Little things, like taking a shortcut through the park on your way to work each day can make a big difference

to your mental health. Find your little big thing

big thing at every mind matters.

This is Scientific Americans' 60 Second Science.

I'm Jason Goldman.

More than 200 million die

die, and about half a million die, mostly in Africa, many of them children.

And those staggering numbers are an improvement.

Malaria deaths have been cut in half since 2000.

In many places, a remarkably simple tool has led the fight.

Bed nets, treated with a mild insecticide that stop mosquitoes from biting people in their sleep.

Both people and mosquitoes are ponds in the malaria transmission cycle.

If an infected person gets bitten by a mosquito, the parasite gets picked up along with the blood meal.

That mosquito can then transfer the parasite to the next person it bites.

Bed nets help stop mosquitoes from easy attacks on motionless

sleepers. But now some mosquitoes seem to be giving up the night shift.

Malaria mosquitoes in Africa tend to shift their Nighting

Nightinguegios in Africa tend to shift their biting behavior.

Entomologist Uno Sousa from Penn State University's Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics.

Normally they tend to buy people during the night,

but because of extensive use of a bed match,

these mosquitoes started fighting in the early evening or in the mornings.

...