Slashdot Mirror
Bacteria To Protect Against Quakes
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you live near the sea, chances are high that your home is built over sandy soil. And if an earthquake strikes, deep and sandy soils can turn to liquid with disastrous consequences for the buildings built above them. Now, US researchers have found a way to use bacteria to steady buildings against earthquakes by turning these sandy soils into rocks. 'Starting from a sand pile, you turn it back into sandstone,' the chief researcher explained. It is already possible to inject chemicals into the ground to reinforce it, but this technique can have toxic effects on soil and water. In contrast, the use of common bacteria to 'cement' sands has no harmful effects on the environment. So far this method is limited to labs and the researchers are working on scaling their technique. Here are more references and a picture showing how unstable ground can aggravate the consequences of an earthquake."
I wonder if my homeowner's insurance will cover this...
"researchers are working on scaling their technique"
I hope their technique doesn't scale too far. Its hard to make sand castles out of sandstone without power tools.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Now if only they'd had this in 1692. Pirates of the Caribbean would still have a home base.
I was going to imagine a Beowulf cluster of these, but I lost my microscope
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It seems to me that alot of research is needed to investigate possible side effects of such a process. Changing the soil composition is going to have far greater consequences than just protecting against earth quakes! Especially when used over large areas.
Also I wonder how one would contain these bacteria, and stop them from spreading? I don't think we would want our beaches turned to stone...
I am generally very reserved when it comes to releasing living organism where they don't belong and/or trying to alter the environment. There are just too many factors involved, and there is no way we can cover them all!
09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63
I know people think Quakers are wierd, isn't biological warfare a bit too much?
Sorry.
no harmful effects on the environment
Just wait, some environmentalist will find *some* impact on *some* aspect of the environment and pronounce it a conspiracy of the Bush Administration and Big Oil.
-------
I accept the Troll mod with pride
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This could be use to battle beach erosion and other problems of global warming. Just pile the sand higher before building any more beach-front property and turn it to sandstone.
some microbial life form to prevent Diakatanas instead.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Are these bacteria found on sheeps' bladders, by any chance?
Look what happened in Guatemala's capital a few days ago...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Awesome.
surely the best way forward is to not build houses on sand in the first place?
I ain't afraid'a no quake.
What if the bacteria gets out of control. Then we have to generate a bunch of viruses or organism that eat bacteria in order to control their population. Then have things that eat those things. Then, a few levels up, bring in snakes for some reason. Then mongooses... monkeys... robots. It's a slippery slope my friends.
If we can turn sand/soil into solid ground, we're one step further to dealing with the melting polar ice caps. I forsee a globe of man-built rock land! And if we need some more, we'll just dig it up out of the ever expanding oceans and BOOM! ...instant land. It's all pretty simple really.
Wouldn't it be much simpler to just use a small bit of Ice-9?
The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life. -FZ
I didn't know people thought that. But it was the Washington Post, some years ago, that published a cartoon strip suggesting that the Quakers had developed a 40-megaton nuclear plowshare. After that, using CBW to save foolish men who build their houses on the sand should be a no-brainer.
Pining for the fjords
Here in Boston, about most of the city's residents and commercial property is sitting on land fill. (At its time, the filling of Boston's Back Bay was the nation's largest public works project ever. The Big Dig is us reclaiming that dubious title) Buildings sit on wooden pilings that are buried in the landfill below the water table. As long as those pilings stay wet, the buildings and streets on top of them are supported. But if and when the water recedes, those pilings start to rot, and bad things can (and likely, will) happen. A century's worth of construction has started to upset groundwater levels. Since most of the landfill material used was sand, I wonder if this discovery could be used to solve the problem here in Boston (and any other cities with similar problems).
When making such radical changes to the soil, the first thing to look at is how water is being handled. Sandy soil lets water through, and in fact filters it quite nicely. Rock will keep the water on top, causing all sorts of interesting issues. Like cars and furniture floating thhrough the streets...
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
"[...]the use of common bacteria to 'cement' sands has no harmful effects on the environment"
Smoking was also considered harmless until people started dying from it. Just hope they test it enough before trying to use it "in the wild".
Gazooks, what if this gets loose on the beaches. It's a cinch people with eroding beaches threatening buildings will be injecting this stuff along shorelines.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Leaning Tower of Pisa saved by E. Coli
OR
SandMan to take penicillin to stop from getting stoned.
Since I _am_ a Quaker, though not a very good one, and since I have the cartoon somewhere in my files if I could be bothered to look it out, and since the Amish are opposed to irrelevant technology, and since there is an anti-nuclear and WMD campaign called Ploughshare Fund, and since the Amish are a German speaking sect and ploughshare/plowshare is an English word, and since the Quakers in the UK are involved in an anti-submarine campaign called Trident Ploughshares, and for a number of other reasons too long to post here but having to do with my somewhat in-depth knowledge of both Testaments and religious history, I guess I am not.
Pining for the fjords
Seriously, more often than not, he submits really interesting stuff. I wish more people would emulate that, not less.
The bacteria process basically improves the shear response of the soil when it's under motion to prevent/reduce liquefaction. The problem in Boston is that buildings in Back Bay and along the Harbor are basically setting on water. Short of soil mixing under each of the foundation, there's not much that you can do to solve the problem you describe.
sand-nine.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
This new learning fascinates me, Bedeveire - tell me again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
I wish Westwood studios implemented this idea in Dune II ...
"Impressive"
Spam is Spam. He is dishonest and embellishes the articles for dramatic effect.
No one has explained about the company who took pre-orders on "Tactile Digital Assistants" but vanished, while Roland was pimping the company with article after article, many featured on Slashdot. Why does this seem not to bother anybody? Why does he not answer for himself when asked?
Roland is a fraud.
I wonder if such bacteria are potentially hazardous to the silicon dioxide supplies of the semiconductor industry.
I just love comments like this: "Isn't the fact that so many environmental actions undertaken by humans have turned out to make things worse reason enough to be scared? We barely understand natural processes, or how they affect eachother. It seems to me that interfering with them is not a good idea unless it is absolutely necessary." Why is it I think the same people that say "We barely understand natural processes" are the same ones that are convinced mankind is warming the planet?
I wonder is this can provide help for sinking cities like Venice. I don't think the Venitian Lagoon is that sandy, but at some depth there might be enough to work with. As long as it doesnt just turn everything into a bigger rock that will sink faster.
-- http://uncannyvalley.org/
Wooden piles have worked in Venice for quite some time - I beleive some of them are heading for a thousand years. (And no, the building in Venice aren't sinking - they were, but they've stopped taking water from the aquifer [why does everyone say "underground" aquifer - where the heck else would it be?] and they've stopped sinking. The lagoon's still rising though, and global warming is yet to show much effect).
"Cats like plain crisps"
Bad things already have begun to happen in the Back Bay. Granite blocks that form the foundations of some brownstones are shifting on those rotting pilings, and a lot of building owners (divided among condos, for the most part) are suddenly realizing that they need to cough up $100,000+ to dig under and replace the building's pilings.
It's an interesting problem for Boston, because they don't want to spend the money to fix things (they're more at the "let's dig more monitoring wells" stage), but those buildings are prime Boston real estate, and that's where a lot of tax money comes from. If the value of those condos drops, so will the tax receipts.
Two years ago I sold my Back Bay condo, and was glad to get out.
Could something like this be used as a low-cost concrete alternative structural building material in 3rd world locations where chemical concrete mixes might not be affordable...?
Well, now that they got the sand problem almost fixed...what about the tsunamis?
If you've inherited such a property, or have only recently started to think about defensive housing (in the same sense as "defensive driving"), then you need to keep your mouth very firmly shut until you've got the buyer's money cleared into your account.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"