

One million dollar grant awarded for anti-mosquito light barrier - grannyg00se
http://techventures.columbia.edu/blog/profile/mosquito-repelling-light-barriers-show-great-promise-containment-malaria

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jerf
This makes me feel a lot safer than the ones that actually shoot the
mosquitoes down with lasers. It would only take one computer blip that
misidentified your pupil as a mosquito to make you really regret purchasing
one of those. Merely confusing the mosquitoes with some much weaker infrared
degrades far more gracefully.

~~~
windsurfer
One computer blip, you standing or walking through the laser-fence, and you
not turning the fence off before you do so.

~~~
jerf
Lasers are simultaneously more and less dangerous than people think, which is
a cute trick. So you walk through some low-intensity infrared beams... so
what? It's not going to magically fry you. Energy levels sufficient to scare
off mosquitoes are probably barely perceptible to humans in any way. Lasers
aren't magically dangerous.

On the other hand, the badly underestimated danger of lasers is their ability
to focus retina-damaging amounts of energy into your eye in less time than it
takes you to blink, which in this case I mean fully literally and not at all
figuratively. Blinking is basically your only defense against lasers that
might blind you and if you can't deploy it in time, that means you're
defenseless. Anything that can burn a mosquito down in flight is probably
enough to burn at least some of your retina, too. I can't believe some of the
lasers we sell without permits; if you've got a laser that can pop a balloon
from across the yard you are playing with something that can burn out your
vision with only a moment's inattention. For the love of all that's holy keep
these things away from children. More dangerous than you think.

~~~
Natsu
It's sad, really. I wish people wouldn't freak out to much about the weak
laser pointers, but most people have no idea what the wattage is or why it
matters, so the weak ones get lumped together in their minds with the
dangerous ones.

And I fully agree with you: the general public has no business owning some of
those lasers. I wish they would require that you have to prove that you have
appropriate safety gear and know how to use it properly or something, because
I feel like we're one stupid kid away from overburdensome restrictions that
prevent even responsible folks from being able to use lasers without tons of
red tape.

~~~
electromagnetic
I moved from the UK to Canada and have realised that companies really have no
clue what potential damage they can expose themselves to. I noticed Bell
(phone company) is especially bad for leaving the boxes for their fibre
terminals open. No one thinks its a big deal, because nothing happens to them.

One of my friends works for a cable company and occasionally has to patch a
fibre connection, and whenever he does he has to run back to head office to
pick up the mechanical splice and asked the guy one day "Why don't they let me
keep some of these in my truck?" and got told "Because it costs over 500
bucks".

When he told me this all my mind went to was: It costs $500 plus time to
repair a fibre bundle and Bell leaves boxes containing 20 or more bundles
open.

If you'd have told that to a kid where I grew up, he'd be out there with bolt
cutters as soon as it went dark because costing a company $10000 for their own
stupidity would be awesome.

So I really don't get why companies leave these bundles unlocked and in plain
view. Or why they run peoples cable overhead to a wall anchor on the house.
Again, where I grew up you'd only have to piss one of your neighbours off and
they'd tell their kid to go out with a branch trimmer and snip your TV.

It really doesn't make sense to me when I've worked on new construction and I
see the cable and power companies come in when the house is almost done and
use a machine to bury the cables and come up in the garage.

~~~
mhb
Wouldn't those kids where you grew up think it was just as much fun to throw a
brick through someone's window if they couldn't get to the TV cable?

~~~
electromagnetic
You'd be surprised but bricks don't do an awful lot to a good double-glazed
window unit, plus that gets someone trying to find you and the police
involved. Spring loaded pellet gun works exceptionally well against tempered
glass though, found that one out accidentally.

Also TV cable in the UK isn't strung to your house, its buried. Although most
people have either free-to-air in the UK or satellite.

Where I grew up on mischief night we didn't egg peoples houses. We filled
water balloons with an egg-flour mix and hurled that, because 10 hours later
when people went to clean it off it was impossible. It's literally drying
pasta into brick and then trying to wash it off with a garden hose and you
don't have any water pressure because the council hasn't had the funding to
upgrade the mains, but they're still selling off land for new housing and drop
the systems pressure even more.

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cubix
What's the advantage over insecticide treated nets? I see a few drawbacks: it
requires energy to run, surely costs a lot more, and doesn't kill the
mosquitos.

~~~
srl
On the other end of the wealth spectrum: this lets folks have large windows
open without risking annoying bugs flying in (although birds might be more
problematic). No window screen or net. Imagine the possibilities: you could
install them on your porch to make later summer hours less annoying, and
rather than have a bay window, you could just take out a wall.

Or you could use them to help keep poor children from dying of malaria. I'm
betting on the porch, though :P

~~~
electromagnetic
My mind instantly went to the same place. This isn't going to save a life in
Africa, it's going to be used to treat the annoyance of the American middle
class.

Although the ability to have large windows open with these might see the
potential reduction in use of AC units. I know my AC got used a lot later in
the year because screens or no screens I found I still got a dozen flies in my
house over night if I kept my windows wide open.

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zellyn
I hope they find a large variety of intensities, wavelengths, patterns, etc.
and then set all units to slowly vary their parameters in sync with each other
over the years, so as bugs get used to old settings, the new ones get them.

Also... sudden gust of wind = mosquito trapped _inside_ my bedroom?

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IanDrake
I'm thinking that while this is a noble effort, people in Africa living in
huts probably won't be buying one of these and running them on solar power
anytime soon.

I'd like one though.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The poor in Africa won't buy these for full retail price, no. However, they do
care about the safety of their children, if for no other reason than that sick
kids can't work on the farm.

And it might not be just because of malaria -- mosquitoes ruin a good night's
sleep, and a good night's sleep is required for farm work, especially when
you're malnourished.

So when offered the opportunity to purchase these for 50 cents, they will do
so. And they will have that opportunity because aid agencies will be giving
them away like candy if they are effective. Aid agencies have trouble getting
things like that into the hands of where they're needed, but grey/black market
entrepreneurs help ensure that they do.

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diego_moita
I don't understand this. What is the point of it?

I've been in parts of northern Brazil where malaria is endemic. People there
are so poor that they can't even dream of having electricity or clean water.
Most are illiterate. Besides, it is useless to protect people from malaria
only when they're sleeping; mosquitoes can byte you also when you're awake,
right?

Is there anyone seriously dreaming of fighting mosquitoes there with this kind
of high-tech equipment?

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kovacs
Seems like combined with this news from a couple weeks ago we might be able to
wipe malaria out completely in the next decade or so?

[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44947187/ns/health-
infectious_di...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44947187/ns/health-
infectious_diseases/t/first-malaria-vaccine-works-major-trial/#.TrLO9VZSmds)

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sambabu9
mosquitoes will quickly learn to overcome their fear. They already have
mutations for various chemicals.

~~~
latch
I can't tell if you are being funny or serious.

It doesn't sound like they actually understand why it works. I hear what you
are saying, but evolution and mutations have their limit. What if this is just
as lethal as ionizing radiation for them?

~~~
vectorpush
The system is non-lethal so natural selection wouldn't even come into play
(unless these machines became so ubiquitous that mosquitoes start starving to
death).

~~~
jodrellblank
If it was a widespread system, the mosquitos which were immune to it (if any)
would have a better food supply, and tend to reproduce more easily, and come
to dominate the population.

Natural selection doesn't need a lethal system to come into play.

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Cushman
1\. I've had this idea for years.

2\. I love it when other people make "I've had this idea for years" into
reality with zero effort on my part. The future is _so cool._

~~~
mrleinad
Do you still love it when it´s other people who profit from that idea?

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noonespecial
I have more ideas than I could implement in 10 lifetimes. My first reaction
when I see something I thought of come to be is "oh hells yeah, they made my X
for me!"

The second is a nice feeling of vindication. "It _was_ a good idea. Look!"

That's what bothers me most about "intellectual property". This "if I can't be
the one to build it and profit from it then _no one should_ " notion is just a
recipe for nothing ever getting done.

~~~
nitrogen
In my case, the only thing that really bothers me about someone else
implementing one of my ideas is that I won't have the joy of being involved in
its creation. Otherwise, you're completely right -- ideas are cheap, and when
one gets "stolen," it's a sign the idea was obvious, and a net benefit to
society. The one exception is if an obvious idea gets stolen by a troll.

~~~
noonespecial
I'd say that trollish behavior is the only way an idea can really be "stolen".

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shrikant
While this is an awesome development in a preventive approach, the best
reactive approach to those purveyors of pestilence remains the mosquito bat[1]
- for disease prevention and fun!

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_bat>

