On the Radar

The pick of the science news

Putting up a laser barrier against malaria

Mosquito bites are irritating at best, and, more seriously, they can transmit the malaria parasite, which kills around one million people each year. Now scientists have come up with a new way of taking out the insect pests – with a laser. Based on an idea first mooted in the 1980s, the US-based researchers have come up with a hand-held laser that can locate and kill individual mosquitoes. The system can distinguish between males and females on the basis of wing movement, which could prove important as only females spread the malaria parasite.

The developers suggest the technology could be used to create laser barriers around houses or villages to keep the insects out.

Guts of the matter

A gut enzyme could be the key to putting on weight when on a high-fat diet – at least in mice anyway. Researchers in the US have found that, for mice, lacking the enzyme Mgat2, which is involved in taking up triglycerides, appears to delay the entry of fat into the blood and lessen the amount of fat stored.

“Because mice that lack this enzyme do not gain weight on a high-fat diet, it is an intriguing target for future interventions to prevent weight gain and the problems associated with that extra weight,” said Dr Robert Farese, from the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco, in whose lab the research was carried out.

By numbers

10.2 million - The estimated energy in joules it can take to produce and transport a litre of bottled water, compared with 0.005 million for tap water, according to research from California published in Environmental Research Letters

95 - The weight in pounds of a walking, talking, black-haired robot with a female face from Japan, the type of “cybernetic human” that could in future appear on catwalks or act as an exercise instructor.

e-mail: 1000.claire@gmail.com