Courtesy of ABEM A retired engineer uses an out-of-production device to read very-low-frequency radio waves to find water trapped in underground rock. In California, a retired electrical engineer has revived an out-of-production sonar device that uses very low frequency, or VLF, radio waves to locate underground water, and, as recently as Feb. 15, he has been successful. Using improved software, he found water where others had failed.Richard Varian, owner of Survey4Water, Willits, Calif., uses the WADI VLF-sonar device—developed over 25 years ago by ABEM, Sundbyberg, Sweden—to find water trapped in rock fractures and cavities."The fractures in the rock are where
FIRST READ COMMENTARY: Providing valuable, credible information can be the foundation of a sound business model, something the earliest online business learned in a hurry.Take Autobytel, for example. The web’s first car-buying website launched in 1995, supplying consumers with information they’d never before had access to: how much automotive dealers paid for new cars. “The dealers hated it,” recalls Thomas Heshion, a former executive.Autobytel will always be remembered as the first dot-com to advertise on the Super Bowl, but it’s thriving more than a decade later because it supplies information that helps car buyers better understand what they’re buying, and
Photo by Tom Sawyer Drag and drop Form builder for Android device lets users with no programming skills create apps. App development for mobile devices is surging, like lines of surfers picking up big sets of waves.Economists are beginning to notice "the app economy," saying that it is now responsible for 466,000 jobs in the U.S., up from zero in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced, according to a report published on Feb. 7 by TechNet. The report is based on research by Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics LLC, a consulting firm that tracks the impact of innovation and
Related Links: Key Federal Technical Committee Says No Practical Solution to LightSquared's GPS Interference LightSquared Pushes for FCC Decision on GPS Network The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to turn out the lights on LightSquared's proposed $14-billion national 4G broadband network, following findings from a key technical committee that "there is no practical way to mitigate potential interference" with the nation's GPS systems.The FCC will open a comment period today on the recommendation from the National Telecommunications And Information Administration that the launch of the network should be killed.“NTIA, the federal agency that coordinates spectrum uses for the military and
COURTESY OF INSITE SOFTWARE New vectors Software displays multiple views and grabs selected contours. A new release of an earthwork estimating tool should make tracing contours on most site plans obsolete. Replacing tracing, the software allows a user to click on the end of a line to extract vector data from CAD files and—remarkably—many commonly distributed PDFs.InSite Software released SiteWork 11 on Jan. 24. The product's new automated, vector-based contour-tracing function is quite different from the contrast-based automated tracers available in previous versions, which are easily fooled by intersecting lines. By importing a CAD file or first-generation, vector-based PDF and
With creative use of laser scanning, Alberici Constructors has shaved four weeks off its schedule to install two 120-ton steel vertical-lift gates that are part of a $165-million complex.
COURTESY OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Color-Coded Computed using city data, the map breaks down energy use into four categories: space heating, space cooling, electricity and hot water. Researchers at Columbia University's school of engineering have laun-ched a public, online catalog of all New York City buildings, each characterized by estimated energy consumption based on size and use.When users mouse over the interactive map, pop-ups present energy consumption estimates for individual buildings. The estimates are derived from a formula that multiplies square footage by the building type, such as single- or multifamily residential, business, school or industrial. Energy consumption is broken down
Starting in its 2009 survey of users of architectural and engineering software, Cyon Research began asking respondents how they expected their companies’ revenue would change that year and the following year. In 2009 negativism was rampant as the United States plunged into a severe recession and 57% expected revenue to decrease and only 23% were looking for revenue to increase. The 2010 survey was more optimistic and in 2011, respondents had totally switched their outlook on the economy with 70% expecting revenue growth in the second half of 2012 and less than 10% expecting revenue to decrease during that period.This
A team of researchers recently shifted its operations to Edmonton, Alberta, from Hong Kong to continue development of a new alignment-control and surveying system for tunnel-boring operations. The city is helping with on-the job testing of the system, which is based on a successfully tested, smaller version for utility tunnels. Researchers aim to have a fully operational system for use in the construction of a large-diameter drainage tunnel this April.“The tunneling industry is losing productivity and having problems with quality control” because it lacks real-time survey data, says Ming Lu, associate professor at the University of Alberta. He says the
A British company has a reassuring answer for safeguarding data on USB flash-drive devices, which are all too easily lost or stolen.Conseal Security Ltd. on Jan. 17 released a new version of a locally installed software, called Conseal USB2, that password-protects such devices and then enrolls them in an online "dual lock" password-checking system. Whenever the device is jacked into a computer, the drive checks in with a server that turns back to the software's local management consol to verify the credentials.Because the device is managed from the local administrator's console, access rules can be set at a variety of
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