DON鈥橳 BET ON A SMOOTH RIDE
The American gambling capital, Las Vegas, last week launched the world鈥檚 first fully computer-driven, driverless, conductor-less monorail line. Even the ticket booths are unstaffed and automated.
Running parallel to the city鈥檚 famous Strip, the monorail links casinos and hotels with its Convention Center, used for computing, electronics and video exhibitions. The city hopes the $650 million scheme will attract 50,000 passengers a day and cut the city鈥檚 traffic by 4 million car and taxi trips a year. However, New 杏吧原创鈥檚 reporter found the ride surprisingly bumpy, triggering frequent recorded announcements to 鈥減lease hang on鈥� 鈥� a request made worse by the fact that there was nothing to hang on to.
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THE INCORRUPTIBLES
To prevent corrupt officials tampering with data on Mexico鈥檚 police computer, 160 of the country鈥檚 top law-enforcement officers, including the attorney general, have had radio frequency identification tags implanted in their wrists. The tags, the size of a rice grain, transmit a unique code identifying that person when they wave their wrist over an RFID reader.
The tags control computer access at a $30 million crime data centre which President Vicente Fox opened last week at the justice department headquarters in Mexico City. The system also records who has accessed sensitive information 鈥� a facility seen as crucial for fighting corruption.
DEATH BY CINNAMON
Cinnamon, that essential ingredient in apple pie, appears to spell death for Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries dengue and yellow fever.
Peter Shange-Tzen Chang and his colleagues at the National University of Taiwan in Taipei tested several compounds found in oil extracted from the leaves of Cinnamomum osmophloeum, a Taiwanese relative of the cinnamon tree (Cinnamomum cassia). Lab tests on sprays made from the different compounds showed that cinnamaldehyde can kill A. aegypti larvae at much lower concentrations than existing pesticides such as DEET.
And because the compound has low human and environmental toxicity, Chang suggests it may one day form the basis of a powerful larvicide (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, vol 52, p 4395).
