Narrator: This is Science Today. Smart dust motes are tiny sensors with wireless radio transceivers that allow one to sense structures intelligently. Steve Glaser, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley says these devices are being used to monitor buildings, bridges and other structures for structural soundness. But Glaser says, they can also use smart mote technology for archeological preservation.

Glaser: For instance, we’ll probably go and instrument the Meseba site in Israel – it’s a World Heritage Site. So the people running the facility don’t want wires. So we’ll be monitoring some large pieces of the mountain that could fall off on people and also, the seismic behavior because the Dead Sea is below sea level because it’s a seismically active area.

Narrator: Smart dust motes are also less expensive.

Glaser: The traditional devices cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars a piece. We’ll make them for about five thousand dollars a piece.

Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.