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Directed Energy Weapon Downs Mosquitos
wisebabo writes "Nathan Myhrvol demonstrated at TED a laser, built from parts scrounged from eBay, capable of shooting down not one but 50 to 100 mosquitos a second. The system is 'so precise that it can specify the species, and even the gender, of the mosquito being targeted.' Currently, for the sake of efficiency, it leaves the males alone because only females are bloodsuckers. Best of all the system could cost as little as $50. Maybe that's too expensive for use in preventing malaria in Africa but I'd buy one in a second!" We ran a story about this last year. It looks like the company has added a bit more polish, and burning mosquito footage to their marketing.
Well, to hell with the green movement... get me another 250 amp breaker box to my house! It's go time, you little bastards. I'm going to put some energy executive's nephew through college!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Woe be to the man who walks past wearing his fishing vest.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
And NOTHING ... I repeat, NOTHING ... is better than burning mosquito footage.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Finding, focusing on, and tracking a mosquito (in 3 dimensions!) would be an astonishing accomplishment. Forgive me if I'm skeptical.
I'm from Minnesota, if this thing works that well I'll be tempted to pick it up and put it on a plinth in my backyard. Between that and my mosquito deleto I just might be able to enjoy a mosquito free evenening....
With one of these who needs Armageddon?
A useful, and frightening device. If the neighbors have one in their backyard, I don't want to be in mine. NIMBY , or let me have one on my cell phone.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I thought of this about a decade ago and have been wanting one ever since. Of course I've never had the time or money to build one... Sure, sell them for $50 a pop and I'll buy at least two.
..and a Roomba to clean up the mess, and you've got a party.
When will it be until mosquitoes evolve energy shields?
Student Research and Development
I love the smell of mosquito lasers in the morning... The smell, you know that burning insect smell... Smells like, victory.
...then it is only a matter of time to scale up the output energies. Take out 50-100/sec of congresspersons or lawyers and you get a Nobel prize.
... is going to throw a fit. A pissy hissy little fit. Good.
Infuriate left and right
Great.. Now we can look forward the evolution of the laser-resistant mosquito!
...and that's a cute robot doll to shoot the laser at the mosquitos!
"Your donation of only $2 a day could help this African village purchase a mosquito defense laser . . . "
Not a typewriter
"Best of all the system could cost as little as $50. Maybe that's too expensive for use in preventing malaria in Africa but I'd buy one in a second!"
If it works as advertised (ok, ok, so we're in sci-fi land here with any product, but follow me for just a minute more), then it *would* be inexpensive enough for use in hospitals and medical centers, even purely by donation. Yes, nets work much better and are cheaper, but you could put this in the surgery room where nets would be impractical, or keep it in the triage room where people are in/out too much for nets to work particularly well. It wouldn't eradicate malaria, but I imagine it could seriously help prevent it spreading in a few specific situations that just also happen to be involving high-risk (for carrying/transmitting and catching) individuals.
/pipe-dream
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
That's where the idea comes from :-)
You know what's great at combating malaria? DDT. Does anyone know of any negative side effects of indoor use of DDT, to the inhabitants or the environment? Does anyone know of a more effective way to prevent malaria?
-Peter
Travel time is instantaneous for all practical purposes. If you think you need the distance to know what to shoot and what not to shoot, that's only half the problem. The real problem is what about the parts of the laser beam that aren't intercepted by the mosquito? I realize lasers do gradually expand, but not enough to avoid zapping the people nearby.
Infuriate left and right
Oh wait...I can't buy one. They don't exist yet. There is just the one prototype and the company that built it doesn't even plan to market it.
Dammit, don't get me all excited about this stuff untill I can buy it!
Note, I am one of those people who attract mosquitoes. You put me at a pond and I get bit and no one else does. I would pay $500 for a personal mosquito zapper, that works, let alone $50.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This lazer device use was banging around in the early 1980's. A couple of grad students from Florida created it. I don't recall how they were able to track the bugs. But they also "tuned" the lazer so that it lasted just long enough to only vaporize the wings. There's just one problem with this device, if the target is between the lazer, and a person's eye.
I'd love them to zap bugs in our code.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
It's a friendly mosquito killing robot here to help you... Until a mosquito lands on your face or near your eyes.
Better living through non-chemistry. I'll bet this can be adapted to target clothes moths and case-making moths, the two species responsible for textile (and other) damage. The things are pernicious; very difficult to remove from a home with an infestation. Perhaps even make the zapper more effective by using it to cover the area where a pheremone trap is located (to draw adults into the kill zone).
While I admit this is very cool and I'll take two; what power is the laser? What keeps this thing from also shooting out a user's eyes while it is doing its job?
As a walking mosquito magnet, let me be the first to say "I'm in. Let's do this thing."
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
a PATENT TROLL.
BTW, the name is Nathan Myhrvold
Yours In Novosibirsk,
Kilgore Trout
This came out of Intellectual Ventures, which Slashdot often derides as a patent troll that brainstorms ideas, patents them, then lives off of the licensing revenue without actually contributing real products to the world or even prototyping their vaguely defined ideas.
This shows that IV is quite capable of producing actual, useful products. Its business model is not limited to patent licensing revenue, which makes it more like, say, IBM, than a typical patent holding company.
Maybe, just maybe, IV is not the evil parasite that many on Slashdot made it out to be. In fact, it seems to be in the business of shooting evil parasites with lasers, which is pretty cool.
Now if we can only find a way to attach this to a shark, we'll be in business!
please contact the next Entomologist group working with Anopheles.
They are seeking a way to distinguish male from female ( before they suck blood )
best contact the winner of the Ig Nobel-Price2008, Dr. Bart Knols from the Netherlands.
I can see it now, in a few years these pests will be on the endagered species list and then we'll have to protect them!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
They'll finally get Binnie L. if they can now just get him to dress as up as a mosquito.
Table-ized A.I.
The original posting has the incorrect name for Nathan Myhrvold. It's Nathan Myhrvold, not Nathan Myhrvol.
Obi-Wan: I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of mosquitos suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
Dear Slashdotters,
Can someone explain posts like this to me? I don't quite understand why someone would go through the effort of posting something like this...
This is awesome. I need to mount one of these on the handle bars of my mountain bike and wire up a firing trigger with the handle. lol
Knowing this can be done, I bet this would be pretty easy to make.
You'd take a pan and tilt servo controlled laser, and put sound sensors around the laser. Move the laser towards the loudest noise, fire when the noise is equal on the sensors. Bingo, dead mosquito. Just like a sun tracker!
Everything else is software, like knowing what frequency to listen to mosquitos on.
Does anyone know:
1. How much laser power do you need to kill a mosquito?
2. What frequency noise do you target?
3. Is it shark-mountable?
The kid who used to pull the wings off of flies just died of an organism reading this.
Table-ized A.I.
But, but, I want fricking lasers mounted *on* the mosquitoes so I can terrorize my enemies!
Full disclosure: I am not a biologist by any means, so I might be wrong here.
Annoying as they are, mosquitoes are an exceptionally important part of the food chain. To eliminate them would have massive repercussions on the rest of the chain. I heard from a biologist once that the lower you are on the food chain, the more important you are.
Think about it - if you eliminate mosquitoes, things that eat mosquitoes (bats, small spiders, birds, whatever) will have a plentiful food source eliminated.
They will either adapt or die; more likely die as adaptation takes a long time. This means that things that eat THOSE animals will have a plentiful food source eliminated.
And so on.
All because we get annoyed - and yes, malaria is a problem, but let's be a little bit darwinian here - by some tiny flying insects.
Seriously, how self-centered are we?
Oh wait...
People for the Ethical Treatment of Mosquito for Urbanization, Nurturing, Colonization and Husbandry (PETMUNCH) is going to sue these people into oblivion!
Someone better call PETA!
An improvement in both safety and efficiency would be to use two lasers, each about 60% as strong as the currently used single one.
The targeting computer would aim both lasers at the target frying it even faster than now. But, should one of the "canons" miss, or should an unintended target come into one of the beams, the "collateral damage" will be much smaller, because the other laser will not be aimed at the same spot.
I think, the military lasers should use the similar technique — use multiple weak lasers frying the same target from dispersed locations. An unintended object (such as a civilian airplane) flying into any one of the beams will be safe, and taking out the entire installation will be much harder for the enemy. The set can have a cumulative power twice (or more) than is required to destroy one target, while each individual beam is still (relatively) harmless.
When "healthy", such a setup will be able to destroy multiple targets at a time, and the enemy will only be able to reduce its capacity gradually, rather than all at once.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Imagine these lasers hooked up to your wi-fi using sim cards, and through the cloud be able to leverage better targeting systems, And be able to upgrade their firmware to support bigger and stronger targets, spiders and wasps. Until one day the entire network gets taken over by an unwitting team of military personnel. Oh Hang on... AFK. I'll BB...
When I saw the headline, I thought it was a dupe of the earlier article about Directed Energy Weapons but that Mosquito was the name of the type of missile.
Star Wars Mosquito Defense System. Now where are our flying cars?
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
So why in the hell are we not nuking them all? why leave the males? So they can go find females that havent yet penetrated the perimeter and reproduce?
I say nuke them all from orbit. And biting black flies too.. The island where I vacation every year in Candada is rife with the buggers. you can see dozens of swarms of skeeters the size of a small house (the swarm not the skeeters) hovering near the tops of the treelined fields at dusk, and the flies along the beach in some areas make it impossible to inhabit without a beekeepers suit (they bite through tshirts). One year I had to run a 1/4 mile off the beach because I was being swarmed by the flies. I could feel them bouncing off the back of my head as I ran... not fun times.
"You're implying that a group composed entirely of male mosquitoes will... breed... and bite?"
"No, I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way."
Someones trying out their horrible AI to see if it will pass the turing test? You just failed by the way as you asked why "someone" would write that. :P
letting an idiot know they are an idiot is not a game... it's a responsibility. - by Kristopeit, M. D. (1892582)
His name is Nathan Myhrvold... come on Slashdot... you used to be cool (in an ironic sort of way)
...(Not anything on the research in question)
TED Profile.
Nathan Myhrvold on archeology, animal photography, BBQ
I tried zapping mosquitos with a camera flash to see whether a strong pulse of light would disorient them. To my surprise, when the flash was held close to the mosquito ( 1"), the wings would actually be singed! They were very alive but could no longer fly with their crumpled wings. I used a rather powerful off camera flash-- one of the older Canon models at full power. Probably wouldn't work with the small flashes built into cameras.
Flame on about cruelty to animals/insects but I think mosquitos might be one of the few things to garner less sympathy than lawyers.
It's a step in the right direction, but it just doesn't quite beat the competition yet.
Buggy assed bug-laser zapped my neighbor's dog and four year old, then blue screened and left the postman permanently blind in his left eye.
This is my sig.
Although: high powered laser + computerized operation (Windows probably) + beer (frequently) = what could possibly go wrong here.
This is also a solution that is more environmentally friendly than the existings ones such as oiling swamps, deet fogging, or using LP/Natural Gas Traps. Deet is a carcinogen and oiling swamps does damage to other species of wildlife. The system is, admittedly, genius.
... predator drones for mosquitoes! We must bring the war to the scourge of humanity.
Killing mosquitoes is outstanding. In addition this technology might be adaptable to farming to have a mobile robot find and zap insect pests. There would be no need for pesticides. Likewise perhaps the robot could identify pest plant species and zap them. Perhaps organic farming will be cheaper than using pesticides and herbicides.
Ray Seyfarth, ray.seyfarth@gmail.com, http://rayseyfarth.blogspot.com
I walk by with about 10K of these buggers already sucking me dry? Do I get lit up in a fiery insect apocalypse or what?
Wha? ZZZAP!
Does anyone have a picture of this thing? It would be really interesting to see how it works.
from "Not Necessarily the News":
Fly Wars, from RAID
Add a discoball in the mix and then you can have a mosquito-free Abba and Bee Gees night every night during the summer.
I speak England very best
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki4JKy4XkC4 ;)
Name for a metal band or an emerging trend in entomology? Let's go to our roundtable...
... the laser targeting system listens for the precise wingbeat frequency of the female Anopheles Stephensi mosquito and then zaps only those.
Darwin says, in a generation or two, the frequency changes...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
I think a version of this that could be worn as a hat would have great utility as a mobile mosquito defense platform.
Every municipality in South Louisiana will pay gorgeous sums to equip every telephone pole. This has to be much more cost effective--not to mention healthier (greener)--than the trucks driving around spraying chemicals in the air and ditches. The annual contracts for mosquito control services are usually well in the millions, even for smaller parishes.
(such as my balls)
Assuming they are in your pants, they are probably quite safe. It's your eyeballs you should be really worried about.
For some reason, this exchange made me think of:
A Dying Tiger—moaned for Drink—
I hunted all the Sand—
I caught the Dripping of a Rock
And bore it in my Hand—
His Mighty Balls—in death were thick—
But searching—I could see
A Vision on the Retina
Of Water—and of me—
'Twas not my blame—who sped too slow—
'Twas not his blame—who died
While I was reaching him—
But 'twas—the fact that He was dead—
(Emily Dickinson)
IV was contracted by TED to develop an anti-gates weapon due to 2009 presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppDWD3VwxVg
But why would sharks be interested in killing mosquitoes?
Seastead this.
When Nathan Myhrvold left Microsoft I was wondering what was on his mind? Now I know....Bugs
Sell a model I can buy that kills all female mosquitoes within range. I'll install one on the side of my house tomorrow. The Mosquito Magnet is only marginally effective and those run $250 these days. If this can really be done for $50, sell it for $100 and use the money to lower the cost in malaria areas.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Almost impossible to communicate the power of the tiny midge to people unaccustomed to them, but suffice to say currently there is no real effective defence against them.
... one funny looking hat you'd be wearing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I Want one with a dial to select other insects. $200 bucks easy sell
I don't see the point, you rarely find mosquitoes where you find sharks
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
How many generations will it take for the females to become more male-like in appearance?
Then when you start shooting down both sexes, how many more generations for them to start resembling a harmless species?
How many generations for the mosquitos to develop shiny bodies the same color as the laser?
Any other unintended evolutionary consequences? How long?
Oh, and I hope the lasers aren't pointing up into clear air past the target. I'd hate to be a pilot in that case.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Wake me when they actually start selling this product? This seems like something too cool to go to market.
Also, even if they do make a product this time, does that really excuse killing the products of other companies via patents on things they haven't actually built or sold? Then again, if someone robbed hundreds of people, then donated 10% of the proceeds or whatever to a charity named after them, people would defend them, so I suppose that they're only being consistent here if we excuse someone who practices patent trolling to kill their competitors, but who eventually makes a real product.
Sure, it's good to do good things. But putting it forth as some kind of excuse is just lame. Call me when they actually repent of their patent trolling and promise to discontinue it, then we'll see if their reform is real or not. Otherwise, you might as well be selling indulgences.
Fly Wars is a decades-old hilarious (and prescient) spoof about this technology.
Thanks to someone with a good memory
who posted this to the NY Times article.
Why would anyone want w weapon that shoots down WWII British fighter planes?
Ya ya, I know. But there's often an element of truth and vision in jest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki4JKy4XkC4
Life is not for the lazy.
This would make another 40% of Canada inhabitable.
It's all history, man. -anon
Here in the interior of Alaska we have to plant trees close together in our campgrounds. That keeps the mosquitos with the larger wingspans from getting through. Heck, some of them have their own landing strip at the airport. Our mosquitoes are big -- scary big.
The mosquitoes will probably evolve to "exploit" any and eventually all bugs in the targeting software. They will probably do it at a rate that seems surprising.
Humans are probably their easiest food source, they will not be discouraged easily.
I wonder if this inevitable "arms race" will be considered human directed evolution?
You'll need a buddy. After all, we humans need souls.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
til the developers nerf it?
... with Google Buzz?
Couldn't help myself, sorry.
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why. -- Hunter S. Thompson
And not one of them leads to actual facts or specifications. Brilliant.
...I was going to say that Monty Python already did a sketch like this. But once I saw how many mosquitos it was capable of downing, I think I want one of those suckers to cover my backyard.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
DIE FUCKING MOSQUITO DIE
I can die tomorrow knowing my life is now complete
www.boznz.com Simple solutions to complex problems.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680870885500701.html
They don't have a lethal system.
They have a targeting system that works on highly-illuminated mosquitos in a box in front of a reflective screen. The optics track the shadows. You wouldn't be able to sleep in a room with this device because it would have ONE REALLY POWERFUL lightbulb. And very bright walls.
Also, there's nothing in the article about differentiating males from females. Except they say they can. I would assume by size, but they don't actually say, nor do they claim that it works, or that they even have a device or a method for doing so.
Do they run Linux? Can I get a Beowulf cluster of these? :O
The possibilities for awesome here are astounding.
... like if being cute didn't matter.
Those animals, by the simple fact that we like to look at them, are important.
If they are more important than others is a matter of personal priorities, but we humans value aesthetics and beauty, you refer to those attributes like if they were unimportant or disposable.
And of course the fact that we are uttelry raping their natural environment should have some bearing into conservation, but given the depth of your initial argument I will not go into complicated socio-political issues with you.
Looking at the video of the system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNL_Q57Xn28&fmt=35
The system doesn't look very compact, but very cool nonetheless.
Sounds like the "Star Wars Mosquito Defense System" to me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGkPMZxWPpA
“The women are bigger. They beat at a lower frequencies,” Mr. Myhrvold said.
huh-huh huh-huh
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
your missing the main thing here, those kids with those mosquito ringtones, is it male or female??? dont wanna get zapped when your phone rings
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
... when the space mosquitoes comes, and wants to know what happened to their primitive cousins.
Maybe that's too expensive for use in preventing malaria in Africa but I'd buy one in a second!
Am I the only one who finds this statement on the perverse side?