Spider-drone

More bleeding edge drone technology from researchers at Stanford University from within their Biometrics & Dextrous Manipulation Laboratory; a drone that can land on ceilings and walls using micro-spines, basically clinging to the wall or ceiling. 

Obviously the real world applications of such a drone are numerous, especially in natural disaster areas where real time updates are required without worrying about battery life. Restricted to areas that are rough at this point, nicely explained in the video below:

 

Depth of Field

A really good, in depth, explanation regarding Depth Of Field when using your camera. The post is a few weeks old on the Petapixel blog and is well worth a read if you like photography. The post explains all the basics and some of the more advanced features that will help you take better photographs, even if you are using a smartphone.

The basic camera app that comes with your phone probably won't have depth of field settings that are adjustable as it is usually a point and shoot (with the camera deciding the right settings for the scene). I recommend the use of the Camera+ application that can be found over at campl.us and has been a staple on my iPhone since the app launched. Even better it costs less than your morning latte from Starbucks, even with the add on packs. Lisa Bettany one of the developers has a great instagram account of which most of her photographs are taken with an iPhone using her app.

 

Dissertation Progress

I thought it would be nice to post the map that I am working on that makes up a crucial part of my dissertation project The aim of the project is to identify where glacial lakes may pose a risk of catastrophic drainage and the route they would take using the integration of remote sensing and geographical information systems in the Burang valley in Western Tibet. This area is just north of western Nepal and the area is known for having previous glacier lake outburst floods.

So far I have identified 51 glacier using remotely sensed imagery from the Landsat Missions. Using some. I have mapped these lakes over five different years: 1994; 1999; 2005; 2009 and 2015. Due to warming global temperatures many scientists have found that glaciers in the Himalayas have undergone increased retreat causing pro-glacial lakes to build to dangerous levels which can catastrophically drain. Needless to say this can cause a lot of damage and loss of life downstream.

This is the map that I have produced so far  

Glacial Lakes from 2015.

This map has the glacier lakes from 2015 mapped on it, the glaciers from the GLIM's database, the major road(s), bridges and settlements in the valley that would be affected a GLOF. It also shows the streams and rivers routes any GLOF would take.

This cut out below shows how the some of the lakes have increased since 1994.

As can be seen some of the glacial lakes have expanded rapidly although some have stayed relatively the same size. From analysis of the imagery it can be seen that those that have stayed the same size have good drainage networks and those that have increased in size do not and are often dammed by pro-glacial moraines (sediment deposited by the glacier).

It is now time to crunch numbers regarding the lake volumes to see which have increased rapidly and and are potentially dangerous and if they would cause any damage to the settlements and infrastructures downstream.

Lightroom Tutorial

Discovered a great Adobe Lightroom tutorial for turning bad photographs into slightly better arty photographs. :-) It's a good tutorial on some of the features of Lightroom though so definitely worth watching if you are a Lightroom newbie.