NP? re-engineering humans for military purposes

[Doug Millison]

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020730-075022-4219r
][,,,] Putting bio-science into action could enable soldiers to stay awake
for days at a time without side effects, for example, said Michael
Goldblatt, director of DARPA's Defense Sciences Office. The work, he said,
is meant to address what many consider the biggest point of failure in
today's defense systems -- the human being. [...] Researchers are focusing
on ways to reduce sleep needs and the effects of sleep deprivation,
Bielitzki said. These methods include resetting or eliminating a person's
body clock, allowing a portion of the brain to rest while the remainder
continues to function, and even prompting the brain to produce additional
connections between brain cells, he said. The physical demands of such
extended activity also must be considered, so the CAP team is examining how
to alter the body's metabolism appropriately, Bielitzki said. Some research
areas include coaxing cells to change their energy source from
carbohydrates to lipids, the building blocks of proteins, he said, or
altering cell chemistry to allow for the use of more mitochondria, the
subcellular "engines" that produce the body's primary fuel, a chemical
called ATP. [...] For instance, examining the feet of a gecko, a small
lizard able to cling to vertical surfaces, reveals thousands of tiny hairs,
or cilia, on each of the animal's toes, Wax said. Coming up with the
man-made equivalent could give soldiers the ability to climb smooth walls,
he said. Likewise, noting how a hawk radically changes the shape of its
wings as it traces lazy aerial circles, then dive-bombs its prey,
aeronautics-minded DSO researchers are trying to develop adaptable flight
surfaces on military aircraft. This work is similar to efforts at NASA,
which wants to construct wings out of thousands of individually movable
segments to allow greater control than today's structures, he said. [...]