To crack down on illegal drug labs, law enforcement officers often enlist the hyper-sensitive noses of our canine brethren. Some dogs can smell up to a thousand times better than humans, but a group of students at the University of North Texas (UNT) have created technology that can top that.
It all started eight months ago, when a group led by UNT lab director Guido Verbeck developed a portable mass spectrometer to analyze air quality. Affectionately named Membrane Inlet Mass Spectrometry, the system was quite bulky, so to make it portable, the team ripped out the passenger seat of a Ford Fusion Energi and stuck an array of computers and sensors inside. This way, the mobile science lab could easily roam the different boroughs of the Lone Star State, taking measurements over a large area.
Unbeknownst to them, they had created a tool that could be used to sniff out drug labs even better than a bloodhound.
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The technology uses a string of gas analyzers and particle detectors crafted by Inficon of East Syracuse, and with a special “nose” intake built into the passenger side mirror, the plug-in hybrid can sniff out unique chemical signatures up to a quarter-mile away and determine their point of origin within 15 feet. Better yet, it does this silently and with complete discretion, keeping would-be Walter Whites in the dark and allowing the police to do their job.
“The car could just drive by it and keep moving down the road,” Verbeck told CBS DFW. “It’ll alert the officers there’s something going on at the house, and where the location is.”
To calibrate the spectrometer’s sensitivity, the UNT team set the baseline readings in Antartica, which has the cleanest air on Earth. The latest version is compact enough to fit inside a small handheld case, but at the time of this writing, it has not been picked up by any law enforcement agencies.
BYD has launched the third-generation Qin Plus DM-i in China, and the first thing that caught my eye is its price. According to CarNewsChina, the plug-in hybrid sedan starts at 79,900 yuan, which is about $11,980. That’s an incredibly low price for a brand-new car, especially by US standards.
What’s even more impressive is the range. The Qin Plus DM-i can drive up to 137 miles on electricity alone, which should cover most people’s daily commutes without using a drop of gas. Once the battery runs out, the 1.5-liter engine takes over. Thanks to its 17-gallon tank and roughly 91 mpg with a drained battery, the combined range reaches up to 1,423 miles.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.