Ever wondered if your Florida grapefruit is really from Florida? After all, how can you trust those flimsy little stickers. Well, researchers have a solution to this important problem: lasers!
Via Physorg.com:
Laser labeling of fruit and vegetables is a new, patented technology in which a low-energy carbon dioxide laser beam is used to label, or “etch” information on produce, thereby eliminating the need for common sticker-type labels.
In the United States, the FDA is in the final stages of approving this “tamper-free labeling technology.” Laser-etching of fruits and veggies is already underway in New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Rim countries, and it has been been approved in many other regions.
There’s actually some science behind laser-etching. A recent study in the journal HortTechnology concluded “the fruit quality remains high as the invasion of the epidermis does not incite decay [or] provide an avenue for food pathogens,” as the laser essentially cauterizes the peel of the fruit. “The technology will offer the grapefruit industry a safe alternative to adhesive sticker labeling without enhancing decay susceptibility.” Thank goodness for that.
Related Content:
Discoblog: Pilots Attacked By Frickin’ Laser Beams
Discoblog: When Fruit Gets Deadly: Woman Eats Grapefruit, Nearly Loses Leg
Discoblog: EU Embraces Ugly Fruits and Vegetables
Image: Agricultural Research Service and University of Florida
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If you were a particularly mischievous youngster, you might have gotten a lecture about the dangers of aiming a laser pointer at someone’s eye. But those low-power classroom aids are practically nothing compared the damage one could cause with an industrial-sized laser.
About 30 Russians went to the hospital after suffering partial vision loss from a laser show gone wrong. Heavy rains forced organizers to hold the July 5 Aquamarine Open Air Festival, an all-night dance party, under huge tents. The lasers that normally shine harmlessly into the sky were instead refracted into the crowd. Russians officials are sure how it happened, whether the light bounced off the rain or the tent, but the beams gave some of the party-goers’ instant and irreversible retinal burns.
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I think it’s reasonable to assume that ever since the dawn of humankind, people have yearned to control lightning. (No, Halle Berry did not create this idea for her role in X-Men.) The first approach—rain dances, spells, and the like—proved marginally effective, at best, but there wasn’t much of an alternative. In the ’70s, scientists found out that if they launched rockets carrying long metal wires into thunderstorms, the wires would sometimes provide enough conductance to coax a lightning strike, much like Ben Franklin’s (probably apocryphal) kite string. But around the same time, they also thought it would be much, much cooler to use a laser to bring about lightning. Most things are cooler when accomplished by lasers, as any scientist can tell you.
A group of European researchers working at South Baldy Peak have finally realized this longstanding goal by successfully bringing about lightning by zapping lasers into thunderclouds in a recent experiment. The ultrashort laser bursts (only around a hundred femtoseconds) ionize some of the molecules in the air, forming a plasma, and these channels of plasma act can guide lightning strikes like the wires on a rocket. (more…)
Last Friday night between 10:15 and 10:30 pm, six airplanes flying into Sydney Airport were victims of the city’s first coordinated laser attack, in which some miscreants shined lasers at the folks operating the flying tin cans carrying lots of people. The potentially dangerous maneuver provoked the government to consider banning laser pointers or classifying them as illegal weapons. (Shining laser beams at aircraft is already punishable by two years’ jail time and fines of up to $30,000.)
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