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UC San Diego Scientists Sensor to Detect Homemade Bombs

A team of chemists and physicists at the University of California, San Diego has developed a tiny, inexpensive sensor chip capable of detecting trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide, a chemical used in the most common form of homemade explosives.

The hydrogen peroxide sensor is the size of a penny.Credit: UCSD

The invention and operation of this penny-sized electronic sensor, capable of sniffing out hydrogen peroxide vapor in the parts-per-billion range from peroxide-based explosives, such as those used in the 2005 bombing of the London transit system, is detailed in a paper in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

In addition to detecting explosives, UC San Diego scientists say the sensor could have widespread applications in improving the health of industrial workers by providing a new tool to inexpensively monitor the toxic hydrogen peroxide vapors from bleached pulp and other products to which factory workers are exposed.

“The detection capability of this tiny electronic sensor is comparable to current instruments, which are large, bulky and cost thousands of dollars each,” said William Trogler, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSD and one of its inventors. “If this device were mass produced, it’s not inconceivable that it could be made for less than a dollar.”

The device was invented by a team led by Trogler; Andrew Kummel, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry; and Ivan Schuller, a professor of physics. Much of the work was done by UCSD chemistry and physics graduate students Forest Bohrer, Corneliu Colesniuc and Jeongwon Park.

The sensor works by monitoring the variability of electrical conductivity through thin films of “metal phthalocyanines.” When exposed to most oxidizing agents, such as chlorine, these metal films show an increase in electrical current, while reducing agents have the opposite effect—a decrease of electrical current.

But when exposed to hydrogen peroxide, an oxidant, the metal phthalocyanine films behave differently depending on the type of metal used. Films made of cobalt phthalocyanine show decreases in current, while those made from copper or nickel show increases in current.

The UCSD team used this unusual trait to build their sensor. It is composed of thin films of both cobalt phthalocyanine and copper phthalocyanine to display a unique signature whenever tiny amounts of hydrogen peroxide are present.

Bombs constructed with hydrogen peroxide killed more than 50 people and injured 700 more on two London subway trains and a transit bus during rush hour on July 7, 2005. More than 1,500 pounds of a hydrogen peroxide-based mixture was discovered after an alleged bomb plot in Germany that resulted in the widely publicized arrest last September of three people.

Trogler said that because the team’s sensor is so little affected by water vapor, it can be used in industrial and other “real-life applications.” The university has applied for a patent on the invention, which has not yet been licensed.

Funding for the research study was provided by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

http://w2aiq.servebbs.com:2000/attack-on-ufo.flv

Tags: Technology, weapon

FBI, CIA recruiting among terrorist sympathizers?

Are you an American terrorist sympathizer but don’t know how to strike back at the Great Satan? Afraid of getting arrested while your plot to blow up something or other is still half-baked? You don’t have to worry anymore. Now, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency want to hire you.

Both the FBI and CIA are running recruitment advertising with a pro-terrorist magazine, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. The magazine is well known for its anti-Israel, pro-terrorist writing, except, it seems, to the human capital managers. One glance at the magazine’s homepage today reveals, for instance, five articles on “The Ordeal of Dr. Sami Al-Arian,” who pleaded guilty in 2006 of conspiracy to provide funds to the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

It’s as if they’re inviting the terrorists to infiltrate. If you are one, you may as well go ahead and infiltrate now, because it’s going to take a couple of years for these thickheaded government human capital managers to catch on.

It is the same lack of judgment that led the Department of Justice to set up a recruitment booth and serve as a co-host for the annual Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention in September. Four months earlier, the same Justice Department designated ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator (PDF) in Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) case as part of the Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy in the United States. U.S. Reps. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., and Sue Myrick, R-NC, protested the Justice Department’s recruitment effort with ISNA in a letter (PDF) to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asserting that ISNA is a Jihadi organization.

The Justice Department blithely dismissed the concerns, saying other organizations did it, too. That was true. That willful blindness was evident in the fact that, in 2006, the Department of Defense dispatched Deputy Secretary Gordon England to an ISNA conference and sent another representative to the annual conference in 2007. The Department of Homeland Security was there, too, with its recruitment booth adjacent to the Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical movement which endorses the use of violence and is devoted to establishing a global Islamic state governed by Shariah law.

After that embarrassment, the FBI placed a full-page recruiting ad (PDF) in the November 2007 issue of ISNA’s magazine Islamic Horizons. “Help us light the way to a new era of understanding,” the ad reads.

Just what types of recruits are the FBI and CIA looking for? Apparently, these agencies do not learn from experience, even recent experiences. Just last November, former FBI and CIA agent Nadia Nadim Prouty was arrested and pled guilty to fraudulently obtaining American citizenship through a sham marriage, and using her illegally acquired status to attain employment with both the FBI and CIA. Prouty is the sister of Elfat Al Aouar, who is the wife of Talal Chahine — the Detroit-based restaurateur linked to Hizballah. — The Investigative Project on Terrorism

That’s right. It’s not just the FBI and CIA. It’s Homeland Security too. And the State Department will get 1,000 new diplomats in President Bush’s 2009 budget. How many terrorist sympathizers will they hire? Government is growing so fast and in so many different directions that the opportunities to cause mayhem from within — or just to run interference so your buddies can carry out their next attack — grow by the day.

Steven Emerson from IPT closes by saying that “Congress should investigate immediately,” but really, will that help? Congressional hearings take months to set up, and months more to accomplish anything. By the time they call these wayward human capital managers onto the carpet, who knows how many enemies of the state could be in the pipeline? And that’s assuming Congress bothers to do anything. Maybe they just won’t see a problem.

So, let’s get serious. The federal government’s own internal security is so bad that it’s recruiting among the “enemy.” You expect these idiots to keep you safe? They can’t. They never could, and they never will.

B2 bomber crashes in Guam Costs 1.2 Billion dollars

A US B-2 stealth bomber - one of the world’s most expensive planes - has crashed for the first time on the Pacific island of Guam.

The jet crashed shortly after taking off from the island’s Andersen Air Force Base, but both pilots ejected and survived, the US Air Force (USAF) said.

Black smoke could be seen billowing from the site, witnesses said.

The B-2 bomber costs $1.2 billion and is capable of deploying both conventional and nuclear weapons.

Crowds gathered as emergency vehicles attended the scene after the crash, which happened around 10:45 am local time.

Uncle Sam Say’s: Sorry Taxpayers!

Tags: b2

Cell Phone IED Revisited

Almost anything that blows up can be turned into an IED, from grenades to plastic explosives to leftover mines. The most everyday of electronics — a cell phone, a garage door opener, a child’s remote-control toy — can be recast as a trigger. And the hiding places for the handmade bombs are everywhere: in the ground, aboard a truck, even inside an animal carcass.

So far, the strongest push to silence the bombs has come from the Army, which has ordered thousands of radio-frequency jammers from Simi Valley, California, firm EDO Communications & Countermeasures. The devices, called Warlock Green and Warlock Red, intercept “the signal sent from a remote location to the IED instructing it to detonate,” an Army official told military newsletter Inside Defense. The signal “cannot make contact, therefore when it can’t make contact it doesn’t detonate,” he added. “(It’s like) the cell phone never gets through, but (enemy forces) think it goes through.”

The Army won’t say much about the machines. But last week, service chiefs signed a contract with EDO for an additional 1,440 Warlock jammers, to be delivered in May at a cost of more than $56 million.

Tags: cell phone, ied

Fever Named After Blackwater

FALLUJAH,  - Iraqi doctors in al-Anbar province warn of a new disease they call “Blackwater” that threatens the lives of thousands. The disease is named after Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. mercenary company operating in Iraq.

“This disease is a severe form of malarial infection caused by the parasite plasmodium falciparum, which is considered the worst type of malarial infection,” Dr. Ali Hakki from Fallujah told IPS. “It is one of the complications of that infection, and not the ordinary picture of the disease. Because of its frequent and severe complications, such as Blackwater fever, and its resistance to treatment, P. falciparum can cause death within 24 hours.”

What Iraqis now call Blackwater fever is really a well-known medical condition, and while it has nothing to do with Blackwater Worldwide, Iraqis in al-Anbar province have decided to make the connection between the disease and the lethal U.S.-based company which has been responsible for the death of countless Iraqis.

The disease is most prevalent in Africa and Asia. The patient suffers severe intravascular haemolysis — the destruction of red blood cells leading to kidney and liver failure. It also leads to black or red urination, and hence perhaps the new name ‘Blackwater’.

The deadly disease, never before seen in Iraq on at least this scale, seems to be spreading across the country. And Iraq lacks medicines, hospitals, and doctors to lead a campaign to fight the disease.

“We informed the ministry of the disease, but it seems that they are not in a mood to listen,” a doctor from the al-Anbar Health Office in Ramadi told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We are making personal contacts with NGOs in an attempt to get the necessary medicines.”

The three doctors who spoke to IPS in Fallujah and in Ramadi in al-Anbar province that lies west of Baghdad, seemed sure that the Iraqi government would do little to face the plague.

“They have not even made any announcement so that people can take precautions,” one of the doctors from Fallujah told IPS.

The doctor said a patient usually suffers three stages of malarial infection. “First is the cold stage where the patient will have chills and shaking, the second is the hot stage when fever takes over, and the third is the sweating stage.”

Doctors in Fallujah say the new complication of the disease that may develop from malarial infection can be treated in its early stages, but is difficult to control when complications develop. Drugs currently being used to treat the disease include Chloroquin, Mefloquin, Pyrimethamine, Suladox, Halfotrin and Primaquine.

Patients seem unaware of the seriousness of the disease, though doctors tell them it is essential to buy medicines from private pharmacies because they are not available at general hospitals.

“Many have died within the past two weeks in my town,” Mahmood Nassir, a schoolteacher from Saqlawiya, north of Fallujah, told IPS. “We know it is a deadly disease, but what can we do about it? We have no government to refer to, and everyone in the Green Zone (the government district of Baghdad) is too busy preparing to escape with their share of the money they stole from us.”

Talat al-Mukhtar is an Iraqi doctor now studying abroad. IPS asked him to comment on the Blackwater fever outbreak in Iraq.

“Malaria is endemic in Iraq, mainly in the northern part. However, it is prevalent in the milder forms; the severe form had been reported but not at an epidemic level.”

Dr. Mukhtar said this form of malaria requires a “triple-drug treatment programme because it is an aggressive infection.” He said the patient “requires meticulous medical and nursing care, and might even need time in an intensive care unit, as it can easily lead to kidney and liver failure.”

Like the other doctors IPS spoke with, Dr. Mukhtar was clear that the Iraqi ministry of health needs to take a proactive role before the disease spreads further. “These cases of severe fever that follow haemolysis should warrant immediate action from the ministry of health to investigate thoroughly these cases and assess whether they are malaria or other conditions.”

Dr. Mukhtar added, “Considering the poor health situation and poor resources in Anbar province, even though clinical judgment is important, laboratory tests are not easily verified, and many other diseases can give the same clinical picture. That is why standard lab investigation is needed, may be with the help of WHO (World Health Organisation).”

The disease seems too sensitive for journalists to talk about.

“There was a great deal of anger when we wrote about cholera in Iraq last summer,” a journalist in Fallujah told IPS. “Neither the government nor the occupation forces would accept our covering such a story.”

IPS was not allowed to take pictures at the Fallujah General Hospital. A doctor refused to disclose how many may have been infected or how many may have died.

The spread of this condition follows the outbreak of other diseases. According to the WHO, as of Oct. 3, 2007 cholera outbreaks in Iraq had spread to nine of 18 provinces, and roughly 30,000 people had fallen ill with acute diarrhoea, with 14 deaths.

An Oxfam International report released last July showed that the humanitarian disaster in Iraq is compounded by a mass exodus of medical staff fleeing chronic violence and lawlessness. The report said the lack of doctors and nurses is breaking down a health system now on the brink of collapse.