A little more work on
mosquitoes. The trick is to wear an odor
that overloads the insect’s ability to detect you. Works for me and may well explain a number of
natural methods used to the same effect.
Certain shrubs were burned and the smoke used to mask the users in
situations I have heard of.
Actually, this is promising and
would solve the problem. If one could
simply take a pill and in fifteen minutes be good to go for the whole day, it
would end the whole problem once and for all.
The mosquitoes would not even have to be attacked at all and we all know
just how futile that is.
Let us hope that something can be
sorted out with this. I would love to sleep under the stars without caring about mosquitoes.
Buzz Killer: Special Smells Keep Mosquitoes at Bay
By Jennifer Welsh, LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com | LiveScience.com – Thu, 2 Jun, 2011
A whiff of one of three newly identified scents can send
a mosquito into a bout of woozy bewilderment, scientists find. These
odor molecules, they say, may stop the pests from biting and
transmitting malaria and other diseases to humans.
'These chemicals offer powerful advantages as potential tools for
reducing mosquito-human contact, and can lead to the development of new
generations of insect
repellents and lures," study researcher Anandasankar Ray, of the
University of California, Riverside, said in a statement.
The compounds could help replace the expensive and toxic repellent DEET
and help fight malaria and other diseases spread by mosquitoes, which cause
millions of deaths per year.
I want to sense your blood
Female mosquitoes find their blood meal using special structures near
their mouths called maxillary palps, which detect carbon
dioxide exhaled by mammals, including humans. When they sense carbon
dioxide, they whip around and fly upwind, eventually finding the source.
The compounds were originally discovered in experiments with fruit
flies, which use the same carbon dioxide-sensing machinery to send each other
threat signals. Interestingly, fruit flies' favorite foods, ripe fruit, also
give off carbon dioxide; and to stay under cover, the fruits give off their own
odor molecules that block the fruit flies' carbon dioxide receptors.
The researchers used these fruity molecules as a starting point for
designing repellents, because they figured this group of compounds might have
similar effects on mosquitoes (to block their detectors).
Bewildered brains
By studying how these molecules affect mosquitoes in the lab, the
researchers figured out how they work: The first group works by binding to the
mosquitoes' carbon dioxide receptors in the maxillary palps,stopping
the mosquitoes from sending the signal indicating there's a mammal
close by when they sense carbon dioxide.
\
The second group of molecules acts to mimic carbon dioxide's effect on the
mosquito — they turn on the carbon dioxide sensing neurons and
essentially overwhelm them.
Another group of odor molecules essentially blinds the mosquito to any
nearby blood-filled humans by disabling their carbon dioxide-detection
machinery. Even a brief exposure to these molecules was enough to confuse the
mosquitoes' carbon-dioxide detectors for minutes and severely reduced their
sensitivity for minutes afterward.
The group made a mixture of these different odorants to get the maximum
effect. The result: Mosquitoes that got a whiff of this compound cocktail were
unable to follow a carbon dioxide trail both in the lab and in a study in the
field.
They are continuing to test these and similar compounds; though due to
some side effects, they can't be used in humans yet and need more testing to
determine how safe they are, the researchers report in the June 2 issue of the
journal Nature.
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