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PDA/Radiation Detector
sgpennebaker writes "This article tells of lab rats who've built a cell phone/PDA/GPS device that also lets you surf the web and, oh, yeah, sniff out any dirty bombs that might have gone off in your area. Then you can cancel your meetings, call family and friends and send GPS coordinates to whoever it is that cleans up afterwards. I'm waiting for the next generation; I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears and emits a loud noise when it senses their proximity."
Thinkgeek.com has a watch that detects radiation. No GPS though
Radiation Watch
The actual researchers on this project. And a video on the air quality experiment with the palm using gps and air quality sensors to track data.
Why do I h8 apple?
http://www.antirad.com/sources.htm
Pottery glazes and art glass, some ceramic glazed jewelry and cloisonné enameled jewelry contain high percentages of uranium oxides to produce bright yellows and oranges. Fiesta Red china dishes by Fiestaware produced through 1971 emit gamma and beta. Acidic foods left in contact with this chinaware will dissolve small amounts of these radioactive elements which will be ingested. Enameled jewelry made with these glazes and worn next to the skin is hazardous.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
Depleted Uranium is not spent the fuel rods leftovers most people assume from its name. It is what is left over after extraction of the fissile material from refined Uranium.
Significant amounts of refined Uranium are stable isotopes. To get enriched Uranium you force the refined metallic Uranium through a series of filters that select the isotopes based on physical characteristics. Uranium ions in solution are large enough a special porous ceramic filter can pass the ions of the desired atomic weight. Using several passes with different sizes of pores you get the nice hot Uranium you need for bombs and such. One of the byproducts is a nice very dense metal, Uranium. Almost as hard as austenitic steel and much denser than lead. Not much hotter than the tritium illuminator sources in the standard issue compasses carried by infantry. The dust is however a mechanical poison that works much like ionic silver. Silver nitrate is just as dangerous a compound.
Yeah, the reason is that it has been used to make power/weapons and has become denser than lead, making it an ideal substance for making anti-armor projectiles. They don't "deplete" it to make it non-radioactive:
DU is a waste product of the process that produces enriched uranium for use in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants. Much like natural uranium, it is both toxic and radioactive. Over a billion pounds of DU exists in the United States and must be safely stored or disposed of by the Department of Energy. With its half-life of 4.5 billion years, DU's radioactivity effectively lasts forever.
DU is so abundant the government gives it away to arms manufacturers. Because it is extremely dense--1.7 times as dense as lead--when turned into a metal DU can be used to make a shell that easily penetrates steel. In addition it is pyrophoric--that is, when it strikes steel, heat from the friction causes it to burn.
When DU burns, it spews tiny particles of poisonous and radioactive uranium oxide in aerosol form, which can then travel for miles in the wind. Humans can ingest or inhale the small particles. Even one particle, when lodged in a vital organ--which is most likely to happen from inhalation-- can cause illnesses from headaches to cancer.
The Pentagon tested DU shells at various sites around the U.S. and used it in combat for the first time against Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. It was very effective in destroying Iraqi tanks, as well as their occupants and anyone in the area. At least 600,000 pounds of DU and uranium dust was left around Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by U.S. and British forces during that war.
Although the U.S. government and military continue to minimize the environmental and health dangers from depleted- uranium weapons, even they have to admit these dangers exist.
DU is also considered at least a contributing cause to the 130,000 reported cases of "Gulf War Syndrome." The chronic symptoms of this ailment range from sharp increases in cancers to memory loss, chronic pain, fatigue and birth defects in veterans' children.
Dr. Mona Kammas is a professor of pathology at Baghdad University and director of a study of the environmental impact of U.S. aggression against Iraq. At the Gijon symposium, she reported on a paper that showed an almost five-fold increase in cancers, a more than three-fold increase in spontaneous abortions, and a nearly three-fold increase in congenital anomalies in a study group of those exposed to combat.
The paper also reported on environmental damage due to the Pentagon's destruction of the water-supply and sanitation systems and the destruction of oil refineries and factories that used toxic chemicals in the production process.
Iraqi researchers believe that the different relative frequency of various types of cancer now as compared with before 1990 in the Basra region was a significant indication of a major change, and that this pattern continuing long after the war indicated that DU's impact was long- lasting.
Besides the contents listed below, the second edition of Metal of Dishonor has chapters reporting on a study from Iraq and from Bosnia, and a new chapter by Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a physicist and medical doctor who examined U.S. troops hit by DU "friendly fire."
source
radioactive boyscout
... June 26, 1995, was not a typical day.
Ask Dottie Pease. Cruising down Pinto Drive, Pease saw half a dozen men crossing her neighbor's lawn. Three, in respirators and white moon suits, were dismantling her next-door neighbor's shed with electric saws, stuffing the pieces into large steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs.
The cleanup was provoked by the boy next door, David Hahn. He had attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his mother's shed following a Boy Scout merit-badge project.
I don't think he turned himself in, but he did realize what he had put together was too 'hot' and he had started dismantling it.
When David's Geiger counter began picking up radiation five doors from his mom's house, he decided that he had "too much radioactive stuff in one place" and began to disassemble the reactor. He hid some of the material in his mother's house, left some in the shed, and packed most of the rest into the trunk of his Pontiac.
At 2:40 a.m. on August 31, 1994, Clinton Township police responded to a call concerning a young man who had been apparently stealing tires from a car. When the police arrived, David told them he was meeting a friend. Unconvinced, officers decided to search his car.
They opened the trunk and discovered a toolbox shut with a padlock and sealed with duct tape. The trunk also contained foil-wrapped cubes of mysterious gray powder, small disks and cylindrical metal objects, and mercury switches. The police were especially alarmed by the toolbox, which David said was radioactive and which they feared was an atomic bomb.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Michael Moore is a loud mouth liar who is himself, the fear mongering media he encourages everyone to despise.
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Moore isn't a liberal. He's "moore" likely to be a republican mole. He should move out of his 1.2 million dollar Manhattan apartment and get out of the country and away from the people he hates so much. Ofcourse he won't because Moore really doesn't care about what he preaches. Moore only cares about getting attention to feed his ego. Guess who once said "My biggest failing is that I have absolutely no ego"?
Truth about columbine:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.
http://www.atomiq.org/archives/000524.html
http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.htm
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/printout/0,881
http://www.hollywoodhalfwits.com/michaelmoore/ind
http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000037.html
Yup all various penetrators from DU rounds. My wristwatch is a hotter radiation source. The issues with DU are due to the dust. The radioactive nature of the metal is a hysteria button used by the leftist enviro-terrorists to whip up the panic in the unwashed masses.
The dust is a mechanical poison that works much like ionic silver. Silver nitrate is just as dangerous a compound. Heavy metallic ions are bad in general. Heavy metal poisoning is bad. Cadmium, Lead, Tungsten, Polonium and Rhenium dust are just as bad. Mercury is worse. Uranium Oxide dust is non-water soluble and settles very quickly. Now if you crawl around a knocked out tank without a dust filter you'd die of silicosis faster than DU poisoning from the residue of an anti-tank munitions.
On the other hand if it is a Soviet built tank it is the Boron, Molybdenum and Osmium dust from the vaporized armor that you should worry about. It'll cut your lungs out in just a few months.