The earliest signs of summer herald my annual metamorphosis – from woman to outsize pincushion. Whether at home or abroad, when mosquitoes begin their hunt for blood I am reminded, via a blanket of red blotches, that have more than once swelled to the size of a golf ball, that mine is a godlike nectar. On a single day last December, a tropical Christmas trip quickly became a less-than-festive scratchathon, after which I was stung by jellyfish, then wasps.
But there are signs that a solution for the 20% of us who receive above-average numbers of bites may soon be at hand. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) have developed a new repellent capable of reducing the number of mosquitoes feeding by 80%. Applying a thin
