Remember when you thought a can of RAID was hi-tech? It’s the 21st century already and the modern way to zap bugs is the photonic fence. A photonic fence is nothing but a fancy name for shooting down mosquitos with a laser beam driven by closed loop fire control system. According to Intellectual Ventures, “malaria is both preventable and curable”. The mosquito is the disease. Meet the cure.
The root idea, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, was to see if there was a way to use lasers to destroy parasites. If a the wavelength could be tuned to the parasite’s characteristic vulnerability … well you’ve watched enough science fiction to know what’s coming next. The resarchers wanted to zap malaria parasites inside the bloodstream.
Not long ago, researchers discovered that hemozoin emits distinctive light signals whenever it is hit by an ultrashort, high-intensity laser pulse. Experiments with a femtosecond laser at the Intellectual Ventures Lab have confirmed this optical fingerprint of hemozoin. Our inventors have applied for patents on noninvasive diagnostic devices that could send brief pulses of laser light into blood capillaries in eye or skin. If the blood cells carry malaria parasites, the hemozoin inside them will send back light signals that give away its presence. …
Besides being optically active, hemozoin is very slightly magnetic. That opens another avenue for attacking the parasite. We’ve invented ways to magnetically shake or spin hemozoin crystals, rupturing the parasite’s innards enough to kill it.
And to keep people from getting malaria in the first place, well there’s the photonic fence. It sounds a whole lot more hi-tech than the methods I used in Africa back in the day which relied upon doses of Lariam, DEET insect repellent and of course, bug spray. Why with today’s technolgy, you’re almost sorry for the bug.
A completely novel invention, called a Photonic Fence, detects mosquitoes flying at a distance and shoots them down with lasers. Although this approach may sound high-tech (and indeed some of the inventors are veterans of the antiballistic missile program), the basic components needed for such a system largely exist already in inexpensive consumer electronics, such as laser printers, Blu-ray disc writers, camcorders, and video game consoles. The working prototype at Intellectual Ventures Lab was constructed almost entirely from parts purchased second-hand on eBay and similar websites.
Photonic fence then and now.
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“Is this gonna be a stand up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?”
Award winning SF author (and unfortunately AGW nut) David Brin suggested this 20 years ago in his near-future novel ‘Earth’:
“At least the bee zapper was working. For years their hives had been under siege by Africanized swarms, seeking to take over as they had everywhere else in the area… But a few weeks ago Claire had found a net reference by a fellow in Egypt, who’d discovered that the African strain beat their wings faster than the tame European variety. Burrowing into archaic TwenCen military technology, he had adapted sensor-scanning designs from an old defunct project called “Star Wars…” “
Maybe Bill Gates should use some of that bug killing laser technology to zap the bugs in Windows.
That’s a beautiful idea, taking advantage of the hemozoin’s teeny tiny magnetism, using a magnetic field to disrupt it.
I sure hope they’re considering the possible disruptive effects on OTHER teeny-tinily magnetic stuff in our bodies.
I don’t want to have my ability to migrate with my eyes closed disrupted, even if the GPS system still can link to my printer.
And when the scientists discover they can use similar technologies to separate XX-chromosomed spermatazoa from XY ones, the ratio of boy babies to girl babies (especially in China) will swing to about 10:1 or worse. When this happens, of course, marriagiable girls will be at a premium. My three-daughter family would be worth big bucks!
Meanwhile, I want one of those devices that shoots flying mosquitoes out of the air. F
No kidding, Walt @ 3.
Bill Gates, you’ve got a laser umbrella vs. mosquitos now, so can we please have large file support in your stdio at long last for the love of God?
Ah, heck with it. When will they find the Tree of Souls so I can transfer my consciousness to a giant, sexy blue elf hiply in tune with Gaia?
All this science from the industrial world, the sick and dying one, is getting pretty freaky. Let’s all go hug trees instead!
Frickin’ laser beams… Is the future really here? Considering the computing technology in my phone (my PHONE, for crying out loud) it’s rare to have that ‘wow’ feeling anymore.
But that’s frickin’ awesome.
Hmmm the mosquito zapper needs a CO2 bait, A CCTV camera with magnifying lens, a slow mo recorder, and a sound systems with prerecorded effects, I want to hear ZAPs and the screams of the little bastards as they get blasted out of the air. That and six pack would be an evenings fun in some parts.
DDT worked great.
How many young Africans did Silent Spring kill?
When I saw Forbidden Planet as a kid it was a scary movie to me then.
I think it ought to be obligatory though that if you show something from Forbidden Planet you should also show a shot of Anne Francis.
newscaper – “he had adapted sensor-scanning designs from an old defunct project called “Star Wars…”
What is the terminal velocity of a fly?
“What do you mean, an Musca Africanus or Musca Eupeanicus?”
It would certainly fit on a system on a chip.
The big question is “Will it kill the parasites in Washington?”
If not, it won’t matter ’cause we’ll be so broke we won’t even be able to buy one used, at least not us working folk. Maybe there will be a “cash to zapper” rebate program, I got a couple of the old style ones around here.
BREAKING NEWS
Big Taliban leader captured. Wonder if there is only a 20% chance he’ll go back to trying to kill Americans when they release him?
… to see if there was a way to use lasers to destroy parasites
No wonder all the Democrats are bailing out of Congress as per the last thread.
Intellectual Ventures wants to zap malaria parasites inside the bloodstream.
Those bastards are infiltrating our Precious Bodily Fluids. Paging General Ripper.
Has anyone here ever walked into a Club on a Marine base and yelled out “Dead Bug?”
Seems to me the old fashioned way to kill mosquitoes was with ddt until it was banned back in the 60′s because of books like silent spring which said ddt caused eagle eggs to get thinner. or some such.
then the matter was forgotten about. and then as I heard the story told — when the various administrators around the world who banned ddt — died or left office — ddt was quietly reintroduced especially in places like africa where the loss of ddt caused an explosion of mosquitoes and malaria. and millions died.
now the official line is that ddt used in moderation is ok.
I have no understanding of any of it except that from one decade to the next — the story line changes.
On summer nights years ago my family would visit my aunt outside Baltimore.She and my uncle had a big house and a big garden out back. There were benches all round the back porch where we chatted on a summer evening. We never swatted mosquitoes because my aunt had a blue electric bug zapper. Somehow the little critters were drawn to the electric fire. Occasionally we’d hear a zzzt.
This was a much more up to date solution than the yellow/orange strip of fly paper that dangled from the over head light in my grandma’s kitchen in PA back in the 60′s. Flies dotted the thing. She never took it down until it was pretty well clogged with flies.
They were usually house flies. But occasionally a fire fly would get stuck. They were taken off and taken outside and let go. At night the yellow light fire flies would mix it up with the white light stars. A youngster could cap and jar against the stars a mayonnaise jar full of fire flies. they’d all be so close together they’d make the jar glow.
Kids liked to put them up against their cheeks and make faces; Then open the mayonnaise jar and fling the fire flies back to the stars. They didn’t actually go far. They just winked on and off as they flew around in the yard.
I’ve dreamed about building a laser mosquito zapper for many years.
Problem is, any beam hot enough to damage even a mosquito, will certainly blind humans, birds, passing aircraft, etc.
You need to intersect three or more divergent beams.
I suspect it can be done, even at a reasonable price, but while it might be great as a rich person’s indoor toy, it’s not going to help any african villages.
wait a few years and we’ll have robot dragonflies. much safer.
Lifeothemind @ 13
Politicians are not parasites – they are more like predators or a monster we have created that is out of control.
We do not need lasers – old technology – pitchforks and torches are fine with me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTNN5h8CG_Y
I wonder how many young African American children were killed by the Great Society?
The danger is, this might get into the wrong hands. Like mine.
The buzz is a photonic fence
Will zap and kill the buzzers
It gets his aunts and uncles too
And all his little cuzzers
Oh little buzzer how you fly
To see you makes me happy
Cuz with my laser you will die
It really is quite zappy
It’s late at night, I’m sound asleep
When near my ear a buzzing
My laser flares my wife recoils
I say it isn’t nuzzing
Out by the trees a flitting shape
It’s getting late at night
Was that a skeet or firefly
I just shot out his light
Is that my neighbor by the fence
I aimed and hit him low
I told the judge I saw him buzz
But he didn’t let me go
#13 LOTM,
Loved the link, ‘Paging General Ripper’ but you are sick, sick, sick…
Where do you get these twisted themes?
Never mind, I don’t really want to know…
Langley@16
Of course, Carson never actually called for a DDT ban (she didn’t call for a ban on pesticides, in fact). But her research or its presentation was shoddy in failing to discriminate between let’s say judicious and injudicious use of DDT. And it was the timing of her book that is often overlooked too: right after a contaminated cranberry scare (!), results of human impact of nuclear testing etc etc and WHO abandoned its eradication effort in 1969, two years before the DDT 1972 ban. WHO started sponsoring spraying again in 1996 and even the Sierra Club supports it today I believe.
Here is a safety promotional film for the Zappers when more than one is in use at a time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jJ2WnRjzWs&NR=1
Why are there mosquitoes?
who still remember Igor Panarin’s prediction ?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html
if some see with Greece money collapsing, the end of EU, then some others see the end of the US, where’s the guy that will earn money out of the hoax ?
about the laser arm against mosquitoes, a french blog talk about it last year too (apparently Reagan thought about it in 1983)
http://www.pourceuxquiaimentlenet.fr/?p=3222
That’s not very sporting of them. If you want to see a REAL MOSQUITO HUNTER who is a master of his craft, check out this documentary of a couple of Aussies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcACaW9vwg4
And this expensive, sensitive hi-tech system, dependent on a steady electrical supply, is going to be useful in African villages….how?
Charles (#14):
Great firefly memories! We may be contemporaries.
As to DDT and birds eggs, it does seem to have been a real effect; DDT could cause a fatal (to the developing chick) thinning in the egg shells of raptors, especially the Peregrine Falcon (and the latter have made a comeback). But it was almost certainly a mistake to completely ban the stuff. The careless and excessive use of DDT, and careless disposal of waste during manufacture, was probably the problem.
And the loss of countless lives to malaria was a huge and unnecessary tragedy.
Jamie Irons
You may not need lasers, or robot dragonflies, or even bug-zappers, and there’s a way even more old-fashioned that DDT. Maybe what you need is: chickens. Dad got rid of his chicken coop a few years back, claiming he was too old to fool with them anymore. That almost ended outdoor barbeques, because his mosquito population went through the roof after that. Simultaneously his vegetable garden developed more pests, too.
Google “chicken tractor” to have a peek at innovative uses of chickens to do a surprising number of things from pest control to fertilization and rehabilitation of soils. Another advantage: when the chips are down, you can’t eat your laser array. And it doesn’t lay eggs.
What is more intelligent, building a better high cost mousetrap or getting a good cat? I wonder how different things might be if folks would be more open to natural solutions that lie just before they eyes, waiting fo just a little creativeness and innovation.
I love that Id Monster, Forbidden Planet is second only to Blade Runner on my list of all time best SciFi.
That film took Shakespeare and turned it into Star Trek.
Another way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbminOZZcio
PETA will have a stroke.
I could get hooked on watching the l’il bloodsuckers get zapped first by my laser zapper, I’d name it, “Han Solo” LOL
“As to DDT and birds eggs, it does seem to have been a real effect; DDT could cause a fatal (to the developing chick) thinning in the egg shells of raptors, especially the Peregrine Falcon (and the latter have made a comeback)”
Untrue: an officially-sanctioned urban legend.
The comeback of raptors has been a function of hunting bans, and to a lesser extent the Clean Water Act (thinning of eggshells was a function of heavy metals, not DDT).
http://junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html#ref6
29. herb:
Seen that one before. I laughed then. Laughed again when I saw it this time.
I had to laugh when I saw the video, and laughed again when I thought about such a clunky system seriously considered for pest control. In many places on earth, mosquitoes of many sizes and species swarm in clusters of hundreds or thousands. In Alaska in the spring you can go out with DEET covered clothes and a thick hat with bug mesh veil, and if you forget to spray the mesh you soon won’t be able to see for all the mosquitoes coving the veil completely. The same is true in the high sierra of California, the fields of Thailand, etc. Even if the system could track a target properly in such a swarm, I doubt the service life of the servo motors or solid state LASER would be long in such an environment. It might last a day or two. I also worry about damage to mammal retinas.
The answer to mosquitoes is in biology and genetic engineering. Eventualy someone will invent or modify a biological organism tailored to hunt down this vermin. I believe work is ongoing to geneticaly engineer “sexy” but sterile mosquitoes who will excite the opposite sex to mate with them by preference, resulting in no offspring and a much smaller wild mosquitoe population.
Now if someone could just invent “Fem-bots” & “M-bots” respectively that would be “sexy” to political progressives, perhaps we could breed that vermin into extinction as well.
AR @ 34: I doubt the service life of the servo motors or solid state LASER would be long in such an environment.
It’s an interesting challenge, almost a philosophical issue.
I tend to think the technology we have now could do it, at a rather high cost.
For a real challenge, we could try laser-zapping locust swarms!
But my main interest is in the much more modest challenges of zapping the handfull that get inside a house.
Or maybe we could send Hillary to negotiate with them, impose sanctions.
There are places where mosquitoes resemble a P-51 Mustang with a spike on the nose. They are best handled with napalm but if you try nukes the results could be even more disastrous.
Armageddon Rex,
They already abort their offspring, sterile decoys seem superfluous.
Can we use it on Jihadists?
I’m probably showing my age, here, but this was my first thought:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki4JKy4XkC4
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100216/sc_livescience/shortageofrareearthelementscouldthwartinnovation
Came across this AP story about how only the Chinese government subsidies the rare earth metals and has actually banned their export. And I started thinking again – dang, this is why some Patriot Tea Partyers think Maurice Strong is sitting in Beijing, stroking his cat and plotting world domination like Ernst Blofeld in the Bond movies. It is hard to explain such things as simple ignorance or obliviousness and not see malice.
Bohemond (#31):
Well, you learn something new every day.
A least it was an officially sanctioned urban legend.
Jamie Irons
So on February 11th our airborne laser system shot down a ballistic missile at boosting stage, an historic first, and rather timely considering the NORKS and Ahmadinnerjacket.
And now it has no money requested for the F2011 budget.
BUT I’m sure obama and friends will make this mosquito laser a national priority, and spend trillions to make 3rd world countries safe from malaria-bearing mosquitos.
When I taught the lesson on the Holocaust I started by using a can of Raid as my motivating prop. I am, or would be if I was working, a very good teacher.
The M2A1-7 flamethrower is infinitely more effective – when not used indoors.
We can’t even get a high tech “virtual fence” on the U.S. border to work against big human beings. Good luck with mosquitoes.
Wretcherd,
You are unbelievable – working “Forbidden Planet” into a post. Truly a great sci-fi movie. With all the crap Hollywood puts out, I can’t understand why there has not yet been a re-make of this classic. (Now that it has showed up on BC, we can probably expect news of a re-make any day.) Sometimes it seems that if one were able to read all BC posts and comments, the inner secrets of the world would become clear.
Gotta go now and pour myself a Jack.
Keep swarming
I believe Monty Python had a rather low tech but equally heavy handed solution to mosquito problems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcACaW9vwg4
I wonder if it would be possible to tweak a laser DLP chip system (micro mirrors on a chip) from a back projection TV to aim the mosquito laser?
Perhaps a phased array microwave system for a total blow up of the bugs?
A big system for locust control maybe?
Most importantly who should be cast as the female lead in a remake of “Forbidden Planet”?
For a really scary version maybe it should be re-named “For Biden Planet.”
“Neeed moorrree Brainnnnssssss.”
t/47; –hey, if anybody ‘splains dat to the Vice Moron, he gonna be po’d
@14 Charles
Fireflies – you do have a knack for describing lights at night – I remember well your post some time back about the lights at Antietam
We used to collect fireflies in the summer when we visited my grandmother in Connecticut – except we called them lightning bugs – we’d put them in a jar, with some grass, (for food, so we thought!) and we’d fall asleep watching them wink on and off. A very happy memory.
There’s a lovely passage in Tanazaki’s novel “The Makioka Sisters” that describes an excursion into the country to watch fireflies – there is something exquisite and dreamlike about the very idea of such a pastime
@34 Armageddon Rex
~”Eventually someone will invent or modify a biological organism tailored to hunt down this vermin.” ~
Yikes. Ever see “Mimic”?
My late father, Lee Howard, a veteran of the malaria hostilities would have been highly amused to see this contraption. His first question would be “How would you handle the cloud of mosquitoes that will blow into the poorest areas of say Freetown, or Calcutta, or Iloilo?”
Dear Armageddon (#34),
Actually, the primary line of attack in reducing mosquito populations is to create a huge populace of gay mosquitos.
Theoretical problems present several hurdles which so far defy resolution: (1) Even at 50 percent of the female population and 90 percent of the males seeking same-gender mates, the natural fecundity of straight females laying hundreds of eggs each can repopulate a treated region in a single season. Additionally, (2) the Nature/Nurture ambiguity makes it impossible to calculate whether the next generation will have any significantly increased incidence of homophilics of either gender; (3) Unless a finite set of genomic components of the family Anophelinae can be conclusively shown to correlate to gender-preference, surviving members of successive generations will in effect be increasingly resistant to non-genetic induced gayness as a result of natural selection pressure.
It is feared that this will lead to world-wide spread of a plague of mosquitos which are fiercely homophobic. Considering that humans are among the mosquito’s prime feeding sources, the potential for cross-species effects presents incalculable peril.
Mad Fiddler,
Are you submitting a grant application for project to teach mosquitoes to watch Bravo on cable as a method to make them either useless metrosexuals or homophilic? It could be part of the stimulus.
@31 Bohemond,
You have it backwards. The Urban Legend is that DDT DIDN’T cause eggshell thinning in wild birds. This legend is spread by sites like the one you link.
Much of the ‘facts’ quoted on that page are irrelevant. He quotes a lot of reports in the poultry journals showing that DDT didn’t cause eggshell thinning in poultry. That’s right. It’s a well-known fact that chickens in cages aren’t affected by DDT in the same way that wild raptors and some water birds are affected. Populations of cormorants, for instance, were decimated by DDT and recovered quickly after DDT was banned in 1972. Cormorants reproduce at a much higher rate than Eagles and falcons so didn’t require help for their populations to rebound.
Look at the wikipedia page on DDT for a more unbiased description of the effects of DDT. It’s correlated with diabetes in people. Who knew? According to that page almost ALL human blood samples tested for DDT by the CDC in 2005 had DDT in them. That’s over 30 years after its use has been banned in the US.
You could honestly argue that DDT should be sprayed IN SPITE of the fact that it causes eggshell thinning in wild birds. You can’t honestly argue that it DOESN’t cause eggshell thinning in wild birds.
52. L,
So are we in a code-mode in which “the Stimulus Package” is a sly reference to the endowments of a Chippendale dancer?
Actually, I’m guessing that if mosquitos differentiate by the sort of genital elaboration of other insectivora, any same-gender fooling around could result in severe injuries.
Mr. X @ 39:
Pretty good article about the Mountain Pass Mine. It is really in the middle of nowhere on the run out of Barstow to Las Vegas. There was a story, which I cannot verify, but which does not prevent me from spreading, that Senator Feinstein was instrumental in getting the mine closed under the Desert Tortoise Protection Act, which put a lot of the Mojave Desert off limits to mining. Her husband, Mr. Blum is a major player in the China investment world, and allegedly involved with the rare earth mining there.
http://mainebusiness.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=289955&ac=Business&hcode=pph
Not necessarily a conspiracy, but maybe just doing well while dong good.
Anyway, if China drives up the price of the rare earth elements, other places will start production.
55.erc rodson
you said “just doing well while dong[sic] good.”
Recalls the congressional testimony attempting to torpedo the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas… especially in the context of mined precious metals.
ER/55; …shades of Pelosi’s Cannery Row.
(not that protecting her personal interests is such a grave sin, but that she demonstrated that she perfectly understands what the federal minimum wage laws can do to the entry level aspirants, and the hi-vol/lo-margin enterprises that hire them –and she simply didn’t give a sh*t, she had her orders from the unions who want that baseline raised since their collective bargaining starts from that number)
Barrington doctor details life of curious cat
BARRINGTON —
Barrington resident Dr. David Dosa, 37, has written a book entitled “Making Rounds with Oscar.” Oscar looks like an ordinary cat, but the feline has shown an extraordinary ability to predict when residents at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center are close to death. Dr. Dosa, a geriatrician, works at the Steere House and is also a health services researcher at Brown University. According to Dr. Dosa, Oscar spends very little time with the residents of Steere House until they are approaching the last hours of life, then he maintains a vigil at the bedside, offering feline comfort to patients and caregivers.
The book is about Oscar, but it is also about the challenges of caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. Dr. Dosa’s book tells the story of several patients who were under his care at Steere House and the interactions between himself and the residents, their families, the staff, and Oscar. Oscar’s ability received international media attention after Dr. Dosa wrote an article published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007.
Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat