Laser

"Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate and the Thirty-Year Patent War," by Nick Taylor. Simon & Shuster. 320 pages. $27.50. At around this time last year, newspapers and magazines were rife with lists of the most notable achievements of the 20th century. Many of these honor rolls included an invention that has changed the way we communicate, shop, wage war, make maps, receive medical treatment and much, much else. This invention is the laser, that concentrated beam of light that scans groceries, corrects myopia and enables compact discs to be something more than futuristic-looking beer coasters.

It's now summertime (unofficially) in Ocean City and some of you will be hitting the shore for the first time since last year. I took a gander around town during last week's Memorial Day celebrations, looking for new places and new faces. If you're headed over for this weekend's Ravens Beach Bash , here are some tips on changes at the beach that you'll want to know about: 1. Lasers we love. Visitors last Sunday got to enjoy some green lasers- no, not the kind from two summers ago that drove everyone crazy.

Buying a printer for your home - whether for work, school or recreation - begins with a basic choice: inkjet or laser. A decade ago, the choice for most home users was an inkjet, which hit the market in 1992. Laser printers existed back then - a desktop model was introduced in 1984 - but were so expensive that they were far outside the grasp of most home users. Then about five years back, black-and-white laser printers plunged in price, becoming affordable for those who wanted fast, professional-looking documents at home.

Ocean City is ready for the spotlight this weekend as the town launches into the summer season with a new laser light show. The O.C. Beach Lights Spectacular features lasers, videos, special effects and lights displayed on a 50-foot-tall sphere that looks like a beach ball. The show will take place Sundays on the beach at North Division Street three times a night - 9:30 p.m., 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. - from Memorial Day to Labor Day. "We're excited about it," says Donna Abbott, public relations manager for the Town of Ocean City.

MURRAY HILL, N.J. -- Lucent Technologies Inc., the world's largest maker of phone equipment, unveiled yesterday laser technology that can transmit large amounts of information through the air over short distances. The equipment, which will be available next year, could be used to transmit voice, video and other data between office buildings, for example, or ships at sea. The lasers can carry as much as 65 times more data than conventional wireless systems can.Lucent expects the laser products to appeal to phone companies that need to provide services in areas where it's impractical or too expensive to use fiber-optic cables, such as linking buildings across a river.

In the darkness, an electric blue shark grows from a tiny speck of light, its eyes focused on a tiny fish. In an instant, dinner vanishes inside its mouth.Welcome to ImaginOcean.The National Aquarium's new laser-animated exhibit opened yesterday after a year of work by designers, animators and laser technology experts. It temporarily replaces the Atlantic Coral Reef and Open Ocean exhibits, which are undergoing $12.7 million in renovations over the next 12 to 14 months."It's great," said Donna Reynolds of North Canton, Ohio, viewing ImaginOcean with her husband, Don. The Reynolds are vacationing in Baltimore until tomorrow, and have a passion for zoos and aquariums.

The final day of Severn Sailing Association's Laser Atlantic Coast Championship Regatta ended with a whimper off Annapolis yesterday afternoon.The only race that was attempted was abandoned in the face of an extremely light and dying wind, a strong flood tidal current, and a 20- to 25-degree wind shift that forced most of the fleet eastward into the mouth of the Severn River instead of south toward the first weather mark.In the absence of results yesterday, the regatta consisted only of Saturday's two races, falling one race short of the number required for an officially sanctioned championship.

D. Barry Coyle, a staff scientist at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, will present "Probing Volcanoes, Old Growth nTC Forests and Ice Sheets," a discussion and slide presentation on laser altimeters at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Decker Auditorium at Western Maryland College.Recent developments in laser altimetry have made it a viable tool for acquiring precise topographic data where radar resolutions may not be enough, Dr. Coyle said.His program will include slides from laser scanning flights over numerous sites of interest, including Mount St. Helens.

"Deep discounting," "special introductory offer" and "convenient mall location" -- strategies long used to entice American consumers -- are now being employed to sell something customarily discussed in the hushed tones of doctors' offices: eye surgery.Laser vision correction, however, is not ordinary eye surgery. It's an elective procedure, seldom covered by insurance. Thus surgeons have turned to the selling points of the retail world -- price and easy access -- to persuade consumers to spring for it."

The first modern Olympic regatta was sailed a century ago in London in big boats with big crews in big winds. This year, it's little boats with small crews and tiny winds. That combination means sailors and their coaches will have to be adaptable and patient, just the formula used by Olympic Laser sailor Andrew Campbell and his coach, Bill Ward, over the past five years. Ward is director of sailing at St. Mary's College. Before that, he coached at Georgetown University, where he trained Campbell, who was named national collegiate Sailor of the Year three years ago and is ranked 15th in the world in the Laser class.

A recent report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments concluded, "Historically the U.S. military has often been slow to identify, adequately prioritize, and respond effectively to the emerging challenges likely to impose the greatest stresses on our forces in future contingencies…" The 30-year shipbuilding plan just submitted by the U.S. Navy unfortunately confirms this judgment, and recent decisions by the Senate Armed Services Committee...

If the Backstreet Boys and new Kids on the Block concert has you wanting to relive the '80s and '90s, there's plenty of options available, including several dance parties, nostalgia acts and even laser tag. The Ottobar 's upstairs floor has long been a shrine to the kind of unadulterated pop that flourished then. On Saturday, DJs Sarrs and Starlight host a no cover "All Excess" night that will feature a selection of the best of INXS, Depeche Mode, The Cure and other new wave classics.

This might be hard to believe, but I'm not the only music writer on the Internets. Each week I'll compile the pieces I think are worth checking out. Check out the first batch: Noz, who has run one of rap's most vital blogs for years, breaks down the new Lil B x Phonte x Jean Grae x 9th Wonder track "Base For Your Face. " Noz, an early Based God champion, makes the excellent point that it shouldn't be shocking to hear B on a 9th Wonder beat — he's been rapping over that style for a long time.

It was a lazy August night in Essex, and 21-year-old Joshua Brydge decided to have fun with his brother's laser pointer. Standing on his back porch, he aimed the piercing green beam at a police helicopter circling overhead. Inside the cockpit of Baltimore County's Air 1, hovering over the houses on Maryln Avenue, pilot Hobart Wolf was temporarily "flash-blinded" by the light and was diverted from helping fellow county officers chasing a suspect. Police say helicopters and other aircraft are increasingly being targeted by laser pointers commonly used in lecture halls.

Laser pointers are more likely found in the boardroom than the Boardwalk, but this summer they're selling so quickly that beach retailers can't keep up with demand. Resort officials and police, however, say the green laser pointers, more powerful than their red-hued predecessors, are becoming a public safety problem. "This year, it is out of control," said Ocean City Police Chief Bernadette DiPino. "The Boardwalk is just inundated with these green lasers." The Town Council recently made provisions to make laser buyers aware of the rules surrounding their purchase, requiring retailers to post signs clearly stating the town's law and give a verbal reminder.

Zack Barry is training to become a police officer. But for the moment, there are more pressing matters to attend to. Like pressing the button on his laser gun, and making sure he tags more people than tag him. Almost every week, Barry and his friends can be found at XP Laser Sport in Reisterstown, pointing concentrated beams of light at one another, exulting in every hit and snarling in disgust whenever they're the ones being tagged. "It's a lot more complicated than people think," the 22-year-old Howard Community College grad says of laser tag, the '80s entertainment-center phenomenon that's gaining a whole new generation of fans.

Laura Khoury's birthday is Dec. 23. She likes to do something extra-special for her big day so it doesn't just become part of the overall holiday festivities. This year, for her 10th birthday, Laura opted for a party at ShadowLand, the laser adventure center in Columbia. She had gone to ShadowLand for a friend's birthday party, she said, and had really enjoyed it, even though her team didn't win the laser tag game. "It was really fun," she said. "I was in last place, but I really liked it."

With more than 30 reports of laser beams hitting airplane cockpits since Dec. 31, the government is warning the people responsible that they will be found and prosecuted. "Shining these lasers at airplanes is not a harmless prank," U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said this week. "It's stupid and dangerous. You are putting other people at risk, and law enforcement authorities are going to seek you out ... and prosecute you." Despite the fresh urgency in Mineta's warning, the problem of laser beams aimed at airplanes - accidentally or on purpose - is not a new one. More than 400 such incidents have been reported to the government since 1990.

L ast month, 360 miles above the Earth, a little-noticed light went dark. It was the third and final laser on NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), developed and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. For the last 6 1/2 years, ICESat has been using precise laser measurements to determine how much the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets are contributing to the rise of the global seas and how much the sea ice that blankets the Arctic Ocean is thinning in ways that can affect climate all over the world.

The first modern Olympic regatta was sailed a century ago in London in big boats with big crews in big winds. This year, it's little boats with small crews and tiny winds. That combination means sailors and their coaches will have to be adaptable and patient, just the formula used by Olympic Laser sailor Andrew Campbell and his coach, Bill Ward, over the past five years. Ward is director of sailing at St. Mary's College. Before that, he coached at Georgetown University, where he trained Campbell, who was named national collegiate Sailor of the Year three years ago and is ranked 15th in the world in the Laser class.