“Any kind of exposure you could give to someone that wouldn’t burn them to a crisp would produce a sound too weak to have any effect,” said Kenneth Foster, a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Foster knows what he’s talking about, too. In 1974 he published the first research on the microwave auditory effect.

Fellow scientist and microwave research author Bill Guy agrees, citing some hard facts to support his conclusions:

Guy says that experiments have demonstrated that radiation at 40 microjoules per pulse per square centimetre produces sound at zero decibels, which is just barely in hearing range. To produce sound at 60 decibels, or the sound of normal conversation, requires 40 watts per square centimetre of radiation. “That would kill you pretty fast,” Guy says. Producing an unpleasant sound, at about 120 decibels, would take 40 million W/cm2 of energy. One milliwatt per square centimeter is considered to be the safety threshold.

Both scientists were in agreement about one other thing too: the MEDUSA just morphed from a crowd-control device into a monstrous weapon. We need more of those, right? [IEEE Spectrum Online]

“An eyepiece shows a red target dot, and then transmits an image of the target to a monitor, which relays the information to the gun.” According to creator Barry Lamperd, if the holographic sight is on target, you can’t miss. Let’s hope so–because the company plans to sell the scooter to the US Army to use in crowd control situations (presumably in Iraq), and it will probably make its way down to local law enforcement somewhere down the line. [Lamperd Less Lethal via Sarnia Observer via Danger Room]

Knewsroom works like this: Members submit story ideas, which can be as basic as “Apple Introduces 3G iPhone.” Then, people find stories around the web that they like, maybe one from Giz, one from Engadget and another from, let’s say, Ars Technica. Readers vote on the stories they like, but if someone doesn’t like any, they are free to write their own, possibly combining those three sources for a better overall story. (As if.) The final product is a daily Knewspaper that runs only the biggest crowd pleasers, and the Knewsroom writer, if one is selected, gets paid for services rendered.

You may say, “That doesn’t sound like Digg,” and in truth, this once-per-day concept isn’t very Digg-like. But if you belong to the community, you’ll be seeing the popular stories rise and fall day in and day out, just like they do on Digg. Then, people with less time or maybe just better perspective will hit the daily site, to see what the top stories are and then get on with their actual bona fide lives.

The funny thing is, this all came from a guy who wanted to use the collaboration to create gadgets. Ben Kaufman—who at 21 is so much younger than me it’s embarrassing—has already sold one company that was successful at doing just this: it was called Mophie, and now it’s a part of mStation, an exotic iPod accessory product maker.

Ben wanted Kluster to be an expanded Mophie, a place where companies could go to find design inspiration for whatever they were trying to build—iPod docks, sunglasses, board games, you name it. It worked almost like a massive sim game—you bet on various ideas at various stages of development, and if your idea wins, you get a piece of the bounty offered by the client companies. That’s right, you got real money.

The downsides were that the companies who most liked the service wanted it on their own terms, and a site with a broad mission to design anything and everything with a massive, nebulous volunteer workforce was hard to manage. As a result, Kluster pulled down its initial infrastructure, and is in the process of building mini Klusters for companies. It will also launch specific Kluster “labs” for specific product categories. Ben thinks a more focused studio breeds better and faster decisions.

It’s all pretty crazy, and I don’t blame you if it’s hard to follow along. But what’s important is that you go there, because shit, someone’s got to start submitting those Gizmodo stories, and if it’s not you, then who, baby, who? [Knewsroom]

A motion sensor in front of the theater takes its cues from the movements of the crowd, and the result is the liveliest bunch of people waiting for a movie we’ve ever seen. Sure as hell beats watching an interminable cavalcade of cacophonous commercials after you’ve spent $30 on a couple of movie tickets and the usual mass quantities of popcorn. – Charlie White

NewsBreaker (online version) [MSNBC.com]