Inventor taking on toiletries in prisons

WASHINGTON - Long-standing challenge: how to keep prison inmates from turning their toothbrushes and shaving razors into weapons.

Unlikely man taking it on: Paul Biermann, an inventor at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, whose work to date has tended more toward fields such as biomechanics and outer space. Now, he proposes toothbrushes and shaving razors with altered molecular properties.

It is no small problem. Inmates extract blades from razors, then wedge them into the melted ends of toothbrushes to make slashers. They sharpen the ends of toothbrushes into small daggers by rubbing them against concrete.