TSA Unzips More Than Your Pants; X-rays Unzip Your DNA

[Technology Review] The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. "Some studies reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, showed none," say Boian Alexandrov at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a few buddies. Now these guys think they know why.

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That's a jaw dropping conclusion.

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Documents reveal TSA ignored dangers of body scanners

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) says that is has official documents that reveal the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) deliberately ignored warnings that airport body scanners pose a health risk; the internal documents and email exchanges show that TSA officials brushed aside concerns that employees raised after noticing that a large number of workers had cancer, strokes, and heart disease after working near the body scanners

The TSA's tentacles spread

It's eight months now since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) abandoned its last pretence of respect for America's constitutional principles, by mandating no traveller may fly in American airspace unless TSA agents first see and/or feel said traveller's genitalia. That's not hyperbole, just a straightforward description of American law playing out in airports every day. And given America's vast size, lack of mass transit and Americans' generally short vacations from work, flying is often the only feasible way US citizens can travel from points A to B. Yet our government has decreed every such flyer submit to search procedures previously associated with playground-haunting paedophiles and prison rapists.

All along, the TSA and its cowardly supporters insist my freedoms be curtailed to assuage their thumbsucking fears: "If you don't like it, don't fly!" Only now, they'll have to expand their craven mantra: "If you don't like it don't fly, don't take a train or trolley, don't ride a bus, don't board a boat or ferry, and don't drive your own car. In fact, don't go anywhere; just stay home and be thankful you live in a free country."

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