Robot may help fight malaria

Most people kill a mosquito with a violent swat of the hand, but Yaroslav Tenzer is much more methodical — and tender. He needs the tiny pest’s body intact so he can harvest its salivary glands. Mosquito saliva is the key to a potential malaria vaccine and Tenzer, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University’s Biorobotics Laboratory, has spent the last two years designing a machine that can very precisely behead an infected mosquito and gently squeeze its body to extract and collect its parasite-filled spit. He’s come up with a machine that uses a very small blade to cut off the head of a mosquito in a petri dish, then applies gentle pressure to the thorax to force out the salivary glands, which are captured in a special fluid and purified later to make the vaccine. This week, the Maryland company that asked the Harvard lab to build the machine launched a...