UAV Provides Colorado Flooding Assistance Until FEMA Shuts it Down

As reported by IEEE Spectrum: There's been some terrible, terrible flooding going on in Colorado. Rain which ended earlier in the week, made it difficult (or impossible) for airplanes and helicopters to get in and out of the area. Drones can fly, though, and while they're not able to pick up people or drop off supplies, they are able to make damage assessment maps to help relief agencies coordinate their efforts. Or at least, they were, until the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) showed up and grounded them.

Falcon UAV is a Colorado company that makes a fixed-wing UAV (called a Falcon) that uses GPS and cameras to autonomously generate (among other things) highly accurate maps of the ground. The UAV is hand-launched, with an endurance of about an hour, and generally operates between 300 and 1,500 feet above the ground. It has public safety flight approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly in some parts of Colorado. Basically, the point here is that we're not talking about some random dude with a quadrotor flying around taking pictures: the Falcons are designed for (and governmentally approved for) mapping missions in public airspace.

For the last three or four days, Falcon UAV has been volunteering with the Boulder County EOC (Emergency Operations Center) to coordinate mapping flights around the towns of Longmont and Lyons, just northeast of Boulder. This is the kind of thing they end up with, with a turnaround time of just a few hours from launching the drone to delivering a high resolution, georeferenced map:

It's tiny, I know, but you can see a subset *.gif here and download a full version for Google Earth here.

So, it seems like that would be handy to have, especially since the UAVs can fly even when manned aircraft are grounded by weather, like last Thursday afternoon when the Falcon was the only aircraft that managed to get into the air at all.
And then, over the weekend, FEMA showed up. Falcon UAV tells the story on their blog:

Early Saturday morning Falcon UAV was heading up to Lyons to complete a damage assessment mapping flight when we received a call from our Boulder EOC point of contact who notified us that FEMA had taken over operations and our request to fly drones was not only denied but more specifically we were told by FEMA that anyone flying drones would be arrested.  Not being one to bow to federal bureaucrats we still went up to Lyons to do a site survey for how we can conduct a mission in the near future to provide an adequate damage assessment to this storm ravaged community.
While we were up there we noticed that Civil Air Patrol and private aircraft were authorized to fly over the small town tucked into the base of Rockies.  Unfortunately due to the high terrain around Lyons and large turn radius of manned aircraft they were flying well out of a useful visual range and didn't employ cameras or live video feed to support the recovery effort.  Meanwhile we were grounded on the Lyons high school football field with two Falcons that could have mapped the entire town in less than 30 minutes with another few hours to process the data providing a near real time map of the entire town.
[...] We are very disappointed in FEMAs response to actively prevent the use of UAVs and drone technology when these services were offered for free and at a time when manned helicopters could be used for more critical missions such as evacuations and high mountain search and rescues in inaccessible communities.

It's unfortunate that the government seems more than willing to employ UAVs when it comes to military, police, and security operations, but when drones have a chance to go some tangible public good, the reaction is all of a sudden there's this panicked "new technology is scary and bad" response. This is part of the reason why drones have such a bad rap: it's not that they can't be used for helpful things (much as they were used for in the Yosemite fire by California), it's just that in this social and political climate, it's much much harder.

We should stress that we don't have FEMA's side of the story on this, and it's entirely possible (even likely) that there's more going on that we know about. But it's also hard to dispute the facts, which are that Falcon UAV was actively assisting Boulder EOC with valuable information until FEMA showed up and told them to stop. Honestly, I hope that somehow there's more going on, because if not, then the only thing we have to blame is bureaucratic inertia, which is small comfort to the people in Colorado who Falcon UAV could be helping right now.

Safe Driving: Apple Urged to let iPhone Auto-Reply to Texts

As reported by Geek Wire: If you’ve ever driven anywhere during rush hour, you know that texting while driving turns people into a menace on the road.

OTTER, a Bainbridge Island-based company, aims to alleviate that problem with an eponymous app that allows a user to cede his or her texting to an automated system while driving — alerting people who text the driver that the recipient is behind the wheel — as well as silence notifications and the ringer while the car is in motion.

The company’s app is already available on Android. But, because of restrictions placed on iOS developers, OTTER can’t make the jump over to iOS. To try to get Apple to budge, OTTER has started a petition on Change.org to ask the iPhone maker to open up its platform to apps that prevent texting while driving.
Apple offers a hands-free texting solution in the form of Siri, but a recent study has shown that hands-free texting doesn’t do anything to ease the distraction brought on by texting. OTTER says there’s no speed-activated, texting auto-reply software available on the iPhone today.

“Now, more than ever, it’s time take on this epidemic on a large scale and Apple has the ability to tackle it like few other companies can. Our goal is to give bicyclists, motorcyclists and all drivers an easy way to let Apple know that this is a priority – and it takes less than 30 seconds to sign the petition,” OTTER Co-Founder John Lam said in a press release.

It’s worth noting, however, that OTTER is asking a lot from Apple. Allowing apps to automatically text on a user’s behalf opens up a lot of potential abuse cases for malicious devs to turn unsuspecting iPhone users into text spamming machines. That’s not to say Apple won’t end up doing what OTTER is asking for, especially in light of Tim Cook’s remarks at D11 when he said that he was interested in potentially opening up iOS, but what OTTER wants is a tall order.

If you want to sign the petition, you can find it here. As of press time, 91 people had signed the petition.

Apple to use Fingerprint Recognition Against The Smartphone Black Market

As reported by NPR: Last week, Apple introduced two new iPhones with new features, including fingerprint recognition on one model, and extra password protections. But the new technology is up against a sophisticated black market that has had years to grow and adapt to meet the world's desire for smartphones.

To call smartphone-related crime an epidemic is not an exaggeration. By one estimate, more than 4,000 phones are stolen every day in the United States.

Last year the crime rate in New York City rose after years of declines. The reason? Fifteen thousand people reported a stolen phone.

Jessica Ingle was one; her phone was stolen in a crowded bar. "I didn't even notice it," she says. "They must be experienced or something at doing it without people noticing."

The weird thing, Ingle says, is that the thief actually left her wallet in her handbag. Only the phone was missing; it was never found.

Officers are doing their best to fight crime, says Pat Timlin, a former deputy commissioner in the New York City Police Department. But the odds are against them. Smartphones are easy to grab, he says, and they're almost as liquid as cash.

Tracking The Black Market

An insatiable appetite for smartphones has turned the black market into a global enterprise, efficiently sending ill-gotten gadgets wherever demand is greatest.

But no one has a complete picture of the size or scope of the black market. One can only catch it in glimpses.

In a report for NYPD, Timlin found stolen phones changing hands all over the city. "We saw bodegas, we saw local laundromats, and we saw back-alley sales," he says.

In March, the California attorney general announced the arrests of two individuals who allegedly paid homeless people to buy discounted phones on a two-year contract, and then shipped the devices in bulk to Hong Kong.

There, phones can sell for $2,000 each — 10 times as much as in the states. The accused allegedly took in almost $4 million in less than a year.

Larger Than Thefts

"I hate the guys who do this type of stuff," says Marc Rogers of the online security firm Lookout. He is a hacker who frequents forums where information on the black market for cellphones is exchanged. He says that in the global game of cat and mouse, the mouse is usually faster.

For example, some European authorities created blacklists, where users could report stolen phones and block them from being used again on other networks. But Rogers says criminals quickly realized that by shipping devices to foreign countries, they could sidestep the blacklists and probably sell for close to retail price.

Law enforcement tends to focus on thefts on the street and in subways. But Rogers believes police will only make progress when the black market itself is squeezed.

He says the security features in Apple's new operating system, like fingerprint ID and the requirement that you enter a password before resetting the phone, are a good start.

"Ultimately, it would be fantastic if we could get it set up so once a device is stolen, the only value there is from the parts," he says.

New York police will be on high alert when Apple's new iPhone goes on sale Friday. Since the first iPhone debuted six years ago, they've noticed that every new Apple product comes with a spike in street crime.

Google Buys Wireless Sharing App 'Bump'

As reported by CBS News: Google has purchased Bump, makers of smartphone apps for wirelessly sharing files, photos, and contacts, for an undisclosed sum. Bump CEO and co-founder David Lieb made the announcement in a blog post and tweet Monday morning. Google confirmed the buy to CNET.

Founded in 2008, Bump raised roughly $20 million in funding from a collection of renowned venture firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital before it was picked up by Google. A source told AllThingsD that the deal was valued between $30 million and $60 million.

"We strive to create experiences that feel like magic, enabled behind the scene with innovations in math, data processing, and algorithms," Lieb said. "So we couldn't be more thrilled to join Google, a company that shares our belief that the application of computing to difficult problems can fundamentally change the way that we interact with one another and the world."

The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup developed an early following for its fun technology that lets people exchange content with friends and strangers with the bump of two smartphones. The Bump application seemed to fade from view over the years, however, and more recently the team released Flock, an app for group photo albums. Lieb said that both Bump and Flock will remain operational for the time being.

"The Bump team has demonstrated a strong ability to quickly build and develop products that users love, and we think they'll be a great fit at Google," a Google spokesperson told CNET.

The news comes just ahead of the release of Apple's iOS 7, which comes with a feature called AirDrop for wirelessly sharing content with other iOS users.

Remote Sensing Archeology Using Satellite Imagery

Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings
identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.

Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt. More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.

Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings, including two suspected pyramids.

The work has been pioneered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham by US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak.

She says she was amazed at how much she and her team has found. 

"We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the "Aha!" moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we'd found and I couldn't believe we could locate so many sites all over Egypt.

"To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist," she said.

The infrared image on the right reveals the ancient
city streets of Tanis near modern-day San El Hagar

The team analysed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pin-point objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth's surface.

Infra-red imaging was used to highlight different materials under the surface.

Test excavations

Ancient Egyptians built their houses and structures out of mud brick, which is much denser than the soil that surrounds it, so the shapes of houses, temples and tombs can be seen.

"It just shows us how easy it is to underestimate both the size and scale of past human settlements," says Dr Parcak.

And she believes there are more antiquities to be discovered:

"These are just the sites [close to] the surface. There are many thousands of additional sites that the Nile has covered over with silt. This is just the beginning of this kind of work."

BBC cameras followed Dr Parcak on her "nervous" journey when she traveled to Egypt to see if excavations could back up what her technology could see under the surface.

In the BBC documentary Egypt's Lost Cities, they visit an area of Saqqara (Sakkara) where the authorities were not initially interested in her findings.

An infra-red satellite image shows a buried pyramid, 
located in the center of the highlight box.

But after being told by Dr Parcak that she had seen two potential pyramids, they made test excavations, and they now believe it is one of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt.

But Dr Parcak said the most exciting moment was visiting the excavations at Tanis.

"They'd excavated a 3,000-year-old house that the satellite imagery had shown and the outline of the structure matched the satellite imagery almost perfectly. That was real validation of the technology."

The Egyptian authorities plan to use the technology to help - among other things - protect the country's antiquities in the future.

During the recent revolution, looters accessed some well-known archaeological sites.

"We can tell from the imagery a tomb was looted from a particular period of time and we can alert Interpol to watch out for antiquities from that time that may be offered for sale."

She also hopes the new technology will help engage young people in science and will be a major help for archaeologists around the world.

"It allows us to be more focused and selective in the work we do. Faced with a massive site, you don't know where to start.

"It's an important tool to focus where we're excavating. It gives us a much bigger perspective on archaeological sites. We have to think bigger and that's what the satellites allow us to do."

"Indiana Jones is old school, we've moved on from Indy. Sorry, Harrison Ford."

Egypt's Lost Cities is on BBC. It will also be shown on the Discovery channel in the US.

The use of remote sensing in archeology is gaining use as a valuable tool for identifying buried ancient settlements.  NASA has a site outlining its use of remote sensing in archaeology with information about research in the Arenal Region of Costa Rica, and Chaco Canyon, NM.  

NOVA also has a write-up on the use of remote sensing in archaeology: The Sky’s Eyes: Remote Sensing in Archaeology.

How Smartphones Became Vital Tools Against Dengue In Pakistan

As reported by NPR: A line of men in black rain boots push trash carts through the alleys of Lahore, Pakistan. They stop at an open sewer along a neighborhood street and start to pull up shoes, bricks, plates and any other trash that might block the flow of waste water.

Standing water is a prime breeding ground for mosquitoes. And the local government in Lahore is on a focused mission: Stop the spread of dengue fever by mosquitoes.

Two years ago, an estimated 20,000 people in and around the city of Lahore contracted the deadly tropical disease. This year, the region has recorded just a few dozen cases of dengue fever, which usually involves a high fever, horrible headache, and severe bone and joint pain.

What triggered the sharp decline in dengue cases? Fortuitous weather patterns may have helped to keep the mosquito population low. But many leaders also credit a mobile phone app — and the public health campaign that uses it.

"We pull up the trash, put it in the basket, tie up the bag and take it away," says sanitation worker Tanvir Channa. He says that he doesn't often think about his role in combating a deadly epidemic. "Whatever I do, it's just to provide for my kids," the thin 30-year-old says.

To make sure workers like Channa don't skip out on their tasks and allow the dengue mosquitoes to breed, they're followed by an investigator who uses a smartphone to their progress. In this case, it's a tall man in plaid shirt named Mohammad Saleem Taqi.

"I open this application, called Clean Lahore, to enter a field activity," he says. "I take pictures before and after the work is done, enable location services to map (geo-tag) this spot, and then send it on to my supervisors."

Workers drop tilapia fish into a a small pond at a neighborhood park,
as an inspector enters the activity into the Clean Lahore app.
The fish eat the larvae of mosquitoes that spread dengue fever.

"Of course it seemed strange at first," Channa says, of having his picture taken on the job. But now he feels the monitoring campaign is to his benefit because the photos show supervisors that he's on the job and can't be marked absent.

Across town from the sewer, men with the fishery department tip a bucket of water into a small neighborhood pond. Dozens of tiny tilapia fish swim into the pond. These fish have a taste for mosquito larvae and naturally curb the mosquito population.

As the two men work, an inspector snaps a photo of them with the Clean Lahore app.

The app is the brainchild of Umar Saif, a Cambridge-educated computer scientist, who now manages part of the anti-dengue campaign.

"So let me tell you the story from the top," Saif says, settling into a couch in the center of his office in a Lahore high-rise building.

For him, the story begins in the summer of 2011. "What happened is, Punjab was hit with one of the worst dengue epidemics anywhere in the world."

Government officials realized they would need to work harder — and smarter — to prevent another epidemic. That's why they turned to Saif. He developed a smartphone app to track all efforts to prevent the disease. And the idea has contributed to the city's striking success against dengue.

"If Punjab averted another epidemic in 2012, then it didn't happen by accident," Saif says. "There were 67,000 different prevention activities [that] were performed and were photo-logged by the smartphones."

Other public health researchers have suggested that the decline in dengue cases might be because of environmental factors, at least in part. But still, the government's prevention campaign has been widely lauded.

One reason for the accolades is that Saif took the mobile campaign one step further: He built a Google map that correlates the locations of dengue cases and hot spots for mosquito larvae. "So there's a clear pattern of disease outbreak that corresponds to reports of positive dengue larvae," he says.

With these visuals, Saif and his team could zero in on problem regions in the province and predict future outbreaks.

The mobile phone campaign also helps to stop another issue that plagues Pakistan: entrenched public sector corruption.

"You have people who have not done — maybe for decades — work as well as they were supposed to do," Saif says. "So the government needs to therefore now use technology in innovative ways to monitor its functions."

"This is quite remarkable," says Columbia University's Patty Mechael, who studies how mobile technology is helping public health, says about the anti-dengue campaign.

When it comes to tracking infectious diseases with cellphones, Mechael says, the possibilities are endless. "It's really up to the health sector to imagine what it needs and then think about where mobile technology can actually play a role in solving some of those problems."

In a report by MIT Technology, analysis of cell phone traffic using big-data analysis techniques have also been used recently to help fight malaria in Africa, showing that even without smartphones analysis of communication traffic can be used to help support public health issues.

Space Weather the Cause of Recent Satellite Failures

Solar storms carrying highly charged matter could have caused
the recent malfunctions of satellites affecting TV, GPS/GNSS
and Internet signals.

As reported by Latinos Post: Turns out that nasty space weather may be the reason behind a number of television, Internet, and communications outages down here on planet Earth. According to one study in the journal Space Weather, charged particles from space phenomena such as solar flares and geomagnetic storms are causing greater damage to our satellites than previously thought.

By analyzing 26 geostationary satellite failures in eight satellites over 16 years, a team of MIT researchers discovered that the failures tended to happen when there was a high level of electron activity due to phases in the solar cycle. The scientists theorize that a buildup of these charged particles led to the deterioration and ultimate failures of the satellites. These failures can affect satellites in charge of television or Internet signals even though they are traditionally created to last 15 years, creating a communications disruption on the ground.

"If we can understand how the environment affects these satellites, and we can design to improve the satellites to be more tolerant, then it would be very beneficial not just in cost, but also in efficiency," says Whitney Lohmeyer, a graduate student at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"Users are starting to demand more capabilities. They want to start video-streaming data, they want to communicate faster with higher data rates. So design is changing -- along with susceptibilities to space weather and radiation that didn't used to exist, but are now becoming a problem."

A satellite's view of space weather affecting the Earth's
magnetosphere.

Despite the promising results, the scientists are cautioning against an easy fix. Cosmic weather patterns are more difficult to understand than those linked to our atmosphere, and there are the obvious logistics of repairing something above in space. 

"But space weather is a lot more dynamic than models predict, and there are many different ways that charged particles can wreak havoc on your satellite's electronics," explains Kerri Cahoy, an assistant professor at the MIT Department of Aeronatuics and Astronautics. "The hard part about satellites is that when something goes wrong, you don't get it back to do analysis and figure out what happened."