Fiber Optic Cables To Detect Tunnels

Researchers from the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology have developed an interesting technology to identify and locate the exact position of underground tunnels. This is very useful technology, especially in times of war, when underground tunnels are often used to smuggle prohibited goods and arms into warzones. In some places of the world, underground tunnels are even used to smuggle people across international borders.

Researchers from Technion have used the same kind of fiber optic cables in this technology that are commonly used for telecommunication systems across the world. This system is capable of pinpointing the position of any tunnel, no matter how narrow or wide it may be, at depths more than 60 feet below the surface of the ground. This system is so sensitive; it can locate and identify cracks and strains that are caused in the ground by the process of excavation.

The ground can be affected by a number of disturbances including water percolation and erosion. This unique system is able to create simple profiles for each variety of strain found in the ground and eliminates those that can be caused by natural causes. Using this process of elimination, it can identify the exact variety of strain caused in the ground due to excavation.

This system is based on an existing technology called BOTDR (Brillouin Optical Time Domain Reflectometry) that can measure ground distortion along 15 miles using one device. It then supplies a continuous profile of soil distortions to the device through a fiber optic cable which then performs the function of identifying those ground strain profiles that characterize the process of excavation.
The new technological wonder will be presented in Orlando, Florida, at the Defense, Security and Sensing Conference of SPIE (an international society advancing light-based research) in April 2009.

Tony Hawks New Charity Game

Forbes.com has announced the oh so famous Tony Hawks as a member of the top 3 most influential sportsmen. In case you are wondering, the top two are Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong. To be honest, I would be happy even having my name placed with them, pretty big rap I must say!

Now to many that wouldn’t follow skateboarding, you either wouldn’t have had a clue who this guy even was or; you would have thought that he was no match for other guys at the top of their competing sports.

Those that do however know about Tony and/or have played any of his games would say that he deserved it! For more then 20 years the Hawk has brought us his wicked style and extreme skills! After all, his video games turned out to be some of the most successful ever made. Still the games continue to come out, many don’t even know that Tony retired 10 years ago and no longer skates!

As said above the video games do continue to come out and in fact, there is a new one comin g out very soon. The main idea for it is to help out a new charity named: “Regift the Fruitcake”.
(Credit goes to Tony Hawk for that bit of information)

The Hawk is now 40 and still going strong, he spends his time working on the video games and so on. Although he still joins in on many of the recreational sports he loves doing, he likes to put most of his time into the Tony Hawk Foundation. The goal of the foundation is to help build skate parks in places around the US where the government or people can’t really supply the money.

Tony Hawk, Yao Ming, Nicole Richie and Fall Out Boy are all promoting the charity called Regift the Fruitcake. This will help them to further their careers as well as hopefully raise enough money for some needy causes. The campaign is being run by joined forces, Paypal and Facebook.

Want to know more about this? Check out the Q&A session here!