NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Acoustics Extinguish Fire

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has developed a technique that extinguishes fire by using sound. And before you break out your stereo to full blast the next time your dinner catches on fire, let’s remember that this experiment was done in a controlled space with trained professionals.

TREEHUGGER: DARPA's 'Wall of Sound' Extinguishes Fires Using Just Noise

In a video published on their website, two speakers are put on either side of a liquid fuel flame to demonstrate how this is done. As Wired explains, “The sound increases air velocity, which then thins the area of the flame where combustion occurs, known as the flame boundary. Once the boundary area is thinned, the flame is easier to extinguish.”

BLOG: Sun Fires X-ray Shot at Earth, CME on the Way

The Instant Fire Suppression project was launched to find new ways to stamp out flames in enclosed areas, like cockpits, ship holds and ground vehicles -- where they're difficult to control. While the idea of manipulating fire goes back to the early 1900s, this is one of the first examples of extensive research in the area.

  

via Wired

Credit: DARPA

---

Email:

---

iPhone Combusts Mid-flight

On Friday, a passenger aboard Australian flight Regional Express ZL319 got an unwelcomed landing gift when their iPhone 4 started spewing smoke and emitting a red glow while en route to Sydney.

According to the airline, this occurred while the plane was preparing for landing and it was extinguished by a flight attendant immediately and handed over to officials. There's no word yet on why it happened, but it had to have been a pretty big deal by the looks of the photo. 

NEWS: Mysterious Death Ruled Spontaneous Combustion

This isn't the first time iPhones have overheated or exploded. In 2009 instances of iPhones exploding in Europe happened so often that the European Union launched an investigation. There were also reports of iPod Touch overheating, exploding or shattering its screen in France.

You'd think something that could survive a fall from 1,000 feet out of an airplane going 150 mph could handle a two-hour flight from Lismore to Sydney. 

Via: BGR 

Credit: Regional Express 

---

Email:

---

Power Strip Slays Peripheral Vampires

TrickleStar Advanced PowerStrips: $29.95 - $54.95

Good neighbor that you are, you invited your friends who lost power to stay with you. And then what do they do? They hang out all night with the lights on, movies blaring, wasting power like they own the place. How rude!

Well, in an electrifyingly loose analogy, that's what happens every day with your power strips. You might turn off your PC or TV, but their little buddies -- a printer or external monitor here, a receiver or game console there -- continuously mooch juice.

NEWS: Top 10 Fastest Electric Vehicles

With adjustable thresholds, the circuitry in TrickleStar's line of advanced power strips senses changes in the current and is able to respond. In other words, when you turn your PC or TV off or on, the strip shuts off or turns on all the associated peripherals. It's an easy way to reduce vampire power, which saves you money. (On a related aside, TrickleStar is currently offering instant rebates to New York State customers.)

Additionally, another section of these transformer-friendly power strips is dedicated to devices you always want on, such as modems, routers, etc. They're offered in 4- to 12-outlet configurations, certain models of which also provide coaxial, telephone and/or Ethernet connections.

And on the safety side, because they all utilize ceramic-encased MOV (metal oxide varistor) components, they're all fireproof with tolerances in the hundreds of thousands of amps and thousands of joules. If that doesn't give you peace of mind, perhaps the $400,000 connected device warranty will.

Credit: TrickleStar

---

Email:

---

Tech Sees Fire Where There's Smoke

Wildfires that produce a lot of smoke are difficult to manage because the source of fire can be hard to see. From the air, firefighting units typically use infrared cameras to help spot the hottest and most intense parts of a fire. But when conditions are far to dusty and smokey, the infrared technology is not effective.

Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques in Wachtberg, Germany, have developed a sensor that can see through the smoke. It works at a much lower frequency than the infrared sensors, and is less affected by dust particles. It can also see down through thick foliage to locate hidden areas of fire.

"Particles of dust and smoke are practically transparent in the microwave range, but the radiation is still strong enough for the source of a fire to be detected," said team leader Nora von Wahl. "From a height of 100 meters, we were able to locate fires measuring five meters by five meters in low visibility conditions,” she said.

The system is also quite effective for locating fires that are smoldering beneath the top layer of earth -- a problem that occurs with wildfires thought to have been snuffed out.

Photo: George Frey-Pool/Getty Images

---

Email:

---