8

Thursday, June 15, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS

ACROSS
1 Port initials
4 Fallon’s
predecessor
8 Negative quality
13 Late July arrival
14 No longer hung
up on
15 Composed
16 Going rate?
18 Younger
daughter of Hi
and Lois, in
comics
19 Admission of
defeat
20 Petal pusher?
22 Baseball’s Wills
and TV’s Povich
24 __ zone:
shallowest
oceanic region
that sunlight
doesn’t reach
27 Co. once led by
Baryshnikov
28 Sap sucker
31 Green prefix
32 Suffix with Bieber
34 Like aged
cheddar
36 With some
unscrambling,
the contents of
each set of
circles
40 Invoice word
41 Blow one’s fuse
42 Once-sacred
snake
43 Straight sides of
a pizza slice, e.g.
45 Relaxation
destination
48 Low-down
prank?
51 __ torpedo: “Star
Trek” weapon
54 Symbol of
complementary
principles
57 Watching intently
58 Bakery-café
chain
60 Man of steel?
62 “Wild” author
Strayed
63 Actor Baldwin
64 Tillis of country
65 “Sonatine
Bureaucratique”
composer
66 Soothing
succulent
67 Pitches during
breaks

DOWN
1 Word’s last syllable
2 Aquanaut’s base
3 Block during
rebounding, in
basketball
4 Up in the air
5 Actress Longoria
6 Soft toy brand
7 Russian city
where Turgenev
was born
8 Positive quality
9 “Fighting” Indiana
team
10 When some fans
have to wait till
11 Solitary prefix
12 “Told you!”
15 Fine fiddle
17 Med. nation
21 Sapporo sash
23 Reasonable
25 Zoning unit
26 Cut
29 Shot
30 Word repeated
twice in a Roger
Ebert title about
bad movies
32 Injured pro’s test,
perhaps
33 Toward the stern
34 “What’s doin’?”
35 Haberdasher’s
item

36 Latin American
capital
37 Like some late-
game hockey
goals
38 Hindu title
39 Wisecrack
40 Fan sound
43 __ blue
44 Words with clip
or crossroads
45 Mark of shame
46 Paid (up)

47 Cloud dwellers?
49 Guy in the kitchen
50 Deli order
52 For this reason
53 “Listen up,” to
Luis
55 Indiana-based
sports org.
56 Chutzpah
58 Best Buy buys
59 “That’s it!”
61 Flying Cloud, for
one

By Brian Thomas
©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
06/15/17

06/15/17

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Thursday, June 15, 2017

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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Anti-Zika pesticide linked to slowed brain growth

By CHETALI JAIN

Daily Staff Reporter

Since the alarming incidences of 

the Zika virus in North and South 

America in 2015, efforts to study 
the formidable infectious agent 
and find ways to prevent its spread 
have intensified. Researchers at the 
University of Michigan conducted a 
study to investigate the link between 

exposure to pesticides like naled and 
chlorpyrifos — which are used to kill 
mosquitoes that could potentially 
be carrying the virus — and child 
neurodevelopment.

The virus, which is transmitted to 

humans via a mosquito vector Aedes 
aegypti, has been linked to serious 
neonatal malformations as well 
as Guillain-Barré syndrome — an 
autoimmune disease which leads 
to nerve damage and weakness in 
adults.

John Meeker, an Environmental 

Health Sciences professor in the 
School of Public Health, oversaw the 
project that built on earlier studies 
done by Betsy Lozoff, Center for 
Human Growth and Development 
professor, and her research team.

“There has been a lack of 

human research on naled, whereas 
chlorpyrifos has been more well-
studied but not for these effects 
specifically,” Meeker said.

The 
statistically 
significant 

results of the University study 
showed there were issues with 
motor skill development in infants 
that were prenatally exposed to 
the 
aforementioned 
insecticide 

chemicals. 

According to Monica Silver, a 

research fellow at the School of 
Public Health, naled exposure is 
associated with fine motor function 
deficits, 
notably 
visual-motor 

coordination, while those exposed 
to chlorpyrifos exhibited deficits in 
both gross and fine motor functions. 
Silver acknowledged the delicate 
balance between stopping the spread 
of the virus and avoiding the adverse 
effects of such preventive measures.

“Zika is a very serious public 

health threat, but this study 
highlights that the way we go 
about combating Zika and other 
vector-borne 
diseases 
needs 

to be carefully thought out in 
order to minimize unintended 
consequences,” Silver said. “One 
of the aims of my research was to 

examine the effects of prenatal 
organophosphate 
insecticide 

exposure on infant motor function.”

Currently, 
the 
U.S. 

Environmental Protection Agency 
regulates the use of both insecticide 
chemicals. Chlorpyrifos is the 
most common way to control 
agricultural pests. However, the 
United States no longer licenses 
the chemical due to its propensity 
for causing neurotoxic damage.

The study was innovative in 

its incorporation of the potential 
ecological 
effect 
to 
Lozoff’s 

study 
of 
iron 
deficiency 
and 

neurodevelopment.

“This is an example where we 

leveraged NIH funding by building 
an environmental exposure study 
on top of a nutrition study,” Lozoff 
said.

Future 
directions 
shared 

among the researchers include 
a 
shift 
toward 
studies 
that 

examine 
different 
ways 
to 

control the spread of Zika while 
simultaneously taking into account 
the unintentional costs of doing so.

“Holistic approaches addressing 

the full spectrum of the issue to 
reduce Zika-carrying mosquito 
populations, 
mosquito-human 

interactions, and mosquito bites 
should be considered in order to 
minimize both the spread of the 
virus and the amount of potentially 
harmful chemicals used,” Meeker 
said.

Investigators hope that their 

research exposing the detrimental 
effects 
of 
the 
chemicals 
on 

neonatal health will encourage 
future studies to focus on the 
impact of such pesticide usage 
on the environment and human 
health.

 
 
 
 
 
 FILE PHOTO/DAILY

The University of Michigan School of Public Health