Earthquake Invisibility Cloak 121
BuzzSkyline writes "The same folks who brought us the tsunami invisibility cloak last year have now come up with an earthquake invisibility cloak. They show that a platform made of just the right configuration of elastic rings could make a structure invisible to earthquakes by effectively steering a quake around the structure. It doesn't work well for compression waves, but the researchers claim it could hide buildings from the slower-moving, more destructive shear earthquake waves. The research is due to be published soon in the journal Physical Review Letters."
Marketing vs Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget the bad analogies! (Score:3, Interesting)
Having seen my share of rivers, I can pretty much say that the water pattern DOES change when it hits a rock.
And that the rock is more solid than the water.
With an earthquake, isn't the building less solid than than Earth?
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Maybe their technology does work, but their analogies do not.
It's an analogy, not a model. Analogies are always their to bridge the gap between complete ignorance and knowledge. Grasping onto the analogy and complaining it doesn't work is like floating while holding onto a life preserver while trying to cross a stream and complaining the life preserver isn't getting you to the other side.
In other words, if you want to understand what's going on you need to start understanding the model and throw away the
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I'm a gun-rights activist. What do you do now?
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In other words, if you want to understand what's going on you need to start understanding the model and throw away the dumb analogy.
So what you're saying is, it would be easier to get to the other side of the river if you just threw the life preserver away? ;)
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Solidity isn't necessarily good protection against an earthquake. A hunk of granite bedrock a mile thick is a fairly solid thing, but a medium-grade earthquake will crack it without breaking a sweat. The atmosphere, on the other hand, is not generally considered to be solid, but it's difficult to imagine an earthquake powerful enough to damage it.
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Maybe their technology does work, but their analogies do not.
Yeah, where's the car?
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> With an earthquake, isn't the building less solid than than Earth?
IANASiesmologist (but I play one on TV (ok, I can't back that up))
Actually, sometimes it isn't. Depending on the properties of the quake (strength, depth, etc), the ground itself (particularly soil) acts a lot like a liquid. A "slab" house might float while a bedrock based building may have major structural issues due to compression of the major structural elements. This is one of the big reasons that building in earthquake zones have "f
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One particularly inventive solution stored inertia in a giant multi-ton sphere suspended in the top of a skyscraper.
Was that either of the main WTC buildings? That might explain the collapse!
<_< >_> <_< [/tinfoil]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuned_mass_damper#Examples_of_buildings_and_structures_with_tuned_mass_dampers [wikipedia.org]
IIRC the Jeddah tower is going to have one. The Mubarak tower will have ailerons.
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I should also have mentioned, sometimes the house "floats". Other times it gets sucked under and disappears.
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An informal survey done my one of my coworkers at a party with his fiance's family and coworkers (a group largely composed of doctors and lawyers -- she's doing her residency) found that only 25% of the doctors would do it again (given the costs and stresses involved); many indicated they'd have stayed in medicine, but have gone for a cheaper job title (such as FNP). For the lawyers, the would-do-it-again ratio was closer to 50%.
I think we engineers have it good.
Re:Marketing vs Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we engineers have it good.
Many doctors and lawyers go into the field for the money. That's not really true of the hard science/engineer types. So most engineers would do it again because they actually want to spend their time engineering, and enjoy it.
That's true of a lot of doctors too...but a lot of them just picked their career by the expected income. How many engineers or mathematicians or computing scientists or physicists etc chose the career for the paycheque*. Sure we can get paid well, but lets face it... its not the license to print money being a lawyer or doctor can be.
(*Other than the brief rash of worthless eng. and comp.sci. grads chasing the .com bubble)
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And doctors going into it for the money is one of the big reasons why healthcare is so broken in America. Doctors aren't doing it in order to help people (though it is a secondary motive for some). Rather, they're mainly doing it to enrich themselves. Is it any surprise that healthcare is so expensive?
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Re:Marketing vs Engineering (Score:5, Insightful)
(now spends another 20 minutes with that patient covering what the real issues were, and is now 15 minutes "behind" which physicians *hate*, but they have no control over)
I hate to break it to you, but that is par for the course in ANY profession where you need to meet with other people for any reason whatsoever.
Doctor. Plumber. Network Admin. Baby Sitter.
I don't book 16 15 minute appointments in a 4 hour afternoon, because there is no way in hell I'd ever get through them all. 8-10 would be pushing it.
If they want to address this, do what everyone else does: wake up to reality and stop over booking yourself. Yeah, you'll make less money if you can't book 32 patients in a day anymore. So what?
And on that note, why do I have to take half a day off work, so I can come in and meet with a doctor for 7 minutes (after waiting 40+) who has nothing important to tell me and barely looks at me. Fuck, unless they need to poke or prod or sample something I have better things to do than to lose half a day of work to see them. -- you want to tell me my test came back fine, or that I need to book another blood sample at some lab... pick up the phone tell me.
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The horror! The inhumanity! Why, they'd have to violate their ever-so-precious HIPAA guidelines, or so they seem to think anyway.
Seriously, every time I've tried to get basic medical info over the phone, usually simple blood test results, I've had to make an appointment, and always because HIPAA somehow prevents it (or so they claim), even though they know perfectly well who is calling. My guess is that, despite the time saved by both parties by making a
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I guess it's easy to blame the health-care provider.
Don't let it bother you that nobody knows exactly what would violate HIPAA, so everyone goes by their legal team's best guess. Or I suppose you think that for your convenience your doctor should ignore legal advice and risk exposing himself to litigation from someone who views the regs differently than you do?
I suppose the providers could just lawyer up even more, buy even more insurance... and guess what, they'll pass the "savings" on to you!
Yes, there s
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Don't let it bother you that nobody knows exactly what would violate HIPAA
Nobody knows what the full ramifications of any piece of legislation are. Its a BS excuse. What's next?
What part of disclosing medical information to the PATIENT could violate the HIPAA? Its pure nonsense.
If they can be confident that they are disclosing the information to the patient, say, by requiring that they call the patient back on a pre-authorized number, there would be no issue with HIPAA. This is on par or better than the lev
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"Nobody knows what the full ramifications of any piece of legislation are"
I didn't say "nobody knows what the full ramifications of HIPAA are". I said, nobody knows what violates HIPAA.
If I hop in a car and start driving down the highway, I know damned well what behavior will constitute speeding. If I go into the corner market, I know what would constitute shoplifting. So on the face of it, your attempt to paint HIPAA as no more difficult than any other law is baseless.
"What part of disclosing medical in
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I said, nobody knows what violates HIPAA.
Nobody really know what violates copyright either, for example.
And as for your driving example... yeah, speeding is well defined. How about 'careless driving'? do you know exactly what that is, and when you've crossed it?
For Ontario Canada, for example it is:
"Every person is guilty of the offence of driving carelessly who drives a vehicle or street car on a highway without due care and attention or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the highway.
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"Nobody really know what violates copyright either, for example."
Yes, there are laws other than HIPAA that are widely open to interpretation (which is a much weaker claim than your original "nobody knows what any law does" assertion). Copyright is not, however, as open to interpretation as HIPAA, as it has a much more robust case history.
Even with that broader case history there's enough uncertainty that companies play "better safe than sorry". When large companies are potentially liable for copyright inf
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Nice deflection, but it is you who is missing the point.
Your doctor probably doesn't personally care about the ideals behind HIPAA. He or she also isn't just trying to screw you if he or she refuses to discuss medical issues over the phone. He or she has no choice in the matter.
Now I don't know what your definition of "work with companies in the industry" is, but you're barking up the wrong tree if you think you're positioned to talk down to me about HIPAA.
The landscape of information controls will become
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Now I don't know what your definition of "work with companies in the industry" is, but you're barking up the wrong tree if you think you're positioned to talk down to me about HIPAA.
Not at all. My intent wasn't to try and come off with more knowledge than I have. I almost went AC but rewrote as more vague instead to "protect the innocent".
The landscape of information controls will become more coherant over time...
I can agree with that. At this stage though I find HIPAA is tossed around like SOX -- its a sc
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My doctor had a practice of well over 2000 patients. This wasn't about being greedy - it was about staying afloat. He hated it enough that he followed one of the recent trends: he switched to a "small practice" model where he guarantees high availability to each of the couple hundred patients to which he now limits himself.
Of course, he now has to make the practice profit on something like 1/6 to 1/10 as many patients. So, he charges an annual fee (which is a bit steep, and which insurance won't cover -
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Re:Myth of doctors as "high paid" (Score:5, Informative)
The illusion that medicine is well-compensated for the effort is just that -- an illusion.
Relative to what, exactly?
http://www.cejkasearch.com/compensation/amga_physician_compensation_survey.htm [cejkasearch.com]
There isn't an entry on that list below six figures. And I'd say the average is easily 250k plus.
An electrical engineer "1" in the 90th percentile (ie making more than 90% of his peers), according to salary.com makes 67k. Unless he gets promoted to management, (and does less engineering and more managing) he's going to have a very tough time cracking 6 figs.
A nuclear physicist, cracks six figures. But even his 90th percentile at 126k doesn't quite reach the expected STARTING wage of "Pediatrics - Adolescents" - 130k, probably the lowest number on that list.
Re:Myth of doctors as "high paid" (Score:5, Insightful)
Couple of things to point out here...
A "starting" physician is 6 years behind a starting electrical engineer. 4 years of med school + 2 years of residency (at a minimum!) and they have a tremendous amount more debt for those additional years of schooling. Even at that point they are considered to have very little experience.
In addition try looking at malpractice insurance for physicians, or something called "tail insurance", ie if you leave the practice and 10 years down the road someone you treated decides to sue you the tail insurance takes care of that, but it means you're paying insurance against the chance of a lawsuit forever basically, even if you leave medicine.
Not to mention the fact that if differences were that significant in salary and the work was actually the same amount of effort or easier I have absolutely no doubt that we would see more physicians but instead of that we're actually seeing *fewer* physicians. I've often heard from physicians that anyone could do it, there's nothing special about them, just a matter of lots and lots of hard work. Most physicians I know actually recommend to their children that they *not* go in to medicine. How's that for an indication of how the field is doing?
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Most physicians I know actually recommend to their children that they *not* go in to medicine. How's that for an indication of how the field is doing?
It's like investment bankers dissuading their children. The past generation of doctors (along with the past generation of insurance agents and the past generation of politicians) has brought the health system to its knees, and there will be lean years ahead. I doubt they are listening though, since medical school acceptance rates are still in the single-digits.
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Um, no. The physician also has a 4 year degree obtained before medical school.
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Unless you mean masters or PHd, medical students do have more years of school. Med students go to a 4 year college/university, then med school, then residency. Maybe more years of schooling if they specialize.
I do not agree with fact that more years of school == higher paycheck. But that is the way the world currently works. I have heard of and seen some really crappy doctors. With all those years of training, one would think that all doctors would be really really good.
Re:Myth of doctors as "high paid" (Score:4, Insightful)
The intake of doctors into med school is tightly controlled. They are not going to start raising their intake, oh, just because the market wants it. How else could they command the high salaries that they do?
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The intake of doctors into med school is tightly controlled. They are not going to start raising their intake, oh, just because the market wants it. How else could they command the high salaries that they do?
I recently helped a friend prepare the physics part of her MCAT and in the processed learned a lot about medical school in the US. I came away with exact feeling you have that medical school is but an exclusive (not only by grades, but other standard) club that is rather convoluted to join and to be brainwashed in, with the understanding that some day down the road by reciting memorized stuff from thick books that one can command high salary and demands respect.
I also teaches run-of-the-mill freshmen ph
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A "starting" physician is 6 years behind a starting electrical engineer. 2 years of residency (at a minimum!) and they have a tremendous amount more debt for those additional years of schooling. Even at that point they are considered to have very little experience.
Not really. They start getting paid as residents. Granted not 6 figures, but already well above the national average.
Meanwhile a comp sci or phys grade with a BS is what? Not a whole lot, you need your MS or PhD. Which adds years (and dollars) to
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Move to jupiter (Score:2)
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and ask yourself why oh why you didn't go to medical school.
And AFTER the earthquake, you will ask yourself why oh why DID you go to medical school...
Physics (Score:2)
If you're an engineer you call it a tuned resonator...
Not necessarily. One other way to make a building "invisible" to the shear waves of an Earthquake would be to float it. Shear waves cannot pass through liquids. Of course this is probably somewhat less practical...
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Instead of Invisibility Cloak, I would call it "Earthquake Deflector Shield"
Same coolness, more accuracy
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I just wonder how they cope with the tachyon field and quantum neutrinos. Maybe they reversed the polarity?
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Well thats useless. (Score:4, Funny)
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Additionally it's unlikely that the amount of extra energy from a few buildings would have a noticeable effect in the other buildings. Of course we can't violate the laws of physics, but when you're talking about that much energy and when most buildings are built to sustain much larger earthquakes than what's realistically going to happen it isn't worth worrying a whole lot about.
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It's not the sheer magnitude of an earthquake that actually determines damage. Damage should be much more correlated with how much of the energy gets dissipated into a building or other structure.
Try looking at it like this: If you are standing out in a field when an earthquake hits, you personally may be the only thing on top of the ground, that could absorb any energy from that part of a wave passing through the whole area. Just you. Now if you are on the bottom floor of a big concrete parking garage, tha
Reality decloaking off the starboard bow. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not an invisibility cloak. A nearby building could still fall on the cloaked one, with the usual result. Also, it's not a cloak, as in a piece of fabric. Last, anything can be made resistant to earthquakes, but to make it earthquake-proof is something only an arrogant designer or a project manager would say. Every design component can fail, and most catastrophic engineering failures are rooted in miscalculation or failing to test the model with a particular cascade of failures.
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Actually, I'm pretty sure those arrogant designers at NASA are quite confident that the International Space Station resists earthquakes.
For the more terrestrially minded, the problem is to resist earthquakes in a cost effective manner, or alternatively stop people from doing stupid things. After all, why do people knowingly locate in known flood areas behind dikes, in arid deserts, underneath volcanoes, or in known high-intensity earthquake areas? and not expect disasters to happen?
Live in the big flat m
Re:Reality decloaking off the starboard bow. (Score:4, Funny)
Live in the big flat mid-west plains, it might be boring, but it is safe.
(Taps Cassini2 on the shoulder and points to the huge tornado) "Is anywhere safe?"
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Central/Western VA, WV, TN, KY... those are all pretty immune to most natural disasters. Hurricanes are all petered out by the time they hit here, the biggest earthquakes are like magnitude 4, the mountains kill the tornados quickly in general, there are no big rivers that cause massive flooding, etc.
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My part of TN, we have the occasional tornado. F2s. No big ones so far in over 200 years of settlement. One tornado fatality in the last 20 years within a 50 mile radius, and there's claims the wall which fell there was single thickness brick constructed by the amateur homeowner. Floods? My home is over 500 feet above the local river. Earthquakes? If the new Madrid fault lets loose and literally hits Memphis TN with a Richter 10.8 quake and not a building is left in pieces bigger than marble sized, I would
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Taps Cassini2 on the shoulder and points to the huge tornado "Is anywhere safe?"
Cassini: Ah, I'm sorry, but I'm over 746 million miles away right now. Try asking a satellite a bit closer.
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Live in the big flat mid-west plains, it might be boring, but it is safe.
As long as you're not near New Madrid, MO.
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Live in the big flat mid-west plains, it might be boring, but it is safe.
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The ISS doesn't resist earthquakes, it simply isn't subjected to them.
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Actually, I'm pretty sure those arrogant designers at NASA are quite confident that the International Space Station resists earthquakes.
And it would be just like them to focus on earthquakes, which can't happen in space, instead of say, solar flares.
the problem is to resist earthquakes in a cost effective manner, or alternatively stop people from doing stupid things.
Well, the second half of that is clearly impossible, so I'd suggest focusing on cost efficiency.
why do people knowingly locate in known flood areas behind dikes, in arid deserts, underneath volcanoes, or in known high-intensity earthquake areas
Curiously, the most fertile land, plentiful sources of water, and temperate climates, are located in those places. Except underneath volcanoes -- evil overlords live there, not joe average.
and not expect disasters to happen?
Oh, I think they do expect disasters to happen. And everyone else to pay for it thanks to this con game we call "
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Fabric, I think you're on to something there. Maybe they're selling tents? I guess they'd be pretty good in an earthquake. In fact, they seem quite popular afterwards, so just save time and live in one to start with.
Will it work for everyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Will mechanical waves skip the entire area?
What if all buildings in a certain large area will be made that way?
I fear that the "solution" is good only when a few of them are made that way. The other ones will need to collapse.
Re:Will it work for everyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Would there potentially be constructive interference though? That could make it worse for neighbors.
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In other words, it's a great idea for your next Arcology project, not so good for the new apartment block?
I can live with that.
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We're working on this. We've got this perfected for cars, we just need to perfect the bigger hydraulic cylinders needed for buildings.
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Retrofitting (Score:1, Insightful)
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EARTH QUAKE! (Score:2, Funny)
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Flying (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes
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Unless they use Gravity [bulbagarden.net] yes.
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My ideas interest you, and you want to subscribe to my newsletter - Marvin, Uber-ninja assassin of garage bands.
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Just tell them to use headphones when working on their Mac. Problem solved.
Now they can't see me! (Score:4, Funny)
Good thing we invented the earthquake invisibility cloak! Now the earthquakes won't be able to see me!
Wind Cloak? (Score:2, Interesting)
IANAP but the basic idea I got from the design of the "Tsunami Cloak" was that there was simply a path of less resistance along the concentric corridors than along the radial ones, so that the wave tended to flow around the center rather than through it. Correct me if I'm wrong about this. Sometime later I was wondering if the same principal could be used to redirect strong winds around a vulnerable structure. I was thing along the lines of metal posts rather than concrete pillars, but then I started consi
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This is how a snow fence works. It doesn't stop the snow from piling up, it re-directs the wind blowing the snow.
Montoya: "You keep using that word ..." (Score:2)
you keep using that word. i don't think it means what you think it means.
I'd call it geodynamic lawsuit generator (Score:2)
So, in Magic: The Gathering terms... (Score:2)
Enchantment
{1}{R}
All creatures have flying.
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What happens, when... (Score:2)
...the epicenter of the quake is *inside* the ring? Imagine a future skyscraper with a huge base and this installed.
Now imagine a quake in the middle of that protective ring. Would the waves reflect off the inside, ripping the building apart in seconds?
That would be one giant nelson munz "haah-haaah" moment. (Except for the people in the building!!)