Even in the technology-intensive world of medicine, there’s a lot to be said for simplicity. A new study [PDF] from the World Health Organization (WHO), which monitored 340 locations in five countries for five years, finds that bed nets treated with pesticide continue to stop malaria transmission, even as mosquitoes develop pesticide resistance. The report was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (ASTMH).

Mosquito nets have literally been around for ages; the Greek historian Herodotus noted their use in Egypt as early as the 5th century BCE. For all that time, they were pretty effective—certainly effective enough that people kept using them—but that efficacy got a boost in the mid-20th century when we started spraying them with pesticide. The year 2000 saw the introduction of the long-lasting insecticidal net (LLIN), an inexpensive bed net made with insecticide-treated fabric that drove down the number of malaria cases even further.

But heavy insecticide use has its costs. Pesticides are similar to antibiotics, in that they can’t kill every single one of the species they’re meant to destroy. The survivors reproduce, creating new generations that are able to resist the treatment. And the more we use, the faster they can adapt. We’re now facing a crisis of antibiotic resistance, and pesticide resistance is not far behind. Mosquitoes in 60 countries have already developed a resistance to the pesticides used in LLINs.

 
Consequently, researchers at the WHO’s Global Malaria Programme were concerned that the rise of pesticide-resistant mosquitoes would create a decrease in LLIN effectiveness. They spent five years surveying LLIN use and pesticide resistance in 340 sites in malaria-heavy Benin, Cameroon, India, Kenya, and Sudan.

The results were surprisingly positive. People who used LLINs around their beds at night were significantly less likely than others to become infected. From 2000 to 2015, the WHO estimates, interventions like LLINs prevented around 663 million new malaria infections in sub-Saharan Africa. And of those potential cases, 69 percent were prevented by LLINs.

Co-author Tessa Knox of the WHO notes that the potency of LLINs comes not from the pesticide or the net alone, but from their combined power. “A resistant mosquito may not die immediately after landing on a net, but it could continue to absorb insecticide as it seeks a way to get through and bite a person beneath the net,” she said in a statement. “This may eventually kill the mosquito and stop onward transmission of malaria parasites.”

Encouraging though these findings may be, experts caution that there’s still a lot more work to do as pesticide resistance continues to spread.

Stephen Higgs is president of the ASTMH. “This study provides encouraging news that we have not yet run out of time in battling insecticide resistance,” he said in the statement. “However, we must take advantage of the time we now have to invest in research and generate new tools that will allow us to finally defeat this complex and challenging disease.”

A handful of those new tools are already in the works. Some researchers are exploring chicken feathers as a natural mosquito repellent, while others are developing high-tech pills that could deliver a week’s worth of malaria medication with one swallow.

The human body is an amazing thing. For each one of us, it’s the most intimate object we know. And yet most of us don’t know enough about it: its features, functions, quirks, and mysteries. Our series The Body explores human anatomy part by part. Think of it as a mini digital encyclopedia with a dose of wow.

The brain is arguably the one organ that makes you who you are—and the largest part of the brain is the neocortex. Taking up a vast amount of space in your skull, the neocortex is what allows you to do many things you take for granted, such as write and speak, have social interactions, and muse philosophically about the meaning of life. But you might not have known these nine crucial facts about this critical part of your brain.

1. IT’S THE “NEWEST” ADDITION TO YOUR BRAIN.

You might have guessed that, considering the name. The origin of the neocortex is surprisingly recent, evolutionarily speaking. It dates back to reptiles of the Carboniferous Period, about 359 million years ago. It emerged then as “a uniform, six-layered sheet consisting of radially deployed neurons” in the first small mammals who appeared during the transition of the Triassic and Jurassic periods.

2. IT TAKES UP MOST OF THE SPACE IN YOUR BRAIN.

The human neocortex accounts for a whopping 76 percent of your gray matter.

3. YOU WON’T FIND IT IN BIRDS OR REPTILES.

 
The reason birds, lizards, and frogs can’t do much more than attend to the basic functions of survival, and certainly will never write a poem or perform a piece of theater, may be due to the fact that they lack a neocortex. And yet some birds are incredibly clever. The term bird brain is turning out to be quite the misnomer.

4. THE NEOCORTICES OF EARLY MAMMALS WERE MUCH SMALLER.

The fossil record tells us that early mammals were typically small—generally somewhere between mouse- and cat-sized. They likely had small brains with much smaller neocortices [PDF].

5. YOUR NEOCORTEX CAN DEVELOP NEW NEURONS IN ADULTHOOD.

In 1999, contrary to previous theories, scientists were surprised to discover that the adult neocortex can in fact experience neurogenesis—the growth of new neurons. This helped develop a theory about plasticity in the brain—the idea that even adult brains can be retrained and strengthened after adulthood.

6. IT MAY BE THE SEAT OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

 
The neocortex controls language and consciousness, among other things. It is also involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, motor commands, spatial reasoning, and conscious thought.

7. CORTICAL NEURONS ARE NOT BORN IN THE NEOCORTEX.

As the cortex develops in mammalian species, its neurons are not generated within the area, but migrate from neighboring “transient proliferative embryonic zones” near the surface of the cerebral lateral ventricles.

8. THE NEOCORTEX BUILDS CONNECTIONS BETWEEN PARTS OF THE BRAIN.

A team at Yale’s Kavli Institute for Neuroscience found that the human brain is “like a neighborhood”—better defined by the community living within its borders than its buildings. The team writes, “The neighborhoods get built quickly and then everything slows down and the neocortex focuses solely on developing connections, almost like an electrical grid.”

9. INJURY TO THE NEOCORTEX MAY COST YOU THE ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE.

 
If the neocortex is injured through accident, surgery or head trauma, patients may lose any number of cognitive abilities including speech, space recognition, eyesight, motor control, the ability to recognize social cues and more. Wear your helmets!

Among other things, Washington, D.C. is known for its thousands of beautiful cherry blossom trees, which flower spectacularly every March and April in an eye-popping explosion of blush-colored blooms. But on November 17, 1938, the gorgeous trees caused fireworks of a different sort.

The iconic trees have commanded attention for more than a century, with the first pair planted in 1912 by First Lady Helen Taft and the Viscountess Chinda, the wife of the Japanese Ambassador. A total of 3020 cherry trees of 12 varieties were eventually planted in the area, including East Potomac Park, the Washington Monument grounds, and the Tidal Basin. The trees grew and flourished for more than 20 years—and then the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission was formed, charged with planning the construction of the monument to our third president.

After much debate, the commission recommended that the Jefferson Memorial be erected on the Tidal Basin site where it stands today, which would require the removal of some of the cherry blossom trees. Washington society ladies, led by editor of the Washington Times-Herald Eleanor Patterson, immediately protested, horrified at the prospect of losing the natural splendor of the trees.

The media piled onto the problem, with one article estimating that nearly 600 trees would meet their untimely demises. President Franklin Roosevelt called the report “one of the most interesting cases of newspaper flimflam” he had ever come across. The trees, he promised, would be relocated—not chopped down.

Unconvinced by the president’s statement, 50 women marched on the White House on November 17, 1938, the day construction started, to deliver a petition to halt the wanton destruction of their beloved trees.

When that didn’t work, approximately 150 society ladies showed up to the construction site the next day, wearing furs and carrying chains. They snatched shovels from the workers’ hands, refilling freshly dug holes and even chaining themselves to the trees. They sang a version of Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” poem and created their own chant: “Who is it wants these grand old trees displaced? Who is it wants our fair D.C. disgraced?”

“This is the worst desecration of beauty in the capital since the burning of the White House by the British,” a woman chained to a tree declared.

Roosevelt remained unmoved by the protests: If the activists didn’t remove themselves, he said, “the cherry trees, the women and their chains would be gently but firmly transplanted in some other part of Potomac Park.”

According to the National Parks Service, the women eventually left because they needed bathrooms; Roosevelt had the trees taken out in the middle of the night instead. The protesters may have lost the battle, but they would no doubt be pleased to know that the war eventually went their way—today, there are more than 3750 cherry trees in Washington.