
Solar Scare Mosquito - rytis
http://www.gallactronics.com/2014/05/solar-scare-mosquito.html
======
patio11
Assuming both that it works and that one wants to do a prodigious amount of
enterprise sales, this is probably something which is actually easier to sell
to comparatively rich countries rather than comparatively non-rich countries.
Illinois and much of the Midwest has substantial annual expenditures on
mosquito abatement, partially through habitat destruction and partly through
periodically spraying after e.g. substantial rainfall or when residents get
particularly bothered. A single truck roll to e.g. a park pond costs them
several hundred dollars. They might repeat that several times in the season.
1,000 of these devices at $10 apiece and $25 per deployment (I know that
sounds high, but government work, what can I say) costs "rounding error."

Potential problems: There is the perpetual issue with all government work,
which is that one can't ever propose doing it _too_ efficiently, lest one
discover that there exists a margin at which the government is happy to
inflict more mosquito bites as long as it allows it to continue awarding easy,
well-paying jobs to favored constituents.

Anyhow, I assume that after you start ordering these in lots of 100k you can
get it closer to the pennies-per-household-protected figure that it has to
reach to be achievable for the largest fraction of folks worrying about
malaria.

~~~
sambeau
I would buy one for my neighbours pond so I could once again sleep with the
window open and I live in rural England.

~~~
cma
$5 of screen or netting and you are good to go...

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mechanical_fish
Critiquing this article's approximation of a field-biology study would be a
great exercise for young science students. I envision a roomful of kids
shouting "where is your control group"?

I know nothing of mosquitoes and I haven't had my coffee and yet I can reel
off three alternative hypotheses that need to be checked, from the prosaic
("experimenter cannot reliably identify viable mosquito larvae", "water
temperature was incorrect and mosquitoes died") to the less prosaic ("plastic
box leaches chemicals into water which poisons mosquitoes"; "a tiny frog,
perhaps attracted by the alluring sound of this buzzing box, visited the pond
and took the opportunity to snack on mosquito larvae". Oops, that was four.
I'll get my coffee now.

Also, citations. Just one, pretty please? Surely a thousand people have
published on this problem before. What was wrong with the version of this
approach that they probably tried back in 1953?

~~~
jamesaguilar
God forbid someone should sketch out a prototype and share about it before
running a multi-million dollar RCT, right?

~~~
foxylad
You're right we shouldn't shoot this down in flames, but I think most of us
would consider evidence with a sample size of one as un-evidence.

Providing better evidence will not take a multi-million dollar RCT - all you'd
need is ten ponds and a fortnight of checking them once a day.

If that went well, you would have the confidence to push this harder, and
maybe get a local university biology department involved to carry out a better
designed study. And if that produced good results, you'd be ready to knock on
the Gates Foundation door.

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jhull
This device will do great clearing out mosquitoes from your backyard but don't
think for a second that this will save lives or help solve the global malaria
problem.

This is a great device for eliminating mosquitoes from stagnant water but it
is completely impractical that it would work in the areas where malaria hurst
the most. [1]

Firstly, it would require that every single puddle be discovered immediately.
Try doing that after monsoon season in India, or in rural West Africa where
malaria is one of the main killers of children under the age of five and where
the roads are so bad you can't even get a truck loaded with food in, let alone
these devices.

If these did make it into some of these rural villages, every single one would
be picked up off the ground immediately and be converted into something that
really could improve the quality of life, into something that might power
lights or charge cell phones or be sold to someone who could.

[1] [http://cms.travelstart.com/uploads/image/asset/92/malaria-
ar...](http://cms.travelstart.com/uploads/image/asset/92/malaria-area-map.jpg)

~~~
mrfusion
I think he proposes leaving these in areas that are prone to forming puddles
after storms. And they would turn on automatically when wet.

That way you don't have to immediately locate all puddles.

~~~
Someone
I doubt it, as the in-built alarm would sound for months while the device
waits for the puddle to form.

Also, largish puddles are not the only (and probably not the main) problem
with malaria. Many puddles will be too small for this device. That old tire in
a corner, a coke can, a discarded piece of plastic all can and will contain
stagnant water.

Finally, even if one could predict where puddles would form on roads, I doubt
these would survive the dry season with cars driving over them.

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psaintla
Having built my own pond and faced similar issues dealing with mosquitos I'm
highly skeptical that this is as effective as claimed. I've purchased cheap
aeration devices that were solar powered in the past and they were not very
effective. It took a few months of getting the right combination of fish,
plants and a more powerful aerator to solve the problem. Also it seems like
deployment of these things in thousands of small standing pools of water which
breed mosquitoes wouldn't be feasible.

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eaurouge
I find it amazing (and somewhat disappointing) that some comments are
heralding this as the end of malaria. The lifecycle of mosquitoes is quite
complex and mosquitoes are very adaptable creatures, unfortunately. I imagine
this device would help, but only as part of a more comprehensive approach

I'm typing on my phone, but here are two informative articles on how
mosquitoes breed and what can be done to reduce populations:

[http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/lhd/CentralShenandoah/EH/WNV/mos...](http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/lhd/CentralShenandoah/EH/WNV/mosquito_breeding_habitats.htm)

[http://www2.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef005.asp](http://www2.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef005.asp)

~~~
njharman
Technophants believe 1) technology solves all problems more or less instantly
and 2) the only reason any problems exist are because one or more of
bureaucracy, regulation, ignorance(luddism), lack of monitization scheme have
prevented the technical solution from being applied.

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blisterpeanuts
This solar aerator is interesting but still a bit expensive and limited. I
wonder what happens when buggies and fishies nibble at it and water inevitably
leaks in.

There are some cheaper solutions. The mosquito dunk costs less than $1 per
application and is pretty easy to use--just toss a little puck into a pond,
and the bacteria specific to mosquito larvae destroys the pest without causing
any known side effects.

There are also dragonflies. They, like mosquitoes, start life in the water and
the nymphs are voracious eaters of mosquito larvae. Then, when they crawl out
of the water and grow wings, they eat flying mosquitoes and other small
insects in large quantities.

If you seed your area with dragonflies, of course they will end up becoming
food for bats and other predators which also eat mosquitoes but will
preferentially go after larger, meatier insects. But on balance, a larger
number of these creatures will keep the mosquito population down naturally and
efficiently.

It seems unlikely that introducing dragonflies to a specific area will
unbalance the ecosystem. Dragonflies are ubiquitous in the world except for
Antarctica. They are an ancient species and fossil records of giant
dragonflies date back as far as 300 million years. The mystery to me is why we
even still have mosquitoes, when we have such efficient and highly adapted
killers of mosquitoes out there.

Spraying is perhaps the worst possible approach of all of these. I've seen
spraying done in urban areas that actually resulted in more mosquitoes in some
neighborhoods. It either pushes the mosquitoes into new areas, or it
inadvertently kills predators of mosquitoes. The best thing is to use as
natural means as possible.

That said... please, please find a way to wipe these critters out of
existence. As discussed a few weeks ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657251))
there are plenty of non-biting mosquitoes out there; only 200 out of 3,000
species feed on human blood. Life would go on just fine if we could
genetically target those blood-sucking varieties and zero them out.

~~~
dublinben
>genetically target those blood-sucking varieties and zero them out

This is exactly what some scientists are doing. A recent Radiolab episode
discussed a field deployment in Brazil.

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-
all/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-all/)

------
tren
If you're interested in this you may like to check out Radiolab's "Kill 'em
all" \- [http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-
all/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-all/). There is an organisation
breeding a strain of mosquito that when released into wild populations causes
all offspring to be infertile. This causes mosquito populations to be
eradicated very quickly.

One of the presenters was asked if there are any benefits of having mosquitos
around. After looking high and low, his conclusion was that they've stopped
humans from coming in and destroying precious ecosystems, for instance in
jungles, forests and swamplands.

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diasks2
One issue seems to be that if the pond is of any decent size (say > 20 meters
in diameter) and you put in a few of these devices at the end of the day they
are all in the same corner of the pond due to the current/wind.

~~~
avighnay
that would be simple solution of anchoring the device with a stone

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yitchelle
Put some Mosquitofish[1] into your pond. It should clean the pond up pretty
quickly. It is also provide a pleasant environment as well, watching the fish
rather than some box creating bubbles.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquitofish](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquitofish)

~~~
Ygg2
Wouldn't that disrupt the ecosystem?

~~~
bencollier49
Wouldn't removing the mosquitoes and changing the entire environment from
fetid to oxygenated water disrupt the ecosystem?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
The change in the water might, but it turns out that mosquitoes aren't a vital
part of any ecosystem. Nothing preys on them exclusively or even primarily,
and their animal victims seldom die, so they're not keeping anything's numbers
in check.

~~~
gurraman
Well, they do seem to keep human numbers in check to some degree.

~~~
icoder
I always understood that human numbers in less developed areas actually
increase because other forces (disease, poverty, mosquitoes?) try to keep them
in check.

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pling
Simpler solution: stick a tiny bit of soap in the water. Not much at all.
Doesn't hurt aquatic life but breaks the surface tension which kills the
mosquito rafts dead as they sink straight away.

Source: I live next to a sewage farm.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I thought the traditional simple solution (e.g., while building the panama
canal) was to put a thin layer of oil over your stagnant water.

~~~
pling
Yes - they put kerosene on it which suffocates them. Unfortunately it's quite
toxic to anything which enters and exists the water plus there is some
indication (after the whole BP Deepwater Horizon fuck up + Corexit that used
deodorised kerosene) that it is toxic if absorbed.

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13hours
I suspect the problem with deploying this on a large scale to fight Malaria
for example, is that mosquito breeding areas are often very large areas, and
change in location due to environmental changes. This device is probably a
good fit for stopping mosquitos breeding in the pond outside your house, but
for stopping malaria you need to cover a very large area.

~~~
jwr
The other problem is that even tiny still water bodies are enough for
mosquitoes to breed. So even if you control several ponds, if your neighbor
keeps a bucket of still rainwater, you'll have mosquitoes.

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acdha
This isn't a bad idea but it's increasingly a side-show: tiger mosquitoes are
spreading throughout the world courtesy of commercial shipping and global
warming. In addition to being active throughout the day, they need far less
water to reproduce – something like a bottle-cap or flower blossom is enough:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aedes_albopictus#Control_and_su...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aedes_albopictus#Control_and_suppression)

If you do a great job suppressing traditional threats, all you're doing is
wiping out the competition…

What we really need is something like the photonic fence prototype from
Intellectual Ventures:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser)

Unfortunately, my understanding is that they decided this wasn't cost-
effective as a malaria control mechanism but I suspect there'd be a big market
in developed controls where the drawbacks of pesticides are an increasing
concern.

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mleonhard
I don't see how this could kill mosquito larvae. Aerating the water will just
make it better for the aquatic animals.

Ripples on the water surface might stop some mosquitoes from laying their
eggs. But this would need to be tested. I doubt a small device could
continuously create big enough ripples.

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trhway
simple arithmetic : 3.4B people in the risk areas, US retail price for
mosquito DEET containing repellent is $0.1-0.3 per day (this is also about the
same as mosquito repellent bracelets on Alibaba, though i never used one, and
Amazon shows even cheaper ones - would be great if this stuff really works).

So, the higher estimate for everybody to have repellent every day is $400B
dollars/year. In many areas you actually need it only part of the year. So
napkin calculation comes to say $200B or 1K per clinical episode (or even less
if not to use US retail prices).

[http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html](http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html)

To me it looks like something that we as a civilization could have done. And
after few years the parasite would possibly be eradicated in many areas.

(note: i'd used DEET extensively in my time in Western Siberia ("stroyotryad"
who knows/remembers :) , so i understand limitations of it, yet i also
understand the difference it makes :)

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smoyer
I've got a fountain in which the pool is NEVER still ... once the chlorination
has bubbled out of the water, it still gets mosquitoes.

~~~
exhilaration
You want to throw one of these in every month:
[http://www.amazon.com/Summit-111-5-20-Pack-Mosquito-
Dunk/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Summit-111-5-20-Pack-Mosquito-
Dunk/dp/B0002568YA/)

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Ygg2
What an elegant solution to malaria problem. My only fear is that mosquitoes
will adapt to this minor change.

~~~
grinich
I'm not sure if that would happen. It's a natural adaptation to only breed in
still water. If mosquitos evolved from that, we would have _much_ bigger
problems than just malaria.

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Gravityloss
The air pump is probably superfluous, you could just have a cell phone
vibrator style motor...

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FollowSteph3
Can it cause issues with other living organisms in water?

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snambi
oh god this is awesome. a lot of people will buy this if it is only $10.

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jackau
So simple, so smart

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frozenport
Is a 2 meter radius enough? I don't think that this strategy scales because
power dissipates as r^a.

~~~
sambeau
If this technique is shown to be effective and becomes popular amongst owners
of small ponds I could imagine similar techniques being encouraged, or
mandated, for any large body of still water in and around high-populations.

~~~
frozenport
But it literally can't scale. If you want your wave to do more than a 2 radius
meters you need a ton more power.

~~~
hrjet
Yes, but area also scales square of radius, so it will consume power
proportional to the area covered.

