CENS News

• Latest Biodiscovery at CENS

  05-Nov-09

  The latest biosensor discovery at CENS--squirrels as detectors of leaky irrigation systems.
  
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• CNN.com - A new way of looking at the world

  02-Nov-09

  An emerging set of tools is making it easier than ever to track and compile all sorts of "data" and display it in a way that's relatively easy to understand.
  
  Nathan Yau, a CENS graduate student at UCLA is featured. He founded a Web site, Your Flowing Data, that helps people chart their lives using Twitter. Read More

• CENS SRC URO Scholars Program

  24-Sep-09

  Apply today to become a CENS SRC URO Scholar! CENS is accepting applications for UCLA undergraduates to apply to the 2009-2010 CENS SRC URO Scholars Program. Deadline: October 16, 2009 Read More

• Deborah Estrin awarded 2009 ACM Sigmobile Outstanding Contribution Award

  11-Sep-09

  Congratulating to CENS's Director, Deborah Estrin for being this year's winner of the ACM Sigmobile Outstanding Contribution Award! Sigmobile is the Association of Computing Machinery's special interest group on wireless and mobile communications.

• Slashdot.org - Your Rights Online: Privacy, Mobile Phones, Ubiquitous Data Collection

  03-Sep-09

  CENS' Katie Shilton's article is featured on slashdot. Read More

• National Geographic - Tracking Alien Species by Phone

  30-Jul-09

  New smart-phone applications may enable the public to help scientists monitor invasive species and collect data in a fraction of the time it normally takes. CENS' Mobile Sensing is featured. Read More

• Live Science - Cell Phones Allow Everyone to Be a Scientist

  04-Jun-09

  Cell phones let you chat with friends, send emails and even guide you to the nearest pizza joint. But now these toys are acquiring more serious roles: They're turning into personal and environmental sensors useful for health and science.
  CENS' Participatory Sensing is featured. Read More

• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars - There's a Sensor in Your Pocket

  18-May-09

  Mobile Technologies Enable a New Generation of Citizen Scientists. CENS' Participatory Sensing is featured. Read More

• Nature News - Personal technology: Phoning in data

  22-Apr-09

  Far from being just an accessory, mobile phones are starting to be used to collect data in an increasing number of disciplines. Roberta Kwok looks into their potential.
  
  CENS' Martin Lukac is featured. Read More

• MobileActive.org - Earth Day and Mobile Phones, Part 1: Sensing for a Better World

  21-Apr-09

  If 2009 is the year of the mobile phone for social impact, then Earth Day should mark a special occasion in this regard. More and more organizations and people are discovering how mobile phones can be used for social impact, including how to use mobile tech for environmental protection, sensing, and to leverage just-in-time information to make our movements and actions more environmentally friendly.
  
  CENS Urban Sensing group is featured. Read More

• Wired - 10 Awesome Summer Internships for Science Students

  16-Apr-09

  If you're a college student thinking about becoming a scientist, now is the time to apply for summer internships. Aside from studying hard, the most important thing that you can do for yourself is get some research experience.
  
  The CENS Summer Program is featured. Read More

• San Francisco Chronicle - Program helps kids find their carbon impact

  06-Apr-09

  The Go Green Foundation of San Francisco, with support from Nokia, CENS at UCLA and AT&T, has been testing a groundbreaking project for the past month that allows 25 students at the Urban School in San Francisco to track their transportation habits using GPS-handsets from Nokia over AT&T's network. Read More

• Popular Mechanics - Citizen Science: How Smartphones Can Aid Scientific Research

  30-Mar-09

  Is your smartphone reaching its full potential? You may use your phone to text, Twitter and geo-tag photographs, but your phone can collect data for so much more than your social networks. CENS' work on smartphones is featured in this article from Popular Mechanics. Read More

• Science Cheerleader - Cell phones + user-generated data = citizen science on steroids

  30-Mar-09

  Fascinating combination of cell phones and citizen scientists to do everything from helping joggers chart healthy running courses, to alerting scientists and policy makers to needed environmental policy changes. CENS' Participatory Sensing project is featured in this blog post. Read More

• Discovery - Sustainable: Wide Angle: All the Cool Kids Have Them

  27-Mar-09

  CENS and the PEIR application are featured in a Discovery article discussing the Urban School of San Francisco and its participation in a pilot project organized by the Go Green Foundation. Read More

• UCLA Impact - PEIR in "10 cool UCLA things to see and do on the Web"

  26-Mar-09

  The CENS PEIR program was featured as #9 in this month's e-newsletter. IMPACT is also emailed to 80,000 alumni through the Alumni Association. Read More

• KQED - Tracking Carbon through Your Cell Phone

  09-Mar-09

  (Audio) A group of high school students in San Francisco are using high-tech GPS cell phones running CENS-developed software to track their daily carbon footprint - and to gauge their daily environmental risk. Read More

• CENS 2009 High School Scholars Program

  13-Feb-09

  APPLY TODAY TO BECOME A CENS HIGH SCHOOL SCHOLAR!
  CENS is accepting applications for the CENS High School Scholars Program. Deadline: March 20, 2009
  
  DEADLINE EXTENDED: April 6, 2009 Read More

• The National Academies - CENS Director Deborah Estrin elected to the National Academy of Engineering

  06-Feb-09

  Congratulations Dr. Estrin! Read More

• New York Times - CENS High School Scholar Ian Cinnamon

  30-Oct-08

  The New York Times features an article about iPhone applications created by Ian Cinnamon (CENS High School Scholar ‘07, ‘08). Read More

• CENS News - Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing (MIT Press, 2008)

  19-Sep-08

  A new book by UCLA GSEIS researcher Jane Margolis describes four years of research in LA schools on high school computer science education and why so few African Americans and Latino/as are learning computer science. It also describes our program for high school teachers. Now available from MIT Press!

• UCLA Today - Calculate Your Carbon Footprint with a Cellphone

  02-Sep-08

  CENS' Deborah Estrin has put herself on the line for her work, comparing her carbon output to that of her friends and then showing the results, flattering or unflattering, on Facebook. Read More

• Business Wire - Personal Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) - Press Release

  16-Jun-08

  CENS unveils new tool to help people understand their relationship with the environment. Read More

• EOS - AGU Student Award

  02-Jun-08

  CENS student Igor Stubailo received an Outstanding Student Paper Award for his poster about shear wave splitting in Mexico. Read More

• Google - Anita Borg Scholarship Winner

  02-Jun-08

  Diane Budzik, a CENS GSR, has been named one of the winners of the 2008 Anita Borg Scholarship. Read More

• Scientific American - Rainforest Climate Change Sensor Station Goes Wi-Fi

  24-Mar-08

  UCLA researchers are setting up a wireless data collection, dissemination and analysis system in Costa Rica's La Selva rainforest Read More

• CENS News - Allen Husker: Outstanding Student Paper Award

  13-Mar-08

  CENS student Allen Husker receives an Outstanding Student Paper Award for his presentation: Tomography of the subducting Cocos plate in central Mexico: Images of a truncated slab.

• NSF - At the NSF FY 2009 Budget Open House

  07-Feb-08

  CENS Director Deborah Estrin and graduate student Teresa Ko presented CENS research at the NSF FY 2009 Budget Open House. Read More

• MIT Press - Scholarship in the Digital Age - Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet

  12-Dec-07

  CENS Faculty Christine Borgman has authored a new book in which she "explores the technical, social, legal, and economic aspects of the kind of infrastructure that we should be building for scholarly research in the twenty-first century." Read More

• UC News - When the cows come home

  11-Dec-07

  CENS Faculty Tom Harmon is leading research using wireless sensors to measure the effects that manure produced by California's dairy industry has on our state's groundwater supply. Read More

• New Scientist - Rattling elevators reveal a building's health

  28-Nov-07

  Just running an elevator up and down is enough to determine the "structural health" of a building, a new study reveals. Read More

• CENS faculty receives PECASE award

  15-Nov-07

  CENS Faculty Eddie Kohler (Computer Science) has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), one of 20 such awards made by the National Science Foundation. Read More

• CENS student researchers earn Edward K. Rice awards

  14-Nov-07

  CENS graduate student researcher Amarjeet Singh has been awarded the Edward K. Rice Outstanding Master of Science Student Award, while undergraduate researcher Andre Encarnacao received the Edward K. Rice Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award. Both awards were announced at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science 2007 Awards Dinner. Congratulations to both students on these prestigious awards. For the full list of student awards, please visit the 2007 Awards Dinner page: Read More

• New York Times - News Flows, Consciousness Streams: The Headwaters of a River of Words

  25-Oct-07

  CENS Member and UCLA statistician Mark Hansen joins with artist Ben Rubin to create Moveable Type, a work of art displaying statistically selected phrases and individual sentences from the New York Times databases on hundreds of small screens on two walls in the lobby of the Times' new office tower. Read More

• eSchool News - Wireless sensors extend internet's reach

  05-Jul-07

  Sensor networks link students, researchers with real-world data Read More

• UCLA Today - Gold Shield winner empowers undergrads

  27-Jun-07

  CENS Faculty Member William Kaiser was awarded the prestigious 2007 Gold Shield Faculty Prize. Read More

• DailyBreeze.com - Part Boat. Part Laboratory. It's Roboduck.

  25-Jun-07

  When the stench in Redondo Beach's King Harbor started driving people away, scientists had an idea. Read More

• Los Angeles Times - Marine deaths linked to toxin

  30-Apr-07

  CENS Researcher Dave Caron discusses the relationship between increased quantities of algae and domoic acid and the health of marine life. Read More

• Merced Sun-Star, ABC News, Fresno Bee - UC Merced partners with agriculturalists to study cultivation techniques

  26-Apr-07

  The University of California at Merced on Wednesday announced its first agricultural research project -- one that will study nitrate levels in soil and water. The project is led by CENS faculty member Tom Harmon. Related stories: UC Merced Farming for Research and Education and Ag Coming Together

• ABC News - Wireless Sensors Extend Internet's Reach

  11-Feb-07

  CENS Director Deborah Estrin talks to the Associated Press about CENS research. This AP article was published in over 75 newspapers. Read More

• UCLA Today - Remapping: from cell phones to collective consciousness

  11-Feb-07

  CENS researcher Jeff Burke's research project Remapping LA was profiled in UCLA Today. Read More

• Environmental Engineering Science - Special Issue

  07-Feb-07

  This issue features several articles by CENS members on a variety of CENS Research Projects. Read More

• CBS Evening News - Troubled Waters For Our Sea Creatures

  01-Feb-07

  Marine biologist Astrid Schnetzer, from the lab of CENS member David Caron, talks with Bill Whitaker, CBS Evening News, about the surge of toxic algae and its effect on marine life. Read More

• The Beach Reporter - Deploying Sensors

  25-Jan-07

  Photograph of CENS members deploying sensors to detect red tides appears on The Beach Reporter homepage. Read More

• Architecture Week - Embedded Lab

  23-Jan-07

  CENS functional new space of glass and steel is highlighted in Architecture Week. Read More

• The Beach Reporter - Red tide research to start

  19-Jan-07

  David Caron and his team of researchers will be distributing sensors in the water off Redondo Beach to monitor oxygen levels and understand the causes of the fish kills that come with red tide algae blooms. Read More

• EETimes - Sensor nets branch out in real world

  16-Jan-07

  The EETimes covered Director Deborah Estrin's talk last week at the IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium. Read More

• UCLA Institute of the Environment - 2006 Report Card

  19-Dec-06

  CENS has contributed a chapter entitled "Innovations in Environmental Monitoring" to the Institute of the Environment 2006 Report Card. Read the press release or access the report card directly.

• Technology Review - TR35 - Eddie Kohler 2006 Young Innovator

  20-Sep-06

  Since 1999, the editors of Technology Review have honored the young innovators whose inventions and research is most exciting; today that collection is the TR35, a list of technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35. CENS member Eddie Kohler was selected for his "Better Operating System." Read More

• LA Times - Sentinels Under Attack

  09-Aug-06

  Research of CENS Member David Caron is mentioned in an article on toxic algae. Read More

• The Mercury News - Capturing humanity's conversations in the ether

  11-Jun-06

  Where do you go to see the Internet? A mesmerizing answer to that question just went on exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art, which has unveiled "Listening Post" by Ben Rubin and CENS member Mark Hansen. Read More

• Metroactive - Someone's Listening

  07-Jun-06

  A new computer installation at the San Jose Museum of Art mines the Internet in real time for found poetry. New York sound artist Ben Rubin and CENS member Mark Hansen first developed "The Listening Post" in 1999-2001. The Listening Post has been mutating and growing ever since. Read More

• KCRW - If the Water Doesn't Get You, Watch Out for the Sand

  25-May-06

  CENS Professor Jennifer Jay joined KCRW's Which Way, L.A.? as a guest to report on the condition of Southern California beaches. Read More

• Los Angeles Times - More Bad Tidings; Polluted Sand

  23-May-06

  A UCLA study finds that bacteria persist in wet portions of beaches even when water is deemed clean. Health risks have yet to be determined. CENS Professor Jennifer Jay headed the study. Read More

• Idyllwild Town Crier - Robotics Engineering and Microbiology Research at Lake Fulmor

  18-May-06

  Lake Fulmor is the site of cutting-edge technology Tuesday, May 9, as the San Jacinto Mountain Reserve hosts robotics engineering and microbiology research teams from UC Riverside, UCLA and USC. The teams deployed a robotic boat that traveled around the lake measuring water temperatures and algae growth, a robotic helicopter equipped with GPS and wireless video, and a wired cable robot that took water samples at varying locations and depths, all pre-programmed and operating autonomously. Here, the USC team's robotic helicopter takes off on its mission to image the lake from above. The scientists will compile data on the health of the lake and return several times this summer to collect more data. Photo by Michael Erlich [PDF with photo]

• Los Angeles Times - State Called Unready for Big Quake

  21-Apr-06

  Scientists marking 1906 disaster say future toll could be worse because of surging population and development and lack of retrofitting, CENS researcher Monica Kohler’s work mentioned. Read More

• Ivanhoe Broadcast News - Forest Robot Fleet

  04-Apr-06

  Professor William Kaiser comments on how the use of technology is helping us understand how humans impact the environment and how the environment can impact public health. Read More

• ACM MemberNet - ACM-W Names Networking Researcher First Athena Lecturer

  28-Mar-06

  Deborah Estrin has been selected as the 2006-2007 ACM-W Athena Lecturer. She will give her invited lecture at the MobiCom conference in September, a SIGMOBILE meeting. A video of the talk will appear on the ACM Web site. Read More

• CENS News - James Reserve Using Google Earth

  23-Mar-06

  The James Reserve is using Google Earth to display sensor data and webcam views of the Reserve. Visit the James Reserve's Data Management System to download the KMZ file. You must have Google Earth installed. The James Reserve application has been highlighted on the Google Earth Blog and the Ogle Earth blog.

• Nature - 2020 computing: Everything, everywhere

  22-Mar-06

  Tiny computers that constantly monitor ecosystems, buildings and even human bodies could turn science on its head. Declan Butler investigates. Read More

• Inland Empire News Radio - Let's Talk Show

  08-Feb-06

  Dr. Michael Hamilton, discusses smart sensors with host Jerry Gordon. Read More

• CENS News - CENS project wins 2nd place at 2006 DAC / ISSCC Design Contest

  09-Jan-06

  A paper on the CENS Illumimote system, a novel high-performance light sensor module for sensor networks in film production, has been awarded the 2nd place award and a cash prize of $2000 at the Student Design Contest (System Category) jointly organized by the prestigious 2006 ACM Design Automation Conference and the 2006 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. The paper was co-authored by Heemin Park, Jonathan Friedman, and Prof. Mani Srivastava from the Networked and Embedded Systems Lab, and Pablo Gutierrez, Vids Samanta, and Prof. Jeff Burke from the Hypermedia Studio. For more information on Illumimote: Read More

• CENS News - New Administrative and Program Development Directors join CENS in 2006

  06-Jan-06

  David Avery joined CENS January 1st as Administrative Director for CENS and Dr. Jeff Goldman joined CENS March 1st as its first Director of Program Development. Read More

• ACM/IEEE ISLPED - CENS Project Wins Low Power Design Contest

  24-Sep-05

  A submission on Heliomote, a solar energy harvesting module for wireless sensor nodes, has been selected as one of the winners of the low power design contest at the ACM/IEEE - International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design (ISLPED) [being held at San Diego on Aug 8-10]. This work was performed by CENS graduate students Jason Hsu, Jonathan Friedman, Vijay Raghunathan, and Aman Kansal under the guidance of CENS faculty Mani Srivastava at the Networked and Embedded Systems Laboratory. Read More

• California Connected - Robot Forest

  23-Sep-05

  An article on James Reserve field research station in the San Jacinto Mountains, where a network of robots and sensors developed by CENS monitor the forest’s vital signs, such as temperature, humidity and who’s living there. Read More

• NBC News - Wireless Wilderness

  11-Jul-05

  NBC News story on CENS and the James Reserve Read More

• CENS News - Congratulations to Saurabh Ganeriwal

  17-Jun-05

  Saurabh Ganeriwal has been awarded the dissertation year fellowship in the Electrical Engineering Department. Read More

• New York Times - A Web of Sensors, Taking Earths Pulse

  10-May-05

  In the wilds of the San Jacinto Mountains, along a steep canyon, scientists are turning 30 acres of pines and hardwoods in California into a futuristic vision of environmental study. Read More

• CENS News - UCLA Spotlights CENS Video Feature

  01-May-05

  UCLA Spotlight: Deborah Estrin and the Center for Embedded Network Sensing. View the video in which Estrin talks about what embedded networks can do today and where we go from here. Read More

• CENS News - CENS Project Received Best Demonstration Award at ACM/IEEE IPSN 2005

  27-Apr-05

  A research demonstration on SOS, a new operating system for sensor networks with dynamic module reconfiguration capabilities, was declared co-winner of the Best Demonstration Award at the ACM/IEEE The Fourth International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN 2005). The demonstration was presented by CENS graduate students Simon Han, Ram Kumar, and Roy Shea who have developed SOS under the guidance of CENS faculty Eddie Kohler and Mani Srivastava. More details on SOS, including downloadable source code and detailed technical documentation, are available at the SOS project website: Read More

• CENS News - CENS Student Recieves Google Anita Borg Scholarship

  07-Apr-05

  Nithya Ramanathan, a CENS graduate student, is a recipient of the Google 2005 Anita Borg Scholarship for female students in the computer sciences. Read More

• CENS News - New CENS Building

  28-Feb-05

  The proposed building for CENS is designed to move research beyond the traditional laboratory setting. The systems developed by CENS researchers will be operating throughout the building, not only collecting data for ongoing research but showcasing the many practical uses this technology will serve. Read More

• Global Agenda 2005 Issue - How smart sensors might save Planet Earth

  07-Feb-05

  Smart sensors embedded in the wireless network could help reduce pollution, says Deborah Estrin, and even improve our response to natural disasters Read More

• IEEE Wireless Communications - Special Issue on Wireless Sensor Networks

  01-Dec-04

  December 2004, Vol. 11, No. 6
  See at IEEE ComSoc Digital Library or IEEE Xplore

• NSF - AIBS-NEON Design Consortium

  22-Sep-04

  The AIBS-NEON Design Consortium is pleased to announce the completion of the Cooperative Agreement between the National Science Foundation and the American Institute of Biological Sciences under which NEON will be fully planned, designed and budgeted. The NEON Project Office has opened its doors, at AIBS Headquarters in Washington DC. Read More

• NY Times - Ars Electronica Asks What Will Be Next

  09-Sep-04

  This year's top prizewinner for interactive art at Ars Electronica was "Listening Post" by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin. In it 231 small displays are mounted in a grid. A computer scans Internet chat rooms, message boards and forums, and displays the results, while a speech synthesizer reads some of them. Read More

• IEEE Computer - Special Issue on Sensor Networks

  01-Aug-04

  August 2004, Vol. 37, No. 8
  See at IEEE Computer Society Digital Library or IEEE Xplore

• CENS News - CENS demonstrates critical new technologies in support of biological, geo, and environmental sciences

  01-Feb-04

  Under the direction of PI Professor William Kaiser (UCLA), a recent ITR award has enabled the development of Networked Infomechanical Systems (NIMS). Read More

• CENS News - CENS Aims to Improve Gender Diversity in Engineering

  01-Feb-04

  The Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), an NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) headquartered at the University of California, Los Angeles, has expanded its work in diversity through an NSF Gender Diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education grant. Read More

• CENS News - IEEE Fellows Annoncement

  01-Dec-03

  CENS Center Director and Computer Science Professor Deborah Estrin has been elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Estrin was honored for her innovations in scalable network protocols and sensor network research. She was also recently named to the "Brilliant 10" list of top researchers in Popular Science magazine. Read More

• San Diego Union-Tribune - Embedded networks help make sense of nature, life and the world

  01-Nov-03

  Read More

• NSF - NSF Office of Legislative and Public Affairs: NIMS Team Wins NSF Information Technology Research Award

  17-Sep-03

  "The NIMS program is an essential next step for networked embedded sensing by now including a hierarchy of fixed and mobile nodes along with infrastructure. NIMS allows us to introduce the physical reconfiguration that is neccessary for adapting physical sensor networks to the full complexity of environments. NIMS also enables transport and reconfiguration of sensor nodes and actual physical samples collected by nodes, all with the low energy that an infrastructure can provide." -- Professor William Kaiser. Read More

• CENS News - In the California State Senate

  18-Aug-03

  CENS Professor Greg Pottie testifies in a California Senate Committee Informational Hearing on RFID Technology and Pervasive Computing. Read More

• UCLA News - UCLA Computer Scientist Named to ‘Brilliant 10’ List

  18-Aug-03

  "Deborah Estrin, UCLA professor of computer science, has been named to Popular Science magazine second annual Brilliant 10, a list of young scientists doing extraordinary work." Read More

• NSF Sponsored Workshop Report

  01-Aug-03

  Environmental Cyberinfrastructure Needs For Distributed Networks

• MIT Enterprise Technology Review - "Casting the Wireless Sensor Net"

  01-Jun-03

  "Smart, networked sensors will soon be all around us, collectively processing vast amounts of previously unrecorded data to help run factories, maintain crops, and even watch for earthquakes." Read More

• LinuxDevices.com - Mobile robots as gateways into wireless sensor networks

  05-Feb-03

  "This is a new venture that is focused on intelligent mobile robots -- robots that are used in flexible environments, not automated toolsets in fixed locations. For example, Intel-based mobile robots will be used at the James Reserve by the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) to map terrain and monitor habitats." Read More

• MIT Technology Review - 10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change the World

  02-Feb-03

  Spotlight on wireless sensor networks and TinyOS, a compact operating system only a few kilobytes in size. Read More

• Apple SciTech: Profiles in Science - Michael Hamilton: 21st Century Biologist

  01-Jan-03

  A profile on the work of CENS Principal Investigator and UCR Professor Michael Hamilton.
  Read More

• ZDNet - Wireless Research Senses the Future

  06-Dec-02

  ZDnet reports Deborah Estrin is pushing wireless technology into places it's never been before. Read More

• Forbes Magazine - Sensors Gone Wild

  21-Oct-02

  Deborah Estrin comments on the uses of intelligent sensors in the James Reserve project. Read More

• Cal-(IT)² News - Deborah Estrin Addresses Emerging Challenges in Sensor Network Research

  21-Oct-02

  The Emerging Challenges in Sensor Network Research 10.25.02 --"Imagine high-rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles that could detect their structural faults, then alert authorities on corrective action," begins Deborah Estrin, a professor of Computer Science at UCLA and a member of Cal-(IT)²'s Advisory Board. This was the opening scientific challenge Estrin posed at a seminar she gave October 21 at the UCSD Computer Science and Engineering Department. Read More

• News Factor Sci-Tech - Networked Computer Sensors Infiltrate Everything

  06-Sep-02

  Read More

• iCompass - New Center for Embedded Networked Sensing

  03-Jun-02

  Will Use Wireless Technology to Create Wide Array of Sensor Systems to Monitor Environment, Buildings. Read More