Science & technology | The war on malaria

A charge that sticks

Static electricity may lead to better mosquito nets

Sep 3rd 2015

THE widespread use in recent years of nets, insecticides and new drugs has helped to bring malaria under a measure of control—but evolution is constantly pushing back by generating resistant strains of both the parasite that causes the disease and the mosquito that spreads it. Even resistant mosquitoes, however, can take only so much chemical abuse, and Marit Farenhorst, a researcher at In2Care, a Dutch mosquito-control firm, and her colleagues think they have devised a way to dish out more of it.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “A charge that sticks”