As I was looking through the readings for tonight, I was reminded of an article I read about the TED conference out in Cali last week. As Bill Gates is pursuing more of the purely scientific aspects of malaria eradication, his colleague and former Microsoft CTO is pursuing the tech aspects in designing rapid lasers that shoot down mosquitoes mid-flight. Amazingly, these lasers are made of parts from old printers, cameras, & projectors which make them pretty cheap & sustainable.
The idea is that this technology could be used to create a photonic fence around these villages and they’re developing it to be cheap enough that it might actually work. The only challenge they’re encountering is adopting the existing electronics being used in the lasers so that they will consume less power (and finding power in some of these remote areas to begin with). With the rising resistance of the mosquitoes to the insecticide treated nets, this might be a complement, alternative or even replacement for the current nets and sprays being used.
I went and checked out the site for this company, Intellectual Ventures, and was pretty amazed by the specs. This thing takes down 50-100 mosquitoes per second and is able to identify an insect by how large it is and how fast its wings are flapping. Amazingly it can even tell the difference between a male and female mosquito. Apparently the females beat slower and are the only ones to bite humans. This company is also pursuing technologies to pursue the problem from the detection aspect being able to identify infected patients by detecting hemozoin in the patient’s blood.
I realize that the Bill & Linda Gates Foundation only awards grants to non-profit organizations and even though they’re not funding the research of the private side I think it’s key that they’re building these open, collaborative relationships outside the non-profit sector that will ultimately help them reach their ultimate goal of eradicating malaria.
I saw another TED talk featuring George Whitesides, who discussed the development of a very, very inexpensive (practically zero-cost) tool that can be used to diagnose various diseases.
The concept of designing "up" from lowest possible cost vs. trying to engineer costs "down" or out of a $100k device was very interesting and reminded me of the concept of "jugaad" we discussed in class.
Definitely worth watching if you have a few minutes...
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