"What’s that smell? Electronic noses can sniff it out" by Andy Rosen Globe Staff August 25, 2018
Ammonia hits the nose with a caustic punch, a fitting warning from a gas that irritates the throat and sends the lungs gasping for air, but to Jan Schnorr, CEO of C2Sense, it smells like sweet opportunity.
Schnorr’s Cambridge startup makes a device that can sniff out ammonia and, potentially, nearly every other gas, even in tiny concentrations. One market targeted by the company is commercial customers including chicken farms, where ammonia from the birds’ waste can harm both animals and people, and workers’ noses are sometimes so damaged by the substance that they can no longer tell when the gas has reached dangerous levels.
C2Sense is one of a number of companies seeking to improve technology for detecting and identifying multiple scents, a field where sensors have traditionally been slow, unreliable, or prohibitively expensive.
Experts say the difficulty comes in part from the sheer complexity of our sense of smell, which is perhaps the least understood of the human senses.
When we inhale through our noses, we are using hundreds of receptors, each of which is sensitive to thousands of different compounds that help our brains understand what’s in the air nearby, but scientists have struggled to understand smell as well as they comprehend how our eyes absorb light or how our eardrums pick up vibrations.
Venture investors have put about $5.3 million into C2Sense, optimistic that it will be on the forefront of the use of software to quantify the factors associated with air quality and scent, creating what backer Reed Sturtevant described as “a whole new way to understand what’s happening in the physical environment.”
Sniff, sniff?
Sturtevant, general partner at The Engine, an MIT-linked venture firm that is an investor in C2Sense, said the technology has the potential to shepherd in technological changes as vast as those brought by the advent of digital photography.
Then it has its roots in the Defense Department or CIA.
The aromatic equivalents of Instagram, self-driving cars, and facial recognition are hard to imagine today, but in retrospect, Sturtevant said, they may seem obvious as “sensor technology becomes better, and cheaper, and easier to integrate into networks and software.”
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I wonder what they were smelling over on the town common, before the restaurant smells overrode it:
"Massachusetts woman sues Mario Batali, accuses him of sexually assaulting her in Boston" by Jaclyn Reiss Globe Staff August 23, 2018
A 28-year-old Massachusetts woman is suing celebrity chef Mario Batali, accusing him of forcibly kissing and groping her while the two were at a Boston restaurant in April 2017.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, alleges that when Natali Tene saw Batali in the restaurant she took a photo with her phone’s camera. Bataly is behind the massive Eataly complex in the Prudential Center and also cohosted ABC’S “The Chew” at Towne Stove and Spirits in the Back Bay.
Batali noticed Tene and invited her to take a selfie with him, but when she approached him, “Batali grabbed and kissed Ms. Tene’s face, rubbed her breasts, grabbed her buttocks, put his hands between her legs and groped her groin area, and kept forcefully squeezing her face into his as he kissed her repeatedly,” according to the complaint.
“Without asking her permission or giving her any warning, and without having received any indication that she had any sexual interest in him whatsoever, which she did not, Batali sexually assaulted her,” the complaint alleges. “Batali’s actions . . . were unwanted and disgusting, and made Ms. Tene feel shocked and highly uncomfortable.”
At least she didn't die.
Tene is seeking unknown damages “for the severe emotional distress she suffered,” including anxiety, self-doubt, and “a specific fear of being assaulted and/or touched in an inappropriate manner in public,” according to the complaint.
Tene’s lawyers, Eric Baum and Matthew Fogelman, called their client’s experience “a nightmare.”
Batali could not be reached for comment.
Batali, who had owned dozens of restaurants worldwide — including Eataly at the Pru and Babbo Pizzeria on Fan Pier — stepped away from his restaurant empire in December 2017 after several women lodged sexual misconduct allegations against him on the website Eater. The allegations in the Eater story revealed a pattern of alleged groping, sexual innuendo, and other inappropriate and aggressive behavior over the course of several decades. In a statement to Eater at the time, Batali said that “much of the behavior described does, in fact, match up with ways I have acted.”
It must be the aphrodisiacs in the food.
The lawsuit filed in Boston on Wednesday cites that report, as well as a “60 Minutes” segment that aired in May, in which several women who worked at a New York City restaurant frequented by Batali alleged that he tried to grope them.
"Asia Argento is not the #MeToo movement" by Jeneé Osterheldt Globe Staff August 21, 2018
Asia Argento is not the #MeToo movement.
The actress and director may have been among the first women to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, but the new scandal implicating her will not be the end of #MeToo and sexual assault survivors coming forward.
Not another charge dropped.
Argento has said Weinstein raped her in a hotel room when she was 21; Weinstein claimed his relationship with Argento was consensual. She was one of his many victims. Sixteen years later, she may have been a predator, too.
Not another charge dropped.
Argento has said Weinstein raped her in a hotel room when she was 21; Weinstein claimed his relationship with Argento was consensual. She was one of his many victims. Sixteen years later, she may have been a predator, too.
The New York Times reported Sunday that Argento allegedly sexually assaulted Jimmy Bennett, an actor and musician, in a Los Angeles hotel room. She was 37. He was barely 17 at the time. She’d known him since he was 7, when she played his mom in “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.”
Oooooh, bad age difference.
On Tuesday, Argento released a statement denying the assault and claiming her relationship with Bennett was platonic. She also said a $380,000 settlement with Bennett was an effort by late boyfriend and culinary culture legend Anthony Bourdain “to help Bennett economically” and “protect” the couple.
Oooooh, bad age difference.
On Tuesday, Argento released a statement denying the assault and claiming her relationship with Bennett was platonic. She also said a $380,000 settlement with Bennett was an effort by late boyfriend and culinary culture legend Anthony Bourdain “to help Bennett economically” and “protect” the couple.
We’re allowed to be outraged. We’re allowed to have questions. Bennett is allowed to never address it if he so chooses. And none of it hurts #MeToo.
We need to have these conversations. Because rape culture is anything but simple.
“People have this one-dimensional view of survivors, that they’re anointed and never do anything wrong,” says Gina Scaramella, executive director of Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. “But people are complex. Survivors are complex. There certainly is no causality between being a victim and being an offender. But being a survivor doesn’t preclude someone from being an offender. And Argento having offended against someone doesn’t mean her victimization is not victimization. One is not proof against the other.”
Go tell it to Kavanaugh.
Go tell it to Kavanaugh.
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Speaking of rape cultures::
"A former hockey coach at Masconomet Regional High School in Boxford is facing three counts of rape of a child and one count of indecent assault and battery for allegedly sexually assaulting a child between 2003 and 2005, a prosecutor said. Andrew Lecolst, 39, was indicted by an Essex County grand jury Wednesday, according to Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett’s office, which is prosecuting the case. Lecolst allegedly assaulted the child while the victim was between 13 and 15 years old, Blodgett’s office said in a statement. He is a Middleton firefighter but was not working for the town at the time of the alleged assaults. Lecolst is scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Essex Superior Court in Salem."
Poor boys:
"Worcester boy, 5, drowns while visiting family in Jamaica" by John Hilliard Globe Correspondent August 24, 2018
A 5-year-old boy from Worcester was one of the two people who drowned in a Jamaican river Tuesday when the raft they were traveling in overturned, according to Jamaican authorities.
Jace Jones and the raft’s operator, Llewellyn Reid, 65, were among the passengers who fell into the water when the raft struck an embankment along the Martha Brae River in Trelawny, in northwest Jamaica, G. Ingram, a spokesman for the Jamaica Constabulary Force, said in a phone interview.
Jones was on the raft with two siblings, who were able to make it to shore, he said, but Jones and Reid remained submerged.
“Those two individuals had more trouble coming back up,” Ingram said. “They never resurfaced.”
The constabulary force recovered their bodies Thursday and is investigating the deaths, he said.....
Globe dropped it because I never saw another report.
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One kid tried to save him:
"Three injured after teenage boy allegedly steals, crashes Coventry, R.I., ambulance" by John Hilliard Globe Correspondent August 24, 2018
Three people were injured after a teenage boy allegedly stole a parked Coventry, R.I., ambulance out of a fire station, dragged a firefighter trying to gain control of the vehicle, and crashed into a motorcyclist traveling on Route 117 Thursday evening, according to police.
The teenage boy, who was described as a special needs juvenile who suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism, is unlikely to face charges, said Coventry police Colonel John MacDonald in a statement Friday.
“For all the first responders involved in this incident, it brings into acute focus the challenges that parents, care givers, and children experience when dealing with autism and other disabilities. It also reminds us of the difficulties our officers and firefighters face when assessing and treating individuals who suffer from mental health disorders,” MacDonald said.
Looks like a good defense for the hockey coach. Kid is mentally ill.
On Thursday, Coventry officers were responding to a call shortly before 8 p.m. when they assisted the mother of the special needs boy.
Officers met the pair at the mother’s car, which was parked along Route 117, and they tried to calm the boy, who was described as “excited and unsettled,” MacDonald said in the statement.
Police took the woman and her son to Central Coventry Fire Station #7 so the boy could be evaluated.
In a video released by the police department Friday afternoon, the boy and his mother can be seen arriving at the fire station in a police cruiser, where the vehicle parked behind another cruiser.
Part of the video is blurred, but the boy can be seen running into the garage bay about 10 seconds after getting out of the cruiser. One officer can be seen walking after him, followed a few seconds later by a woman and two other officers.
The ambulance then drives out of the garage, striking the rear quarter of one of the police cruisers, and drives across Route 117.
Police said the teenager locked the driver’s door, and a Coventry firefighter, Scott Brown, tried to enter the vehicle through the passenger door. As the ambulance proceeded, Brown tried to hang on but fell from the side of the vehicle and rolled across the street.
A motorcycle traveling eastbound crashed into the ambulance and fell to the ground. The ambulance rolled down an embankment and into a wooded area directly in front of the fire station.
That's when my print copy ended the ride.
In the video, Scott can be seen getting up as police moved toward the crash scene. He fell to the ground but then crawled toward the injured motorcyclist.
In a separate video from the motorcyclist’s helmet camera, the ambulance rolls directly into the road and into the path of the motorcyclist, who crashed near the ambulance’s rear wheel.
Coventry’s police and fire departments jointly commended Brown for risking his life to try to stop the ambulance and for trying to aid the motorcyclist after the firefighter had been injured, MacDonald said.
Coventry first responders’ thoughts are with the mother and family of the teenager who are “struggling with the aftermath of this incident,” he said in the statement.....
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Kid just wanted to be a limo driver.
