Who's Afraid of the Wasabi Fire Alarm ?

It was a strange series of events that lead me to having dinner with IgNobel awards maestro Marc Abrahams, former Monty Python Terry Jones and the inventors of the wasabi fire alarm. I had met Marc at the IgNobel show when it came to Imperial. I know I should have been writing up my PhD, but  one night surely wouldn't matter too much ?
 We ended up talking about this new fire alarm that had been invented by a couple of japanese researchers. This fire alarm was not like normal ones. Instead of ringing, it sprayed an infusion of wasabi into the air. Who could possible want a fire alarm that sprays you with wasabi. Isn't it bad enough being inside a burning building, and now they've invented a fire alarm and burns you from the inside too ?
This product was marketed to the deaf, which to me suggested a new horror was being inflicted on the disabled. I suggested that it would be useful for clearing out rooms in a night club when the music was too loud. Because I don't like nightclubs or the people who use them. So as we talked, Marc mentioned that the two IgNobel prize winners were coming into the country to exhibit their invention, and would I like to come along and discuss my ideas with them.
So that was how I ended up at the Science Museum to meet the inventors of the fire alarm. To my surprise Dr Makoto Imai was a friendly psychiatrist from Sapporo had helped test out the fire alarm, and his somewhat more subdued colleague, Hideako Gotou were not the vindicitive pranksters I had hoped for expected.
They had brought with them their new invention. It was quite simply a fire alarm with a wire attaching it to one of those automatic air fresheners you see in more upmarket public toilets. We were shown into the science museum, which was planning to exhibit the fire alarm. Marc and Steve Colgan  (of colganology) and I were treated to an enthusiastic tour of the museum by former New Scientist editor Roger Highfield. He had taken to the new role with aplomb, positively bouncing with excitement about all of the new exhibits and events happening at the museum.
After this, we ended up taking the inventors to the Knightsbridge fire station for a photo op.
Eventually a Tom Whipple, a journalist from the Times arrived, and displayed true dedication to his profession by making Dr Imai demonstrate the power of the alarm directly.

Immediately after he had finished dousing the choking journalist with wasabi spray, the inventor wryly noted that "This is a misuse of this system".
Whilst the effects are dramatic, and painful, the recovery was rapid.  Tom had to get quite close to the spray to get the worst effects. I was told this system would be mounted in such a way as to avoid situations where users get blasted in the face as demonstrated above.
Since the inventors were only going to be in London for a day, Marc had offered to show them around some of the best tourist attractions. As the Photo Op was drawing to a close, Marc said that he was taking the Inventors to meet Terry Jones at Centre Point, and whether Steve and I would like to come along. Whilst I still had a lot of writing to do for my thesis, I was not going to let it get in the way of meeting one of the Pythons.
So we ended up in a restaurant in one of the tallest buildings in the centre of london. If the day hadn't been so foggy, I would have been able to see my house from it. And so we sat down to dinner with our esteemed host and his wife. Later that day I would go home and be quizzed about the whole experience by my flatmates. They would ask whether he had eaten waffffer thin mints and look eachother knowingly as if this was a reference I should get.  I was spending too much time trying talking to Dr Imai, trying to decipher his motives for creating a wasabi spraying alarm.
  I asked him exactly how did this idea came into being?
 The original idea for the alarm came from the author Karin Matsumori. She had lost her hearing during her time at school, and had intially pitched the idea of an odour based alarm system to the perfume company Seems Inc.
At this point, Dr Imai noticed that I was feverishly writing all of this down on my arm. I had left the house without my note pad. So I had been writing notes on my hand since the museum. By the time we had reached the restaurant, my arm had begun to turn blue.
 Noticing this, He produced a business card, and wrote the pertinent details in neat handwriting. I asked him why the focus of his alarm system was on odour, rather than say, flashing lights.
There were a variety of problems with visual systems. What if the lighting system was not visible from wherever the person was?  And the most pressing concern was how to get someone to wake up quickly in the event of fire.
Conventional Fire alarms rely on triggering the startle reflex. When a human hears a loud unexpected noise, this reflex kicks into action to make you alert to possible danger. It can wake you up out of a deep sleep, and help you escape a fire. To demonstrate the startle response, watch this with the sound off, and then with the sound turned right up.



stereo skifcha from xgabberx on Vimeo.


So visual cues just don't have the same impact. So the question is whether the addition of an olfactory cue would make this type of alarm more effective.But this reflex is based solely on sound. A deaf person cannot react to these cues, so they would not be awakened. So how could they get a fire alarm for the deaf that could wake them out of a deep sleep. The solution was to use a different sense altogether. The sense of smell.
 Seems Inc tried out a number of different fragrances, such as the smell of dirty old socks, and others to see what would work. At some point, they contacted Dr Imai and asked him to conduct a trial with wasabi to see if it could wake people up.
Then  it occurred to me that since Dr Imai was a clinical psychiatrist, there was one key question that I needed to ask. What has this research told him about the brain?
He told me that the way the brain processes the smell of wasabi is quite different to how it treats most other smells. Most of the things you smell are processed by an area of your brain called the olfactory bulb which cuddles up against the back of your nose. When sensory neurones detect smells, they relay this information to the bulb, which can interpret these signals and relay this information to the rest of the brain. Pretty much everything that you can smell goes through this region. However, there is a problem.When you sleep, the olfactory system becomes dormant as well.  This may have been a problem for the inventors of the odour alarm.
But there are certain chemicals which don't limit themselves to using the olfactory system. For instance, when you fry chillis you will no doubt notice that the smell stings the nostrils somewhat. When cutting onions, your eyes will often betray you and start to weep. These are examples of smells which activate pain receptors in mucus membranes in the eyes. When Dr Imai took electro encephalogram readings of the brains of volunteers exposed to wasabi, he noticed this manifest as trigeminal nerve activation.
The trigeminal nerve is not the most famous of the cranial nerves, but it is important. It controls the muscles around the face and mouth, and processes pain in these areas. This is why you get a stinging sensation in addition to flavour when you eat spicy food.
If you happen to be ill, and are bunged up with a stuffy nose, whilst most of the sensory neurones associated with olfaction get knocked out, the trigeminal system is still in working condition. Most importantly, the trigeminal system doesn't go to sleep when you do.  So odours that can have an effect on this system will be able to wake you up from a sleep.
As I noted earlier there are a number of different odours which can activate this system, to different extents.  One viable candidate was capsaicin, the primary component of pepper spray. So why aren't we talking about an alarm that pepper sprays you ? In a word, boiling points.
Capsaicin has a higher boiling point than the odorant in Wasabi. This basically means that unless the fire was already too hot to survive, the fire alarm would have to physically squirt you with the liquid. If you are out of its range, it is pretty much useless.
 The chemical that gives wasabi it's smell however has quite a low boiling point, and exists as a gas. That is why when you have wasabi, it hits you in the nose, whereas a chilli exerts most of its fire in the mouth.
I asked whether this odour could travel faster than say the smell of smoke, and whether it would wake people up before the fire had gotten out of control. The solution here would be to have multiple odour dispensers in a house linked to a smoke detector system, so that no matter where you were, the smell of wasabi would reach you before the smell of smoke.
Is it possible to get used to the smell ? Hypothetically it's possible, if unlikely. Because of the way it acts to elicit pain, it would be harder for people to get used to its smell, in the same way that you can get used to the smell of a fart after a while. However, it's your olfactory system that controls how you adapt to smells, and is the reason why people are mostly unaware of their own body odour. However, the pain sensing system does turn itself off in the same way. However, if people eat enough wasabi on a regular basis , it is possible for them to become less sensitised to the stinging sensation. Of course the only way to test whether this were true would be to find wasabi eating champions, test whether they need more spray to wake them up.
Speaking of which, it turns out that there is someone working on an alarm clock that will sprays wasabi. That's something to look forward to.
But despite my initial skepticism about the practical uses of the wasabi fire alarm, I was slowly won over. These weren't just a pari of eccentric inventors who had decided to add another terror to being trapped in a burning building. They had identified a specific safety concern for the deaf. And to solve this problem, they had come up unique and well thought out solution to this problem.  In spite of myself, I was surprised. While their research had made me laugh, and it was now getting me to think. What else should I have expected from IgNobel prize winners ?

In which I attempt to review "The Psychopath Test"

When I first saw him, he was in the queue to see The Infinite Monkey Cage (Prof Brian Cox's Radio show)  at the Cheltenham science festival. I noticed him immediately, in the queue, carrying a laptop under his arm.
In the cluttered teenage bedroom that is my brain, I tried to work out where I recognised him from.  He wasn't my year 7 biology teacher, although they look strangely similar. Then it clicked. After 10 whole seconds of staring at him, and him smiling back.
 But at this point it was irrelevant. If I stared for a second longer, I'm pretty sure I would look like a gormless psychopath. I didn't want to offend one of my favourite scientists, so I peeled off quickly, trying not to be more of an embarrassment than I already was.
I spent all of 5 minutes wondering what I would have said to him, and cursing myself for not being quick or bold enough to start a conversation. But at ChelSci there really isn't much time to dwell on things like that, and soon I was off to the next talk. I probably wouldn't get another chance to meet him, so it was best not to dwell.
However, after one of the lectures I decided to get some reading material for the 3 hour journey back to London from Cheltenham. Luckily, they had opened up a Waterstones at the science festival, so I could go in and get a copy of a book that I'd heard a lot of good publicity about.
And right by the entrance, I saw the man I had accidentally glared at earlier.

 PZ myers was in waterstones, peering at a shelf of books. For those of you who don't know, PZ is probably the best blogger still remaining at scienceblogs.com and an outspoken proponent for atheism.
And now was my chance to have a conversation with him, a golden opportunity, although probably not as good as when he was bored waiting in a queue. But still, I'll take what I could. I wouldn't squander this opportunity like I had with Richard Dawkins.
When I was a lowly undergraduate in my first year of study, there was an interesting event happening at the museum adjacent to my campus. There was a discussion over the full extent of evolution in our daily lives, which I thought would be fascinating. I tried to get my friends to go, but they didn't really go for it.
At the end of the discussion, I bumped into Richard Dawkins whilst he was waiting for his cab.  He had been one of the speakers, and had talked a fair bit about stuff from his book, the extended phenotype. However, at this point in time, I had little or no idea who Sir Richard Dawkins was. All I knew was that one of his books was listed on the syllabus (the selfish gene) and that he was an inspiring speaker. I knew he was an important person, but i didn't quite grasp why. It was because of this that I had a conversation with Sir Richard Dawkins about.... the english weather.
when I got back to halls, and mentioned this, I was met with uproar and hand wringing.  firstly, how come I didn't tell them that Richard Dawkins was part of this talk, and secondly how I wasted an opportunity to talk to him.
But this time would be oh so different. and it was, I knew exactly who PZ myers was, and I'm sure I would have something interesting to talk with him about. Inside my brain, a little homunculus was putting together all of the folders marked "pharyngula" together with an aim to put everything together for a conversation.
"Hi are you PZ myers? "
"yes"
"I read your blog"
"oh, and who are you?" he said raising an inquisitive eyebrow. The tiny homunculus in my brain frantically attempts to find intelligent responses, but defaulted to the truth
"[--insert name here--]" there was a silence "I am a PhD student studying infection" i didn't know what that information contributed, except another short pause, which I dutifully filled with more words. The homunculus pressed the stream of consciousness emergency button, which is always a tricky manoeuvre.
"I'm not sure the right way to introduce myself, or whether i should define myself by my qualifications"
"oh, don't worry about that"
Great, now the initial awkwardness is out the way , conversation can start. The homunculus proudly opens the "pharyngula" folder of conversation topics. Funny, I thought there would be more stuff in here. Ah, PZ is an american. My prejudices tell me that americans don't often leave america. let's go with that.
"oh, I didn't expect to see you in england"
"Oh well, I've been doing talks in glasgow and other places. I'm just taking some time off and enjoying the sites"
My internal homunculus realises that almost all of the pharyngula facts strewn over then floor of the office of my brain. "Stall for time whilst I get these together," it would have told me if it existed.
"Oh, did you catch  the Infinite monkey Cage" I said, wryly accessing my short term memory.
"Oh yes" PZ replied "a little too much physics for my liking, not enough biology"
"Well" I improvised " Biology is the language of love "
Jesus, where did I get that corny line from ? Was I coming on to him?  I definitely didn't want to come on to him. I didn't want to frighten the old gent.
"oh" PZ responded " I never thought about it like that"
"oh, and it's responsible for hate and other emotions "
Well on the bright side he definitely knew I wasn't coming on to him. On the downside I was failing to conceal my lunacy.
"Oh, well I'd better get back"
"Oh yes, of course" Thank god. Who knows what bullshit I'd've said next.
"Nice meeting you" he said
"you too, and thank you for blogging"
To which he smiled and gave a polite reply, before taking his place in front of the books. Perhaps I should have opened with that, but never mind, the moment had passed.
I walked off glad the pressure of the conversation was over. I was about to walk out, but then I remembered that I still needed to get that book.  It was the psychopath test by Jon Ronson. He was speaking later in the conference, and I had read a bit of the publicity spiel for it, and it seemed like it would be a good read. I turned back and saw that it was on the very same shelf PZ was looking at.  Having already said my goodbyes , I didn't want to invading his personal space once again, or worse get into another painful conversation.
 I could have waited until he left. But wouldn't that be even more suspicious, wringing my hands and glaring just on the periphery of his vision ? I'd probably get arrested.
 Instead I decided to go past and grab the book as quickly as I could hopefully without him noticing. In my mind I was a book grabbing ninja, but in reality I was the twat who barged past PZ myers to get a book. My escape may not have been graceful, or cunning but it was hasty.

And this was how I ended up with a copy of The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. In retrospect, my odd behaviour around PZ myers left me in the perfect state of mind to read this book, for it was about how craziness, ranging form the mild to the severe, affects each of us and how it affects society on a larger scale.
It was one of those books that I simply could not put down.  It begins with a simple story of the author investigating the erratic behaviour of one individual, and how that behaviour affected a number of different people in interesting ways. From there, he diligently investigates people with personality disorders, and how the treatment and diagnoses of these individuals have affected us.
Through his research, he met an individual who faked madness to avoid prison, and ended up indefinitely detained in broadmoor. Funnily enough, most of his doctors knew he faked psychosis, but determined that this was a symptom of psychopathy. And through this story we enter the strange kafkaesque world of the madness industry.
It was at this point in reading the book on the way from London to cheltenham that I finally give in. You see, a large part of the time I spent reading this book on the train, a loud mob of cricket fans have sat next to me in the carriage. In particular, a very inebriated individual whom I would come to know as "Nobby" sat down next to me, with a half pint still in his hand. From his red features and slurred speech, I presumed that this was not his first one. The train guard had noticed that Nobby was carrying a beer on public transport, but wisely didn't harass him about it when he wasn't making a fuss. In fact, none of these events were enough to tear me away from the book. The fascinating story of Emmanuel "toto" constant, a Haitian mass murderer inexplicably living with his mother in a New York suburb verged on the unbelievable.
However, for around half an hour, "Nobby" had been loudly announcing to the train carriage that he needed to go take a piss. He went to the train loos, and found that all of them were locked. Still I read the book.
Nobby then started complaining that he'd piss himself, and he needed a bottle. It was when one of his friends suggested that he should take this opportunity to"top up his pint" that I cracked up. And that was how I got into a conversation with "Nobby".
admittedly, all I could really get out of him was how incredibly desperate he was for the loo, and how he couldn't believe that not only both the loos were occupied, but that they were occupied for so long. He was right not to, so it transpired. The train guard eventually noted the mans distress, and unlocked the lavatories. The were empty all of this time.
Apparently, the policy of british rail is to lock all lavatories on some local journeys to stop vandals from destroying them. And that was why Nobby nearly pissed himself.  And it was why, a notably more relieved nobby, was still furious with the train guard.  The train guard to his credit took the verbal abuse with good humour, and did his best to not inflame the situation.
Eventually nobby cools down a bit, and notices that I'm reading a book. I say that it's about madness. He looks straight at where I presume he thought my face was,  winked blearily and said "well, everyones a bit mad. I'm mad. I'm definitely mad, but I guess you've noticed that. Everyone's a bit mad"
Which is funnily enough, one of the conclusions you can take from the psychopath test. In the book, the author, Jon Ronson learns the art of diagnosing psychopaths. And he meets a number of characters, from a ruthless corporate executive, to an overly rude concierge, each of whom are described on the psychopathic spectrum. He demonstrates the old adage that a hammer wielder sees a world made of nails. Once armed with the "psychopath test" he sees madness everywhere. And so will you.

The point is that when you have these tests, one tends to extrapolate from the most extreme bits of behaviour. Nobby was not a lunatic, despite behaving like one. In this extreme situation, where he was both too drunk to stand, and suffering from a strained bladder, and surrounded by equally drunk (if more restrained) friends, he behaved like an impulsive mad man. But I am only observing him at his most extreme edge. I have no idea what he's like the rest of the time, so I can't make a solid diagnosis based on this.

Having finished this book , I went into a joint session on the human mind, with Richard Wiseman and Jon Ronson. Anyway, it was nearing the end of the question and answer session that a distressed lady came up to the microphone. She had not read the book, but had read in various reviews that it took a light hearted and comical view of mental disorders. Having suffered from mental disorders herself, she was not happy with what she saw as the trivialisation of these diseases.
It was for this reason I hung out at waterstones afterwards, so that if she turned up to attack him, I'd at least get a good view.
Whilst I was waiting for this event to occur (It didn't) I thought a bit more about her statement. Evidently, it was never the authors intention to trivialise mental disease. He references cases of people who genuinely suffered terribly from psychiatric disorders, and how doctors struggled to find ways to "cure" them. But this book isn't just about psychopaths, and those who we regard as mad. It is how we respond to madness in the modern era, and how this response affects us and our society as a whole.

What I'm saying is that I highly recommend that people read this book. In fact I would recommend you read it as I did, fumbling through a conversation with a personal idol, and then whilst absently consoling a drunken yob whose only real desire was a working lavatory.