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NASA Tech is Helping Find Mexico Earthquake Victims Buried in Rubble

posted by Fnord666 on Friday September 29 2017, @10:52PM   
from the almost-X-ray-glasses dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow5743

NASA search-and-rescue technology has been sent to Mexico following the series of earthquakes that shook the country last week. The suitcase-size device, dubbed FINDER, uses radar to detect human heartbeats under rubble.

The device was developed through a collaboration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Department of Homeland Security. Two private companies have licensed the technology. As of Thursday, Sept. 21, one of the companies, called SpecOps Group, was in Mexico City participating in rescue operations, NASA officials said in a statement.

The other company, R4, sold FINDER units to Quito, Ecuador's, fire department following an earthquake there last year. That fire department has dispatched these units to Mexico City, according to the NASA statement.

FINDER, which stands for Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response, uses low-power microwave radar to detect small movements, like breathing or heartbeat, beneath rubble. In tests, it can detect a heartbeat through 30 feet of rubble or 20 feet of solid concrete, NASA officials said. The technology was developed from JPL's efforts to design low-cost, small-spacecraft radios, using signal-processing techniques created to measure small changes in spacecraft motion.

Source: https://www.space.com/38290-nasa-rescue-tech-sent-mexico-earthquake.html

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Original Submission

• Re:The commenting system is atrocious (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 01 2017, @09:00AM

  by khallow (3766) on Sunday October 01 2017, @09:00AM (#575498) Journal

  Reddit's commenting system is far superior; besides a more expressive markup, the ability to edit a comment is essential to creating high-quality content.

  I can see the point of editing, though not the point of the more expressive markup [reddit.com]. The latter basically boils down to tables and images. I like the site image-free though tables would be interesting to add.

  The moderation system sucks balls. It does virtually nothing to curate the comments into something worthwhile, and it probably actually damages the quality of the discussion; it's just as bad on Slashdot.

  We're not Reddit. We don't have moderators or want that sort of curation.

  For one, it's rate-limited, which is just annoying. Surely, there are better ways these days to ensure that comments are being made by real people who are providing worthwhile content—the problems here are probably related to the terrible moderating system, too.

  Ok, what's supposed to be the problem? There's no good way to determine that real people are behind the keyboard (nor is that necessarily desirable), and that will get worse.

  Even worse is the fact that the commenting system seems to be fundamentally broken. It times out or gets confused (especially when connecting through the Tor network): "Invalid form key: JEoUKug9ip" after writing this comment and trying to submit it; to get around this problem requires cyberacrobatics to coax the commenting system into actually posting a comment.

  Sounds like a timeout issue from letting the comment sit around for a few hours (even if it isn't that, it may have a similar cause). I'd suggest at first copying the comment, reload the original post, and hit reply to the post and paste the old comment.

  It's all just a very painful experience.

  Compared to Reddit, huh? I'll note that they just do flat threading and most of the posting is just images with junk writing.

  The only reason I keep coming back here is because I'm a masochist who likes to point out how stupid the rest of you are.

  Or maybe paid to steer traffic. There's all sorts of conspiratorial possibilities when someone is as unproductive a contributor as you appear to be - hidden rewards to explain the superficial masochism.

  Parent