Mosquito

Thermacell LPG- and battery-powered repellers offer one of the more convenient ways to keep mosquitos off your skin, without open flames, sprays or pungent odors. Now Thermacell launches its latest repeller with increased range.

Genetic engineering has been proposed as a way to deal with the deadly mosquito, and a new project by Texas A&M AgriLife Research is looking to enable risk-free "test runs" of such genetic changes that are automatically deleted after a period of time.

DEET may be an effective mosquito repellent, but it can cause irritation, and has to be reapplied every few hours. Scientists are now working on a more innocuous, longer-laster alternative, that involves introducing genetically engineered bacteria onto the skin.

If you're trying to eradicate disease-carrying mosquitos, it's important to know when and where the biting females of the targeted species are present. An experimental new device could help, by mimicking the insects' hearing apparatus.

VEEV is a mosquito-borne virus that, in the worst case scenario, can infect the brain and become deadly. Now scientists have discovered the protein it latches onto – and used it to create a decoy molecule that draws the virus away from the brain.

A type of volcanic glass, perlite is frequently used as building insulation or a potting soil additive. According to a new study, though, it also works quite well at killing malaria-causing mosquitos.

Several years ago, we heard how scientists were looking at eradicating malaria-carrying mosquitoes by making the females infertile. Now they're going a step further, by eliminating the females altogether.

Researchers have taken inspiration from a mosquito's ability to fly and land in the dark to develop a new collision-avoidance sensory system for drones that mimics the insect's ability to use airflow to detect obstacles.

A study modeling the impact of rising temperatures on suitable habitats for disease carrying mosquitoes has found such regions are expanding at a steady rate, with warnings the mosquitoes could become common in southern Europe within 10 years.

A newly discovered microbe identified in wild mosquito populations in Kenya has been found to protect the insects from malaria infection and could be recruited for malaria control strategies to limit transmission of the disease into human populations.

In order to gauge the risk of mosquito-borne diseases, authorities typically monitor the numbers of specific mosquito types that are known to carry those illnesses. A new system makes it possible to do so remotely, and thus more effectively.

New research hints at the possibility that more effective, less toxic mosquito traps and repellents could one day be made, based on chemicals in orchids to which mosquitoes are attracted and repelled.