[Infowarrior] - Bugging Out on Homeland Security

[Richard Forno]

Bugging Out on Homeland Security

Abby Seiff

See the photo gallery for an illustrated look at a creepy new line of
defense

Annoying as they are, you may want to think twice before you crush a
cockroach or swat a fly‹you could be killing a future foot soldier in the
war on terror. Increasingly, scientists are turning to insects and other
creatures for better ways to identify biohazards. ³Cockroaches can detect
all kinds of things, from anthrax spores to DNA,² says Karen Kester, an
entomologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. With $1 million in funding
from the Pentagon¹s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa),
Kester is studying ways to use roaches and houseflies as toxin sentinels
inside contaminated buildings or subways. This, of course, spares humans the
job, and it may prove more effective than mechanical sensors, which often
lack the range and sensitivity of their living counterparts.

Bees and fish are also in demand. A small British biotechnology firm called
Inscentinel is employing the finely tuned olfactory system of bees to sniff
for explosives. And New York, California and Maryland are exploiting the
highly sensitive nervous system of bluegill fish to test for toxins in
municipal water supplies. Bill Lawler, co-founder of Intelligent Automation
Corporation, the California company that sells the bluegill-monitoring
system, says living sensors are ³the wave of the future.² So go easy on the
Raid.

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/243434a70e131110vgnvcm1000004eecbccd
rcrd.html