From Warren, KD4GUA:
Last Sunday we competed with contesters (again) but managed to conclude "AUTISM". This Sunday we will update "Sleep & Sleeping Disorders" and discuss the new drugs Lunesta and Remelteon--do they work and if so how good are they? Why can't people go to sleep and stay asleep? How much sleep do we really need? Why do we sleep?
We are looking for new topics to talk about. If you would like to present a program say so, don't be bashful.
Good hearing from Joe W5DJH in Houston, Ed W4UVS in Oak Ridge, Miles W3DRB in Elizabethtown, Ian, K3iK in Shavertown, Bob VE3OQM in Hamilton.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Monday, November 07, 2005
MARCO Grand Rounds for November 6, 2005
From Warren, KD4GUA:
We lost Gerald Bellehumeur MD, former anesthesiologist and pilot. His wife Susan renewed his membership in Marco in his honor.
Since we failed to have a topic for discussion last week (October 30), no CME credits given for checking in--the contestors drowned out everyone.
Last week we discussed GAS. This week we will talk about AUTISM--a symptom and not a disease. It affects 6 out of every 1000 newborns and is more common than we think. Chip N5RTF will be on board to answer questions concerning the NP side of the problem.
We lost Gerald Bellehumeur MD, former anesthesiologist and pilot. His wife Susan renewed his membership in Marco in his honor.
Since we failed to have a topic for discussion last week (October 30), no CME credits given for checking in--the contestors drowned out everyone.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
More on Ham Radio in Emergencies
From Bob Conder, K4RLC:
The November issue of the Southeastern Repeater Journal has articles by
three hams who were in the Mississippi-Louisiana gulf area post Katrina,
either conducting communications or working with the Red Cross Disaster
Services. It speaks to what it was like and what worked for communications.
... get a copy of the entire issue if you can.
Basically, LCD radio services were what worked - lowest common denominator
- VHF and HF phone simplex. Battery operated, off the grid.
Bob K4RLC
Ham Radio in Emergencies
Smitty, W6CS, forwarded this discussion from Rick Ellinger:
A few months ago, NBC's Tonight Show staged a race between a pair of ham-radio operators with Morse-code keys and a couple of kids with text-messaging cellphones to see who could communicate faster. The hams won hands down, proving, in the minds of some, that old technology could hold its own against new. In recent days, ham radio was put to the test again by Hurricane Katrina. This time, however, lives were at stake.
In the world of design engineers and electronics in general, change is essential. Designers work diligently to make the fruits of their labors obsolete almost before they see daylight. The turnover in technology is sometimes like a flood, with old being washed away by new over and over. Often, the new beats the heck out of the old. But there are times when old isn't necessarily bad; in fact, sometimes old works when new doesn't. And then we're glad that old is still around, or at least we should be.
Wireless technology, while relatively new to many consumers, is of course not new at all. A few (very) old-timers remember the original "wireless" of radio. The revolution wrought by the pioneers of wireless changed the world then, and the technology behind that revolution has been re-invented and re-applied time and again. Its pre-eminent incarnation today is our near-ubiquitous wireless communications infrastructure, which has freed us from the shackles of landlines and made our mobile lifestyles possible. Technology truly is great stuff.
Until, of course, a monster hurricane comes along to render it nearly useless. Here we see a scenario in which a flood literally swept away the new. As Hurricane Katrina's fury hammered the Gulf states on August 29, the communications infrastructure took a devastating hit. Telephone service, including wireless, became at first intermittent and then unusable in many localities. Where there was phone service, 911 switchboards were often unreachable due to the massive volume of calls. The response of local authorities, now termed "confused" by deposed FEMA chief Michael Brown, wasn't helping much. The Gulf Coast was about to descend into darkness, chaos, and, worst of all for many, silence.
But proponents of the old were at the ready. The "old," in this case, is ham radio. In the eyes of the "man on the street," ham radio has a pretty stodgy reputation. Aren't hams still using Morse code? Don't some of them use radios with tubes, for goodness sake? What the "man in the street" probably doesn't know is that it was amateurs who advanced the radio arts early in the 20th century. Down through the decades, amateurs have embraced (and often driven) all of the innovations in wireless technology, up to and including all digital modes and the Internet. But many have stayed in touch with their roots, which is good old-fashioned analog HF operation. And while amateurs have a longstanding tradition as innovators and experimenters, they also have a mandate that comes with their licenses: to be ready, willing, and able to provide emergency communications whenever and wherever they're needed.
As Katrina bore down on the Gulf region, amateur radio operators, under the aegis of the American Radio Relay League's (ARRL's) Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), prepared to swing into action with emergency networks that would run health-and-welfare traffic into and out of the disaster zone. As early as the Monday following the storm, hams throughout the hurricane zone were putting emergency stations on the air. In one instance, hams were instrumental in the rescue of 15 people clinging for life to a New Orleans rooftop. Meanwhile, in Alabama, amateur SKYWARN weather nets kept the National Weather Service apprised of conditions throughout the state. In hard-hit sections of Mississippi, hams running off generators and with makeshift antennas were the only means of communication, getting word to out-of-state friends and relatives concerning their loved ones.
There were numerous other instances of hams helping those who were not simply inconvenienced by the storm, but whose lives were in imminent danger. Now that things have calmed down in the Gulf region, many of the emergency nets have stood down. But hams continue to serve the public in the many areas that are still without power or phone service.
As our nation collects itself in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, President Bush has promised federal reviews of what went right and what went wrong. One of the findings of those inquiries should be that the federally-instituted Amateur Radio Service, which functions under the licensing authority of the FCC, stood tall when the country needed it.
Amateur radio currently faces various threats to its existence. Chief among those is the advent of broadband-over-powerline (BPL) technology, which, if broadly adopted, has the potential to cause widespread interference to HF communications, not just for amateurs but for other services that use the HF spectrum.
Amateurs and the ARRL have made a lot of noise about BPL, asserting that it could seriously hamper their efforts and those of relief agencies such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army, in the event of a disaster such as Katrina. It's rumored, though, that the same FCC commissioners who have given their blessing to BPL field trials will now take a much harder look at the technical issues concerning BPL and its interference potential in the HF spectrum. Let's face it: The federal government didn't handle the emergency in the Gulf very well; it'd be prudent for it not to sanction a technology that could impede one of the few things that actually worked.
Many readers of this newsletter are amateur radio enthusiasts. If you are, and if you haven't already done so, consider writing your congressman to express your concern about the future of the Amateur Radio Service, especially in light of its outstanding efforts in recent days. Remind your elected representatives that a vibrant and unimpeded Amateur service can and will be a lifesaver when disaster strikes. Also, consider how you yourself might help. What if a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake ravages your area? Are you prepared to get on the air without relying on the mains to handle emergency traffic? Get in touch with your local amateur-radio club and find out how you can pitch in.
Your cell phones and wireless routers are indeed great stuff, but so is a good old HF transceiver. We shouldn't always be in such a hurry to let the flood of new technology wash away the old. The geek down the block with all the antennas on his property could turn out to be your best friend someday. Because sometimes, old trumps new.
A few months ago, NBC's Tonight Show staged a race between a pair of ham-radio operators with Morse-code keys and a couple of kids with text-messaging cellphones to see who could communicate faster. The hams won hands down, proving, in the minds of some, that old technology could hold its own against new. In recent days, ham radio was put to the test again by Hurricane Katrina. This time, however, lives were at stake.
In the world of design engineers and electronics in general, change is essential. Designers work diligently to make the fruits of their labors obsolete almost before they see daylight. The turnover in technology is sometimes like a flood, with old being washed away by new over and over. Often, the new beats the heck out of the old. But there are times when old isn't necessarily bad; in fact, sometimes old works when new doesn't. And then we're glad that old is still around, or at least we should be.
Wireless technology, while relatively new to many consumers, is of course not new at all. A few (very) old-timers remember the original "wireless" of radio. The revolution wrought by the pioneers of wireless changed the world then, and the technology behind that revolution has been re-invented and re-applied time and again. Its pre-eminent incarnation today is our near-ubiquitous wireless communications infrastructure, which has freed us from the shackles of landlines and made our mobile lifestyles possible. Technology truly is great stuff.
Until, of course, a monster hurricane comes along to render it nearly useless. Here we see a scenario in which a flood literally swept away the new. As Hurricane Katrina's fury hammered the Gulf states on August 29, the communications infrastructure took a devastating hit. Telephone service, including wireless, became at first intermittent and then unusable in many localities. Where there was phone service, 911 switchboards were often unreachable due to the massive volume of calls. The response of local authorities, now termed "confused" by deposed FEMA chief Michael Brown, wasn't helping much. The Gulf Coast was about to descend into darkness, chaos, and, worst of all for many, silence.
But proponents of the old were at the ready. The "old," in this case, is ham radio. In the eyes of the "man on the street," ham radio has a pretty stodgy reputation. Aren't hams still using Morse code? Don't some of them use radios with tubes, for goodness sake? What the "man in the street" probably doesn't know is that it was amateurs who advanced the radio arts early in the 20th century. Down through the decades, amateurs have embraced (and often driven) all of the innovations in wireless technology, up to and including all digital modes and the Internet. But many have stayed in touch with their roots, which is good old-fashioned analog HF operation. And while amateurs have a longstanding tradition as innovators and experimenters, they also have a mandate that comes with their licenses: to be ready, willing, and able to provide emergency communications whenever and wherever they're needed.
As Katrina bore down on the Gulf region, amateur radio operators, under the aegis of the American Radio Relay League's (ARRL's) Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), prepared to swing into action with emergency networks that would run health-and-welfare traffic into and out of the disaster zone. As early as the Monday following the storm, hams throughout the hurricane zone were putting emergency stations on the air. In one instance, hams were instrumental in the rescue of 15 people clinging for life to a New Orleans rooftop. Meanwhile, in Alabama, amateur SKYWARN weather nets kept the National Weather Service apprised of conditions throughout the state. In hard-hit sections of Mississippi, hams running off generators and with makeshift antennas were the only means of communication, getting word to out-of-state friends and relatives concerning their loved ones.
There were numerous other instances of hams helping those who were not simply inconvenienced by the storm, but whose lives were in imminent danger. Now that things have calmed down in the Gulf region, many of the emergency nets have stood down. But hams continue to serve the public in the many areas that are still without power or phone service.
As our nation collects itself in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, President Bush has promised federal reviews of what went right and what went wrong. One of the findings of those inquiries should be that the federally-instituted Amateur Radio Service, which functions under the licensing authority of the FCC, stood tall when the country needed it.
Amateur radio currently faces various threats to its existence. Chief among those is the advent of broadband-over-powerline (BPL) technology, which, if broadly adopted, has the potential to cause widespread interference to HF communications, not just for amateurs but for other services that use the HF spectrum.
Amateurs and the ARRL have made a lot of noise about BPL, asserting that it could seriously hamper their efforts and those of relief agencies such as the Red Cross and Salvation Army, in the event of a disaster such as Katrina. It's rumored, though, that the same FCC commissioners who have given their blessing to BPL field trials will now take a much harder look at the technical issues concerning BPL and its interference potential in the HF spectrum. Let's face it: The federal government didn't handle the emergency in the Gulf very well; it'd be prudent for it not to sanction a technology that could impede one of the few things that actually worked.
Many readers of this newsletter are amateur radio enthusiasts. If you are, and if you haven't already done so, consider writing your congressman to express your concern about the future of the Amateur Radio Service, especially in light of its outstanding efforts in recent days. Remind your elected representatives that a vibrant and unimpeded Amateur service can and will be a lifesaver when disaster strikes. Also, consider how you yourself might help. What if a hurricane, tornado, or earthquake ravages your area? Are you prepared to get on the air without relying on the mains to handle emergency traffic? Get in touch with your local amateur-radio club and find out how you can pitch in.
Your cell phones and wireless routers are indeed great stuff, but so is a good old HF transceiver. We shouldn't always be in such a hurry to let the flood of new technology wash away the old. The geek down the block with all the antennas on his property could turn out to be your best friend someday. Because sometimes, old trumps new.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Soil Liquefaction by Hurricane Katrina, Reply.
Dave, KI5NG, in response to N5RTF's proposal:
Having grown up experiencing hurricanes on the Texas coast (Deborah [cat. 1], Carla [cat. 4], Beulah [cat. 3]. and Alicia [cat.3]; I don't count Rita, during which we only had tropical storm-force winds) and having been in the eyes of the first three, I remember something that I rarely hear mentioned in this day of live reporting.
As the eyes of Carla and Beulah approached, there was a "buzzing" sound, very loud, that most resembled the sound made by a four-piston-engined bomber flying overhead. I remember WWII-era adults saying things like, "What idiots would be flying around in weather like this?" My dad, who had first heard this during a cat. 4 1949 hurricane (they weren't named back then), recalled that this sound seemed to occur when winds exceeded 125 mph or so.
Every dentist knows that freshly mixed dental stone (modified plaster-of-Paris) is virtually thixotropic before it sets. To get it to flow into the intricacies of our intra-oral impressions, we subject it to a vibrator that causes the stone to liquefy. During dental school, when there might be several of these things going at the same time, the sound was very similar to that of a piston-powered multi-engined plane or .... like the sound I heard during the peaks of Carla and Beulah.
I have always assumed that such liquefaction of dental stone followed the same physics as soil liquefaction during an earthquake. The interaction of strong airborne vibrations with the ground and water would certainly be highly complex, but why couldn't such vibrations, under the right conditions, produce standing waves of highly significant energies?
I think your deduction is brilliant. If I were a graduate student, I would be wetting my pants to get approval to do a thesis on this.
David - KI5NG
Having grown up experiencing hurricanes on the Texas coast (Deborah [cat. 1], Carla [cat. 4], Beulah [cat. 3]. and Alicia [cat.3]; I don't count Rita, during which we only had tropical storm-force winds) and having been in the eyes of the first three, I remember something that I rarely hear mentioned in this day of live reporting.
As the eyes of Carla and Beulah approached, there was a "buzzing" sound, very loud, that most resembled the sound made by a four-piston-engined bomber flying overhead. I remember WWII-era adults saying things like, "What idiots would be flying around in weather like this?" My dad, who had first heard this during a cat. 4 1949 hurricane (they weren't named back then), recalled that this sound seemed to occur when winds exceeded 125 mph or so.
Every dentist knows that freshly mixed dental stone (modified plaster-of-Paris) is virtually thixotropic before it sets. To get it to flow into the intricacies of our intra-oral impressions, we subject it to a vibrator that causes the stone to liquefy. During dental school, when there might be several of these things going at the same time, the sound was very similar to that of a piston-powered multi-engined plane or .... like the sound I heard during the peaks of Carla and Beulah.
I have always assumed that such liquefaction of dental stone followed the same physics as soil liquefaction during an earthquake. The interaction of strong airborne vibrations with the ground and water would certainly be highly complex, but why couldn't such vibrations, under the right conditions, produce standing waves of highly significant energies?
I think your deduction is brilliant. If I were a graduate student, I would be wetting my pants to get approval to do a thesis on this.
David - KI5NG
Soil Liquefaction by Hurricane Katrina?
This post from Chip, N5RTF of New Orleans:
During hurricane Katrina, up to 7 levee breaches occurred simultaneously in widely separated locations, affecting structures of different ages and design, all which have withstood many previous high water and wind events. After a good deal of thought plus listening to 'experts' on the news who clearly don't have a clue, I sent the following hypothesis to several engineers including a group up at Bruce's universty in Buffalo for evaluation. I pass it on to you guys for critique and/or dissemination. Do you think this is possible?
Multiple organizations have dispatched investigators to analyze causes of levee failures in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. Theories include veins of weak soil, overtopping, undermining, and defective construction. Most fail to explain why levees which have been in place for 15 years failed simultaneously during this, but not other, storms.
I am writing to you because of MCEER's dual interest in hurricanes and earthquakes. It seems to me that the damage to several of New Orleans' levees closely resembles that caused by soil liquefaction during earthquakes. Although New Orleans has never experienced a fault-based quake, microseismic activity has been clearly recorded during hurricanes on multiple occasions.
It is my proposal that the 100+ decibel roar of a Category 4 hurricane for 6-8 hours, along with conduction from vibrating structures into the ground through foundations and anchors could produce an environment for wave summation similar to that seen in an earthquake. In this situation the saturated soil of an earthen dam would be especially susceptible to liquefaction and failure.
As a physician who lives and works in New Orleans I have more than an academic interest in finding the correct answer. If a hurricane can acoustically liquify soil, no earthen levee will ever be safe in a hurricane-prone area. This has major implications in the rebuilding of New Orleans.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you feel that the idea has merit, I hope you will pass it along to persons within your center who have the resources to pursue it further.
Sincerely,
Thomas L. Keister, Jr. M.D.
During hurricane Katrina, up to 7 levee breaches occurred simultaneously in widely separated locations, affecting structures of different ages and design, all which have withstood many previous high water and wind events. After a good deal of thought plus listening to 'experts' on the news who clearly don't have a clue, I sent the following hypothesis to several engineers including a group up at Bruce's universty in Buffalo for evaluation. I pass it on to you guys for critique and/or dissemination. Do you think this is possible?
Multiple organizations have dispatched investigators to analyze causes of levee failures in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. Theories include veins of weak soil, overtopping, undermining, and defective construction. Most fail to explain why levees which have been in place for 15 years failed simultaneously during this, but not other, storms.
I am writing to you because of MCEER's dual interest in hurricanes and earthquakes. It seems to me that the damage to several of New Orleans' levees closely resembles that caused by soil liquefaction during earthquakes. Although New Orleans has never experienced a fault-based quake, microseismic activity has been clearly recorded during hurricanes on multiple occasions.
It is my proposal that the 100+ decibel roar of a Category 4 hurricane for 6-8 hours, along with conduction from vibrating structures into the ground through foundations and anchors could produce an environment for wave summation similar to that seen in an earthquake. In this situation the saturated soil of an earthen dam would be especially susceptible to liquefaction and failure.
As a physician who lives and works in New Orleans I have more than an academic interest in finding the correct answer. If a hurricane can acoustically liquify soil, no earthen levee will ever be safe in a hurricane-prone area. This has major implications in the rebuilding of New Orleans.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you feel that the idea has merit, I hope you will pass it along to persons within your center who have the resources to pursue it further.
Sincerely,
Thomas L. Keister, Jr. M.D.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
MARCO Grand Rounds for October 30, 2005
From Warren, KD4GUA:
Last Sunday we were "rained out" by the contestants. This Sunday we will talk about "GAS." We have discussed this before and have learned a lot....for example, food from the mouth can reach the iliocecal valve within 30 minutes (according to our radiologist Ian, K3IK). Question: How much blood does it take to color the stools black? Tune in Sunday, 10 a.m. eastern 14.308. CME standings will be posted next week. If there are no alternatives we will discuss "AUTISM" the following week and hope that we can pick up our Prez Chip Keister N5RTF our NP consult. This condition, believe it or not, is present in 6 out of each 1000 births and no (at this time) it is not caused by MMR injections.
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