Author: kylerc210

Today was our last day working with Vector Textiles, and our second day seeing the whole group in person. The overall presentation went really well- it was a very casual environment which was really cool. We saw the other VT group for a few minutes, many of whom looked quite dapper in their suits. We even got to see Mr. Self’s dog. She is some sort of shiba mix if I remember correctly, and also very cute. Overall, the presentation day was a great success and I’m glad at how much we as a group, and also Mr. Self, was able to get out of it. He explained that he would be using our research in his work in the future, which was really exciting to hear!

Today was largely dedicated towards getting ourselves as prepared as possible for our presentation to Mr. Self tomorrow. We met up for the first time as a whole group, which was super exciting. We ended up going into a conference room and finalizing our presentation while watching Bob Ross on the TV, then taking the rest of the time to run through the our slides to each other. I really enjoyed just switching up the work environment by having us all in person, personally I feel like it really allowed me to focus a lot more while still having a lot of fun.

Today, my main goal was to prepare my research to a point where it would be ready to present at least in some form. Tomorrow, our group is planning on meeting up in person and running through some practice, and I just wanted to make sure my slides were thoroughly prepped. I mostly worked on finalizing how I would explain the climate regions’ relationship with temperature, mosquito population, and therefore permethrin efficacy. In the image below, I wanted to highlight the Af and Aw/As regions picture in light and dark blue in sub-Saharan Africa. From our research, this seems to be one of the most heavily impacted areas.

 

Today we finished up our research and began putting the presentation together. We started off with a quick call with Mr. Self, then joined together to talk about our rough plans for what would go into the presentation. A big portion of it just centered around the 3 groups we had already created, which I think is the most efficient way to divide up the information we wanted to present. Overall I am super excited to continue putting the presentation together!

Today was spent finalizing our research. I really wanted to end the research process by having some solid conclusions drawn about how the regions in sub-Saharan Africa are affected by permethrin, and I think I was able to do this. I think the biggest questions I have from today’s research relates to the almost completely negative relationship between temperature and mosquito mortality when exposed to permethrin. Interestingly, at a range of 30-32, there is actually a positive relationship, which was confusing to me. I really want to dive deeper into that and figure out some reason behind it.

 

Today was spent going deeper into the research of regional effects of permethrin in sub-Saharan Africa. We started off with a brief check in with Mr. Self, which was really useful just to make sure we were all on the same page and doing effective work. I think one of the biggest challenges from today was tackling the issue of calculating how much permethrin would be transported in a group 225 million nets annually- it’s definitely difficult to figure out but we’ll keep working on it this week! Below is an image from my research relating permethrin efficacy and temperature, depicting generally a negative relationship in graph A.

Day 2 was spent diving into research, splitting into 3 groups of 2. I worked with Abby to find the environmental and impacts of permethrin on different regions within Sub-Saharan Africa. We called in the morning to go over an outline of the topics we wanted to research, and afterwards, spent time individually finding information and drawing conclusions. I initially looked into how climate change plays a role in permethrin’s effects in different regions. Later, I began researching the toxic effects of permethrin on fish, which is especially impactful on the more fishing-oriented regions in Africa.