Month: January 2014

‘Wikipedia’ of cheap tech to get facelift

A Wikipedia-style site that gets people to upload information on sustainable technologies and has received more than 50 million page views since its launch in 2006 is going through a raft of changes aimed at improving it further.

The site, called Appropedia, is built on open-source wiki software and allows information to be shared on technologies that could help improve lives in the developing world.

“We focus on sustainable technologies and how to use them in resource-poor settings,” says Lonny Grafman, founder and president of Appropedia.

As is the case with Wikipedia, anyone can edit Appropedia pages that currently hold close to 6,000 articles on topics including agriculture, energy, water and transport.

Appropedia has also collaborated with the WHO to host a catalogue of medical devices for use in poor countries. The Global Health Medical Device Compendium was developed by students at the University of Michigan, United States

Read more at SciDevNet.

Prawns show promise in parasite control

Reintroducing prawns to lakes and rivers in which they have been partially or fully lost may be a sustainable way of controlling the parasitic disease schistosomiasis, which kills more than 200,000 people every year in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, says a study.

Researchers have found some native prawns to be voracious predators of the freshwater snails that transmit schistosomiasis parasites and so could be used as a biological control, they report in a study in press in Acta Tropica.

Field tests are under way in Senegal, and researchers suggest that farming the edible prawns could help local populations cut disease while also providing an additional source of income.

“Prawns may offer a simple and affordable transmission control solution in rural poor communities where few alternatives exist and drug treatment is failing to achieve long-term disease reductions,” the study says.

People get infected from contact with water containing schistosomiasis parasites, which are released by infected snails.

Read more at SciDevNet.