Tag: LASERS

Good news, everyone! The future is finally here, and we'll soon leave bullets behind for a much sexier laser alternative, filled with "PEW PEW" and plenty of cat-shaped guns. The U.S. Navy successfully fired a high-energy laser at another boat, continuing its research into using lasers to blind or disable smaller vessels. The BBC has video but no sound, so you'll have to improvise the "BEYOO! ...

Scientists at the University of Utah led by researcher Richard Rabbitt, have found a way to stimulate inner ear cells with infrared laser light. Using low-powered optical signals, the researchers triggered the inner ear hair cells of an oyster toadfish to send signals to its brain, raising the possibility of using the technology to restore hearing to the deaf. Rabbitt believes the cells ...

It may have seemed like a novel idea just a year ago, but an effective and marketable mosquito-zapping laser fence could be on the horizon. Intellectual Ventures (IV) continues to develop and demonstrate its anti-malaria technology, which relies heavily on Nvidia's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). IV now hopes to raise awareness about the potential benefits and widespread applications of the GPU ...

Scientists have already discovered methods of instantly teleporting information between atoms, and ways of moving molecules using only light and lasers. Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) have expanded on those groundbreaking developments by recently transporting particles of a relatively massive size across unprecedented distances. ANU's teleportation enterprise ...

While FIFA will probably never embrace technology in the World Cup, some sporting events are warming up to its potential benefits. According to the BBC News, athletes competing in the pentathlon at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London will shoot laser guns rather than the traditional air pistols used in past games. The switch reduces cost, for one, since laser guns won't use ammunition or air ...

Thanks to technology like Google Earth, you can visit places with a few clicks and keystrokes. But Google Earth uses GPS to create 3-D maps of locations, which means you can't venture "inside" the structures to really get a feel for the space. That could soon change. According to a report by San Francisco's ABC News 7 (catch it after the break), professors and graduate students at the ...

Forget swallowing pills or being poked by a needle. According to ABC News, scientists at Georgia Tech University have developed a way to inject vaccines directly into cells by using a laser beam to blow holes into that most basic unit of life. In this technique, scientists place blackened carbon nanoparticles (called "soot") next to the cells in question, which are then blasted with infrared ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. The entire Switched team was too busy sitting face-first in front of the AC this weekend to attend Vice Magazine's and Intel's 'Creator's Project' exhibition -- a ...

How in the hell is this thing legal? We're a bit confused, because the Spyder III Pro Arctic Series laser pointer is marketed as a "home theater projector" and yet the lightsaber-shaped implement will also set your skin on fire. The manufacturer Wicked Lasers proudly boasts that the Spyder III is "the most dangerous laser ever created," and requires customers to sign a Class IV Laser Hazard ...

Albert Einstein first postulated the possibility of amplifying protons to create "masers" in 1917, but the theory wouldn't produce effective technology until the post-World War II period. The science of masers continued to evolve over the following decade, and, in 1958, Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow of Bell Labs published a seminal report that would spark a scientific revolution. The paper ...

For archaeologists, the days of trudging through dense jungle to map out ancient sites by hand could soon be over. The New York Times reports that husband and wife team Dr. Arlen F. Chase and Dr. Diane Z. Chase recently used an Airborne Laser Terrain Mapper to provide 3-D images of ancient Mayan ruins in Caracol, Belize. "This will revolutionize the way we do settlement studies of the Maya," Dr. ...

Share Rather than cause more damage, scientists say lasers could improve the healing process of scars. According to Scientific American, researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital Wellman Center for Photomedicine used a green laser and a pink dye to reconnect nerves, blood vessels, tendons and incisions in the cornea. The study's goal was to find ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2009/09/22/billionaires-yacht-blasts-lasers-at-spying-paparazzi/'; The world's largest, costliest, and most private yacht, owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, has two heli-pads, a missile defense system, two swimming pools (one doubling as a dance floor), and six-foot wide cinema screens in all 26 of the guest bedrooms. Oh, and to keep out prying ...

Andrea Barisani and Daniele Bianco, two researchers from network security company Inverse Path, will soon be demonstrating how to power lines and off-the-shelf lasers to capture a user's keystrokes at the Black Hat 2009 security conference in Las Vegas. Both methods are similar in that each uses different fluctuations to determine what keys are being pressed: The first uses voltage differences ...

If you have an abundance of flashlights and a dearth of futuristic armaments in your house, then you'll want to take a look at what the weaponry wizards over at TechEBlog.com and Kipkay.com have for you. Without revealing whether the blueprints came from 'The A-Team' or 'MacGyver,' the video on Kipkay.com provides step-by-step instructions for converting a "regular mini-mag flashlight into a ...