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Scientists have created a new file app designed to identify dangerous mosquitoes based on the sounds made by insects.
The app, called Abuzz, aims to help fight the main diseases spread by mosquitoes. Diseases – such as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever – kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.
Haripriya Vaidehi Narayanan is one of the researchers who helped develop the app. She began working on the project as a graduate student at Stanford University. He currently works in the Department of Immunology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Narayanan told VOA that anyone with a mobile your phone could use the app to identify mosquitoes. “If they see a mosquito walking around, they just open the phone, open the app, point the phone at the mosquito and hit the record button,” she said.
“So when the mosquito flaps its wings and it starts flying around, it makes that noise, that annoying hum. That noise is what the Abuzz app records, “he added.
Many mosquito-borne diseases have no treatments or vaccines. Hence, targeting flying insects is the best way to control them. “The most important step is to know where the mosquitoes are,” Narayanan said.
Traditional methods of hunting mosquitoes are expensive and can be time-consuming. The process also requires labor-intensive entrapments and trained scientists to identify the insects.
Manu Prakash is a bioengineering professor at Stanford University and a lead researcher on the project. He says this about around 3,500 different mosquitoes species, only about 40 are dangerous to humans.
Prakash says the project’s goal was to find out if mosquitoes around a person’s home are just a nuisance or if they are potentially dangerous. To find out, his team decided to listen.
When mosquitoes move their wings up and down, they make humming sounds. But each type of mosquito emits a slightly different buzz. The app records these sounds.
App users can get a response by recording just a second or two of the buzz. The app compares this recording with a collection of other recordings. So it predicts which mosquito species it is most likely to be.
Billions of people around the world can use this tool with their phones. Hence, the researchers say they will be able to do this monitor mosquitoes on a much larger basis than in the past.
Of crowdsourcing information about mosquitoes around the world, the app can help build maps of where dangerous mosquitoes are found. This can help scientists and health officials identify areas where the disease is likely to occur and where to target mosquito control.
Prakash said he believes this type of widespread community effort could be an important step in fighting mosquito-causing diseases.
He added that the tool uses machine learning to improve as more people use it. “So, we are very excited that if … hundreds of thousands of people register mosquitoes every day – especially around the world – it will create the kind of community that is needed,” Prakash said.
The development team is expected to release the Abuzz app to the public in the coming months.
Another group of researchers from the University of Oxford in Great Britain developed a similar app called Mozzwear. That app is designed to identify malaria mosquitoes by the sound they emit.
I’m Bryan Lynn.
Asher Jones reported this story for VOA News. Bryan Lynn adapted the report for Learn English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.
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Words in this story
app – n. a mobile phone program that performs a special function
button – n. a switch you press to control a piece of equipment
flap – adj. to move up and down quickly and repeatedly
mobile – adj. able to move or be moved easily
to annoy – v. to slightly anger someone
species – n. a group of animals or plants that are similar and can produce young animals or plants
monitor – v. look at something carefully
crowdsourcing – n. it’s about giving pieces of work to a large group of people or the public to gather information
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