Device 'cancels out the sound of the dentist's drill'

10 January 2011 Last updated at 02:14 GMT By Dominic Hughes Health correspondent, BBC News

Some people find the sound of a dentist's drill distressing

An invention which cancels out the noise of a dentist's drill could help people overcome their fear of a check-up, researchers say.

For many, the sound of the drill is a big cause of anxiety when it comes to visiting the dentist.

This new device allows patients to listen to music on an MP3 player, while the sound of the drill is blanked out.

Patients are, though, still able to hear the dentist's voice because not all sounds are filtered out.

The device is similar to noise cancelling headphones.

It works by turning the sounds of the dental consulting room into a digital signal.

A special chip called a digital signal processor analyses the incoming sound from microphones placed close to the dental drill.

It produces an inverted sound wave to cancel out unwanted noise in the headphone signal.

It also uses "adaptive filtering" technology, where electronic filters lock onto sound waves and remove them, even if the wave's amplitude and frequency change as the drill is being used.

But this also allows other noises like the dentist's voice to come though.

So a patient could simply plug the device into their MP3 player and then, via their headphones, listen to their own music without being disturbed by the noise of the drill but still be able to hear the dentist.

'No extra cost'

Developed by experts at King's College London, Brunel University and London South Bank University, it was originally the idea of Professor Brian Millar of King's Dental Institute.

“Start Quote

It's such a distinctive sound, the pitch is probably recognised around the globe”

End Quote Dr Mark Atherton Brunel University

He was inspired initially by the efforts of car-maker Lotus who were trying to develop a system that removed unpleasant road noise, while still allowing drivers to hear emergency sirens.

After more than 10 years of research and collaboration with engineers, Professor Millar and his team have developed a prototype.

"Many people are put off going to the dentist because of anxiety associated with the noise of the dentist's drill, but this device has the potential to make fear of the drill a thing of the past.

"The beauty of this gadget is that it would be fairly cost-effective for dentists to buy, and any patient with an MP3 player would be able to benefit from it, at no extra cost."

Dr Mark Atherton of Brunel University's School of Engineering and Design said allowing the patient to still hear the dentist was a key theme throughout the project.

The new device could alleviate fear for patients

"You can't switch the patient off. They want to have a conversation with the dentist, so they can't just put a pair of ear-muffs on, they still want to hear a voice."

But Dr Atherton said the designers found that just reducing the noise of the drill, by putting on ear defenders for example, was not enough.

"The dental drill noise is so distinctive the brain still recognises it and people still hear it, such is the anxiety.

"It's such a distinctive sound, the pitch is probably recognised around the globe. Most people have heard it and, sadly for some, they dread it."

The team are now looking for investors to make the device commercially available.

Professor Millar said it has the potential to help people overcome their fear.

"What we need now is an investor to develop the product further, to enable us to bring this device to as many dental surgeries as possible, and help people whose fear of visiting the dentist stops them from seeking the oral healthcare they need."

Bangladesh stock market fall: Clashes hit Dhaka

10 January 2011 Last updated at 12:13 GMT

Ordinary Bangladeshis have been tempted to invest by promises of high returns

Bangladeshi police have used tear gas and water cannon against angry investors after the stock market incurred huge losses.

Trading on the Dhaka Stock Exchange index was halted after it fell by 660 points, or 9.25%, in less than an hour.

It was the biggest one-day fall in its 55-year history.

It is estimated that over three million people - many of them small-scale individual investors - have lost money because of the plunging share prices.

The benchmark index had climbed by 80% in 2010 but has lost more than 27% since early December.

Investors and police also clashed last month.

Monday's protest followed losses of about 6.7% in Sunday trading.

Trading was also halted on the country's other main index, the Chittagong Stock Exchange.

Rumours and panic

Police say that they are now firmly in control of Dhaka's business district and have closed roads leading to the stock exchange.

Earlier, officers baton-charged about 5,000 investors to clear them from the area.

Investors were not pleased to find that shares can go down as well as up

They had gathered to protest against the closing of the exchange after the record fall. Vehicles were vandalised and bonfires were lit at traffic intersections.

"They started vandalising government property, which forced us to use batons against them," police inspector Azizul Haq told the AFP news agency.

One of the protesters, Mukul Ahmed, said he had lost $3,000 (£1,932) in the market over the last three weeks.

There was also violence in the port city of Chittagong - which has its own exchange.

The government regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, held an emergency meeting on Monday with merchant bankers and institutional stockbrokers to discuss saving the market from further falls.

The rising value of the stocks in recent years has attracted millions of investors in Bangladesh.

Shares have become a popular investment for ordinary people, often providing higher returns than bank deposits and savings.

The BBC's Mark Dummett says that Bangladesh might be one of Asia's poorest countries, but its two stock markets have soared in recent years on the rising value of its mobile telephone companies and other firms.

But over the past few weeks more and more investors have been selling up, amid rumours that large institutional investors had pulled their money out after making large profits.

In recent weeks, regulators have taken measures to limit the proportion of deposits that banks can invest into the stock market - after concerns that shares were over-valued.

This move forced big institutional investors to withdraw from the market, triggering panic among individual investors.

Flash floods hit Toowoomba in Queensland, Australia

10 January 2011 Last updated at 14:13 GMT

Flash floods have hit Queensland, killing at least four people with several more missing, as heavy rains continue to pound the Australian state.

A massive deluge overwhelmed Toowoomba, a city west of the state capital Brisbane, without warning.

Cars were swept away by the torrent of water.

State Premier Anna Bligh called the flash floods Queensland's "darkest hour" since the flood crisis began.

"The event that started in Toowoomba can only be described as a complete freak of nature, an extraordinary deluge that almost came out of nowhere," the Australian Broadcasting Corporation quoted her as saying.

"What we have here in Queensland tonight is a very grim and desperate situation."

Helicopters have joined the rescue operation to reach those trapped in cars and on the roofs of buildings.

The tropical storms began in November, triggering the worst flooding in the state in decades. Some 200,000 people have been affected across Queensland.

The flooding has been so widespread that while some communities are still bracing themselves for the worst, in others the clean-up is well under way.

The forecast is for more rain to come, and there are reports of flooding in neighbouring New South Wales.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has warned that the recovery will take a long time.

'No warning'

Police said a woman and child died in Toowoomba when their car was swept away, and a man and a boy died after being swept from their house.

Several more people remain unaccounted for.

Toowoomba's mayor described the scale of the floods as "unbelievable'' and said the city was in shock.

Residents said the flash floods had devastated the town

Mayor Peter Taylor said: ''It's a real disaster scene where I'm standing at the moment in Russell Street, Toowoomba. There's furniture and furnishings and it's just blown shops away.

''We have a railway line about 60 or 70m (230ft) suspended in mid-air and two cars that are virtually unrecognisable that have floated and smashed into the rail.''

Queensland Deputy Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said there had been many calls from people needing to be rescued and that emergency crews were struggling to cope.

"We've had multiple calls requesting urgent assistance from people caught in vehicles, caught on the street, caught in flood ways," he said.

"It is an evolving and obviously quite desperate situation for them," he said. "There has been no warning of this event."

This is some of the most violent and frightening flooding that Queensland has yet witnessed, says the BBC's correspondent in Australia, Nick Bryant.

One eyewitness said vehicles were being swept down streets.

"One car we did see come down with its lights on, it ended up crashing into one of the power poles and people were in it for quite a while before they were rescued," Deanna Ward told state broadcaster ABC.

Heavy rain has lashed the region for the last 36 hours, with 16cm (6in) falling in just one hour. Most of the rainwater hit an already saturated catchment.

The enduring floods in Queensland have washed away roads and railways, destroyed crops and brought the coal industry to a near standstill.

The state premier has estimated that the price of rebuilding homes, businesses and infrastructure, coupled with economic losses, could exceed A$5bn (£3bn).

German cities threatened by flooding after winter thaw

10 January 2011 Last updated at 11:36 GMT

A boat was the only form of transport in Zell in southern Germany

Rivers in many parts of Germany have burst their banks, flooding several cities, because of melting winter snow.

In the west, the Rhine has overflowed in Bonn and Cologne and levels are set to peak in Koblenz where it meets the River Mosel.

Firefighters are searching for a man whose car was found abandoned in the central state of Thuringia beside the swollen River Unstrut.

The body of a kayaker was pulled from the River Enz in the south.

Experts are blaming the high river levels on the record amounts of snow that fell in December and the sharp rise in temperatures that has brought about a fast thaw.

Up to 30 villages in the wine-growing area south of Koblenz on the River Mosel have been flooded but the centre of attention appears to be Koblenz itself, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine at Deutsches Eck.

Some low-lying areas of Koblenz are already under water and officials expect the waters to reach 7.7m (25ft) on Monday afternoon. The normal level is around 2.4m, reports say.

In Cologne, river levels are not expected to reach their peak until Tuesday, although two districts have already been affected.

Commercial shipping has been banned for a long stretch of the Rhine, south of Cologne towards Bingen.

In eastern Germany, the River Oder's levels have begun receding but the authorities are still concerned about the Elbe whose tributaries are still said to be rising, reports say.

Iran holds 'Israel-linked spies behind nuclear killing'

10 January 2011 Last updated at 12:51 GMT

Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed in a bomb blast a year ago as he left his home

The Iranian authorities have arrested a "network of spies" which they say was behind the assassination of a nuclear scientist a year ago, state TV reports.

In a brief statement, the authorities said the network was linked to Israel's Mossad secret service.

Iran blamed US and Israeli agents for the killing at the time.

Separately, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said international sanctions have slowed Iran's progress towards developing nuclear weapons.

Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a 50-year-old university lecturer at Tehran University, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb on 12 January 2010 as he left his home in Tehran.

Iran's intelligence ministry said Mossad had used bases in certain European and non-European countries as well as Iran's neighbouring states for the purpose of the assassination, as well as other activities, Fars news agency reported.

The ministry said months of complicated measures and access to sources in the Israeli regime led to the finding of "very important and sensitive" information about Mossad spy teams, which inflicted heavy damage on Israel's information and security structures, Fars reported.

Iran has blamed the intelligence services of Israel, the US and the UK over bomb attacks against two top nuclear scientists in November last year, Majid Shahriari, who died, and Fereydoon Abbasi Davani, another top nuclear expert who was wounded in a similar attack.

At the time, Iran's state media said Mr Mohammadi had been assassinated by counter-revolutionaries, Zionists and agents of the "global arrogance".

Washington later dismissed the accusation as "absurd".

Although described by the Iranian media as a nuclear scientist, scientists in the UK and the US said, from his substantial body of published research, Mr Mohammadi was unlikely to have been working on Iran's nuclear programme.

They said his expertise was in another field of physics altogether - quantum mechanics.

Sanctions delay

Speaking in Abu Dhabi as part of a tour of the Gulf, Mrs Clinton said sanctions had made it much more difficult for Tehran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

She said Tehran had also been facing technical problems, but she did not get drawn into discussing a timeline.

She called for international pressure to be maintained, and urged caution about a recent Israeli government assessment that Iran was still three years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon.

It is the first time the Obama administration has so openly and publicly claimed that Iran's nuclear programme is facing difficulties, says BBC state department correspondent Kim Ghattas, who is travelling with Mrs Clinton.

Mrs Clinton is in the Gulf partly to urge Washington's allies in the region not to let up the pressure on the Iranian leadership and to continue enforcing UN sanctions, our correspondent adds.

There has been much controversy over Iran's nuclear activities.

Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful energy purposes, but the US and other Western nations suspect it of seeking to build nuclear weapons.

Saudi woman jailed for abusing Indonesian maid Sumiati

10 January 2011 Last updated at 13:57 GMT

Reports of Ms Sumiati's injuries sparked international outrage

A court in the Saudi city of Medina has sentenced a woman to three years in jail for the severe physical abuse of her Indonesian maid.

Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa, 23, was admitted to hospital in November with broken bones and burns to her face and body.

The case received worldwide attention, and prompted the Indonesian president to demand justice for her "torture".

But local media say the alleged abuser maintains she is innocent.

Scissors

The employer was convicted under a new royal decree against human trafficking, al-Watan newspaper reported.

It quoted a lawyer for the Indonesian consulate, Abdulrahman al-Muhamadi, as saying he would appeal against the ruling in order to press for a tougher sentence.

The defendant's lawyer also said she would appeal against the sentence, reported Saudi Gazette.

Ms Sumiati is thought to have arrived in Saudi Arabia last July seeking work.

The woman for whom she found work as a maid was arrested after allegedly beating Ms Sumiati so severely she had broken bones and internal bleeding. She was accused of putting a hot iron to Ms Sumiati's head and stabbing and mutilating her with scissors.

“Start Quote

There's a greater awareness in cases with lots of media attention such as Sumiati's that they [Saudi authorities] need to do something. A very, very small but encouraging sign”

End Quote Christoph Wilcke Middle East researcher for Human Rights Watch

Ms Sumiati appeared in court last week to show the judge her scars.

Outrage

She has already undergone surgery but, according to the Indonesian consulate, will require another operation.

The case outraged rights groups, who said it demonstrated the lack of protection for millions of domestic workers - many of whom are south-east Asian migrants - in Saudi and other Gulf states.

A number of cases of abuse of migrant domestic workers have come to light in Saudi Arabia over recent years.

However, perpetrators have rarely faced punishment greater than a fine.

Christoph Wilcke, a senior Middle East researcher with Human Rights Watch, told the BBC this was the first jail sentence he had heard of in cases of abuse of migrant domestic workers, though there had been instances of pre-trial detention.

"My cautious assessment would be that there's a greater awareness in cases with lots of media attention such as Sumiati's that they [Saudi authorities] need to do something. A very, very small but encouraging sign."

But Mr Wilcke said he was reserving judgement on the fairness of the trial, as it had been concluded so quickly.

Mumtaz Qadri admits killing Governor Salman Taseer

10 January 2011 Last updated at 13:13 GMT

Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri has become a hero to many in Pakistan

The bodyguard accused of shooting Pakistani governor Salman Taseer has confessed in court to the killing.

Malik Mumtaz Hussein Qadri told the Anti-Terrorism Court in Rawalpindi that he had acted alone in the attack.

The hearing came as the Pope called for the repeal of Pakistan's blasphemy law; Mr Taseer's support for changes to the law was blamed for his assassination.

Meanwhile the killer's brother has told the BBC that his family had nothing to do with the murder.

"He never told us what he planned to do," Dilpazeer Awan told the BBC.

"It was his personal act, so I cannot comment on whether he did right or wrong."

Mr Awan, along with his father and four other brothers, was picked up by the police for interrogation soon after the governor's assassination. All have now been released.

"The police were mainly interested in finding out whether my brother was associated with any religious or political group. I told them none of our family has ever had any links with such organisations."

Mr Awan told police that his brother - who is known by his religious surname of Qadri - did have religious leanings and often attended religious gatherings.

After last Tuesday's assassination in Islamabad, Qadri said he had been angered by Mr Taseer's backing for proposed amendments to the blasphemy laws - under which a Christian woman faces the death sentence.

There has been speculation that other guards in the governor's security detail agreed with Qadri they would turn a blind eye to the attack.

Police have been investigating how he was able to empty two magazines of a sub-machine gun at the governor without being challenged by colleagues.

'Acts of injustice'

Qadri was whisked into court on Monday morning, a day earlier than scheduled, to prevent his supporters showing up, correspondents say. He said in a written statement he had acted alone.

At his first court appearance in Islamabad last week, he was showered with rose petals by sympathisers, including a number of lawyers.

The blasphemy law returned to the spotlight in November when Asia Bibi was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad. She denies the charge.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad

---

Mumtaz Qadri may have said in a confession that he acted alone in the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer. But 13 other police guards who were present with him on the day of the assassination remain in custody.

The case registered by the police against Qadri includes clauses that cover both murder and abetting murder.

The police guards are being held on suspicion of abetment as none of them attempted to stop Qadri killing Mr Taseer.

Two police officials who assigned Qadri to the governor's security detail, despite written warnings by a senior police official, are also in custody.

The police are also reported to be looking for two clerics who might have influenced Qadri's decision to kill the governor.

But investigators say they have not had any solid leads so far to suggest that Qadri received help from anyone.

Pope Benedict XVI - who has led calls for mercy to be shown to the mother of five - urged Pakistan on Monday to scrap the law, saying it was a pretext for "acts of injustice and violence".

"I once more encourage the leaders of that country to take the necessary steps to abrogate that law," he said in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Vatican, reports AFP news agency.

"The tragic murder of the governor of Punjab shows the urgent need to make progress in this direction."

Governor Taseer had angered hardline clerics by visiting Asia Bibi in jail, and by supporting proposed reforms to the legislation.

A private member's bill which seeks to remove the law's mandatory death sentence and lessen the likelihood of miscarriages of justice has provoked a wave of conservative fury.

In a news conference on Sunday evening, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani reiterated the government did not plan to amend the law.

But Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti said the blasphemy law should be amended to avoid its misuse.

Earlier that day 50,000 protesters marched in the southern city of Karachi against the proposed reforms.

The rally was attended by all major Muslim groups and sects in the city, including moderates and conservatives.

Many of the demonstrators held banners in support of Qadri.

Critics say the blasphemy law has been used to persecute minority faiths in Pakistan and is exploited by people with personal grudges.

Although no-one convicted under it has ever been executed, more than 30 accused have been killed by lynch mobs.