science visualization Archives

21 December 2010

Earthquake monitoring with smartphones and websites

Want to contribute to earthquake science? Your smartphone can be an earthquake measuring device. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have been developing a smartphone application that uses the phone to measure acceleration during an earthquake and report that data to researchers for processing. Shideh Dashti of the University of California Berkeley reported on initial tests of the system in Fall Meeting’s session S51E: Engaging Citizens In the Collection …

“Seeing” Fall Meeting with New Eyes

Yesterday, as I was leaving my hotel in Union Square I saw a man in the hotel lobby with a red-tipped cane. With some worries about intruding where help was not needed I asked him if there was anything I could do. He said that he wanted to get a cab. I offered my elbow and we left the hotel. I asked where he was going. When he replied, “Moscone,” I realized he was going to the AGU meeting. I said I was too, thinking we might share the cab. Instead we ended up walking, and I had the real pleasure of getting to know Peter Rayner, an atmospheric scientist from Melbourne, Australia.

Virtual Globes, Virtual Field Trips, and Virtual Specimens…Huh?

Informatics–the study of managing, preserving, and sharing data–was featured in IN22A: Geo-Visualization with Virtual Globes II. I only got to see video, but I nonetheless felt tickled that I virtually attended the session :). During this session, researchers discussed how networks of data have the potential to create an interconnected system that is more than just searching for information online. “It is the GeoWeb,” said first speaker Andrew Turner of …