- TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS
The taste of fire
A
new biologica! weapon is ta king pepper spray
10 a new level in India. Its
key ingredienl is Ihe world's
~ roilli. bhut jolokia.Bhut jolokla:
the hattest peppe,
on the planetFtllflW'unils. The Indian
military are now
lakiog advantage
of the pepper's power for their new
non-poisonous stuo e:renade to slop
On the scientific &l!.e: of hol·
ness, most chillis and Tabasco sauce measure belween
2.500 and 8,000 $coyjlle uolls. A "$coville unii" refers 10
the amount of caDsajcin present in peppers. Ihe chemical
that makes them hot. Shul jolokia has more Ihan 1,000,000lerrorisls. 1I will cause an enremely hot, burn·
iog feeling in the eyes and on Ihe skin, "It is much more
Q.01e.nt than normal tear gas," a spokesman for India's De-
fence Research and Developmenl Organizalion told The
Christian Science Monitor.Help from space
A
s the US space-shuttle programme comes to an end this year,
a warning system on th e shuttle used to find and identify
dangerous gases has been given a new job. The modifi ed system,
called a "volcanic-emission mass spectrometer", can ~
changes in gas emissions from volcanoes.
WOfking with the NASA team, scientists from Costa Rica are abte
to measure gas emissions of the country's four volcanoes 10 a high
level of precision and to detect high
concentrations of carbon djoxjde, which
can kill people. The spectrometer can
also help scientists to determine the risk
of eruptions and allow them to evacuate
loeal POPulations before disaster hits.
Such a system might have helped 10
warn of the er uption of the Eyjafjatta-
jökull volcano in leeland t his past April.
The volcaoo's smoke and ash caused air-
traffic chaos aod large linaneial lasses.EYJaljallaJökull eruption:
volcano warnt"gs may be
made by measurlng. changes In the gases
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c.rbon dioxide I.ko:b"n d:lI'oksardJ Kohlendroxid
chilti l 'IJlliJ ChiIr; href: Chrlischote
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dell~ct sth.1d!'ickt] etw, auf~ren
hot (hot1 hier: scharf
inkjetl'I\JkdJclJ TintenstrahJ·
kidneyl'krdniJ Nrefe
potent Ip~"IllJ wrrksam
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"70 BusinessSfxltligtu
Printing body parts
I
magine how many l ives could be saved if new
hearls or .Iilil.nm could be produced on demand.
What sounds (ike scienee f k l ion may one day
become a reali ty. Seientists !rom Organovo, a
company in San Diego, have developed a three-
dimensional bioprin t er that can pr.nt human
~, and in the future perhaps enlire organs.
The first slep to printing organs is to isolate ~
~ from bone marfQW and tal. These ar e then
grown into the types of cells needed for a specific
organ aod kept in clusters of 10,000 to 30,000
cells each. Using i.n.hlm technology. the clusters
are placed ar ound and on top of each other in the
desired shape, and a hydrogel strueture keeps
them in place. The cells grow toget her t o form Ihe
organ, the hydrogel is removed, and the organ is
ready, Currently, only basic tissues like skio aod
bloocl vessels ean be printed, but as the technology
continues to improve, organs may be nexl.