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Hair-Raising Technique Detects Drugs, Explosives On Human Body
sciencehabit writes Scientists have found a way to combine Van de Graaff generators with a common laboratory instrument to detect drugs, explosives, and other illicit materials on the human body. In the laboratory, scientists had a volunteer touch a Van de Graaff generator for 2 seconds to charge his body to 400,000 volts. This ionized compounds on the surface of his body. The person then pointed their charged finger toward the inlet of a mass spectrometer, and ions from their body entered the machine. In various tests, the machine correctly identified explosives, flammable solvents, cocaine, and acetaminophen on the skin.
the way they detect the flammable solvents is by the ignition of them when the spark of static discharge is done
I'm just looking forward to when the TSA hears about this. Pretty soon we'll all be sporting new traveler's hairdos!
Acetaminophen is illegal now??!! Please say it ain't so!!
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
It can't detect a total waste of money.
...when the first terrorist decides that the best place to attack is the line (a "queue" to us Royalists) for security?
Will there be a pre-inspection inspection? Inspections all the way down? Pre-crime profiling? Not allowed to leave your house until you're cleared tor pre-clearing? Just how would the play deal with this sinister turn?
It's gonna make going through airport security even more fun. Especially for those with pacemakers.
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Its also great for detecting suicide bombers.
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They could use a pair of socks.
Curious how such a simple thing actually works where very very expensive pervy nudie scanners just don't. Then again, the manufacturers of the latter are commercial companies looking to make a buck or two million or so, even better if it's by selling snake oil because instead of finding another supplier the TSA thugs will buy some more to keep all crated up "just in case", whereas these people have a little different motivation.
Then again, charging up any random traveler to 400kV is maybe not such a great idea, even before considering this might trigger if you've so much as handled drug paraphernalia (like dollar bills) or shaken hands with a drug user (an investment banker, say).
Air traveler shocked to find out he was carrying illegal drugs !
Scientists have found a way to combine an industrial blender with test subjects; simply pop in the suspect, pulse intermittently for five minutes then place a sample of the fluid in a mass spectrometer to detect explosive residue.
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This could be combined with automatic electrocution if the test turns out to be positive ;-)
I can see the TSA putting the children in the booth and flipping the switch and watchng the children go up in smoke Waylon style.
I would like to know how the courts can honestly say that things like dogs, backscatter EM devices, chemical detectors, and other augmentation tools can possibly fall under the "plain senses" doctrine.
No need to wait for Fourth of July any more. Once this technology is fully deployed in all airports by TSA you would be seeing this. . The large donut and the thick pillar are parts of the Van de Graff generator.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
We will finally get nice clean terrorists! After mixing explosives and building their bomb-belt, they will wash thorougly. Especially the hand used in this new scanner. No more stink-fingered terrorists!
Tr ying to detect explosives with static electricity..Whahahhahaha!!!!
So... am I incorrect in thinking that a decent countermeasure would be to ground yourself in some way? Shoes with a hole in the toe... or if the put a grounding mat on the floor you could have a capacitor in your pocket...
Anyway to exclude false positives in this? TSA hasn't been notably interested in correcting their mistakes in the past.
apologies to those too young to know Monty Python sketches :)
I suggest that everyone who has to go through the scanner reach down into their pants and stick their finger into their butt hole just before they have to point their finger at the detector.
The funny thing is, try to explain this to your doctor when she wants to prescribe an opiate like oxycodone.
In about half the cases I've been prescribed opiates the doctor refused to prescribe oxycodone on its own -- I was told it was Percocet (oxycodone + acetaminophen) or nothing, they would not write a prescription for just oxycodone. I had one surgeon do it reluctantly, pointedly asking me why and not really liking my answer that I felt it was dangerous and could add in acetaminophen on my own if I felt it was helpful.
I did have one specialist who wrote that way and when I asked her why she prescribed that way she said current research showed the liver risk outweighed the small benefits. Ironically she was the "less educated" physicians assistant and not a full MD.
I think most doctors believe its beneficial but I also think they somehow see acetaminophen opiate formulations as some kind of bulwark against abuse. Either because they believe it is so much more effective paired with acetaminophen and you'll be inclined to take less overall or that people "know" acetaminophen is bad in quantity and it will serve as a deterrent to excessive dosage, especially people with a history of drug abuse.
I also think they are highly skeptical of someone asking for a specific opiate formulation, even when they initiate the prescription (ie, you have an obvious injury and they prescribe an opiate). It's highly ironic that they're so worried about addiction they're willing to risk serious liver toxicity.
I for one, look forward to be electrocuted in loyal service to a totalitarian new world order. This way, they can exert a greater control over their treasonous subjects!
I certainly hope the recent slander from Snowden will not stop the NSA and other semi-autonomous government organs around the world from keeping a full record of all traces of substances which are found on my body, each time I travel. That will be great in case someone in power is ever questioned and would need to put the offending party in prison or at least character assassinate them!
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
This is intriguing. Jokes about tasers and cattleprods will abound, and it would definitely get plenty of late night comedy attention. But if the science is good, it will have a lot of commercial applications. As the employer of several commercial truck drivers (and a CDL who takes the tests myself), I'd be very interested in having one at the doorway of our employment office (to scare away certain substance abusing job applicants, mainly).
What it doesn't really address is the "bottleneck" equation at TSA. We've already reached the breakeven point where a suicide bomber can kill more people standing in the incoming security line of the airport than he'd kill bringing down a plane (arguably TSA is mainly a property crime and marketing psychology tool). Also I wonder what the "false positives" rates are and how many people will miss flight connections. You are going after one out of a billion flyers, it would have to either be wickedly accurate in order to achieve it's outcome, which is to redirect suicide bombers from airplanes and towards softer targets.>/p>
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Any air travelers left in that shit hole of an abortion of a country called Merika? Line up at the Van de Graaff scanner! The wool you're covered with will be standing on end.
Infowars called, They want you back.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
100 to 1000 times below NOEL is the goal -- the standard that few come close to.
The maximum daily dose of Paracetamol (aka Acetaminophen) is 66% of the FATAL dose.
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This sounds cool. I tried something similar (but only 300kV) at the Palais de la Decouvertes in Paris. But there it was more about your hair standing on end and shooting lightning bolts with the tip of your finger, and less about bombs and drugs. But if they replace the nudie scanner with this I may start flying again!
"explosives, flammable solvents, cocaine...
Depending on how specific their criteria, and how high they set the detection thresholds, the following people could be in for serious grief:
1) Gardeners and farmers - (nitrate compounds from fertilizer, + fuel oil from any of a dozen sources)
2) Painters, mechanics, people with Zippo lighters, people who use hand sanitizer, people who gas up their own vehicles - (flammable solvents)
3) Anyone who handles paper money (cocaine)
They'd be better off doing genetic research to figure out how to give us all the olfactory capabilities of blood hounds. Then none of us would have any secrets from each other. Of course, the ass-sniffing thing would get old pretty fast.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Wouldn't this be rather dangerous to use outside of the lab? I would think that if a person tried to pull their hand off the generator while it's on, the arc would burn them quite badly.
In Dubai, they already arrest and convict people if they find race amounts of marijuana on the soles of their shoes, I can only imagine they will be among the first to implement these detectors at their airport so they can have fun arresting even more infidels who come to visit their dystopian tourist trap.
Not the least of which are illegal drugs and they wind up on the fingertips!
Do you have a choice of the gender of the TSA screener, or just a right to one of the same gender?
Headline should have been: "Scientists gets Cocaine"
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Now police can use the device to charge you with PCS (possession of a controlled substance) for detecting minute traces of a substance. Just what we needed.
Aight, I just needs to check inside yo asshoe.
Well at least the first part. Charging oneself up with a van de graff generator is a common first year physics lecture demo. We have a generator capable of 400,000 Volts (though it doesnt reach that when its humid), and I have many times, in front of about 230 students, held onto the charge storage sphere. for a minute or more. It's supposed to demonstrate the electric field from a point charge (nominally my head), with the 'sensor' being the hair on my head. It is really good at making one's hair stand on end.....
Of course when we do that demo, we stand on a 2 inch plexiglass plate, which sits on top of a couple of 4x4's. Turns out (not suprisingly) that the discharge part is much more risky than the charging. I have a student turn off the machine, which I'm still holding onto, and wait 30 seconds. The machine is then discharged by touching to ground. That give me a bit of a jolt, but if its done too soon -- IT REALLY HURTS!!
With the discharge event being an important part of this process, its not something I would willingly undergo....
Yeah, um, just, no. Once a decade at the science centre is one thing; weekly in public is something totally different.
I ain't touching that with a ten-foot pole.
So whenever my kids come home, I'll just have them hop on the platform and get a quick drug and explosives test.
Come to think of it, this would also be great at work - no more guessing at whom to select for urine tests.
Is a favorite method of checking out by the spoiled rich brats in the Plano/Richardson, Texas area. They get oral Mucomyst to hopefully counter act it before they die of liver complications. A lot end up on liver transplant lists.
Tylenol( aka acetaminophen) is a good drug. Just don't get stupid with it. The main problem with this drug is that Homo sapiens is an oxymoron for the bulk of their population here on Earth.
I fixed a dozen of them for my high school when I was a student there. I had them all running together. Fun times! The shocks don't really hurt much; I kind of liked it... avoiding puns...
Discharging can be done in ways that don't feel so bad, as the parent alluded to... I'm sure the HS mall cops will enjoy watching people jump who don't follow directions (and purposely being unclear with people they do not like.)
Now if HS put just a fraction of that wasted money on naked scanners and molesting children... They could still waste $$$ for contracted devices but these actually work and have to cost significantly less. (Hey, the pedo job is 1 more salaried position for people who don't want naked photos of themselves taken; so it's not cheap either.)
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They will be able to detect many substances and do statistics on those. You might test off for drugs if you have a lot of money or handled a lot of money-- assuming you would leave your wallet out of the machine as one does at the airport -- if you handled a lot of money you'd get the extra treatment... in which case wash your hands before you go thru it; then you'll probably fit within the normal levels (assuming they calibrate the machine properly-- so many people use plastic that cash users will stand out from the average person.)
I'm sure that some law will prohibit forcing people to have their recent diet tested to be a passenger... but pilots etc will not and this could make drug/alcohol tests CHEAP and commonplace. No more blowing into a tube which has to be sanitized each time-- you just breath in a general direction!
Passive tests could be done without you knowing - there are evil uses for this. Making you wait in a long hall way for your interview for a job... they could charge the bench or the floor and use the security cameras... You could be ruled out for the job without knowing it was because of your medication (it's not like HR would buy the most accurate machines.) No, you CAN be discharged without a big shock so you wouldn't suspect it.
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What will they do about people who have electronic medical devices, such as pacemakers and insulin pumps? A serious terrorist could just forge a document claiming they have one. And I doubt they will do a full chest x-ray to confirm that.
Looking for volunteers to get baked, then fried. Inquire within.
There is such a thing as too much sensitivity. One labs stands to make a mint off of it and starts are colossal, nation-wide witch hunt.
Great, yet another tool for vindictive pieces of shit, control freaks and authoritarian governments.
And this is some how a good thing?
I'm sure that some law will prohibit forcing people to have their recent diet tested to be a passenger...
No "law" is going to prevent the TSA from deploying this against everyone who flies
or takes a train
or a bus
or drives
or uses public buildings
or looks suspicious
you know, Terrorists
-- Sig under construction...
SPECIAL BEAM CANNON!
They put acetaminophen in opiate drugs because it makes it un-/less realistic to take them IV, snort them, etc.