[HN Gopher] Laser for control of mosquitos, weeds and pests
___________________________________________________________________
Laser for control of mosquitos, weeds and pests
Author : ildaron_ron
Score : 298 points
Date : 2021-10-07 23:46 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| taf2 wrote:
| Given just how dangerous these lasers are to vision I really hope
| people to start using this setup ... seems way to risky very cool
| but too risky. Maybe there is another tool besides lasers like a
| sound wave that could be used to knock the mosquitoes out of the
| air into a fatal collision with the ground?
| agent327 wrote:
| Ah, someone finally implemented this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSIWpFPkYrk
|
| How does it do against other 'annoying elements in your
| surroundings'? ;-)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| This is interesting and looks like it was a fun project, but it
| looks a little complicated to be practical for me personally. I
| currently just put a screen over a large fan and open a bottle of
| carbonated water to attract them near the screen. The fan/screen
| can kill (starve) tens of thousands of them per day and their
| carcasses can be used in plant fertilizer. The downside of my
| method I suppose is that the fan will use more power than your
| laser by quite a bit.
|
| [Edit] Apologies to the parent poster. I did not mean to derail
| the laser discussion.
| pier25 wrote:
| How long does the the bottle of carbonated water last?
|
| Do you just open it and leave it there?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| A little more than an hour. Long enough to pull in a swarm. A
| 2 litter would last longer but I just get the flavored
| sparkling water. I open it just to the point I can begin to
| hear a sound.
| 101011 wrote:
| Just curious: do you notice a difference in the population
| over time, or is it one of those things that mostly just
| works while it's running?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| It could be my imagination but it seems like there are
| less of them overall. For sure when I use the disposable
| fly traps there are less flies overall. I can't stand
| seeing horses eyes covered in flies. If I were a horse
| that would drive me insane.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I think in addition - depending on where you live -
| controlling surface water would be a factor. Don't leave
| water to go stale in puddles or containers, and if you
| have something like a pond, either treat the water with
| something or get plenty of mosquito-egg-eating fish.
| pier25 wrote:
| What fishes eat the mosquito eggs?
| convolvatron wrote:
| you'd be hard pressed to find a fish that wouldn't like a
| tasty larvae
| pharke wrote:
| For a longer lasting and potentially cheaper source of CO2
| just add sugar and yeast to water.
| pier25 wrote:
| I've found a number of systems on Amazon intended for
| adding CO2 to aquariums but never got around to buying
| any of those.
|
| Anyone tried using those for mosquitoes?
| healthysurf wrote:
| I use a CO2 tank to re-carbonate my soda stream
| cannisters, I imagine at a slow leak rate my 10lb tank
| would last a long time and it's only $20 I think to
| refill it.
| jdc wrote:
| I think your method would be much better for the indoor use
| case, but the laser method could clear your whole backyard in
| theory!
| Natsu wrote:
| Interesting method. I knew they were attracted to CO2, but I
| thought the CO2 had to be warmer & wetter to attract them for
| some reason.
| shagie wrote:
| Mosquitos use different mechanisms depending on the distance
| to their target.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2019/03/28/7068387...
|
| At a distance, its CO2 (30 feet away). Closer in, its the
| sweat. Even closer to target, its body heat.
|
| The CO2 itself doesn't need to be warm or sweaty. Just when
| the mosquito is close to a target, it switches from the
| general vicinity (CO2) approach to one that will give it a
| better lock on.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| this device can be used also for weed and insect)
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Have you found a tractor company or robotics company to mount
| your laser and zap weeds? I've seen a few prototypes on
| youtube but I have no idea how popular they are yet. If not I
| hope you find one.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| this while the prototype is still needed. I've seen a few
| videos that do this - but the working conditions are too
| ideal there.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I wonder if you could just use something sticky, sort of like
| fly strips? Fertilizer becomes untenable, but perhaps you could
| put the energy savings toward a more efficient fertilizer
| approach?
| mattjaynes wrote:
| More details on this style of setup:
| https://youtu.be/6BhV-o77RqQ
| gingerlime wrote:
| I wonder how it compares with something like Thermacell ?
| (haven't used it, but heard good things)
| enra wrote:
| I think Thermacell is ok to keep mosquitos away but it
| don't think it really kills them, at least in masses. You
| can't really have it running for 24/7 because the pad that
| contains the poison/repellent that it diffuses will run out
| in 4-12 hours.
|
| Also there are some comments on that the poison they use is
| really harmful for marine life, so you shouldn't use it
| near water. Also personally not sure I like to have poison
| diffuser next me all time.
| gingerlime wrote:
| Thank you. Yeah, I realize it has a different purpose,
| but I guess I'm more concerned about not getting bitten
| than about killing mosquitos en masse :)
|
| The point about harmful poison is very valid though.
| Definitely good to know and to avoid extended use. I'm
| less keen on buying it now, even though the protection
| from bites sounds promising.
| Itsdijital wrote:
| That isn't a mosquito trap, that's flying insect genocide
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Yeah I would be concerned about butterflies, moths, bees,
| etc. it's also got to use a lot of energy.
| sixothree wrote:
| It might catch a few mosquitos But the majority is going to
| be small flying insects. But more so the "bait" is likely
| completely in effective
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Yeah it's a simple, effective trap for small flying
| insects, but any CO2 from the seltzer is clearly going to
| be sucked through the fan and dispersed.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Greenpowerscience is a great channel, was hoping their video
| would get linked here :D
| LinuxBender wrote:
| That is really clever. I never thought to use an animal to
| attract the mosquitoes. Not sure what I think about spraying
| alcohol into the fan, at least my old fan. Maybe he's using
| 70%.
| ladberg wrote:
| I the video he said 2 parts water to 1 part rubbing
| alcohol.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| What kind of fan are you using? Would a box fan work?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| 24 inch drum fan. Box fans might work. The drum fans have
| higher air flow so I guess its up to the specs of the fan.
| Try it and see if they stick to the screen.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Thanks
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Just a bottle behind a screen behind a fan? Or does it blow
| into the screen?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| About 20 feet in front of it. The gasses get pulled into the
| fan along with the mosquitoes. It works without carbonated
| drinks too, just slower. And that only helps if there is a
| swarm of them i.e. near a standing body of water. In standing
| water you can also use "mosquito donuts" that release a
| bacterium which is toxic to all species of mosquito larvae. A
| common brand is called "Mosquito Dunks"
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The screen is 20 feet in front of the fan?
| cassepipe wrote:
| There : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6BhV-o77RqQ&feature
| =youtu.be
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Wonderful! Thanks.
| jschwartzi wrote:
| Please only do this in artificial bodies of water. There's
| an entire food chain of insects and birds and fish which
| rely on the larvae and adults.
| SamBam wrote:
| I've been interested in this question for a while. The
| Bill Gates-funded science to try and eradicate all
| mosquitoes always appears founded on the premise that it
| would cause a ripple effect in the ecosystem. Anyone know
| if that's justified?
| sprucely wrote:
| Where I live, we used to have tons of frogs. The city
| actually built a freeway bypass to prevent too many flat
| frogs. Didn't work. Anyway, the frogs quickly vanished
| around the same time we started spraying to reduce the
| spread of West Nile. Don't know if it was the food source
| or if the spray killed the tadpoles, but unintended
| consequences are a thing. A knock-on to that is we now
| have a growing roach problem.
| Cogito wrote:
| It's never "all mosquitos" it's "all of these 2-3 types
| (Anopheles) of mosquitoes that are vectors for human
| pathogens".
|
| The ecosystem impact is still super important to
| understand, but it's reasonable to think that other
| mosquitos, or similar insects, could fill the niche left
| behind.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| I'm for eliminating _all_ mosquitos. They are the single
| most annoying thing about the best time of the year,
| summer, around here. I want to enjoy it without being
| harrassed about sucking my blood. The ecosystem will
| adapt.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I've been plagued by mosquitoes ever since I quit
| smoking, I've found that heating a spoon with boiling
| water and pressing it against the bites for as long as
| you can stand the pain will swiftly deal with the
| itching. You have to be careful not to burn yourself
| though!
| oezi wrote:
| Or just buy a device with the same principle:
| https://www.beurer.com/web/gb/products/medical/insect-
| bite-h...
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Sounds expensive compared to boiling a kettle. I actually
| looked this up, boiling a litre of water in a kettle
| costs about two pence and I'd only boil around half a
| pint (~280 ml) for this costing me 0.56p per go. That
| device retails for about PS30 where I live so I'd need to
| be bitten badly enough for it to be a problem about 5,350
| times before it'd be worthwhile.
|
| I guess it depends on whether the device is durable
| enough to last that long, and whether or not you're
| careful enough to avoid burns with the spoon method!
| oezi wrote:
| The main advantage is that it is quick and delivers a
| quantity of heat that matches what is needed to
| inactivate the mosquito's venom.
|
| Assuming your leisure time is worth 20p per minute, the
| cost is quickly amortized.
| cassepipe wrote:
| I get the feeling but the point is that most mosquitoes
| do not suck your blood. And the blood sucking ones are
| just the female mosquitoes of a certain mosquito type and
| your blood is only meant to help their reproduction.
| #NotAllMosquitoes
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| > The ecosystem will adapt.
|
| Sure, but as with climate change, you may not like the
| result. I guess there's a fair chance that it won't be
| "just like now, but no mosquito bites". Mosquito larvae
| are a big source of food for others, and extensively prey
| on larvae of other species, keeping those in check. Adult
| mosquitos are important pollinators, too, and as we're
| currently discovering with bees, taking out an important
| pollinator has big consequences and while the ecosystems
| will adapt, it may well end up shedding very desirable
| species entirely, ecosystems take a long time to bounce
| back, and may be a lot less appealing to us afterwards.
|
| Frogs and fish might suffer, too, they'll have to make do
| with a lot less food when you take mosquitos out, and
| what takes their niche may not be as palatable. You push
| these below a sustainable population size in an area, you
| probably lose them entirely, and their function of
| keeping insect larvae and adult insects in check. Since
| we'd like to enjoy mosquito-free summers ourselves, and
| soon, the time scales we'd typically do such
| interventions on is way too short for much adaptation in
| vertebrates to take place, generation times even of frogs
| and small fish are too long for that. You may end up with
| ponds that are way emptier and more silent, and with lots
| more creepy crawlies and possibly a long-term balance
| that has, say, way more rats, roaches, etc.
| dmd wrote:
| An excellent comment on this topic last time eliminating
| mosquitos were discussed:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26837319
| rsync wrote:
| On the one hand, yes, an excellent comment with some
| impressive background and credentials.
|
| On the other hand, I'm put off by this rejection of
| differing viewpoints:
|
| "While contrarianism is a valuable american (and human)
| trait, in this situation it is misplaced, mis-informed,
| and dangerous. An educated man's anti-vaxx, if you will."
|
| ... which employs a fairly lazy pejorative to dismiss
| (people that think perhaps we shouldn't eliminate
| mosquitos).
|
| I believe I quote Will Durant: "The mosquito is the enemy
| of civilization" and I am intrigued, generally, by the
| idea of eliminating mosquitos ... but I also adhere to
| the precautionary principal.
|
| Maybe save a breeding stock and frozen eggs, etc., in
| case there is some hidden consequence we didn't think of
| ?
| maxerickson wrote:
| The bacteria probably attack more than just the species
| that feed on humans, but putting that aside, there's only
| a handful of species that focus on humans, so disrupting
| those doesn't necessarily mean disrupting all mosquitoes.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Do you know this for sure?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I've only ever done this in places with a high diversity
| of insects for birds and bats to eat.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| > their carcasses can be used in plant fertilizer
|
| Or fish food.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Also hijacking the general mosquito control discussion: What's
| wrong with UV light traps? Got one from amazon and the soothing
| placebo? effect is great.
| llampx wrote:
| UV doesn't attract mosquitoes
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Oh, are German mosquitoes different or is it really just
| placebo?
|
| Thinking about it:
|
| If I leave the window open with the light on in summer
| there will be hundreds of mosquitoes in the room (together
| with ~50% other critters). Even if no one was inside.
|
| Window open without light: a dozen mosquitoes at max (as
| counted by suddenly switching the light on).
|
| Whatever is known about other species is not correct about
| our breed.
| hcknwscommenter wrote:
| That's not UV light
| singularity2001 wrote:
| fair comment. the "UV" trap lights are not pure UV either
| though.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Great against insects that are attracted by UV light, like
| mayflies, but not mosquitoes.
|
| Some mayflies may look like mosquitoes, but they don't bite
| and are mostly harmless. It doesn't mean they are not
| annoying, especially when there are lots of them, and if
| that's a problem, UV light traps work great.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Tried one. It increased my mosquito bites and killed 1-2 per
| week. Needless to say I wasn't using it for very long.
| ars wrote:
| Can you elaborate a bit on this? Does it work by the fan
| blowing them against a screen and they stay stuck on it?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| mattjaynes linked a video that explains this better than I
| did and looks like its a better way to do it.
| lemper wrote:
| I spent weeks on hospital because of two kids got dengue. so,I
| don't think this is an overkill solution.
| newsclues wrote:
| I want an umbrella that uses lasers to vaporize the raindrops
| that would fall on me.
| zackangelo wrote:
| Tesla obtained a patent for something similar for use on their
| windshields: https://electrek.co/2021/09/08/tesla-patent-laser-
| windshield...
| newsclues wrote:
| https://anonweblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/untitled-
| cyberpunk-w...
|
| " Carrying an Ultra Laser Umbrella, he walked out of the
| garage the car humming as it polished, into the dark rain
| outside in the alley. A cloud of mist covered the man, as his
| umbrella tracked every raindrop that would make contact with
| the man and instantly evaporated them before they could get
| the man wet."
|
| Published 14 years ago
| modeless wrote:
| I think the portable fusion reactor you'd need to power it
| would be a cooler invention.
| newsclues wrote:
| Those a readily available in the cyberpunk future.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| Dear colleagues, I periodically receive questions about the
| status of my project to neutralize mosquitoes with a laser. I
| wanted to say that I post all the new information on the open
| source github - https://github.com/Ildaron/Laser_control
|
| I continue this direction but I do it very slowly. But at the
| same time, I received very important comments from you.
| Jedd wrote:
| I've been meaning to write up an 'Ask HN' style question around
| using something similar to combat a common beekeeping pest
| called the Small Hive Beetle (SHB).
|
| This is a small (5mm) black beetle that comes into beehives,
| usually around dusk, and causes massive havoc, can easily wipe
| out colonies quite quickly.
|
| It arrived in Australia about 15 years ago, but is common
| almost everywhere else in the world now. There's lots of
| control mechanisms, but they're all incomplete (traps,
| nematodes in soil around the hive, mesh layers they can be
| pushed / fall through but bees can't fit through, etc).
|
| A laser unit sitting in front of a hive, perhaps with an
| extended landing pad, seems like an excellent use case for an
| approach like yours.
|
| So, if you're bored, and want to save the (beekpeeing) world
| ... ? : )
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| yes, exactly. I considered it. It is very easy to do.
| Jedd wrote:
| I approve your optimism, while doubting it would be at all
| easy for me to try to do.
|
| You would have no shortage of beta testers, and in the
| hobby / home space I would expect the market to be
| significant. Commercial hive operators, I'm less sure about
| how the economics would play out there.
|
| There's at least one other pest that's large enough to be a
| good candidate for this approach - the wax moth.
|
| There's plenty of other pests, but they're typically small
| and hitch a ride on bees, (eg varroa mite) so terminator
| gene really is our most hopeful solution for many of those.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| your right
| Jarwain wrote:
| I was doing some reading up on beehives and it looks like
| there's generally a single entrance to a hive? This could
| simplify things since if there's a reduced area to guard its
| possible to control/protect that area to prevent stray
| lasers.
|
| I discovered a product called the guardian
| https://guardianbhe.com/ which is mounted by the entrance to
| a hive and uses red light to obscure that entrance. Wouldn't
| a similar configuration work, except instead of red light it
| would incinerate any intruders?
|
| I guess it mainly just comes down to rapid recognition of the
| beetle. With that kind of info one could hook up any number
| of deterrents.
|
| Alternatively, if not rapid recognition of the beetle, rapid
| recognition of bees and just zap anything else.
|
| With a doorway-guard system it could maybe even be done with
| a tesla-coil-esque thing
| Jedd wrote:
| Yup, almost always a single entrance, wide (~30cm) though
| lots of people put in reducers as that's way more space
| than almost any colony needs, and narrow (about 1cm high).
| There's usually a small strip pad there to land on, though
| bees can hover, and don't really need that pad - it's
| typically 2-5cm deep.
|
| A good candidate for an active defence system as the bees
| usually take at least a second from landing to getting
| inside, and a camera / laser could be mounted immediately
| above and restricted to a straight-down view (so quite safe
| for humans).
|
| The guardian tool looks similar to something I recently
| bought, but have not attached to my hive yet[1]. It relies
| more on the physical mesh (being small enough beetles fall
| or can be pushed through) than the red colour, I think. The
| floor inside of my hives are also mesh, similarly sized,
| but made of metal -- beneath that is a shallow tray of
| cooking oil.
|
| Personally I don't yet have a baseline for how much of this
| pest I'm going to have to deal with, but am adopting a
| 'whatever I can do' approach from the beginning, as their
| numbers, once inside the hive, can grow very rapidly.
|
| Within my hives I have also have small oil-based traps
| sitting up higher in the boxes, again that bees can't fit
| through, but beetles can. Because bees will typically chase
| the beetles - they can't remove or sting them - and the
| beetles will try to find safety in crevices, which is the
| basis of most of these trap types.
|
| [1] https://hornsby-beekeeping.com/beetle-off-entrance-
| hive-beet...
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| thank that provide details
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| for Asian Hornet)
| Pention wrote:
| Just a thought: I would love to have/start with a device which
| would track and show me were the mosquito is. This would make
| it much saver and still very helpful.
| lixtra wrote:
| >> My strong recommendation - don't use the power laser! I
| recommend making a device that will track an object using a
| safe laser pointer.
|
| I always wondered if you can't use several low power lasers and
| then cross the beams on the target?
| chris_va wrote:
| Rather than use a depth map, it might be more robust (though
| probably a bit more expensive) to just use a beam splitter
| (dielectric, at the laser wavelength) and have the camera share
| the bore-sight with the laser.
| batch12 wrote:
| I would like to build something this but using a salt gun instead
| of a laser.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| yes, it will be a little easy, because don't need high
| accuracy, only be dirty
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| So how does it do the killing aspect? I guess I would have
| previously assumed that you need to heat up/ burn the mosquito to
| kill them. What wavelength of laser is suitable for killing
| mosquitos?
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| We chose the laser based on the power since the task is to heat
| up. Used 1 W, but for burn wing don't need so power.
| prutschman wrote:
| There's some available literature on the subject of required
| laser wavelength/energy for an in-flight thermal mosquito kill:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71824-y.pdf
|
| For a thermal kill you have to deliver some number of Joules of
| energy into the target. You can use a lower powered laser over
| a longer period of time, up to a point. You have roughly 25
| milliseconds of thermal confinement time before the mosquito
| starts to cool off. Longer exposures can work, but the total
| energy dose needed goes up. Longer exposures also require
| keeping the laser aimed at the target for a longer time.
|
| Power needed also depends on how closely you can track the
| target. If you make the spot small enough that the target
| catches all of it then you minimize power requirements, but
| that increases the complexity of the optics. If you use a spot
| size larger than the target then the optical and tracking
| complexity go down, but you're no longer sending all of your
| Joules into the target.
| iaw wrote:
| Just fyi this is not a new idea (not to detract from the creator)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| of course, not new. But it is the first time when an idea was
| realized in low-cost segment. And is open-source)
| aaron695 wrote:
| > Just fyi this is not a new idea (not to detract from the
| creator)
|
| Sorry but this is HN mythological bullshit. It's a well known
| criticism that Nathan Myhrvold uses his yet to exist 'mosquito
| laser' to justify his patent trolling. (No comment if it's
| true)
|
| Meh, it's a known idea because while stoned people talked about
| it in the 90's. If you have a link to working models though,
| feel free to post. Idea's are worth nothing. Worse Myhrvold's
| TED talk was misleading.
|
| Where's Our Laser-Shooting Mosquito Death Machine?
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/laser-shooting-mosqu...
| sk2020 wrote:
| There is also a really slick website for capturing sweet VC
| bucks: https://photonicsentry.com/
|
| Real. Soon. Now.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxjTgiEXh7g I try to catch a
| cockroach with laser pointer Sorry, not good quality of the video
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'd rather have mosquitoes than be blinded. The box fan idea is
| much more attractive.
| WithinReason wrote:
| I don't want to see any more mosquitoes, one way or another!
| fnord77 wrote:
| Nathan Myhrvold was going to make a company of mosquito laser
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/laser-shooting-mosqu...
| basicplus2 wrote:
| I want one that controls a table tennis bat to intercept rocks
| headed for my windscreen
| oofabz wrote:
| I'd like something like this but for houseflies instead of
| mosquitoes. Although, I suppose a simpler solution would be to
| install a cat door rather than propping the back door open.
| lefstathiou wrote:
| This is awesome. I am not an engineer and am wondering if this
| tech can be applied to killing field mice. I once read this is a
| multi billion dollar problem in Australia. Much better to do this
| than dump poisonous bait everywhere.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I don't think in this application a laser would be practical.
| To kill a mouse you're going to need a really big laser, that
| would give you 3rd degree burns if you were exposed. I'm not
| sure you can buy those things if you're not the military and
| power consumption might be horrendous too.
|
| Shawn Woods on YouTube has a passion for mouse traps. The most
| effective one is a bucket with a plank, he can catch about 20
| mice a night with just one bucket.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Why not laser control of people? You could setup a dazzler which
| blinds, say, someone pulling out a gun in a public place. You
| could couple it with an alarm system to have a limited 'area
| denial' system?
| hnbad wrote:
| I'm sure by "dazzler" you mean something causing temporary
| blindness rather than intentionally afflicting a permanent
| life-altering injury, but sadly that's not how lasers work.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Are you saying there is no safe exposure limit to a laser?
| That doesn't sound right. There are already dazzlers
| available for non lethal defense. You could use a poorly
| collimated laser to temporarily degrade vision just like any
| bright light causes temporary pupil constriction. I'm not
| suggesting causing actual eye damage.
| 9dev wrote:
| Hey, great idea! We could also expand this to, say, blind
| anyone trying to say something bad about the president - NLU
| gets better every day!
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| sound dangerous
| sk2020 wrote:
| In many jurisdictions in the US, interfering with criminals in
| any way is itself a crime, even if it's with cool LTL tech. If
| you're fortune enough not to live in one of those places,
| firearms are a solution that have worked for the last few
| centuries.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >In many jurisdictions in the US, interfering with criminals
| in any way is itself a crime
|
| What do you mean by this? In what jurisdictions is it a crime
| to "interfere" with someone that pulls a gun?
| [deleted]
| chasil wrote:
| In the long term, I think that many mosquito species will be
| driven to extinction within the next 30 years.
|
| As gene drive modifications become more accessible, preventing
| this becomes impossible.
|
| The ones that carry malaria will almost certainly be wiped out.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/07/28/1020932...
| mellavora wrote:
| Well if one of the above-linked articles on how mosquitos
| target humans is correct https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2019/03/28/7068387...
|
| "genetically altered mosquitoes to block the activity of a
| specific olfactory receptor called Ir8a. The result was that
| female mosquitoes -- which are the ones that suck blood -- were
| no longer attracted to lactic acid, an important component of
| human sweat."
|
| So if we could refine this just a little bit more, we could
| engineer mosquitos which don't bite humans. And put that into a
| gene drive.
|
| Still scary as fuck to mess this deeply with nature (note:
| post-doc work on viral evolution), but this is a less severe
| change than sterility.
| rsync wrote:
| "The ones that carry malaria will almost certainly be wiped
| out."
|
| This is always discussed in terms of the mosquitos and the
| population(s) of mosquitos.
|
| Should we think, at all, of the population of malaria, globally
| ?
|
| Is it possible that we could exert this tremendous pressure -
| an evolutionary chokepoint - on malaria and it escapes in some
| unexpected manner ?
|
| This is not an area I have any background in so I hope someone
| can comment on this idea:
|
| If we back an organism like malaria in a corner might
| heretofore out-competed mutations ascend and suddenly malaria
| comes at us from a new direction ?
| Kliment wrote:
| I have some limited background in this though it's not my
| main area of expertise.
|
| The vast majority of non-bacterial species that are subjected
| to severe evolutionary pressure go extinct. The main reason
| this happens is they cannot adapt rapidly enough to respond
| to evolutionary pressure.
|
| Malaria is a very complex parasitic disease which depends on
| a whole series of things going right across multiple hosts.
| If it's disrupted in either the mammal host or the insect
| host it's unable to reproduce. There's a number of disruptive
| events that can happen (such as blood cells being the wrong
| shape, preventing infection from the parasite). There's no
| variants of malaria that can infect sickle-shaped blood cells
| even though sickle-cell anemia is very common in malaria
| regions.
|
| Unlike viruses and bacteria, there's no easy mechanism for a
| new variant of a parasite to spread its mutation laterally.
| The replication mechanism for parasites occurs much less
| frequently and produces much fewer copies than bacteria or
| viruses do. RNA-based viruses have very high mutation rates
| in general, due to the defects in RNA replication. The viral
| life cycle happens anew with every cell infection. Bacteria
| are even more adaptive - they can actually exchange genetic
| material even between replications, and of course replicate
| exponentially without depending on host cells. This is why
| viruses and especially bacteria can rapidly respond to
| evolutionary pressure. Other species are not so lucky. For a
| malaria parasite to respond to evolutionary pressure, it
| would have to go through its entire multi-host song and dance
| on every replication cycle. This already massively slows down
| mutations, as the number of mutations depends on the number
| of replications and the probability of mistranscription in
| each replication. But the important thing is that we are
| already using heavy interventions to prevent the spread of
| malaria - if we can drop the base rate of spread by some tens
| of percent and keep those measures, malaria will go extinct.
| If we remove the index host species (the particular
| susceptible mosquitoes) it's going to take a very long time
| for the parasite to successfully infect another species, as
| the number of replications drops massively and there's no
| replication reservoir where a new variant can develop. As the
| individual parasite's lifecycle is short, extinction is much
| more likely than adaptation.
| rsync wrote:
| "Unlike viruses and bacteria, there's no easy mechanism for
| a new variant of a parasite to spread its mutation
| laterally."
|
| I was not aware until just now that malaria is _neither_
| virus nor bacterium.
|
| Thanks - appreciate your response.
| timmg wrote:
| > In the long term, I think that many mosquito species will be
| driven to extinction within the next 30 years.
|
| I honestly don't know: will this affect the ecosystems? I think
| (at least) dragonflies eat mosquitoes. No idea how much the
| depend on them for food.
| nearbuy wrote:
| There was a study somewhere claiming that it wouldn't. Only a
| small fraction of mosquito species bite humans, and according
| to the study, none were particularly important to their
| ecosystems.
| weq wrote:
| bats eat mosquitoes, frogs, fish eat larvae..
| coldelectrons wrote:
| Since humans only care about cute animals, you should
| probably add hummingbirds to your list.
| stefan_ wrote:
| This is always such an astonishing question to me. What
| happened to "the ecosystems" when we went from millions of
| humans to billions in the ecological timescale of the blink
| of an eye?
|
| One mention of "gene" and you attract all the conspiracy
| theory evolution deniers that suspect the upcoming zombie
| apocalypse behind the most mundane technology, all the while
| combusted dinosaurs takes them to their job.
|
| Don't worry, "the ecosystems" are perfectly fine with things
| appearing and disappearing constantly for the most random
| reasons.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >What happened to "the ecosystems" when we went from
| millions of humans to billions in the ecological timescale
| of the blink of an eye?
|
| Well, its called "the sixth mass extinction", so I'd guess
| it isn't good.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're being serious here.
|
| What happened to "the ecosystems" when we went from
| millions of humans to billions is the extinction of many
| species, and disappearance of biodiversity in general :
|
| > In absolute terms, the planet has lost 58% of its
| biodiversity since 1970 according to a 2016 study by the
| World Wildlife Fund. [0]
|
| The ecosystems are definitely not 'perfectly fine' if we
| keep messing with them [1]
|
| If you want something less dry than pure numbers, you can
| check the docuserie "Our Planet" on Netflix
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiversity#Threats [1]h
| ttps://www.science.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.345.6195.
| ...
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| yes, of course. I do not declare that the need uses a laser for
| neutralizing mosquitoes. But except mosquitoes, we have many
| other harmful insects and pests.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I have tried killing mosquitoes with laser. It just does not
| work. Multiple seconds of those powerful green laser ray does no
| lasting damage to the critter.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I think I'd be happy with a 5mW version which merely highlights
| the insects so I can kill or trap them myself.
|
| How many times have you gone to swat a fly only to have it go out
| of view?
| phgn wrote:
| Or lying awake from a mosquito you can just hear, but not see.
|
| I thought about the laser approach so many times already,
| incredible that some people actually implemented it.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| interesting application
| arondeparon wrote:
| All I could think of when seeing this was the Star Wars Mosquito
| Defense System parody from 2007.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSIWpFPkYrk
| go_elmo wrote:
| Using bio systems is also a way. Libella nymphs feed on mosquito
| larvae, so populating them to local surface waters reduces wild
| outbreaks
| Mandatum wrote:
| Iron Dome meets Starwars meets Bug-a-Salt.. It'll be interesting
| to see how open source extends in this field.
| EastOfTruth wrote:
| appears to be very far from reality... and there is so many
| mosquitos around here that I would not want lasers handling them
| (there are better ways, nowadays)
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Thoughts on danger to eyes? Ie lasers capable of killing a
| mosquito may not be eye safe. (?)
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| absolutely not safe for eyes in my GitHub the next information
| "The main limiting factor in the development of this technology
| is the danger of the laser may damage the eyes. The laser can
| enter a blood vessel and clog it, it can get into a blind spot
| where nerves from all over the eye go to the brain, you can
| burn out a line of "pixels" And then the damaged retina can
| begin to flake off, and this is the path to complete and
| irreversible loss of vision. This is dangerous because a person
| may not notice at the beginning of damage from a laser hit:
| there are no pain receptors there, the brain completes objects
| in damaged areas (remapping of dead pixels), and only when the
| damaged area becomes large enough person starts to notice that
| some objects not visible. We can develop additional security
| systems, such as human detection, audio sensors, etc. But in
| any case, we are not able to make the installation 100% safe,
| since even a laser can be reflected and damage the eye of a
| person who is not in the field of view of the device and at a
| distant distance. Therefore, this technology should not be used
| at home. My strong recommendation - don't use the power laser!
| I recommend making a device that will track an object using a
| safe laser pointer."
| _tom_ wrote:
| Could you use a laser at a frequency that the cornea is
| opaque to?
| wnkrshm wrote:
| Then you injure the cornea. That's why they use UV lasers
| for laser surgery, because the cornea absorbs it.
|
| Edit: I recently had a small corneal erosion from my eye
| drying out over night (eyelid was pulled open by sleeping
| in a weird posture) and I had 30% vision for 2 days on that
| eye. The cornea contributes about 40% (iirc could be more)
| to the total refractive power in the eye. If you have a UV-
| spot that melts moskitos dancing around on that for half a
| second...
| cobbzilla wrote:
| What about an infrared laser? Something where a
| microburst would melt delicate insect wings, but a direct
| hit on a human eye would just warm it up a tiny bit.
| Possible?
| detaro wrote:
| You basically can't make laser pulses safe and melt
| things at the same time, because by nature of having the
| energy in a short pulse created heat doesn't have time to
| distribute, so it doesn't matter if you hit a tiny thing
| or a tiny spot on a larger object, the damage done
| locally is the same.
| cobbzilla wrote:
| I'm confused, are you saying that the minimum amount of
| energy in an infrared pulse sufficient to melt a fly's
| wings (< 1mm) would necessarily also damage a human eye?
|
| I have to believe there is a threshold value of safety,
| particularly with IR. You can tell me I'm wrong, but
| please provide a bit of physics to justify it.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| it is not a toy, not for home application
| batch12 wrote:
| Maybe a salt/sand airgun, but it wouldn't be as quiet...
| ehofnvk0 wrote:
| Or carefully targeted squirts/droplets of a pyrethroid. That
| would add another interesting problem: how to detect and
| compensate for airflow.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Use an array of eye safe lasers that converge on the target.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| it is not easy
| wnkrshm wrote:
| That is (almost*) the same as focusing a laser on the target
| with a very large lens - a highly divergent beam is only
| dangerous near the focus. Some laser processing machine
| developers make their machines eye-safe that way, if you're
| half a meter from the focus, the remaining radiance is low
| enough to not be caught by the laser safety norms anymore
| (there is a very low limit to which radiance is still
| considered class 1, after that it's not considered a laser
| according to the norm). But to make a highly divergent beam,
| you need large aperture optics.
|
| * you'd need to have very good optics and optomechanics on
| each laser to make the spot small enough - the smaller optics
| on each smaller laser would make the spot worse than one
| created with a single large lens, unless the single lasers
| are actually from a single coherent source
| londons_explore wrote:
| To fry a mosquito, you don't need an awful lot of energy.
| That means you don't need awfully big lenses to keep it
| human safe away from the focus.
| wnkrshm wrote:
| That would depend on the distance you want to fry
| moskitos at, if you want to burn them at meters, you need
| a larger aperture to get a similar divergence angle as
| with cm.
| fho wrote:
| I feel like this discussion is missing a bit about auditory
| detection. Maybe that is just my naive conclusion, but mosquitos
| (at least around here) make a very distinct buzzing sound.
| Picking that up with some sensitive microphones, isolating the
| buzz and triangulating in on the mosquito seems possible to me.
| krageon wrote:
| This has been done, so it is definitely possible
| camkego wrote:
| I'm sad to say there is a good chance Intellectual Ventures
| patented similar tech:
|
| https://www.mic.com/articles/180851/the-world-needs-this-sma...
| exhilaration wrote:
| Indeed, discussed on HN (in 2009!):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=829344
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US8705017B2/ (Photonic fence)
| myself248 wrote:
| And I still can't buy it for love or money. Screw 'em.
| basicplus2 wrote:
| In Australia a patent holder can be forced to assign the
| rights to manufacture (for renumeration) to someone who
| wishes to make use of it if the owner is not utlilising the
| patent
| echelon wrote:
| We need regulation to stop patents that aren't actually being
| used by the filer in a patent. Or if the filer hasn't tried to
| take it to market.
| ant6n wrote:
| Couldnt u just use somebody elses patent. Then they can sue.
| Then they win. Then damages will be calcilated for the patent
| holder, which should be negligible.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| I read their paper. But not sure that this is a similar method.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Roughly similar, at least in one iteration. They used a high
| speed camera and a retroreflective backstop to image
| everything between the two posts, then wing beat frequency to
| identify valid targets. After that injure with a laser same
| as yours. They used to have it running with a visible laser
| and box of captive mosquitoes in the lobby.
| ildaron_ron wrote:
| maybe, I am not a big specialist in patent field
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