Word: x-rays
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Experts say that more aggressive safety protocols might have uncovered Abdulmutallab's alleged plot before he had the chance to botch it with a bum detonator. Full-body scanners might do the trick, but they have their drawbacks. The ACLU has condemned backscatter X-ray and millimeter-wave-radar scans as the high-tech equivalents of strip searches. Furthermore, "every technology can be defeated one way or the other," says Vahid Motevalli, who studies aviation security at Purdue University...
...that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit, could have boarded his flight with liquid explosives. "They tell you, Take your shoes off, take your boots off, take your belt off, but the woman who is looking at the X-ray machine is looking at you to give her a tip," says Victor Chidi Asaba-One, 41, a businessman who shuttles between Detroit and Lagos about 20 times a year, often on the same KLM and Northwest flights that Abdulmutallab used. (See pictures of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab...
...airport in Lagos, as well as the one in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, passengers are now subjected to extra screening, with officials there saying everyone will now be subjected to body-screening. "It's a joke, man," Asaba-One says. "They may have functioning X-ray machines, even though they are older, but I'm not sure the person looking at the screen even knows what to look for. If, for example, I had a liquid explosive that is going through it, will they be able to tell the difference between a liquid bottle of Coke versus a liquid...
...like most stable explosives it's not easy to ignite - it requires an initial explosion. Usually that would be accomplished with a detonator like a blasting cap, but that device would have almost surely shown up on any airport X-ray machine or metal detector. Instead, Abdulmutallab allegedly brought along a syringe, which could have been filled with a liquid explosive like nitroglycerin. If done correctly, the primer explosion could have set off the PETN, which might have blown a hole in the side of the plane. "It looked like he was trying to use a chemical initiation, and that...
...Mass., resulted in similar findings: that the most active people had the same risk of arthritis as the least active. About 9% of the participants overall developed arthritis over the course of the study, as measured by symptoms reported to their physicians (pain and difficulty walking) as well as X-ray scans. And in the same year, Australian researchers writing in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism found that people who exercised vigorously had thicker and healthier knee cartilage than their sedentary peers. That suggests the exercisers may have also enjoyed a lower risk of osteoarthritis, which is caused by breakdown...