Word: x-rayed
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...setting: any airport, U.S.A. The victims: you and your laptop. Action! You put your computer on the X-ray conveyor belt and get in line for the metal detector. The guy in front of you gets stopped and has to empty his pockets. Turns out he's a walking scrap heap, and it takes him five minutes to get through. Meanwhile, your defenseless laptop is waiting helplessly on the other side. By the time you're finally through, it's gone--swiped by Scrap Heap's accomplice on the other side...
First of all, assuming nobody tries to steal it (you can always hand your laptop to an attendant while you walk through first), and assuming you're not checking it (never, ever check your laptop), one thing you don't have to worry about is the X-ray machine. It's safe. The FAA swears by it on a stack of PowerBooks. Metal detectors are also safe, by the way, although if you try to take your laptop through, you will probably be pulled aside and subjected to the Wand of Shame...
General Electric 50,837 --Electric fan (1902) --X-ray tube (1913) --First U.S. jet engine (1941) --Solid-state laser (1962) --Computed tomography, a.k.a. CT scanner...
...story Kramler Building, "faced with stone the color of a stained shirt collar." Sheldon P. Anapol, the "likable and cruel" publisher and novelty peddler, succeeds with a combination of "hard-won cynicism, low overhead, an unstintingly shoddy product line and the American boy's unassuageable hunger for midget radios, X-ray spectacles and joy buzzers...
...synthesized. These basic forms are then further folded and linked to other proteins to create the uberstructures crucial to protein chemistry. Scientists traditionally dissect the atomic details of these folds by observing how crystallized proteins scatter X rays--experiments that can take years to complete. But robots and powerful X-ray generators have lately boosted the pace of discovery. Structures that two decades ago would have taken a couple of researchers 10 years to crack can now be solved by one in a matter of weeks. "By the end of the five-year pilot phase," predicts John Norvell, director...