December 5, 2017
Published by Malcolm Rosenfeld
We recently devoted a post to summarizing the history of the Global Positioning System, beginning with an examination of Sputnik in 1957 and concluding in 2005, when the current generation of Block II satellite was launched at Cape Canaveral. Now, with a new era of spacecraft on the horizon and set to take to the stars next year, the limitations of GPS capabilities are on the verge of expanding once more. With that in mind, we come to you this week with a more specialized (and probably more pertinent) history: this one on how the technology has been used in... View Article
November 10, 2017
Published by Malcolm Rosenfeld
The territory of Puerto Rico is in dire need of shipments of important supplies, such as food, water and other essentials that could provide some much-needed relief. However, while a lot of these supplies have arrived in the main port city of San Juan, a massive shortage of truckers combined with the completely devastated infrastructure on the island have made it next to impossible to get this assistance to the people who need it. As of late September, there were still more than 10,000 containers of important supplies that were left sitting at the San Juan ports, with no one... View Article
November 3, 2017
Published by Malcolm Rosenfeld
While the United States officially launched its GPS technology in 1974 as a means of overcoming the limitations of previous navigational systems, the technology itself has its roots in the Sputnik era. Today, it is almost impossible to conceive of a world without GPS technology. Let’s take a look at a brief timeline for GPS technology and how it has evolved over the years. October 4, 1957: Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology find that the frequency of radio signals transmitted by Sputnik increased as it got closer and decreased as it moved farther away. This was a result... View Article
October 27, 2017
Published by Malcolm Rosenfeld
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has a variety of very strict rules and regulations regarding how truck drivers and shipping services log their hours of service. However, when states issue emergency declarations or when other exceptional circumstances arise, the FMCSA may choose to suspend some of these regulations so affected regions can get necessary supplies and relief. For example, after Hurricane Harvey, the FMCSA suspended hours of service rules to ensure drivers in Louisiana and Texas could provide direct assistance to the affected areas as quickly as possible. With the wildfires currently raging throughout California, the FMCSA could... View Article
October 20, 2017
Published by Malcolm Rosenfeld
Over the last five years, major advances in global positioning system (GPS) technology have allowed it to become a bigger part of meteorology, especially when it comes to tracking hurricanes. In the recent hurricanes that battered the United States and Caribbean islands (Harvey, Irma, Maria), scientists used GPS to track the path and severity of the storms. The signals from GPS satellites bounce around in a unique way during storms, which allows scientists to calculate the wind speeds, allowing them to predict that kind of damage the storms are capable of committing and where they are most likely to hit... View Article
