One million dollar grant awarded for anti-mosquito light barrier
techventures.columbia.edu
techventures.columbia.edu
On the other hand, the badly underestimated danger of lasers is their ability to focus retina-damaging amounts of energy into your eye in less time than it takes you to blink, which in this case I mean fully literally and not at all figuratively. Blinking is basically your only defense against lasers that might blind you and if you can't deploy it in time, that means you're defenseless. Anything that can burn a mosquito down in flight is probably enough to burn at least some of your retina, too. I can't believe some of the lasers we sell without permits; if you've got a laser that can pop a balloon from across the yard you are playing with something that can burn out your vision with only a moment's inattention. For the love of all that's holy keep these things away from children. More dangerous than you think.
And I fully agree with you: the general public has no business owning some of those lasers. I wish they would require that you have to prove that you have appropriate safety gear and know how to use it properly or something, because I feel like we're one stupid kid away from overburdensome restrictions that prevent even responsible folks from being able to use lasers without tons of red tape.
One of my friends works for a cable company and occasionally has to patch a fibre connection, and whenever he does he has to run back to head office to pick up the mechanical splice and asked the guy one day "Why don't they let me keep some of these in my truck?" and got told "Because it costs over 500 bucks".
When he told me this all my mind went to was: It costs $500 plus time to repair a fibre bundle and Bell leaves boxes containing 20 or more bundles open.
If you'd have told that to a kid where I grew up, he'd be out there with bolt cutters as soon as it went dark because costing a company $10000 for their own stupidity would be awesome.
So I really don't get why companies leave these bundles unlocked and in plain view. Or why they run peoples cable overhead to a wall anchor on the house. Again, where I grew up you'd only have to piss one of your neighbours off and they'd tell their kid to go out with a branch trimmer and snip your TV.
It really doesn't make sense to me when I've worked on new construction and I see the cable and power companies come in when the house is almost done and use a machine to bury the cables and come up in the garage.
Also TV cable in the UK isn't strung to your house, its buried. Although most people have either free-to-air in the UK or satellite.
Where I grew up on mischief night we didn't egg peoples houses. We filled water balloons with an egg-flour mix and hurled that, because 10 hours later when people went to clean it off it was impossible. It's literally drying pasta into brick and then trying to wash it off with a garden hose and you don't have any water pressure because the council hasn't had the funding to upgrade the mains, but they're still selling off land for new housing and drop the systems pressure even more.
* Prolonged exposure to insecticides have been linked to Parkinson's http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/704621
Or you could use them to help keep poor children from dying of malaria. I'm betting on the porch, though :P
Although the ability to have large windows open with these might see the potential reduction in use of AC units. I know my AC got used a lot later in the year because screens or no screens I found I still got a dozen flies in my house over night if I kept my windows wide open.
This tech, assuming it can run for years with a solar panel and battery is 'set and forget'.
Also... sudden gust of wind = mosquito trapped inside my bedroom?
I'd like one though.
And it might not be just because of malaria -- mosquitoes ruin a good night's sleep, and a good night's sleep is required for farm work, especially when you're malnourished.
So when offered the opportunity to purchase these for 50 cents, they will do so. And they will have that opportunity because aid agencies will be giving them away like candy if they are effective. Aid agencies have trouble getting things like that into the hands of where they're needed, but grey/black market entrepreneurs help ensure that they do.
Although being able to walk through one means I'd likely have one installed on my front and back door in no time. I'd possibly throw them up in my kitchen doors too as a just in case.
I've been in parts of northern Brazil where malaria is endemic. People there are so poor that they can't even dream of having electricity or clean water. Most are illiterate. Besides, it is useless to protect people from malaria only when they're sleeping; mosquitoes can byte you also when you're awake, right?
Is there anyone seriously dreaming of fighting mosquitoes there with this kind of high-tech equipment?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44947187/ns/health-infectious_di...
It doesn't sound like they actually understand why it works. I hear what you are saying, but evolution and mutations have their limit. What if this is just as lethal as ionizing radiation for them?
Natural selection doesn't need a lethal system to come into play.
2. I love it when other people make "I've had this idea for years" into reality with zero effort on my part. The future is so cool.
The second is a nice feeling of vindication. "It was a good idea. Look!"
That's what bothers me most about "intellectual property". This "if I can't be the one to build it and profit from it then no one should" notion is just a recipe for nothing ever getting done.