Word: laser
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...problem with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, however, is that in order to 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...
...improvement in weaponry traces back to what did not go right the last time U.S. warplanes attacked Iraq. In 1991 clouds and smoke coming from Kuwaiti oil fields set ablaze by Saddam's troops forced many U.S. warplanes to return to their bases without dropping their ordnance because their laser-guidance systems could not see through the foul air. In a handwritten note he fired off to his weapons designers shortly after that conflict, Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak said, "We need to lay down a requirement for an all-WX PGM"--an all-weather precision-guided...
JDAMs help protect pilots too. Unlike laser-guided bombs, which are guided to their target from planes flying at about 15,000 ft., JDAMs can be dropped from 35,000 ft., beyond the reach of much enemy fire. They can be unloaded 15 miles from their target, offering pilots additional protection. Plus, the bomb kits are user friendly. "It takes me about an hour's work to launch a cruise missile but only 10 minutes to launch a JDAM," says Lieut. Colonel James Dunn, a B-52 bombardier at Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base who lobbed the bombs...
...dispatch such weapons. For the first time ever, a war can begin with one side able to wipe out, with near impunity, every key enemy building and other fixed target its intelligence has identified. Instead of F-117s buzzing Baghdad with a measly pair of 2,000-lb. laser-guided bombs, as in the 1991 war, the next conflict might start with B-2s over Iraq, each dropping 16 of the 2,000-lb. JDAMs. They would probably be followed by B-1s, each capable of dropping 24 JDAMs on a single pass...
Though most buyers of cross-border insurance policies are Latino, the price and quality of Mexican health care attract non-Latinos as well. Marvin Morton, 40, a sheriff's deputy inSan Bernardino, Calif., wanted to get laser surgery to correct his deteriorating eyesight but was unable to have the procedure he wanted covered through his U.S. insurer, Kaiser Permanente. The cost out of pocket, he said, was "outrageous" at $3,000 to $5,000. So Morton and his fellow deputies lobbied their union, which came up with an alternative. The union contracted with two doctors, one in Irvine, Calif...