Reuters reports that bees have been sucessfully trained to smell out explosives:

By exposing the insects to the odor of explosives followed by a sugar water reward, researchers said they trained bees to recognize substances ranging from dynamite and C-4 plastic explosives to the Howitzer propellant grains used in improvised explosive devices in Iraq.

“When bees detect the presence of explosives, they simply stick their proboscis out,” research scientist Tim Haarmann told Reuters in a telephone interview. “You don’t have to be an expert in animal behavior to understand it as there is no ambiguity.”

If you have to get close enough to see their proboscis sticking out, you might be too close to the bomb to do much about it.

Now if they could just be trained not to get so angry and sting. Or, alternatively, maybe they could be used to swarm and attack anything that smells like a bomb. Imagine stopping a suicide bomber in his/her tracks by covering them with attack bees.

EDITED TO ADD (06 Dec 2006): Curiosity was getting the better of me so I found a source that describes how bee communication can be interpreted by humans from a distance. An optics.org report from August 2005 explains that trained bees will alter their behavior when flying over landmines, which can be detected by horizontal LIDAR:

The co-polarised LIDAR system uses a frequency-doubled 532 nm Nd:YAG emitting 100 mJ pulses at a repetition rate of 30 Hz. The back-scattered light is passed through a receiver with a linear polarisation parallel to that of the emitted light.

To test the feasibility of the approach, the team carried out an experiment on a live mine field. Using tens of thousands of bees, the researchers conclude that the scanning LIDAR consistently detected a higher bee density near most of the significant chemical plumes. But there is still a lot of work to do.

[…]

“The primary limitation was identifying bee-specific signatures from grass and other interfering objects,” said Shaw.

I love the details in optics.org. Ok, so let’s say that bees would be flying around checkpoints with LIDAR sensors. Could anyone stung by a bee, or that bees hover by, be reasonably assumed to have trace amounts of explosives? Not only does this present a very interesting partnership with nature and science, but imagine all the side benefits like military checkpoints planting flowers and selling honey on the side.

Creative Destruction seems to completely misunderstand the results of removing signs from streets, as first mentioned here. Sameer writes:

But the question no one seems to address is what impact this has on traffic? Maybe this works in towns where there are only a few cars on the road and traffic is not an issue, but traffic control devices don’t just exist to improve safety, they exist to increase road throughput! This appears like a recipe for gridlock! I can’t say for sure that this is the case, however, because NONE of the press accounts have read have said anything about the impact this has had on traffic. They didnt say it got worse, they didn’t say it got better — they are simply silent on the question. I know it is old hat to complain about how useless our news media is these days, but really. They are useless.

Strange conclusion when you consider how moving at a constant rate increases throughput versus having regulated intermittent traffic flow. In fact, most drivers I know curse at the stop signs and lights that burden them with unnecessary stops and gridlock where there could be even flow. Ever wait at a light for no apparent reason?

This is proven out in the wave theory of traffic congestion, not to mention the practical application of roundabouts versus stoplights. If you can keep everyone moving, albeit somewhat carefully and at a reduced rate, you increase the throughput of traffic. It is only when intelligent signalling is applied (think switching based on complex addressing, which we simply do not have for cars) that stop-and-go signs begin to approximate the throughput of fluid systems.

Also, the articles say that this is just the start of some experiments but so far accidents have decreased. I don’t know why that is not sufficient empirical data for Sameer, but there will surely be more data forthcoming as other cities adopt the same strategy.

I suppose it is most amusing, actually, that Sameer jumps from a dead-end in his search for answers in a simple news reporter’s story to the conclusion that all news media are useless. That makes me think he might also go into a shop for lunch, not find the exact sandwich he is seeking, and therefore decide that all restaurants are useless.

The BBC has a strange story on the fight to clean up the streets of Belfast:

Caroline Briggs from the council’s cleansing department said it was “a never-ending job”.

“We spend approximately £60,000 a year to remove chewing gum,” she said.

“However, we could spend 10 times that amount and still not really crack the problem.

Is chewing gum on sidewalks really that much of a problem? Another story discusses solutions at the front-end of the process.

New polymers being developed by Revolymer Ltd can be incorporated into chewing gum which may stop it cementing itself to the ground when dropped.

And here is a story on penalties that attempt to dissuade chewers from littering…

Chewers will be offered pouches to deposit their gum in pedestrian areas, while specially trained wardens in the trial areas will issue fines from £50 up to £75 for persistent offenders. […] Local authorities have said previously that it costs £150m a year to remove discarded chewing gum from the streets.

Special gum wardens? That seems strange to me. I can see wardens for real risks, but is chewing gum really the most pressing disaster facing urban areas?

What if the price of chewing gum included the costs of cleaning it up?