Aloha man charged for allegedly pointing laser at federal helicopter. MGN image.
PORTLAND, OR – The United States Attorney’s Office has announced that Brian Keith Kapileo Nepaial, 38, of Aloha, has been charged for allegedly pointing a laser at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Helicopter and possessing methamphetamine with the intent to distribute.
According to court documents, a CBP helicopter was struck by a green laser on October 3rd, causing the pilot to abort a planned landing. The flight crew said they observed a person walking near a residence and disappearing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is said to have identified the residence, then agents executed a federal search warrant there a week later. Agents say they found a laser in the bedroom of Nepaial. They also say they discovered over 100 grams of methamphetamine and evidence of drug trafficking.
“Laser strikes are a serious matter with potentially deadly repercussions. They put the lives of the pilots and the public at risk. Aiming or pointing a laser at an aircraft is a federal crime and will be prosecuted,” said Scott E. Bradford, U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon.
Aiming a laser pointer is punishable by up to five years in federal prison. Possessing methamphetamine with the intent to distribute is punishable by up to 40 years in federal prison.
Kapileo Nepaial is currently in Washington County custody on a parole violation.
One of the most popular ways to get your nails done is now banned in parts of Europe. And an expert says that should give everyone pause. “I was counseling patients or trying to steer them in other directions or alternatives,” said Dr. Farah Moustafa, a dermatologist and the director of Laser and Cosmetics at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.That included Yara, who has been getting gel manicures regularly for about a decade. “I get them done every two or three weeks,” she said. “It makes my nails look very shiny and hardens them. It also lasts longer.”But when she noticed her nails getting really weak, she turned to Moustafa for advice.”She recommended that I stop getting gel nail polish done,” Yara said. Moustafa said she’s been worried about gel manicures for years, before the European Union banned the polish because of a chemical that may raise concerns about fertility. “The ban was based on some animal studies in which rats were fed large quantities of TPO and they were found to have fertility issues, and it was reproductively toxic,” Moustafa said. TPO stands for trimenthylbenzoyl diphenylphoshine oxide — a long name for a chemical agent that allows the nail polish to harden when exposed to UV light. That’s long been the appeal of gel polish: the shiny seal that makes the color last for weeks instead of days. There have been no scientific studies that definitively establish a link between TPO and health risks in humans. And a ban in the United States is seen as unlikely. Moustafa said, the chemical aside, the UV exposure has always worried her when it comes to gel. “The UV exposure is not good for your hands long-term and does increase your risk of skin cancer of the nail bed,” she said. “It’s like a tanning bed for your nails.”Moustafa suggests patients look at the labels before picking their polish or consider alternatives like dip powder or dazzle dry. For Yara, it was enough to make her hit pause, even though she admits she loves gel polish.”I’m going to try my best to stick with it,” she said. “I’ll probably do it occasionally when I have a wedding or something. But for now, day to day, I think I’m going to stick to regular nail polish.”
BOSTON —
One of the most popular ways to get your nails done is now banned in parts of Europe. And an expert says that should give everyone pause.
“I was counseling patients or trying to steer them in other directions or alternatives,” said Dr. Farah Moustafa, a dermatologist and the director of Laser and Cosmetics at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
That included Yara, who has been getting gel manicures regularly for about a decade.
“I get them done every two or three weeks,” she said. “It makes my nails look very shiny and hardens them. It also lasts longer.”
But when she noticed her nails getting really weak, she turned to Moustafa for advice.
“She recommended that I stop getting gel nail polish done,” Yara said.
Moustafa said she’s been worried about gel manicures for years, before the European Union banned the polish because of a chemical that may raise concerns about fertility.
“The ban was based on some animal studies in which rats were fed large quantities of TPO and they were found to have fertility issues, and it was reproductively toxic,” Moustafa said.
TPO stands for trimenthylbenzoyl diphenylphoshine oxide — a long name for a chemical agent that allows the nail polish to harden when exposed to UV light. That’s long been the appeal of gel polish: the shiny seal that makes the color last for weeks instead of days.
There have been no scientific studies that definitively establish a link between TPO and health risks in humans. And a ban in the United States is seen as unlikely.
Moustafa said, the chemical aside, the UV exposure has always worried her when it comes to gel.
“The UV exposure is not good for your hands long-term and does increase your risk of skin cancer of the nail bed,” she said. “It’s like a tanning bed for your nails.”
Moustafa suggests patients look at the labels before picking their polish or consider alternatives like dip powder or dazzle dry.
For Yara, it was enough to make her hit pause, even though she admits she loves gel polish.
“I’m going to try my best to stick with it,” she said. “I’ll probably do it occasionally when I have a wedding or something. But for now, day to day, I think I’m going to stick to regular nail polish.”
In December 2023, a tiny, gold-capped satellite beamed a video of an orange tabby cat named Taters chasing a laser pointer up and down a couch. If you thought you were incessant about showing off your pets, Taters’ 15-second-long adventure was transmitted from 19 million miles away from Earth. A few months later, photos and videos of NASA employees’ pets were flying through space, delicately packed inside laser beams that took 101 seconds to travel to Earth at the speed of light.
Aside from one-upping every pet owner on Earth, the NASA demonstration is designed to test optical communication systems as a way of transmitting data to distant spacecraft at a much faster rate than radio waves. “This has been something that’s been in the works for decades,” Meera Srinivasan, the operations lead of NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), told Gizmodo. “We needed to develop that technology and make it suitable for operations, and in particular, in the space environment.”
A new era of space communication
It took years of research and smaller technology demonstrations that beamed data across shorter distances, like from Earth to the Moon, before DSOC was ready to fly. The DSOC flight laser transceiver launched in October 2023, attached to the Psyche spacecraft (which is on its own mission to explore an asteroid by the same name).
While Psyche relies on traditional radio communication, the DSOC laser transceiver is the first demonstration of optical communication from distances as far away as Mars. In November, the instrument saw its first light and beamed data encoded within a near-infrared laser from nearly 10 million miles away from Earth.
Yes, we’re talking about invisible beams traveling at the speed of light, carrying high-definition data from deep space to Earth. Here’s how it works: Optical communication systems pack data into the oscillations of light waves in lasers, encoding a message into an optical signal that is carried to a receiver through infrared beams that the human eye can’t see.
How optical communication works
Since the launch of the first satellite in the 1950’s, NASA and other space agencies have relied on radio frequency communication to send data to and from space. Both radio signals and laser signals are part of the electromagnetic spectrum and travel at the same speed, but they each have different wavelengths. Lasers transmit data in the near-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, so they have a shorter wavelength and a higher frequency. That means there are more infrared than radio wavelengths over a particular distance, allowing for more data to be packed inside infrared waves.
“It affects the amount of data that you can fit in,” Srinivasan said. “And obviously what that does is it enables higher resolution data because you can send so many more bits in the same window of time.” The DSOC experiment aims to demonstrate data transmission rates 10 to 100 times greater than current radio frequency systems used by spacecraft today, according to NASA.
If you consider the tabby cat video, Psyche’s traditional radio transmitter, which has a data rate of 360 kilobits per second, would have taken 426 seconds to transmit the video. Meanwhile, the DSOC laser transceiver took only 0.58 seconds to transmit the video at a data rate of 267 megabits per second. Both radio and laser would have taken the same amount of time, however, to get to Earth at the speed of light.
“With optical communications, you’re essentially using telescopes and lasers to communicate, and you’re pulsing these laser beams,” Srinivasan said. The DSOC experiment has a flight laser transceiver and two ground stations: the 200-inch (5-meter) aperture Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego, which acts as the downlink station, and the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain facility in California, the uplink station.
The uplink station sends a pulsed laser signal to the flight terminal, which is equipped with a camera that has the ability to count the individual photons. The flight terminal uses the ground transmitter as a beacon, locking onto it to aim where it’s pointing the laser beam. Using the ground transmitter, the flight terminal sends its data in the form of laser pulses as a downlink to Earth.
Challenges and the future of space lasers
That sounds fairly easy, so why hasn’t NASA been relying on these cool space lasers this whole time? Well, optical communications is not without its challenges. As the laser beam reaches Earth, it is much narrower than its radio counterpart, measuring at only a few hundred miles wide compared to an approximately 1.5 million mile-wide (2.5-million kilometer-wide) radio signal. Its narrow width requires more accuracy to reach the receiving station on Earth, aiming the laser beam at a point where the ground-based telescope will be in the planet’s orbit by the time the signal reaches it.
Optical communication has been used to transmit data from Earth orbit and the Moon, but the recent test marks the farthest distance covered by the laser beams, as NASA seeks to fine tune its communication skills ahead of upcoming missions to deep space. However, longer distances make it more difficult for space lasers to precisely hit a target on Earth—NASA’s biggest challenge in fully relying on lasers for downloading data from deep space.
As the Psyche spacecraft continues its 2.2 billion mile (3.6 billion kilometer) journey to the asteroid belt, the engineering team behind DSOC will continue to run tests of the communication system and have weekly check ins with the laser transceiver. The farther away Psyche travels on its way to its asteroid target, the fainter the laser photon signal will become.
So far, the experiment is smashing records as it gets farther away from Earth. In July, DSOC sent a laser signal from Earth to the Psyche spacecraft from a distance of about 290 million miles (460 million kilometers), which is the same distance between Earth and Mars when the two planets are farthest away from one another.
NASA’s Srinivasan anticipates that missions will begin relying on lasers within the next 10 years or so, highlighting the need to build telescopes dedicated to optical communication to have a number of options for ground sites that can receive the data.
“I think it’s going to be a solution of both [radio and laser communication],” Srinivasan said. “With laser communication, it’s a high data rate channel used for getting across high definition videos, much richer science data and so on, but there’s always going to be a place for radio frequency communication.”
HOUSTON, Texas – More and more people are shining lasers at pilots flying above Houston.
In 2023 alone, it happened well over 400 times. Each of those occasions temporarily blinding a pilot flying at several hundred miles per hour, putting lives in the air and on the ground in danger.
A laser strike is when someone on the ground points a laser at an aircraft. The laser hits the cockpit of the airplane or helicopter, often obstructing the pilot’s vision temporarily. In some serious cases, a laser strike can lead to injury.
According to data from the FAA, pilots flying above the Houston area reported 473 laser strikes.
One of those pilots is Lt. Ryan Chapman with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Texas Department of Public Safety Pilot Lt. Ryan Chapman flying above Houston, Texas in a law enforcement helicopter. (Copyright 2023 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)
“Your eyes constrict and you can’t see anything,” Chapman said. “Not only is my life at stake, but my partner’s life is too.”
He flies the Texas DPS helicopter around 1,000 feet above the ground, travelling often at speeds topping 150+ miles per hour. Just the slightest of movements on the controls could be the difference between staying airborne or crashing to the ground.
“It’s like jumping on one leg, patting your head and rubbing your belly,” Chapman said. “Because every limb you have is doing something different. There’s a lot going on. And then you add a distraction like a laser you can’t see that’s that’s a big factor.”
Any distraction is bad, but a blinding laser could be catastrophic. When the laser beam enters the cockpit, it often reflects off the glass, expanding and blinding the pilots to the point they can’t see.
A laser strike as seen in the cockpit by the pilot of an aircraft. (Copyright 2023 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)
To make matters worse, law enforcement, like the Texas Department of Public Safety, uses night vision goggles. This just makes the laser strike that much more powerful.
Gage: “When you think about a laser coming out of a little device just like that, whenever it travels up to the aircraft, is it coming in tiny like that? Or what does it look like?”
Ryan: “No. As the beam travels, it gets wider from the source. It gets wider. And so when it hits, it hits a wider surface area of the actual helicopter or airplane.”
According to Chapman, the tiny little laser that’s smaller than the tip of a pencil grows into a ginormous glow.
Gage: “We’re right over one of Houston’s busiest highways. If something, God forbid, were to happen. I mean this not only for us in the aircraft, but it could be for countless people on the ground.”
Ryan: “That’s correct. Yep. Residential areas. Because most people are at home when they’re doing this, they don’t realize the people that their friends and neighbors they’re putting at risk.”
Chapman is one of the thousands of pilots that have been blinded by lasers. This wasn’t a one-time occurrence for him.
Ryan: “At least 25.”
Gage: ”25 time?”
Ryan: “25 times.”
Gage: “How long you been doing this?”
Ryan: “Two years.”
Gage:“You’ve been hit 25 times in two years?”
Ryan: “Yes, sir.”
His most recent run in with a laser was on February 1, 2024.
Two men are accused of pointing a laser at his law enforcement helicopter in Northwest Houston. His tactical officer, or right hand man, used the helicopters state-of-the-art cameras system to hone in the home that the light beam was coming from.
Texas Department of Public Safety Pilot Lt. Ryan Chapman flying above Houston, Texas in a law enforcement helicopter. (Copyright 2023 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)
“You can see the beam all the way to the ground. So, if you’re within range of the camera, then we can see you,” Chapman said.
The chopper calling down to Precinct 4 Constable deputies who arrested Artemio Gonzales and Leonel Vasquez.
“If an individual decides to make that unfortunate choice, state wise, it’s a Class A misdemeanor, but federally, it’s a felony charge,” said Sgt. Stephen Woodward of the Texas Department of Public Safety. “And it’s not a matter of if, it’s when you get caught, you could face some serious penalties and fines.”
Across the county, laser strikes are up 40%, according to data from the FAA. A total of 13,304 reports were filed in 2023 alone.
In the Lonestar State, a total of more than 1,400 laser strikes were recorded. Of those, 473 are in the Houston area.
Many of those strikes hitting commercial airline jets, which are carrying hundreds of passengers.
Gage: “What does that tell you?”
Ryan: It tells me they’re not getting caught enough.”
That’s exactly what the FAA is looking to change. The enforcer of the sky is cracking down on anyone who has the not so bright idea to blind a pilot.
Texas Department of Public Safety Pilot Lt. Ryan Chapman flying above Houston, Texas in a law enforcement helicopter. (Copyright 2023 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)
“Including fines of up to $11,000 per violation. Bottom line lasers and aircraft don’t mix,” said FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker.
Gage: “What would you say to anybody that thinks it’s funny? It’s a joke to just go ahead and shine. A laser up in the sky thinking it’s harmless fun.”
Ryan: “I would tell them to think about their actions before they do that, because it’s not fun and it’s not safe.”
To report a laser incident to the FAA, click here.
Copyright 2024 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.
By Bassel H. Mahmoud, MD, PhD, as told to Susan Bernstein
Vitiligo is mainly an autoimmune disease of the skin that targets pigment-producing cells called melanocytes. This results in patches of depigmentation in the form of chalky white areas on the skin that can range from very small to very large, even covering most of the skin surface.
Vitiligo affects anywhere from 0.5% to 2% of the population, both adults and children, and affects people of all ethnic groups and all skin types. Vitiligo, although most of the time considered a cosmetic problem, can have a devastating psychological effect on patients and can affect their quality of life.
Treatments for vitiligo include topical and systemic immunosuppressant medications. The one that may be best for you depends on how extensive and active your disease is. There is also phototherapy, which uses ultraviolet light and laser. Other options include surgical treatment.
Immune T cells Attack Pigment Cells
Recent research studies have looked at the pathogenesis of vitiligo, which simply means the chain of events leading to this disease. These studies showed that vitiligo is an interferon-gamma driven disease leading to recruitment of CD8-positive T cells. These are cytotoxic T cells that engage with the melanocytes, or cells producing pigment in the skin, and kill them. Now that we have a better idea of how vitiligo occurs, we can develop better treatments to address this process. These newer treatments target and block these chains of events.
Recently developed drugs for vitiligo that have shown promising results are Janus
kinase (JAK) inhibitors. Examples include ruxolitinib and tofacitinib. Both are immune-suppressing medications that disrupt the cytokine signaling in the interferon-gamma pathway. Some of these new medicines can be used at topic creams or taken by mouth. It does take a few months to start seeing repigmentation of the vitiligo skin.
Many conventional treatments are still used and can be effective for vitiligo, such as oral and topical corticosteroids, which can have side effects if taken for a longer period of time, even topical steroids. The main side effect of topical steroids is skin atrophy, thinning of the skin. Calcineurin inhibitors, such as tacrolimus, are nonsteroidal alternative topical treatments, and they do not have the risk of skin thinning.
Light and Laser Treatments
Phototherapy is also a common, conventional treatment for vitiligo. The most used is narrow-band ultraviolet B light. It’s effective and relatively safe when used under supervision of a board-certified dermatologist. Another type of phototherapy is called PUVA, which is still used in some countries, but studies show that if it’s used for too long, it can cause skin cancer.
Previously, phototherapy treatments were done only at the dermatologist’s office two to three times a week. While it only takes a few seconds to a few minutes to get the treatment, you would still have to leave your work or school to come to your doctor’s office. Now, there are home phototherapy devices available, including many that are covered by insurance with a dermatologist’s prescription.
There is also a laser treatment for vitiligo called excimer laser. You must go to your doctor’s office for this treatment. A machine is used to target the vitiligo areas of the skin with an excimer laser. This treatment is in the ultraviolet range, but it’s a laser, not light. It’s stronger and can have a good effect on the areas that do not respond to treatment with UV light. You need to get the treatment two to three times a week.
New Cell and Tissue Transplant Surgeries
Cell transplant surgery is an option for recalcitrant vitiligo, which means when your vitiligo patches fail to respond to other conventional medications or light therapies. There are very few places in the U.S. that offer this surgery; one of them is at our department of dermatology at the University of Massachusetts. In vitiligo, there is a loss of the melanocytes in your skin, but the hair follicles in this area may have it and act as a reservoir of melanocytes. But if the hair also becomes white, then the reservoir of melanocytes is lost, and this vitiligo area will not respond to conventional therapy, and this is when a cell transplant procedure would yield the best outcome.
One type of surgical treatment is tissue transplant, such as punch grafting from normal skin and applying it to the vitiligo area. But the surface area to treat with this type of transplant is very limited. Also, the outcome is not optimum as it can cause a “cobblestone” look, which may be cosmetically unacceptable.
The other type of surgical option, which is the one I perform, is a cell transplant technique. We take a small amount of normal skin from a donor area, usually a hidden area on the body such as the upper thigh or buttock. Then, we extract the melanocytes from it and suspend them in a solution. While doing this step, we use a laser to resurface the vitiligo areas. Then, when the cells are ready, we apply them to the vitiligo patches and cover them with a bandage. This technique only requires a small area of skin to be taken from the donor site to cover a much larger area of vitiligo, which is a major advantage. The outcome leads to homogenous repigmentation without the cobblestone effect. The procedure is all done under local anesthesia as an outpatient procedure. The complications are minimal with excellent outcomes.
Talk About Your Options
When a patient with vitiligo comes into our office, they are counseled regarding the nature of their condition, different treatment options, techniques, and complications in detail. Then we come up with the best treatment plan for you. There are also many resources to help you understand vitiligo and treatment options that can be found on the American Academy of Dermatology’s website, so please visit www.aad.org for more information on skin, hair, and nail health, and www.umassmed.edu/vitiligo/ for our Vitiligo Clinic and Research Center at UMass.
MILWAUKEE, December 28, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– Start New Year celebrations at iCOMBAT in Waukesha, Wisconsin, with special tactical laser tag “rave” sessions featuring an ultra-realistic first-person shooter experience on a Hollywood movie-style set using the same equipment and software deployed by SWAT teams and Special Operations teams around the world.
“Don’t just sit around all day watching the games – get in the game,” said Rick Jensen, CEO and president of iCOMBAT. “Start the New Year off with a bang by playing real-life ‘Call of Duty.’”
On New Year’s Eve, iCOMBAT will feature four special rave sessions where the adrenalin-powered competition is taken up a notch by the pounding rhythms of the players’ preferred tunes. These New Year’s Eve pre-party sessions will be at 4 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. The cost is $30.
iCOMBAT’s patented technology is so realistic that it is used for training by SWAT teams and Special Forces units around the world. The 15,000-square-foot iCOMBAT Waukesha facility features a movie set from a middle-eastern city with a city square with a fountain and a road with vehicles. There are two VIP areas for observers to watch the intense fun. Scores and live footage of the missions will also be shown in the lobby on large television screens.
MADISON, Wisc., December 27, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– Start the New Year celebrations at iCOMBAT in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, with special tactical laser tag “rave” sessions featuring an ultra-realistic first-person shooter experience on a Hollywood movie-style set using the same equipment and software deployed by SWAT teams and Special Operations teams around the world.
“Don’t just sit around all day watching the games – get in the game,” said Rick Jensen, CEO and president of iCOMBAT. “Start the New Year off with a bang by playing real-life ‘Call of Duty.’”
On New Year’s Eve, iCOMBAT will feature five special rave sessions where the adrenalin-powered competition is taken up a notch by the pounding rhythms of the players’ preferred tunes. These New Year’s Eve pre-party sessions will be at 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. The cost is $30.
iCOMBAT’s patented technology is so realistic that it is used for training by SWAT teams and Special Forces units around the world. The 16,000-square-foot iCOMBAT Madison facility is modeled after Camp Leatherneck, the U. S. military base in Helmand, Afghanistan. It features guard towers, a sniper’s nest, real military vehicles, multiple exploding props and one- and two-story buildings on a fully immersive field with a 27, 000-watt sound system. Participants will hear helicopters hovering overhead and jets screaming by during an action-packed session with multiple missions. There is a lounge serving beer for observers to watch the competition. Scores and live footage of the missions will also be shown in the lobby on large television screens.
iCOMBAT Madison is located at 2919 Marketplace Drive in Fitchburg near the intersection of County Road PD (McKee Road) and Seminole Highway close to Breakaway Sports Center. More information about iCOMBAT can be found on their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ICombatMadison or on their website at https://www.icombat.com/madison.
CHICAGO, December 27, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– Start New Year celebrations at iCOMBAT Chicago in Illinois with special tactical laser tag “rave” sessions featuring an ultra-realistic first-person shooter experience on a Hollywood movie-style set using the same equipment and software deployed by SWAT teams and Special Operations teams around the world.
“Don’t just sit around all day watching the games – get in the game,” said Rick Jensen, CEO and president of iCOMBAT. “Start the New Year off with a bang by playing real-life ‘Call of Duty.’”
On New Year’s Eve, iCOMBAT will feature four special rave sessions where the adrenalin-powered competition is taken up a notch by the pounding rhythms of the players’ preferred tunes. These New Year’s Eve pre-party sessions will be at 4 p.m., 5:30 p.m., 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. The cost is $30.
iCOMBAT’s patented technology is so realistic that it is used for training by SWAT teams and Special Forces units around the world. The 16,000-square-foot iCOMBAT Chicago facility contains a playing field modeled after an abandoned prison. It features guard towers, prison cells and a broken down prison bus in a two-story facility with a 27,000-watt sound system. Participants will hear helicopters hovering overhead during an action-packed session with multiple missions. Scores and live footage of the missions will also be shown in the lobby on large television screens.
