Scientists aim to create robot-insects

A picture taken on June 9, shows Japan's Tokyo University Assistant Professor Noriyasu Ando looking at a live male silkmoth strapped a vehicle so that its legs can move across a free-spinning ball during an experiment into insect-machine hybrids in Tokyo.
Photo: AFPAfp, Tokyo

Police release a swarm of robot-moths to sniff out a distant drug stash. Rescue robot-bees dodge through earthquake rubble to find survivors.

These may sound like science-fiction scenarios, but they are the visions of Japanese scientists who hope to understand and then rebuild the brains of insects and programme them for specific tasks.

Ryohei Kanzaki, a professor at Tokyo University's Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology, has studied insect brains for three decades and become a pioneer in the field of insect-machine hybrids.

His original and ultimate goal is to understand human brains and restore connections damaged by diseases and accidents -- but to get there he has taken a very close look at insects' "micro-brains".

The human brain has about 100 billion neurons, or nerve cells, that transmit signals and prompt the body to react to stimuli. Insects have far fewer, about 100,000 inside the two-millimetre-wide (0.08 inch) brain of a silkmoth.

But size isn't everything, as Kanzaki points out.

Insects' tiny brains can control complex aerobatics such as catching another bug while flying, proof that they are "an excellent bundle of software" finely honed by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, he said.

For example, male silkmoths can track down females from more than a kilometre (half a mile) away by sensing their odour, or pheromone.

Kanzaki hopes to artificially recreate insect brains.

"Supposing a brain is a jigsaw-puzzle picture, we would be able to reproduce the whole picture if we knew how each piece is shaped and where it should go," he told AFP.

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Fighting in Pak tribal belt kills 23 Taliban

Afp, Peshawar

Fighting in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt killed 23 Taliban militants and destroyed an oil tanker supplying Nato forces based across the border in Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.

The deadliest clashes involved a village militia, officials said, reflecting the state's increasing reliance on local tribesmen to battle Islamist radicals allegedly plotting attacks against targets in this region and in the West.

The worst violence occurred Monday and overnight in the village of Anbar in Mohmand district, 15 kilometres (nine miles) southwest of Khar, the main town of the neighbouring Bajaur district -- another Islamist stronghold.

"According to reports received here, a lashkar (traditional tribal militia) killed 23 militants and several others were wounded," local administration official Asad Ali Khan told AFP.

Administration official Mohammad Rasul Khan said three villagers were missing after the clashes between a 150-strong village force and militants.

Intelligence and security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the fighting and the death toll.

Hundreds of Islamist fighters are believed to have fled Afghanistan into Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas to carve out safe havens after the US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in Kabul in late 2001.

Pakistan is encouraging locals to organise lashkars against militants in several northwestern regions, as they widen the fight against extremists blamed for bomb attacks that have killed about 2,000 people in two years.

In the infamous Khyber region, militants ambushed a tanker carrying fuel for Nato forces in Afghanistan and an ensuing gunfight killed two civilians, said local administration official Rehan Gul Khattak.

The attack took place near the town of Landi Kotal on the main highway, which links Pakistan to landlocked Afghanistan.

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