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Comment Re:No push for teacher education? (Score 1) 657

Any electronic clock (or mechanical clock) is a potential bomb trigger be it a cell phone or wrist watch. The only thing that makes it a bomb is explosives. From the picture nothing even remotely looked like it could be explosive. It is just circuit boards and wires. The only person that acted appropriately was the teacher that took it away and shoved it in a desk (he was being disruptive with it).

Comment Yet another Gizmag article on a hair brained idea (Score 4, Insightful) 369

Looks like some idiot an Gizmag was talked into doing an article by some hair brained inventor again. Neither party understands physics so they both think its great. As mentioned a few times here by others before me that firing a bullet into another ball isn't going to increase its knock down power (Conservation of momentum). The stupidity from there grows by training a law enforcement officer to use the gun as a first resort instead of a last one. Also for when lethal force is called for it means that the officer will have one less effective bullet and their follow up shots will be done with them dealing with the recoil from their first useless shot. Bad idea all around!

Comment Re:About time. (Score 1) 309

Nuclear reactors don't need water. You can build liquid metal cooled reactors. Metallic sodium is one such metal used.

Although some reactors have been built with liquid metal cooling, nearly all have been experimental reactors only. However, even in liquid metal cooled reactors, generally the turbine that actually generates the electricity is driven using a steam cycle (which uses water). So technically a nuclear reactor doesn't need water, but generally you want electricity out such a reactor (unless you are using it simply to generate transuranic elements)...

you can use the mercury vapor cycle or even a boiling sodium vapor cycle with a turbine. Both have a thermal efficiency advantage over steam cycle. Further more you can use either of those cycles in combination with a steam cycle thus creating a binary cycle that has a thermal efficiency above 50%.

Comment The nuclear power industry doesn't target anything (Score 0) 3

The nuclear power industry doesn't target anything. Nuclear power is a technology. It has advantages. It has disadvantages. The nuclear industry competes with all other types. It competes with wind and solar in that it doesn't emit green house gases. One of its main advantages is it doesn't fluctuate on external conditions. This is an area where wind and solar can't compete. Because of this wind and solar proponents claim they are being targeted.

Submission + - Navy: More railguns and lasers, less gunpowder (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: “Number one, you’ve got to get us off gunpowder,” said Greenert, noting that Office of Naval Research-supported weapon programs like Laser Weapon System (LaWS) and the electromagnetic railgun are vital to the future force. “Probably the biggest vulnerability of a ship is its magazine—because that’s where all the explosives are.”

Submission + - Cosmonauts Carried Sawed-Off Shotgun on Space Missions

HughPickens.com writes: James Simpson has an interesting story about the TP-82 survival pistol that Russian cosmonauts carried into space with them on missions between 1982 and 2006. But calling it a pistol is slightly misleading—the TP-82 was essentially a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun with a short-barreled rifle added onto it. Having a gun inside a thin-walled spacecraft filled with oxygen sounds crazy, but the Soviets had their reasons. Much of Russia is desolate wilderness. A single mishap during descent could strand cosmonauts in the middle of nowhere. In March 1965, cosmonaut Alexey Leonov landed a mechanically-faulty Voskhod space capsule in the snowy forests of the western Urals 600 miles from his planned landing site. For protection, Leonov had a nine-millimeter pistol. He feared the bears and wolves that prowled the forest—though he never encountered any. But the fear stayed with him. Later in his career, Leonov made sure the Soviet military provided all its cosmonauts with a survival weapon. For the Soviets, the weapon was a case of “better safe than sorry,” and from 1986, it was a permanent fixture in the portable survival kits of every Soyuz mission. "Astronauts of all nationalities—including Americans—have trained with the TP-82," writes Simpson. "And still today, before they ride the Soyuz to space, they must complete a Russian survival training course in the Black Sea and the Siberian forest."

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