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Background: Determination of blood-meal hosts in blood-fed female Anopheles mosquitoes is important for evaluating vectorial capacity of vector populations and assessing effectiveness of vector control measures. Sensitive molecular methods are needed to detect traces of host blood in mosquito samples, to differentiate hosts, and to detect mixed host blood meals. This paper describes a molecular probe-based quantitative PCR for identifying bloodmeal hosts in Anopheles malaria vectors from Papua New Guinea. Methods:TaqMan oligonucleotide probes targeting specific regions of mitochondrial or nuclear DNA of the three primary Anopheles blood-meal hosts, humans, pigs and dogs, were incorporated into a multiplex, quantitative PCR which was optimized for sensitivity and specificity.Results: Amplification of serially diluted DNA showed that the quantitative PCR detected as low as 10 −5 ng/μl of host DNA. Application to field-collected, blood-fed Anopheles showed that the quantitative PCR identified the vertebrate hosts for 89% (335/375) of mosquitoes whereas only 55% (104/188) of blood-meal samples tested in a conventional PCR were identified. Of the 104 blood-fed Anopheles that were positive in both PCR methods, 16 (15.4%) were identified as mixed blood meals by the quantitative PCR whereas only 3 (2.9%) were mixed blood meals by the conventional PCR. Conclusions:The multiplex quantitative PCR described here is sensitive at detecting low DNA concentration and mixed host DNA in samples and useful for blood-meal analysis of field mosquitoes, in particular mixed-host blood meals.

There is room for topical and theoretical expansion in the literature on gender and ICT4D (information and communications technologies for development) to better prepare critiques and policy applications that improve gender equity. A constructivist approach was taken to understand the relationship between gender and technology utilizing insights from science and technology studies. Existing theory on the relationship between gender and technology was conceptualized as three categories: women using ICTs as laborers, women using ICTs for leisure, and ICTs as infrastructure impacting women.Thirty articles from four journals (Gender, Technology, and