Who doesn’t hate mosquitoes? For centuries humans have had to endure this pest, and we started to win the war when DDT came out. Of course DDT isn’t allowed any more, but now you can kill these little buggers with a new gadget. It’s like Star Wars technology for vampire defense. I want one, preferably with a USB port so I can watch the body count on my PC. It will probably be a few years before the digitized ghost of Billy Mays hawks one on TV though. Still, I want one.
Here’s some background from Information Week:
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the project has been dubbed “WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction.” It aims to kill mosquitoes with lasers to prevent the spread of malaria, which mosquitoes can transmit.
The anti-mosquito laser system is being funded by Intellectual Ventures, a company run by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s former CTO.
…
Kare said that “WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction” isn’t a term used internally to refer to the project. He calls the project “the Photonic Fence.” “When we’re being lighthearted, we call it ‘the bug zapper,'” he explained.
As its name suggests, the Photonic Fence prototype consists of two posts that direct laser fire at mosquitoes that fly between them. Kare said the research team is still optimizing its targeting algorithm. “But we definitely can detect them and aim a beam at them,” he said.
When that happens, the mosquitoes literally get toasted.
From the intellectualventureslab.com website: This illustration shows one way our “photonic fence” mosquito laser system could be used to set up a perimeter defense, protecting a single building. The red “fence” shows a border that mosquitoes can’t pass through, but it is safe for everything else. There is no top coverage because mosquitoes don’t fly very high.
Here’s the videos of mosquitoes meeting a well deserved death by laser fire:
Here’s the live demonstration setup at the 2010 TED conference:
Want a big laser to play with? Try here:http://www.wickedlasers.com
This gizmo seems like a ridiculous waste of enterprise, because it’ll result in a product that no one but the military could afford or want: Sean Peake’s (13:14:54) picture of the User Manual is probably pretty close to the mark.
On the other hand, building toys for the military is not a bad way to make a few bucks. . .
Re the claim that mosquitos don’t fly high enough to get over this ‘laser fence’, that’s been pretty well debunked above, though it may well depend on the species. Certainly I’ve seen bats in the treetops zig-zagging after something, probably skeeters.
Mosquitos are a problem in many (most?) parts of the USA, but malaria is not, though it has been claimed that it was prevalent in Philadelphia in colonial times (when according to the warmists it was colder than now). Where did it go? It’s hard to imagine that better sanitation (draining swamps, etc.) could have done the job alone. It’s a question for an epidemiologist. Maybe the disease depends on a sufficient reservoir in the human population. . .
/Mr Lynn
Mr Lynn,
Malaria was a problem in the US through the 19th and into the early 20th century. The man who invented air-conditioning in 1842, an American physician named In 1842, John Gorrie, designed the first system for refrigerating water to produce ice (using a system that compressed air, then partially cooled the hot compressed air with water allowing it to expand). He also conceived the idea of using his refrigeration system to cool the air for comfort in homes and hospitals (i.e., air-conditioning). allowing windows to be kept closed. His idea for refrigerating a room was to keep bad air out, then thought to be the cause of malaria (Mal = bad; aria = air).
The link with mosquitos was not made until the turn of the century, by a British scientist. Swamps were already being drained because they caused ‘bad air” this continued as it was realized that they are breeding areas for mosquitos. The Americans added to their anti-malarial arsenal by screening windows – a practice still not followed in Europe. These two practices largely wiped out malaria in the US, but the advent of DDT finished it. In Italy, where screens are not used and there was a large ‘human reservoir’ of malaria, the mosquito borne disease continued to cause illness and death until 1970: the Italian communist government would not use DDT before this as their philosophy was to fight the disease socioeconomically.
Must retire for the night humbled by the sight of the massacred punctuation of my last comment. My apologies for the mess.
Where’s PETA when you need them!!!
Ben (10:27:56) :
So we are now back to where we were in the fifties. We just had to beat back the alarmism started by Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”. It only cost the human family millions of deaths. But that is ok because most of the victims were black, poor, young, and out of sight over there in Africa.
This whole tragedy of DDT illustrates what happens when zealots convince people “science” says something bad is going to happen if we don’t do something.
It seems the global warming hysteria is turning on itself and will soon drop out of sight. Twenty years from now Climate Change will be the answer on a game show and most people who even remember will snicker at people’s foolishness.
Here’s a good write up on what happened with the DDT scare:
http://spectator.org/archives/2005/02/25/ddt-fraud-and-tragedy
Ben thank you for the good news on the return of DDT.
Steve (18:52:07) :
I had forgotten all about Mothra. LOL
tty (15:05:03) :
Citation?
does anyone else think it’s a crime against humanity that ddt is banned so people can sell more expensive and more harmful stuff?
Back again – hopefully more coherent after getting some sleep.
stansvonhorch, just wanted to say absolutely I agree that it’s a crime against humanity that DDT is banned. I doubt it is to sell more expensive and more harmful stuff, though – the ban is ideological.
In Brazil you can still buy it as an indoor pesticide – I had two students from Brazil who floored me with this information a few years ago. Just go to the local supermarket or hardware store and pick up the stuff. There are a lot of creepy-crawly thingies that find their way into homes along the Amazon, and DDT is the best way to deal with them, although these students told me that they’re always seeing the stuff marketed as “new and improved” or “stronger formulation.”
The ban was put in place in Europe and North America and enforced elsewhere by placing anti-DDT stipulations in aid packages – so the poorest of the poor could not get DDT if they needed food etc.
I wonder how bad the bed-bug situation will have to get in N. America before DDT is considered again as a solution. Perhaps only the reintroduction of malaria to N. America and Europe will change attitudes – and the way the world is going, unless DDT use is allowed elsewhere, this is not beyond the realm of possibility.
vigilantfish (06:34:32) :
Perhaps only the reintroduction of malaria to N. America and Europe will change attitudes – and the way the world is going, unless DDT use is allowed elsewhere, this is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Malaria *was* endemic to North America before DDT wiped out anopheles skeeters and other species hopped into the vacant habitat. The only thing keeping them from moving back is the ongoing battle to prevent new habitat from appearing — despite the efforts of the Greenies who want *all* skeeter habitat to remain untrammeled by us odious humans.
Remind me to tell you about the time the NJDEP “re-introduced” timber rattlers to southern NJ in 1978 without warning anybody they did it.
Bob Edelman (16:42:42) :
Barbed wire would work just as well for New Jersey mosquitos.
Razor wire. Jersey skeeters just use the normal type to hone their snoots.
Wouldn’t it be a lot cheaper to install such systems at the sources; mosquito environments such as creeks, swamps, polar tundra areas? Bet it would. They could use solar, mini-nuclear or space developed power sources. Right? But I really agree that they ought to beef it up to also take care of flys.
r (13:31:05) : “Can it tell the difference between a mosquito and Tinkerbell?”
Tinkerbell is DEAD!!!!!
OK. Calm down. There is a way . . .
Everyone . . . clap your hands . . . and believe in fairies . . .
Could be interesting for burglars if the power could be ramped up by a factor of a million or so. We should just eliminate those carbon breathing pollutants in the house. If it is not a fake the targeting is the most impressive or is it a scatter gun technique?
tty, that does not explain why barnyard chickens, eating feed with large amounts of DDT directly applied to the feed, eating bugs killed by DDT, eating mice that ate bugs killed with DDT, eating chicken scraps from the kitchen, (did I miss anything?) did not have a problem with thin eggshells due to DDT.
vigilantfish: A local pest control tech says that DDT is being made availible in the US soon. It will be water based instead of petroleum based.
Bill Tuttle (07:02:50) :
I’d love to hear your story about the reintroduction of rattlers unannounced by the NJDEP – hopefully somehow snakes will work their way into an AGW story posted at WUWT so we’ll have an excuse to hear it!
I wrote and thought I had posted a long comment on the history of malaria in the U.S. and Europe, but in my sleepy haze last night I must have missed the ‘submit comment’ button as it never appeared. Many people, however, share the misconception that malaria is a tropical disease – thanks to DDT and its elimination from northern nations.
Phillep Harding (12:46:54) :
Did the pest control tech say for what applications DDT might be made available in the US again. Ferries will be frozen in the River Styx (rather as they currently are in the Baltic) before DDT returns to Canada.
Canada – the land where PC politics were honed to their highest level before the Brits decided to imitate us, and amazingly quickly surpassed us. All you WUWT readers suffering under the current decline in British freedom and civility – blame Canada!
In 1996 Discover magazine had an article about biologists who worked in the Alaskan tundra during the summer. They had a competition each year called the Swat Test. The goal was to kill as many bloodsucking insects as possible with a single swat of your hand, using your shoulder, thigh, or forearm as the impact area. (I suspect it was regarded as poaching to kill the critters on another person.)
The record, at that time, was 270.
I’m not sure how you count 270 squashed insect bodies, perhaps you just count the legs and divide by 6.
vigilantfish (06:34:32) :
(…)
I wonder how bad the bed-bug situation will have to get in N. America before DDT is considered again as a solution. Perhaps only the reintroduction of malaria to N. America and Europe will change attitudes – and the way the world is going, unless DDT use is allowed elsewhere, this is not beyond the realm of possibility.
More likely we need to re-conceptualize what a mattress is. We build them like furniture, then allow the soft parts to get loaded up with shed skin cells, other debris, and some bodily secretions, creating a feast for mites and other small bugs. Then we provide them incubator-like warmth for about eight hours a day.
I remember the TV news reports on the secondhand mattress market. They followed government regulations where they were cleaned, fumigated, and even hung in a heated space for a fixed length of time before they could be sold. I’ve been to public auctions, estate sales etc, where the mattresses were wrapped and labeled as having been so processed. The bugs were not impressed, and persisted despite the rough treatment. Now the official secondhand market has apparently gone away, even the charities won’t take used ones.
But what did work was mattress re-manufacturing. They stripped the mattress down to the springs, repaired them as needed, discarded the old soft parts and used new.
Mattresses should be designed with the soft parts as removable covers, top and bottom pieces, that can be washed as large blankets and comforters are. Some bleach in the washer, dry them on high heat, should take care of the problem. This will lead to a replacement covering market, which should see good business due to the tendency of mattresses to get stained. If the mattress has a foam core, well that could be bagged with vent holes, or an anti-bug foam possibly could be formulated, like we have made anti-microbial plastics.
Makes one wonder if our ancestors did or did not have it wrong, when a bed had a base of a grid of taut ropes on which washable soft layers were laid. There were maintenance issues, keeping the ropes under tension and washing the padding, but “sleep tight, and don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Washable padding on top of a springy layer attached to the bed? That should work.
There are always unpredictable unintended consequences to things like this. For example, a die off of mosquitoes in one area doesn’t cause vacuum like effect and bring ever increasing numbers of them in? (The analogy of a hospital and it’s spread of infectious diseases within it’s walls)
Or “nature” decides that a shortage of female mosquitoes forces an adaptation that generates more female mosquitoes being borne?
So much of what we do is directed towards a symptom rather than a cause, and I view this kind of effort as much the same.
On a side note, the power generation for these lasers is….solar? Wind, or more of those evvviiiiiiilll fossil fuels? 🙂
kadaka (11:55:04) :
I enjoyed your disquisition on the technology of mattress-making. Bed-bugs predate modern mattresses, and are notoriously difficult to eradicate because they hide in the crevices of all kinds of furniture and may be transferred from one location to another via unlaundered clothing, childrens’ toys, and other objects. To cite one paragraph of a long Wikipedia article (sorry):
Bedbugs travel easily and quickly along pipes and boards, and their bodies are very flat, which allows them to hide in tiny crevices. In the daytime, they tend to stay out of the light, preferring to remain hidden in such places as mattress seams, mattress interiors, bed frames, nearby furniture, carpeting, baseboards, inner walls, tiny wood holes, and/or room clutter. Bedbugs can be found on their own but will more often congregate in groups once established. They tend not to travel further than 100 feet (30 m) from their host to feed and will usually remain close to their blood supply in the same bedroom or living quarters where people sleep.
“Exact nesting locations of a typical infestation can vary greatly as bedbugs will often attempt to hide themselves within a wide range of tiny areas or spaces, within cracks and crevices, or simply in darker locations where they are out of plain sight. Such hiding spots may not always be immediately obvious to an inexperienced searcher—although bedbugs will indeed be much easier to find and locate once an infestation has become concentrated. A single intricate bed frame or mattress can hold a wealth of choice areas for bedbugs to hide so careful, meticulous inspection is a must. A standard mattress, however, is most likely to house bedbugs along the sewn piping material running along the outer edges on both the top and bottom sides of the mattress. The common bedbug is also most likely to hide in certain sections or parts of various types of beds if the segments are, in fact, present (i.e., hiding in the wooden head or footboard, for example, if the bed has one). Bedbugs may also quietly nest themselves under the cover of various materials and lie completely still for long periods making detection even more difficult. This manner of actively elusive behavior creates significant problems in successfully getting rid of them.”
Bedbugs tuck themselves into peoples clothing when the unwitting victim fails to notice their attachment and the bedbugs can then be transferred to upholstered armchairs, sofas etc, where, if these are frequently used, bedbugs can also establish themselves.
And another paragraph gives the following encouraging information:
“Bedbugs may also introduce themselves into a new residence by traveling between multi-unit housing such as condominiums, dormitories, and apartment buildings, or arrive after having exited infested furniture that has been thrown out, discarded and/or placed outside for garbage collection or for treatment. This unintentional spread between adjacent homesites and nearby units is dependent, in part, upon the degree of infestation at the source (i.e. a heavier infestation is more likely to spread), but also upon the building material used to partition units and the material used to seal connecting pipes, vents, wires, etc. Further potential to spread is also directly related to the manner in which infested items are disposed of — such as whether or not contaminated furniture is dragged through common areas while being removed, which can result in the shedding of bedbugs or their eggs while being dragged — and whether or not infested items have been properly sealed once discarded….Bedbugs can also be transmitted via animal vectors including wild birds and household pets”
Even after all the live bedbugs have been eliminated, a bedbug re-infestation can occur through eggs (bedbugs are prolific breeders) that have been inadvertently scattered while furniture or other items are being moved in the process of trying to eliminate the infestation.
IF bedbugs only involved bugs in beds, your ideas might work. Pesticides are always involved in eradication efforts, but the problem of eggs cannot be dealt with as effectively by any other insecticide as it could be using DDT, due to the persistence and efficacy of DDT. In fact, very likely current bedbug problems are due to a reintroduction of this insect, as DDT apparently wiped out bedbugs in the 1940s in North America.
From the wikipedia page on bedbugs…
“Experiments with high concentrations of carbon dioxide have succeeded in killing bedbugs within 24 hours.”
@ur momisugly vigilantfish (13:55:47) :
True, I have proposed a treatment, not a cure. But it would be good for many ills attributed to mattresses, including mites. I shall also note that before modern mattresses, the laundry technology employed by our ancient ancestors was… somewhat less effective than what we currently have. Nevermind that the padding used could have also been hay, among other organic substances that do not lend themselves well to being washed.
@ur momisugly DirkH (14:45:26) :
So we remove people and pets, seal up a house with plastic and duct tape, flood it with CO2 at positive pressure, then just come back in a day and open everything back up, problem solved. That should also be as effective on other infestations, like cockroaches and mice.
That should make for interesting confrontations with the committed CAGW-believing greens. Such a solution would obviously be marketed as 100% natural without dangerous chemicals, and the greens would throw a fit since it uses EVIL CARBON DIOXIDE!
DirkH (14:45:26) :
Carbon dioxide would not kill the eggs. This would require several repeats – and at what cost to the climate? sarc/
More seriously – boggles the mind as to how one would make an entire house or apartment airtight so as to keep the carbon dioxide at high enough concentrations for long enough to wipe out the bedbugs.
Moral of the story – always read hotel reviews before booking in to check for bedbug reports. This is not a problem you want to have, when bedbug laser zappers don’t seem to be an option and DDT is not allowed.