SENSORS IN YOUR WORLD
Pebbles Sense Glaciers
Glacier scientists have developed plastic sensor
“pebbles” to track what happens inside large masses of
ice. The Glacsweb team is based at the University of
Southampton in the UK, and feels its invention is the
start of something big. Concerns over global warming and
changes in sea level prompted the team to literally get
inside glaciers. The first one to be explored: Norway’s
Briksdalsbreen Glacier.
A hot water “drill” puts a 60-90 meter hole
into the ice into which the 14 cm sensor is dropped. The
sensors measure temperature, pressure, speed and the
makeup of the glacier’s sediment six times a day and
report it back, once a day, via radio waves and SMS, to a
nearby base station on the surface. The base station has
its own set of sensors and keeps track of its local
temperature and the position of the in-glacier sensors.
The base station transfers the data to a scientific
basecamp, where it is processed and put out on the Web.
Sensing Lightning
The National Weather Service and National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration recognized a week in June
as Lightning Safety Awareness Week. With more and more
people outdoors in all sorts of weather, the likelihood of
lightning strikes has risen dramatically. At one time
farmers were most likely to be hit, but more recently
it’s those “playing” outdoors that report incidents.
Lightning sensors range from small handheld products to
computer enhanced predictors with multiple data inputs.
The several hundred dollar handheld devices can detect
lightning within 5-20 miles, but can’t tell users where
the strike is. But there’s another good, inexpensive
sensor: an AM radio will detect lightning as interference.
Sensing the Perimeter
A Distributed Ad-hoc Intelligent Sensor-Intrusion
Detection System (DAIS-IDS) is in development for the
Helena Regional Airport in Montana. The development
project was funded by a $1.2 million grant from the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Computer
software is connected to cameras that continually check
for intruders, and automatically alert guards to prevent
security breaches.
Those managing security work with an interactive
digital map of the whole area. They can “draw” virtual
barriers to define security zones. When those barriers are
crossed, in the real world, the software triggers alarms
to immediately notify the appropriate personnel. Intruders
are tracked in real-time, and live video of the event is
sent to remote monitors and handheld devices. The software
can do a bit of feature extraction, too: distinguishing
between planes, cars, people, animals and other objects.
Sensing Blackwater and Red Tide
Oceanographers at the University of South
Florida’s College of Marine Science are using
remote-sensing fluorescence data gathered from NASA’s
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and
other instruments aboard both NASA’s Terra and Aqua
satellites to differentiate between algae and plumes of
dark-colored runoff from river and wetlands, sometimes
causing “blackwater.” Armed with such information,
researchers could notify regional environmental managers
who can obtain field samples in time to warn fisherman and
swimmers about developing cases of red tide, which occur
every year off Florida, causing fish kills, coral stress
and mortality, as well as skin and respiratory problems in
humans.
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