Gizmodo: earthquakes

Snake-Like Rescue Robot Will Scare the Sh*t Out Of You, Then Pull You From the Rubble

John Mahoney — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:00:00 EDT

If I was trapped in a pile of earthquake rubble, I'd do just about anything to get the hell out as soon as possible. But if this cilia-covered rescue snakebot squirmed it's way up my leg, I think the chances of heart failure might need to be factored in. It's called the Active Scope Camera, and it was conceived by researchers at Japan's Tohoku University, all of whom are clearly fans of War of the Worlds. It's a fiber-optic camera wrapped in a layer of tiny cilia bristles, which allow for millipede-like locomotion that's creepy, creepy, creepy in this video.

With a length of 8 meters, it can dive in with its fiber cam where rescue dogs can't, leading the way for human rescuers. Look for it slinking around in rubble piles next year. [Nikkei and Tohoku University via Crunchgear]

Incredibly Weird Global Teledildonics

Jason Chen — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Dash over at Fleshbot's got a very interesting look at Ars Elektronika in SF, where inventors and teledildonics fanatics gather together to show off the weird, gadgety and sexy things they made in their sex dungeons. One invention is a vibrator that's connected to the U.S. Geological Survey which only activates during an earthquake somewhere in the world. "Only trouble is that when your own "Big One" finally arrives, it's tempered by the realization that a building might have collapsed somewhere with people trapped inside." It gets better. Another is tied to how many Iraqi civilian deaths there are a day which you can read about over at Fleshers (NSFW). [Fleshbot]

Laptop Accelerometers Used to Study Earthquakes, Desk "Bumping"

Jason Chen — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:20:00 EDT

Seismologists at Stanford are learning from their roommates over in the biology department and rigging up a distributed computing system to gather quake data from laptops with accelerometers. It's used to save resources for scientists by using assets (your laptops) that are already deployed in a widespread area. They're rolling this out primarily in quake-heavy areas like SF and LA, but should be spreading to other zones later.

If you've got a MacBook, iBook or Powerbook made after 2005, you too can join the effort to tell people about quakes after it already happened, or maybe even act as a warning system. "Even just a few seconds of warning may be enough time for people to take cover and automated systems could slow trains and divert traffic from vulnerable bridges." And if you think that your constant table bumping from your activities at your computer will trigger The Big One over at EarthquakeHQ, "the Quake Catcher Network's software will analyze shakes sensed by a computer's accelerometer and report only big movements to the central server, ignoring the vibrations from a passing truck, a bump to a table, or even a minor earthquake." [Stanford via Technology Review]

Japanese Want Quake-Alarm Cellphones Sooner Rather Than Later

tgrumet — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:57:11 EST

With all the natural disasters this past year, Japan isn't taking any chances. As one of the highest risk areas for earthquakes, the country's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is looking to develop an emergency broadcast system that would be able to turn on your cell phone and send a warning alarm and other information via text messaging. The system would use a digital terrestrial television broadcasting signal and would receive data, including information about disasters and evacuation instructions and routes. The plan is to use a new broadcasting system called One Seg that will be used to play TV shows on cellphones—due out in April of next year.

Quake-alarm cell phone to be tested [Yomiuri]