Home  »  Headline News

On:

We have recruited animals, from llamas to dolphins, in our fight against terrorism. The latest strategy is to train honey bees to sniff out bombs. But if we’re going to draft bees for military action, we’d better make sure they don’t disappear.

Los Alamos scientists think they can figure out how to harness the incredible olfactory sense of honey bees, which they use in their search for nectar, to sniff out the explosives used in the kinds of explosives that are used in roadside bombs in Iraq. Researcher Tim Haarmann says, “Scientists have long marveled at the honey bee’s phenomenal sense of smell, which rivals that of dogs.”

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk
read more

On:

Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) say that bad habits like smoking, eating the wrong foods, drinking too much alcohol and not exercising enough cause half the deaths in the US. Researchers are trying to figure out why we persist in these deadly habits.

In LiveScience.com, Jeanna Bryner quotes researcher Cindy Jardine as saying, “?It’s not because they haven’t gotten the information that these are big risks.” In other words, the reason is not that people don’t realize that these habits are shortening their lives, so even if they have a genetic propensity towards whatever bad habit they are indulging in, why don’t they at least make an attempt to break away from their addictions?
read more

On:

Signs of predictedweatherextremes are everywhere: a massive snowstorm crippled Buffalo in October. In November, a heat wave ruined the start of the ski season in the Alps. December started with monster typhoon Durian killing as many as a thousand people in the Philippines, while a brutal blizzard knocked out power for millions in the United States. And now a tornado has struck a residential district in London, injuring six peopleand causing damage to homes. Britain experiences about 30 tornadoes a year, but for one to cause injuries and damage is extremely rare. Warmer than normal autumn temperatures have contributed to violent weather in the UK this year.
read more

On:

There has long been speculation that innocent animals could be used to create bioweapons for terrorist attacks. But they could be used to detect these weapons as well.

If terrorists deploy a biological weapon, the molecules in the blood of llamas would warn us we were being attacked. Scientists would just have to look in the llama?s blood for antibodies to the specific bioweapon.
read more