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You can now order an “Iron Dome” for mosquitoes. Its name is the Photon Matrix, a black box about the size of a smartphone that can detect, track, and eliminate mosquitoes mid-flight using an AI-guided laser system. According to its inventor, it can identify and zap up to 30 mosquitoes per second with calibrated laser pulses that will disintegrate these potentially lethaland always annoyingflying pests without harming people or pets. Just looking at the video of it in action makes me laugh like a supervillain. Chinese engineer Jim Wong built a working prototype that can “effectively identify and strike mosquitoes with a flight speed of no more than 1 meter per second and a characteristic size of 2 to 20 millimeters,” according to his Indiegogo crowdfunding page and the viral videos on TikTok and Instagram. The device can also target other flying insects within that range, like sand flies and fruit fliesbasically anything small, slow, and infuriating that you may want to vaporize. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Art Stine (@rokdog1) The timing couldn’t be better. Due to climate change, virus-carrying species like those that transmit Zika and dengue are creeping into nontropical latitudes. The United States, Europe, and other areas outside of the tropics are facing a growing threat. Take Europe: In 2024, the hottest year on record, the European Union documented more than 300 autochthonous dengue casesacquired within European territorysurpassing the 275 cases recorded during the previous 15 years combined. The tiger mosquito, which transmits dengue and Zika, has already established itself in 13 EU countries. And optimal temperatures for these bugs to thrivebetween 75 and 79 degrees Fahrenheitare becoming increasingly common during European summers. Pew, pew, pewyoure dead The idea of using laser beams to destroy mosquitoes dates back to 2007, during a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation brainstorming session on eliminating malaria. Thats when astrophysicist Lowell Woodone of the architects of Reagan’s “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiativeproposed a laser system not to stop the Soviet Union from nuking the U.S., but to defend humans against mosquitoes. Many tried to fulfill Wood’s idea, but Wong’s project might be the first to achieve an affordable commercial solution (though at this first stage, each Photon Matrix costs nearly $500). The key that makes the device work lies in current hardware capabilities and computer visions ability to quickly recognize objects. The system, Wong explains, identifies targets through movement pattern analysis, distinguishing between mosquitoes and similar pixel signals like dust or sensor noise. Here is how it works: The insect dome uses a light-detection-and-ranging (LiDAR) module that fires thousands of laser pulses that bounce off any solid object, creating a real-time 3D map of its surroundings. When they hit something airborne, the photons bounce back, and the system detects how long it takes for the light to return. When it spots a mosquito, the system calculates its distance, orientation, and body size in just three milliseconds, Wong claims, marking the target for destruction. At that moment, a second laser fires, this one capable of instantly hitting the mosquito with a pulse that’s lethal to the bug but harmless to humans. Right now, the technology only works with insects flying slower than 1 meter per seconda speed that includes mosquitoes (which fly between 0.6 and 0.9 mph) and some small flies like sand flies and fruit flies, but excludes much faster houseflies. The Photon Matrix also employs millimeter-wave radar to constantly scan its field of view for larger objects. If it detects people or pets, the laser won’t fire. When an object significantly larger than a mosquito enters the detection range, the system can quickly and precisely identify it and refrain from laser activation, Wong says. He claims that this prototype not only effectively eliminates mosquitoes using laser technology, but also prioritizes safety as its core feature. The design incorporates “mandatory safety certification requirements”though it doesn’t specify which standards it meets or whether they’re Chinese or international. The basic version offers a 90-degree surveillance and elimination range, with a 10-foot reach. The professional version extends that range to 20 feet. Both models can operate in completely dark rooms and can withstand water immersion up to 5 feet for 30 minutes, thanks to their IP68 (dust-tight and waterproof) certification. The system draws power from wall outlets using a USB adapter or from portable batteries that provide between eight and 16 hours of autonomy, depending on the model. The laser system isn’t perfect. The Photon Matrix’s limited range means it can’t protect extensive areas like large patios or public spaces. Its effectiveness also decreases with rain, which can interfere with optical sensors. World war against mosquitoes The Photon Matrix is just the latest invention that is trying to defend humans against mosquitoes. Other people have been trying to find solutions for ages, most of them using genetic modifications to stop their reproduction. Some scientists also went low-cost, like with “ovillantas,” a term combining the words “ovi” (a prefix in biology for “egg”) with “llantas” (Spanish for “tires”). Developed by Canadian chemistry professor Gérard Ulíbarri of Laurentian University in Ontario, this device exploits mosquitoes’ strange attraction to old tires. Ulíbarri discovered that these insects are attracted to some chemical compound in rubber that drives them to lay eggs inside the hollow interior of tires. In fact, scientists have determined that this type of “nest” can produce up to one-third of all mosquitoes in an area. The traps are built inside a section of a tire that’s fitted with a drainage valve at the bottom. Next, it’s filled with water and pieces of paper that float like landing strips for mosquitoeson which they lay their eggs in the stagnant water. The water is drained once or twice a week and filtered through a cloth to remove the larvae. That filtered water preserves the pheromones carried by the eggs and is reused, indicating to other mosquitoes that this is a good place to lay more eggs. Results from the pilot project in the Guatemalan town of Sayaxché were promising: Ovillantas destroyed seven times more mosquitoes than traditional traps, eliminating nearly 18,000 larvae per month. In fact, the project claims no new dengue cases were recorded in the areawhere nomally there would be two or three dozen cases a month. Ulíbarri estimates that two ovillantas per acre are sufficient to impact a local mosquito population, although “the more you have, the better,” he says. Perhaps in the future, scientists and engineers will come up with a 100% effective solution. But for now, the ideal approach is combining multiple systemshome laser beams, reproductive traps, epidemiological surveillance, repellents, and physical barriers like nettingwhich can provide a layered defense against a present and growing threat. Multilayered defense Neither ovillantas nor this domestic “Iron Dome” can completely eliminate the threat of mosquitoes, although plenty of people seem swayed by the latter. The crowdfunding campaign seeks $20,000which it has far exceeded, at more than $758,000 right nowwith a presale pricing of $497 for the basic version and $598 for the professional model. (The usual Indiegogo/Kickstarter might never reach market caveat applies.) Wong acknowledges that price is the systems biggest problem. The production and selling costs of this product are relatively high, he says, and the only way to solve it is by manufacturing scale. He says that third parties have already approached him to build the Photon Matrix in large numbers. The big question is, of course: Will it really work? If the videos are true, then one day we could see them at much lower prices. Let’s hope it all goes well. Not only because these viruses could soon become endemicbut also because I want to sit in my garden on a hot summer night and watch hundreds of these insects go down in flames after saying, You may fire when ready, in my best Peter Cushing voice (from Star Wars: A New Hope).
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E-Commerce
Some days, Have a great day!!! is just too much to ask. You might even be tempted to respond to this effusive well-wisher: Have you seen the news? Have you seen my to-do list? Have you seen my teams numbers? Have you seen my sleep score? Some days, you might just settle for Having a day. And yet, that doesnt feel great either. It would be nice to do more than get through the week, to do more than endure. I have guided many leaders whose company cultures were built on endurance. I have endured many days myself. I know how easy it is to paint a day or week as categorically hard or bad. But calling a whole day bad is like calling a gravel driveway flat. Sure, from a distance its flat-ish, but from an ants point of view, it might as well be a mountain range. What we sometimes miss is that even on aggressively bad days, there is often an hour or two that is kind of okay. Or maybe every single last hour is hard, but within an hour, there is a minute when you laugh at a colleagues joke or check out your good hair day in the mirror. Even if youre in a meeting when every last minute is painful reviewing your businesss financials, you still have access to a delicious five seconds of deeply breathing in the smell of your coffee. Or in other words: You can thin-slice your joy. Because the last thing harried, overworked people need is to add learn meditation to their to-do list. Similarly, deciding to focus on fewer things sounds nice, but your boss may respectfully disagree. It would also be good to distance yourself from people who stress you out and demand your attention unfairly, but you know what? Sometimes those people are your kids. In these moments, you can thin-slice your joy in two ways: savoring the joy already present in your day, and creating new moments of micro-joy. Savoring your daily joys Like scarfing down a meal while watching TV or getting some work done, its easy to anesthetize ourselves to pleasure without realizing it. The good news is that it takes the same amount of time to chew mindlessly as it does to savor the taste of your foodit simply requires attention. Here are three no-time-required actions you can take to bank more joy from your day: Appreciate a quirk. In your next meeting, look around the room (2D or 3D) and identify one quirky thing you like about a colleague. Maybe someone throws their head back when they laugh and its joyful. Or another person drums their fingers when theyre about to share a good idea. Its an appreciation of their humanity and individuality, which makes us feel closer to them. Smell first. Before sipping your coffee, tea, or other beverage, take three seconds to smell it first. Risk looking indulgent: close your eyes and breathe in for three secondsthen sip. If its a particularly rough day, sprinkle some cinnamon on that cappuccino. This practice is especially useful when you feel in your head. Reconnecting with our senses brings us back to the present moment. Revel in your work. The next time you write a particularly funny Slack message, a compelling email, or create some bit of work thats better than your average, take one minute to simply stare at it and enjoy how clever you are. Were so often on to the next thingand when we do review our work, we often do so with a critical eyethat we miss the part where we feel pleased with ourselves! Even enjoying a cute turn of phrase in an email is plenty to savor. Creating new micro-joys It would be lovely if we all had the time, energy, and budget to take up new hobbies, make new friends, and take two-hour lunch breaks. And if you can, you should! But also, joy is not all-or-nothing. A good thought experiment to get you dreaming about micro-joys is to consider what sort of habits, experiences, or moments bring you the most joyand then identify their smallest viable unit. Here are three micro-joys to try this week: Ask a random question. The next time you see a colleague you like, take two minutes to get to know them a bit better. You could say, Random question: Whats your middle name? or Random question: Do you have siblings? Longitudinal studies of human happiness are very clear about what mattersand thats the quality of our relationships. And yet, how often do we work with people and not know even the most basic facts about them? These questions shouldnt be a long diversion from your workeven a minute of knowing someone better and that person feeling seen can be a high point of joy in your day. Do a doodle a day. Spend two minutes on a simple doodle. Maybe you draw a different timepiece each day (watch! clocktower!). Maybe its an abstract shape or a hand-lettered word. Maybe you draw a family of ducks, one day at a time. Bonus points if you do each doodle on a Post-it and then create a collection at your desk. We benefit from art, play, and self-expression during the workday, but maybe youd garner some side-eye if you set up an easel in the office. If you love art, then a daily doodle can be your version of a micro-joy. Misbehave. Mischief at work can give us a much-needed shot of adrenaline, connection, and adventure. This might look like rearranging the office furniture, using Comic Sans font in your next presentation, or playing a quick round of guess that tune with your colleagues as you hum your favorite throwback song. At best, work is steak: rich, juicy, delicious. But sometimes its just notsometimes work is broccoli. On those days, your job is to throw some cheese on it. Never gonna give you up . . . never gonna let you down . . . take it, reader! Louder, so coworkers can hear! And have yourself a great day! Or, you know, a daywith at least one truly great moment.
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E-Commerce
Workers who take small steps to enforce work-life balancelike setting an out-of-office message on weekends or not answering emails on vacationare often considered less committed and promotable, even when theyre encouraged to take those actions. Researchers behind a new study looking at the phenomenon are calling this the detachment paradox.” We were only looking at stuff that happens when the worker is not supposed to work, such as evenings, weekends, and vacations, says Elisa Solinas, an assistant professor of marketing at IE University in Spain and one of the papers coauthors. What we still see is that the more the worker detaches, the more harshly they get evaluated. Managers both value and punish time off The researchers split managers into two groups and gave each the same fictitious story about a hypothetical employee, only for one group the protagonist took a small action to detach from work during their off hours. Managers perceived the employee who enforced some relatively minor work-life boundaries as more focused, less stressed out, and less likely to experience burnout. However, they also perceived that employee as less dedicated to work. The same people who said that [the workers] are going to be more productive also said that they were going to be less promotable, says coauthor Eva Buechel, an assistant professor of marketing at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. So even the people who say this is really important and even encourage work-life balance penalize them [for detaching]. The researchers also came up with nearly identical results when they replaced the hypothetical workers with the managers real team members in those fictitious scenarios. Finally, researchers asked participants to describe members of their staff, including their ethnicity, age, tenure, job performance, collegiality, commitment, and whether they enforce work-life boundaries. In the end, workers who took even small actions to detach from work during their designated time off were broadly seen as less committed and less promotable by their managers. Theres significant literature on how people are evaluated differently based on things like age, ethnicity, and gender, and we didn’t really find any of that, Buechel says. I can comfortably say this [detachment] penalty has equal, if not more significance than those other worker-related biases. Give me a break With work-related stress and burnout rates on the rise, employees need more time to rest and recover, but research suggests theyre getting less of it. According to a recent survey of 2,000 American workers conducted by book summary app Headway, two-thirds of workers struggle to switch off on vacation, and more than half have experienced conflicts with loved ones over their inability to unplug while away. Just 4% of workers are left alone on vacation; the rest get bombarded with emails, messages, and calls, says Thalia-Maria Tourikis, a health coach and burnout prevention and recovery expert for Headway. Workers are encouraged to take time off, then pestered with emails and messages the moment they do, to the point of guilt, anxiety, insomnia, and burnout. Thanks to technology, there are few physical barriers between employees and their increasingly digital workplaces. As a result, Tourikis says, many struggle to mentally detach from work, even when theyre far from the office. Taking time off shouldnt feel like a sin, she says. If we want to be healthier and happier, we have to stop glorifying constant availability and start respecting annual leave. Small breaks can make a big difference Vacations have traditionally been considered an employee indulgence that came at the expense of their employers, but new research suggests the benefits are mutual, and more significant than previously understood. The prevailing assumption was vacation offers small benefits for well-being, and they fade quickly when you get back to work, says Ryan Grant, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Georgia who recently coauthored a meta-analysis on vacations and employee well-being. We found the benefits were pretty huge. Grant explains that the energizing effects of time off are actually 85% greater than previously suggested, and those effects persisted much longer, fading gradually over an average of about 43 days. According to the study, the most significant factor in determining the size and longevity of that post-vacation well-being boost was the ability to detach from work while away. It was the only recovery activity that had a strong positive association with well-being both during and after the vacation, Grant says. That suggests the more you psychologically detach during vacationthe less you check your email, communicate with coworkers, and just think about work generallythe better your vacation is going to be, and the larger your well-being benefits are going to be after. Detachment offers a win-win for employees and managers But this isnt just about enjoying that week in the sun or on the slopes. When workers can fully detach from work, their employers often benefit in the form of higher employee morale, resilience, and productivity, as well as lower healthcare costs, absenteeism, and turnover rates. [Managers] are trying to improve the organizations bottom line and improve employee performance, but not allowing people the time to detach and recover directly opposes that goal, Grant says. They’re actually doing things that run directly counter to what they’re trying to accomplish. While the occasional late-night email or Saturday phone call may seem inconsequential in the moment, Grant says such actions leave workers in constant fear of having their downtime interrupted, making it harder to fully recharge while away from work. In the short term, you’re like, Well, I need this thing done today, so I’m going to email my subordinate and say I want them to do this thing tonight, he says. But if you look at things in the longer term, the more you’re not allowing people to detach on a daily basis, the more the negative effects on their health and performance are going to increase over time.
Category:
E-Commerce
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