Plant essential oils synergize various pyrethroid insecticides and antagonize malathion in Aedes aegypti.

Pyrethroid resistance is a significant threat to agricultural, urban and public health pest control activities. Because economic incentives for the production of novel active ingredients for the control of public health pests are lacking, this field is particularly affected by the potential failure of pyrethroid-based insecticides brought about by increasing pyrethroid resistance. As a result, innovative approaches are desperately needed to overcome insecticide resistance, particularly in mosquitoes that transmit deadly and debilitating pathogens. Numerous studies have demonstrated the potential of plant essential oils to enhance the efficacy of pyrethroids. The toxicity of pyrethroids combined with plant oils is significantly greater than the baseline toxicity of either oils or pyrethroids applied alone, which suggests there are synergistic interactions between components of these mixtures. The present study examined the potential of eight plant essential oils applied in one of two concentrations (1% and 5%) to enhance the toxicity of various pyrethroids (permethrin, natural pyrethrins, deltamethrin and ß-cyfluthrin). The various plant essential oils enhanced the pyrethroids to differing degrees. The levels of enhancement provided by combinations of plant essential oils and pyrethroids in comparison with pyrethroids alone were calculated and synergistic outcomes characterized. Numerous plant essential oils significantly synergized a variety of pyrethroids; type I pyrethroids were synergized to a greater degree than type II pyrethroids. Eight plant essential oils significantly enhanced 24-h mortality rates provided by permethrin and six plant essential oils enhanced 24-h mortality rates obtained with natural pyrethrins. By contrast, only three plant essential plants significantly enhanced the toxicity of deltamethrin and ß-cyfluthrin. Of the plant essential oils that enhanced the toxicity of these pyrethroids, some produced varying levels of synergism and antagonism. Geranium, patchouli and Texas cedarwood oils produced the highest levels of synergism, displaying co-toxicity factors of > 100 in some combinations. To assess the levels of enhancement and synergism of other classes of insecticide, malathion was also applied in combination with the plant oils. Significant antagonism was provided by a majority of the plant essential oils applied in combination with this insecticide, which suggests that plant essential oils may act to inhibit the oxidative activation processes within exposed adult mosquitoes.

Essential oils enhance the toxicity of permethrin against Aedes aegypti and Anopheles gambiae.

Insecticide resistance and growing public concern over the safety and environmental impacts of some conventional insecticides have resulted in the need to discover alternative control tools. Naturally occurring botanically-based compounds are of increased interest to aid in the management of mosquitoes. Susceptible strains of Aedes aegypti (Linnaeus) (Diptera: Culicidae) and Anopheles gambiae (Meigen) (Diptera: Culicidae) were treated with permethrin, a common type-I synthetic pyrethroid, using a discriminate dose that resulted in less than 50% mortality. Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) and 35 essential oils were co-delivered with permethrin at two doses (2 and 10 µg) to determine if they could enhance the 1-h knockdown and the 24-h mortality of permethrin. Several of the tested essential oils enhanced the efficacy of permethrin equally and more effectively than piperonyl butoxide PBO, which is the commercial standard to synergize chemical insecticide like pyrethroids. PBO had a strikingly negative effect on the 1-h knockdown of permethrin against Ae. aegypti, which was not observed in An. gambiae. Botanical essential oils have the capability of increasing the efficacy of permethrin allowing for a natural alternative to classic chemical synergists, like PBO.

Causal entropic forces.

Recent advances in fields ranging from cosmology to computer science have hinted at a possible deep connection between intelligence and entropy maximization, but no formal physical relationship between them has yet been established. Here, we explicitly propose a first step toward such a relationship in the form of a causal generalization of entropic forces that we find can cause two defining behaviors of the human "cognitive niche"-tool use and social cooperation-to spontaneously emerge in simple physical systems. Our results suggest a potentially general thermodynamic model of adaptive behavior as a nonequilibrium process in open systems.

Relativistic statistical arbitrage.

Recent advances in high-frequency financial trading have made light propagation delays between geographically separated exchanges relevant. Here we show that there exist optimal locations from which to coordinate the statistical arbitrage of pairs of spacelike separated securities, and calculate a representative map of such locations on Earth. Furthermore, trading local securities along chains of such intermediate locations results in a novel econophysical effect, in which the relativistic propagation of tradable information is effectively slowed or stopped by arbitrage.