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Handhelds Hardware Science

PDA/Radiation Detector 158

Posted by michael from the tricorder dept.
sgpennebaker writes "This article tells of lab rats who've built a cell phone/PDA/GPS device that also lets you surf the web and, oh, yeah, sniff out any dirty bombs that might have gone off in your area. Then you can cancel your meetings, call family and friends and send GPS coordinates to whoever it is that cleans up afterwards. I'm waiting for the next generation; I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears and emits a loud noise when it senses their proximity."
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PDA/Radiation Detector More

PDA/Radiation Detector

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  • Yeah... (Score:5, Funny)

    by superdan2k ( 135614 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:41AM (#5758809) Homepage Journal
    I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears and emits a loud noise when it senses their proximity.

    Nothing like attracting their attention, right?
    • A PDA that senses hungry, angry, Gang Memebers?
    • I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears and emits a loud noise when it senses their proximity.

      Nothing like attracting their attention, right?

      I think he meant to give to people. You know, goes well with a nice new tent smeared with peanut butter.
    • When hiking in bear country, if you don't want to encounter them the advice I've heard is: make noise. You could shout occassionally, but a simpler method includes loosely attaching cookware to your backpack.

      But then the noise normally bothers the hiker too. I guess I'd rather deal with an annoyance I control than an wild animal many times my size.
    • When I worked in Glacier National Park in Montana we sold "bear bells" in the gift shop. Generally speaking a bear doesn't want to have anything to do with you unless you're around in mating season, cub season, or just too close to their personal territory. So, by making noise while on the trails you were less likely to run across a bear (which is a good thing you know)

  • Screw radiation! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Corporate Troll ( 537873 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:42AM (#5758818) Homepage Journal
    I want a cellphone that alerts me whenever there is a slut in proximity that wouldn't mind being screwed by a pasty-skinned-underweight-nerd!
    • Sure, I can do that for you!
      Give me your phone... [removes battery]

      There you go! It works perfectly!
      • Yes, but in that case, my bluetooth connection with the internet would drop and my modified Apache for PalmOS couldn't serve my addressbook of "sluts-that-likes-nerds" anymore! As a good P2P citizen I share useful information.
        • actually, what am I talking about?!

          If you set up at any con (game con, computer con, sci fi con, anime con) you'd find beacoup ladies who give it up for the geeks!

          Whoo hooo! get the big box of trojans!*

          *Safe sex, kids. ALWAYS. This message has been brought to you by the Concerned Linuxers Against Pathogens.
    • "I want a cellphone that alerts me whenever there is a slut in proximity that wouldn't mind being screwed by a pasty-skinned-underweight-nerd!"

      They're already out. It's a cell phone with a compartment that holds $1,000 in cash. When you're near a desirable woman, make her an offer.

      The problem is that they need to get the cost down on these things. They cost $1,200.
    • Heh. You know, there's always the tried-and-true method of talking to women...

      It turns out a good chunk of them are looking to get laid.

  • Mother... (Score:5, Funny)

    by }InFuZeD{ ( 52430 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:45AM (#5758842) Homepage
    This article tells of lab rats who've built a cell phone/PDA/GPS device that also lets you surf the web and, oh, yeah, sniff out any dirty bombs that might have gone off in your area.

    Man those lab rats are getting smart...

  • surprisingly crude for LLNL (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    a) it's not a tricorder
    b) it measures the temperature rise in a thin tin film at 1K (cryocooling in your PDA, anyone?)

    just more idiotic pandering to Homeland Security...
    • it measures the temperature rise in a thin tin film at 1K (cryocooling in your PDA, anyone?)
      So now, on top of worrying about our batteries dying, we also have to worry about running out of liquid helium!
    • >
      > a) it's not a tricorder
      > b) it measures the temperature rise in a thin tin film at 1K (cryocooling in your PDA, anyone?)

      "Oh yeah? I'll bet I can overclock my Palm Pilot to run faster your lame-azz dual Athlon!"

      - Two guys in the LLNL cafeteria, three months ago


  • Was this product in developement pre-Sept. 11? I'm interested in knowing if this is a knee-jerk reaction to terrorist attacks (ala duct tape shortages) or if it was on the drawing board before.

  • *pfft* Hungry Bears, (Score:5, Funny)

    by crazyaxemaniac ( 219708 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:47AM (#5758857)
    This PDA I've developed keeps away tigers.

    Now you don't see any tigers do you?

  • mildly hot - Orange Fiestaware (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:47AM (#5758860) Homepage
    Try any radiation monitors on old orange glazed Fiestaware in granny's house, you'll be suprised how much it makes a geiger counter tick! I tried it with my old 50's era CD counter and a plate was as hot as the calibration source. Also smoke detectors have a radioactive ionizing source in them.

    • Yes (Score:2)

      by Raul654 ( 453029 )
      I do believe some smart kid in michigan used just that idea to build himself a breeder reactor about 20 years ago out of nothing but tin foil, americenium taken from smoke detectors, and his trusty (home-mady, jury rigged) neutron gun.
      • man that sounds a lot cooler than making your own potato cannon. where can i get some plans?
      • He was trying to make a reactor, but did not quite get there. He collected Radium from watch dials, whateveranium from smoke detectors etc. His warehouse, the boot of his dads car finally got so radioactive that he turned himselves in. I believe he also made a geiger counter approximation.
        The story was on Readers Digest or some such magazine.

      • Re:Yes (Score:2, Informative)

        by Fishstick ( 150821 )
        radioactive boyscout [dangerousl...tories.org]

        ... June 26, 1995, was not a typical day.
        Ask Dottie Pease. Cruising down Pinto Drive, Pease saw half a dozen men crossing her neighbor's lawn. Three, in respirators and white moon suits, were dismantling her next-door neighbor's shed with electric saws, stuffing the pieces into large steel drums emblazoned with radioactive warning signs.

        The cleanup was provoked by the boy next door, David Hahn. He had attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his mother's shed following a Boy Scout mer
    • http://www.antirad.com/sources.htm

      Pottery glazes and art glass, some ceramic glazed jewelry and cloisonné enameled jewelry contain high percentages of uranium oxides to produce bright yellows and oranges. Fiesta Red china dishes by Fiestaware produced through 1971 emit gamma and beta. Acidic foods left in contact with this chinaware will dissolve small amounts of these radioactive elements which will be ingested. Enameled jewelry made with these glazes and worn next to the skin is hazardous.

  • Thinkgeek.com (Score:5, Informative)

    by mfos.org ( 471768 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:47AM (#5758861)
    Thinkgeek.com has a watch that detects radiation. No GPS though

    Radiation Watch [thinkgeek.com]

  • hmm (Score:1, Funny)

    by adamruck ( 638131 )
    "This article tells of lab rats who've built a cell phone/PDA/GPS device that also lets you surf the web and, oh, yeah, sniff out any dirty bombs that might have gone off in your area..."

    ok if a bomb goes off and you need a friggin PDA to figgure out where, I would say your beyond help.

    • Re:hmm (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      yeah.. I think the heading for this story is wrong. The point is not to find out where bombs have gone off, but find the bombs that havent gone off yet.

  • Great for... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by skillet-thief ( 622320 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:49AM (#5758870) Homepage Journal
    Nice for reporters covering war zones where they've been shooting around ordonnance containing spent uranium.

    Sucks having to carry both a PDA and a radiation detector.

    • You mean depleted uranium? it's called depleted for a reason you know
      • Yeah, "depleted" is what happens to the local population in the years that follow...
      • sure, that makes it safe [cadu.org.uk], right?

        [iacenter.org]
        DEPLETED URANIUM EDUCATION PROJECT

        WHO studies depleted uranium in Iraq [bbc.co.uk]

        These are lies. There have been no firings of depleted uranium in Iraq. We crushed the crusading infidels and forced them to eat their own DU munitions!

        • I have 17 lbs of DU on my desk. (Score:4, Informative)

          by BobBoring ( 18422 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @10:45AM (#5759224) Homepage
          Yup all various penetrators from DU rounds. My wristwatch is a hotter radiation source. The issues with DU are due to the dust. The radioactive nature of the metal is a hysteria button used by the leftist enviro-terrorists to whip up the panic in the unwashed masses.

          The dust is a mechanical poison that works much like ionic silver. Silver nitrate is just as dangerous a compound. Heavy metallic ions are bad in general. Heavy metal poisoning is bad. Cadmium, Lead, Tungsten, Polonium and Rhenium dust are just as bad. Mercury is worse. Uranium Oxide dust is non-water soluble and settles very quickly. Now if you crawl around a knocked out tank without a dust filter you'd die of silicosis faster than DU poisoning from the residue of an anti-tank munitions.

          On the other hand if it is a Soviet built tank it is the Boron, Molybdenum and Osmium dust from the vaporized armor that you should worry about. It'll cut your lungs out in just a few months.

      • Re:Great for... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yeah, the reason is that it has been used to make power/weapons and has become denser than lead, making it an ideal substance for making anti-armor projectiles. They don't "deplete" it to make it non-radioactive:

        DU is a waste product of the process that produces enriched uranium for use in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants. Much like natural uranium, it is both toxic and radioactive. Over a billion pounds of DU exists in the United States and must be safely stored or disposed of by the Department o

    • Depleted Uranium ain’t what you think. (Score:5, Informative)

      by BobBoring ( 18422 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @10:12AM (#5759000) Homepage
      Depleted Uranium is not spent the fuel rods leftovers most people assume from its name. It is what is left over after extraction of the fissile material from refined Uranium.

      Significant amounts of refined Uranium are stable isotopes. To get enriched Uranium you force the refined metallic Uranium through a series of filters that select the isotopes based on physical characteristics. Uranium ions in solution are large enough a special porous ceramic filter can pass the ions of the desired atomic weight. Using several passes with different sizes of pores you get the nice hot Uranium you need for bombs and such. One of the byproducts is a nice very dense metal, Uranium. Almost as hard as austenitic steel and much denser than lead. Not much hotter than the tritium illuminator sources in the standard issue compasses carried by infantry. The dust is however a mechanical poison that works much like ionic silver. Silver nitrate is just as dangerous a compound.
      • Tritium is used in very small quantities as an illuminator. Hre we are talking about larger quantities and after impact in powder form for optimal ingestion. It certainly seems radioactive enough to be more than an annoyance. Nobody hanging around one of the wrecks would would want to breathe to much of that dust.

        DU as a metal is relatively harmless but only in big lumps, and then it is significantly above background levels of radiation (Unless you are in the vicinity of Chernobyll) - but this isn't a ma

        • I have ~20 lbs of DU on my desk right now and my wrist watch has a bigger effect on the geiger counter I use in the lab.

          Like I said "The dust is however a mechanical poison ..."
          • So the reporters running geiger counters over the entry points of DU ammunition were clicking with their mouths?. U238 is an Alpha emitter. Alpha particles can be stopped with paper. Certainly, plating the metal is often used and this reduce the emission to almost zero.

            Finely divided particles resulting from impact are easily inhaled. In the lung, the close proximity of the source to tissue is a major risk factor.

            There are also some issues raised about the use of DU weights onboard aircraft. Perfectly s

      • Not much hotter than the tritium illuminator sources in the standard issue compasses carried by infantry.

        Sure, maybe a single bullet is not much hotter... of course when you're spewing them forth from the nose of an A-10 Warthog at the rate of 6000 per minute, then things on the ground tend to get a little warm. Not to mention all that uranium dust that results from those bullets actually impacting something, like the ground or even its intended target.

        And then you even have to recognize the fact that Tr
  • The Ultra-Spec uses extremely low temperatures -- within one degree of absolute zero, or -459 degrees Fahrenheit.....Put in the hands of people like police, firefighters and customs agents....

    Something tells me that this won't be appreciated nearly as much as Mr. Labov suggests. Perhaps they want to work on a room temperature version before they go passing these things out. But then again, think of the overclocking possibilities...

  • fear (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr2cents ( 323101 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:52AM (#5758885)
    I just saw 'Bowling for Columbine' yesterday. It sheds a different light on this kind of inventions. I mean, how many weight are you willing to carry around to protect yourself from all possible terrorist attacks? These things will not help, they will just make some company rich.

    • Re:fear (Score:2, Informative)

      by TummyX ( 84871 )
      Michael Moore is a loud mouth liar who is himself, the fear mongering media he encourages everyone to despise.

      Moore isn't a liberal. He's "moore" likely to be a republican mole. He should move out of his 1.2 million dollar Manhattan apartment and get out of the country and away from the people he hates so much. Ofcourse he won't because Moore really doesn't care about what he preaches. Moore only cares about getting attention to feed his ego. Guess who once said "My biggest failing is that I have abso
    • I just saw 'Bowling for Columbine' yesterday. It sheds a different light on this kind of inventions.

      Well, anybody can shed any light they want, if they just make shit up. Those kids didn't even go bowling that day, Moore starts making shit up in the TITLE for pissake.

  • cost? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adamruck ( 638131 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:52AM (#5758888)
    Are these things going to be available to the general public? If they are how many digits are we talking about for one of them?
    • Um, you could use a *radio* as a geiger counter. You just won't get a guage to determine the exact amount of radiation emitted... you'd just have to kind of play it by ear.

      What they've done is they've just developed a program that uses the radio receiver in the GPS/wireless card to determine the amount of gamma radiation being received.
  • Here's a 2-year old article [detnews.com] on kids being taught to use palm devices to measure smog and air pollution levels.
  • I want a pda that can scan for cellular phones (gsm included), and if possible jam them!

    Why? One word: Movies

  • Tell me this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:53AM (#5758894) Homepage
    How many generations of Palms will we see until they are producing a bona fide tricorder?
    • Depends upon how low your tricorder threshold is. Chem and rad sensing in general probably not that far away, but if you want the ability to do the kind of heavy-duty remote sensing they do in Trek, I think you'll have to wait 50-100 years or so. Amusing thing is that the communicator probably won't be separate from the tricorder.

  • How does it know? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by diatonic ( 318560 )
    `But the advantage of RadNet is that it is a "smart" sensor that can pick up on the difference between radiation emitted by a so-called "dirty bomb," a mix of conventional explosive and nuclear materials, and the radiation from a recent hospital treatment.`

    I'm highly skeptical about this point. Gamma radiation all looks the same, except for varying intensities, regardless of the source... and background neutron radiation almost never exists (unless you're hanging out near nuclear weapons or a running fis
    • I don't think the device could really discern between a dirty bomb and other radiation sources
      Thats easy, if its a dirtybomb it detects the radiation. If its a joe regular "nuke" then it will detect the radiation for a breif momeant before being vaporised :-)
    • No, all gamma radiation is NOT alike. That's like saying all radio waves are alike. Read up on nuclear spectroscopy and then make a useful statement!
      • What I mean was that gamma radiation looks the same to a GM detector like the AN PDR-27 [tpub.com]. Standard GM detectors to not seperate readings based on wavelength, just the amount of rads.
        • Exactly. This is not a GM detector. I am a little surprised that the sensitivity of a thermodetector would be high enough, but LLNL does good work, so it figures. When I first read that it was a low temperature detector, I thought it was going to be one of those germanium detectors we used when I was an undergrad. The way that gamma ray spectrometers work is by telling how big the pulse is from each gamma ray detected, and sorting them into bins by size. The reason GM tubes can't do this is because eve
    • Just how do you detect something that does not interact much with electrons? Neutrons pass right through most geiger-muller tubes without ionizing the gas. Scintillation based detectors usually require cryogenic temperatures or large volumes to detect neutrons. This thing most likely gets x-ray, gamma and beta (if the electrons can penetrate that far) but not neutrons.

  • You know, (Score:4, Funny)

    by Unknown Poltroon ( 31628 ) <unknown_poltroon1sp@myahoo.com> on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:54AM (#5758898)
    Ita time to buy a hunk of uranium ore off ebay and carry it around to piss people off.
  • "PDA/Radiation Detector"

    Was I the only one who read this and thought "Great! Now I have a way to detect radiation and all those annoying Public Displays of Affection"? (Or did they mean it also detects Personal Digital Assistants? Damn multi use acronym....)

  • Were Tricorders better than this? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:56AM (#5758905)
    What it needs is to make sounds like the tricorders on the original Star Trek, and then I'm in.

    Seriously -- what all did the tricorder do, exactly? (I can easily imagine an episode where they use it as a geiger counter; did that ever happen?) Ours do the communicator's job along the way too. Not too bad.

    If only our in-the-field medical instruments resembled spinning salt shakers more...

  • Wait 'til the Homeland Security goons (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Deagol ( 323173 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:57AM (#5758913) Homepage
    figure out someone simply ported the old HP48 Tricorder [hpcalc.org] program to the PDAs and cell phones.

  • ObSimpsons reference (Score:5, Funny)

    by bourne ( 539955 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @10:03AM (#5758950)

    I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears

    We're here! We're queer! We don't want anymore bears!

  • I'm waiting for the next generation; I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears and emits a loud noise when it senses their proximity."

    Is it me or have the submissions gotten lamer and lamer lately? I mean, I know this is slashdot, but this one is TERRIBLE. And its trending that way

    • s it me or have the submissions gotten lamer and lamer lately? I mean, I know this is slashdot, but this one is TERRIBLE. And its trending that way

      While we could be Microsoft bashing as usual: not only have they changed the name of the .NET server (article at The Register), but there is a new bugpatch of a fairly high security level that just came out.

      Sorry, but I'm too lazy to go track down links for those though. Saw them both on Googlenews a couple of hours ago.

      [ Reply to This ]

  • I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears and emits a loud noise when it senses their proximity.

    You have a lot of problems with marauding bears do you? Maybe if you washed up after eating instead of leaving the peanut butter and jelly smeared all over your face....
    • Actually, I have a friend who could use the bear-tracking device. He's off hiking the Appalachian Trail [nashvillecitypaper.com], and his cellphone doesn't work in remote areas, but there are a lot of wild animals around. I think the loud noise might annoy the bears, though.

  • Cell phone/GPS combo already here (Score:3, Interesting)

    by asmithmd1 ( 239950 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @10:06AM (#5758965) Homepage Journal
    If you have a Motorola i88s [amazon.com] and download a midlet [gadgeteer.org] I wrote you can track your cell phone and have it's position update a web page in real time. You can also mark an interesting location to see where it is on a map or aerial photo later. This is possible thanks to Nextel's always on internet connection [nextel.com] for $9.99 for 1 Meg per month
    • On the (unofficial) behalf of the NSA, CIA, FBI and all the other 3-letter spooky organizations, I'd like to thank you for making our jobs that much easier. If only we had more citizens like you... Well, we could track everyone through their own webpages.
    • Get one while it is still optional. Only a terrorist would not want his position constantly updated on a web site for all to see.

      Future traffic stop
      "Let me see your drivers license, registration, and traking device to confirm it is working."
      "I see that last Thursday you were traveling at 72.3 to 73.6 MPH for 3.6 miles in a 65 MPH zone"
      "I'll just deduct the $75 fine from your PayPal account"
      I can hardly wait! Just think how safe we will be!
    • There is some other folks which are paranoid because of some privacy issues,
      But for my part I would really NEED such a device.
      I lost 2 cell phone this year, well one was stolen and I lost the other one.
      Being able to track them down would really be nice.
      It doesn't have to be displayed on my homepage, only send the data to my home computer tough...
  • We Don't Want Anymore Bears! Or Bear-Sniffing PDA's either. But the radiation sniffer's quite convenient. You may never have that meeting now that the entire office is radioactive, but you'll definitely know whether it was worth going to or not...

  • I want one that does this (Score:3, Funny)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @10:23AM (#5759056) Journal
    I emits a loud signal to the bear that there is an idiot with a PDA and a dirty bomb who is not afraid to use it on said hungry bear.

    Give the bear fair warning and all.

  • Read the title as PDA/Nerd Detector.
  • ... Ashcroft going "HO HO HO ...."
  • My PDA will make noise and always be sounding the "dirty bomb" alert when I'm going to get water out of my Revigator! [mtn.org]
  • I thought it said PDA/Radar Detector at first.

    WIMHO would be more practical.
  • This will go perfectly with my CompactFlash form factor Gene Sequencer!

  • pretty wambodyne if you ask me (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jubedgy ( 319420 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @11:27AM (#5759471)
    It's a pretty cool way to detect radiation, but I wonder about its effectiveness. They say it's the size of a '95ish cellphone, so how close to the source would it have to be to get an effective reading? They say it measures gammas so it depends on photo-interactions (ie compton scattering, pair production, photo-electric effect...not an acutal collision like the article implies). It's most likely that compton scattering and photo-electric effect will occur (they are based on essentially the proximity of the gammas to an electron) as opposed to pair production (which requires a highly charged nucleus and how many of those can you find at 1K??)

    In any case, all of those rely on the probability that a gamma will interact which means that size does matter: the bigger the counting material (the tin) the more likely a gamma will get measured. IMHO the best radiological defense wouldn't be portable little devices (which are good for measuring personal exposure) but rather some large detectors placed in strategic locations (say wiring a metal detector with some of this tech and turn it into a metal/radiation detector?).

    All in all a pretty cool devicewhich has some limited use but I doubt it will turn out to be any major solution to discovering a dirty bomb randomly, I'd say they are much better suited to scanning suspicious items (or monitoring your own gamma exposure!).

    --Jubedgy
  • I would rather be able to Detect Police Radar/Laser with my GPS. And then internet enable the sucker to upload/download other points that people have detected radar. Then my GPS can adjust my route to avoid police speed traps.

    I can see the Mazda commercial now.... Zoom Zoom.
  • I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears and emits a loud noise when it senses their proximity.
    Yes, because attracting the bear to your location is obviously the best tactic in this situation.
  • ...warn me when the robots [robotcombat.com] are coming!

    -72

  • Who needs that... (Score:3, Funny)

    by s88 ( 255181 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @01:53PM (#5760558) Homepage
    I want one that also tracks hungry, angry bears and emits a loud noise when it senses their proximity

    Who needs that; I'd rather pay my Bear Patrol Tax. And while I'm at it, I think I'll pick one of those Tiger Deterant Rocks.

    Homer: Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol must be working like a charm.
    Lisa: That's spacious reasoning, Dad.
    Homer: Thank you, dear.
    Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
    Homer: Oh, how does it work?
    Lisa: It doesn't work.
    Homer: Uh-huh.
    Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
    Homer: Uh-huh.
    Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
    Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

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