Many of the assays produced in the diagnostics field today take advantage of molecular labeling. Are you a coach who wants to know if your player is taking a performance-enhancing drug? A doctor interested in the disease status of your patient? Or, a TSA official wondering if there are explosives in a bag? Label it! But as diseases, drugs, and other threats evade our detection systems, research...

Organic fluorescent nanofibrils were fabricated from a linear carbazole trimer and employed for expedient detection of nitroaromatic explosives (DNT and TNT) and highly volatile nitroaliphatic explosives (nitromethane).

The best way to find buried ordnance (e.g., landmines) is to detect the explosive packaged inside. This expedient would eliminate detection of the ground clutter, such as shrapnel and stray metal fragments, that produce the great number of false positive signals and which slow down detection rates to unacceptable levels. The detection of the explosive is essentially what trained dogs do as they...

The pressure-time profiles produced by initiation in free-air of four commercial sector explosives covering a range of velocities of detonation are reported. The results indicate that there are no significant differences in the blast wave shapes from the explosives when measured between 5 and 20 m from the initiation point. The dependence of peak overpressure and positive phase impulse on scale...

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In the sample of 1134 suicides committed in the period 1988-2011 in Bjelovar-Bilogora County, we have analyzed the number of suicides, methods, scene and time of committing, gender, age and probable motives, comparing results from the Homeland war period, pre-war and post-war period, and the period of the economic expansion and recession. The study results show increase in the suicide rate in w...

Over the last decade a large number of weapon systems have appeared that use blast as their primary damage mechanism. This is a notable trend; until recently very few warheads relied on blast as their primary output. Most warheads in service use explosives to drive metal such as fragments and shaped charge jets to engage targets. New technologies are now being integrated into warheads that clai...

We report the detection of characteristic Raman lines for several chemicals using a single-beam coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) technique from a 12 meter standoff distance. Single laser shot spectra are obtained with sufficient signal to noise ratio to allow molecular identification. Background and spectroscopic discrimination are achieved through binary phase pulse shaping for opt...

Systems based on the detection of Compton backscattered X rays have been deployed for screening personnel for weapons and explosives. Similar principles are used for screening vehicles at border-crossing points. Based on well-established scattering cross sections and absorption coefficients in conjunction with reasonable estimates of the image contrast and resolution, the entrance skin dose and...

The detection of military high explosives and illicit drugs presents problems of paramount importance in the fields of counter terrorism and criminal investigation. Effectively dealing with such threats requires hand-portable, mobile and affordable instruments. The paper shows that solid-state gas sensors can contribute to the development of such instruments provided the sensors are incorporate...