Construction industry players and other major users of precision Global Position Systems (GPS) say a new report released by an industry working group today confirms that a wireless broadband network proposed by LightSquared would cause major harm to most GPS equipment in use around the globe. Rendering of LightSquared's latest satellite. Related Links: FCC Announces Comment Period for TWG Report Save Our GPS Coalition Press Releases LightSquared's Press Release Efforts 'To Save Our GPS' Heat up in Congress The group also rejected a three-pronged proposal put forth by Reston, Va-based LightSquared, which it says would mitigate any interference the company's
Engineers and emergency planners from northern California to British Columbia say the massive undersea quake and tsunami that recently assaulted Japan gives clear warning about the danger that lurks just off the Pacific coast like a mad dog sleeping by the bed: A 630-mile-long geologic feature that was identified in 1984 is believed to be very similar to the one that broke with such violence off the coast of Japan in March. Evidence of violent breaks in the featurecalled the Cascadia Subduction Zone, or CSZhas been found in sediment layers left by prehistoric tsunami. On April 25, 1992, a 7.2-Mw
“Engineers should become more involved in research and fundamental knowledge,” says Ian Robertson, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In April, he was on the first of seven teams sent by the American Society of Civil Engineers to Japan to analyze the March 11 quake and tsunami. “There is a tendency to just do what’s in the code,” says Robertson, “but in this case the code has been idling. It’s time to bring it up to speed.” Photo by Tom Sawyer The row of bent flagpoles in Sendai (above) and pressure-shattered walls of a
Engineers and emergency planners from northern California to British Columbia say the massive undersea quake and tsunami that recently assaulted Japan gives clear warning about the danger that lurks just off the Pacific coast like a mad dog sleeping by the bed: A 630-mile-long geologic feature that was identified in 1984 is believed to be very similar to the one that broke with such violence off the coast of Japan in March. Evidence of violent breaks in the feature—called the Cascadia Subduction Zone, or CSZ—has been found in sediment layers left by prehistoric tsunami. On April 25, 1992, a 7.2-Mw
All search engines are not created equal, claims the developer of Yometa.com, a “visual search engine” that simultaneously searches any term on Yahoo, Bing and Google and then displays the results all at once as pins on a Venn diagram. PHOTO, TOP, COURTESY OF AMBERG TECHNOLOGIES. IMAGE, BOTTOM, COURTESY OF YOMETA.COM SPREAD Hits are color-coded by search engine Yometa's algorithm ranks the top results of each search engine in sets, according to relevance. Results that appear in the Venn overlaps most likely contain the looked-for information. By hovering the mouse over any pin, a bubble pops up to offer information
All search engines are not created equal, claims the developer of Yometa.com, a “visual search engine” that simultaneously searches any term on Yahoo, Bing and Google and then displays the results all at once as pins on a Venn diagram. Image Courtesy Of Yometa.com Color-coded by search engine Yometa's algorithm ranks the top results of each search engine in sets, according to relevance. Results that appear in the Venn overlaps most likely contain the looked-for information. By hovering the mouse over any pin, a bubble pops up to offer information about the corresponding website. It is surprising how often highly
The Japanese and American engineers stood atop a tsunami “refuge hill” near Sendai, Japan, and looked across an endless, muddy landscape of structures wrecked by the March 11 tsunami. One of the investigators stretched a long measuring pole into a surviving tree. Its branches apparently had been broken by a massive stone monument—commemorating a previous tsunami of 77 years ago—that was launched from its hilltop pedestal by the latest tsunami. “Three meters,” he said, indicating how much higher the water must have been than the hill. “About 10 feet.” The 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami that devastated northeast Honshu Island left
Conferences are driven by themes, and the most telling themes are expressed by succinct quotes. Presenters at ENR's FutureTech conference, held in New York City in early April, offered plenty of both as they outlined key takeaways about construction and tech. Photo: Art Credit Here “Government didn’t put the data up. It just started to appear,” said Duncan Wilson, describing the radiation reports flowing from personal Geiger counters in Japan and appearing on the site www.failedrobot.com. A quotation from science-fiction writer and visionary William Gibson—“The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed”—was referenced more than once. That quotation
The draft horse pulling workflow into thepaperless world is the open-standard, portable document format, or PDF. Over the years, that plodder has become more and more like a thoroughbred racer. Developers at Bluebeam Software Inc., Pasadena, Calif., came out of the gate on March 22 with Bluebeam Revu 9, their latest release of PDF products crafted for design and construction. The company says V.9 has more than 30 enhanced features to streamline PDF markup, viewing, processing, collaboration and sharing. While some of the features—such as 3D viewing and manipulation—play catch-up with the competition, at least one is a new capability:
Constructing any major hospital is a challenge, but building a 320-bed state-of-the-art teaching hospital for $16 million in the highlands of Haiti is fraught with difficulties. Yet the aid group Partners in Health (PIH) is doing just that, using funds that come not from the government or the United Nations but from donations collected by the Boston-based group, which has worked for 23 years to boost the capacity of Haiti’s public health sector. The materials, services and cash contributions are coming from private companies and organizations, especially from companies in the U.S. construction sector. The hospital, which will have six
