Using Cell Phones as Space Weather Vanes

Cell Phones as Imaging Sensors

Camera phones are ubiquitous, and consumers have been adopting them faster than any other technology in modern history. When connected to a network, though, they are capable of more than just picture taking: Suddenly, they gain access to the power of the cloud. We exploit this capability by providing a series of image-based personal advisory services. These are designed to work with any handset...

Automated doctors: cell phones as diagnostic tools.

“Here we are just playing Angry Birds,” says Wilson To. “How do we unlock [the] smartphone’s potential?” To is trying to do just that at Caradigm, a joint health technology venture of GE Healthcare and Microsoft Corporation. To is the lead researcher and codeveloper of Lifelens, a mobile phone– based diagnostic tool. Lifelens is still in its visionary stage, but the hope is to change point-of-c...

Consensus formation: Using cell phones while driving

Several models (including the widely used Sznajd model) have been proposed in order to describe the social phenomenon of consensus formation. The objective of the present paper is to supplement the simulations based on these models with a “real world simulation”; it considers a situation which can be considered as an ideal laboratory for analyzing consensus formation, namely the authorization o...

Forecasting Space Weather

Forecasting space weather events presents the ultimate challenge to a space physics model. Not only should physical constraints be satisfied, but also practical issues such as timeliness, accuracy, and reliability must be adequately addressed. To address these needs, modern space weather forecasters and users rely on a great variety of space weather models, ranging from simple regressions and e...

Geomagnetically Induced Currents as Ground Effects of Space Weather