Technologies to Track Disasters

Bruce Bigelow has an interesting story in Xconomy about the sensors, wireless networks, wind-speed monitors and other technologies deployed in San Diego County to track and perhaps predict wildfires. Some of this work is being done here at UC San Diego (see below) and read the full story here at Xconomy.

"A more sophisticated wireless sensor network, such as the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network developed by researchers at UC San Diego, serves as a model of the type of network that could provide even more data, including imagery, that could help in the prediction of and response to disasters, according to Hans-Werner Braun of the San Diego Supercomputer Center."

Joseph Wang Textile-Based Sensors in the News

"Textile-based sensors" or "smart underpants"? Both....and two different ways to think about the same research project led by NanoEngineering professor Joseph Wang from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Reuters recently filed a story taking the smart underpants angle...which is true...but there is more. The story was triggered by a peer-reviewed paper in the British journal, Analyst. Also, here is the Reuters story with a funnier headline.

The paper investigates the viability biological sensors printed on the inside of the elastic waistband of underwear, where there is constant close contact with skin and sweat. These sensors could eventually be used as early warning sensors on the battlefiled, telling doctors that something is going wrong with someone out in the field, based on biomarkers recorded in the sweat. The U.S. Office of Naval Research is funding this research. It's part of the "field hospital on a chip" grant that I wrote about in 2008.

I'm working on a story with more details of the new paper. Thick-film textile-based amperometric sensors and biosensors. Stay tuned.

Update: Yahoo!News also picked up the Reuters story.