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CONTAINERS' CONTROLS * USA - The sound of smuggling
But what has proved a boon to the global economy has also provided a great opportunity for smugglers, drug traffickers and terrorists
Chichester,England,UK - Detectors/Separations Now -17 Nov 2008: -- ... Around 18 million cargo containers are transported around the world each year and only a small fraction of those (around 4% in the US) tend to be checked when they arrive at a port. So contraband such as drugs, firearms and explosives hidden in cargo containers currently have a good chance of remaining undiscovered by the authorities... Now, however, a new portable option is available, which should allow a greater proportion of containers to be tested. Developed by Edward Staples from the US measurement technology company Q&A Solutions and Shekar Viswanathan from the National University in San Diego, this new option takes advantage of a phenomenon known as surface acoustic waves (SAWs)... As their name suggests, SAWs are sound waves that travel along the surface of a material. First discovered back in 1885, SAWs have subsequently been employed in electronic circuits, where the propagation of these waves forms the basis for filters, oscillators and transformers... Testing this GC-SAW system on samples of cocaine hidden in a cargo container, Staples and Viswanathan found that their system could detect characteristic chemical markers for this drug in around 20 seconds at concentrations as low as parts per trillion. According to Viswanathan, this system is now being employed by government agencies in several countries around the world, including the US...Labels: controls
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