Month: March 2008

Record-setting high-intensity laser beam

You’ve got your laser.  You’ve got your high intensity.  You’ve got your awesome name – HERCULES.  What missing?

If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of a new laser beam made in a University of Michigan laboratory.

That’s the instantaneous intensity we can produce,” said Karl Krushelnick, a physics and engineering professor. “I don’t know of another place in the universe that would have this intensity of light. We believe this is a record.”

. . .

The record-setting beam measures 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter. It contains 300 terawatts of power. That’s 300 times the capacity of the entire U.S. electricity grid. The laser beam’s power is concentrated to a 1.3-micron speck about 100th the diameter of a human hair. A human hair is about 100 microns wide.

Sadly, no mention is made of strapping these suckers to the frikkin’ heads of any frikkin’ sharks.  Nor is there any word on the available ramp-up possible with a whole mess of these (say, perhaps, an ocean full of frikkin’ sharks, with, well, you know) and harnessing the power of a Dyson sphere.  But some mad-genius will make it happen some day, I am certain (sans popcorn, most likely).

A paper on this research, “Ultra-high intensity 300-TW laser at 0.1 Hz repetition rate,” is published online in the journal Optics Express. The full text is available at http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-16-3-2109. Yanovsky and Krushelnick are authors of the paper.

Yup – 300 Terra-Watts.  Make’s ol’ Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor look pretty miserly with the power, doesn’t it?

[tags]HERCULES, Laser, Frikkin’ sharks, 300 Terra-watts, 1.21 Giga-watts[/tags]

Dismissed!

Let go from work today – just about 90 minutes ago. Was just told things weren’t working out, and the boss didn’t have anything else to say to me after he told me that. What brought this about? Well, I never understood my job, and did it wrong more often that I did it right. I got to the point where I was scared to work on things, which obviously greatly hampered my ability to perform well and hurt my chances of ever understanding the job and doing it right. When the boss days to respond to emails on projects that I was behind on or didn’t respond at all, I pretty much knew it was about the happen. I couldn’t work the way the group I was assigned to worked, and I failed to figure out how to get the help I needed to learn the job correctly within the framework of how others in the group worked.

I’m trying to be careful, because I don’t want to blame my employer. I feel a little shafted, because I never got the support I needed to do the job right. But still, I know responsibility for doing the job ultimately was up to me. I clearly didn’t ask enough questions, or ask the right people, when I was lost and struggling with understanding my responsibilities. I have always been one to work on my own to try to figure out problems, even in instances when I need to ask questions. So rather than asking up front for clarification when I was lost, I would read, re-read, and look back at similar work done by others. And ultimately, what I figured out was usually not right.

In the end, it would have been foolish for my previous employer to keep me, because I wasn’t able to do the job they needed. I just wish I could have found one person in the group who could understand how I work and have that one person available to answer my questions and help me in a manner that matched my work style. I tried to work in their way, but failed, and never found someone who worked the way I do.

[tags]Let go, Unemployment, What’s wrong with me[/tags]

Woman stuck to toilet after 2 years of sitting? Color me skeptical

OK, since it seems every damn news source has covered this today, I have to step in and say I’m just a bit skeptical of what’s going on here. There’s got to be something to this story that we’re not hearing yet. The claim is, a woman sat on a toilet in her boyfriend’s house for 2 years before he finally called police, saying only that there was something wrong with his girlfriend.

Authorities are considering charges in the bizarre case of a woman who stayed in her boyfriend’s bathroom for two years, spending most of her time on the toilet — so that her body was stuck to the seat by the time the man finally called police.

If it were Mississippi or Arkansas, it would probably be a teeny bit more believable than in Kansas. Maybe there isn’t anything more to the story than what’s in the AP story, but it’s just so hard to believe that there’s not something in the story that we’re not being told yet. In particular, it’s hard to imagine this without there being some information missing in the how-did-this-happen details:

It appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat, said Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple. The woman initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

“We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital,” Whipple said. “The hospital removed it.”

Sat so long her skin grew onto/around the seat? Day-um.

“She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body,” Whipple said. “It is hard to imagine. … I still have a hard time imagining it myself.”

Me too, Mr. Whipple. Me too. The boyfriend says, basically, that the whole situation just sorta, you know, snuck up on him.

McFarren told the AP that he wasn’t to blame, and that it was solely Babcock’s choice to remain in the bathroom.

“She is an adult; she made her own decision. It was my fault I should have gotten help for her sooner; I admit that. But after a while, you kind of get used to it,” McFarren said.

Although authorities said they think Babcock was in the bathroom for two years, McFarren said he wasn’t certain how long she stayed there. He said she had a phobia about leaving the room because of childhood beatings.

She did it. She’s kinda kooky. I don’t know how long it’s been. Oh, and it ain’t really my fault.

Whatever. We’ll see if more comes out about just how this happened. Dude is just not telling us something that went on, or the sheriff is leaving out details while an investigation takes place.

[tags]WTF, Seriously?, O RLY?, toilet attachment, Kansas, Really – WTF?!?, Gross[/tags]

Roof strength on SUVs cause for safety concern?

Let me say first that the model they use in the story is the same SUV I currently drive, but mine is white and possibly a little older.  That said, here’s the story – the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has issued a report on roof strength of SUVs, and they find the results not the least bit comforting.  The IIHS believes improved roof strength will reduce injuries and fatalities in rollover crashes and has results of their tests available for concerned consumers looking to still buy a gas guzzler but wanting to remain as safe as possible.

By testing the roofs of 11 sport utility vehicles, then looking at the deaths and injury rates in accidents, the institute found that the stronger the roof was, the less likelihood of injury or death.

. . .

Rollovers account for about one-quarter of those who die in car crashes, but SUVs that are higher off the ground than other vehicles are particularly prone to rollovers. The study contends that stronger roofs, like the one on the 2000 Nissan Xterra, could cut injury risk by a third in single-vehicle SUV rollover crashes.

Automakers contend that roof strength improvements will not do anything to safety numbers, but the IIHS disagrees.  I can conceive that the automakers are right – overall safety design is probably more important than roof strength and the cars with the better safety ratings may achieve that by overall design and not just roof strength.  However, it’s hard for me to imagine that the roof strength could be improved without improving the safety overall design just because I know any change to the design has to be checked for consistency with all other design considerations.

This isn’t to indicate any of these vehicles fail to meet federally mandated safety requirements.  It’s that the IIHS believes the mandates are not strict enough.

The current standard requires vehicles to withstand 1½ times the weight of the vehicle before crushing five inches. The administration would like to require passenger vehicles to withstand 2½ times its weight instead. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that’s still not good enough, and argues a passenger vehicle should be able to withstand three times its weight when it rolls over.

As an owner of the SUV that received the lowest roof strength rating, I’m all for improving it.  But as with anything in design, I wonder what will the price be for any improvements?  These businesses have to factor in how much it will increase manufacturing costs for improve safety, how much of that can be passed on to consumers, and where will the dollars go from the edge-case buyers who would buy at the current price but not at any higher price.  It sucks for those only concerned with safety, and sure some people will throw up the “What cost human life?” question, but we all have finite resources, and these changes have to be considered.

So how much would you pay for more safety?  If it cost $100 for a roof with twice the collapse strength you currently have, would you?  What if it cost $1000 more?  How about an increase that cost $500 and cut fuel efficiency 5%?  Where does the trade-off become too much for you?

[tags]SUV, IIHS, Safety, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety[/tags]