Connect with us

Here is your Sign

Freaked-Out Tweets After Earthquakes Help Scientists

Published

on


A team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists have developed a web service that combines seismic data about an earthquake with Tweets of surprise and angst from the popular microblogging service’s users.

The goal of the project is to improve emergency response by providing a crowdsourced window of the conditions on the ground immediately following a quake.
“Why would such a system work?” asked Paul Earle, a geologist at the USGS, at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting Monday. “Because people like to tweet after an earthquake.”

It turns out that the “Earthquake! Earthquake!” SOS that you tweet, aggregated with thousands of others, provides an excellent indication of the strength and severity of a quake. A little rumbler yields just a small spike, while a strong quake produces a huge spike in Twitter activity, as seen in the graph above.

Right now, the system is designed to automatically harvest tweets, so they can be e-mailed to would-be responders with traditional earthquake measures and plotted in Google maps. All the OMGs and BFDs can provide some qualitative color about what’s happened on the ground.

“We’ve developed a prototype system that integrates Twitter messages with our standard earthquake alerts,” Earle summarized.

It’s one of a variety of ways that some scientists are trying to use the crowd and the cloud to augment the professional tools they already have. It’s already been suggested that some laptops with accelerometers built-in may be useful as earthquake detectors. Researchers in other disciplines, like bird-tracking, have also had success using citizen scientists. In a separate session at the AGU fall meeting, another scientist described a garage seismic station that has begun to make its way into homes around the Bay Area.

The challenge presented by data gathered outside the traditional channels is that it’s noisy. What the scientists gain in breadth is partially canceled out by the lack of control they have over the incoming information. After all, Quake is also a popular videogame and Dairy Queen serves up a “brownie earthquake,” and both are likely to find their way into tweets.

“We’ve been developing filtering techniques that allow us to tell the difference between an actual earthquake and a group of people who just finished playing a videogame and got the munchies,” Earle said.

Eventually, Earle and his software engineer, Michelle Guy, would like to use geolocated tweets to rough out a “felt range” for earthquakes, but it’s not as easy as it looks. Only half of Twitter users even give a basic location like “San Francisco” and just a few percent of earthquake tweets come from GPS-enabled devices, which allow for precise measurements, Guy said.

It also stands to reason that USGSted, as the program is known on Twitter, won’t be of much help in any earthquake strong enough to knock out telecommunications systems.
Where Guy and Earle say their service may be most useful is in the window of time between when an earthquake happens and when the USGS data starts to pour in. That time period can be anything from two to 20 minutes, and during that time, all those tweets are much better than nothing, if far from perfect.
Image: Paul Earle

Source: Wired

Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Really?

Takanakuy Festival at risk? – Strange Events

Published

on

By

250px-Location_of_the_province_Chumbivilcas_in_Cusco.svgDid you ever heard about “Takanakuy”? Did you have wanted the opportunity to straight up your differences with somebody you knew in a fight, enjoin a good food, special dress, dance and booze? Well a lot people call that Saturday night.

Chumbivilcas is a province in the Andes, South Peru, and according to the Peru 2005 Census 77,721 inhabitants, rural communities families with eight and more children are not unusual, one of the poorest regions of the country.

The people in the province are mainly indigenous citizens of Quechua descent.

Takanakuy Festival for beginners

Each December 25th part of the population from Chumbivilcas Province reunite to the Takanakuy “festival”, where participants practice of fighting fellow community members.

Takanakuy Festival at risk - 02The practice started in Santo Tomás, the capital of Chumbivilcas, and has now spread to other villages and cities, the prominent ones being Cuzco and Lima.

The festival consists of dancing and of individuals fighting each other to settle old conflicts or simply to display their manhood.

Those holding the grudges call out their opponents by their first and last name.

Kicking and punching are allowed in the middle of the circle. Biting, hitting those on the ground, or pulling hair is not allowed during the fight, this is a civilized community!

Takanakuy Festival at risk - 01Although the government of Lima has tried to eradicate Takanakuy Festival, the celebration has diffused into urban areas such as Cuzco and Lima.

People of non-indigenous descent are now taking part in this originally indigenous cultural custom, yeah, why not?

Then everybody goes drinking to numb the pain and move on to a new year.

Now serious, tells us, don’t you have a co-worker, neighbor, a church member you have a beef with?

Continue Reading

Really?

Polish company to brew beer from a Czech model’s vagina bacteria

Published

on

By

Polish company to brew beer from a Czech models vagina bacteriaPolish brewery company launched a crowdfunding for its attempt to brew beer from a Czech model’s vagina bacteria.

There are large number of bizarre ingredients used in the manufacture of craft beers, but use a formula from a vaginal bacteria stands out in the crowd.

Warsaw-based The Order of Yoni — “Yoni” being a Sanskrit word for “vagina” — is seeking to raise about U$170,000 (£118,000 or 150,000 Euros) with an IndieGoGo campaign for Bottled Instinct, a beer brewed using lactic acid bacteria collected from the vagina of Alexandra Brendlova.

The Order of Yoni says the initial run of beers would include sour ales, lambics, flanders ales and sour stouts. Each bottle of beer will be stamped with Brendlova’s name as well as “the date of the collection of her vaginal swab.” Also it will brew six batches of 16,600 beers each, with funds going towards the ‘brewing process, ingredients and bottles’ decorations’.

The money will also cover the ‘model’s reward’ and a budget for the ‘perks’ offered to investors. However, there is no detail provided as to the breakdown of the costs.

The beers do not, however, feature the taste or odor of a vagina, the brewers say.

The company says their future plans include brewing other types of beers using bacteria harvested from other woman, as well as other products incorporating said bacteria including kefirs and yogurts.

Not as strange as vagina bacteria beer

In 2012 an Oregon brewery, developed a drink that led, among the ingredients, beard strands of his brewmaster. The drink was sold, including in other countries.

More informations on “The Order of Yoni” oficial website

Continue Reading

Here is your Sign

Roswell Spaceship Stoled, 1 Human arrested 2 on the loose

Published

on

By

Roswell Spaceship stoled, 1 Human arrested 2 on the looseRoswell Police Department informed on its Facebook page “Be on the lookout: missing spaceship,” the Identify Roswell Spaceship has been stolen from a UFO Museum.

The silver-colored saucer made of fiberglass and stainless steel was stolen about 3:30 a.m. Saturday from behind the International UFO Museum and Research Center on Roswell’s main drag by 3 allegedly human beings.

During the day Roswell police spokesman was proudly announcing that they were able to track down the 17-year-old boy who was one of the three suspects in the theft of the spaceship, because of a phone call.

Surveillance video shows the three males walking toward the spaceship, and two of them lifting it up.

They then walk away and out of the camera’s view with it, put the ship into a pickup truck and drove off. The UFO Museum is located just around the corner from police headquarters.

The allegedly human-teen in custody hasn’t said what the motivation behind for stealing the spaceship or who else was involved.

Roswell Spaceship stoled, 1 Human arrested 2 on the looseThe Identify Flying Saucer had a tough year, a blizzard this past winter knocked the saucer from its usual mount on the corner of the museum building on South Main Street, for over 24 years, as the picture to the right.

It recently had been repaired and was being stored under an awning behind the museum.

Now it was The New Mexico Department of Transportation sent an heart broken picture of the saucer in pieces to museum.

Roswell Police Department  are urging Roswell residents and from the surrounding areas to be on the lookout for the Roswell Spaceship’s thieves

Hopefully the other two suspects are still on Planet Earth and can be bring to justice.

“Only in Roswell.”

Source: Daily Mail

Continue Reading

Trending