"The boffins believe that in future their subjects will be able to "see" through fog or smoke - and even some distance into solid walls, floors or ceilings."

It'll be interesting to see how they do this given that bats don't like flying in fog or rain 'cus it screws up their echo locating. AFAIK bats don't see through solid objects either. And don't try using bats (or humans) to echo locate a F-117... http://www.batbox.org/sonar.html

"Two hours per day [of clicking practice] for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you,..."

I don't like to pooh-pooh the efforts of researchers, but, honestly, when was the last time you found yourslf without an object in front of you? This aspect of the research seems pretty fail safe to me - to the point of stating the bleeding obvious: "Yep, there's an obect in front of me..."

And how long are you going to last, I wonder, if you wander around any of the platforms on the London Underground making clicking noises - irrespective of whether or not you are a Brasilian electrician? btw it might be interesting to speculate which tube line would guaranntee a Darwin award the soonest....

This is not something new. Some blind people have been doing this for the last 220 years or so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation

Cheers

Peter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLziFMF4DHA&feature=related

Maybe it's all a hoax?

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1212568,00.html

Ben Underwood - The Boy Who Sees with Sound.

Does nobody remember the 'blind guy riding a bicycle using an echolocation gadget' feature on Tomorrow's World?

This was shown recently in the UK on TV, man vs dolphin. The blind man was incredibly accurate, able to give a very good descrition of an objects shape and distance. An incredible man and very real.

Nothing new here.

Maybe they should have researched 'facial vision'. That is a blind man being able to 'see' an object in front of his face/body by sensing it.

Nothing to see.

No, really. Nothing to see.

"Two hours per day [of clicking practice] for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you"

But long before then you'll be taken away to a nice soft room where all the coats have extra-long sleeves.

Mine's the one with the extra-long sleeves - thanks.

You said:

"...the power of echolocation or "biosonar" - used by bats for flying at night, and of course by the superhero Daredevil."

It should have said:

"...the power of echolocation or "biosonar" - used by bats for flying at night, and of course by the superhero Batfink."

Your bullets cannot harm me! My wings are like a shield of steel!

... will I be awarded a pair of leathery wings?

I could find a pint in the dark with this kit!

have obviously invented something, but this story is just a smokescreen. It's too hot...

So you'd like to fund you to find out if people can teach people to use echolocation to see if detect a pen in front of their lips... riiiiiiight what the hell, its a slow week here's a couple of hundred thousand euros, don't blow it all on acid.