利物浦阿尔伯特码头

Last month Liverpool hosted theBritish Society for Parasitology’s(BSP) 53^rdannual spring meeting. Having enjoyed and previouslyreviewedseveral of the BSPs meetings inBugbitten，今年，我决定在会议上自愿担任助手，并帮助组织臭名昭著的年轻寄生虫党（YPP）。因此，这是发生的事情 - 从这次的角度略有不同的角度来看……

Wednesday 15^thApril

会议开始的前一天，我从职责中原谅，因为我还审查了利物浦的热带医学学校（LSTM）NTD会议. Back at headquarters (LSTM) the rest of the volunteers are manically packing goody bags with leaflets and USBs, onto which we’ve lovingly uploaded copies of abstract booklets, maps and agendas, one by one.

周四16^thApril

6:00am rise-I’ve stayed with a friend to be nearer to the venue for the early start. Sporting our attractive, maroon BSP polo shirts, we head to the Liverpool docks.

7:30am-We arrive at the venue, the BT convention centre, it’s huge and shiny. Before the excitement kicks in, we realise we’ve both forgotten our posters.

8:00am-We arrive at the BT convention centre,和posters. We take a look around to familiarise ourselves with the layout. Several of the rooms have curved walls and seating areas that rotate 180°就像博士谁一样。早晨，包括将更多传单包装到所说的糖果袋中，配备注册桌，并向与会者指向非常模糊的方向。我偷偷摸摸地记下全体会议。

At the plenary session we are first updated on the emergence and spread of artemisinin resistance by Professor Dominic Kwaitkowski (Oxford University and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Intitute). Currently there is a “soft selective sweep”- that is, a reduction in variation as a result of positive selection. One of the major contributors to this is the Kelch13 mutation that confers artemisinin resistance (recentlyreviewed by Hilary Hurd). Professor Jurg Utzinger (Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute) followed with a plea for better diagnostics that are geared towards post-elimination settings e.g where very low-level parasitaemia could cause a drop in sensitivity of these tools. Finally, Professor Janet Hemingway emphasised the need for better quality control of bednets and IRS operations. Fake nets and inconsistencies in IRS can set back control programmes, wasting time and resources, as well as encouraging insecticide resistance.

12:30pm–By this time we are famished. One enterprising volunteer smuggling extra lunch packs barely makes it back to reception before a maroon swarm of helpers descends upon them. The reception is slow over lunch.

Out of the five different themed sessions I choose to attend the diagnostics stream, where I am most excited to learn about a new quantitative assay for the detection of schistosomiasis. The Up-Converting Phosphor- Lateral Flow (UCP-LF) assay is simple, low cost and the reagents are dry and stable at ambient temperatures- ideal for endemic countries. The format also allows multiplexing of different antigens, which could be useful for detecting multiple Soil Transmitted Helminths (STH) in one go.

I also learn more about a diagnostic tool that I will soon be working on as part of my PhD- the Genedrive^®. The handheld Point of Care (POC) device,analyses nucleic acids from fresh or stored samples or biospecimens to provide near-patient diagnostics.Dr Tom Edwards (LSTM) presented his research on the optimisation of preparing sputum samples for TB diagnosis for the Genedrive platform.

下午5:30-I head off to set up the Young Parasitologists’ Party (YPP) with a couple of the others, sadly missing the poster session that we’ve each submitted a poster for. Featured below next to her poster is PhD student and fellow volunteer Eva Caamaño Gutierrez, she describes her experience-

“It was great to be part of the organisation, it allowed us to see first handed how an event of this size is run and how to deal with problems that might arise. It was not only a positive experience professionally, but also very fulfilling personally as it allowed us to get to know many people and to make new friends. Given the opportunity, I will definitely do it again and I will most certainly encourage other people to do it, great fun!”.

回到餐厅，我们遇到了一些问题。承诺的麦克风不存在，餐厅拥有自己的饮料代币系统。经过一些并发症，两次计算出240个单独的饮料令牌 - 我们与餐厅经理建立了一个修改的系统，幸运的是，他们非常合作和适应。

9:00pm-The extensive buffet for 120 people is gone. Every last pizza in the establishment has been demolished. We take that as a good sign. With people excited about the promise of a pub quiz, for some time we consider making Sarah shout questions out over the speakers (now blasting 90’s music) since we aren’t allowed to turn them off. In the end we the restaurant manager prints copies of the the quiz out, which we hand out along with left over drinks tokens. This goes down particularly well- crisis averted.

Friday 17^thApril

8:00am-Bright eyed and bushy tailed, a handful of dedicated volunteers make it in for the early start and hold down the fort while the rest figure out where they’ve woken up…

下午12:30-午餐包再次ho积了en masse并分布在现在已经进入的鲜明眼睛的志愿者中。

One of my favourite talks of the conference was LSTM PhD student Lucas Cunningham, on the development of a LAMP assay for the detection ofTrypanosomaDNA在采摘苍蝇中。该测定具有令人印象深刻的敏感性，较低的单个寄生虫的检测水平较低。我可能非常有偏见，因为我与卢卡斯（Lucas）一起完成了硕士学位，但他确实赢了3^rd最佳学生奖会上讲话,所以clearly a lot of people agreed. Lucas talks about his experience giving his first BSP presentation- “I felt both apprehensive and excited to give my talk at the BSP, a lot of work had gone into the project and I really wanted to ensure I gave all those involved their dues by giving a good presentation. I was of course pleasantly surprised to have won an award and grateful for the opportunity to present at BSP Liverpool 2015. I feel that the subject of a new xenomonitoring tool for sleeping sickness is an important one when trying to realise the aim of eradicating the disease by 2020, and I think this was reflected in the award that the talk received.

下午5:30-The view from the top of the Maritime Museum where the conference dinner is being held is spectacular. Sat at a table with the rest of the volunteers, the past two days have felt like at least a week so there is little small talk. Instead we have multiple fits of unstoppable giggling and perpetual moaning about the lack of a second bread roll, interrupted by liberal use of the salt shaker. The evening ends with an energetic ceilidh, as per BSP tradition.

Saturday 18^thApril

9:00am-会议结束了赖特奖章朱利安·雷纳教授（Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute）。通过基因组测序和蛋白质组学，他的工作为我们的知识做出了巨大贡献Plasmodium- 致电细胞相互作用，这将对疫苗开发有用。

11:30am-会议结束后，场地向公众开放，进行免费的“问题时间”风格辩论，名为“冲突，环境与埃博拉病毒：寄生虫控制和消除的障碍”。现在 - 现在，我的未婚夫在拖曳中 - 我们坐下来笑着，当我们认出BBC新闻中的彼得·西森（Peter Sissons）主席时。彼得还有珍妮特·海明威（Janet Hemingway）教授，摩西·博克里（LSTM）教授，朱莉·雅各布森（Julie Jacobson）（盖茨基金会），BSP教授朱迪思·史密斯（Salford University）教授（索尔福德大学），路易斯·阿尔伯特·托克（Louis-Albert tcheumTcheuenté）（利比里亚卫生部）。关于埃博拉疫情的错误，后果和连锁影响，有很多讨论。最重要的信息是，决策者，公共卫生工作者和科学家之间的多方面合作对于加强卫生系统至关重要，以便可以更有效地控制未来的疾病爆发。最后的辩论更多的是讨论，这可能是志趣相投的科学家的观众。这强调了在这些事件中更多地参与公众的需求，以便他们也可以表达自己的担忧并向专家学习。

下午12:30-自由。它令人筋疲力尽，令人兴奋，鼓舞人心和乐趣。我真的必须赞扬BSP委员会成员组织了这项大规模活动的顺利进行。我特别要感谢秘书处朱利安·富勒（Julian Fuller）（如下图所示，右上角），他一直在接待处发布，无休止地参加代表们，总是带着微笑。这是与这些家伙的60个小时！