WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- The Department of Commerce and Patent and Trademark Office on Monday displayed nine homeland defense inventions that have been awarded patents within the past two years and can help protect Americans from terrorist attacks.
The devices "are either in the marketplace being used or have great potential," said Richard Maulsby, director of public affairs for Patent and Trademark office.
Most of the inventions already are being used in airports, embassies and customs offices.
The U.S. Army had three inventions on display, including a system that detects whether a person has been exposed to a pathogen, such as anthrax or plague, by examining the person's cells.
Most pathogens produce flu-like symptoms at first, making them very difficult to diagnose, but Marti Jett and colleagues at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., found human blood cells known as lymphocytes respond very differently to pathogens, even when the symptoms they cause are nearly indistinguishable.
The cells change their gene expression profile -- that is they begin to produce drastically higher and sometimes lower levels of proteins coded by specific genes. The lymphocytes travel through the bloodstream and in and out of organs, "recording what they've seen in these various organs, which we can't get to easily," said Jett, who is chief of the molecular pathology department at Walter Reed.
Sampling blood cells should allow public health officials to detect an outbreak much sooner than methods that detect a pathogen directly, according to Jett, because pathogens are often present at levels too low to detect. By the time they are detectable, it could be too late. The system is likely five years from practical application, Jett added.
Another technology has the ability to detect residues on people that could indicate whether the person has handled explosives or drugs.
Introduced by Ion Track Instruments of Wilmington, Mass., and in place at two test airports in Knoxville, Tenn., and Orlando. Fla., as part of the Safe Skies Alliance test program. The EntryScan is an adaptation of a hand-held instrument already widely used in airports and embassies that swabs the surface of a suitcase or package and sends residues to an ionizing detector.
The new device works on people, sniffing them by sending a short gust of air upward to dislodge particles from clothing and skin and send them into a detector. It can detect explosive or drug particles at a concentration of 1 part per trillion -- 10 to 100 times more sensitive than a dog's nose, said Anthony Jenkins, president of Ion Track.
Combined with scanning of luggage, the instrument could provide a second line of defense. If a passenger with a suspicious piece of luggage also turned up positive with a residue, "that would be a sure sign of a serious threat," Jenkins said.
The Chemical Biological Explosives Containment System is a low-tech answer to terrorism. It is designed to be placed over suspicious packages or unexploded bombs, where it inflates in 16 seconds to a tent-like cover filled with aqueous foam.
The foam absorbs the energy of a blast and even latches onto chemicals or biological agents that might otherwise become airborne, according to James A. Genovese, a chemist at the U.S. Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Aberdeen, Md.
Despite the impressive innovations, technology will not solve the terrorist problem, said John Pike, director of the security, defense and intelligence think-tank globalsecurity.org. "You can make an attack less likely, you can make it less damaging, but you can not prevent it completely."
It is more important to help security managers at places like shopping malls and corporate buildings make the right decisions about what security steps to take, Pike added.
The federal government has to "help them figure out; 'what do I need to buy?' Right now, there's just too much stuff in the toy catalog," Pike said.
