http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/23/AR2005102300904.html

SCIENCE
Notebook

Monday, October 24, 2005; Page A08

Wasps Used as Scent Detectors

A team in Georgia has built a tiny device that uses trained wasps to detect specific odors -- a prototype "biological sensor" capable of sniffing out anything from chemical warfare agents to corpses.

Five fly-size parasitic wasps -- which don't sting -- are placed in a disk-shaped chamber about the size of two stacked checkers, with a hole in the bottom and a tiny fan that sucks air into the disk. If the wasps detect the suspect odor, they gather around the hole, creating a cluster of pixels for a tiny webcam that sends an alarm signal.

Entomologist W. Joe Lewis of the Agriculture Department's Agricultural Research Service said he and colleagues have known for nearly 20 years that, with a reward of sugar water, wasps can be trained in as little as five minutes to respond to almost any odor.

"But this is the first packaged system," Lewis said from his lab in Tifton, Ga. Ultimately, the "Wasp Hound" will be "like a small BlackBerry" that can be operated robotically or by hand, he added. The disk would be swapped out after a few passes. Lewis and Glen C. Rains, a biological engineer at the University of Georgia, are publishing their latest research in the January-February issue of the journal Biotechnology Progress.

"The wasps are cheap and reliable, and you can breed thousands of them," Lewis said. Other researchers are showing that insects besides wasps can also be trained.

"What we once thought of as instinct is, in fact, learning," Lewis said. "And once you know that, you have a whole new emerging technology."

-- Guy Gugliotta

I've been watching news of rioting in France (Day 11 now). I've been trying to figure out more about what is going on. But, given it's happening in France and not here in the US, getting some real hard-fact news on the subject is difficult.

Someone I am acquainted with on one of my politics boards lives in and is from France. He posted this message, and I found it useful (forgive his broken English):

Here is time for a quick lesson in modern French politics. The President, as you all know, is Jacques Chirac, an ambitious crook who always wanted power so that he could practice his skills at what we call abus de biens sociaux. The man has no political ideology other than his own egotism.

The Prime Minister, you may have heard, is Dominique Galouzeau, better known as Dominique de Villepin (but he's a fake noble, his particule is as fake as the one of ex-president Valéry Giscard "d'Estaing", or Chirac's wife, Bernadette Chodron "de Courcelle"), a faithful chiraquien.

The Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy (who, on the other hand, is a genuine aristocrat, the son of a Hungarian prince, but he tries to hide it as it ruins his "little poor Gavroche immigrant who live in misery and owe his success only to his talent rather than to his parent's wealth" impression) is the very incarnation of the deceitful councilor. You know, the Vizier Jafar or Iznogoud who wants to become the Caliph by betraying everyone? That's who Sarkozy is.

Finally, it's time to present a minor actor, but who plays a role in our little melodrama: Azouz Begag, of Maghrebian origins, a secretary of state (what you would call a junior minister) whose portfolio is "equality of chances" and who is supposed to fight against discriminations and favor integration. You may have heard of him as he recently went to Atlanta, and, being both a French and an "Arab", the American policemen were overzealous in their controls.

The protagonists being presented, let the drama unfolds.

The first step of our little melodrama begins when Sarkozy, during his first rule at the Interior Ministry (this is his second, the first was under Prime Minister Raffarin, and he was then moved to the Finance Ministry, before being made to leave the government when he seized control of the big conservative party, the UMP), martially declares that the police's role is not to play football (aka soccer in the USA) with the disenfranchised youth of the banlieues, but to chase the delinquents. He further explains that there are far too much public function workers (in the poor quarters, the wealthy's tax money should not be used to protect whatever quality of life the poors still have).

Of course, he doesn't actually says the part in parentheses, but actions speak louder than words. So, he cut off the social links between enforcement forces and people in these instable zones, and reduce police's manpower. (Of course, the wealthy neighborhoods, like Neuilly of whom he's been mayor, are not affected by the cuts. Hence the parenthetical part above.) Cops are told that all that matter is numbers -- numbers of people reprehended, fined, etc. Wrongful arrests are OK, even smiled upon, since they contribute to boosting the statistics. Beatings are OK too, because they make the police look badass.

The situation slowly and gradually deliquesce. In the banlieues, the resentment against the police, and by extension all institutions (including firemen, electric co. agents, etc.). A crisis chase another, government shifts left and right (though, politically, it only shifts right), and finally Sarko is back to the Interior.

Arrives the day when the shit hit the fan. There's been trouble reported in a zone. Police arrives and starts controlling ID. Three young men, afraid of the cops because they have names like Banou, Ziad, and Metin, run to hide in a voltage transformer. Banou and Ziad die, Metin is grievously wounded.

Sarkozy commits his first mistake -- he claims (and is repeated by medias) that they were thieves that had been caught in the act. (Fooled me, makes me even more angry about it.) This is libel, slander, calomny. You imagine the result -- two innocents, stupid but innocent anyway, die, but the policeman-in-chief dismisses the case as being not that important since they were criminals by birthright, because they were young and of Maghrebian descent.

(About the same day, a gang of thugs pummel a man to death in front of his wife and daughter. Working for a urban furniture company, he was taking photos of streetlamps his company had recently installed, and the thugs wanted to take his camera. Although these two cases are distincts, the emotional reaction to both stories bled on each others.)

And now the powerplay starts. Chirac, Villepin, Begag, all the anti-Sarko camp stays carefully silent, conscious that Sarkozy is starting to burry himself and not wanting to stop him.

Sarko next visits the city where the crispy-frying happened. Supposedly to speak with the youth here. But he doesn't listen to them, and doesn't say anything until the journalists are there, ready to transmit his glorious chickenhawk speech to the whole France. He's booed. He tells the people that don't boo him that he'll get them rid of the racaille (scum).

The riot starts. Once it's clear that Sarko doesn't control the situation at all, then the Chirac camp starts the counter-attack. Begag, who was up to now rather obscure, get mediatic attention to violently criticize Sarkozy, denouncing his infuriating speech and his constant tossing of more oil to the fire. The Sarkozy camp retaliates by attacking Begag, accusing him of being Villepin's puppet and of not having any legitimacy because he's a junior minister of a rather useless ministry, and he's only in the government because he's an Arab, so he's just a badge of non-racism for the government.

Through this retaliation, the sarko camp just succeeds at angering even more the minority, and thus fanning the fires even more. Sarko looks badder and badder, and who cares if poor people's cars burn, as long as Chirac's last rival gets politically assassinated?

Soooo, this is where I am at the moment. No longer wanting the Army to come and shoot everybody. And I'll admit that if the moronic vandals had the idea of attacking Auteil, Neuilly, Passy, and other rich neighborhoods rather than continuing stupidly of destroying their own city, I'd take a certain schadenfreunde of seeing the parisian maffia panick at the sight of their ten Mercedes getting torched. Since it was to reduce their taxes that the policemen were removed from the burning banlieues...