Taser to raise power of stun gun used by police

[struggle4progress]

PHOENIX Taser International is .. raising the power of .. stun gun models .. police use ...

(P)olice officers .. complained .. suspects were able to regain partial mobility ...

The .. company will increase .. power .. by 14 percent ...

The guns have come under .. scrutiny .. as .. deaths have been blamed .. on the weapons.

http://www.wbay.com/Global/story.asp?S=2843001

[theshadow]

1. I was shot with a Taser...

... and it was powerful enough, thanks. I have a hunch that the cases in which it didn't work involved subjects who aren't going to be bothered by a 14% increase either.

[NuttyFluffers]

2. wait... what does this mean?

if it increases the frequency cycles so that they are less similar to the electrical frequency of the cardiac muscles' electrical pulses then... this might be a good thing. it might have such a dissimilar frequency cycle as to only stun but not disrupt the heart's rhythms and this might prevent heartattacks.

but why do i get the feeling that this might not be the goal...

[struggle4progress]

3. Sixty hertz household current can stop your heart, although ...

... the natural rhythm is nowhere near sixty hertz.

[NuttyFluffers]

4. isn't our cycles 80-100 hertz? i forget my biology...

and didn't europe put theirs around 200-300 hz? i thought household circuits in europe and latin america (they have like 120 or above, if i remember correctly from my relatives) were less lethal than the household circuits we use here in the usa.

oh dear, i'll have to go ask my friend who was apprenticed as an electrician and then ask a few doctor friends.... or i could use the internet! but i'm lazy today... it's the weekend.

[struggle4progress]

5. It's my impression that significant EM fields near neural tissue ...

... can polarize or depolarize neurons, leading to some firing and others not; so EM fields can potentially desynchronize the natural cardiac pacemaker, which involves synchronized firing by a large group of neurons, producing fibrillation.

I could of course be wrong, but I don't think this effect really has very much to do with relations between the frequency of house current and either the gross frequency of the natural pacemaker or the frequency of the action potentials that make up the neuronal pulses.