Using high-speed lasers to zap mosquitoes in the fight against malaria

Sep 2 2011

In this post on CNN's Global Public Square, journalist Amar Bakshi interviews Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer of Microsoft and co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, about an anti-malaria project "that use[s] lasers and digital image processing techniques to not only find mosquitoes ... but also to determine the gender of the mosquito" before zapping female mosquitoes, which are responsible for transmitting malaria, out of the sky.  Myhrvold told Bakshi, "Basically what we do is we look for the bug using a digital imaging processing. Then we shine the laser on it and measure the wing beat frequency and the size and a couple of other parameters. And then we decide if this guy is a mosquito and if it is a female," according to the blog (Todd, 8/21).