Word: kevlar
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...large can take half an hour for a crew of eight. Slick aerodynamic design and a hydraulically powered keel let the Procyon sail at speeds of up to 15 knots: roughly 15% faster than a conventionally designed boat of comparable size. Automatic winches furl and unfurl the Procyon's Kevlar mainsail and jib horizontally, at a finger's touch, without human assistance. The unique, sculptured boom eliminates the need for much of the equipment required on standard boats. There are two sets of controls -- helms, winch buttons, wind and direction gauges -- to allow the skipper to steer from either side...
WHEELS. Modern fibers are also making a difference in bicycle wheels, which traditionally feature dozens of thin metal spokes within a pliable rim. While multispoked wheels minimize wind resistance, they are easily bent out of shape. In the mid-'80s, solid "disk" wheels made of Kevlar improved matters but were somewhat hard to control in crosswinds. A solution came early this year from Specialized Bicycle Components of Morgan Hill, Calif.: a three-spoke wheel developed with Du Pont. Specialized's wheel, a composite of carbon fiber, epoxy resin, Kevlar and aluminum, has an air-foil shape, and was designed with...
...voices against the sale of "cop-killer" bullets -- Teflon-coated projectiles whose sole purpose is to penetrate body armor -- the N.R.A. mounted a campaign to make people believe this ban would infringe on the rights of deer hunters, as though the woods of America were full of whitetails in Kevlar vests. Now that the pressure is on to restrict public ownership of semiautomatic assault weapons, we hear the same threadbare rhetoric about the rights of hunters. No serious hunter goes after deer with an Uzi or an AK-47; those weapons are not made for picking off an animal...
...next onscreen line was harder to forget: "Are you ready for me, Ralph?" The movie was Paul Brickman's uproarious young-'n'-dumb flick Risky Business, and no one was ready for De Mornay. She was a call girl with a heart of Kevlar, growling seductively at the stupefied Tom Cruise, who played a suburban high school senior whose parents had gone off on vacation. The script managed to satirize kids, adults, greed, sex, Porsches and the Princeton admissions process in less than two hours, and De Mornay was easily best-of-show. Thousands cheered. De Mornay went...
...known locally as the Fremantle Doctor, frequently frosted the 6- ft. ocean swells with a 3-ft. chop described by one Australian sailor as "dirty and short." In all the rough slogging, the assembled regatta lost four 90-ft. masts, a dozen booms and hundreds of square yards of Kevlar sailcloth. In the turmoil, five crewmen were washed overboard and had to be saved. Gary Jobson, of the Chicago-based Heart of America syndicate, declared the roiled-up waters off Fremantle "unsuitable for racing...