"California scientists are reporting a pair of victories in the epic struggle between man and mosquito. A team at the University of California, Riverside, appears to have finally figured out how bugs detect the insect repellent known as DEET. And the team used its discovery to identify several chemical compounds that promise to be safer and cheaper than DEET, according to the report in the journal Nature."
"The new repellents, if they pan out, could make a huge difference in developing countries where mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are common, says Craig Montell, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who is not connected to the new research."
Jon Hamilton reports for NPR's The Shots blog October 2, 2013.
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