Month: August 2012

Sean Bonnerʻs Safecast X Kickstarter Geiger Counter was recently rated one of Kickstarterʻs Best in this Wall Street Journal article.   The instrument is remarkable, and there is also an interesting history behind it, and its creator, Bunnie Huang.

For background, I first met Sean and Bunnie in Tokyo in April 2011.  The building we were conferencing in was swaying from aftershocks of the Tohoku earthquake.  The conversation was largely about the lack of data on radiation levels.  The situation to the North was unstable and disconcerting.

The conference was attended by movers and shakers in the global technology arena, and the traditional media world.  The vital data transfer rate Twitter vs. Traditional Media during the Haiti earthquake, presented by Adhur Chowdhury, Chief Twitter Scientist, was truly impressive.  A number of groups and individuals in Japan and beyond were harnessing the power of the world wide web to communicate radiation data, but the numbers were confusing, some of the instrumentation was unreliable,  and general evolution was needed.  The Safecast Geiger Counter Reference Design concept was created under these conditions.  The people, circumstances, technology, the scope of the larger project it is part of, are worthy of a book.  I will attempt to condense parts of the story into a series of blog posts.

Geiger Counters have been part of my life since an early age, back in the 1950ʻs, when they were built with vacuum tubes – and were the size of a large lunch box.   Analog meters were standard issue for decades, sometimes supplemented with scalers using neon light bulbs.   Many of the early instruments required special, expensive, batteries.  Iʻve witnessed, and been a part of, the evolution of the Geiger Counter, Iʻve designed them, repaired them, evaluated them, and Iʻve started and worked with companies that make them from Tennessee to California, New York, Nanjin, Minsk, and places in between and beyond.

The Safecast Reference Design is something new and different in many regards.  One, it is an open source project with the potential for world wide collaboration and evolution of functions and features.  It also has enough power under the hood to handle any conceivable workload in terms of calculations and communications of data.  It is small and beautiful and easy to use.  And it is designed to share information with the world.  Iʻll write more about some of the other salient features of this instrument later.

The Safecast Geiger Counter Reference Design is basically a labor of love by  Bunnie, a very talented engineer.  Itʻs one of his contributions to help the people of Japan during a very challenging chapter in Japanʻs history.   And the instrument will have impact and influence far beyond Japanʻs borders.  The Safecast X Kickstarter version of this instrument is a very limited edition of Bunnieʻs Safecast Reference Design.   The Limited Edition will be in clear plastics with laser-etched serial numbers starting at 001.

Bunnie was introduced to me during the April 2011 NCC conference, by Joi Ito, now Director at MIT Media Lab.  Again, this was during the period when 4 unstable reactors were still spewing radioactive materials, and Tokyo had been dusted.   There was a world wide shortage of Geiger Counters and other types of radiation detectors.  Not only was demand high, due to the emergency, but there were shortages of key components affecting the industry.   Manufacturers in Japan affected by the earthquake, tsunami and meltdown, supply many components critical to the worldwide electronic industry.

High quality Geiger tubes, the heart of all high quality Geiger Counters, are manufactured under rigorous conditions in a multistage process that cannot be speeded up without degrading the quality of the detector.  So there were only a very limited number of instruments available.

I handed over every instrument I could put my hands on to Joi and his friends, because I knew they would publish the data they gathered rapidly.

I brought some Geiger Counter components with me to Tokyo, including some “Pancake” tubes, for the people at Tokyo Hackerspace, who were working long hours to develop instruments and get them into the field.   The Geiger tube is the heart of a Geiger Counter.  While the technology behind them is old, they are still often the best detector for mixed alpha, beta, gamma, x-radiation sources.  The large mica window on a Pancake detector allows the detection of all of these types of radiation.  A lot of measurements in Fukushima were being made with energy compensated detectors.   These tubes have a thick side wall and cannot measure anything except energetic gamma rays.   There was concern about the people who were waving these over their food and thinking it was safe to eat.  The main isotopes remaining on the ground in Fukushima were Cesium 137, Cesium 134, Strontium 90, all primarily beta emitters.  And there is some concern about Plutonium, an alpha emitter.  The pancake tubes  were in incredibly high demand.   They were worth their weight in gold at this critical time in history.

Bunnie decided he wanted to make a major commitment to this fledgling data logging/sharing project, which became Safecast, by designing the reference  Geiger Counter, with one of these precious “Two Inch Pancake Tubes” at the heart of it.  If you want to dive deeper into the heart and soul of Bunnie and his creation, read his blogpost: Safecast Geiger Counter Reference Design.    Bunnieʻs project has also been widely Tweeted, and written about in Engadget, BoingBoing, Gigaom, Security Management, Live Science, The Verge.

Bunnie is an incredibly talented young man.  Joi Ito told me he considers him to be the worldʻs best industrial designer.  Itʻs been a real honor to meet and collaborate with Bunnie to bring this instrument into the world.    My next post will have some more images of Bunnieʻs creation, a little more  history, an update on the limited edition release, and information on the upcoming commercial version of the instrument.

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A CNN article reports record levels of Cesium 137 are being recorded in some fish near Fukushima.  Other fish are testing at levels within safety limits.

Another CNN story looks at impacts on the Ocean.  More studies are needed according to the author, Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Butterflies are being affected by radiation from the disaster according to this CNN report.

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It?s Joe Jaffe?s 95th birthday today, and he and I reminisced about our many adventures this afternoon. Joe is a physicist, scientist, and entrepreneur who dedicated his life to making the world safer for the next generations. As a young physicist at Smith Kline in Philadelphia he convinced the management team to start a biomedical division, which he headed as Director of Instrument Research and Development. There he pioneered, developed and patented technologies that have saved many lives, including early diagnostic ultrasound imaging systems and the first commercial doppler fetal pulse detector. This was after Dr. Alice Stewart found that en utero x-rays were contributing to excess childhood leukemia rates in Great Britain. Ultrasound imaging pioneered by Joe has almost completely replaced the use of x-rays on pregnant women. Many medical clinics can even look into financing options to afford these machines now (such as from https://www.butterflynetwork.com/financing), often making it a less awkward experience for all involved.

Prior to Smith Kline, Joe was on the team that developed the bazooka, and he went from there to telemetry projects at NACA (the predecessor of NASA). Later when President Nixon opened the door to China, Joe led one of the first scientific and industrial delegations into Beijing. He came out and provided many of us the first glimpses of Chinese medical devices and practices of that period.

Joe left Smith Kline to start Products and Processes, and I met him at that phase of his career. We partnered on some doppler fetal pulse detectors and he loaned me money to start the instrument division of SE International, where we, with Steve Weiss and a talented team, developed some interesting radiation detection instruments including an early hand held low power device called the Monitor 4. This was during an age when geiger counters were typically large and bulky, with poor battery life. When our team left SE and formed IMI – International Medcom, Joe became our physicist, Chairman of the Board, and a key contributor to many radiation detection instruments including the Radalert, Radalert 50, Radalert 100, Digilert (licensed to SEI), the Geiger, the Gateman (for border security), the Inspector, Inspector Alert, and advanced radiation monitoring networks for communities. During that period IMI introduced the first real time data on the world wide web, in a GIS format for the Three Mile Island Community. The Gateman was the first instrument deployed at borders in Russia, Kazahkstan, Belarus, to prevent smuggling of nuclear weapons and materials. It was part of the Nunn Lugar Mutual Threat Reduction Regime. This was during a very dangerous period of transition in the former Soviet Union, when nuclear scientists weren?t getting paid and the stockpiles of nuclear materials were not secure. Joe?s statistical calculations and mathematical formulas contributed to a successful design that could detect as little as 10 grams of moving weapons grade uranium at a border crossing.

Joe was also an architect of the licensing agreements to share technology with SE International. One of those agreements allows SE International to produce a version of our Inspector under their brand name. This was in support of the friendships that were in place between the companies: Joe’s commitments and priorities include honoring friendships, creating healthy communities, protecting the environment, reducing the risk of nuclear war or nuclear accidents. Joe didn’t need to work after he retired from Smith Kline, but he told me on many occasions that he wanted to do all that he could to create a safer world for his and other’s grandchildren.

Joe and I worked closely with Dr. Karl Morgan to develop a community monitoring program around Three Mile Island, and we also deployed systems around Seabrook and Pilgrim reactors, to serve communities in those areas. Joe had a dream of a worldwide radiation monitoring network, so that data on radiation in the environment was transparent and available to all members of the world community. His dream is becoming a reality through the work of another project we are actively supporting: Safecast. After Fukushima we were able to provide instruments that contributed to the publishing of 3 million data readings in the first year since the disaster. In the early days of the disaster instruments Joe contributed to, significantly the Inspector Alert, documented the high radiation levels on playgrounds and school yards that were still being attended.

Joe has occasionally said that he went into physics because that realm was more predictable than the human realm. But despite the occasional problems dealing with the human world, Joe has remained a humanitarian and the world is a safer place because of him.

Thanks to Joe, millions of pregnancies have been managed without the risk of en utero x rays, and high quality radiation detection instruments have served numerous communities from Chernobyl to FDNY post 9/11, to the community surrounding the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, and the people of Fukushima. We’ll never know what tragedies may have been prevented by technologies and mentoring that Joe has provided over his 95 year lifespan, but I do know that the positive impact by Joe in my world and the world of communities IMI serves has been significant. I?m grateful that Joe took the time to mentor and help me when I was a young man, and to dedicate his life to creating a safer world, and I wish him a very happy birthday!

Joe retired from his post as Founding Chairman of IMI – International Medcom at age 90, but continues an active interest in the affairs of the company and the world from his home in San Jose, California. He remains our Chairman Emeritus.

 

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