ÆtherCzar: Best of August 2010

The time has arrived once again for my monthly review of the top ten posts or threads from the past month. If you’re new around here and want to see what the ÆtherCzar blog has to offer, the best posts of each month is a good place to start. Here are my top ten for August:

1. My company, Q-Track (on Facebook), had a successful demonstration of our FLARE (Firefighter Location and Rescue Equipment) prototype system at the 5th Annual Workshop “Precision Indoor Personnel Location and Tracking for Emergency Responders” at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA. We annotated a video of the rescue as well.
2. In addition, last month a Q-Track team traveled to the historic Safety Research Coal Mine in Bruceton, Pennsylvania to conduct RF propagation and performance tests on a Near-Field Electromagnetic Ranging (NFER®) Real-Time Location System (RTLS). We optimized the system for use in a mine environment in an effort funded by NIOSH. Q-Track produced a video of our prototype miner tracking system.
3. I’ve continued a series of posts on the history of real-time location systems (RTLS) with:  RTLS: Four Novel Approaches and RTLS: The Invention of the Long Range Navigation (LORAN) System. The series is now about half complete. I compiled the first half in a paper, “On the Origins of RF-Based Location,” submitted to the 2011 IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium.
4. Given the controversy around relativity, the Nobel Prize committee chose to honor Einstein for his work on the photo-electric effect in 1921. Ironically, this work is now among the most contentious in Einstein’s legacy. In Einstein’s Nobel Prize: Proving Cell Phones Can’t Cause Cancer, I tackle the physics of cell phone exposure.
5. I also noted that cell phones aren’t likely to ignite gasoline.
6. In My Atari Adventure, I terrified my twin five-year-old girls by introducing them to a Flash version of the classic Atari Adventure video game. The low-res dragon was too much.
7. I’ve become much more active on Twitter. By following #RTLS and #RFID tags, I’m keeping up with more news items. This means more frequent news updates on wireless, RFID, RTLS, and Location-Based Services.
8. One of my favorite books, Atlas Shrugged, will soon be the subject of a major motion picture. In a post, I discuss the movie, and introduce my Atlas Shrugged Pages.
9. On Memorial Day, I kicked off a series of posts to commemorate my grandfather, Paul Farnum, and his WWII experience. The posts follow him day-by-day waiting in England for deployment, crossing Utah beach a few days after D-Day, and participating in the capture of Cherbourg which surrendered 27 June, 1944. His unit, 1st Battalion, 313th Regiment, 79th Infantry Division is currently in hot pursuit of retreating German forces. ÆtherCzar will continue to report the events of September 1944 each day, as events warrant.
10. Finally, I’ve had a few updates on some long running threads, including the 1099 Mandate, For-Profit Education, the ScienceBlogs Kerfuffle, the iPhone4 Antenna, and more on the iPhone4 Antenna.