Navy awards $750,000 grant to Wash U. scientists to create bomb-sniffing locusts

“Men, bring out the sniffer locusts.”

That's something a bomb squad chief could say in the future, thanks to a team of scientists and engineers working to turn the insects into cyborgs that can be sent anywhere to sniff out explosives. It won't be an easy feat: the researchers, who hail from the Washington University in St. Louis, will have to equip the insects with several pieces of technology. Good thing they have a powerful backer: the Navy. Team leader Baranidharan Raman has received a three-year $750,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research to make his dreams a reality, according to Endgadget.

Raman has been studying how the bug processes smell for years now. He and his team found that locusts can identify particular scents, such as those they're trained to detect, even in the presence of other odors.

Raman believes the cyborg bugs will be much more effective than robots, because their antennae have a ton of natural sensors. “Why reinvent the wheel?” he asked. “Why not take advantage of the biological solution?”

***

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that drug giant Sanofi SA has formed a partnership with the U.S. Army to expand research and development of an experimental Zika vaccine that has shown promise in early laboratory studies and is among a few candidates expected to be tested on humans in the coming months.

At least 15 companies and entities, including Sanofi, are racing to develop vaccines against the Zika virus, which is behind an epidemic in the Americas that the World Health Organization says constitutes a public health emergency because the virus is linked to birth defects in multiple countries.

The experimental vaccine developed by scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., and now to be advanced by Sanofi, is one of the furthest along.

Made from a whole virus that has been killed, or inactivated, it is based on a technology that has been used on vaccines that have been licensed against viruses related to Zika, such as Japanese encephalitis, said Col. Stephen Thomas, the institute’s Zika program lead. “It was a playbook that we’ve run before,” he said. The technology has also been used for years for flu, polio and other vaccines.

***

Two years after a scandal over long wait times for veterans seeking health care, the Department of Veterans Affairs still has "profound deficiencies" in delivering health care to millions of veterans, a congressional commission says in a new report, according to the Associated Press.

The Commission on Care says in a report to be released Wednesday that the VA delivers high-quality health care but is inconsistent from one site to the next, and problems with access remain.

The panel says the VA needs to improve its service to veterans, adding that the VA's health care operations "require urgent reform. America's veterans deserve a better organized, high-performing health care system."

Congress created the 12-member commission in 2014 after approving a landmark law overhauling the VA in the wake of the wait-time scandal, which also revealed that VA employees were covering up chronic delays with false paperwork and secret waiting lists. As many as 40 veterans died while awaiting care at the Phoenix VA hospital, according to an investigation by the VA's inspector general.

***

Stars and Stripes is reporting that the Western military alliance is set this week to commit to extend its support of government forces in Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents have made significant gains since international combat forces withdrew 18 months ago.

In outlining the agenda for NATO’s two-day summit in Warsaw, Poland, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Afghanistan will be one of the top items under discussion when member states begin their meetings on Friday. Others are a buildup in eastern Europe, by deploying four battalion-strength multinational units in the Baltics and Poland, and steps to improve cyberdefense and a ballistic missile shield.

Stoltenberg on Monday pledged support for Kabul through next year, mainly through the extension of the Resolute Support training and assistance mission, and continued funding of the Afghan security forces until 2020.

This story was originally published July 6, 2016 at 11:04 AM with the headline "Navy awards $750,000 grant to Wash U. scientists to create bomb-sniffing locusts."