Zapping Mosquitoes

It appears someone is beginning to take the human war on mosquitoes seriously.  The fact that it was so readily cobbled together is rather good news. It suggests that the next order of magnitude is possible and that works for me. 

The needs of the modern consumer are simple.  He wants to sit in his back yard in a fairly open place on a summer evening and relax with a beverage in hand.  It takes little to make him happy.

Lasers can protect a large cube around that consumer as a minimal design plan. 

Everyone else in the world wants the same protection, but right now a simple fifteen by fifteen by ten cube will satisfy plenty of paying customers who want their patios back for the whole summer.

Establish that market and the crest will follow naturally as need and funding dictates.

Using Lasers to Zap Mosquitoes

February 12, 2010, 9:16 AM

By JENNIFER 8. LEE

TED / James Duncan DavidAt the annual TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., Nathan Myhrvold presented a laser, built using common consumer electronic parts, that shoots down mosquitoes.

Can consumer electronics be used to combat malaria?

Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s former chief technology officer, thinks so. His company, Intellectual Ventures, has assembled commonly available technology — parts used in printers, digital cameras and projectors — to make rapid lasers to shoot down mosquitoes in mid-flight. If bed nets are the low-tech solution to combat the deadly disease — caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people — the laser is a high-tech one.

He gave the first public demonstration of the laser, which was cobbled together from parts found on eBay, at the annual TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., which features lectures and demonstrations by experts in a wide range of fields, including technology, politics and entertainment.

After hundreds of mosquitoes (which were kept in the hotel bathroom until showtime) were released into a glass tank, a laser tracked their movements and slowly shot them down, leaving their carcasses scattered on the bottom of the tank. While the demonstration was slowed down for public viewing, Mr. Myhrvold said that normally the lasers could shoot down anywhere between 50 to 100 mosquitoes per second.

Mr. Myhrvold played a slow-motion recorded video that showed what happened to a representative mosquito. As the insect flew, a sudden light beam struck it, disintegrating parts of its body into a plume of smoke. It fell, even as its wings continued to beat.

Mr. Myhrvold said the software detects the speed and size of the image before deciding whether to shoot. It would reject a butterfly or a human, for example, and more powerful laser blasts could be used for locusts. In regions afflicted by malaria, the lasers could be used to create protective fences around clinics, homes, or even agricultural fields as a substitute for pesticides.

The idea was born from a 2008 brainstorming session held on strategies for killing malaria-bearing mosquitoes, a particular interest of Mr. Myhrvold’s friend and former boss, Bill Gates, who has made the illness one of priorities of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (to the point that Mr. Gates released mosquitoes into the audience at last year’s conference).

The idea of lasers — a miniature “Star Wars” weapons system — was thrown into the mix. “Everyone was like, ‘C’mon, be serious,’” Mr. Myhrvold said in an interview after the demonstration. After doing a little bit of research, he said, his team concluded that “this is feasible. We can actually do it. So we did.”

The breakthrough relied on understanding how the technology that guides the precision of laser printing could be combined with the image-detecting charge-coupled devices, or C.C.D.’s, used in digital cameras and powerful image processing software. Mr. Myhrvold said he thinks there is particular potential in the Blu-ray laser technology, because blue lasers are more powerful than red ones and there are a lot of them being made cheaply now.

He estimates that the devices could potentially cost as little $50, depending on the volume of demand. However, his company would not manufacture them. Rather, it built the technology mostly as a proof of concept. (Among other things, his company is also working on cooking technology.) Other companies would have to take the laser technologies to market, so the timeline for seeing the lasers in common use is uncertain.

The laser detection is so precise that it can specify the species, and even the gender, of the mosquito being targeted. “The women are bigger. They beat at a lower frequencies,” Mr. Myhrvold said. Since it is only the female mosquitoes who bite humans, for the sake of efficiency, his system would leave the males alone.

Fiona Kobusingye's Africa

It is about time that someone pointed out the obvious. It is outrageous to suggest that modern methods not be used to produce the wealth for others that it has produced for us. That modern methods are not perfect is irrelevant. They were replacing methods that were even less perfect. I tend to actually get angry about such profoundly ignorant assertions.

The magic of modern methods is that they begin an optimization process that step by step eliminates new problems as they arise.

The present emphasis on CO2 production is well met because it forces us to create far better energy regimes. That was simply overdue and required a blanket decision by governments to do it.

Subsistence farming, which only exists because the farmers do not have access to credit on reasonable terms, is the worst producer of CO2 imaginable. Slash and burn is just that.

The reason that I have been pushing subsistence biochar using maize culture in emulation of the Amazonians is to end the folly of slash and burn. My initial posts on this now go back two years and the general methodology has made great strides into agricultural consciousness. However, we still do not have the picture show made on the earthen corn kiln method that could be used to get the information to everyone out there. Good progress is been made in applying biochar with zao holes by hugely reducing the need for biochar. Hills are better still in well watered climates.

Africa’s real climate crisis

by Fiona Kobusingye

http://townhall.com/columnists/FionaKobusingye/2009/07/29/africa%E2%80%99s_real_climate_crisis?page=full&comments=true

Life in Africa is often nasty, impoverished and short. AIDS kills 2.2 million Africans every year according to WHO (World Health Organization) reports. Lung infections cause 1.4 million deaths, malaria 1 million more, intestinal diseases 700,000. Diseases that could be prevented with simple vaccines kill an additional 600,000 annually, while war, malnutrition and life in filthy slums send countless more parents and children to early graves.

And yet, day after day, Africans are told the biggest threat we face is – global warming.

Conferences, news stories, television programs, class lectures and one-sided “dialogues” repeat the claim endlessly. We’re told using oil and petrol, even burning wood and charcoal, will dangerously overheat our planet, melt ice caps, flood coastal cities, and cause storms, droughts, disease and extinctions.

Over 700 climate scientists and 31,000 other scientists say humans and carbon dioxide have minimal effects on Earth’s temperature and climate, and there is no global warming crisis. But their views and studies are never invited or even tolerated in these “climate crisis” forums, especially at “ministerial dialogues” staged with United Nations money. Al Gore refuses to debate any of these experts, or even permit questions that he hasn’t approved ahead of time.

Instead, Africans are told climate change “threatens humanity more than HIV/AIDS.” More than 2.2 million dead Africans every year?

We are warned that it would be “nearly impossible to adapt to the loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet,” which would raise sea levels by “5 to 15 meters.” That certainly would impact our coastal communities. But how likely is it?

The average annual temperature in Antarctica is minus 50 degrees F! Summer in its Western Peninsula barely lasts two months and gets maybe 10 degrees above freezing for just a few hours a day. Not even Mr. Gore or UN computer models talk about raising Antarctic temperatures by 85 degrees F year-round. So how is that ice supposed to melt?

Let’s not forget that sea levels have risen 120 meters since the last Ice Age ended. Do the global warming alarmists think cave men fires caused that? Obviously, powerful natural forces caused those ancient glaciers to come and go – and caused the droughts, floods and climate changes that have affected Africa, the Earth and its animals and people for millions of years.

Just consider northern Africa, where green river valleys, hippopotami and happy villages suddenly got turned into the Sahara Desert 4,000 years ago. Scientists don’t know why, but it probably wasn’t Egyptian pharaohs building pyramids and driving chariots.

However, the real problem isn’t questionable or fake science, hysterical claims and worthless computer models that predict global warming disasters. It’s that they’re being used to justify telling Africans that we shouldn’t build coal or natural gas electrical power plants. It’s the almost total absence of electricity keeping us from creating jobs and becoming modern societies. It’s that these policies KILL.

The average African life span is lower than it was in the United States and Europe 100 years ago. But Africans are being told we shouldn’t develop, or have electricity or cars because, now that those countries are rich beyond anything Africans can imagine, they’re worried about global warming.

Al Gore and UN climate boss Yvo de Boer tell us the world needs to go on an energy diet. Well, I have news for them. Africans are already on an energy diet. We’re starving!

Al Gore uses more electricity in a week than 28 million Ugandans together use in a year. And those anti-electricity policies are keeping us impoverished.

Not having electricity means millions of Africans don’t have refrigerators to preserve food and medicine. Outside of wealthy parts of our big cities, people don’t have lights, computers, modern hospitals and schools, air conditioning – or offices, factories and shops to make things and create good jobs.

Not having electricity also means disease and death. It means millions die from lung infections, because they have to cook and heat with open fires; from intestinal diseases caused by spoiled food and unsafe drinking water; from malaria, TB, cholera, measles and other diseases that we could prevent or treat if we had proper medical facilities.

Hypothetical global warming a hundred years from now is worse than this?

Telling Africans they can’t have electricity and economic development – except what can be produced with some wind turbines or little solar panels – is immoral. It is a crime against humanity.

Meanwhile, China and India are building new coal-fired power plants every week, so that they can lift their people out of poverty. So even if Africa remains impoverished – and the US and Europe switched to windmills and nuclear power – global carbon dioxide levels would continue increasing for decades.

Even worse, the global warming crusaders don’t stop at telling us we can’t have electricity. They also campaign against biotechnology. As American, Brazilian and South African farmers will tell you, biotech seeds increase crop yields, reduce pesticide use, feed more people and help farmers earn more money. New varieties are being developed that can resist droughts – the kind Africa has always experienced, and the ones some claim will increase due to global warming.

Environmental radicals even oppose insecticides and the powerful spatial insect repellant DDT, which Uganda’s Health Ministry is using along with bed nets and modern ACT drugs to eliminate malaria. They claim global warming will make malaria worse. That’s ridiculous, because the disease was once found all over Europe, the United States and even Siberia.

Uganda and Africa need to stop worrying about what the West, the UN and Al Gore say. We need to focus on our own needs, resources and opportunities.

We don’t need more aid – especially the kind that goes mostly to corrupt officials who put the money in private bank accounts, hold global warming propaganda conferences and keep their own people poor. We don’t need rich countries promising climate change assistance (maybe, sometime, ten years from now), if we promise not to develop.

We need to stop acting like ignorant savages, who thought solar eclipses meant the gods were angry with them, and asked witch doctors to bring the sun back. We need to stop listening to global warming witch doctors, who get rich telling us to keep living “indigenous,” impoverished lives.

Walden Pond and Malaria Threat

This is one of those stories that somewhat annoy me just because global warming is used as deus ex machima. A little more effort is surely warranted. Every researcher is pitching his favorite scheme as a crusade on global warming and we are getting these breathless pronouncements.

In this case a quick trip to Google maps quickly shows that this very modest kettle lake is and has been encroached on all sides at a modest distance with roads and freehold woodland.

Backyard biomes compete with local flora and the local flora that require rare conditions are obviously under pressure. A young boy walking through the woods can stomp a rare species out of existence when you do not have an adjacent reservoir of the plants in question. A glance at the map shows a sharply reduced ecology surrounding the pond and thus we understand the change in biodiversity. This has nothing to do with global warming.

The next story is about the threat of an expansion of biodiversity. Yes the SE USA is a prime prospect for malaria reinfestation. If it happens it will because we did not spray and did not move to irradiate the outbreak.

DDT is not a toxin of choice for dealing with a chronic situation but a DDT saturation of an affected area will eliminate the problem quickly at which point the environment can recover without that mosquito.

And surely we must now have an oil based insecticide that can do the job DDT did. DDT could be sprayed on water and the mosquito larvae would rise to the surface to breathe and be killed.

Global warming changing Walden Pond

Published: Oct. 29, 2008 at 2:13 AM

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Two-thirds of the plants writer Henry David Thoreau chronicled at Walden Pond in Massachusetts have disappeared due to global warming, a U.S. study contends.

The Harvard University report said some of the hardest-hit plants include lilies, orchids, violets, roses and dogwoods. Plants that have thrived in the warmer temperatures include mustards, knotweeds and various non-native species.

"Some plants around Walden Pond have been quite resilient in the face of climate change, while others have fared far worse. Closely related species that are not able to adjust their flowering times in the face of rising temperatures are decreasing in abundance," Charles C. Davis, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said Monday in a news release.

The report said about 27 percent of all species Thoreau recorded in the 1850s around Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., are now locally extinct and another 36 percent are so sparse extinction may be imminent.

"The species harmed by climate change are among the most charismatic found in the New England landscape," Davis said.

King: Malaria may return with global warming

Malaria is the most fatal of infectious diseases. Its daily death toll tops the number of casualties on Sept. 11th, 2001 and dwarfs the combined mortalities from AIDS and Tuberculosis.

Americans are increasingly aware of the magnitude of this scourge. More and more elementary schools, church groups and bar mitzvahs are donating their collections to purchase malaria nets. The United Nations created its Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in 2001. The Gates Foundation invested $168.7 million in the Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

But Americans are not yet fully cognizant of malaria’s relationship to climate change: A warming climate might facilitate the return of malaria to the world’s temperate regions.

History might help our nation once again appreciate the relationship between health and the environment. Malaria fell off the radar of many industrialized, wealthier nations as soon as they successfully eliminated the disease within their own borders. This neglect allowed malaria to not only resurge within endemic countries but also threaten nations long considered malaria-free.

For instance, malaria was successfully eradicated from the Southeastern United States in 1951. But since malaria remains endemic in most of the Southern Hemisphere, including places as close to the U.S. as southern Mexico, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges that reintroduction of malaria into the United States remains a constant risk — one of the principal reasons that the CDC is located in Atlanta, Ga., not in Washington, D.C.

Now, warming global temperatures — which allow malaria-infected mosquitoes to survive in new areas and for longer periods — could endanger hundreds of millions in the coming decade.

American public opinion surveys reflect our inadequate comprehension of the effect of climate on health. The nation’s public health system has allowed for an unacceptable disconnect between climate change and human health. Information and recognition are the first steps to cure, and those first steps have already been taken by many countries. For instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which co-won the 2007 Nobel Peace Price, warned the public in its acceptance speech of an altered distribution of infectious diseases due to rising temperatures.

In contrast to the international community’s efforts on this front, the United States has performed relatively few health-climate studies. The paucity of federally-funded research on the links between climate change and human health reflects the ignorance of the American public.

Americans must now strive to avoid becoming victims of our own success. Sound scientific study will give individuals and businesses the necessary behavior modification tools to stem the resurgence of a malaria pandemic. When it comes to developing a better understanding of the relationship between malaria and climate change, ignorance is no longer an option.

Leslie P. King, M.D., M.P.H., is the founding director of Flying Physicians International. She currently is completing a one-year mid-career masters degree at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, focusing on communications of the impacts of climate change on human health.