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A story hot on the internet today regards concerns that Federal authorties have been exposing US citizens to possibly dangerous radiation at x-ray machines placed at the entrance on airports through which one must pass before entering the facility, with the #1 Google Search today "Feds radiating Americans"- hard to conclude they're happy about it, lol. Now the rampant rumor is that the US government has purchase X-ray machines that can peer inside homes, cars, and clothing... And it's not optional of course, all air travelers must pass though the current machines- so besides the civil liberties issues at stake,...

Privacy-conscious travelers may cringe to think of the full-body scanners finding their way into dozens of airport checkpoints around the country. Most likely aren't aware that the same technology, capable of seeing through walls and clothes, has also been rolling out on U.S. streets. American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Mass., has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter X-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles or cargo containers to snoop into their contents. And while the biggest buyer of AS&E's machines over the last seven years has been...

Scientists have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton to detect a vast reservoir of gas lying along a wall-shaped structure of galaxies about 400 million light years from Earth. In this artist's impression, a close-up view of the so-called Sculptor Wall is depicted. Spiral and elliptical galaxies are shown in the wall along with the newly detected intergalactic gas, part of the so-called Warm Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM), shown in blue. This discovery is the strongest evidence yet that the "missing matter" in the nearby Universe is located in an enormous web of hot, diffuse gas. The X-ray...

Do Not Mock Your Co-Worker's Tiny Penis While Testing Full-Body Scanners By Laura Northrup on May 7, 2010 11:10 AM If you've been wondering how much of your body airport full-body scanners actually do reveal, a recent TSA training session in Miami shows the answer: enough for your co-workers to mock the size of your genitals. The target of the mockery eventually found it unbearable, and police say that he "could not take the jokes anymore and lost his mind," attacking one of his colleagues in the parking lot. He was arrested for aggravated battery. From the police report: "The...

The government is upgrading the X-ray technology that detects flaws in its nuclear weapons stockpile. The new machine, called the Confined Large Optical Scintillator Screen and Imaging System, or CoLOSSIS, uses thousands of 2D X-ray images to produce one 3D image depicting the inside of a nuclear weapon — the same way CT scanners generate 3D images of the inside of a human body. Developers say the new system will pick up more defects in the nuclear stockpile than the current 2D sensors and will eliminate the need to disassemble weapons to search for problems, which is a process that...

The latest airport security trend is the backscatter x-ray machine, touted as a powerful way to virtually frisk a traveler for contraband without the embarassment of a strip search. Though touted as completely safe because the level of radiation is so low, travelers have been nervous about the devices -- and not just because it shows off a nice outline of their privates to the people manning the machines -- but because they remain scared of the health problems they might propose. Looks like a little healthy paranoia might have been a good thing. While the conventional wisdom has held...

This extraordinary X-ray shows how 27-year-old Anthony Liu was brutally murdered with a nail gun. Up to 30 nails were fired into his head, the three-inch spikes penetrating vital areas of the brain. Police in Sydney have released the graphic photo in the hope that it will lead to the identity of Mr Liu's killer. Someone, they believe, has information about the murderer who will have had a grudge against the dead man - and be in possession of a nail gun.

IBM Research scientists, in collaboration with the Center for Probing the Nanoscale at Stanford University, have demonstrated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with volume resolution 100 million times finer than conventional MRI. This result, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), signals a significant step forward in tools for molecular biology and nanotechnology by offering the ability to study complex 3D structures at the nanoscale. By extending MRI to such fine resolution, the scientists have created a microscope that, with further development, may ultimately be powerful enough to unravel the structure and interactions of proteins, paving...

The superhero power to see through walls will soon be within the grasp of ordinary mortals, thanks to a new hand-held X-ray scanner. Inventors hope the gadget could revolutionise police work and Customs searches by allowing officers to seek out contraband, weapons, bombs or hidden people. The LEXID device sends out low-level X-rays which are collected in a lens based on the design of a lobster's eye. Rick Shie, senior vice-president of its American inventors, Physical Optics Corporation, said that lobsters' eyes, which are able to see in deep, murky water, use thousands of tiny squares to focus by reflection...

X-rays point to human pincushion June 20, 2007 12:00am A CHINESE baby who had been unusually fussy was x-rayed by doctor who found six sewing needles inside him - including one in his head. The baby, just 12 months old, was x-rayed at a hospital in Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong province. Doctors are planning to operate to remove the needles, which are in his chest, abdomen and head. The child's parents, migrant workers from southwest China, said they had no idea how the needles ended up in their son.

******************In a nearby galactic cluster, there is more than meets the eye. When galaxy 3C438 is viewed in the optical spectrum (top image) it looks like your normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill collection of stars. However, beneath the peaceful facade viewed in the optical spectrum—in the X-ray region of the spectrum—lies a violent explosion of hot gas spanning over 2 million light years (middle image). A closer examination of the center of the explosion using radio telescopes (the VLA) shows two jets of gas moving away from the center of the explosion (inset, bottom image). The galaxy at the heart of this...

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured the largest data set yet of Jupiter's colorful lights called aurora, yielding a pretty picture that could help solve some mysteries about the phenomenon. The phenomenon is similar to the Northern Lights seen on Earth, thought on a much larger scale. "Jupiter has auroras bigger than our entire planet," said Randy Gladstone of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. In a NASA statement today, Gladstone called the purple rings in a new colorized image "Northern Lights on steroids. They're hundreds of times more energetic than auroras on Earth." Unlike Earth's auroras, Jupiter's...

Sky Harbor International Airport became the country's first to begin testing a controversial new federal screening system that takes X-rays of passenger's bodies in an effort to find concealed explosives and other weapons. The Phoenix airport started testing the new technology on Friday. It can see through people's clothes and show the body's contours with blush-inducing clarity. Critics have said the high-resolution images created by the "backscatter" technology are too invasive. But the Transportation Security Administration adjusted the equipment to make the image look something like a line drawing, while still detecting concealed weapons. During testing, the machine will be...

MESA, Ariz. - A new X-ray machine for detecting weapons and explosives on airline passengers makes its debut today in Phoenix. The so-called “backscatter” device will be used at one checkpoint in one terminal at Sky Harbor International Airport. The machine visually strips off clothing, although a Transportation Security Administration spokesman says the image it projects looks more like a chalk drawing than a real person.

WASHINGTON, - More than 40 years after demonstrating the heroism immortalized in the bestselling book and movie, "We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young," retired Army Lt. Col. Bruce P. Crandall will receive the Medal of Honor, the White House announced yesterday. Crandall will receive the nation's highest military award for actions during the Battle of Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam in November 1965. The battle, at Landing Zone X-Ray near the Ia Drang River, was the first major ground battle of the war. During the incident, Crandall, then a major and commander of Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion,...

OFFICIALS are bracing themselves for a storm of public outrage over their controversial X-ray cameras scheme. As part of the most shocking extension of Big Brother powers ever planned here, lenses in lampposts would snap “naked” pictures of passers-by to trap terror suspects. The proposal is contained in leaked documents drawn up by the Home Office and presented to PM Tony Blair’s working group on Security, Crime and Justice. But the prospect of the State snooping on individuals’ most private parts is certain to spark national fury. And officials are battling to find a way of dealing with that reaction.

YouTube posting: Actual backscatter video footage from TSA. Images are exactly what Transportation Security Officers see. Interesting technology. Hasn't Europe been using this technology for years now?

PHOENIX (AP) -- Sky Harbor International Airport here will test a controversial new federal screening system that takes X-rays of passenger's bodies in an effort to find concealed explosives and other weapons. The technology, called backscatter, has been around for several years but has not been widely used in the U.S. as an anti-terrorism tool because of privacy concerns. The Transportation Security Administration said it has found a way to refine the machine's images so that the normally graphic pictures can be blurred in certain areas while still being effective in detecting bombs and other threats. The agency is expected...

LONDON (Reuters) - Teams of international scientists have used observations from NASA's Swift satellite and other telescopes to witness the evolution of a cosmic blast into a stellar explosion or supernova. The blast is thought to be a milder type of gamma-ray burst (GRB) -- the most powerful type of explosion known to astronomers -- called an X-ray flash. It is known as GRB060218 after the February 18 date it began in the constellation of Aries about 440 million light years away. A light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year. "This extends the...

Andy Kessler has worked in Silicon Valley for a long time. He's seen the way that improving technology can lower costs and increase capabilities in all sorts of areas, and now he says that it's time for silicon to do for medicine what it's done for so many other fields.