Bikini-clad baristas arrested for serving more than coffee

By Jonathan Kaminsky

OLYMPIA, Washington | Thu Oct 31, 2013 7:51pm EDT

OLYMPIA, Washington (Reuters) - Two female workers at a bikini-themed coffee stand near Seattle have been charged with providing customers nude, striptease-style dances in full view of passersby, authorities said on Thursday.

The women, aged 20 and 21, both employees at the Hillbilly Hotties coffee stand in Everett, were arrested on Wednesday and charged with violating the city's adult entertainment laws, said Everett police spokesman officer Aaron Snell.

A third woman worker at the stand, age 33, was arrested and charged with lewd conduct in connection with a case from June at a separate nearby coffee stand in which police said workers were alleged to have performed sex acts on customers. The nature of the accusation against her was not immediately clear.

All the charges are misdemeanors, which carry a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. Bail for each was set at $500.

Police began investigating the coffee stand after receiving complaints that the women working there were exposing themselves for customers as they sat in their cars, Snell said.

"It's right on the main drag and anybody walking by can pretty much see it," Snell said. "That's probably why we were getting complaints."

Snell said the business itself was not facing any charges. The stand's Facebook page declared it open for business shortly after the raid. Its owner, Jovanna Edge, was not immediately available for comment.

The same coffee stand was robbed at gunpoint last month by a 12-year-old boy who was on a bike and fled with about $15 from the tip jar.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Bob Burgdorfer)

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A Possible Answer For Protection Against Chemical / Biological Agents, Fuel Leaks, And Coffee Stains

Main Category: Bio-terrorism / Terrorism
Also Included In: Medical Devices / Diagnostics
Article Date: 05 Feb 2013 - 0:00 PST Current ratings for:
A Possible Answer For Protection Against Chemical / Biological Agents, Fuel Leaks, And Coffee Stains

A recent discovery funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) may very well lead to a process that not only benefits every uniformed service member of the Department of Defense, but everyone else as well: protection from Chemical/Biological agents, to self-cleaning apparel, to effortless thermal management, to fuel purification as well as enhanced control of leaks - especially oil and fuels.

In 2006, AFOSR Program Manager Dr. Charles Lee funded Professor Gareth McKinley at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exploring nanocomposite technology for Defense applications. Anish Tuteja, an MIT doctoral student at the time, was exploiting the unusual surface properties of a nanocomposite with fluorinated nanoparticles, to create a superoleophobic surface. After graduation, Tuteja moved to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he is currently an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, specializing in chemical engineering and macromolecular science and engineering. He was awarded a Young Investigator Program grant from AFOSR in 2011, and continued to conduct the same line of research begun at MIT. His team also included doctoral student Shuaijun Pan and postdoctoral researcher Arun Kota, as well as collaboration with Dr. Joseph Mabry, from the Rocket Propulsion Division of the Air Force Research Laboratory, at Edwards AFB, California.

In their latest paper, "Superomniphobic Surfaces for Effective Chemical Shielding," in the current issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Tuteja and his team have demonstrated surfaces that effectively perform as "chemical shields against virtually all liquids."

To make this possible, surfaces are prepared using a nanoscale coating that is approximately 95 percent air, which in turn, repels liquids of any material in its class, causing them to literally bounce off the treated surface. The surfaces "possess hierarchical scales of re-entrant texture that significantly reduce the solid - liquid contact area." It all comes down to controlling how much contact the liquid ultimately has with the treated surface. To accomplish that the researchers apply the nanoscale coating using a process called electrospinning - using an electric charge to create fine particles of solid derived from a liquid solution.

The coating is a mixture of cross-linked "polydimethylsiloxane," or PDMS, and liquid-resisting nanoscale cubes developed by the Air Force that contain carbon, fluorine, silicon and oxygen. While the material's chemistry is important, so is its texture, because it hugs the pore structure of whatever surface it is applied to, and creates a fine web of air pockets within those pores, so any liquid that comes in contact with the coating is barely touching a solid surface.

According to Dr. Tuteja, when an untreated surface and a liquid get in close proximity, "they imbue a small positive or negative charge on each other, and as soon as the liquid comes in contact with the solid surface, it will start to spread... we've drastically reduced the interaction between the surface and the droplet." By effectively eliminating the contact between the treated surface and the liquid, there is almost no incentive for the liquid to spread, as such, the droplets stay intact, interacting only with molecules of themselves, and maintaining their spherical shape.

The research team has tested more than 100 liquids and found only two that were able to penetrate the coating: they were both chlorofluorocarbons - chemicals used in refrigerators and air conditioners. In Tuteja's lab demonstrations the surface repelled coffee, soy sauce and vegetable oil, as well as toxic hydrochloric and sulfuric acids, and the surfaces are also resistant to gasoline and various alcohols.

This program is of particular interest to the Air Force and the Department of Defense, as it can be useful for self-cleaning surfaces (in particular, integral breathable protective Chemical/Biological Warfare defense in uniform clothing and sensor systems), improvement of thermal management efficiency in phase change cooling systems, fuel purification and the control of oil and fuel leakages in rockets and airplanes. Not to mention, protection against the everyday coffee spill.

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