No actually, what I'm doing is more along the Astronomy. I'm still a student, but my major area of interests is planet habitability, exo-planetary hunting and astro-biology.
I've learned about Nikoli Tesla, he was a very crazy man, but very prolific in his field. The deathray concept would work in theory. but is very hard to do, since you are basically moving energy around (in simple terms), the rate of transfer would have to be EXTREMELY high for that to work.
... as for the elevators, talk to English mobster, he made a tutorial about making elevators, see if he will include your link in his tutorial.