Word: beams
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...computer monitors can shrink to almost nothing, why not keyboards? They soon may. Two companies have developed prototype "virtual" keyboards designed to accompany portable devices like PDAs, tablet PCs and cell phones. Here's how they work: a laser beam projects a glowing red outline of a keyboard on a desk or other flat surface. A sensor like those used in digital cameras monitors the reflection of an infrared light projected on the same spot. It can tell which "keys" you are trying to strike by the way that reflection changes. Someday, similar keyboards may be built into the gadgets...
...right, this could happen to anybody. But then the family dog gets infested and infected, attacks two of the kids, dies gruesomely, is buried and sends an infernal laser beam into the grieving brother, who becomes a blood-sucking vampire. This family makes the House of Atreus seem like the Partridges. By the time Granny?s birthday cake is served - and one of the guests notices too late that it?s full of worms, cuing her to vomit the Betty Crocker Maggot Mix on the floor ? you may want to follow the advice of this patch of ?Devil Fetus? dialogue...
...fans’ embrace of Pete Rose. Rose still refuses to admit he gambled on baseball despite volumes of evidence pointing his guilt. If you’ve ever seen him interviewed, he routinely acts like James Traficant in his bizarre denials and frequent assaults on reality. Beam me up, Pete...
...test rely instead on scanning electron microscopes. Just touch a bit of tape to a suspect's hands, place it under the scope and hit it with a stream of electrons. The elements in gunpowder give off distinct X-ray signatures, and if they are there, the electron beam will spot them. The drawback? "You don't get to see the terror on people's faces when you pour hot paraffin on their hands," says Fischer. "I think it encouraged some people to confess...
...analyze evidence, you have to destroy it--which means investigators have to get the test right the first time, or the perp might walk. A new laser ablation spectrometer under development could solve that problem by etching off only a tiny slice of a sample with a needlelike light beam and cooking it in a plasma furnace equipped with a mass spectrometer especially sensitive to trace elements. Similarly, researchers at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have shown that a synchrotron radiation device can bounce a beam of infrared energy off a piece of evidence and analyze the spectrum...