Scientists Want to Turn Smartphones Into Earthquake Sensors

As reported by The Verge: For years, scientists have struggled to collect accurate real-time data on earthquakes, but a new article published today in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America may have found a better tool for the job, using the same accelerometers found in most modern smartphones. The article finds that the MEMS accelerometers in current smartphones are sensitive enough to detect earthquakes of magnitude five or higher when located near the epicenter. Because the devices are so widely used, scientists speculate future smartphone models could be used to create an "urban seismic network," transmitting real-time geological data to authorities whenever a quake takes place.

The authors pointed to Stanford's Quake-Catcher Network as an inspiration, which connects seismographic equipment to volunteer computers to create a similar network. But using smartphone accelerometers would be cheaper and easier to carry into extreme environments. 

The sensor will need to become more sensitive before it can be used in the field, but the authors say once technology catches up, a smartphone accelerometer could be the perfect earthquake research tool. As one researcher told The Verge, "right from the start, this technology seemed to have all the requirements for monitoring earthquakes — especially in extreme environments, like volcanoes or underwater sites."

Solar Flares: X-Class

As reported by The Christian Science Monitor: Don't be distracted by Star Trek's M-class planets or X-Men's First Class of students – while the terms have been appropriated by science fiction, M-class and X-class solar flares are very real.

Two enormous solar flares – an X1.7 and X2.1 class, respectively – erupted from the surface of the sun on Friday morning. The smaller flare peaked at 4:01 a.m. EDT, while the X2.1 solar flare peaked seven hours later, at 11:03 a.m. EDT.

The last time the sun released an X-class flare was on May 14, 2013, but there were two weaker M-class flares on Thursday.

The steady stream of solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and other solar storms are associated with the solar maximum. Solar storms occur on a roughly 11-year cycle, but the "maximum" isn't a one-day peak, but a prolonged period of more than a year.

The minimum-maximum pattern is more of a gentle sine wave, like a system of rolling hills and valleys, than like the jagged peaks of a heart monitor, says Art Poland, an astrophysicist with George Mason University.

"We're just on the other side of the top of the sine wave right now," says Dr. Poland. "You get your biggest flares and biggest magnetic disruptions on the way down."

It's hard to pinpoint the precise timing of a solar maximum, especially in advance. In recent years, NASA was estimating the maximum would come in 2011, or 2012, or maybe 2013. "You only know afterwards," says Poland, who is the project scientist on SOHO, an observatory orbiting the sun. "You're pinning real data to a sine wave, and it's not a perfect sine wave, so it's hard to tell."

The first X-class flare of the current solar cycle occurred in February 2011. The largest X-class flare so far in this cycle was an X6.9 on Aug. 9, 2011.

What's an "X-class" solar flare?

Solar flares are classified by strength. When the system was created in the mid-1960s, the smallest solar flares were classified as C-class, moderate flares were M-class, and the largest were X-class. Since then, more refined instruments have been able to measure even smaller flares, called A-class and B-class. 

How GPS Has, and Has Not Transformed Trucking

Portions reported by The Wall Street Journal: One icon of American popular culture of the 1970s was the long-haul trucker, a free-range rebel in jeans and a Peterbilt hat. Think Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit, hauling a load of Coors beer eastward from Texas. Or Clint Eastwood (and his orangutan Clyde) in Every Which Way but Loose. Or of the truckers in the song “Convoy,” tearing up their log sheets, triumphing over Smokey, and rockin’ into the night. The spirit of the American West firmly relocated itself from pioneer to cowboy to trucker, at least for a little while.

Fast-forward 30-some years: That untamed maverick is harder to find and the open road has gotten a lot less wild. In one short generation, technology, from on-board computers to GPS systems, transformed some truckers from free-range rebels to carefully monitored employees whose lives are a bit more like cubicle-bound office workers than the iconoclasts of yore.

In the days before GPS, a driver could, if he chose, take leisurely breaks at truck stops then make up the time by racing at 80 miles an hour down the highway, possibly endangering himself, other motorists and company profits.

So most companies that had to get stuff across the country refused to take on the risk and hired freelance drivers who owned their own rigs. Owner-operators, the logic went, would be responsible because they had to account for the cost of wear and tear on their trucks—and the consequences of reckless endangerment. Or, at the very least, any screw ups would cost the driver, not the company.

But this situation of owner-operators hauling on a contract basis was less-than-ideal for some companies. Drivers did little to help out with loading or unloading at the warehouse or taking care of special loads, something the company could ask drivers to do if they were full-time employees.

Along came better monitoring via on-board computers or GPS. This fundamentally changed the playing field. Companies could keep reckless behavior in check and benefit from more coordination and extra help at the warehouse. Companies dumped the freelance operators and once again hired their own. (A 2004 study confirms this.)

Call it a victory for the productivity-enhancing effects of information technology, weighed against a loss of autonomy and independence of the trucker on the open road.

Gary Bojczak, who worked for a construction company in northern New Jersey, discovered the personal effects of these trade-offs  Earlier this year, Bojczak got his 15 minutes of fame (and a $32,000 fine) for jamming the satellite signals of a newly installed air traffic control system at Newark Airport. Bojczak hadn't procured his illegal GPS jammer for the purposes of disrupting civil aviation. He merely wanted to keep his boss from tracking his whereabouts at all times.

Increasingly sophisticated software is able to detect employee misbehavior even in the absence of direct monitoring by flagging suspicious patterns.  And the benefits – at least for the company’s bottom line – are being felt across many industries; where performance can be monitored real-time.

If workers aren't doing anything wrong, one might argue, they shouldn't mind being tracked.

So is there still room for mavericks in the trucking industry?  The short answer is 'Yes'.  They still have the opportunity to roam throughout the country, rubbing elbows with their compatriots at truck stops along the way; but also emulating those most famous traits of the cowboy and the wild west - hard work, dependability, and taking on the tough jobs that demand durable character an adventurous spirit and a can-do attitude.  Technology will never take that away from them.

Noise Pollution Mapped using Crowdsourced Data Collected by Smartphone App

As reported by Wired UK: The main causes of noise pollution -- machines, transportation, poor urban planning, people -- vary considerably in terms of location and intensity throughout the year. Consequently, measuring these noise levels on a large scale is often a time consuming and sometimes inaccurate procedure.

However, Rajib Rana, Chun Tung Chou, Nirupama Bulusu, Salil Kanhere and Wen Hu at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, have devised a novel way of combating many of the problems that have hindered previous methods of monitoring noise in the past. Rather than spending thousands on equipment, Rana and his team have crowdsourced the data from smartphones -- they call it the "Ear-Phone".

The average smartphone has enough sophisticated technology (on-board microphones, GPS, time stamping) to make it an extraordinary mobile monitoring device. However, the implementation of the Ear-Phone came with its own set of challenges -- there are many ambient noises picked up by a smartphone that would be of no use to the researchers, namely intimate conversations that sound loud to the phone, but wouldn't be disruptive to passersby, as well as the sound of rustling clothes, or keys or money jingling in pockets.

The team at CSIRO isolated these problems and fixed them accordingly, programming the phone to recognize a conversation, wait until it was over, and then start recording again. They also made sure the GPS was only collecting data when outdoors and while being held in the user's hand.  

This was made possible by taking advantage of the automatic proximity sensors and accelerometers that are standard in most smartphones. These sensors generate specific feedback when the phone is handled, which the software developed by Rana and his team can then use to assess whether or not it's an appropriate time to take a reading. Using this method, handheld usage can be detected with an accuracy of 84 percent.

Once all of the criteria have been met, the phone will take a sound recording, complete with exact location and time. The data is then sent to a central server the moment the phone is connected to Wi-Fi.

The only major downside with the crowdsourced method is battery life -- always-on GPS and Wi-Fi can drain a phone's power in a matter of hours, but the team claims it is working on a solution.

Noise pollution is thought to be a particularly destructive environmental hazard. Not only can it cause hearing-loss, stress and tinnitus in humans, but it's devastating to local Wildlife, reducing livable habitats, disrupting predator or prey detection and avoidance, and even causing infidelity in finches.

The Ear-Phone has been tested on various Android and Nokia phones in Australia.

NASA Has a 622 Mbps Data Connection to the Moon

As reported by Gismodo UK: NASA has smashed its record for transmitting data to and from the moon. Now, it boasts a frankly amazing 622Mbps transfer speed to the rock that circles our little planet.

The Agency is able to achieve that using lasers—instead of radio waves—to transmit data between its ground station in New Mexico and a spacecraft that’s orbiting the moon, 239,000 miles away. Part of the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, the agency was also able to upload error-free data to the LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) spacecraft at a rate of 20Mbps.

It beats previous attempts to send data through space using similar techniques, in particular one earlier this year which saw NASA beam the Mona Lisa into space at a rather paltry 300 bits per second. The new success of the LLCD marks a major milestone in space communications: NASA has previously relied on radio frequency data links, but they’re not able to carry the quantities of data that the agency will require in the future.

So, while the LLC is currently a proof of concept, it’s hoped it will see real service soon. “We are encouraged by the results of the demonstration to this point, and we are confident we are on the right path to introduce this new capability into operational service soon,” explained Badri Younes, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation. And frankly, when Internet on the moon is faster than some home connections, you know the future had arrived.

Federal Court of Appeals Says Police Need a Warrant to Track Vehicles via GPS

The Supreme Court ruled that attaching a GPS unit to a vehicle
constituted a 'search', but not if that search generally required
a probable cause warrant.

As reported by the Washington Post: A federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled Tuesday that the government must obtain a warrant to attach a GPS unit to a car.

The case involved alleged pharmacy burglaries in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland: the authorities suspected a trio of brothers and slapped a magnetic GPS unit to one of their vehicles after consulting the U.S. Attorney's office -- but without obtaining a warrant. Using the evidence gathered from the device, the vehicle was tracked to a recently burglarized RiteAid. Police stopped the brothers shortly afterward, and a search allegedly revealed items from the RiteAid. In the resulting case, U.S. v. Katzin, the brothers argued that the evidence obtained as a result of the GPS unit should be inadmissible because the police had not obtained a warrant.

The District Court agreed with the brothers, and the government appealed the case to the Court of Appeals for the Third District. On Tuesday, a three-judge panel upheld the lower court's ruling, finding that the actions of the police were "highly disconcerting" under a physical intrusion theory of the Fourth Amendment. The judges dismissed the government's arguments that the search was legal because the police had probable cause even if they didn't seek a warrant, saying "generally speaking, a warrantless search is not rendered reasonable merely because probable cause existed that would have justified the issuance of a warrant."

That's important because it extends a recent Supreme Court ruling, which found that GPS tracking constituted a search but did not rule on whether it's reasonable to conduct such a search without a warrant. This week's ruling is the first time a federal appeals court has ruled since that landmark decision.

The appeals court also rejected a government argument that a GPS search might qualify for the automobile exception, in which police have greater leeway searching through vehicles. "A GPS search," the court found, "extends the police intrusion well past the time it would normally take officers to enter a target vehicle and locate, extract, or examine the then-existing evidence."

American Civil Liberties Union Staff Attorney Catherine Crump, who had argued before the panel, called the decision "a victory for all Americans because it ensures that the police cannot use powerful tracking technology without court supervision and a good reason to believe it will turn up evidence of wrongdoing," in a statement. A request for comment from the U.S. Attorney's Office which argued the appeal was not returned.

A Tentative Step Toward Intelligent Highways: Bluetooth Detection In Vehicles Helps Crowdsource Traffic Flow

As reported by the Columbian: If you want to improve your travel time along some of Clark County’s busier roads, turn your Bluetooth device to “discoverable” mode.

Clark County traffic engineers — along with engineers from the State of Washington and the city of Vancouver — have in place a system that can detect Bluetooth devices in discoverable mode.

The program is being funded primarily through a $540,000 federal grant, with a small match from the local governments.

And with some 900 vehicles traveling through the Andresen corridor during peak travel times, even a small sampling is enough to give information on how quickly cars are moving along the roadways.

“Right now, we are seeing between 3 and 5 percent of traffic broadcasting in discoverable mode,” said Rob Klug, traffic signal operations and engineering lead at Clark County. “From that, we can track MAC addresses and ... get a timestamp of when cars enter and exit the area we are scanning. From there, the next step, we can make traffic signal settings based on (the information).”

Klug explained the process from an interior office at the Clark County Public Service Center. Large computer screens blink out traffic data and display live footage from intersection cameras. When something traffic-related in Clark County breaks, this office is where it starts to get fixed. At times, Klug will run signals manually from his computer to unclog congested areas.

He receives immediate reports from an automated system when cars start to back up beyond expectations.

Klug can talk at length about traffic philosophy and methodology, and he can recommend a few books to read if you’re really interested in how traffic systems have evolved over the years.

But before he explained how this Bluetooth system is being implemented, he stopped for a moment.

“It sounds kind of like Big Brother, right?” Klug said.

The fact of the matter is Bluetooth devices are most commonly used in connection with cellular phones. And it can sound, perhaps, a bit creepy that your local government can see those devices.

Because of that, Klug made it a point to make sure the county wouldn’t end up in a strange spot from day one.

Every Bluetooth device comes with a unique address to identify it. The system that tracks those addresses strips about half of the address off before tracking them. Further, if the system finds a device that isn’t moving through the corridor, it quits tracking it.

The system can’t listen in on your conversations, either.

And if some agency were trying to find a certain device for whatever reason, the county wouldn’t be able to help out.

“We don’t have any way of tracking like that,” Klug said.

And the bottom line is, if you don’t want the system to find your device, simply turn off discoverable mode.

“You can turn it off and just not participate,” Klug said. “But if you want travel times to improve, well, leave it on.”

Bob Hart, project manager at the Regional Transportation Council, is assisting with linking the Bluetooth program between the state, county and city. He said the hope is that enough information will be available by spring 2014 for the agencies to start tweaking traffic signal times.

“The reason for having the pilot project is we want to know if enhanced information can help us make the corridor work better,” Hart said. 

“We’re testing it now to see if the project is going to give us the information we want. The next part will be if the information can improve the corridor.”