Chinese Espionage in Canada - Part 1

From: <reginal..._at_hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:19:56 -0700 (PDT)

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Subject: Nanotechnology and spying - Part 1
From: reginal..._at_hotmail.com
To: TSCM-L Professionals List <TSCM-..._at_googlegroups.com>
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Good article from the March 06/2008 edition of the New Scientist
magazine, pp. 40-43.

"The cyborg animal spies hatching in the lab

Jessica Marshall

The next time a moth alights on your window sill, watch what you say.
Sure, it may look like an innocent visitor, irresistibly drawn to the
light in your room, but it could actually be a spy - one of a new
generation of cyborg insects with impants wired into their nerves to
allow remote control of their movement. Be warned, flesh-and-blood
bugs may soon live up to their name.

It's not just insects that could be used as snoops. Researchers have
already developed remote control systems for rats, pigeons and even
sharks. The motivation is simple: why labour for years to build
robots that imitate the ways animals move when you can just plug into
living creatures and hijack systems already optimises by millions of
years of evolution? 'There's a long history of trying to develop micro-
robots that could be sent out as autonomous devices, but I think many
engineers have realized that they can't improve on Mother Nature,'
says insect neurobiologist John Hildebrand at the University of
Arizona in Tucson. Furthermore, animal's sensory abilities far
outstrip the vast majority of artificial sensors. Sharks, moths and
rats, for example, have amazing olfactory systems that allow them to
detect the faintest traces of chemicals. And if you can hide your
control system within your cyborg's body, it would be virtually
indistinguishable from its unadulterated kin - the perfect spy.

Jose Delgado at Yale University created the first cyborg animal in the
1950s. Delgado discovered where to insert electrodes in the brains of
several species, including bulls, to acquire crude control of their
movement. In one dramatic demonstration in 1963, he stood in a
bullring in Cordoba, Spain, as one of his cyborg bulls charged at him.
With just seconds between him and a good goring, Delgado flicked a
switch and the bull skidded to a halt.

The cyborg concept drifted back into science fiction for a few
decades, until 2002 when a team announced that they had developed a
cyborg rat whose movement could be controlled remotely (New Scientist,
4 May 2002, p 6). The team led by John Chapin at the State University
of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn, implanted electrodes
in the rat's brain which mimicked the sensation that its left or
right whiskers had been brushed. They then trained the rat to respond
to the electrical stimuli. For example, if the rat turned right when
the brain region associated with its right whiskers was pulsed, then
reward centres in its brain were electrically stimulated.

Linda Hermer-Vasquez at the University of Florida in Gainsville later
joined the project to train the cyborg rat to identify specific
scents, such as humans or explosives, to demonstrate that it could be
used in search-and-rescue missions to find people trapped under
rubble, for example, or to sniff out bombs.

To give the animal's operator a rat's-eye view, the most advanced
generation of cyborg rats were kitted out with video-camera backpacks.
These souped-up rats were trained to board a rolling carrier so that
they could be easily transported to the site of their mission.

To test the system, the team allowed a rat to descend from the carrier
and remotely steered it to the area they wanted searched for traces
of an explosive. Once in the correct area, they switched off their
remote control. 'When the rat realized that it was no longer being
controlled, it went into odour-sniffing mode,' says Hermer-Vasquez.
Within a few minutes, the rat had successfully identified the source
of the scent. They repeated the test several times, with the same
result.

....."
..................................................
Continued in Part 2 to follow.

Reg Curtis
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:20 CST