An elite squad of real but remote-controlled rats could soon be scouring enemy bases and sniffing out explosives for the US military.

The rodents are directed using a series of brain implants, which can be operated wirelessly from a distance of several hundred metres. Now, for the first time, the researchers behind the project have demonstrated the ability to control the rodents' movements before activating their “sniffer dog” instincts.

John Chapin and colleagues at the State University of New York, US, say the rats could eventually sniff out hidden weapons or act as remote video sensors for military and police forces.

With colleagues from the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, they have previously shown that brain implants can be used to steer the rats over an assault course, or home in on a particular odour. But combining the two tricks is a significant step towards turning them into useful “robo-rodents”.

The rats’ olfactory talents are such that it should be possible to train them to locate explosives or drugs by the tiny chemical traces they emanate, Chapin says.

But, whereas sniffer dogs are trained to crouch down or make some other signal when they locate something, the researchers hope to use brain signals discover when a rat has reached its target, too. Previously they had hoped to monitor the olfactory regions of the brain, but Chapin says monitoring the limbic system within the brain - which shows when the rat thinks it is about to get a reward - is more effective.

The research, which is funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will appear in a forthcoming edition of the journal Physiology and Behaviour.
See the full "Remote-controlled rats to sniff out explosives" article

Babies who attended daycare are much less likely to suffer childhood leukaemia when they grow older than those who did not mix with other infants, a new study suggests.

The findings, from the largest-ever investigation into the causes of leukaemia, provide strong backing to a theory linking common infections to the childhood cancer. Leukaemia experts presented these and other results from the UK Childhood Cancer Study (UKCCS) in London on Friday. The 15-year-long study tracked 11,000 children, over 1700 of whom suffered with leukaemia.

It found that increased levels of social activity outside the home reduced the risk of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). But this cut in risk was greatest in children who attended formal daycare during their first three months of life.

This could be because being exposed to common bugs from other children at a young age helps to educate the immune system on how to respond effectively, says Greaves.

Without that experience, the immune system might overreact when children get to school and are exposed to further infections. This could cause "a great deal of proliferative stress to the bone marrow" - where immune cells are produced - potentially triggering the leukaemia, he says.

If this theory does prove correct, Greaves says it might be possible to develop a prophylactic vaccine to immunise children against leukaemia by giving them the early exposure to infections needed to educate their immune systems.

Full Infant daycare helps prevent childhood leukaemia at New Scientist.

Suspended animation has been deliberately induced in a species of mouse which does not naturally hibernate. It is the first time such a feat has been achieved, say the procedure's pioneers.

If a similar response could be triggered in humans, there would be major healthcare benefits and the futuristic idea of putting astronauts into suspended animation on long-haul space flights could move a step closer to reality.

The mice were induced to fall into their deep sleep after being exposed to hydrogen sulphide - the gas which gives rotten eggs and stink bombs their characteristic foul odour. The animals later revived in ordinary air.

Hydrogen sulphide sends cells into a state of dormancy. "You're shutting down the cellular hunger for oxygen,", says Mark Roth, head of the team which pioneered the procedure at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, US.

While hibernating, their metabolic rates plummeted by about 90% as their cells dropped their usual demand for oxygen. Core body temperatures dropped from the normal 37°C to 15°C.

"Once down to around 15°C, instead of 150 breaths per minute, they were down to just a couple of really shallow breaths a minute," says Roth. "We are, in essence, temporarily converting mice from warm-blooded to cold-blooded creatures, which is exactly the same thing that happens naturally when mammals hibernate".

The breakthrough suggests humans along with other mammals might harbor a mostly unused ability to hibernate on demand. Further research into the phenomenon could lead to medical advances, such as buying time for humans awaiting an organ transplant, scientists said.

Squirrels, bears, snakes and many other animals hibernate naturally, some more deeply than others. Humans have been known to hibernate by accident, Roth and his colleagues point out.

A Norwegian skier was rescued in 1999 after being submerged in icy water for more than an hour. She had no heartbeat and her body temperature was 57 degrees Fahrenheit (normal is 98.6). She recovered.

Canadian toddler Erika Nordby wandered outside at night and nearly froze to death in 2001. She wore only a diaper and T-shirt. It was minus 11 Fahrenheit (-24 Celsius). When found, her heart had stopped beating for two hours and her body temperature was 61 degrees. She suffered severe frostbite but required no amputations and otherwise recovered.

"Understanding the connections between random instances of seemingly miraculous, unexplained survival in so-called clinically dead humans and our ability to induce -- and reverse -- metabolic quiescence in model organisms could have dramatic implications for medical care," Roth said. "In the end I suspect there will be clinical benefits and it will change the way medicine is practiced, because we will, in short, be able to buy patients time."

The results are detailed in the April 22 issue of the journal Science.

Detailed New Hibernation Technique Might Work on Humans story at Live Science and Stink bomb gas puts mice into suspended animation article at New Scientist.

The relentless influx of emails, cellphone calls and instant messages received by modern workers can reduce their IQ by more than smoking marijuana, suggests UK research.

Far from boosting productivity, the constant flow of messages and information can seriously reduce a person's ability to focus on tasks, the study of office workers found.

Eighty volunteers were asked to carry out problem solving tasks, firstly in a quiet environment and then while being bombarded with new emails and phone calls. Although they were told not to respond to any messages, researchers found that their attention was significantly disturbed.

Alarmingly, the average IQ was reduced by 10 points - double the amount seen in studies involving cannabis users. But not everyone was affected by to the same extent - men were twice as distracted as women.

Full 'Info-mania' dents IQ more than marijuana article.

Scientists recently unveiled the tiniest electric motor ever built. You could stuff hundreds of them into the period at the end of this sentence.

The motor works by shuffling atoms between two molten metal droplets in a carbon nanotube.

One droplet is even smaller than the other. When a small electric current is applied to the droplets, atoms slowly eek off the larger droplet and join the smaller one. The small droplet grows – but never gets as big as the other droplet – and eventually bumps into the large droplet. As they touch, the large droplet rapidly sops up the atoms it had previously sloughed off. This quick shift in energy produces a power stroke.

The technique exploits the fact that surface tension -- the tendency of atoms or molecules to resist separating -- becomes more important at small scales.

The motor, a surface-tension-driven nanoelectromechanical relaxation oscillator, was built by a team of researchers led by Alex Zettl at the University of California, Berkeley.

Although the amount of energy produced is small -- 20 microwatts -- it is quite impressive in relation to the tiny scale of the motor. The whole setup is less than 200 nanometers on a side, or hundreds of times smaller than the width of a human hair. If it could be scaled up to the size of an automobile engine, it would be 100 million times more powerful than a Toyota Camry’s 225 horsepower V6 engine, the researchers say.

Learn more and see the motor in action with the World's Smallest Motor article at LiveScience.

The world's fastest transistor has been developed by a pair of US researchers, possibly paving the way for a new generation of super-charged electronic chips.

Milton Feng and Walid Hafez at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, developed the record-breaking transistor by carefully blending different semiconducting materials within individual layers of the microscopic device.

Feng and Hafez developed a transistor less than half a millionth of a metre long, with a maximum operating speed of 604 GHz, meaning it can carry out 604 billion operations every second.

"This establishes a new benchmark for transistor performance," says Doug Barlage at North Carolina State University, US. "It is probably three times faster than the fastest silicon-based device."

Read the full World's fastest transistor operates at blinding speed at New Scientist.

Imagine movies and computer games in which you get to smell, taste and perhaps even feel things. That's the tantalising prospect raised by a patent on a device for transmitting sensory data directly into the human brain - granted to none other than the entertainment giant Sony.

The technique suggested in the patent is entirely non-invasive. It describes a device that fires pulses of ultrasound at the head to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating "sensory experiences" ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds. This could give blind or deaf people the chance to see or hear, the patent claims.

While brain implants are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the only non-invasive ways of manipulating the brain remain crude. A technique known as transcranial magnetic stimulation can activate nerves by using rapidly changing magnetic fields to induce currents in brain tissue. However, magnetic fields cannot be finely focused on small groups of brain cells, whereas ultrasound could be.

Elizabeth Boukis, spokeswoman for Sony Electronics, says the work is speculative. "There were not any experiments done," she says. "This particular patent was a prophetic invention. It was based on an inspiration that this may someday be the direction that technology will take us."

See the Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix NewScientist Article.

A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Paleontologists forced to break the creature's massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.

When they got it into a lab and chemically removed the hard minerals, they found what looked like blood vessels, bone cells and perhaps even blood cells.

"The microstructures that look like cells are preserved in every way," added Schweitzer, whose findings were published in the journal Science.

Studying the soft tissues may help answer many questions about dinosaurs. Were they cold-blooded like reptiles, warm-blooded like mammals, or somewhere in-between? How are they related to living animals?

The finding certainly shows fossilization does not proceed as science had assumed, Schweitzer said. Since the discovery, she has found similar samples of soft tissue in two other Tyrannosaur fossils and a hadrosaur.

Read full coverage at Scientific American or LiveScience or have a look at Yahoo's short
Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Bone piece.

A Swiss company, Syngenta, accidentally sold unapproved genetically modified seed corn in the US for four years. The mistake resulted in about 133 million kilograms of the corn making its way into the food chain.

Officials for the company and the US Environmental Protection Agency insist there is no danger to human health. But the EPA and the US Department of Agriculture are investigating to see if any laws or regulations were broken. The EPA confirmed the investigation was underway in a statement to the journal Nature.

Between 2001 and 2004, Syngenta accidentally sold an unapproved corn variety called Bt 10, mistaking it for the approved variety Bt 11. Both varieties produce a bacterial toxin that kills insects, using the same inserted gene and producing the same protein. The only difference is the location of the inserted gene, Syngenta says.


See the CorporateWatch Syngenta profile, the GeneWatch.org Syngenta page or the Unapproved GM corn found in US food chain, New Scientist article.

For the first time, astronomers have seen the glow of alien planets circling sun-like stars. "This is a new era," says the leader of one of the teams, Drake Deming from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, US. "This is the first time we have actually seen light."

"Spitzer has provided us with a powerful new tool for learning about the temperatures, atmospheres and orbits of planets hundreds of light-years from Earth," said Dr. Deming, lead author of a new study on one of the planets.

"It's fantastic," said Dr. David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass., lead author of a separate study on a different planet. "We've been hunting for this light for almost 10 years, ever since extrasolar planets were first discovered." The Deming paper appears today in Nature's online publication; the Charbonneau paper will be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

So far, all confirmed extrasolar planets, including the two recently observed by Spitzer, have been discovered indirectly, mainly by the "wobble" technique and more recently, the "transit" technique. In the first method, a planet is detected by the gravitational tug it exerts on its parent star, which makes the star wobble. In the second, a planet's presence is inferred when it passes in front of its star, causing the star to dim, or blink. Both strategies use visible-light telescopes and indirectly reveal the mass and size of planets, respectively.

In the new studies, Spitzer has directly observed the warm infrared glows of two previously detected "hot Jupiter" planets, designated HD 209458b and TrES-1. Hot Jupiters are extrasolar gas giants that zip closely around their parent stars. From their toasty orbits, they soak up ample starlight and shine brightly in infrared wavelengths.

See the Glow of alien planets glimpsed at last New Scientist article or go straight to NASA's Spitzer Marks Beginning of New Age of Planetary Science announcement.