Technology companies are forging partnerships with public health officials in several U.S. states to test whether new inventions can intervene in the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses, reports Reuters.
Microsoft is testing 10 smart traps in Texas that isolate and capture Aedes aegypti, the mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus, to help entomologists study their outbreak patterns.
The traps — each one about the size of a birdhouse — use robotics, infrared sensors, machine learning and cloud computing to help health officials track mosquitoes. The devices also collect temperature and humidity data, which can be used to build models that predict when mosquitoes are active.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Verily, Alphabet's life sciences division, has taken a different approach to addressing mosquito-borne illnesses. Verily is working to shrink the mosquito population in a partnership with the Lexington, Ky.-based startup MosquitoMate, which developed a way to sterilize male mosquitoes.
Verily will support MosquitoMate by automating the process to separate male and female mosquitoes. The technology combines sensors, algorithms and "novel engineering" to sort the mosquito sexes for genetic modification, Reuters reports.
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