Tech firms eye robotics and birth control to end spread of mosquito illnesses
Chicago — US technology companies are bringing automation and robotics to the age-old task of battling mosquitoes, in a bid to halt the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne maladies worldwide. Firms including Microsoft and California life sciences company Verily are forming partnerships with public health officials in several US states, to test new high-tech tools. In Texas, Microsoft is testing a smart trap to isolate and capture Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known Zika carriers, for study by entomologists to give them a jump on predicting outbreaks. Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences division, is speeding up the process for creating sterile male mosquitoes to mate with females in the wild, offering a form of birth control for the species. While it may take years for these advances to become widely available, public health experts say new players bring fresh thinking to vector control, which still relies heavily on traditional defences such as larvicides and insecticides. "It’s exciti...
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