back to article They've only gone and made a chemical-threat-detecting ring

Smartwatches and Fitbits might be the cool wearables du jour, but they're hardly able to tell you if you're standing in a cloud of noxious chemicals. However, a team of boffins hopes to some day fill this, er, gap in the market with their hip prototype, the broad goal of which is to help keep you alive. Juliane Sempionatto, …

  1. Simon Harris
    Alert

    Just don't wear it...

    on your arse scratching finger.

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: Just don't wear it...

      I've been given some pretty rubbish costume jewellery down the years, but this takes the biscuit...

  2. Semtex451

    Someone should invent glasses that become opaque when there's any danger in the immediate area

    1. 2Nick3

      They have: http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Joo_Janta_200_Super-Chromatic_Peril_Sensitive_Sunglasses

    2. Mark 85

      So make one go blind if it detects danger? Somehow this doesn't seem like a good idea.

      1. Midnight

        If you can't see it, it can't bother you.

        If they weren't a good idea, would the President of the Galaxy wear them?

    3. Captain DaFt

      Why not just go full paranoid and start wearing full body armour with a life support system? It's the only way to be sure!

      Then all you'd have to worry about would be the battery/fuel cell/ nuclear generator dying. ☺

      1. annodomini2
        Mushroom

        Nah, Nah, Nah....

        Nuke it from orbit, only way to be sure!

  3. Teiwaz

    Article title reminds me...

    Of Sergeant Collon in 'Men at Arms'.....

    the whole article...also reminds me of 'throats dragon detector....

  4. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    That's pretty bad ...

    "Concentrations" in mg and mL, percent (but not in context) and mM (thank heavens, a measure of ... oh, sorry it's not concentration). At no time any indication of the actual detection concentration except it sounds like a face full.

    Were these figures actually taken from any kind of journal when scientists write stuff or made up by a bloke producing exceedingly naff costume jewelry for TJC? Did he sell explosive/metal not-detectors to lots of organisations like the British army some years ago?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Naming protocols

    By tradition, it should take the name of the person who's idea it is, and the name of the actual thing. Like a 'Dyson Sphere', or perhaps 'Schrödinger's cat'. Who wouldn't want a 'Wang Ring'.

  6. ukgnome

    Frodo took one look at this and thought - yep, happy to chuck that.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can see a use for this if I can set the deadly gas alert to be my chemical romance "I'm not okay" just for kicks.

  8. Paul Cooper
    Joke

    Whatever happened to Unicorn Horn?

  9. Cynic_999

    An excellent solution. Though I fear the problem remains elusive.

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "after three hours in open air [..] the agarose gel dried"

    Well guys, it was a nice idea, but implementation will not be for mass consumption.

    Chuck the ring format, make it a pendant. Give it to hazmat workers evolving in unknown conditions, working in 2-hour shifts, and you'll be on to something.

    As it is ? I don't think a kleptomaniac would want to be caught dead with that thing.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: "after three hours in open air [..] the agarose gel dried"

      Not a pendant. Could get caught on something. Just make it a little bigger and fit it on a wristband.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: "after three hours in open air [..] the agarose gel dried"

      "Give it to hazmat workers evolving in unknown conditions"

      I think your hazmat workers need better protection if their environment is causing them to evolve (into what?)

  11. Mike 16

    Probably illegal to wear

    In any parts of the U.S. that have outlawed photography of environmental hazards on private property and reporting to environmental authorities.

    Now that the EPA is being re-purposed, this can only spread. What you don't know, you can't talk about, and what you don't talk about, you can't get arrested and beaten for.

  12. Cameron Colley

    I think I know how this works.

    You make sure a lot of people in a crowd, say commuters, are wearing them. Then, in the event of a chemical attack as they start dropping dead you take the readings sent from their rings to model the movement of the threat telling you the likely origin and the direction it is moving and how it is dispersing -- letting you know where to evacuate other people to.

    So, it's a ring for human canaries...

    1. Peter2 Silver badge

      Re: I think I know how this works.

      I was thinking pretty much this. All you've got to do is ditch the ring format and stick the sensors in a mobile phone and it's probably usably useful for disaster response as is.

  13. Dr_N

    The Scared Dollar

    They're going for the scared dollar. That's a big market. Very shrewd move.

    Free marketing too, as pundits amp-up the threat levels.

    1. handleoclast

      Re: The Scared Dollar

      Upvoted for the Bill Hicks pastiche.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    "Warning" VX Detected

    You have 30 seconds to kiss your arse goodbye.

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