Lightening the Load Giving the Sniffer Dogs Some Needed Help.

The Soldier Systems Center, at Natick, Mass., has unveiled a micro rappel system, so soldiers will no longer have to tote around loads of rope over their shoulders with extra harnesses.

Instead, a soldier fastens a nylon belt into a seat. Attached to the belt is a nylon container about the size of an ammunition pouch that holds a descender, carabiner and 80 feet of 5mm rope made with Kevlar in the center, surrounded by a nylon shell. The rope also can be sheathed by fabric for high-abrasion surfaces like brick. However, the results of tests conducted by soldiers in Alaska, at the Ranger Training Center in Georgia and the Mountain Warfare School in Vermont may lead to the removal of the abrasion sheath from the system.

Users have the option of letting the rope slip through the eyelet at the top of the bag or unzipping the top and dropping the entire length of the rope. All together the system weighs less than 3 pounds.

A growing demand for technologies to track explosives and illegal drugs has prompted Ion Track Instruments, headquartered in Wilmington, Mass., to create the EntryScan3.

A person is told to enter the portal, and, once in the portal, vapors and particles from the person are collected from the natural flow of air generated by the individual's body heat. This collected air sample is analyzed rapidly for the presence of explosives or narcotics.

The collecting mechanism consists of a single-stage pre-concentrator that traps vapor and particles from the sample and then desorbs them into the detection system. The normal processing time is about 10 seconds per person.

The data are displayed in a bar graph form that changes color to indicate the strength of the alarm or a more detailed analysis of the ion spectrum known as plasmagram. It can then be stored for further analysis at a later time.