The LouseBuster could be installed in school clinics. School nurses and physicians' assistants could be taught to use it. In fact, non-medical school officials could get training on its application.

But the LouseBuster is not designed for home use. "It's a big machine, so it's not something that would be marketable in its present incarnation to households," Clayton said.

Also, parents not trained to use the device could make mistakes.

Clayton's children, Mimi and Roger, came down with head lice about 10 years ago. He is an expert on lice that plague birds but did not know of a better treatment for head lice than chemicals or laborious daily combing.

"It's frustrating when you're an expert on lice and your kids get head lice and there's nothing you can do," he said. "That helped focus my interest on the problem a little bit."

Clayton also discovered that some researchers in Utah were having trouble keeping small insects alive because of the aridity. That led to the idea of using dry air to kill head lice.

According to the U., authors are Clayton; Brad Goates, a U. medical student who wrote his master's thesis about the LouseBuster; Atkin; Wilding; Kurtis Birch and Michael Cottam, who were undergraduates in Clayton's lab, and Clayton's wife, Sarah Bush, one of the directors of the Center for Alternative Strategies of Parasite Removal.

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