Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Light Barrier Repels Mosquitoes

Posted by samzenpus on from the raise-shields dept.

kodiaktau writes "Dr. Szabolcs Marka has received one of five $1M grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue his experiments with using light beams to create mosquito barriers. This is the second grant he has received from the foundation and proves to be a deviation from the previous and more dangerous use of lasers to control mosquitoes. A video of the light barrier in action can be seen here"

7 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Adaptation... by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Won't the mosquitoes just adapt to ignore this 'barrier'?

    I figure this will work for a year or so, tops. The evolutionary rewards for getting past it are huge.

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:Adaptation... by Sqr(twg) · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You could make evolution work for you by putting death traps behind light barriers at mosquito breeding grounds.

    2. Re:Adaptation... by Solandri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If people were the main source of nourishment for mosquitoes, then yes. But they're not. If you use this to discourage mosquitoes from biting humans, they will happily get blood from other animals, resulting in no evolutionary pressure to pass light barriers.

    3. Re:Adaptation... by Gideon+Wells · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Depends. I built fences for farms for a while. One of the things the older folk told me was that you cannot build a perfect anti-deer fence so they settled for a three to five foot fence normally. They had tails of deer jumping these electrified fences. Once they had a deer jump "through" the individuals wires to get inside.

      Why were these easily bypassed fences used? They weren't to stop deer, but discourage them. One farmer builds a fence, the deer go to his neighbor. His neighbor builds a fence, they move to the next least annoying place to go. May sound harsh, but the deer here were reintroduced from a non-native variety from the Mid-west. Only in the last ten-twenty years have the natural predators began making enough of a comeback to control the population beyond hunting season.

      The mosquitos will likely the same. A few might adapt, but since this isn't killing the non-adpators there won't be any genetic favor towards the adapters. A percentage of mosquitoes is better than the current amount.

      --
      by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
    4. Re:Adaptation... by Muad'Dave · · Score: 3, Funny

      They had tails of deer jumping these electrified fences.

      You built fences that would rip the tails off of deer that attempted to jump over them? How cruel!

      Oh, you meant tales. Nevermind.

      --
      Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
  2. IR = heat by flyingfsck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most insects are very heat sensitive and will die quickly when temperatures are elevated. So I suppose the mozzies see the IR light as a dangerous threat and move away.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  3. IR != heat by subreality · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IR is a very broad spectrum. They don't say what the wavelength is, but I'd expect they're using near-IR, which is cheap, widely-available laser technology. Do you feel warm when you cover the front of an infrared remote? Near IR isn't a strong heat carrier unless you're pushing a LOT of photons... In which case this isn't a safe alternative to the high power bug-zapping lasers used in those wonderful videos.

    Far-IR lasers are expensive, inefficient, finicky machines. They're not the sort of thing you'd deploy to fight malaria.

    In between there's a whole lot of spectrum, but really, I think it's most likely they're using near IR, the mosquitoes see it, and for whatever reason they don't want to cross.