Gary Robbins, The Orange County Register [California]
October 14, 2006

(Article excerpt) … [Engineering professor Maria Feng and her colleagues at University of California (Irvine)] have developed sensors that monitor stress on everything from bridges and high-rise buildings to dams that are prone to damage from earthquakes. One of the devices is a fiber optic sensor that’s the size of a half dollar. The other is a wireless device that Feng describes as “smaller than a woman’s thumb nail.” Both are designed to monitor structures much as a doctor would monitor a patient. In fact, Feng talks in medical terms when describing work she did as a graduate student years ago. “I developed a smart building structure that has built-in sensors (like human nerves), a computer (like a human brain), and actuators (like human muscles),” she said in an e-mail a couple of days later. Such work holds some appeal. “The design of buildings isn’t always as good as it needs to be to handle an earthquake,” says Sue Hough, acting chief of the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena. “So sensors could help tell you what’s really going on. This is a growth area.” … In a few weeks, [Feng will] travel to China to do sensor work on the enormous hydroelectric station at the Three Gorges Dam, a structure large enough to be photographed by orbiting satellites. … Read the full story.