Microsoft is not known for its ability to prevent infectious diseases. Project Premonition to be presented today at an event in Washington, D.C θα παρουσιάσει ένα νέο ερευνητικό πρόγραμμα της εταιρείας. Οι ερευνητές της Microsoft φέρεται να συνεργάζονται με επιστήμονες από διάφορα πανεπιστήμια (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health και το University of Pittsburgh) to catch mosquitoes!
To clarify, the company will build a system that collects mosquitoes and analyzes them to see if the diseases are spreading. The goal of the researchers is prevention, that they can take action before the outbreak of an infectious disease.
Microsoft researcher Ethan Jackson, who is in charge of the project, refers to mosquitoes as “drones of nature."
Part of the project will also include real drones.
Pitfalls and drones
To control the mosquitoes, you must catch them first. The traps used today are obsolete technology and have changed little over the decades. So they have inherent problems.
These pitfalls use heavy batteries but also capture other insects. Imagine, however, how lengthy the sifting process can be in a bunch of insects.
Also, the bait system is not so useful, because dry ice - the preferred method of attracting mosquitoes - is very difficult to obtain in many areas.
So Microsoft has developed a smarter trap that solves some of these problems.
The Project Premonition trap consumes less energy, has lighter batteries, adopts a new bait system, and has a sensor that separates mosquitoes from other insects.
For these traps, Microsoft is developing semi-autonomous drones, those that do not require "ground control" to manage the process.
Microsoft reports that it is working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for that matter.
The central objective of the project is to modernize the transfer of dead mosquitoes to the laboratories.
The final piece of the puzzle is identifying the diseases, and using recent advances in molecular biology and genetic sequencing, scientists will create fundamentals data in the cloud (powered by Microsoft, of course) from their findings.
