Laser

Next week, drivers will speed down Interstate 495, maybe weaving in traffic or tailgating a tractor-trailer, before flying by a large 4x4 with state police markings.Many of those drivers will relax when the police vehicle doesn't pursue, thinking they've escaped for another day of dangerous motoring.But what they just drove past was a souped-up Ford Bronco equipped with calibrated lasers and three cameras designed to capture dangerous drivers on tape.In a few weeks, those reckless drivers are likely to receive letters about their actions that day, with color photographs showing them in midviolation.

What is it about electrical engineers? These guys just can't get along. A group of them brings a wonderful new technology to market, and another equally brilliant band creates another way of doing the same thing. It's the customers who end up sorting things out by voting with their dollars. And heaven help the consumer who backs the loser. Think of the hapless souls who chose Sony's Betamax videotape standard over VHS. That didn't turn out at all well. For a more recent example, there's the "plus/dash" war in the recordable DVD business.

While songs like Aretha Franklin's "Respect" blared through speakers set up in Manchester Elementary School's gymnasium, Alex Rufe and Ashley Merryman could hardly stay seated on the floor. Instead, the third-graders and their classmates clapped and sang along to the music, which was being featured in a laser light show. "It was awesome," said Alex, 8, after the show. The 45-minute program highlighted how the songs of African-American musicians and the work of civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. have influenced musicians today.

A 16th-century work of artistic genius is being studied by scientists once again, but this time researchers came to Baltimore to demonstrate how computer technology can help examine its tiniest details. Michelangelo's David - its exact measurements recorded by state-of-the-art laser scanners in 1999 - was reduced to a computer model and projected onto a theater screen in 3-D at the Convention Center yesterday while viewers with special glasses admired the lifelike reproduction. Software engineers say developments in visualization technology allow for a closer-than-ever examination of David - and just about anything else that can be photographed or scanned.

WASHINGTON -- Ever since the Vietnam War, the American infantryman's most valued tool and trusted friend has been the M-16, a lightweight but lethal rifle that can spew out devastating torrents of high-speed fire. Soon the Army will be giving the foot soldier a new battlefield companion, a high-tech weapon designed to revolutionize the timeless tactics of combat by giving U.S. troops the ability, in effect, to shoot around corners. The new weapon, which looks like a steroid-fed prop from a sci-fi movie, uses lasers to guide smart shells that explode in the air above concealed enemy soldiers, spraying them with deadly metal fragments.

Burning a CD has become commonplace for most computer users. You can burn CDs to reliably store your computer data, burn a CD to hold your favorite music in the order you want to hear it, store still and moving images - the list goes on and on. And after you've burned your disc, there are ways to create nice-looking labels that add a professional touch. But Yamaha has just introduced a novel approach to their line of CD burners that might give it an edge over the competition. And I mean that literally, because now you can burn a label along the edge of a CD. Yamaha's DiscT@2TM Laser Labeling System, which is being offered with their latest line of CD recorders, is an innovation that lets you burn a CD and its label directly into the CD itself without having to remove the CD from the drive.

BOSTON -- Cardiac pacemakers save countless lives by prompting balky hearts to beat regularly. It's not a big deal to implant one: The device and its battery slide into a pocket made under the skin of the chest, and the attached electrical lead, a thin metal wire, is threaded through a blood vessel into the heart, where its tip lodges in the muscle.But when a pacemaker lead has to be removed -- because of infection, scarring, breakage or some other reason, it's a different story. After a few years in the body, the wires can become virtually glued in place as scar tissue builds up around the wire inside the artery.

State environmental officials have sued a Westminster machining and welding business, accusing the company of illegally discharging wastewater with excessive amounts of copper for more than 20 years. The maximum penalty for the alleged offense is $10,000 a day for each violation, according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Carroll County Circuit Court by lawyers for the Maryland Department of the Environment. The state alleges that Laser Applications Inc., in the 1100 block of Business Parkway South, has never had a permit to discharge wastewater from its "water jet" cutting processes.

Permanent makeup -- color applied to the facial skin to resemble lip liner, eyeliner or eyebrows -- is among the trickiest of tattoos to remove. Just ask the woman whose lips turned black and eyebrows yellow. The case, reported by a team of dermatologists last year in the journal Dermatologic Surgery, was an extreme example of what can go wrong when doctors use lasers to attempt to remove certain colors of tattoos, such as the reds and browns used in permanent makeup. Such tattoos are popular among women who want to save time applying makeup or who want to appear as if they have makeup on all the time.

Howard County police began a two-week initiative yesterday designed to reduce speeding near schools. Police will increase patrols around schools, and they will use radar and laser speed-detection devices during morning arrival and afternoon departure times, police said. The program will end Sept. 6.