A complex new attack on mosquitoes, sort of, is outlined in this new study about identifying the sound of a single mosquito: “Mosquito Detection with Neural Networks: The Buzz of Deep Learning,” Ivan Kiskin, Bernardo Pérez Orozco, Theo Windebank, Davide Zilli, Marianne Sinka, Kathy Willis, Stephen Roberts, arXiv:1705.05180, May 15, 2017. The paper points out, especially, a limitation […]
Tag: mosquito
Booze, beer, and another way to protect mosquitoes
Mosquitoes can be resilient, but even they can use some help in surviving a sterilizing bout of x-ray radiation. This study studies several kinds of help: “The effect of the radio-protective agents ethanol, trimethylglycine, and beer on survival of X-ray-sterilized male Aedes aegypti.” Stacy D. Rodriguez, Ramaninder K. Brar, Lisa L. Drake [pictured here], Hannah […]
Battle over a library’s use of an Ig Nobel Prize-winning teenager-repellant
People are displeased that a Welsh town’s library installed an Ig Nobel Prize-winning device designed to repel teenagers. BACKGROUND: The 2006 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant — a device that makes annoying high-pitched noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later […]
The vampire spiders and the transplanted mosquito heads
This tweet by May Berenbaum will lead you, if you let it, to an entomological adventure: Testing vampire spider preferences by transplanting male mosquito heads on female mosquito bodies. It’s alive!! See J Exp Biol 6/7 Berenbaum refers, tersely, to this study: “The discerning predator: decision rules underlying prey classification by a mosquito-eating jumping spider,” Ximena […]
Cheese and dogs and a pill to kill mosquitoes
Bart Knols explains—and also demonstrates—three related things: How to use cheese and dogs and a new kind of pill to kill malaria mosquitoes. Knols and Ruurd de Jong were awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in biology for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to […]