An organisation with similar intentions to Star-Tides

http://www.instedd.org/

"InSTEDD’s mission is to discover, develop, test, deploy and share information about technologies that buy critical time. Through better disease detection and response times, outbreaks can be contained and possibly prevented. Through better disaster response, more lives can be saved. Through collaboration better answers can be found."

This page details some fascinating communications tech projects.

http://www.instedd.org/technology_field_lab

A bio-degradable plastic bag coated internally with Urea breaks down faeces & urine.

http://davidreport.com/blog/200809/life-saving-peepoo-bag/

"In the world today more than 2,6 billion of people has no access to basic sanitation. That means that 40 out of 100 person lacks even the most simple latrine to perform their needs. The lack of toilets affects both society and the individual through the contamination of fresh water and ground water. Human faeces contain viruses, bacteria, worms and parasites which kills and infects people with serious diseases. One child in the world dies every 15 seconds due to contaminated water."

PeePoo Bag from

http://www.peepoople.com/

GATR Technologies develops and markets deployable, inflatable SatCom antennas and systems that provide for quick deployment and high-bandwidth communications in remote, hard-to-reach areas. The GATR satellite dish is supported by a collapsible, radio frequency-transparent sphere that allows for easy packing and transport. There are 2 dish sizes: 1.8 and 2.4 meter diameter. The larger weighs 18 pounds and all components pack into a box less than 70 pounds that can be transported in a single airline check-able case. It can run on a generator, solar power, battery, or AC or DC power. For this dish size, GATR provides unparalleled bandwidth in an extremely portable package.

www.gatr.com

Disasters will happen, Babies will arrive even when it is most inconvenient for them to do so.

The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood

http://www.whiteribbonalliance.org/

offers a PDF document.

http://www.whiteribbonalliance.org/resources.cfm?a0=pubs

" Saving Mothers' Lives: What Works." which will help relief workers to reduce problems they may encounter.

You can't build ICT networks with out whiteboards, nor can you do a lot of other wonderful things. The modern replacement for the blackboard, this is a simple low coast way to get ideas on the wall.

Here's a simple way to make one.

Free material from OpenLearn, part of UK's Open University

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3557

Water and human health

Course contents:

Introduction

1 Water as a global resource

2 The global water cycle

3 The distribution of water and its use by people

4 Chemical pollution of water

5 Unit summary

6 Self-assessment questions

References and Acknowledgement

Monmouth University has been funded by the federal government to design a first response truck for data sharing in domestic disaster situations.  It was designed to facilitate coordination and communication between civilian first responders and the military.  It has capabilities for real-time data download, drawing, editing, and upload, and strategically transmits data to minimize bandwidth use.  This truck and the technological capabilities within it are working to provide the technology useful for disaster response while integrating it with civilian responders who may not be familiar with it and more likely use paper maps.  Inside, there are also stations for responders from different organizations to connect to the internet and link to their own networks.

Solar Stik is a company that makes portable solar energy generators and solar/wind hybrid generators.  In the portable power market, solar and wind has a profound impact on sustained power delivery because the most expensive cost in portable power is transport and storage of fuel.  Solar and wind have no support costs.  One of the benefits to Solar Stik's design is that their versatile systems can power diverse power needs, and are not narrowly designed for specific technologies.  They are easily transportable and can be folded down into boxes that can be checked on an airplane.  These benefits provide the ability to deliver power to remote locations or regions where transportation pathways are compromised.

Earlier this month we completed nine months of exposure testing for three kind of shelters on a hilltop in western Virginia.  The test period ran from mid-Dec 07 to mid-August 08 and included fairly mild winter snows, fairly strong spring thunderstorms with estimated 60 mph winds, and summer heat/heavy rains.  The testing was