There's no nation better prepared for a quake than Japan. The nation has invested billions, in fact, in seawalls designed to stymie the power of a tsunami to skyscrapers built to sway instead of snapping or crumbling. Sway they did, looking like trees in a strong wind during Japan's 8.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday.

The folks at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center are creating mock earthquakes — the sim pictured represents a 4.4-magnitude tremor in a valley in northern Greece. From there, architects and regulators can more easily decide what type of structure to build in that area.

The brainchild of an Israeli start-up, Axxana's Phoenix is a bombproof — nay, pick any scenario from a big-budget disaster movie and, rather like Bruce Willis, it'll survive anything you throw at it — recorder. The solid state flash memory...

Want to put your laptop intro service for the good of environmental observation? The Quake Catcher Network in California is an effort by researchers to use the accelerometers built into most modern laptops to help keep track of seismic...