• by Sophie Kleber , February 11, 2010

We invent. Nathan invents technology, for fun, for profit, for humanity. Examples include a small container that can eliminate vaccination spoilage (since vaccinations need to be kept cold, in hotter developing counties, vaccines frequently spoil), that keeps content cool for six months, using less than 0.5 Watts.

A big global problem is malaria.

27 people will die of Malaria while Nathan is speaking. Nathan is prototyping three devices for early diagnosis, and they also developed the first malaria super computer, monitoring spread of Malaria, mosquito population, and seasonality. The goal is to stop mosquitoes from flying by shooting them out of the sky with lasers! And we even want to determine which mosquitoes we need to kill (the females), and the laser is environmentally harmless!

What follows is a live demonstration of the "Big scary Laser". We see mosquitoes being tracked by laser, we hear mosquito wing slap, we slow down the pace and then witness the execution of a mosquito - magnified a gazilion times... it fumes as it gets hit, but still flaps its wings on the way down...