The Download: robotic bees, and China's surveillance state

Something was wrong, but Thomas Schmickl couldn't put his finger on it. It was 2007, and the Austrian biologist was spending part of the year at East Tennessee State University. During his daily walks, he realized that insects seemed conspicuously absent. Schmickl, who now leads the Artificial Life Lab at the University of Graz in Austria, wasn't wrong. Insect populations are indeed declining or changing around the world.