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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Working on more affordable & environmentally-friendly traps for mosquitoes
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-11-22 18:00:00
	Description:		When there’s an outbreak of West Nile virus in California or dengue in Florida, county vector control districts will set up traps all over the place to capture mosquitoes and then test which were infected by the viruses in question. "That’s how they are able to do surveillance work and figure out where they can concentrate their effort in cleaning up the mosquitoes." That’s Anandasankar Ray, director of the Center for Disease Vector Research at the University of California, Riverside. Ray and his colleagues are using environmentally-friendly volatile molecules that can be formulated in little bottles to create affordable traps that can be set up in backyards for people to use. "At the moment, the traps that are available in the market that are successful usually have a big tank of propane or butane that it burns. They’re quite expensive. And so we feel that by using volatile odors that are safe and that can mimic carbon dioxide, we may be able to create low-cost traps, affordable ones that can be used by vector control in developing countries as well."
	Total Play:		0