T-Rays Advance Toward Airport Screening

Researchers around the world are trying to tap a barely used portion of the electromagnetic spectrum — terahertz radiation — to scan airline passengers for explosives and illegal drugs. The rays are particularly attractive: they can see through clothing, paper, leather, plastic, wood, and ceramics. They don’t penetrate as well as x-rays, but they also don’t damage living tissue. And they can read spectroscopic signatures, detecting the difference between, say, hair gel and an explosive.
Source: Neil Savage, Technology Review, February 20, 2007

Dell ‘IdeaZone’ Solicits Product Ideas from Customers

Billed as a type of Digg for the Dell community, Michael Dell said that IdeaStorm will offer up yet another new way for the company to listen to and interact with its customers. According to Dell, the site is to be a type of online community where customers can post their ruminations on technology in general, as well as their specific thoughts on Dell products, services, and operations.
Source: Bryan Gardiner, PC Magazine, February 20, 2007

Estonia to hold first national Internet election

The Baltic state of Estonia plans to become the world’s first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet next month. E-voting will be introduced for a parliamentary election on March 4, for the first time after it was used in more limited local elections in 2005. It is a fresh sign of Estonia’s strong embrace of technology since it quit the Soviet Union in 1991.
Source: Reuters, via CNET News.com, February 21, 2007

Deaf to sign via video handsets

Deaf people could soon be using video mobiles to chat with their friends using sign language. Video compression tools made by US researchers make it possible to send live pictures of people signing across low bandwidth mobile networks.
Source: BBC News Online, February 16, 2007

Blog tests hospital leaders’ patience

In August, Paul Levy, chief executive of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, began writing an Internet blog called Running a Hospital, about the inner workings of an academic medical center. Since then, he’s broken a few unwritten rules. In a recent entry on his website and two previous ones, Levy, saying patients have a right to know, posted the percentage of Beth Israel Deaconess patients who get infections each month from intravenous tubing inserted by staff, known as central line infections, which can cause serious harm and even death. [...] He challenged other hospitals to publicize their infection rates.
Source: Liz Kowalczyk, The Boston Globe, February 23, 2007 (Free registration

New airport X-ray is a virtual strip search

U.S. authorities in Phoenix on Friday began testing a controversial new X-ray machine to screen air passengers for weapons, a process that critics likened to a “virtual strip search.” The U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will test the machine in Phoenix for 60 to 90 days before deploying machines in Los Angeles and New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport for additional testing this year.
Source: Reuters, via CNET News.com, February 24, 2007

T-Rays Advance Toward Airport Screening
Researchers around the world are trying to tap a barely used portion of the electromagnetic spectrum — terahertz radiation — to scan airline passengers for explosives and illegal drugs. The rays are particularly attractive: they can see through clothing, paper, leather, plastic, wood, and ceramics. They don’t penetrate as well as [...]