,

There is growing concern among health care experts and policy makers about antibiotic resistance and the rise of superbugs,

it s also meant the onset of superbugs. According to the National Academy of Sciences roughly 70 percent of the antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs used in the U s. are fed to farm animals

Cicadas, locusts, crickets, dragonflies, flies are spared not either. While two billion people are perfectly fine with eating insects,

10 grams of hops can be the home for 2, 500 aphids...#oe The disgust you may be experiencing right now is unfortunate.

The key is an alarm pheromone that some species of wild plant have evolved to mimic the chemical warning signals put out by aphids#a major crop pest in the temperate zones

#17-Year Cicadas Are Buzzing In! What to Expect The U s. Northeast is about to be snowed under by cicadas.

Don't worry though it's normal. The pesky invasion is just so unusual that people tend to forget about it.

After 17 years underground the so-called Brood II cicadas are about to have their time in the sun. Millions of these root-sucking insects will come out into the open

This brief overpopulation of cicadas in April and May is supposed to overwhelm what predators are able to eat explained Jim Fredericks the National Pest Management Association's director of technical services.

6 Crazy Facts About Cicadas Bird species raccoons possums foxes and whatever can get their mouths on these things can eat their fill

or to property although occasionally a car parked under a cicada-infested tree could get covered in small droppings.

Hormones drive the cycle Cicadas (erroneously called locusts) are backed large dark insects related to aphids and leafhoppers.

The United states hosts several cicada species. Many of them emerge every year but there are also distinct populations that only mature every 13 or 17 years.

when the cicadas will emerge biologists believe. After cicadas emerge from the ground and mate the females lay eggs at the edges of tree branches

which can damage the branches on a small tree. A single female can produce hundreds of eggs across several batches.

In annual cicadas these stages pass quickly while 13-or 17-year cicadas see a much more prolonged childhood In the case of these cicadas they are triggered to not produce the hormones essential for becoming an adult until those numbers of years have passed Hartley said.

It's all in their genes and their development and that is the adaptation that they have acquired to achieve these mass emergences.

Few underground life studies It's difficult to study the cicada cycle as much of it takes place underground.

when the cicadas are still nymphs. Most mortality takes place in the first or second nymph stage said Chris Simon a cicada researcher at the University of Connecticut.

There's competition for feeding space underground. The cicadas may die in battle fighting with each other for food

but nobody knows that for sure yet. They have digging claws that can dig through hard dirt

The 13-and 17-year cicadas are the only ones that spend such a long period as juveniles except for insects that diapause

but stink bugs (Hemiptera order) are consumed throughout Asia South america and Africa. The insects are a rich source of important nutrients including protein iron potassium

But aphids the pesky insects that feed on plants thrive inside the Mall of America's many landscaped areas.

Aphids however have a natural enemy: Ladybugs members of the coccinellid family of beetles which are valued by gardeners for their habit of eating pests like aphids.

Ladybugs are what I like to call sort of a biological defense system Lydell Newby the Mall of America's senior manager of environmental services told local news station KARE 11.

#As Superbugs Rise, New Studies Point To Factory Farms (Op-Ed) Peter Lehner is executive director of the Natural resources Defense Council (NRDC.

Finally treatment with a potent form of the antibiotic cephalosporin managed to beat back the multidrug-resistant superbug.

or fields fertilized with pig manure is also at greater risk of getting infected by a superbug.

For decades scientists have been teasing out the link between the abuse of antibiotics on livestock farms and the rise of superbug infections in humans.

#Honey Not a Contender in The Fight Against Superbugs (Op-Ed) This article was published originally atâ The Conversation.

There are no new drugs in the pipeline to fix the superbug problem. And when times are tough

and methods to diagnose superbug infections. This article was published originally at The Conversation. Read the original article.

but then suddenly grow elongated flagella whiplike appendages to propel them to a new region to inhabit. 6 Superbugs to Watch out For Tufenkji's group found that cranberry powder in a petri dish limited the growth of flagella

The bacteria are spread from tree to tree by a tiny insect called the Asian citrus psyllid The New york times reports.

Between 1985 and 2003 officials intercepted 170 cases of Asian citrus psyllids entering U s. ports on plant material according to a report from the University of California Davis Division of Agriculture and Natural resources.

while Washington state University has begun a $9-million five-year project to develop genetically modified psyllids that cannot transmit citrus greening.

#Nature Aids Science to Take on Bed bugs This Research in Action article was provided to Livescience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

Taking up the fight against bed bugs research scientists have looked to old European folk practice kidney bean leaves.

Traditionally in Bulgaria Serbia and other southeast European countries households with infestations of bed bugs have thwarted the evasive little bloodsuckers by strewing kidney bean leaves on the floor at night.

In the morning the bed-bug-studded leaves are swept up and burned in piles. This method was documented scientifically in the 1940s.

and with the advent of the pesticide DDT bed bugs became less of a problem in many places.

But as many people are aware the 1990s saw the beginnings of a bed bug resurgence in cities all around the world

When you put a bed bug on a bean leaf and it takes a few steps and this actually happens fairly rapidly I was astonished rather...

Hopefully Loudon said this technology could help relieve some of the problems that the burgeoning pesticide-resistant bed bug populations are causing internationally.

In the eastern United states an invasive sap-sucking bug called the adelgid is also killing off hemlocks.

#Tree-Killing Insects Adapting to Warmer Cities Bizarre-looking bugs known as scale insects may be tiny but they can take down an oak tree.

A new study shows that scale insects are found in big numbers in populous regions because they have adapted to the heat of urban areas.

And if climate change causes temperatures to rise in forests as we expect we may see scale insects becoming a much bigger problem for ecosystem health.

Frank and his colleagues analyzed the Raleigh N c. populations of the oak lecanium scale insect (Parthenolecanium quercifex)

The team then collected scale insect egg sacs from both hot and cool zones and incubated them in hot and cool greenhouses.

The scale insects in the hotter urban zones appear to have adapted or acclimated to the higher temperatures in urban environments study researcher Emily Meineke a doctoral student at NC State said in the statement.

Rising numbers of scale insects in cities could spell trouble for city trees which can provide some environmental benefits like cooling through shade and carbon sequestration.

And if global temperatures continue to rise scale insects could spread outside cities and infest more rural trees the researchers warn.

Invasives and other effects Warming has brought already the hemlock wooly adelgid northward devastating hemlock trees Iverson said.

The adelgid is clearly a climate change-related pest limited by temperature he said. As climate change continues to alter habitats sending insects

To that end Halberg studies how a water bug called a tardigrade can withstand spacelike conditions. The water bugs dehydrate

and go into an extreme hibernation with zero metabolism he said thereby withstanding the punishing radiation desiccation and frigid temperatures of space.

Many of the creatures with expanded ranges are invasive pests like the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) and the hemlock wooly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) both

Populations of hemlock wooly adelgids which kill evergreens by feeding on the plants'needles year-round are expected to plummet.

The lethal temperature for the woolly adelgid is minus 4 or 5 degrees Fahrenheit negative 20 or negative 21 degrees C Richard S. Cowles a scientist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station told The New york times. I was cheering a couple of days ago

because most of the adelgids will be dying from the temperatures we saw. Other vulnerable pests include the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis) the brown marmorated stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys) and ticks (Ixodes sp.

Asian Carp Spread to Upper Mississippi In my home state of Ohio people who love natural areas are about to get such a cold wet slap in the face in the form of the hemlock woolly adelgid#a tiny aphid-like insect

Those trees will likely be gone before too long victims of the adelgid #and the guides say rafters will notice the change

I didn't tell them that before my grandchildren are grown the adelgid is likely to kill those hemlocks as they have up to 90 percent of the hemlocks in the Great smoky mountains national park in The Nature Conservancy's Greenland Gap Preserve in West virginia

Experiments with a tiny Asian beetle that is a natural predator to the adelgid show some promise in keeping the insects in check.

And scientists are working on an adelgid-resistant strain of hemlock. In the meantime expensive chemical treatments may keep enough hemlocks alive long enough to find a solution. 6 Invasive Pests Threatened by Cold weather Next time

but stink bugs (Hemiptera order) are consumed throughout Asia South america and Africa. The insects are a rich source of important nutrients including protein iron potassium

The bacteria are spread from tree to tree by a tiny insect called the Asian citrus psyllid.

True bugs with mouthparts modified for piercing and sucking plant materials evolved during the Permian. Other new groups included the cicadas and beetles.

Two important groups of animals dominated the Permian landscape: Synapsids and Sauropsids. Synapsids had skulls with a single temporal opening

As Superbugs Rise New Studies Point To Factory Farms (Op-Ed) We will work with our suppliers to establish action plans to address these practices

and now live on top of a building on campus where their main forage might be drops of soda on discarded cans around campus says Moran who for many years studied the maternally transmitted symbionts of aphids

The best way to confirm an active lice infestation is to find a live louse on the head according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP.

The most effective way to check for lice is to use a louse comb according to the AAP.

In a study published in 2001 in the journal Pediatric Dermatology researchers found that using a louse comb was four times more effective than simply doing a visual check of the scalp for lice

and that checks with the louse comb could be performed two times faster than visual checks. Dandruff dirt and other common debris found in the hair are confused commonly for lice according to the CDC.

or insecticides that kill lice as well as combing the hair with a louse comb that removes lice and nits.

The manual removal of lice recommended by the NPA can be performed using the same type of fine-toothed louse comb used to check the scalp for lice.

Louse combs can be used on wet or dry hair though some experts suggest that combing out lice

and is known for spreading among hospital patients. 6 Superbugs to Watch out For About one-third of people in the general population carry the human-associated strain of Staphylococcus aureus in their noses at any given time according to the Centers for Disease Control

As Superbugs Rise New Studies Point To Factory Farms (Op-Ed) Awful indeed as is the amount of time the animals spend wallowing in manure often not only their own.

Invasive insects such as the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) and the hemlock wooly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) both of which have decimated native tree populations in the Northeast may have had their march across America slowed

Specifically it ought to make a difference to gloomy scale insects. These little sap-sucking insects seem to like it hot.

if warming gives scales such a powerful boost in the city global warming could do the same thing for scale insects in rural forests.

But perhaps we could scavenge scale-insect information from another source#nd this is why I became extremely grateful to scores of plant biologists like the one who archived a foot-long maple twig from Hill Forest in 1971.

It turns out that many of these old twigs still have stuck scale insects intact firmly but inconspicuously to the spots where they once lived.

During relatively cool historical time periods only 17%of branches had scale insects. But during relatively hot periods 36%were infested.

if scale insects benefit from warming in rural forests as they do in the city. Furthermore the most heavily infested twigs were had ones that grown at temperatures similar to those of modern urban Raleigh.

Although the rural scale insects clearly benefited from warming just as they do in Raleigh they still never got as abundant as the ones we see in town.

and to control mosquitoes and blackflies. The cost to treat one child with Bt would be 28 cents, Aroian estimates.

Numbers of mirid bugs (insects of the Miridae family), previously only minor pests in northern China, have increased 12-fold since 1997,

Mirids are now a main pest in the region, says Wu. Their rise in abundance is associated with the scale of Bt cotton cultivation.

Wu and his colleagues suspect that mirid populations increased because less broad-spectrum pesticide was used following the introduction of Bt cotton.

Mirids are not susceptible to the Bt toxin so they started to thrive when farmers used less pesticide,

Mirids can reduce cotton yields just as much as bollworms, up to 50%when not controlled, Wu adds.

The rise of mirids has driven Chinese farmers back to pesticides they are currently using about two-thirds as much as they did before Bt cotton was introduced.

As mirids develop resistance to the pesticides, Wu expects that farmers will soon spray as much as they ever did.

and trying to reduce mirid damage to cotton by growing crops the pests prefer nearby.

Meanwhile, Chinese researchers are trying to develop cotton plants that kill both bollworms and mirids. Wu stresses,

If you have something like aphids or thrips, where there are thousands on a plant, it's kind of hard to release enough sterile insects to do any good,

and reduce the amount of weeds and harmful pests such as the rice planthopper. This invasive insect has the potential to devastate entire rice fields an outbreak in Thailand last year destroyed four per cent of the country's harvest.

The development of new countermeasures, from diagnostics to antibiotics and antivirals to respirators, will help protect human lives in the face of new bugs and superbugs.

Since last week, Cooley, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, has been on the road mapping populations of periodical cicadas (Magicicada.

Like a handful of other cicada researchers on the prowl from North carolina to New york, Cooley knows that he has to work quickly."

"Time is the real enemy here, for both the cicadas and the researchers, he says."

The insect genus with the longest known life cycles, Magicicada has confounded scientists for centuries. In 1665, the first volume of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society included a report from New england concerning"swarms of strange insects,

Of the thousands of cicada species known around the world, only the seven Magicicada species,

At the southern end of their range, Magicicada populations have split into three mixed-species broods that emerge every 13 Â years.

Brood II cicadas have grown through five larval stages underground, where they survived by sucking fluids from tree roots.

the cicadas can chorus at more than 95 decibels loud enough to harm human hearing as the males woo the females.

Biologists generally agree that the giant synchronized emergence of periodical cicadas overwhelms potential predators, allowing some of the relatively defenceless insects to reproduce.

And some researchers have proposed that the cicadas have evolved life cycles around prime numbers of years because that arrangement limits the chances that predators will synchronize with the cicadas.

But these ideas do not address why the generations specifically last for 13 Â or 17 Â years.

which periodical cicadas emerge. Birds feed on cicadas, so Koenig expected to find the opposite pattern. He proposes that the masses of cicadas trigger long-term changes in the forest that end up causing bird populations to crash after 13 or 17 Â years.

The mechanism remains a mystery, but Koenig notes that one factor could be the flood of dead cicadas,

whose bodies are 10%nitrogen. The die off sends a pulse of fertilizer into the forest that temporarily enhances plant growth

but could later lead to unfavourable conditions for birds.""It s a pretty weird hypothesis, he admits.

Ron Edmonds/AP Photoa cicada moults for the last time before taking wing. To synchronize their emergence, the nymphs must somehow keep track of how long they have been underground.

in 2007, some Brood XIV cicadas emerged a year early, following a strong winter thaw during which trees produced leaves,

But no one knows how cicadas remember the number of years since they last emerged. Researchers are making more progress in probing the biological mechanisms that allow cicadas to switch their life cycles.

2013), a team including Cooley developed an evolutionary tree for Magicicada and found that the major species groups had repeatedly split into 13-year and 17-year cohorts.

plans to follow up those results with several genetic studies, including sequencing the RNA transcripts of genes that are active at different stages in the cicada life cycle.

She is interested particularly in probing the occasional tendency of periodical cicadas to emerge 4 Â years early or late.

Kritsky documented thousands of cicadas appearing last week in a spot where he saw stragglers in 2000,

four years before the city was inundated with the expected 17-year cicadas of Brood X. The arrival of cicadas in the same place this year might mean that an environmental change such as global warming is causing them to emerge early,

The long generations of the periodical cicadas makes studying them difficult, he says.""You would think we d have a lot of answers