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Showing posts with label air. Show all posts
Showing posts with label air. Show all posts

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Birth on plane, Free filghts for life


A Malaysian woman, who gave birth to a boy on board an aeroplane minutes before it landed, has been promised free flights for life, as has her child, an airline official said on Friday. Liew Siaw Hsia (31) gave birth on budget carrier AirAsia's flight from Penang to Kuching on Wednesday. Nazatul Mokhtar, a spokesman for the airline, said on Friday that the flight had been diverted to nearby Kuala Lumpur for an emergency landing when Liew had labour pains. A doctor on the flight helped the woman deliver her son, while the plane was still 2,000 feet in the air in its final approach to land

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Bee bomb


Specially trained sniffer honey bees are being used in a successful new prototype that is about the size of a hand held vacuum cleaner. Training the bees is simply a matter of bribing them with sugary treats. Trainers expose the bees to the odour, like the smell of explosives, for a few seconds and simultaneously give the bees a sugar syrup reward.
After 4 or 5 exposures the bees associate the odour with the reward.Consequently, if the bees are exposed to an air sample containing the substance, the bees demonstrate the Proboscis Extension Reflex response, that is they stick out their tongue in expectation of food, which the trainers can observe and then they can respond to the threat.