Slashdot Mirror
Sensor Networks for NBC Threats
Nerdsville writes "Planet Analog have an article describing research into a nationwide sensor network that could provide a real-time early-warning system for chemical, biological and nuclear threats across the US.
Researchers plan to use microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology to create accurate biological and chemical sensors. Linked in an Internet-like peer-to-peer network spanning wireless, wired and satellite links."
Like that godawful Will and Grace show?
A P2P network eh? Now what are the xxAA going to bash, when they can't claim P2P is evil?
we come in peace / shoot to kill
is that Friends will continue for many, many years.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Nukes give out a big flash of light which will tell you when they've hit. You should then remember to duck and cover. The mushroom cloud should help to warn those outside the range of the flash.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
a real-time early-warning system for chemical, biological and nuclear threats
Next time they should order the words the same as in the acronym (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) so those of us who are not terrorism experts can stop wondering why the peacock network poses such a threat to our well being.
I'd like a sensor that sniffs the RIAA and update me via MSN!!
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Must-See threats!
* Please do not read my signature.
It seems to me that a terrorist could use this system to cause panic without ever using the agents on a large scale. They could just get some agents to deploy a very small amount at different sensors they identified throughout a metro area and that would cause enough panic to disrupt what they want to disrupt.
How do they plan on concealing this?
Terrorist will use use something else that governments aren't looking for. For example the US was ready for an invasion by planes missiles etc... but on Sept. 11, the terrorists used something nobody expected.
I think the different governments should spend more money on trying to understand the causes of terrorism, and try to eliminate it at the source (which one could argue they already do with the war on terrorism).
You'll notice the article only mentions airborne threat... What about water ?
CBRN
t -really-means-afterwards department, aka the LNMUANAAFWIRMA dept.
Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear.
From the let's-not-make-up-a-new-acronym-and-forget-what-i
I can see it now: the 10 o'clock news reports that we've had the 3rd false nuclear threat, as sensors read a 69.69% jump in radiation levels at 4:20 this afternoon.... yeah, right!
stuff |
If it could warn us when NBC is about to put on one of its cheesy shows it would be worth it.
That's already done -- the network has agreed to limit crappy shows, they now will only air on days ending in "y"
--
When I first saw this I thought it might having something to do with protecting us from more Reality shows ....
Maybe not.
The Anti-Blog
For some reason, I read the title as Censor NBC Networks for Threat
Like you wanted us to censor the NBC TV network and then blackmail them or something.
It's... News for Nerds! Stuff that Matters! La-de-da-de-da-DE-da!
Unless, of course, Planet Analog are a hive mind. Then it would be grammatically correct.
No shit. As they're ordered now it would be CBN, and then we'd have to weather a storm of jokes about Christian Broadcasting Network instead of the current storm of jokes about National Broadcast Corporation.
From what I've learned a long time ago in the army one of the biggest issues with NBC is that even if you get an alert in a lot of cases you're just in time to let people know they should have put on their suit and masks allready.
So I wonder what a network like that could contribute.
(I say I'm wondering, not that it can't be done... Any suggestions?).
I can see it now: thousands of people fleeing the subway when a sensor trips because someone lit up a cigarette underneath one. Now every ignores it when a real NBC attack comes around, just like the tsunami early warning systems in the pacific.
This IS a gov't project, and this one is only getting funding because of people who watch the news too much and are becoming exactly what terrorists want: afraid.
Also, politicians are aching to to jump on the "spend money on homeland security" bandwagon. 2004 is just around the corner . .
-n
Would it kill you to explain an abbreviation that most people are unfamiliar with?
That reminds me of the "GSW" (Gun Shot Wound) that doctors use. Guess which one takes longer to say (more syllables)?
Stop clinging to acronyms as esoteric bravado.
How much is it going to cost? How many attacks have there been in the US since 9/11? None. Nada. Zip.
While the Federal government spends billions of dollars on anti-terrorism, homeland security, tax-cuts-for-the-rich (TM) and un-necessary wars, ordinary people are losing their jobs, have no decent health care and are suffering for inadequate funding of schools. This is progrsss?
CBN? That'd have to be the CowboyNeal threat.
Gotta watchout for that one.
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Sure, create a lot of warning systems and defence systems. Everyone feels safe.
Than continue with stupid foreign policy.
Everybody happy, including the no-brainers in politics.
I have to post this as AC because the american audience here will murder my karma! American christian fundamentalists have the same insane beliefs, and bloodlust for infidels. As do Israeli Jewish fundamentalists. The only difference is that Islamic militaries are considered terrorists by americans, and american and israeli terrorists are considered millitaries by americans. It is all perspective. And yes Israeli soldiers and American soldiers quite often kill civillians without apology. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not defending terrorist actions(on any side) , I am quite against all these warlard puritans and zealots.
As September 11 2000 showed us, the most effective way of killing people is large and obvious amounts of energy (kinetic, potential, chemical). The NBC available to terrorists - dirty rather than fission, agents that can effect only a small area and number of people - are minor in comparison. Their primary effect is to create panic out of proportion to the actual effect.
Sure, release Sarin in a subway station, you'll kill some people. But have a detector that screams "Sarin attack! Sarin attack!" and you'll kill just as many, perhaps more, in the stampede to get out.
And if it turns out that the sensor was triggered by a new type of cologne? Well, we've just done the terrorists' job for them.
As a further thought, how do you field test these things? Test them in the lab with real agents, sure. Test them in the field with harmless agents that produce the same effect (and hope that nobody finds out what those are), but how do you know with any confidence that you can actually detect a genuine attack in the field? False positives in a military situation aren't so bad - all that will happen is that the grunts will turn on the overpressure systems or put on their NBC suits, but in a civilian situation? We've seen what happens when large numbers of people panic in a small area. Deploying these in cities seems to me like a big gamble to take, for little potential reward, when the costs of false positives are so high.
I'm not suggesting that we do nothing, but I am suggesting that reaction (which includes "preemptive strikes" against people that already hate us) isn't the way to go. Perhaps we could devote some of this energy to dealing with the causes of terrorism rather than the symptoms.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Funny that you don't see attacks against other countries who have similar beliefs to America, i.e. Canada.
A lot of recent terrorist activities have been targetted at one country and one country alone. The United States. What is so different about their beliefs from those of others that has put them under the proverbial microscope?
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
Nuclear
Biological
Chemical
Informatus Technologicus
The worst and third worst terrorist attacks in recent American history were carried out by radical Islamic fundamentalists, yes. The second and fourth worst ... well, I don't think Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph had spent much time listening to the imams. Pretty much all fundamentalism is bad, mmmkay?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I work at the Labs, right down the hall from these guys. I play soccer with a man named Panos Datskos. He recently finished building a cantilever based electronic nose that has the potential to detect a single molecule. Datskos is working on a "universal" sensor that shares many of the same processes of a gas chromatograph to identify any substance. As described in the article, it uses very basic technology (a CD laser). It's also very compact, the size and shape of a discman. The coolest thing about the technology is that it functions in the ambient environment. It does not, like most laboratory equipment, require a vacuum, extreme temperatures, or special shock absorbance to reduce vibration. This is the kind of device that they'll be deploying to airports, I believe.
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
Two things - first, a decent sensor device made to detect specific things (like sarin, soman, etc, which are all chemically similar) won't be tripping on a cigarette. Pattern won't match.
Second, that's the advantage of having a network - in addition to spacial information, you get redundancy. If there are a few sensors in the area, they can back each other up.
Sensor networks like these are getting better all the time. Unfortunately, too often the scientists/engineers making them spend too much time creating the device and not enough time on the back-end signal processing that provides error correction and greater accuracy, not to mention false-positive protection.
Put it this way - if I made a sensor network, it would not confuse a cigarette for a threat. And hopefully, the people making this one work similarly.
Also, I was interested by something in the article:
The goal for all the government efforts, perhaps three to five years out, is to deploy a highly accurate yet low-cost network of sensors "that in a couple of minutes could tell you if an agent is present, in what concentration and something about the agent. But the technology for that doesn't really exist yet."
Yes it does. We can do it now. :P So it remains to be seen whether what is deployed is really state-of-the-art (or even state of 5 years ago, really).
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
False.
From Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin To Do by From the Wilderness From http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AVE_STE.htmlIt is beyond dispute now that Bush lied when he said the government had no idea this could happen. They had plenty of idea. This kind of idea had been speculated about for years.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Christian Broadcasting Network
Is that the Al Jazeera of the U.S.?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
You want to know what the next terrorist will be like? Read up about the DC sniper case a few months back. Now imagine 20 snipers armed with rifles, and RPGs fanning out accross the nation. Yeah, eventually they'll be found and shot (martyred), but the terror it would cause both before and after (how do you know there aren't more?) would be immeasurable. How can you prevent it from happening? Well you can't, but that won't stop your leaders from turning the US into a police state because of it.
Does this strike anyone else as "Skynet" in the making?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I didn't realize that abortion clinic bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Did they also organize the Oklahoma City bombing?
Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors (the purple ones are tasty). Unless that is recognized and dealt with this so called "War on Terrorism" is going to be just another buzzword-laden travesty of what it should be, much like the "War on Drugs".
It is very important to understand the cause of the problem so that in trying to solve it, we dont create a larger one. My gut feeling based on my reading is that, unfortunately, the seeds of a larger problem have already been planted.
Affiliate "Networks" and "NBC," and read "Sensor" as "Censor," assuming that the government was trying to censor networks like NBC? (And was anyone else... not surprised?)
________________________________________________
suwain_2