科学家让蝗虫嗅出炸弹和爆炸物

Could cyborg locusts be the bomb-sniffing dogs of the future?

电子蝗虫能成为未来的炸弹嗅探犬吗?

Scientists who received funding from the US Navy revealed last week that they were able to program the bugs to sense various different smells, including from explosives.

上周，从美国海军获得资助的科学家们透露，他们能够对这些臭虫进行编程，使它们能够感知各种不同的气味，包括炸药的气味。

The team’s preprint research paper, published in BioRxiv, states that the insects have been used to detect gases released by substances such as ammonium nitrate – often used by terrorist groups for bomb-making – as well as military explosives TNT and RDX.

该小组在BioRxiv上发表的预印本研究报告称，这些昆虫已被用来检测由硝酸铵等物质释放的气体，这些物质通常被恐怖组织用来制造炸弹，以及军事炸药TNT和RDX。

The robot-bound locusts were exposed to five different explosives and it only took 500 milliseconds of exposure for a distinct pattern of activity to appear in the locusts’ brains. The scientists chose locusts because their tiny antennae are filled with about 50,000 olfactory neurons.

被机器人束缚的蝗虫被暴露在五种不同的爆炸物中，仅仅500毫秒后，它们的大脑中就出现了一种截然不同的活动模式。科学家选择蝗虫是因为它们的小触角充满了大约5万个嗅觉神经元。

Researchers chose locusts because they are sturdy and can carry heavy payloads, according to the preprint paper. They implanted electrodes into the insects’ brains to analyze their neural activity when they were around different substances.

根据预印本，研究人员选择蝗虫是因为它们很结实，可以携带沉重的货物。他们将电极植入昆虫的大脑，分析它们在不同物质周围时的神经活动。

The US Office of Naval Research had allocated $750,000 for the project back in 2016.

早在2016年，美国海军研究办公室就为该项目拨款75万美元。

Although the team has not commented about its new work, lead scientist Baranidharan Raman, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Washington University at St. Louis, expressed optimism when he received the grant.

尽管该团队还没有对他们的新工作发表评论，但首席科学家巴拉尼德哈兰·拉曼，圣路易斯华盛顿大学工程与应用科学学院生物医学工程副教授，在收到这项资助时表示乐观。

“We expect this work to develop and demonstrate a proof-of-concept, hybrid locust-based, chemical-sensing approach for explosive detection,” Raman told The Source.

拉曼告诉《消息来源》:“我们希望这项工作能够发展和演示一种概念验证、基于蝗虫的混合化学传感方法，用于爆炸物探测。”