I have come across interesting article on this subject on web site: http://blog.innocentive.com/2009/01/28/innocentive-seeker-spotlight-sunnight-solar-works-to-eradicate-malaria/. Please read it as it will of interest to all of us.
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"Engineers should not look for jobs but should create jobs for others" by Dr.Radhakrishnan Ex President of India during my college graduation day
mosquitos actively hunt prey by following the plume of CO2 from respiration. There are patented mosquito traps that burn a little propane all the time to create a CO2 plume and they trap them in mazes or high voltage zappers.
Do they hunt infared? They might, and so the propane CO2 devices will have both heat and CO2 as attractors. A hot body with some mass will accumulate heat in the sun and if the infra red works as an attractor, they might work.A candle as a CO2 source and heat would work as well.\
It is interesting to note that the 'respiration' creating the co2 is not necessarily via the formal respiratory system, but instead co2 respiration through the skin. this gives a mosquito a map of where blood is flowing close to the surface....
"Very intentionally, there is no CO2 present in the air so as to avoid attracting more distant mosquitoes to the habitat."
"The attractant suggested for use in developing third world countries is simply a small amount of water combined with human sweat (collected in a sweatband during the day). It is noted that using sweat is a very simplistic approach, but it makes sense in so many ways. First of all, sweat has been scientifically and experientially proven to work."
The sweat band is worn on the ankle of the adult who gets bitten most frequently.
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If you spend all your time looking for people and things to complain about: trust me, you will find plenty to complain about.
It does indeed seem to have merit. It would work with other forms of heat to warm the wax in the rainy season when there might be little or no sun for months on end and there may well be more mosquitos.
By way of introduction, I am the "Gearhead" mentioned in the original blog posting by Suresh regarding the passive solar mosquito trap.
Note that I would love to be able to respond to all of your posts and carry on a full Engineering focused dialog about how to make this gizmo better and more effective. However, I have paying clients demanding my attention and thus cannot track and participate in all the blogs that have picked up this story. Therefore, I would like to ask you to please join the discussion at....
I am giving below my comment which I have already made in Innocentive Blog.
Hi Tom,
As suggested by you in CR4 Forum, I would like to give my comments as under:-
1) I read about your winning Innovation in Innocentive blog and felt I should recommend my friends at CR4 to read it.
2) I am not a expert on the subject but an affected party (Share Holder).
3) I live in Mumbai,India where there various types mosquitos creating havoc in summer and spreading Malaria. Municipal Corporations spends hell of money in getting rid of them and treating patients.
4) Here we do have some type ropellants such as, burning coils of herbal chemicals, liquid chemical fumes emitted from wick heated by electricity, pads heated by the electric heaters, etc. All of them are not 100% effective.
5) If you feel the testing in lab is expensive then you you should test your prototypes in field trials in your city or other places.
6) I would suggest instead of targeting poor African villages without power you should also target big and small cities where electric power is available. In this case you can eliminate Solar portion but will have to add electric heating element which will enable device to work in rainy days too. It may increase the price but it will be better product for city dwellers.
7) I am giving you web site address of local mfr. here:-www.godrejsaralee.com.
8) If you have funding problem then I think you can get funds for your projects such as WHO and other NGOs.
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"Engineers should not look for jobs but should create jobs for others" by Dr.Radhakrishnan Ex President of India during my college graduation day
Solar Mosquito Repellant.
Re: Solar Mosquito Repellant.
