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Solar Scare Mosquito

gallactronics.com

212 pointsrytis72 comments

Assuming both that it works and that one wants to do a prodigious amount of enterprise sales, this is probably something which is actually easier to sell to comparatively rich countries rather than comparatively non-rich countries. Illinois and much of the Midwest has substantial annual expenditures on mosquito abatement, partially through habitat destruction and partly through periodically spraying after e.g. substantial rainfall or when residents get particularly bothered. A single truck roll to e.g. a park pond costs them several hundred dollars. They might repeat that several times in the season. 1,000 of these devices at $10 apiece and $25 per deployment (I know that sounds high, but government work, what can I say) costs "rounding error."

Potential problems: There is the perpetual issue with all government work, which is that one can't ever propose doing it too efficiently, lest one discover that there exists a margin at which the government is happy to inflict more mosquito bites as long as it allows it to continue awarding easy, well-paying jobs to favored constituents.

Anyhow, I assume that after you start ordering these in lots of 100k you can get it closer to the pennies-per-household-protected figure that it has to reach to be achievable for the largest fraction of folks worrying about malaria.

While it's true poor countries might not buy this, that's where were I selling it I'd make it a BOGO (buy-one-give-one) setup, such that for every unit sold I'd send one to Panama (i.e. to a charity fighting malaria in a malaria-ridden country). As a benefit, working through a charity should reduce the likelihood of corruption getting in the way. (should ...)

As I recall the solar-flashlight outfit had a similar plan - for each one sold, they'd send one to rural Africa.

http://inhabitat.com/bogolight-solar-powered-flashlight/

NOTE - I don't know if the bogo-light organization is still around, but the overall concept seems reasonable enough.

I would buy one for my neighbours pond so I could once again sleep with the window open and I live in rural England.

$5 of screen or netting and you are good to go...

> [..] this is probably something which is actually easier to sell to comparatively rich countries rather than comparatively non-rich countries.

If you compare Switzerland (rich country) to Ethiopia (poor country) that's true for anything I can think of.

The economics term 'inferior good' refers to one which has negative income elasticity of demand, i.e. a good for which an individual's demand falls as their income rises.

Of course, which goods are inferior will vary depending on where you are on the scale. Someone may consume more margarine as they become more affluent, but at some point they may switch to butter or an olive-based spread. At this point in the scale, margarine has a negative income elasticity of demand.

Critiquing this article's approximation of a field-biology study would be a great exercise for young science students. I envision a roomful of kids shouting "where is your control group"?

I know nothing of mosquitoes and I haven't had my coffee and yet I can reel off three alternative hypotheses that need to be checked, from the prosaic ("experimenter cannot reliably identify viable mosquito larvae", "water temperature was incorrect and mosquitoes died") to the less prosaic ("plastic box leaches chemicals into water which poisons mosquitoes"; "a tiny frog, perhaps attracted by the alluring sound of this buzzing box, visited the pond and took the opportunity to snack on mosquito larvae". Oops, that was four. I'll get my coffee now.

Also, citations. Just one, pretty please? Surely a thousand people have published on this problem before. What was wrong with the version of this approach that they probably tried back in 1953?

God forbid someone should sketch out a prototype and share about it before running a multi-million dollar RCT, right?

You're right we shouldn't shoot this down in flames, but I think most of us would consider evidence with a sample size of one as un-evidence.

Providing better evidence will not take a multi-million dollar RCT - all you'd need is ten ponds and a fortnight of checking them once a day.

If that went well, you would have the confidence to push this harder, and maybe get a local university biology department involved to carry out a better designed study. And if that produced good results, you'd be ready to knock on the Gates Foundation door.

This device will do great clearing out mosquitoes from your backyard but don't think for a second that this will save lives or help solve the global malaria problem.

This is a great device for eliminating mosquitoes from stagnant water but it is completely impractical that it would work in the areas where malaria hurst the most. [1]

Firstly, it would require that every single puddle be discovered immediately. Try doing that after monsoon season in India, or in rural West Africa where malaria is one of the main killers of children under the age of five and where the roads are so bad you can't even get a truck loaded with food in, let alone these devices.

If these did make it into some of these rural villages, every single one would be picked up off the ground immediately and be converted into something that really could improve the quality of life, into something that might power lights or charge cell phones or be sold to someone who could.

[1] http://cms.travelstart.com/uploads/image/asset/92/malaria-ar...

I think he proposes leaving these in areas that are prone to forming puddles after storms. And they would turn on automatically when wet.

That way you don't have to immediately locate all puddles.

I doubt it, as the in-built alarm would sound for months while the device waits for the puddle to form.

Also, largish puddles are not the only (and probably not the main) problem with malaria. Many puddles will be too small for this device. That old tire in a corner, a coke can, a discarded piece of plastic all can and will contain stagnant water.

Finally, even if one could predict where puddles would form on roads, I doubt these would survive the dry season with cars driving over them.

You're making some comparison that I don't understand, how exactly are these devices comparable with tracks?!

You're saying that keeping the lights on is a higher priority to the people of India and Africa than keeping themselves safe from malaria?

If that's true, so be it. It is still it's better than nothing. If this could work as an energy source would be extremely good anyway :-)

> You're saying that keeping the lights on is a higher priority to the people of India and Africa than keeping themselves safe from malaria?

It is if there's not a direct link between a whirring box and children not dying in the next several years.

I mean, I'd sound crazy if I said that a slight convenience is more important to Americans than long-term cardiovascular health, and yet McHere we are.

Having built my own pond and faced similar issues dealing with mosquitos I'm highly skeptical that this is as effective as claimed. I've purchased cheap aeration devices that were solar powered in the past and they were not very effective. It took a few months of getting the right combination of fish, plants and a more powerful aerator to solve the problem. Also it seems like deployment of these things in thousands of small standing pools of water which breed mosquitoes wouldn't be feasible.

I find it amazing (and somewhat disappointing) that some comments are heralding this as the end of malaria. The lifecycle of mosquitoes is quite complex and mosquitoes are very adaptable creatures, unfortunately. I imagine this device would help, but only as part of a more comprehensive approach

I'm typing on my phone, but here are two informative articles on how mosquitoes breed and what can be done to reduce populations:

http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/lhd/CentralShenandoah/EH/WNV/mos...

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef005.asp

Technophants believe 1) technology solves all problems more or less instantly and 2) the only reason any problems exist are because one or more of bureaucracy, regulation, ignorance(luddism), lack of monitization scheme have prevented the technical solution from being applied.

This solar aerator is interesting but still a bit expensive and limited. I wonder what happens when buggies and fishies nibble at it and water inevitably leaks in.

There are some cheaper solutions. The mosquito dunk costs less than $1 per application and is pretty easy to use--just toss a little puck into a pond, and the bacteria specific to mosquito larvae destroys the pest without causing any known side effects.

There are also dragonflies. They, like mosquitoes, start life in the water and the nymphs are voracious eaters of mosquito larvae. Then, when they crawl out of the water and grow wings, they eat flying mosquitoes and other small insects in large quantities.

If you seed your area with dragonflies, of course they will end up becoming food for bats and other predators which also eat mosquitoes but will preferentially go after larger, meatier insects. But on balance, a larger number of these creatures will keep the mosquito population down naturally and efficiently.

It seems unlikely that introducing dragonflies to a specific area will unbalance the ecosystem. Dragonflies are ubiquitous in the world except for Antarctica. They are an ancient species and fossil records of giant dragonflies date back as far as 300 million years. The mystery to me is why we even still have mosquitoes, when we have such efficient and highly adapted killers of mosquitoes out there.

Spraying is perhaps the worst possible approach of all of these. I've seen spraying done in urban areas that actually resulted in more mosquitoes in some neighborhoods. It either pushes the mosquitoes into new areas, or it inadvertently kills predators of mosquitoes. The best thing is to use as natural means as possible.

That said... please, please find a way to wipe these critters out of existence. As discussed a few weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657251) there are plenty of non-biting mosquitoes out there; only 200 out of 3,000 species feed on human blood. Life would go on just fine if we could genetically target those blood-sucking varieties and zero them out.

>genetically target those blood-sucking varieties and zero them out

This is exactly what some scientists are doing. A recent Radiolab episode discussed a field deployment in Brazil.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-all/

If you're interested in this you may like to check out Radiolab's "Kill 'em all" - http://www.radiolab.org/story/kill-em-all/. There is an organisation breeding a strain of mosquito that when released into wild populations causes all offspring to be infertile. This causes mosquito populations to be eradicated very quickly.

One of the presenters was asked if there are any benefits of having mosquitos around. After looking high and low, his conclusion was that they've stopped humans from coming in and destroying precious ecosystems, for instance in jungles, forests and swamplands.

One issue seems to be that if the pond is of any decent size (say > 20 meters in diameter) and you put in a few of these devices at the end of the day they are all in the same corner of the pond due to the current/wind.

that would be simple solution of anchoring the device with a stone

I guess they could be anchored?

Put some Mosquitofish[1] into your pond. It should clean the pond up pretty quickly. It is also provide a pleasant environment as well, watching the fish rather than some box creating bubbles.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquitofish

From the fourth paragraph of your own link:

    Mosquitofish were introduced directly into ecosystems in many parts 
    of the world as a biocontrol to lower mosquito populations which in 
    turn negatively affected many other species in each distinct bioregion. 
    Mosquitofish in Australia are classified as a noxious pest and may 
    have exacerbated the mosquito problem in many areas by outcompeting 
    native invertebrate predators of mosquito larvae.

People are overcomplicating things.

You should be able to use almost any local fish. We don't have malaria mosquitoes in northern europe, but when we just put some small perch (Perca Fluviatilis) and roach (Rutilus Rutilus) into a pond, they cleared up local mosquito larvae quite efficiently.

That works for individual ponds, but not for ubiquitous and transitory puddles.

Wouldn't that disrupt the ecosystem?

Wouldn't removing the mosquitoes and changing the entire environment from fetid to oxygenated water disrupt the ecosystem?

The change in the water might, but it turns out that mosquitoes aren't a vital part of any ecosystem. Nothing preys on them exclusively or even primarily, and their animal victims seldom die, so they're not keeping anything's numbers in check.

Well, they do seem to keep human numbers in check to some degree.

I always understood that human numbers in less developed areas actually increase because other forces (disease, poverty, mosquitoes?) try to keep them in check.

Don't bats eat a healthy diet of mosquitoes?

They do, but it's a relatively small part of their diet. They do all right on other bugs.

Yeah, but male mosquitoes are pollinators, right?

They are, but the same thing applies--every plant that mosquitoes pollinate is also ably served by other species.

That's unclear - there was an article a few years back arguing otherwise:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

In fact, even in that article

"Mosquitoes consume up to 300 millilitres of blood a day from each animal in a caribou herd, which are thought to select paths facing into the wind to escape the swarm. A small change in path can have major consequences in an Arctic valley through which thousands of caribou migrate, trampling the ground, eating lichens, transporting nutrients, feeding wolves, and generally altering the ecology. Taken all together, then, mosquitoes would be missed in the Arctic — but is the same true elsewhere?"

There seems to be this assumption that a small ecological disruption wouldn't cascade and to me that seems pretty short-sighted.

There are almost always unforeseen consequences. As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, doesn't it feel almost impossible that the sole purpose of mosquitoes is to annoy and kill humans?

Agreed, although that article does depend on some sort of near-magic which could wipe out only the mosquito species which actually feed on humans. If you're going to wipe out something without consequences, a few subspecies of parasite would probably be your best case.

Disrupting the ecosystem is precisely what we're trying to do here, so I hope it would :)

Removing mosquitoes from our ecosystems just means emptying an ecological niche, which can be filled by some other animal. Possibly one that's even worse than the mosquito.

The same thing happened with bioengineered maize.

Maybe, but the problem is what if you introduce mosquitofish and instead of mosquitos it decides that some other important insect is more edible.

It's not just insects. Mosquitofish (especially in sufficient numbers) are voracious eaters, and will eat other fish, insects, frogs, etc.

Yes, they're effective at containing mosquitos, but broader ecological disruptions can occur through other activities, including out-competing (or in cases eating) other aquatic life.

What's wrong with disruptive innovation?

Simpler solution: stick a tiny bit of soap in the water. Not much at all. Doesn't hurt aquatic life but breaks the surface tension which kills the mosquito rafts dead as they sink straight away.

Source: I live next to a sewage farm.

I thought the traditional simple solution (e.g., while building the panama canal) was to put a thin layer of oil over your stagnant water.

Yes - they put kerosene on it which suffocates them. Unfortunately it's quite toxic to anything which enters and exists the water plus there is some indication (after the whole BP Deepwater Horizon fuck up + Corexit that used deodorised kerosene) that it is toxic if absorbed.

That's not simpler, because the soap will disperse eventually so it would need to be continually replenished. The apparent attraction of this device is you set it up once and it keeps working for years without further maintenance.

Until it doesn't and you don't know.

Also kills water striders.

They're hardly innocent or desirable either. They devour everything in sight right up to the size of bees including things that eat mosquitoes and they bring parasites when they migrate between bodies of water which kill things that eat mosquitoes. Plus they can swim fine under the surface.

I suspect the problem with deploying this on a large scale to fight Malaria for example, is that mosquito breeding areas are often very large areas, and change in location due to environmental changes. This device is probably a good fit for stopping mosquitos breeding in the pond outside your house, but for stopping malaria you need to cover a very large area.

The other problem is that even tiny still water bodies are enough for mosquitoes to breed. So even if you control several ponds, if your neighbor keeps a bucket of still rainwater, you'll have mosquitoes.

This + roomba = problem solved

This isn't a bad idea but it's increasingly a side-show: tiger mosquitoes are spreading throughout the world courtesy of commercial shipping and global warming. In addition to being active throughout the day, they need far less water to reproduce – something like a bottle-cap or flower blossom is enough:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aedes_albopictus#Control_and_su...

If you do a great job suppressing traditional threats, all you're doing is wiping out the competition…

What we really need is something like the photonic fence prototype from Intellectual Ventures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser

Unfortunately, my understanding is that they decided this wasn't cost-effective as a malaria control mechanism but I suspect there'd be a big market in developed controls where the drawbacks of pesticides are an increasing concern.

I don't see how this could kill mosquito larvae. Aerating the water will just make it better for the aquatic animals.

Ripples on the water surface might stop some mosquitoes from laying their eggs. But this would need to be tested. I doubt a small device could continuously create big enough ripples.

simple arithmetic : 3.4B people in the risk areas, US retail price for mosquito DEET containing repellent is $0.1-0.3 per day (this is also about the same as mosquito repellent bracelets on Alibaba, though i never used one, and Amazon shows even cheaper ones - would be great if this stuff really works).

So, the higher estimate for everybody to have repellent every day is $400B dollars/year. In many areas you actually need it only part of the year. So napkin calculation comes to say $200B or 1K per clinical episode (or even less if not to use US retail prices).

http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/malaria_worldwide/impact.html

To me it looks like something that we as a civilization could have done. And after few years the parasite would possibly be eradicated in many areas.

(note: i'd used DEET extensively in my time in Western Siberia ("stroyotryad" who knows/remembers :) , so i understand limitations of it, yet i also understand the difference it makes :)

I've got a fountain in which the pool is NEVER still ... once the chlorination has bubbled out of the water, it still gets mosquitoes.

You want to throw one of these in every month: http://www.amazon.com/Summit-111-5-20-Pack-Mosquito-Dunk/dp/...

What an elegant solution to malaria problem. My only fear is that mosquitoes will adapt to this minor change.

I'm not sure if that would happen. It's a natural adaptation to only breed in still water. If mosquitos evolved from that, we would have much bigger problems than just malaria.

It would likely be deployed only near human settlements, which cover a relatively small portion of Earth's land surface area. Mosquitos would still be able to breed unabated in, say, protected land in the United States and Canada.

Not that it takes away from your concern, which is valid. It is possible that ubiquitous deployment of this device could select for more resilient phenotypes on human-observable timelines (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution)

If these are deployed in high population areas they are also being deployed in high-malaria areas. If you treat those with malaria while preventing mosquitos from reproducing you would hope that you would prevent the spread of malaria to those areas with low populations where mosquitos are left to reproduce.

The goal, after all, is to wipe out malaria — not necessarily to wipe out mosquitos.

The air pump is probably superfluous, you could just have a cell phone vibrator style motor...

Can it cause issues with other living organisms in water?

oh god this is awesome. a lot of people will buy this if it is only $10.

So simple, so smart

Is a 2 meter radius enough? I don't think that this strategy scales because power dissipates as r^a.

If this technique is shown to be effective and becomes popular amongst owners of small ponds I could imagine similar techniques being encouraged, or mandated, for any large body of still water in and around high-populations.

But it literally can't scale. If you want your wave to do more than a 2 radius meters you need a ton more power.

Yes, but area also scales square of radius, so it will consume power proportional to the area covered.

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