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Analytical Chemistry
Trained Wasps as Chemical Detectors, Runners Stopped for Radioactivity, a Nice Chianti for the Boy King
November 7, 2005
| A version of this story appeared in
Volume 83, Issue 45
Trained wasps as chemical detectors
Move over, Rover; there's a new species that's out to claim your job. Tiny, stingless wasps are being trained to detect minute quantities of specific chemicals and someday may be used to find hidden explosives, illegal drugs, and even buried bodies. The claim is that the wasps are cheaper to use than trained dogs and more sensitive than current chemical detection methods.
Researchers at the University of Georgia and the Department of Agriculture have developed a device that holds several small parasitic wasps of the Braconid family that can be trained to react to chemicals by associating them with a food reward. The device, called a Wasp Hound, is linked to a video camera and computer and works by detecting movement of the wasps in response to a target chemical. The research will be published in the January-February edition of Biotechnology Progress.
The wasps were placed in the ventilated device and trained to detect 3-octanone, a compound produced by toxic fungi that infect corn and peanuts. The wasps were challenged with this target chemical, with myrcene (a compound of neutral interest to the wasps), and with corn alone. The trained wasps showed a significant response only to the 3-octanone by congregating around the device's odor inlet.
Other studies have shown that the wasps can be schooled to react to 2,4-dinitrotoluene, a chemical used in some explosives, or to detect specific odor compounds emitted by bodies buried by natural disasters.
Although the wasps can be raised by the thousands and trained quickly, they do have a pretty short life span and would have to be replaced regularly. Still, the researchers believe a commercial Wasp Hound could be ready in five to 10 years. Another drawback is more personal. It's doubtful that many dog handlers are going to want to substitute their friendly canine partners for a can of wasps, no matter how cheap.
Runners stopped for radioactivity
A short news item from Detroit states that a number of runners in the Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Bank Marathon were stopped by federal border agents because someone set off the radiation alarm inside the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which goes between the U.S. and Canada.
The agents eventually determined that the alarm was probably set off by a runner who had retained some residual medical radioisotope that could have been injected during a stress test. That runner, however, was not located.
The report does note that of the runners detained for the several seconds while agents tried to find out if they had triggered the alarm, some complained that the delay could hurt their chances of qualifying for the Boston Marathon.
A nice Chianti for the boy king
Archaeology has come a long way from when the tomb of Egyptian king Tutankhamen was first dug out of the desert in 1922. Chemical analysis can now tell us even the kind of wine the pharaohs took to the afterlife.
Chemist Maria R. Guasch-Jane of the University of Barcelona told reporters last month that her analysis of residues in jars found in King Tut's tomb were from red wine. It is, she claims, the first time a specific color of wine has been determined from ancient materials.
Guasch-Jane scraped residues from ancient wine jars owned by the British Museum in London and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, including two that were from Tut's tomb. Then, using techniques published in Analytical Chemistry last year for detecting the compound syringic acid, which is found in red but not white wines, she affirmed that the wines were red. Archaeologists have suspected that some of these ancient wines were red, but had no way to be certain. For example, drawings from the era show grapes that were red and purple being pressed into wine.
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The earliest wines discovered have been from grape residues found in northern Iran that date wine making to around 5400 B.C. The first wines found in an Egyptian tomb go back to about 3125 B.C. and are believed to have been imported from Jordan. Research indicates that Egyptian kings and the upper class drank wine frequently, but common folk only imbibed during special events.
This week's column was written by David Hanson. Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.
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