Featured Products of The Month

TEMPERATURE SENSORS Used In Detecting & Screening for SARS

Cantronic's Thermal Images of a Boy Land's System Show Hotest Temperatures & Reference Temperature Source (left side) as Red Isotherms Wuhan Guide's Remote Monitor-Several in use in China Exergen's Temporal Artery Thermometers in Screening Use. FLIR Systems' (top) and Indigo Systems' Products for SARS Screening Singapore Technologies(ST) Electronics System (The first units "On Duty" at Singapore Airport ) Shown above are images from some of the equipment manufacturers' web sites or news releases about offerings of thermal imaging products, other devices and software to help Public Health and other officials screen travellers for possible fever, an early indicator of possible SARS infection. The first reportedly installed units were in Singapore at the airports. The units were developed and put into services by ST Electronics within one week of the request. (Their system is the image in the lower right.) This technology was rushed into use despite the fact that no study exists showing that a thermal imaging device could reliably and accurately distinguish between those with and those without a low level of fever. The ST Electronics images above would suggest that such a study is not necessary. The images evidently show a capability to distinguish between even mild and high fever levels. There are many factors that can reduce an infrared system's ability to measure accurately, and time and analysis of comparative data will tell. There are likely several studies underway to pin down the key elements of this application; one is mentioned in the Raytek Corporation web site disclaimer on SARS. The Land Instruments International system stands out because it includes a seperate reference temperature source near body temperature in the image field of view. This enables the system to perform comparisons between people's maximum surface temperature and a stable reference temperature. All this work to develop and deploy many IR Thermal Imagers and other sensors put nearly the entire temperature sensor industry into a panic mode. Images on the Web and reports from contacts in the industry attest to that, but even more interesting is the use of so many handheld IR thermometers and even small units designed for industrial process monitoring and control. There was a disclaimer posted on the Raytek Corporation web site about the topic. Not immune to the rush for devices were the suppliers of clinical thermometers, digital electronic, liquid-in-glass and IR ear thermometers. These devices are used for followup on anyone detected as having a possible fever in the IR screening areas. They also are being distributed widely in Singapore, Taiwan and elsewhere for routine temperature monitoring to detect fever onset for those at home and in quarrentine. This brought to the forefront the issue of how good (or bad) some of the IR ear thermometers are. Along the same lines, the issue also brought some publicity to the newer Temporal Artery Thermometer made by Exergen Corporation in the USA. This is a novel IR thermometer that reports and published results of clinical studies support as accurate as both the traditional glass thermometer and the IR ear thermometer, possibly more so. Check our special web pages (listed below) for more detail on who, what and where.

Upcoming Meetings, CFPs etc.

Check the Meetings page for many more meetings and dates

NEW Pages of Interest -April 2003

SARS Page ,
A new page about generic SARS information (links to CDC and WHO SARS pages) and Temperature-related issues.

SARS TEMPERATURE NEWS,
A page with news of the uses and places where SARS and temperature sensors connect.

SARS TEMPERATURE SENSORS,
Devoted to the temperature sensors and infrared Thermal Imagers technical/detail information of devices and manufacturers that are being used or offered for screening and early detection efforts.

NEW Links of Interest -April 2003

Distributors and Multiple Product Line Vendors Page

Automation Components Inc. (ACI) (USA)
ACI products monitor temperature, relative humidity, pressure, current, air quality, specific gases, light level, and enthalpy. They also carry products like thermowells, interface devices, power supplies, and control relays to support customer needs.

M-Tech (Slovak Republic)
10BaseT Ethernet SNMP Adapter for temperature / humidity monitoring, Paperless electronic temperature recorders, Temperature and Humidity recorders, TCHRON-Temperature micro recorder that is extra small size, has long life battery (up to 10 years), stainless hermetic case and uses MS Windows based software.

Bimetallic Thermometer Vendors Page

Miller Thermometer Company (USA)
Miller Thermometer Company is one of the country's largest suppliers of thermometer, specializing in high quality thermometers, dairy bimets and more plus maintaining a large inventory.

Glass Thermometer Vendors Pages

Miller Thermometer Company (USA)
Miller Thermometer Company is one of the country's largest suppliers of thermometer, specializing in high quality thermometers, dairy bimets and more plus maintaining a large inventory.

HVAC Page

ECI (USA)
ECI offers a completely customized Integrated Process Control System of manufacturing software and quality testing equipment for HVAC and refrigerator assembly lines.

Links Page

CliniSense (USA)
CliniSense has developed a programmable electronic time-temperature indicator (eTTI) with a simple "+" / "-" visual output.  This indicator can be preprogrammed or instantly customized to match the particular time-temperature decay profile of nearly any perishable material. 

Thermocouple Vendors Page

York Wire -Thermocouples (USA)
Bulk bare wire, insulated wire of all calibrations, extension wire, connectors and more.

Thermal Imager Vendors

Avio (Nippon Avionics Co., Ltd.) (Japan)
Maker of high quality infrared thermal imaging cameras ("thermal video" systems). Web site has information on both cameras and their applications. The model TVS-700 is among their leading products.

Electrophysics Corp. (USA)
Electrophysics develops advanced near infrared, night vision and thermal imaging systems for use in industry, law enforcement and by military customers around the world.

Infrared Solutions, Inc.(USA),
Make innovative, low cost Thermal Imagers which resemble hand-held snapshot cameras plus software that enable users to see images directly on a desktop or portable PC.

InfraTec GmbH , (Germany)
Thermal Imagers, both portable and stand-alone units for laboratory and industrial uses.

Meditherm (Australia and USA),
Medical Monitoring Systems trading as Meditherm for about twenty years. They produce the Meditherm med2000T, a thermal imaging unit that for clinical thermography. They are active in clinical practice and areas of medical research. Meditherm provides support and training to thermographers from technician upwards.

NEC San-ei Instruments, Ltd. (Japan)
A long-time manufacturer of a wide range of Thermal Imaging equipment that is mostly sold through third parties around the world, e.g. Mikron Infrared in North America, outside of Japan.

Opgal Optronic Industries Ltd (Israel)
OPGAL is a developer of thermal imaging technology and cameras principally for military uses and, more recently, for industrial, security and commercial customers. Recently announced their Fever Detection System, a packaged hardware & software systems for use in mass screening of people for possible fever, indicative of infection, e.g. SARS virus.

Singapore Technologies Infrared Fever Screening System (Singapore)
Providing Infrared Thermal Imaging System withsoftware for prime use in screening groups of people at ranges up to 15 meters for possible fever. Developed systems in very short time as an aid to screening passangers in airposts, bus stations and pedestrians crossing into Singapore from Malasia.

Thermal Imaging Services Page

Sierra Pacific Innovations (USA)
Thermal Imaging services, Camera Sales and Night Vision Sales: "The largest selection of online thermal images to browse as well as some various technical information."

Dewpoint & Humidity Vendors Page

Dewcon Humidity Sensors (USA & Germany)
Dewcon is a process instrumentation company specializing in unique moisture sensors, analyzers, meters, hygrometers and probes for on-line humidity and dewpoint measurement and control in drying, chemical and pharmaceutical applications including high temperatures and very dirty processes.

Next month is almost here and we are busy upgrading our web sites and seeking new information from the Web. There seems to be an endless supply! Our eNewsletter web site finally moved into a Content Management Software configuration with integral email, subscribe and unsubscribe features. It's needing more polishing but the results are beginning to look better. By this time next month it should be shining very nicely. Come on over and have a look at http://www.TemperatureSensorNews.com

COMMENTS and Alexa™ SITE RANKINGS

Notice to PR and Ad staffs in equipment and service companies:

Now you can list your organization and your new product or services or meetings information at the Temperature Sensor Community web site, www.tempsensor.net. It is a self-service feature that anyone who joins as amemebr can access. Membership is free!

Listed below are the Alexa Web site rankings at the end of April and the preceeding two months. The rose color indicates that a site became less popular during the month, the green or aqua indicates more popular. The numbers provide a quantitative measure of the site popularity according to the Alexa ranking system. Needless to say, lower values mean more popular (like:"Yahoo is Number 1!").

Rose just edged our green this past month. The upward trend appears to be taking a breather. The missing data for Land Instruments has returned back to about 12% below where it was two months previous. GlobalSpec posted the best gain among industrials, about 20%, Pyromation was up by about 15%, while FLIR, RaytheonInfrared and Omega each increased popularity by about 10% each. Indigo Systems took a big popularity hit slipping down two levels to below Raytek, which itself slipped about 10%. Our site exchanged positions with Sensors Magazine; we lost a little less than 10% while they gained about 13%.

According to www.netcraft.com's latest survey, they received responses from 40,444,778 web sites accessible on the Internet. In context of a popularity rating, a position of 1 or 2 million doesn't seem so bad. However the rankings of sites of similar organizations competing for Web visitors and exposure does seem to indicate at least relative success in attracting visitors.

Note, too, that the links indicated by the underline and color of the indivdual web site entries in the table below take you to the corresponding Alexa report page for each site.

We have also joined with Alexa as an Amazon Associate web site (Amazon owns Alexa) to offer an Alexa Toolbar for your IE web browser, if you wish to use Alexa on a regular basis yourself. See the small banner ad at the bottom of the page to access it. It is one small way that you can help support About Temperature Sensors.

From the above Alexa ratings you can see that our Web site consistently achieves a lower ranking (meaning it is more popular) than many vendors of temperature sensors, with the major exceptions of GlobalSpec and Omega Engineering, two gigantic web sites.

Our site swapped places again with Sensors Magazine in March after passing ASNT, The American Society for Non-Destructive Testing, in January and continues to grow overall in popularity. These gains on our site were made using our own knowledge of the Web and the methods we have learned to gain ratings. If you check most of the search engines for" temperature sensors" or "temperature measurement" our site is usually number one, or close to it in non-advertiser rankings.

Our second site, www.tempsensor.net only available on the net since last November, has already reached an Alexa popularity ranking that places it between ASNT and Sensors Magazine. That means it has already passed all the major equipment and services vendors, just like our main site. We think we know how to get high rankings and good directory placements! If your organization wants help in improving its Web marketing and popularity contact us at web@temperatures.com and ask for a free estimate.

If you only need more exposure of your organization's name and special capabilities, consider a banner ad on one of our websites. Our page view rates are high and prices reasonable. We have a two for one special that runs until May 30th.