From Fox News
October 31, 2017
Doctors hope a mosquito trap will prevent the spread of disease. The trap is smart enough to know what type of mosquito it’s trapping, and if by the small chance it catches the wrong one, it will learn from its mistake.
The smart trap senses the wing length and wing beats to detect what type of mosquito has entered the chamber. If it’s the type of mosquito the scientists are looking for – the kind spreading fatal diseases – the chamber will close and trap the mosquito inside.
“If we want the Aedes Aegypti, which is the yellow fever mosquito, or the Asian Tiger Mosquito, that carries Zika virus, we will train this trap to only catch those mosquitos,” said Dr. Mustapha Debboun, director of Harris County Public Health’s mosquito control division.
Harris County includes Houston, Texas, which was devastated by Hurricane Harvey. After the storm, Debboun and his team worked to set traps around the county to determine whether the stagnant water left by the storm became a breeding ground for mosquitos and if the mosquitos were carrying diseases. Harris County is a test site for the high-tech device, becoming the first government agency in the country to try it out.
The trap was developed by Microsoft as part of Project Premonition. It’s designed to help entomologists perform their job faster. In turn, the trap should help create an “early-warning system” for outbreaks that allows doctors to catch diseases while they’re still in the field, instead of catching them when sick patients start filling up hospitals.