Test Results Surprise Politician, Cat on the Fast Track, Hallway of Chemists, Spell-checker Irks Indiscriminately

Test results surprise politician

William Graham, a conservative welsh assembly member and longtime campaigner on substance abuse issues, got quite a shock when he demonstrated a new drug detection instrument to his fellow assembly members last month. He tested positive for cannabis.

BBC News reports that Graham had arranged for the Gwent police to demonstrate its new Ion Track drug detection system--the first of its kind in Wales. The system uses an ion-trap mobility spectrometer to screen for traces of illicit substances. Police swab the hands of patrons entering a nightclub, for example, and then use the Ion Track to analyze the swabs.

As Graham unwittingly demonstrated, the system is highly sensitive and can easily detect traces of drugs someone may have picked up from a door handle or by handling contaminated cash. "It must be borne in mind that anyone taking the test can test positive as a result of cross-contamination," a spokesman for the Gwent police told BBC News.

Cat on the fast track

The East Japan railway unveiled a test model of its new bullet train--the Fastech 360S--on June 24 in Rifu, Japan. The Japan Times reports that Fastech will operate at a speed of just over 223 mph, with a top speed of 250 mph. That's faster than both the French national railway's high-speed TGV and West Japan Railway's Sanyo shinkansen train, which travel at about 186 mph and have maximum speeds around 218 mph.

Perhaps more impressive than Fastech's speed is the train's eye-catching design. The jade and white test train has a rounded nose and a tapered caboose. And the train's emergency braking system features retractable cat-ear-shaped spoilers that pop out of the roof. The U.K.'s Mirror newspaper notes that the ears aren't the only feline feature. One wag told the paper, "As it flies past you, it seems to go meeee-ooooww!"

  Hallway of chemists

An item about how to describe large groups of animals--a parliament of owls, a dazzle of zebras, etcetera--in the spring issue of ACS's seasonal tabloid Chemistry got Patrick J. Dolan of Cambridge, Mass., thinking about what the appropriate term for a collection of chemists should be. "Upon polling a number of the members of the Northeast Section, I suggest that a gathering of chemists should be called a 'hallway,' " he writes.

Dolan offers four points to support his proposal: "(1) We work somewhat individually in labs but only gather in the hallway to discuss things--for safety reasons. (2) Labs are often 'strung together' in a linear fashion, and offices as well. (3) Unlike military or clergy, about which I know something, chemists rarely either stand out or gather in groups about the local populace, and (4) the term 'hallway of chemists' just seems to fit intuitively."

Dolan offers the following as an example of proper usage: "There was an entire hallway of chemists at the impromptu birthday party." He points out that the terminology parallels other expressions like "a coffeehouse of poets."

Spell-checker irks indiscriminately

All those frustrated chemists who curse Microsoft Word's spell-checker feature as it automatically changes "proline" to "praline" and "dimer" to "dimmer" can angrily tap their delete keys knowing they are in good company. In his Softmachines weblog (softmachines.org/wordpress/index.php), physics professor Richard A. L. Jones of the University of Sheffield writes that Nobel Laureate Sir Harold Kroto has a similar problem. While giving a talk about nanotechnology at the English university last month, Kroto confessed to the audience that the spell-checker prefers to identify him as Sir Harlot Crouton.

This week's column was written by Bethany Halford . Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.