Insect Cyborgs May Be The Spies And First Responders Of The Future
Airborne bugs equipped with sensors, microphones, and cameras will one day go wherever people cannot. Science Daily reports:
Research conducted at the University of Michigan College of Engineering may lead to the use of insects to monitor hazardous situations before sending in humans.
“Through energy scavenging, we could potentially power cameras, microphones and other sensors and communications equipment that an insect could carry aboard a tiny backpack,” Professor Khalil Najafi said. “We could then send these ‘bugged’ bugs into dangerous or enclosed environments where we would not want humans to go.”
The principal idea is to harvest the insect’s biological energy from either its body heat or movements. The device converts the kinetic energy from wing movements of the insect into electricity, thus prolonging the battery life. The battery can be used to power small sensors implanted on the insect (such as a small camera, a microphone or a gas sensor) in order to…
Oldest Known “Beds” Had Insect Repellent
Insects have bugged human beings for a long time. Via Discover:
In a South African cave, researchers have uncovered traces of the oldest known human bedding, 77,000-year-old mats made of grasses, leaves, and other plant material. While it’s not especially surprising that early humans would have found a way to improve the cold, generally unpleasant experience of sleeping on a cave floor, archaeologists know little about our ancestors’ sleeping habits and habitats.
Using scanning electron microscopy, the researchers identified several species of local rushes and grasses that made up the bulk of the mattress, as well as leaves of the Cryptocarya woodii tree. These leaves contain chemical compounds that repel mosquitoes, lice, and other insects, suggesting that the cave’s ancient residents protected their bedding with natural insecticide.
World’s Biggest Insect Found In New Zealand
No word on whether it is available for adoption. Via the Daily Mail:
Mark Moffett’s find is the world’s biggest insect in terms of weight, which at 71g is heavier than a sparrow and three times that of a mouse. The 53-year-old former park ranger discovered the giant weta up a tree and [it] has now been declared the largest ever found. The creepy crawly is only found on Little Barrier Island, in New Zealand, although there are 70 other types of smaller weta found throughout the country.
Mysterious Drop In Mosquito Numbers
Photo: Arthur Chapman (CC)
Is this a good or a bad thing? Incidents of malaria are reduced, but there are less people to test treatment on. Via BBC News:
Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are disappearing in some parts of Africa, but scientists are unsure as to why.
Figures indicate controls such as anti-mosquito bed nets are having a significant impact on the incidence of malaria in some sub-Saharan countries.
But in Malaria Journal, researchers say mosquitoes are also disappearing from areas with few controls.
They are uncertain if mosquitoes are being eradicated or whether they will return with renewed vigour.
Data from countries such as Tanzania, Eritrea, Rwanda, Kenya and Zambia all indicate that the incidence of malaria is dropping fast.
[Continues at BBC News]
The Emotional Life Of Bees
Now if only the mysterious Vanishing Bees could tell us what stresses are making them disappear in droves… Jason Castro reports on provocative experiments suggesting that the insects have something like an emotional life, for Scientific American:
If you’ve never watched bees carefully, you’re missing out. Looking up close as they gently curl and uncoil their tapered mouths toward food, you sense that they’re not just eating, but enjoying. Watch a bit more, and the hesitant flicks and sags of their antennae seem to convey some kind of emotion. Maybe annoyance? Or something like agitation?
Whether bees really experience any of these things is an open scientific question. It’s also an important one with implications for how we should treat not just bees, but the great majority of animals. Recently, studies by Geraldine Wright and her colleagues at Newcastle University in the UK have rekindled debate over these issues by showing that honeybees may experience something…
Chinese Man Breaks World Record For Wearing Most Bees
The kicker – Mr. Wei achieved the feat just two days after Chinese beekeeper Shen Zonghong broke the previous world record by having 36kg of bees on his body. What is going on over there?! Via the Daily Mail, the paper of record for entomological matters:
This man broke the world record for the heaviest bee suit after being loaded up with 83.5kg of the flying insects. Zhang Wei, from Zizhou County, in western China, wore a special frame covered in foliage to hold the mass of bees.
Wearing a pair of gggles and holding a tube in his mouth for breathing, Mr Wei was seated as around two dozen crates full of bees were released next to him.
The man – who was wearing a jacket and trousers but did not have his hands or face protected – did not seem to mind as thousands of the insects buzzed around him and almost completely engulfed his…
World’s Largest Cicada Brood Begins Hatching In U.S. South
If the world is going to end this coming weekend, this seems about right. USA Today notes:
Here comes the Brood. An enormous brood of cicadas that covers parts of 16 states is beginning to wake from its 13-year slumber underground.
The inch-long insects have been reported hatching in South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Arkansas. They will appear farther north as soil temperatures reach 64 degrees.
“There are billions of them in the trees,” Greta Beekhuis says, speaking by phone from Pittsboro, N.C. The sound of the cicadas is clearly audible over the line. “When I drove from my house to the grocery store, I ran over thousands of them. They’re everywhere. The air is just thick with them.”
Scientists call these cicadas the Great Southern Brood or Brood XIX. It is the world’s largest “periodical” brood, one that surfaces after years.
Cicadas aren’t dangerous, and are non-toxic and even edible, says Kritsky, a…
Insects Recover Lost ‘Wings’
Female Buffalo Treehopper (Stictocephala bisonia) boring a hole into a branch for laying eggs. Photo: Quartl (CC)
Is evolution backtracking? Physorg reports:
The extravagant headgear of small bugs called treehoppers are in fact wing-like appendages that grew back 200 million years after evolution had supposedly cast them aside, according to a study published Thursday in Nature.
That’s probably shocking news if you are an entomologist, and challenges some very basic ideas about what makes an insect an insect, the researchers said. The thorax of all insects is by definition divided into three segments, each with a pair of legs.
In most orders, there are also two pairs of wings, one on the middle segment of the thorax and another at the rear. Other orders such as flies and mosquitoes have only one set of wings, at the rear, and a few — most ants, for example — have no wings at all.
But no insects today…
Termites Eat Millions Of Indian Rupees In Bank
Via Yahoo News:
LUCKNOW, India – It was an all you can eat buffet at the bank.
An army of termites munched through 10 million rupees ($222,000) in currency notes stored in a steel chest at a bank, police in northern India said Friday.
The bank manager discovered the damage when he opened the reinforced room in an old bank building on Wednesday, police officer Navneet Rana told The Associated Press.
“It’s a matter of investigation how termites attacked bundles of currency notes stacked in a steel chest,” he said. The money was put in the chest in January.
The termites had damaged bank furniture and documents in the past.
The police have registered a case of negligence against bank officials in Barabanki, a town 20 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh state capital. In India, police register a case before opening an investigation.
Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 Textbook About Flies
New copies are still going for around a grand. Interesting story: Michael Eisen writes on it is NOT Junk:
A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence’s The Making of a Fly — a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists — consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from $1,730,045.91 (+$3.99 shipping).
I sent a screen capture to the author — who was appropriate amused and intrigued. But I doubt even he would argue the book is worth THAT much.
At first I thought it was a joke — a graduate student with too much time on their hands. But there were TWO new copies for sale, each be offered for well over…
Insects Will Be Our Meat In The Future
According to the Wall Street Journal’s Marcel Dicke and Arnold Van Huis, insects are nutritious and easy to raise without harming the environment. They also have a nice nutty taste…
At the London restaurant Archipelago, diners can order the $11 Baby Bee Brulee: a creamy custard topped with a crunchy little bee. In New York, the Mexican restaurant Toloache offers $11 chapulines tacos: two tacos stuffed with Oaxacan-style dried grasshoppers.
Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future…
Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Released
Photo: Alvesgaspar (CC)
I have a bad feeling about this — how long before the scientists say “Sorry, we didn’t think that was possible” when the mosquitoes mutate into something deadly to humans…? From the happily hyperbolic Daily Mail:
Malaysia has released 6,000 genetically modified mosquitoes into a forest in the first experiment of its kind in Asia aimed at curbing dengue fever.
The field test is meant to pave the way for the official use of genetically engineered Aedes aegypti male mosquitoes to mate with females and produce offspring with shorter lives, thus curtailing the population.
Only female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes spread dengue fever, which killed 134 people in Malaysia last year.
However, the plan has sparked criticism by some Malaysian environmentalists, who fear it might have unforeseen consequences, such as the inadvertent creation of uncontrollable mutated mosquitoes.
Critics also say such plans could leave a vacuum in the ecosystem that is then filled by another insect…
Latest Mass Animal Death: Crickets
I’m not sure how many signs of the apocalypse we’ve now experienced this season, but it’s a high tally. In the latest disturbing mass wildlife die-off, MSNBC reports that a paralyzing virus is killing crickets by the million:
A virus has killed millions of crickets raised to feed pet reptiles and those kept in zoos. The cricket paralysis virus has disrupted supplies to pet shops across North America as a handful of operators have seen millions of their insects killed.
Some operations have gone bankrupt and others have closed indefinitely until they can rid their facilities of the virus.
Cricket farms started in the 1940s as a source of fish bait, but the bulk of sales now are to pet supply companies, reptile owners and zoos, although people also eat some. Most U.S. farms are in the South, but suppliers from Pennsylvania to California also raise crickets.
The virus had swept through European cricket farms…
Scientists Find Natural Photovoltaic Cell In Hornet
Oriental Hornet
By Ben Coxworth at www.gizmag.com:
It’s no big mystery why turtles and other reptiles bask in the sun – being cold-blooded animals, they’re gathering heat to warm their bodies, so they can be active. Recently, however, scientists from Israel and the UK discovered that the Oriental hornet has been putting a “high-tech” spin on that model… the outer layers of its body work as a natural photovoltaic cell, converting sunlight to electricity. The scientists then proceeded to create a cell of their own, using the hornet as their inspiration.
The study was led by Dr. Marian Plotkin of Tel-Aviv University. It had been observed that the hornets’ underground nest-digging activity increased with the intensity of the sunlight, whereas most wasps tend to be more active in the early morning. This caused the late Prof. Jacob S. Ishay to suspect that the insects were utilizing solar radiation…
[continues at at www.gizmag.com]
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Taiwanese Animation: America’s ‘Giant’ Bedbug Problem
In its latest CGI masterpiece, New Media Animation tackles America’s takeover by bedbugs. This is an accurate depiction of what is already happening in certain apartments in New York:
New Species Found On Easter Island
The new insect. Photo: Jut Wynne, Northern Arizona University
Last year disinformation undertook an investigative expedition to Easter Island with geologist Dr. Robert Schoch, of MIT. You can review Robert’s initial findings here (includes video). One of the focuses of the expedition was exploring caves for fossil remains. Now the caves have supplied another amazing finding, reported by Clara Moskowitz for LiveScience:
Scientists recently uncovered a new species of tiny insect in a cave on Easter Island. The find is exciting because most of the island’s native life has gone extinct, researchers said.
The still-unnamed insect was discovered in a cave within the Roiho lava flow in west-central Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui) in the South Pacific Ocean. The species – roughly the size of a grain of rice – is a type of book louse, in the order Psocoptera, the family Lepidopsocidae and the genus Cyptophania.
“This could be very important for piecing…
Insects: The Hot New Food?
Perhaps it’s good practice for a 2012 Apocalypse-type scenario, but it’s hard to believe that eating bugs will really catch on more than as a shock tactic. Sumathi Reddy reports for the Wall Street Journal:
He’s making “chocolate chirp cookies”—with crickets inside—for a coming art festival. He puts crickets in his tacos when he watches football. And his freezer is full of bags of various insects, including dry-roasted crickets from Thailand, wax- and silkworms, and domestic crickets he raised at home, fattened up on oatmeal and orange rinds.
“Hearing them chirp all night long is really kind of beautiful,” said Mr. Dennis on a recent evening as he prepared a bug dinner. “But then you’ve got to eat them, of course.”…
Scientists Find 95-Million-Year-Old Bugs In African Amber
Scientists have found amber containing perfectly-preserved 95-million-year-old bugs. From Wired Science:
Suspended in the stream of time were ancestors of modern spiders, wasps and ferns, but the prize is a wingless ant (above) that challenges current notions about the origins of that globe-spanning insect family.
The amber, which is formed when plant resin fossilizes, preserving flora and fauna trapped within, was found in what is now northwest Ethiopia. Ninety-five million years ago, it was part of a disintegrating Gondwana, one of two vast land masses that spawned the seven modern continents.
While it will take years to interpret the ecological tales trapped in the new amber, one important story is already suggested. Inside the Ethiopian amber is an ant that looks nothing like ants found in Cretaceous amber from France and Burma. Those deposits had placed the origin of ants in Laurasia. That’s no longer certain.
Read more at Wired Science
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Researchers Turn Mosquitoes Into Flying Vaccinators
Thanks scientists for taking mosquitoes from an “annoying” level to now a plot line for a super-villain. Martin Enserink writes on ScienceNOW:
Here’s a study to file under “unworkable but very cool.” A group of Japanese researchers has developed a mosquito that spreads vaccine instead of disease. Even the researchers admit, however, that regulatory and ethical problems will prevent the critters from ever taking wing — at least for the delivery of human vaccines.
Scientists have dreamed up various ways to tinker with insects’ DNA to fight disease. One option is to create strains of mosquitoes that are resistant to infections with parasites or viruses, or that are unable to pass the pathogens on to humans. These would somehow have to replace the natural, disease-bearing mosquitoes, which is a tall order. Another strategy closer to becoming reality is to release transgenic mosquitoes that, when they mate with wild-type counterparts, don’t produce viable…
