ATMs ....Equipped now with Pepper spray

Pepper-spray defence means

Thieves face squirt of eye-watering chemical

New security feature to thwart exploding cash machine
raids


David Smith in Johannesburg guardian.co.uk, Sunday 12 July 2009 17.27 BST

Cash machines offer an ever-growing menu of services beyond merely dispensing money. For tampering criminals, this now includes a squirt of pepper spray in the face .

The extreme measure is the latest in South Africa's escalating war against armed robbers who target banks and cash delivery vans. The number of cash machines blown up with explosives has risen from 54 in 2006 to 387 in 2007 and nearly 500 last year.

The technology uses cameras to detect people tampering with the card slots. Another machine then ejects pepper spray to stun the culprit while police response teams race to the scene.

But the mechanism backfired in one incident last week when pepper spray was inadvertently inhaled by three technicians who required treatment from paramedics.

Patrick Wadula, spokesman for the Absa bank, which is piloting the scheme, told the Mail & Guardian Online: "During a routine maintenance check at an Absa ATM in Fish Hoek, the pepper spray device was accidentally activated.

"At the time there were no customers using the ATM. However, the spray spread into the shopping centre where the ATMs are situated."

In conjunction with the police, Absa is using the technology at 11 sites, identified as high-risk by branch managers.

If successful, it will be expanded to cash machines around the country.


With thanks from Guardian

CHINESE DRIVING ........Trick or Treat?

Police in southwest China are spicing up drivers with raw chili in a bid to stop them from falling asleep at the wheel, a newspaper said.

Police in Chongqing started serving drivers chili peppers at highway service stations, holding to the traditional Chinese belief people often feel more sleepy in the Spring, the Chongqing Evening News said.

Most of the drivers are from neighboring Sichuan, Yunnan and Hunan provinces, where chilies are a local favorite, it added.

"It's really good to have some hot peppers when you are tired from driving," van driver Chen Jun was quoted by the newspaper as saying. "They make you alert."

China's roads have long been among the most dangerous in the world due to overloaded and speeding trucks and drivers who switch lanes without signaling and often ignore traffic lights.With thanks from the net

OFFICIAL "HOLY JOLOKIA SAUCE"

Monday, May 4, 2009

NMSU inks hot deal on world’s spiciest pepperNew Mexico Business Weekly

The Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University has partnered with a private company to create a hot sauce with the world’s hottest chile pepper.

It’s the first time the Institute has joined with a private firm to produce a product. The Holy Jolokia sauce is produced by CaJohns Fiery Foods, based in Columbus, Ohio, and is made from the Bhut Jolokia pepper, which the Institute and the Guinness Book of Records certify is the hottest pepper on the planet.

Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute, said the new product will help further cement New Mexico as the chile capital of the world.

The Bhut Jolokia chiles are grown in India and their reputation has boosted production in that country by more than 25 percent, according to NMSU officials.

The pepper has more than one million Scoville Heat Units, which makes it nearly twice as hot as the Red Savina, the pepper which once held the hottest crown.

New Mexico green chile contains about 1,500 Scoville Heat Units. An average jalapeño has about 10,000.

The 5-ounce bottles of Holy Jolokia retail for $10 and a portion of the sales will help fund research and education at the Chile Pepper Institute. The Institute is the only organization devoted to education, research and archiving information on chile peppers. Plans are in the works to raise $10 million for an endowed chair in the institute and establish a new facility with a tourist venue that will include accommodations for conferences and teaching, and a demonstration garden and greenhouse.

With thanks from net

New device uses carbon nanotubes to rate chillis hotness

London, May 13 (ANI): Scientists have developed a new device that takes the help of carbon nanotubes to provide an objective and cost effective way to rate how hot a particular chilli is.
According to a report in Nature News, Richard Compton, a chemist at the University of Oxford, UK, and his colleagues have made the device, which measures the accumulated concentrations of the capsaicins in a chilli simultaneously.

Capsaicins are chemicals, which cause the hotness in a chilli. The higher the concentration, the hotter a chilli tastes.

The conventional method to determine the heat of a chilli or chilli sauce was devised in 1912 by chemist Wilbur Scoville.

Scoville ratings are worked out by diluting a chilli-containing sauce to the point at which a team of five expert tasters can no longer detect the heat.

But Richard Compton and his colleagues have developed a way to get a Scoville rating for a sauce while sparing the tasters tongues, and without blowing a cooks budget.

The device that they have developed measures the accumulated concentrations of the capsaicins in a chilli simultaneously.

The technique involves coating electrodes covered in carbon nanotubes with the chilli sample. The nanotubes have a high surface area, which means that they can absorb lots of the sample.

The whole device is then dunked in an ethanol-based solution to oxidize the capsaicins, which causes current to flow.

Stronger chillies mean more electric current, said Compton.

According to Compton, his method is cheaper than the only other available tester-free method, called high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC).

The HPLC technique involves separating out the capsaicins in a sauce and working out their concentrations individually an expensive process.

By using mass-producible electrodes screen-printed with carbon nanotubes, Compton reckons he can bring down the cost of a sampler to around 30 pounds. By comparison, an HPLC machine costs around 40,000 pounds.

Compton has applied for a patent for his device and is attracting commercial interest for what he envisages as a cheap, disposable hand-held heat detector that keen cooks could use in their own kitchens. (ANI)

with thanks to Thaindian news