The first installment of this two-part series discusses ion mobility spectroscopy (IMS), the leading contender for fast and reliable detection of trace chemicals, and differential ion mobility spectroscopy (DMS), a related technology that provides faster, smaller and more sensitive sensors capable of detecting chemicals in environments with greater concentrations of interfering substances.

Wildfires, river basins, tsunami alerts, and environmental risk management are just some of the projects using OGC's interoperability framework for Web-based access and control of sensors and sensor data.

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. Building on a vendor-neutral interoperability framework for Web-based discovery, access, control, integration, and visualization of online sensors, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) tested this idea in a December 2006 disaster response demo.

Better Security with Ambient Air Sensing Dec 1, 2006 By: John S. Kauer, Barbara Talamo

We all want to feel safe in public places, and knowing that there's nothing noxious in the air is a strong step in that direction.

Firefighters and HazMat workers have a very tough job. They're frequently in heavy gear, in unfriendly atmospheres, and working hard. Unfortunately, this combination of equipment, environment, and job stress means that frequently they're operating at the limits of human endurance.

The federal government is spending billions on new Border Patrol agents and on sensor and radar networks in remote areas of the U.S.-Mexico border.

NIST researchers have devised a novel platform for self-assembling hierarchical surfaces in a fluid. Rather than mixing the components on a substrate and letting them dry, the investigators allowed them to mix and assemble freely in a fluid and then quickly froze them in place.

The demand for sensitive, low-power, low-cost gas sensors that respond quickly to appropriate stimuli is growing. Macro scale components and conventional manufacturing techniques cannot provide sensors that deliver the detection levels and low-power operation increasingly required by today's applications. And many of these sensors are prone to false alarms. However, manipulating sensing events at the molecular level avoids most problems associated with the more traditional sensor technologies.

CogniScent has developed a DNA-based sensing material that can detect, identify, and discriminate among a large number of airborne compounds in ~2 s. ScenTraK, a lightweight, handheld unit, uses an optoelectronic sensor array; its output drives software algorithms trained to ID specific olfactory patterns.