14th
WSJ: Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With Lasers
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680870885500701.html
In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light…The scientists’ actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Ended in the U.S. decades ago, malaria remains a major global public-health threat, killing about 1 million people annually.”
The mosquito laser is the brainchild of Lowell Wood, an astrophysicist who worked with Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and architect of the original plan to use lasers to shield America from the rain of Soviet nuclear arms.
“Not only can the laser target a mosquito, it can also tell a male from a female based on wing-beat.
That’s a crucial distinction, since only females feed on blood and thus transmit disease. Males in the wild eat sugary plant nectar. (In the lab they get raisins.)
“If you really were a purist, you could only kill the females, not the males,” Mr. Myhrvold says. But since they’re mosquitoes, he says, he’ll probably “just slay them all.”
