People have been trying to predict earthquakes for centuries—using animal behavior, weather, and seismic monitoring—but have had less than stellar success. As the human population shifts from a mostly rural existence to a mostly urban one, earthquakes exact a higher price, both in property damage and in lives lost.

Autonomous mobile robots rely on sensors to navigate through their environment.

If you've ever worked while resting a laptop computer on your lap, you know that computers emit heat, and the more powerful the computer, the greater the heat produced. This is a problem because electronics really don't enjoy elevated temperatures. A hot computer is a slow computer or, worse, a computer that will cease functioning.

In HVAC systems, the humble freezestat and the newer solid-state combination sensor both prevent freeze-related damage to ventilation system coils. Here's how the two technologies stack up against each other.

In an increasingly wired world, knitting together data from disparate sources into an interoperable whole can present disaster managers and first responders with critical information during a major emergency or crisis.

New 100-node ZigBee evaluation product enables deployment of large-scale real-world building monitoring applications.

Three major wireless communications protocol rivals have made new moves in home automation , while energy-harvesting pioneer pursues its own path to the building market.

New Jersey's Asbury Park Press reports that the ghost of Bruno Hauptmann, convicted of kidnapping and killing the toddler son of Charles Lindbergh, is rumored to be turning on lights at the Hunterdon County Courthouse, where he was tried in 1935. But county architect Frank Bell points out that overly sensitive IR sensors, recently installed to control lights, are being triggered when the climate-control system causes air currents to shift. (http://tinyurl.com/ljr3x)

These jumpy times call for ever more building security, and that includes access through revolving doors. The ceiling-mounted BlackHawk system uses active IR and triangulation distance measuring to detect unauthorized entry or exit in a door quadrant.

CityTV News in Calgary, AB, Canada, reports that motorists don't see the value in road sensors installed by the city's Roads & Maintenance division.