Rethinking the extrinsic incubation period of malaria parasites

The time it takes for malaria parasites to develop within a mosquito, and become transmissible, is known as the extrinsic incubation period, or EIP. EIP is a key parameter influencing transmission intensity as it combines with mosquito mortality rate and competence to determine the number of mosquitoes that ultimately become infectious. In spite of its epidemiological significance, data on EIP are scant. Current approaches to estimate EIP are largely based on temperature-dependent models developed from data collected on parasite development within a single mosquito species in the 1930s. These models assume that the only factor affecting EIP is mean environmental temperature. Here, we review evidence to suggest that in addition to mean temperature, EIP is likely influenced by genetic diversity of the vector, diversity of the parasite, and variation in a range of biotic and abiotic factors that affect mosquito condition. We further demonstrate that the classic approach of measuring EIP as the time at which mosquitoes first become infectious likely misrepresents EIP for a mosquito population. We argue for a better understanding of EIP to improve models of transmission, refine predictions of the possible impacts of climate change, and determine the potential evolutionary responses of malaria parasites to current and future mosquito control tools

Learners' Assessment and Evaluation in Serious Games: Approaches and Techniques Review

International audienceRecently, there has been growing interest in the use of Serious Games (SG), as they provide a more powerful means of knowledge transfer in almost every application domain especially in the crisis management field. With this increasing adoption of SG, designing novel techniques for learners' assessment and evaluation has become of paramount importance to improve learning results and thus to maintain players' motivation. This paper focuses on the learners' assessment and evaluation in SG. After defining assessment and evaluation, we distinguish two main approaches: implicit and explicit. For each of these approaches, we present some techniques currently used in some existing games. Then we compare these different approaches and techniques. This synthesis is expected to help researchers and games creators working in this area and identifying benefits and limitations of these techniques in order to develop a new comprehensive technique that outperforms all existing ones