What is Reverse 911 ?

Please watch this video on how Reverse 911 may have made a difference in saving a woman's life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMMv29ylvzM

Reverse 911 is exactly what it sounds like, 911 in reverse. Instead of citizens calling in, emergency personnel contact designated communities or individuals. The Reverse 911 Interactive Community Notification System is described by its service provider as “a communications solution that uses a patented combination of database and GIS mapping technologies to deliver outbound notifications.” The amazing communication system quickly reaches a specific demographic and provides rapid notification to communities or individuals for the purpose of general information or crisis notification. The current Reverse 911 system is in use by many local governments, police, emergency management agencies, universities, utilities, chemical and transportation companies to quickly inform citizens of impending emergencies. Reverse 911 has been instrumental in saving lives in the recent California wildfires. Authorities were able to rapidly notify residents to evacuate as fire raced toward unsuspecting homeowners. Reverse 911 could be vital to the safety of people living near nuclear power plants or chemical manufacturers when used to inform residents of toxic spills or radiation releases. As communication technologies continue to grow and improve, Reverse 911 will replace slower notifications systems like tornado sirens to warn communities of impending danger.

www.reverse911.com/

I Pod Breathalyzer

When you turn on your TV nowadays and watch the news most likely there is always a story about someone being killed or hurt by a drunk driver. This device which is sold by David Steele Enterprises costs $79. It is compact and fits onto the bottom of an IPod and displays the logo "Made for iPod." While it is attached you can download your music by using your FM Radio. The I breath is charged by your IPod’s battery and lets you perform your own Breath test to determine if it is safe for you to drive yourself home. Maybe if more people use the I breath instead of just driving drunk less people will get killed or hurt by drunk drivers and more people will be safe on the road!

Technology and Safety Group Art Project

Undergraduate Safety Technology Degee at Rochester Institute of Technology

Virtually every organization today depends on safety experts to ensure a safe, smooth, and effective operation. These professionals address their organizations’ immediate safety needs, with work ranging from creating physically safer work places and modifying employee behaviors to implementing voluntary protection programs that go beyond legal standards.

Safety professionals protect resources such as workers, buildings, equipment, intellectual capital, and corporate reputations. They perform their functions in a variety of settings, including manufacturing, construction, engineering, insurance, risk management, consulting, corporate business, government, education, and health care. This program is available to students both on campus and in a distance-learning format.

The safety technology program is academically challenging and prepares graduates with the skills and knowledge to address their organization’s immediate and long-term safety needs, including protection and preservation of workers, buildings, equipment, and corporate reputations. The program prepares graduates to be:

• qualified to practice as safety professionals in industry, government, or other related areas of employment;


• able to progress toward safety management (leadership) positions; and


• able to pursue appropriate advanced education or certification as safety professionals.

The curriculum is grounded in math, science, and the liberal arts, with specialized courses in a wide range of subjects, including occupational safety, fire protection, construction safety, incident investigation, and ergonomics. The safety technology curriculum emphasizes creative problem solving through challenging, application-based courses that provide the opportunity to solve actual safety problems provided by industry.

Your Cell Phone, Your Lifeline

What I thought about at Meeting yesterday.
Posted on April 20, 2009 by QuakerDave
http://www.quakeragitator.wordpress.com/.../

The tragic shootings at Columbine High School and Virginia Polytechnic Institute have brought to the forefront the need for rapid, mass communication on college campuses. (see links for more information on Columbine and Virginia Tech. Warning: These videos may disturb some viewers): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7uEpHFhDS4&feature=email%20
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OwK34ZD1TY&feature=email
College administrators need to be able to quickly communicate with faculty, students and employees in emergency circumstances (severe weather, fire, campus intruder or other emergency). During the Virginia Tech shootings, the university attempted to notify campus members about the ongoing emergency via campus email, the latest technology available at the time to communicate with large groups on campus.
A timeline pictured on Liveleak, shows that it took nearly two and a half hours after the shootings began at Virginia Tech for the university to attempt to notify the campus community about the impending danger.
http://cdnll-5.liveleak.com/s/8/media8/2007/Apr/17/LiveLeak-dot-com-43323-virginiatechshootingtimeline.jpg?h=c74deffe12ec169a7fec6663e13a822b&e=1248554435&rs=150

Where there is a need, technology responds. College campuses everywhere realized they needed a more rapid method of notifying the campus community of emergencies. According to PEW Internet and American Life Project, “nearly 90% of Americans age 18 to 29 years old own a cell phone” . Rave Mobile Safety corporation provides cell phone alerting systems to universities across the United States. In simple terms, students who wish to participate, provide a user profile and cell phone number to campus security. During a campus emergency, university security can contact and locate students via the cell phone’s GPS system. The use of cell phone technology allows the university to immediately contact campus personnel for security purposes. “In addition to responding faster to emergency situations, this service also allows students to request “electronic escorts.” Students can call a second preprogrammed number and record a message informing security that they are walking from the library to their residence hall, for example. The students set a timer and if they do not call back before the time has expired, security will call the cell phone number to check that the student is safe. If there is no verification, security will respond to the incident.” http://www.ravewireless.com/products/ravealert/beforeafter
The newest technology systems are looking not only to provide outgoing messages from the university to students and staff , but are also looking to provide inbound information from individuals requesting emergency help. Future upgrades may allow participants to add medical history (allergies, diabetic or epileptic) to their profile for use in case of emergency. This service may also be used to follow students anywhere off campus where they have a GPS signal.
Bucks County Community College has a cell phone notification system in place. The system of course is only available to students who chose to enroll. Members may enroll on the college website. http://www.e2campus.com/my/bucks/signup.htm
Consider enrolling today to safeguard your college experience.

Scanning Electron Microscopes

Although these gadgets were published in 1993, today they have become more useful than ever.

In 1993, Charles Smithart was convicted of the murder of an 11-year-old girl in the town of Glennallen, Alaska. Prosecutors suspected Smithart after he was spotted at the scene of the crime, but they had no evidence directly linking him to the murder. That's where a scanning electron microscope (SEM) came in.

Using the X-ray spectroscopy detector of an SEM, a forensic scientist analyzed bits of iron found at the scene of the crime. He found that they had a globular shape that only welding or grinding produces. As it turned out, Smithart had a welding rig in his shop and would sometimes repair bicycles for the local children. Thanks to the tremendous capabilities of scanning electron microscopes, prosecutors had the evidence they needed to link Smithart to the crime.

Why was an SEM, rather than a regular light, or optical, microscope from the local high school, necessary to examine the evidence for Smithart's trial? For one thing, SEMs can magnify objects at upward of 300,000 times the size of the object studied. Scientists refer to this number as the magnification power and denote it, for example, as 300,000^x. In contrast, run-of-the-mill optical microscopes tend to have a magnification power of a few hundred times. SEMs also have tremendous depth of field compared to traditional microscopes, providing an almost 3-D image for researchers to analyze, as compared to the flatter image an optical microscope produces. Lastly, these advanced microscopes can look past the surface of an object, telling researchers information about its composition. All of these attributes proved essential in examining evidence from the Smithart case.

Of course, SEMs have their share of drawbacks as well, like cost. Even the cheapest among them cost tens of thousands of dollars. They're also bulky and complex instruments, requiring considerable expertise to operate. As a result, their use is typically limited to research and industrial applications, though recent breakthroughs have made SEMS more accessible in other applications.

To read more on Scanning Electron Microscopes and to view the whole article you can visit

http://science.howstuffworks.com/scanning-electron-microscope.htm

OnStar Technology

At its most basic, OnStar consists of four different types of technology: cellular, voice recognition, GPS and vehicle telemetry. All of the services that OnStar provides are a result of one or more of these technologies working together.

OnStar's cellular service is voice-activated and hands-free. The console contains a built-in microphone and uses the car speakers. To make a call, you speak a phone number or a previously stored name associated with a phone number. The console is connected to a Vehicle Comm and Interface Module (VCIM), which uses a cellular antenna on top of the car to transmit signals to OnStar's cellular network. (For more information on cellular technology, see How Cell Phones Work.) OnStar's cellular service has a better range than most cell phones (although you can still lose service in remote areas), with a full three watts instead of a regular cell phone's 0.6 watts. With some OnStar plans, you can also use the cellular service just as you would a regular cell phone plan.

For calls to the advisor, OnStar uses voice recognition software similar to that already used in some hand-held cell phones. However, one of OnStar's unique features is the ability to "surf the Web" using the Virtual Advisor automated system. For this service, OnStar uses text-to-voice technology called VoiceXML. When you ask for information, such as "weather," the software translates your request into XML (Extensible Markup Language) and matches it to settings in your OnStar profile. Then it translates the information into VoiceXML and reads it to you. The GPS receiver is called OnCore, and it is part of the VCIM (older OnStar-equipped vehicles have separate modules for the cell phone and GPS system). A GPS receiver uses the amount of time that it takes for a radio signal to get from satellites to a specific location to calculate distance. (For more information on GPS, see How GPS Receivers Work). The OnStar Call Center uses four different satellites to pinpoint the car's location when either the driver or the car itself asks to be located.

Now this is what i call SMART and SAFE technology. To read more on how OnStar works click the link below.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/onstar2.htm