Yuck, my brood of dipteran eggs is filthy. If I don’t do something fast, my unborn larvae may never live to see their third instar.
Fortunately Emma’s here to save the day! She gives a how-to on cleaning mosquito eggs in order to improve their life expectancy in the insectary.
This was actually a deleted scene from the Insectary video, a previous post on our blog.
In order to better understand malaria and its spread, we first need to have an understanding of how the carriers of this disease behave. One of the big questions that we are exploring is, what attracts mosquitoes to humans in the first place? Sure they need our blood to reproduce, but how are they able to seek us out? How do they know to land on me and not the tree I’m standing next to? Why are some mosquitoes within a species more attracted to cows, and others more attracted to humans?
For those of us who were unable to attend the TED conference back in February (my couch cushions just couldn’t quite turn up the $6,000 price of admission), we are in luck! Today, Nathan Myhrvold’s talk was released for the world to see. Check out our founder highlighting several of our malaria projects, along with cameo appearances by 3ric Johanson and Pablos Holman.
Aahhhh, those mosquitoes must have laid a quablillion eggs in Sparky’s water dish on the back porch.
Um…are you sure that you counted correctly?
What we really need is a systematic, and preferably automated, method of counting those minute, black specks, otherwise known as mosquito eggs. In the work being done over in the insectary, egg counts are need to determine hatch rates. This is important for understanding the health of a new generation, as well as the previous generation that produced them. It can also provide insight into the environmental conditions necessary to for a mosquito population to thrive…or not thrive, depending on your objective.
Fig. 1 Answer: Approximately 1149 mosquito eggs if I counted it correctly
In a perfect world, I could stop by the local egg counting store to pick up a dipteran clutch quantifier. However, until we see that day, we will have to find our own solutions by more creative means.
Of course specialized and therefore very expensive software exists, but I just wanted a quick and dirty (i.e. fast and free) way to solve the problem. What I’ve laid out is a first attempt, certainly with room for improvement.
It’s probably safe to say that very few of you are breeding mosquitoes at home, so try out this method to count objects in other types of photos: a huge flock of birds, stars in the sky, your marble collection, the dots make up that stippled portrait of your great-aunt Joanne.
How does it work for you? Do you have any advice or suggestions? Drop a comment and let us know.
The tutorial and more on the project can be found after the break.
Read more…
We’ve been seeing more and more visitors from the media around here. The most recent journalist to peruse the lab was Newsweek’s Dan Lyons, who was looking for the lowdown on our malaria work. Although the Photonic Fence, a.k.a. the mosquito laser system, has gotten most of the press lately due to Nathan Myhrvold’s TED talk, we have several other malaria projects that are starting to turn heads as well.
The meat of the article follows Karima Nigmatulina, 
Ph.D. and Philip Eckhoff, Ph.D. (pictured above) and their disease modeling software. A few other projects got shout-outs as well. These include malaria detection tools headed by Michael Hegg, Ph.D. and Ben Wilson Ph.D. (pictured below), the artificial mosquito diet of Barcin Acar Ph.D. and Emma Mullen, and of course 3ric Johanson’s Photonic Fence. Even TerraPower managed to sneak in there.
Dan was a machine, bolting from group to group and scrawling endless notes in the process; we watched him fill up three whole pads of paper! The result is “Short-Circuiting Malaria,” which can be found on Newsweek‘s website and will be in print any day now. We appreciate the coverage and are excited that more of our projects are being recognized.
Check out the Newsweek article here.
Several years ago we had a thought. The discussion that followed looked more or less like this:
If mosquito populations can be effectively controlled, then we could make a huge impact in the fight against malaria.
Okay, so why not just shoot the mosquitoes out of the sky?
That’s absolutely preposterous…let’s do it!
It wasn’t exactly clear how to convince the disease carriers to fall from the air. However, we were confident that a system could be designed that was far cleaner and more controlled than fumigation and certainly more efficient than old-fashion hand slapping. Wondering if an unhealthy dose of photons might do the trick, we set out in search of an energy- and cost-effective way to kill a mosquito with light. This was no easy task as it became apparent that these insects, though tiny and seemingly fragile, are very resilient. Research engineer, Tom Nugent walks us through the various dosing experiments that have led us to our current method of mosquito elimination.
If you have followed us for long, you’ve probably heard of our facility’s supercomputer and laser systems. However, the first thing I like to reveal when telling people about the lab is the mosquito insectary. Not only is it slightly bizarre having colonies of pests nurtured and bred mere feet away from where I work everyday, but the insectary serves a vital role in several of the lab’s projects.
The insectary consists of the supplies and equipment needed to grow mosquitos, and is housed in rooms that mimic the temperature and humidity of India and Sub-Saharan Africa, where these species originate. Biologists Barcin Acar and Emma Mullen conduct experiments and observations at all stages of the insects’ life cycle in order to gain a better understanding of their behavior, anatomy and vulnerabilities so that we can have every advantage possible in the fight against malaria. Barcin and Emma work closely with Photonic Fence and other projects, providing invaluable support to disease eradication efforts.
You can image that preparing a TED talk is no small task. However, a demonstration as ambitious and technical as shooting mosquitoes with lasers proved to be quite a feat.
Between enhancing and cleaning up the software, assembling and mounting all the components, and just making sure everything looked nice and polished, we had a half dozen people occupied for over a month. During the last minute scrabble, some valuable lessons were learned. First, when the shipping company delivers the wrong crate to TED, effectively losing the world’s only Photonic Fence, it helps not to panic. Also, we now know that hotel water glasses are great places to grow extra mosquitoes when you’re running low.
Getting ready for TED was a lot of work, but nevertheless fun and surreal. We are excited about the enthusiastic response following Nathan’s talk, and can’t wait to share our next big idea with you.
In our efforts to fight malaria, the Photonic Fence has been getting all the attention lately, but this is just one of several ideas that we are actively working on to combat disease. Another key malaria project is Epidemiological Modeling. This is a highly detailed computer simulation that predicts how the disease spreads at local, regional and global scales. The model takes into account many variables that affect transmission such as temperature, population, transportation, and the use of vaccines, bed nets and even innovations such as the Photonic Fence.
There are a wide variety of epidemiological modeling approaches that many groups use to study malaria. Ultimately, our work and other existing approaches are used to evaluate and predict effective strategies for malaria eradication.
Mathematician, Philip Eckhoff, and computational scientist, Karima Nigmatulina, explain the project and software.
Last week, Nathan Myhrvold, founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures presented several of IV’s “malaria projects” to the audience at TED 2010. The Photonic Fence is one piece in a suite of inventions we are working on to help track, understand, detect, treat and eradicate malaria. It has captured a lot of attention and we have received many questions about how it works. In response, we wanted to share some details on the mechanics of this project.
The following video of 3ric Johanson was shot the night before our TED talk at 3 AM in a hallway of the hotel. The hotel staff were good sports despite the death rays and bug boxes.
The Photonic Fence is not for sale today. IV does not produce products, but ideas. To that end, this prototype is a proof of concept. We are looking to partner with another company or organization to make this idea a reality. So stay tuned.
You can learn more about our other malaria projects here and stay tuned to the lab blog for future updates.
