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Wireless Sensor Networks for Killing Mosquitoes
aaditeshwar writes "It looks like sensor networks have some applications afterall, other than the usual stuff for defense and US military! AmBio has created a wireless mesh network of bugspraying "magnets" that report back data on the temperature, air conditions, and wind directions, and a central controller uses this data to turn ON or OFF the magnets in different areas. They plan to cover entire cities with such wireless meshes, and create an anti-mosquito shield around the city!"
This would be great in tropical countries. Mosquito-borne malaria is one of those diseases that affects a huge number of people (a majority in many countries), which is non-fatal but debilitating. It makes you sick every few months, and you spend a week or so in a terrible fever. Sometimes it's fatal but mostly it just makes people very weak, unable to concentrate on useful work, and so on.
Of course there are hundreds of other diseases that weigh down people living in tropical countries but malaria is one of the big ones. Keeping mosquitos away from places where people live would be a great thing. I just hope the technology will become cheap enough to work in rural Africa.
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This is a great application, and one which probably has the largest benefits for the 3rd World and developing world. As with drugs however the issue is going to be the cost to those countries of deploying it (and having the reliable power network to support it).
How long before its cheap enough to not just be about making people in Florida feel more comfortable living in a swamp?
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I thought they meant real magnets. I was like "WTF do we have nano-robitic mosquitos now?". Glad we can all sleep safe in the knowledge that we will only be bitten by regular mosquitos.
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However... they tout this as being great for third-world countries where malaria is prevalent. I'm sure this is the angle they'll use to get major media, since people ultimately aren't that drawn to devices that make live even easier for the country-club set.
According to the article, you need both a 20-pound tank of propane and access to a nearby power outlet to make the machine work, not to mention wifi for the fancier parts of it. Seems like this could be a bit of a stretch in places like Central America and Africa where they're lucky to have running water and decent sanitation facilities. Maybe a better version of device could use the propane to power the unit, so that you don't need that power cord?
Or else, I suppose they could just use the equivalent of the "Mexican National Extension Cord" to run the things.
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As if interference from nearby wireless networks was not enough !! They're using 802.11b network. Do they realize that a 802.11g network gets very badly affected if there's a 11b network nearby ?
Couldn't it have been done through wires, or bluetooth, or custom radio, or whatever....
Dear Mr. Crackpot AC,
Please have a look at some encyclopedia and get a clue. Mosquitos are typically nectar feeders, with only the females sucking out your blood. And they infamous for transmitting illnesses such as Malaria in some countries.
Regards,
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When the bacteria eaten by the mosquitoes begin hurting us, everybody will realize that -after all- they were not just "bad".
Typical biological intervention which reverts against us.
Mosquitoes do not eat bacteria. They are nectar drinkers, with the female ones requiring an additional diet of animal blood.
I'm racking my brain, but I cannot think of a negative reason to remove mosquitoes from cities. Other than reducing spread of West Nile virus and malaria, the only real effect would be a lack of bug bites and a reduced diet for spiders and birds that feed on them.
The speed of time is one second per second.
Great, we'll rid the city of mosquitos... What about natural predation and balance in areas where these systems are deployed? There are species that depend on the these "pests" for survival?
http://www.mosquito-netting.com/predators.html
I know that there are concerns with insect born illness, but that these problems can and in my opinion be solved without wiping out an entire species from an ecosystem, no matter how annoying they are.
Is it just me, or does this seem a little extreme...?
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Maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't know that mosquitos were magnetic. I guess I'll have to welcome my new magnetic insectoid overlords. I'm getting really sick of welcoming new overlord, but whatever.
... and then they built the supercollider.
How does this system compare with just attracting bats to the area? Just attach little wooden bat homes near your golf course or whatever. Bats eat a lot of bugs.
I watched a program about mosqitos recently, and they are actually pretty cool creatures. As mentioned before, it is only the female that drinks blood, and it is used for making babies (mosquito babies I assume, not human), not for everyday sustanance. When they drink your blood, they actually distill it in real time, excreting out what they do not need as they drink.
But anyway, asides from the possible environmental impact it may or may not cause, does this not strick anyone as being highly unrealistic. How much would it cost to put up a city wide net of sensors and magnets, not to mention the power cost, replacing broken components etc. etc. Smells to me like a lot of vapourware.
I think we should just all sit down with mosquitos and have a good long chat, I'm sure we could work out our differences and learn to live together in peace and harmony.
Diseases like West Nile Virus kill people every year in non Tropical climates as well.
Not all bugs are mozzies. If it kills all bugs, what happens to the critters that live by eating bugs?
:-)
I remember reading (somewhere on the innanet, so it must be true...) that the so-called mozzie zappers weren't too discriminatory. ~95% of the bugs caught in them weren't mosquitoes, but were bugs that had been attracted by the zapper's (deliberately attractant) light. This in turn was adversely affecting the local frogs. Less frogs meant more mosquitoes... and so on.
OTOH, my fly catching bottle smells like poo but catches nothing but flies
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
... and the number of birds who feed on the bugs will be cut dramatically throughout the cities.
...and another crackpot comment gets (max)modded insightful
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I'm racking my brain, but I cannot think of a negative reason to remove mosquitoes from cities.
Frogs eat moskitos. You leave frogs without food. Won't anybody please think of the frogs?
The physical injury you get from a mosquito bite is a teeny tiny little pinprick of a puncture wound. The bit that actually annoys is the body's reaction to the chemicals in the mosquito's saliva, which causes the redness, the swelling, the itching. This is something which your body does adapt to the more you're exposed to it. Native people in mosquito-ridden parts have greatly reduced reactions to mosquito bites than hapless foreigners.
I find it a great way to unwind whenever there are too many bugs buzzing around my place I reach for the badminton racquet and go on a genocidal bug swatting rampage through the house.. its great fun and solves the bug problem for a while.. side effects include getting a good workout and having to buy more lightbulbs..
. . . just make smaller, nano-mosquitoes to bite the regular mosquitoes and teach them a lesson?
A Mosquito Magnet is a propane powered device that attracts mosquitos by emitting a plume of CO2. The CO2 (and water vapour and scent additives) emulate the breath of warm blooded animals. The mosquitos are lured into the trap and killed.
The clever idea here is to network a bunch of these mosquito magnets, and a bunch of sensors, together, using wireless networking to remotely monitor propane levels, control burn times, etc. A large area can be protected, and the machines don't have to be on when they won't be needed (rain, high winds, cold, etc), thus extending their resources.
The networking can be done by whatever method is most handy. 802.11b was probably the "in thing" when they started development.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Up here in mosquito infested Minnesota, we will try just about anything to reduce the hordes of the buzzy little buggers that make our life miserable. In untreated areas of the state it is not too uncommon for people to stay inside on nice summer evenings because the mosquitos are horrible. Because I love the outdoors and cherrish my time out of the city, I'd try and do just about anything to deal with the buggers. I fog, I spray, I light those citronella candles and burn those coils, I apply repellent and I'll still get chased inside about twilight!
.10 x.10 =.01 or more simply, about one percent of the time!)
This is because Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes AND 100,000 swamps, we get enough rain so low spots become puddles. We are prime mosquito breeding territory! What makes life so wonderful for us here is also perfect for mosquitos.
Those propane burning things work but only in small areas and only in still weather when their exhaust can placidly spread out far enough to attract mosquitos. A gentle breeze will render the machine utterly ineffective. How often is the air still in a summer environment when mosquitos are most active? As the heat of the day disipates, gentle breezes almost always kick in, sometimes becoming not so gentle breezes. I'd put my money on these machines being truly effective perhaps ten percent of the time when you really, really need them (which is only about 10% of the day so,
In the daylight, or after dark the mosquitos are pretty dispersed. It is only in the evening hours that they get really bad. These mosquito magnets have been around for a few years, they are expensive and they burn propane which isn't cheap! Now this company wants to build a network of them? Perhaps a network large enough to cover a community? Wouldn't it be cheaper, more effective, and more environmentally friendly to issue everyone bottles of repellent? I like the stuff in the yellow and green can from 3M but 100% DEET works pretty well too.
In my opinion, this concept of a computer controlled, propane powered mosquitio magnet net is the dream-child of some marketing exec. It is false science of the worst kind, sold as being believable and effective. It is snake-oil being sold by modern day snake oil salesmen!
All you can do is laugh. P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute.
I've been involved in mosquito repellant trials, as a test subject.
Yes, there are people who will donate their blood and time to counting and collecting all thee mosquitoes that bite them in the middle of a bog, with only whatever snake-oil product we're given to defend us. Most of our group is composed of entomologists, though, so we're weird like that.
So far, we haven't seen any significant results with similar (non-topical) products- we'll be seeing about this one next summer, I suppose.
I highly doubt, even if this does work, however, it would ever be applied to the 'save the world' purpose of fighting malaria in the third world. Let's be realistic, here. This is a product to keep upper middle class suburbanites in North America from feeling a little itchy and think they're protecting Grandma and Little Billy from getting big bad west Nile virus.
The only realistic control for malaria in the third world? DDT. That's right. I said it! DDT is cheap. It can be incorporated into nettings and enclosures in the form of a wash, so very minimal amounts need to be released into the environment. It requires practically no technical expertise to install or maintain, and doesn't require inputs to 'run.'
Now, I'm as leery of chlorinated hydrocarbons as the next granola-crunching hippy, and new, 'clean' (though one has to wonder the environmental impacts of the propane and whatever else goes into producing these things and to make them work) technologies are fine and good, but I can't stand the 'save the world' argument being fed to us here. These will never be in common use in the third world because they'll be comparatively expensive, require technical expertise to install and operate, and require constant fuel imputs. It's not realistic.
I'd rather get a few mosquito bites than buy this miracle new product, thanks.