Midge Attack
The plague of the midge costs the Scottish tourism industry an estimated £268m per year - blighting the British public across the U.K. throughout summer months.
Within one hour 40,000 midges can land on an unprotected person, attacking at the rate of 4,000 bites per hour. As a result The University of Aberdeen announces today the largest number of humans as guinea pigs in a trial to combat the biting midge insect.
Step 1: Where?
Well, we're here today to go and look at a sight near Loch Ness, which is where First Group hold their duathalon event, and last year they suffered very badly from midges at one of the station points, so we're going up to have a look at that sight today to see if we can plan and carry out a really important experiment on some new repellents that we're developing at Aberdine and Rothemstead.
Step 2: Are midges dangerous?
I've never heard of anybody dying from Midge bites, but it is true that some people react quite badly to their bites. Also, they are painful bites, much more painful than mosquitoes at the time it happens. People just don't like them at all.
The first monster trial is very exciting for us, because it gives us the opportunity to work with around a thousand competitors all at one time.
Step 3: Monster challenge?
286 million pounds are lost each year to the Scottish economy because of the midge. Well the first Monster Challenge is bringing people, all sorts of people, a great cross section of society, from all walks of life, into an area like the highlands of Scotland over a period when the midge population is fairly high.
Step 4: Are midges anywhere else?
There are places, going down England, for example, local areas where you find the same species of midge, and indeed this species goes all the way down into the south of France, but you have to have the right larvael habitat, that is the key to it all. So you have to have swampy ground that will support the larvae through the wintertime.
Step 5: How to stop midges?
Well, from our research we've isolated particular chemicals that are found in non-attractive people more than others, so the first one we're going to do is use them in a scent in a puffer device inside a tent. Well, we have a very special device that we've used in some of our wind tunnel arenas in the laboratory which is a killing grid which will kill the midges as they fly into it. So we're going to places these grids in the window of the tent, and as the midges come inside towards the people inside the tent we can count them by the flashes and the cracks that they give on this grid.
We're also going to test creams and lotions, so a traditional sort of repellent type of product. We've already shown that the compounds are very effective against mosquitoes in the laboratory. We've shown that, and we've also done experiments in Africa and South America, showing that different species of mosquito are also very affected by these compounds.
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