Ryn Gargulinski

Creativity on Fire

ua news

Purest cocaine, heroin and meth right here in AZ and other border states, study says

Arizona is smoking when it comes to having some of the purest illegal drugs in the entire nation.

Anger and drug use go hand and hand/Thinkstock image

Boycott be danged – we got ourselves a selling point.

The Grand Canyon State shares this fine distinction with its sister border states thanks to our proximity to Mexico, where we get first dibs on the freshest heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

This glorious news comes from a study tackled by an international research team led by University of Arizona’s own James Cunningham. The study was published in the scientific journal “Addication” and highlighted in UA News.

Researchers checked out about 250, 000 seizures of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin across the U.S. from 1990 to 2004.

Thankfully, they did not test drug potency by sampling the wares, but rather with federal data obtained through the glorious Freedom of Information Act.

“They calculated the distance from the location of each seizure to the nearest major city (import portal) on the border and compared that distance to purity, adjusting for factors such as the size of the seizure,” UA News reports.

The perhaps not-so-shocking results indicated that the purity of these three drugs was inversely proportional to the distance from the border – or the closer you were to Mexico the more potent these three drugs would be.

That means unless you have your own meth trailer hidden in the wiles of Tennessee, you’re best off buying the stuff in Arizona or other places closest to Mexico.

While the general purity decrease held true for all three drugs, researchers did note some exceptions.

Northeastern states as far as 1,500 miles from Mexico had some pretty potent meth, thanks to Canadian imports. New York City and other drug portals made for some pretty pure heroin. Researchers also found cocaine stayed the purest across the board, with less dilution of the drug than the other two.

Your brain on drugs/Thinkstock image

The researchers’ hypothesis?

“Allowing for variance by drug type, it seems that traffickers increasingly cut their drugs – decrease purity – as distance from a portal increases, possibly to compensate for added transport costs,” Cunningham told UA News.

Those unscrupulous drug hustling scamps. Based on their formidable fashion statements, like the diamond pinkie ring, we would have thought those in the business of transporting and selling drugs would have a tad more class.

Next thing we know they’ll be giving away free samples to try and get people hooked.

Cunningham said this decreasing drug potency was good news for communities far from Mexico and other portals, as less potent drugs means less chance of overdose or other health problems.

While the results of this study may seem somewhat obvious, at least it’s now official. And at least the study was a bit more involved than one that researched if coyotes eat cats. (They do.)

We also say such results could mean good news for the border states, as it can increase tourism and boost the overall economy. After all, traveling drug hungry thugs still need a hotel in which to crash and a few restaurants in which to eat. They may even buy a tchotchke or two.

Drugs will kill you/Thinkstock image

The title of the study is “Proximity to the U.S.-Mexico Border: A key to explaining geographic variation in U.S. methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin purity.”

NOTE: Although this piece is written with sarcasm, drug abuse is a serious topic. Drug abuse is not only likely to get you arrested, but is also known to wreck – or even end – your life.

[tnipoll]


What do you think?

Do the results of such a study shock you?

Would you have guessed otherwise?

What other studies do you recall that state something that seems obvious?

Security cameras getting smarter with ‘brains’ to spot suspicious behavior

For us law-abiding citizens, the biggest botheration with security cameras is feeling spied upon – or the way the things instantly add 10 pounds on the monitor.

Perhaps we'll eventually be able to converse with these brainy devices/Thinkstock image

The biggest problem for companies using the cameras is something altogether different.

They don’t care if the cameras make us feel violated or look fat, but they do care it takes a lot of manpower, and thus cash, to sit there and watch them.

It also takes a savvy viewer not to make a bunch of mistakes that result in running after someone who the viewer only “thought” looked or did something suspicious – and an even savvier viewer not to fall asleep.

The University of Arizona is working on fixing that, with security cameras that not only record people’s actions but go so far as to interpret these actions, according to a report from UA News.

If the camera pans pan out, security cameras will be able to note when someone caught on camera is behaving suspiciously. This way human security guards or other viewers don’t have to waste their own time doing so.

Researchers are surely hoping it pans out, as the project just received a $2 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, with the promise of another $3 million if the first two years are successful.

So how does it work?

“Drawing on ways the human brain processes visual information, the research team plans to build a visual detection and tracking system, models of human behaviors and simulators to generate possible future scenes,” the report tells us.

Computers don't fall asleep on the job/Thinkstock

“One of the project’s major components is the incorporation of visual imagination, a process by which the brain decodes what the eyes see while also guessing what should occur next.

“‘The same parts of the brain are involved in vision and visual imagination. To some extent the brain is telling the eyes what they should be seeing. So we want to model this sort of heavy involvement of the brain,’” the report quotes team leader and UA computer science department head Paul Cohen.

So far such brainy cameras have worked in small pilot programs, but more activities need to be added to cover the massive range of behavior that could be caught on video and deemed suspicious.

To kick off the program, cameras will be programmed to interpret 48 actions based on verbs like “run,” “escape,” “climb,” and “carry.”

Researchers also want to add another level of brainpower, where the cameras will understand suspicious behavior when someone is interacting with another person or has an object, perhaps such as a tire iron or bomb.

Whew.

There is a reason many of us majored in English.

Let’s throw out a hypothetical example to see how an equally hypothetical version of the newfangled security camera might work.

Say a camera is focused on a man who gets out of his car. The camera interprets: “Stand.” He then opens the trunk. The camera goes: “Dead body.”

Then the man picks up the object and walks towards a garbage can. “Destroying evidence.”

A woman happens to walk by with her dog and she nods at the man. “Accomplice. Accomplice with deadly weapon.”

At this point a law enforcement officer – or eventually a law enforcement robot – would be on the scene, perhaps arresting them both and throwing the dog in the pound.

Possible suspicious behavior thwarted. Problem solved.

Now if researchers could just create a camera that didn’t automatically add 10 pounds, we’d really be on the way to a perfect future.

[tnipoll]

What do you think?

Does a security camera with brains sound feasible?

Would you trust the interpretations?

Have you ever been wrongly busted for something caught on camera?

What about rightly busted?

E. coli, germs in reusable shopping bags could kill us, study says

The law of the modern world states that any idea, especially those that sound really good at the time, has to be debunked, ripped apart and/or otherwise examined at length to find out how it can injure or kill us.

Produce, shrimp, meats pose dangers in reusable shopping bags/Ryn Gargulinski
Produce, shrimp, meats pose dangers in reusable shopping bags/Ryn Gargulinski

It happened with soda fountain machines.

It happened with sunshine. Heck, even driving around in our cars, especially with that left arm near the window, threatens to give us cancer.

Now cloth reusable shopping bags are the target, as these often filthy and germ-ridden things can make us sick – or worse.

A joint food-safety study from the University of Arizona and Loma University in California found “reusable grocery bags can be a breeding ground for dangerous food-borne bacteria and pose a serious risk to public health,” according to a UA News report.

Researchers randomly tested reusable shopping bags used in Tucson, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“Our findings suggest a serious threat to public health, especially from coliform bacteria including E. coli, which were detected in half of the bags sampled,” the report quotes Charles Gerba, UA professor of soil, water and environmental science who co-authored the study.

“Bacteria levels found in reusable bags were significant enough to cause a wide range of serious health problems and even death. They are a particular danger for young children, who are especially vulnerable to food-borne illnesses.”

Bloated cheese forgotten in trunk/Ryn Gargulinski
Bloated cheese forgotten in trunk/Ryn Gargulinski

We bet the bacteria levels are most dangerous when people stuff cheese, raw chicken and bleeding pork chops into the bags and then leave them in their trunks for two weeks.

In any event, all these horrible and even fatal health problems can be averted with a simple task: wash the dang things.

That little nugget of information, of course, appears after all the hoopla about how the cloth bags can kill us.

At least the bags don’t suffocate small children.

Los Angeles, perhaps not surprisingly, had the highest levels of bacteria in the bags. Researchers say the city’s weather is ripe for bacteria growth.

California, o greenest of lands where smoking is banned on the beaches and in city parks, is also toying with the idea of banning plastic bags in stores throughout the state. Without first warning people the bags could kill them, the results could be disastrous.

One proposal is to print instructions on the reusable bags that tell users to wash or bleach the bags between uses.

Another is an all-out public education campaign that will probably cost millions of dollars and is based, pretty much, on common sense. Unless, of course, it does not seem common-sensical to wash something in which we carry produce, leaking milk and seeping raw meat.

Maybe it’s not common sense. After all, 97 percent of the folks the germ study people interviewed said they never washed or bleached their bags. Perhaps such a campaign is necessary, as is a hefty dose of Tide.

Reusable bag safety tips, courtesy of UA News:

* When using reusable bags, consumers should be careful to separate raw foods from other food products.
* Consumers should not use reusable food bags for other purposes such as carrying books or gym clothes.
* Consumers should not store meat or produce in the trunks of their cars because the higher temperature promotes growth of bacteria, which can contaminate reusable bags.

[tnipoll]

wb-logolilWhat do you think?

Are you grossed out yet?

Do you use reusable shopping bags?

Do you ever wash the bags?

What’s the most disgusting thing you found in your trunk two weeks later? (Mine was a swollen pack of Monterey Jack cheese [pictured above].)