[TheForge] nukkin' skeeters OTOTOT

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Some good may come of "Starwars" after all.  pf

Schade wrote:
> Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With LasersHumans, Butterflies  
> Remain Unharmed; The 'Star Wars' Connection
> By ROBERT A. GUTH
> BELLEVUE, Wash. -- A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists  
> proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from  
> the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming  
> their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito.
> 
> 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 insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal  
> laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile- 
> defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito  
> Destruction.
> 
> "We'd be delighted if we destabilize the human-mosquito balance of  
> power," says Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist who once worked at the  
> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the birthplace of some of the  
> deadliest weapons known to man. More recently he worked on the  
> mosquito laser, built from parts bought on eBay.
> 
> 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.
> 
> Efforts to eradicate the disease languished for years until recently.
> 
> Big-money donors like Bill Gates, the United Nations, the U.K. and non- 
> profit such as Malaria No More re-launched the war on malaria,  
> devoting billions of dollars to vaccines, methods of prevention and  
> novel ways to kill mosquitoes.
> 
> "You can say we are very lucky -- the right place at the right time,"  
> says astrophysicist Szabolcs Márka, a Columbia University specialist  
> in black holes. He has a grant to develop a "mosquito flashlight"  
> designed to knock out the bugs' eye-like sensors.
> 
> Scientists around the world are testing ways of thwarting mosquitoes  
> with microwaves, rancid odors, poisoned blood and other weapons that  
> disrupt the sense of sight, smell and heat mosquitoes use to find  
> their prey.
> 
> There's work on genetically altering a bacterium to infect and kill a  
> mosquito, and a project to build a malaria-free mosquito genetically  
> enhanced to overtake the natural kind.
> 
> There's also a researcher in Japan who thinks mosquitoes can be a  
> force for good. He is working on transforming them into "flying  
> syringes" that deliver vaccines with every bite.
> 
> 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.
> 
> President Ronald Reagan embraced the idea in the 1980s, dubbing it the  
> Strategic Defense Initiative.
> 
> Senator Edward Kennedy mocked it as "Star Wars." Eventually it became  
> a footnote in history.
> 
> Its rebirth as a bug killer came thanks to Nathan Myhrvold, a former  
> Microsoft Corp. executive who now runs Intellectual Ventures LLC., a  
> company that collects patents and funds inventions. His old boss, Mr.  
> Gates, had asked him to explore new ways of combating malaria. At a  
> brainstorming session in 2007, Dr. Wood, the Star Wars architect,  
> suggested using lasers on mosquitoes.
> 
> Soon Dr. Wood, Dr. Kare and another Star Wars scientist teamed with an  
> entomologist with a Ph.D in mosquito behavior and other experts. They  
> killed their first mosquito with a hand-held laser in early 2008.
> 
> "We like to think back then we made some contribution to the ending of  
> the Cold War" with the Star Wars program, Dr. Kare says. "Now we're  
> just trying to make a dent in a war that's actually gone on a lot  
> longer and claimed a lot more lives."
> 
> The scientists envision their technology might one day be used to draw  
> a laser barrier around a house or village that could kill or blind the  
> bugs. Or, laser-equipped drone aircraft could track bugs by radar,  
> sweeping the sky with death-dealing photons.
> 
> They now face one big challenge: deciding how strong to make the  
> weapon. The laser has to be weak enough to not harm humans and smart  
> enough to avoid hitting useful bugs. "You could kill billions of  
> mosquitoes a night, and you could do so without harming butterflies,"  
> says Mr. Myhrvold.
> 
> Demonstrating the technology recently, Dr. Kare, Mr. Myhrvold and  
> other researchers stood below a small shelf mounted on the wall about  
> 10 feet off the ground. On the shelf were five Maglite flashlights, a  
> zoom lens from a 35mm camera, and the laser itself -- a little black  
> box with an assortment of small lenses and mirrors. On the floor below  
> sat a Dell personal computer that is the laser's brain.
> 
> The glass box of mosquitoes across the room is an old 10-gallon fish  
> tank. Each time a beam strikes a bug, the computer makes a gunshot  
> sound to signal a direct hit.
> 
> To locate individual mosquitoes, light from the flashlights hits the  
> tank across the room, creating tiny mosquito silhouettes on reflective  
> material behind it. The zoom lens picks up the shadows and feeds the  
> data to the computer, which controls the laser and fires it at the bug.
> 
> In a video, researchers showed what happens when they deploy deadly  
> rays.
> 
> A mosquito hovers into view. Suddenly, it bursts into flame. A thin  
> plume of smoke rises as the mosquito falls. At the bottom of the  
> screen, the carcass smolders.
> 
> There's ready supply of fresh recruits nearby, where an intern feeds a  
> saucer of goat blood to a colony ofanopheles stephensi, one species of  
> mosquito that transmits malaria.
> 
> 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."
> 
> Write to Robert A. Guth at rob.guth at wsj.com
> 
> Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1
> 
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