Hundreds of thousands of people die annually from malaria; a protozoan of the genus Plasmodium is responsible for this mortality. The Plasmodium parasite undergoes several life stages within the mosquito vector, the transition between which require passage across the lumen of the mosquito midgut. It has been observed that in about 15% of parasites that develop ookinetes in the mosquito abdomen, sporozoites never develop in the salivary glands, indicating that passage across the midgut lumen is a significant barrier in parasite development (Gamage-Mendis et al., 1993). We aim to investigate a possible correlation between passage through the midgut lumen and drug-resistance trends in Plasmodium falciparum parasites. This study contains a total of 1024 Anopheles mosquitoes: 187 Anopheles gambiae and 837 Anopheles funestus samples collected in high malaria transmission areas of Mozambique between March and June of 2016. Sanger sequencing will be used to determine the prevalence of known resistance alleles for anti-malarial drugs: chloroquine resistance transporter (pfcrt), multidrug resistance (pfmdr1) gene, dihydropteroate synthase (pfdhps) and dihydrofolate reductase (pfdhfr). We compare prevalence of resistance between abdomen and head/thorax in order to determine whether drug resistant parasites are disproportionately hindered during their passage through the midgut lumen. A statistically significant difference between resistance alleles in the two studied body sections supports the efficacy of new anti-malarial gene surveillance strategies in areas of high malaria transmission.

This study documents and explores the process of designing a device to decrease the indoor temperature and particulate matter concentration in the air of corrugated steel homes in sub-Saharan Africa. The device, named the Roof Tube, generates power from a solar panel that goes towards powering a motor that rotates blades to output a desired airflow to draw air out from the inside environment. Excess power generated goes towards charging a battery pack during the day that then powers the motor and a light (to improve indoor living quality) during the night when the solar panel cannot collect any more energy. Calculations were done to estimate the ambient indoor temperature of a model home based on the heat transfer from the sun. From this, a rough airflow was determined to offset the temperature difference between the indoor and outdoor environment. A computational fluid dynamics test was performed to determine the effectiveness of the housing design. Results from all tests displayed a low difference between outdoor and indoor temperatures leading to a low prediction of outlet airflow. The designed device prioritized effectiveness, it displaces air at 2700 cfm and charges a 54000mAh battery pack that, when solar energy generation is cut off, can power the motor and light simultaneously for on average 3.02 hours, the motor alone for 8.88 hours, and the light alone for 4.57 hours.