The Schlicken Empire

Maxwell Smart always “missed it by that much,” but some of those dopey spy shows of the ‘60s were right on the money. “Many of the devices first seen in movies and on TV actually came about,” says Robert Wallace, former head of the CIA’s covert skunk works, the Office of Technical Services. “Remember the Cone of Silence? We built shielded enclosures that did the same thing. And the pen communicator in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.? That evolved, 10 years later, into short-range agent communication.” Wallace, who was basically the agency’s real-life Q, reveals these gadgets and more in his new book, Spycraft, the first comprehensive look at the technical achievements of American espionage from the 1940s to the present. “Here’s the laboratory,” Wallace used to tell new recruits. “The only thing that is going to limit what you can do is your imagination.” It seems they took him at his word.

1940s Cigarette gun
Lipping this pistol disguised as a cigarette, an agent could easily release the safety pin. Rotating the filter end counterclockwise armed the gun, and a push of the thumb caused it to fire a single .22-caliber bullet. It really worked.

1940s Combustible notebook
An ordinary-looking bound notebook contained pages of Pyrofilm and came packaged with an incendiary pencil. To prevent notes from falling into the wrong hands, an agent could simply pull the eraser out of the pencil, causing the notebook to burst into flames.

1960s Acoustic kitty
During an hour-long procedure, techs embedded a 3/4-inch transmitter in the skull of a live cat. An antenna made of very fine wire was woven into the cat’s fur, and a microphone was placed in its ear canal. After setting the kitty free, agents could listen in on nearby conversations undetected. Cats being cats, however, the system proved unreliable.

1970s Rat concealment device
When it comes to a “dead drop” — a hiding place where spies leave messages — nothing’s better (or deader) than a dead rat. Who’s going to look inside unless they have to? CIA techs gutted a rat carcass, inserted secret missives wrapped in foil, and then stitched the animal back together. To ward off scavengers, the rodent was often doused in Tabasco.

1975 T-100 subminiature camera watch
A working Seiko timepiece concealed the world’s smallest point-and-shoot camera. The device held a 15-inch strip of auto-advancing film and could snap about 100 crisp shots. A quick twist of the watch face revealed a 4-millimeter-diameter lens. It was a successful and widely used spy tool in its day.

1976 Insectothopter
A remotely piloted aerial vehicle disguised as a dragonfly could carry cameras and audio sensors right into the lion’s den. This mobile eavesdropping bug never got off the ground.

Article Source: wired.com via Yahoo.com
Illustrations: Steve Sanford

This being February 29 — Leap Day — today is costing you an extra day’s interest if you’re repaying a debt. On the bright side, it’s earning you a tiny bit more on your bank deposits.

Whom do we have to thank — or curse — for this extra day every four years? Julius Caesar and his lover, Cleopatra.

In 48 B.C., Julius Caesar was in Alexandria, Egypt, absorbing the culture and science — and decadence — of Cleopatra’s capital. There he learned from an old sage named Acoreus about Egypt’s calendar, which had a leap year.

At the time, the Roman calendar did not. Like most ancient calendars, it was based on the phases of the moon, which in one cycle takes about 29.5 days. But 12 months of 29.5 days doesn’t equal the true length of the year as measured by the orbit of the Earth around the sun. It’s off by 11 days, so anniversaries, holidays, and entire seasons to drift backward on lunar calendars.

The ancient Egyptians had realized this and created a calendar 365 1/4 days long — with the fraction averaged in by adding an extra day every four years.

When Caesar returned to Rome, he created a 365-day calendar with a quadrennial leap year, adding the extra day in February.

A minor hassle for some, perhaps, but certainly better than the alternative faced by the Romans. Back in 45 B.C., for instance, their lunar calendar had drifted backward by 80 days — nearly three months. Spring had become winter, and autumn came in the summer months.

To correct this, Caesar decreed that 45 B.C. would be 445 days long. Think about the extra interest on 80 extra days! No wonder they called it “The Year of Confusion.”

by David Ewing Duncan

Article Source: www.portfolio.com
Image Source: tribuneindia.com

Stretching before exercise may be a waste of time, a study suggests. The elaborate limbering up routines favoured by many athletes and gym-goers do little to prevent muscle aches and stiffness, researchers found. Stretching muscles after exercise may be equally pointless, they say.

A team from the University of Sydney compiled the results of ten small scientific trials, each involving between 10 and 30 people.

These had examined the effects of stretching between 40 seconds and 600 seconds before exercise. “The 10 studies produced very consistent findings,” said Dr Robert Herbert, from the school of physiotherapy at the university, in the journal Cochrane Review.

“They showed there was minimal, or no effect, on the muscle soreness experienced between half a day and three days after the physical activity.”

[Source:this is london via spluch]

Scientists have worked out why mosquitoes make a beeline for certain people but appear to leave others almost untouched.

Specific cells in one of the three organs that make up the mosquito’s nose are tuned to identify the different chemicals that make up human body odour.

To the mosquito some people’s sweat simply smells better than others because of the proportions of the carbon dioxide, octenol and other compounds that make up body odour.

It is those people who are most likely to be bitten.

The researchers believe the discovery of the way the mosquito smells will lead to the development of a new generation of repellents that would block mosquitoes’ nose – preventing them finding humans prey – within five to 10 years.

While helping those people who always seem to get bitten and people with allergic reactions to bites, such substances could also save millions of lives in the fight against malaria, most prevalent life-threatening disease in the world.

Mosquitoes use three organs to smell and taste – a feathery antenna which can identify a wide range of different chemicals, a proboscis used for short-range detection and the maxillary palp for longer range smelling.

US scientists, whose research was published today in the journal Current Biology, have produced a detailed map of the maxillary palp.

They found it contains a series of highly specialised receptor cells used to detect the different components of human body odour.

Laurence J. Zwiebel, professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who led the study, said: “What makes mosquitoes such good transmitters of malaria is that they are extremely good at finding people to bite.

“The amazing thing that we found was that all the sensory hairs that line the bottom of the maxillary palp are identical.

“They are all attached to three neurons – one which is tuned to detect carbon dioxide, one which is tuned to detect octenol, and one which serves to enhance general olfactory reception.

“We are looking to make a new generation of repellents based on targeting these molecular components in the mosquitoe nose.

“If you can block or hyper-stimulate these receptors, the mosquito would not do nearly as well at finding human prey.”

Prof Zwiebel added he expected the new repellents to be available for use within five to ten years.

The tips of the organs that make up the mosquito nose are perforated with thousands of tiny holes that let aromatic compounds to penetrate.

Once inside chemicals encounter the receptors that detect specific molecules that identify potential targets as human.

Co-author of the research Tan Lu, also at Vanderbilt University, said: “These receptors are highly sensitive, which suggests that the maxillary palps serve as the malaria mosquito’s long-range detection system.”

Most of the reason for people believing they are targeted more frequently by mosquitoes is in reality down to their suffering more serious swellings and allergic reactions.

However it has been shown that some people are bitten more often because of differences in their body odour.

The researchers carried out their work on Anopheles gambiae, the mosquito species most responsible for spreading malaria.

They believe it can be applied to other malaria-spreading species.

Malaria infects some 650 million people per year worldwide and kills between one and three million, mostly young children in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The work is part of a large international collaboration led by the US National Institutes of Health aimed at developing a chemical strategy to combat the spread of malaria in the developing world.

[Link: telegraph.co.uk]
[Images: beyondpesticides.org and worst-jobs.com]

Schlicken’s Response: We were just discussing this a couple of days ago. Good thing we ran across this.