A study of acoustic-light-thermal effects on pedestrians' overall comfort in a Cfa-climate campus during the summer.

The environmental quality, in terms of acoustic, visual, and thermal environments, significantly affects people's comfort levels. Along these lines, in this work, their comprehensive impact on people's overall comfort was systematically explored. Pedestrians' outdoor neutral points on various environmental parameters were found by performing linear regressions. Similarly, people's thermal perceptions (indicated by neutral temperatures, NT) were found to vary for both acoustic and light environments. They would be increasingly heat sensitive (R2 increases) in a noisier environment while the NTs varied for either sound or light intensity levels. From our analysis, it was demonstrated that people's overall comforts were negatively correlated with these parameters in different degrees. This work provides valuable insights for future urban design and planning studies to create better outdoor environments.

Mosquito larva distribution and natural Wolbachia infection in campus areas of Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand

Objective: To determine the prevalence of mosquito larvae in campus areas and the infection rate of endosymbiotic bacteria, Wolbachia in mosquito larvae. Method: The mosquito larvae samples were collected in residential areas and academic buildings of Suranaree University of Technology located in Northeastern Thailand during 2017-2018. Mosquito species identification was performed using GLOBE mosquito protocols and Rattanarithikul & Panthusiri's keys. The gene encoding for the surface protein of Wolbachia was amplified by PCR and confirmed by DNA sequencing. Results: Armigeres sp. is the highest proportion of mosquito larvae followed by Culex spp., Aedes albopictus, Aedes aegypti, and Toxorynchites spp., respectively. Aedes aegypti have breeding sites mostly in the containers found indoors, whereas the main breeding sites of Aedes albopictus were found in both outdoors and indoors. The House Index and Breteau Index for Aedes spp. was more than 5% and 20%, respectively, in both areas, indicating that these areas are dengue sensitive. The highest proportion of Wolbachia infection was found in the larvae of Culex spp. (86.21%), followed by Aedes albopictus (69.23%) and rarely detected in Aedes aegypti (9.09%). Conclusion: The present study reported the first natural infection of Wolbachia in mosquito larvae in Thailand. Our result suggested that the mosquito species containing higher proportion of Wolbachia are less likely to be vectors for dengue. Therefore, Wolbachia transfection in mosquito larvae could be applied as a biocontrol for dengue and other mosquito-borne disease prevention.