It's also worth noting that previous attempts at preventing malaria in Africa have failed not because of any technological limitation, but because they view it completely differently than we do in the West.
> As medical anthropologists have consistently found, because malaria is so common in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and because the overwhelming majority of cases go away on their own, most rural Africans consider malaria a minor ailment, the way that Westerners might think of the cold or flu.
I tried the oscillating fan stuff, and got bitten three times in a couple of hours. Guess there are some mosquitoes which can actually fly over a fan's currents.
Local hint: in Spain, we are being invaded by the tiger mosquito[1], which is faster, stronger, and stealthier than regular mosquitoes. They don't care about oscillating fans. So don't trust the fan thingy. I would recommend DEET-based repellents or Autan, which contains Icaridin[2] and has never failed me. I've seen those fuckers hover my legs in rage, unable to land and bite me.
Its saliva causes infection in a large number of individuals, the marks last for 7-14 days[1], and itches as if your leg is on fire. The only remedy is to apply heat[2] and wait for your body to get used to it.
The worst part is that you have to change habits, never lean outdoors if there are mosquitoes, you can't stop have a nice conversation with people on the street without getting your legs bitten, because those fuckers are fast. Even cafe terraces have to install mosquito repellents, because people stop staying outdoors.
In Spain, most houses have an outdoor patio, but people don't use it anymore. It is nice being outside, but the tradeoff is a week of really, really itchy legs (and a possible infection)
It's not fatal, but the pain is way higher than a regular mosquito bite, and it makes you paranoid whenever you are outdoors. God I hate them.
PS: always apply a repellent on your skin before going out
This is a revealing article. I somehow didn't think about, now rather obvious, cultural difference in perception of malaria. I also didn't know that "the overwhelming majority of cases go away on their own". I thought of malaria as a certain death without treatment.
The treated nets did, however, have technological issues, as pointed in the article: "Among other design flaws, their tight mesh blocks ventilation, a serious problem in the hot, humid places where malaria roosts".
Kite patch is simple enough to actually make it work. I just hope it is indeed effective.
Wait a minute - maybe we are being too sensitive to cultural differences here. Do we just accept the culture of sub-Sarahran Africa as equally valid to our own in this case? Do we just accept that Africans don't like using bed nets and so we must discount that approach and look for alternative ways to combat malaria?
Let's not pussy-foot around the issue. The LA Times article mentions that some African people think that mangoes cause malaria - in this case the African view is wrong and the Western view is right. Perhaps it is also wrong to hold the view that (a) malaria is no more harmful than the flu; and (b) having ventilation is preferable to a bed net.
I realise that changing people's attitudes is difficult, particularly when the message is delivered by white people who have such a poor historical record in Africa. But malaria causes a quarter of childhood deaths in sub-Saharan Africa [1] and insecticide-treated bed nets are 90-95+% effective, even when they have small holes [2].
I'm not saying that Western culture is always right - or even right when it comes to malaria. Lets just be careful to avoid automatically excluding other cultural viewpoints from criticism.
The question here, I imagine, is not primarily one of the validity of the various viewpoints. Rather, it is commentary that someone solving the problem of malaria has to accept the reality of the sub-Saharan African viewpoint as a starting point for their approach.
Foundationally, the local populations aren't clamouring for a solution, so they are much less likely to accept inconvenience as a by-product of a solution.
We know rhinovirus and flu kill scores of elderly people in nursing homes, but continue to avoid the minor inconvenience of meticulous hygiene before visiting our geriatric loved ones.
In risk communication, we might say "the audience will be hostile toward our rhetoric". Put another way, the target population will require careful encouragement to changing their viewpoint, while being presented with a solution that does not operate from a confrontational approach.
Any solution that does not consider the local populations' viewpoints will likely fail.
"the overwhelming majority of cases go away on their own" go away for most africans because they are more likely to carry the sickle cell trait which provides defence against malaria.
Still, a square piece of plastic is still more portable than carrying around a 2 liter bottle full of fermenting yeast. I'm not about to strap that to my backpack when I go hiking.
That was interesting, except I don't understand why it calls for a candy thermometer when the highest temperature you are asked to measure is 90 F. The first temperature where sugar does something interesting in candy making is 230 F, and so many candy thermometers don't even go down to 90 F.
Do you know that fans sold in many Asian countries have mandatory automatic shutoff timers? This is due to a deep-rooted and very resilient urban legend that a running fan causes hypothermia in people who sleep in the same room with it and that people die because of that.
Ridiculous. The fan would not do anything that a light bulb of equivalent wattage wouldn't also do.
Someone who asserts that fans can kill people is making an extraordinary claim, and needs to supply extraordinary proof, such as citing a verifiable case where it happened.
It sounds like you haven't read the post I linked to, which explains what fans do that light bulbs don't, cites verifiable cases, and explains the theory.
Your comment, of course, is ridiculous. If a fan didn't do anything a lightbulb didn't do, then why would people buy fans? Lightbulbs are much cheaper!
> Similarly, in a heated room without an outside source of airflow, very hot air is constantly pushed directly to your body, which is a far more effective way of raising your body temperature rather than “baking” in hot air. If you get enough of this, you would die – of hyperthermia, or abnormally high body temperature
For the air to actually heat your body enough to kill you, you need:
* Room temperature that is high enough to kill you (>43 degrees celcius). Any temperature below this -- and the fan helps avoid hyperthermia by averaging out the body temperature with the environment.
* You have to be fully dehydrated, otherwise even air hotter than your body will cool you up.
* According to http://www.mherrera.org/temp.htm no place in Korea ever exceeded 40.3 celsius degrees between 2002 and 2012. So if you slept with a fan, during the hottest day of the hottest city in Korea, you'd still not be hot enough to be killed.
If you sleep on on extremely hot days (not nights), with (>43C) a fan directly aimed at you may increase the risk of hyperthermia (which exists anyway). However, on any day with more than 36 degrees Celsius, you are unlikely to leave a fan directed at you, because it will feel warmer than without the fan.
In short, it is a silly urban legend, more likely to cause hyperthermia in people who are afraid to use fans to lower their temperatures during the night.
The linked post is long and rambles a bit, and I only skimmed it, but I've come up empty handed on any actual cases of someone dying from a fan in a closed room, due to heat stress or any other reason. The citations seem to be an EPA pamphlet and an NPR interview, both of which are far from saying that the fans will kill you, and neither of which are “verifiable cases”, or even anything resembling that.
I have slept under this fan for 15 years now and I keep it running almost constantly. It has yet to kill me. It is on at this very moment and I will sleep under it tonight.
I wonder why we haven't see some silly correlation like "breath death." Do you have any idea how many people die shortly after breathing for the last time?
I actually read it a really long time ago, but I just read it again. Let's review how my scenario is like that which allegedly causes fan death:
* I do not open any windows. Ever.
* My fan does not oscillate (it is a ceiling fan).
* I sleep directly under it.
* I have it on all the time.
* We face extreme heat. This is Arizona. It's well over 100 F all summer long, often closer to 110 F. That means 40+ C most of the time, for you metric users.
* The humidity is usually low, so if it kills you via evaporating all your sweat, these conditions should dry you out faster than anything else.
I have done this all summer every summer for some 15 years now. I am still alive. Heat stroke can kill you. "Fan death" will not.
The post you linked to was stupid. I did, in fact, read it, and I feel dumber for having done so. I award its author (and you) -1 point, and may God have mercy on both your souls.
More dramatically, from needing to set your convection oven 50 degrees lower, he gets that there's a 50 degree delta regardless of temperature, and: "This means that although the room’s air temperature is 90 degree Fahrenheit, with a fan on, your body is cooking at the same rate as being in a room with 140 degree Fahrenheit[.]" Of course that is inane - ignoring evaporation, blowing air over an object means the object will more quickly approach the temperature of the air (and vice-versa). Blowing 90 degree air over a 98.6 degree body is cooling the body, and cooling it faster than static 90 degree air, even if there is no sweat.
I have no doubt that there is a point at which moving air as opposed to static would cause hyperthermia faster, but it quite obviously needs the air temperature to be above body temperature and actually even above the temperature the body needs to reach for hyperthermia to become an issue. It probably needs to be even higher than that, because of sweat, but I don't have an easy way of working out how much higher. At these temperatures, we would likely be seeing deaths from heat stroke without a fan amongst the susceptible population.
None of this disproves fan death, but that article is not at all credible proof.
Well, true in the sense of the way most koreans talk about it is not the case.
Fan death is true in as much as if you blow air hotter than 37 degrees over a dehydrated body that (for whatever reason) can't wake up, you could potentially have trouble. Then again, I don't think it's particularly controversial that blowing hot air over someone who can't wake up might cause them damage. That's not the same as saying that the Korean idea of fan death is true.
Exactly. This one's a pretty easy experiment to duplicate. I always sleep with a fairly strong oscillating fan blowing across me, and whenever a mosquito gets in the house and I can't kill it before I need to go to bed, I wake up with mosquito bites.
I've seen fans firsthand in SE Asia deployed for this reason and I can confirm it really does not work at all. They do cool you down though. Stop propagating this myth people, it does nothing. Especially in SE Asia with their aggressive mosquitos.
So the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation supported them with a grant, but not enough of a grant to do product testing?
Something sounds fishy to me....They seem to be all about results-based investing, and I just don't see the foundation providing funds without providing enough to "see it through" the development and testing phase.
According to their text, they seem to have received those grants 3 years ago.
Still, given the rather low goal, I'd, too, assume that this is simply a marketing strategy to increase visibility.
After all, this is a kickstarter and when you back it (even though not receiving any Kites for yourself on the low tiers) you do something good for those poor people in Uganda!
Also, I'd guess that the $75k goal barely covers production, shipping & travel costs... and their manufacturing pipeline seems to already be set up.
I can see a few potential flaws that could have caused them to not get follow up funding (although I am in no way suggesting that they didn't get follow up funding)
1. Cost. People in Africa are poor, so unless these can be produced and sold for pennies a piece, it probably won't take off. Using the 'buy one, donate one' method probably doesn't scale enough to solve the malaria problem.
2. Behavior. Condoms are a fairly effective method to practice safe sex, and despite a massive amount of money and education, adoption has been slow, or non-existent in Africa. I can see similar issues with Kite.
3. Effectiveness - While they may work, they may not have been shown to be effective enough to warrant further funding.
4. For-profit? I can't seem to find anything on the companies website, but the gates foundation prefers to give their money to non-profits. If they are a for-profit company, I could see reluctance on the foundations part to continue providing funds.
On a personal note, this seems like a cool product that I would use when camping/hiking. But for some of the reasons mentioned above, I would be skeptical to declare this as the solution to malaria in third-world countries, not that I would mind to be proven wrong. I wish them the best of luck.
> how can I invest in them, if they make such a great effort in their video to avoid explaining what it does exactly?
Here you go, there's an article under the video:
>If we had to guess, we'd say the FAQ are referring to this study, published by Ray and his team in a June 2011 issue of Nature, in which the researchers identify three groups of chemicals that can which disrupt a mosquito's carbon dioxide receptors
And also a helpful comment by "ciller" below the article:
>DEET works by blocking the CO2 receptors on mosquitos, this causes the mosquito to be unable to figure out non food sources from usable ones. If this kite patch blocks the CO2 receptors as well as DEET does, then it should be effective.
>I work in a laboratory that deals with mosquito related problems quite a bit and we are more then willing to test these things out in a small scale field study. A viable alternative to DEET that you dont have to apply over your entire skin surface area would be rather ideal.
From the linked article it is unclear if the chemicals are absorbed into the body or not. From the horse's mouth:
"Kite Patch is designed for clothing, not skin. A few news articles did get it wrong – but our technology is designed to be placed on clothing, baby carriers, backpacks, Camelbacks and other outdoor gear (for outdoor enthusiasts), etc. Kite is NOT a skin patch."
Did anyone else pick up on all the chemophobia in this video? Is a clip of people spraying DDT supposed to scare us? Rachel Carson was wrong. DDT is safe. My favorite part is when they say "food grade FDA compounds". That's a lot of words to say chemicals.
You know, DDT was actually used in an Albertan Junior High textbook as an example of a horrid chemical that caused cancer and posed serious threat to the health of the world. They reference Carson's book as an example.
I saw it before in Social and English but damn, the liberal slant of the system has never been so obvious in the sciences.
For a conservative province this is very surprising. It is one thing to be pragmatic and use facts that are just there to be used but cherrypicking data for students to learn and then testing them on it in a subject where it is supposed to be unbiased?
No, I didn't. Interesting. Thanks. Carson's book spurred the environmentalist movement, I'll give her that. I used to think poorly of DDT and GMOs, but then I did some research and changed my opinions. Should we be cautious about spraying chemicals like DDT? Absolutely. But the chemical has saved millions from dying. We don't have anything better yet. Are you from Canada? Because my experience here in the U.S. has been wildly different for the most part. Our textbooks originate from Texas mostly which is very conservative and evangelical. There's an interesting documentary called The Revisionaries which outlines essentially the battle behind textbooks. [1] [2] The chair of the Texas Board of Education believes that dinosaurs and humans coexisted and doesn't believe in evolution. Hell, I don't even remember learning about the Pentagon Papers in high school.
The Pentagon Papers? My history classes barely got into the 20th century, let alone the 1970s (I graduated in the late '90s). History was not a well-taught subject, and my impression is that recent developments in standardized testing and whatnot has made it even worse.
Also, unless you're concentrating on journalism, the Pentagon Papers incident is a rather obscure and unimportant event. I wouldn't be surprised if even a well-taught and comprehensive US history class didn't touch on it.
Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring is credited with starting the anti-DDT movement. It's been discredited and is full of junk science and needless corporation-bashing. Read the paper Chemicals and Pests which tears apart Carson's book. [1]
Checkout the New York Times article from 1962 titled "Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Out Real Science" [2]
A choice quote:
"Ms. Carson used dubious statistics and anecdotes (like the improbable story of a woman who instantly developed cancer after spraying her basement with DDT) to warn of a cancer epidemic that never came to pass. She rightly noted threats to some birds, like eagles and other raptors, but she wildly imagined a mass “biocide.” She warned that one of the most common American birds, the robin, was “on the verge of extinction” — an especially odd claim given the large numbers of robins recorded in Audubon bird counts before her book."
You may also want to check out the story of Professor Kenneth Mellanby who ate DDT for 40 years. [3]
Make sure to take a look at the scientific paper mentioned in this Times article. It concludes "DDT is practically harmless to humans who get it on their skins or breathe it into their lungs." [4]
But the environmental effects regarding birds, as well as the impact of indiscriminate spraying on mosquito resistance to DDT are a far cry from "safe". Regardless of whether Carson was completely right about everything she said, it's silly to claim that DDT is generally safe when it clearly is not.
I'd love for you to cite your source on that. When used properly DDT is generally safe and has saved millions of lives. There is no arguing that it doesn't do a great job killing mosquitos. Resistance is mostly due to agricultural use. The video claimed we are using chemicals toxic to humans and flashed some footage of DDT being sprayed. That's simply a false assertion on the part of the maker's of the video and the product. They're trying to use junk science to push their product onto naive consumers.
Do you actually need me to cite my source on the fact that it harms birds and can lead to resistance? I can, if you need me to, but I didn't think those facts were in dispute. The extent of the problem is arguable, but all I'm asserting is that these are measurable effects. There is also evidence that DDT is harmful to humans, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem to be significantly more so than a ton of other things that we happily accept. It seems unlikely, for example, that DDT usage at its peak killed more people per year than air pollution from coal power.
Anyway, I think your general point is fair and that it was irresponsible to try to scare people away from controlled DDT use on mosquitoes. But I also think it's irresponsible to assert that DDT is safe. It's OK to use solutions that aren't safe if the benefits outweigh the risks.
"Extensive research and testing has since demonstrated that well-managed indoor residual spraying programmes using DDT pose no harm to wildlife or to humans"
They have an indiegogo funding page where you can select your perks [1]. I am wondering why they needed $75k in the first place, if they were funded through Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, wouldn't they just chip in the final chunk to push this into production?
Does Kite provide 100% protection against mosquito bites?
Kite provides a steady stream of our patent-pending spatial (airborne) compounds that block mosquitoes’ ability to track us for up to 48 hours, but it does not guarantee mosquitoes will not bite us. It is being designed to be a replacement for spray-on, fan-powered, or lotion applications, but does not take the place of bed nets at night and/or appropriate clothing in mosquito-impacted areas
So, they have put some compounds, that have been proven to repel mosquitoes in laboratory conditions, on a patch. The "minor" problem is that this patch can't possibly exude enough of those compounds to protect a human in real life conditions. I'm only refraining from calling this a scam because it seems to be a real company with scientists and all. But I won't be spending any money on this patch, that's for sure.
http://xkcd.com/1217/
I remember in 2011 reading with great interest some research into nootkatone[1] as a mosquito repellent[2] (which has already been shown to be effective against ticks). It is a non-toxic oil found in grapefruit and is already approved by the FDA as a food additive.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything (read: consumer-available products) come of it. Upon a bit of searching, I found a patent[3] for a nootkatone-based insect repellent... filed in 1998!
I hope this comes to fruition, since it would be a huge boon for lots of people, assuming its cost effective. On a slightly more cynical note, I am so sick of the self aggrandizing sappy tone of these videos. I think the music is the culprit in this particular case. Maybe its necessary, but it drives me nuts.
I don't understand what covering the CO2 in our breath could do to prevent mosquitoes from biting you when they are around your arm like we can see in the video when the guy puts his arm in the experience box. Does our skin emit CO2?
I don't think the patch helps when you're already surrounded by mosquitoes - the bugs use CO2 to find you in the first place, then find the bare skin using some other means.
In that case, what the hell is going on with their pictures of the arm in a box full of mosquitoes not moving towards the skin? Looks really really shady to me.
Who has told people to stick investor-repellent soundtracks IN EVERY DAMN start-up-beggar campaign? That same bland optimistically beige stuff. This one didn't have the plunky piano and/or guitar bits, but it's like someone ran out and said...
The words aren't enough. We need sound reinforcement to lend emotion. Hmmmm... Apple used quirky, plucky, minimal for their quirky, plucky, minimal industrial design product launches... I KNOW! I want people to think I'm a quirky, plucky, minimal start-up that puts stinky color stickers on people!!!
As anyone who's ever summered in Minnesota will tell you, (and as one who's been chased out of the woods near a river one evening by a starving swarm of thousands) this is akin to finding the holy grail.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/science/a-low-tech-mosquit...
It's also worth noting that previous attempts at preventing malaria in Africa have failed not because of any technological limitation, but because they view it completely differently than we do in the West.
> As medical anthropologists have consistently found, because malaria is so common in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and because the overwhelming majority of cases go away on their own, most rural Africans consider malaria a minor ailment, the way that Westerners might think of the cold or flu.
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/02/opinion/la-oe-shah-2...