In global public health, disease-fighting tools that are cheap, available and sustainable are the Holy Grail. It might be hard to top the one being tested in Tanzania as a way to prevent malaria: smelly socks. Experiments in three villages where people get about 350 bites a year from malaria-infected mosquitoes are using dirty socks to lure the insects into traps, where they become contaminated with poisons and ultimately die. Researchers hope that if the strategy works, it will eventually complement insecticide-treated bed nets as a low-tech way to prevent malaria, which kills nearly 900,000 people a year worldwide, most of them children. Read full article >>