How could the government know about a chemical attack before it wreaks havoc? By smelling it.
But the problem is, to detect an abnormal stench, the government first needs to know the city’s normal aroma, to have an idea of its “chemical profile.” To that effect, DARPA just released a solicitation looking for suggestions on how to best build chemical composition maps of major United States cities. Spencer Ackerman over at Wired’s Danger Room t0ok a look at the solicitation and explained what DARPA is looking for:
The data Darpa wants collected will include “chemical, meteorological and topographical data” from at least 10 “local urban sources,” including “residences, gasoline stations, restaurants and dry cleaning stores that have particular patterns of emissions throughout the day.”
Then, subsequent chemical readings from the area could be compared to the “map” to check for abnormal chemicals in the air. Since many chemicals that can be used in a terrorist attacks are normally found around our cities, it’s difficult to just screen for them without having an idea of their baseline levels, explains Wired:
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In 2003, DISCOVER published a profile of Tyrone Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Hayes went looking for the effects of the herbicide atrazine on frogs and found evidence that it feminized males and diminished larynxes. Apparently the professor, also know to spin rhymes at conferences, has sent years worth of emails to employees of atrazine’s manufacturer, Syngenta. The company recently released them in a 102-page pdf.
Some excerpts follow:
March 16, 2006 (page 22)
dahh… and you guys think i’m unstable?
hey, i will update you on how screwed you are tomorrow.
love
papa
April 1, 2008 (page 25)
if you thought this was ever just about atrazine, you were set to lose from the beginning. not to worry… we all make mistakes… even me… I used to call you “friend”.
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Note to self: the next time you need to carry a container filled with hydrochloric acid to work, take a cab.
Tokyo got a scare this morning after a man dropped his bottle of the toxic liquid on a subway train. Several people when to the hospital with minor injuries, but thankfully this chemical clumsiness didn’t cause a major disaster.
Police didn’t arrest the man in question, a 20-year-old stone mason, deciding he didn’t intend to spill his chemicals on the train. Hydrochloric acid has a number of industrial uses, though perhaps carrying it in a bottle on a crowded train isn’t the best transportation strategy.
And because of his butterfingers, New Yorkers aren’t alone in revisiting unpleasant memories of terrorist attacks (as a 9/11 conspirator’s trial comes to Manhattan). Reuters says:
Japan is particularly sensitive to hazards on its trains after a 1995 incident in which members of [the Aum Shinrikyo] religious cult released highly toxic sarin gas on the Tokyo subway, killing 12 and injuring thousands, some permanently.
Related Content:
DISCOVER: Nerve Gas in the Subway, revisiting the 1995 attack
DISCOVER: What Invisible Things Are in the Surfaces You Touch and the Air You Breathe? (in a which a DISCOVER editor finds out how dirty the New York subway system really is.)
80beats: MIT Students Who Hacked Boston Subway Silenced; Report Gets Out Anyway
Image: Wiki Commons / Fg2
French chef Pierre Gagnaire served up the world’s first “synthetic gourmet dish” in a restaurant in Hong Kong’s Mandarin Oriental hotel today. The meal began with an apple-lemon flavored appetizer—jelly balls made of a “combination of ascorbic acid, glucose, citric acid and a few grams of 4-O-a-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol, a sugar substitute otherwise known as maltitol.” The main dish, lobster fricassee, surely sounds yummy—the chef even described the entrée as “smooth, crusty and frosty.” But the ingredients resemble a laundry list of chemicals you’re likely to find with a “Mr. Yuck” sticker. To top it off, the “lobster” was flavored in a special sauce made from tartaric acid, glucose, and polyphenols.
For months, Gagnaire worked with the French chemist Harvé This—the co-founder of molecular gastronomy—to concoct this allegedly tasty, unnatural meal from scratch. Chemist-turned-chef This sees the potential for this new way of creating and cooking vegetable substitutes molecule-by-molecule as a way to end world hunger. Instead of buying veggies from the grocery store, chefs could instead mix together caroteniods, pectins, fructose, and glucuronic acid to whip up a carrot (esque) dish.
The idea is solid, but what about the nutritional value of vegetables your mom probably nagged about?
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