Category: Syndication

How accurate is your commercial fitness tracker?


In a 2019 study, 18 senior citizens took a stroll on some treadmills while armed to the hilt with fitness trackers. They had devices strapped to their wrists and ankles, fastened to their belts, and wrapped around their chests. But even with all these trackers, the seniors couldn’t get an accurate step count because their movements were too slow to trigger the sensors in the devices. Commercial fitness trackers are being used for all kinds of things other than tracking steps. They measure heart rate, track sleep patterns, and calculate basal metabolic rate and calories burned. They’re used in clinical…

This story continues at The Next Web

These ‘self-driving’ shared scooters will automatically return to base after each use


This article was originally published by Sarah Wray on Cities Today, the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders. For the latest updates follow Cities Today on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube, or sign up for Cities Today News. A fleet of 100 remote-controlled scooters is being piloted at the city-owned Curiosity Lab technology testing ground in Peachtree Corners, Georgia. It is understood to be the first trial of its type on public roads. Citizens will be able to hail a scooter via an app and the vehicle will be automatically returned…

This story continues at The Next Web

How cosmic rays may have sparked life on Earth — and what this could mean for life on other planets


Long before animals roamed the Earth, before the first bacteria, and even before the development of DNA, tiny molecules found they could make simple copies of themselves. Cosmic rays pouring down from space constantly bombarded those molecules as they replicated, and developed over time. These particles, raining down from distant stars and galaxies, could have played a significant role in the what would become the chemistry of life. Mirror, mirror, on the wall… Molecules can take on various shapes as they form during reactions. Some of these molecules can be mirror images of molecules having the same number and types…

This story continues at The Next Web

Google Maps data shows which European countries took lockdown most seriously


A substantial part of humanity is slowly emerging from weeks of lockdown. What we have experienced is truly rare: a real global threat, menacing to all wherever we lived. But how did humanity respond to this pandemic? Did people consistently stay at home as most governments asked them to? And if they didn’t, where did they go? We can answer these questions thanks to Google. It has released data on people’s movements gathered from millions of mobile devices that use its software (Android, Google Maps and so on). Never before has this level of detail been available. For infamous pandemics…

This story continues at The Next Web

Or just read more coverage about: Google Maps,Google

How cosmologists finally found the ‘missing’ half of our universe’s matter


In the late 1990s, cosmologists made a prediction about how much ordinary matter there should be in the universe. About 5%, they estimated, should be regular stuff with the rest a mixture of dark matter and dark energy. But when cosmologists counted up everything they could see or measure at the time, they came up short. By a lot. The sum of all the ordinary matter that cosmologists measured only added up to about half of the 5% what was supposed to be in the universe. This is known as the “missing baryon problem” and for over 20 years, cosmologists…

This story continues at The Next Web

How coronavirus is reshaping the mobility industry, from EVs to supply chains


The current crisis is first and foremost humanitarian, with 300k casualties to date worldwide and massive joblessness. It is also economic, with almost all companies having financial difficulties and many collapsing. However, a few sectors are currently booming (e.g. deliveries), some will benefit from a crisis-induced tailwind, while others will continue to suffer for years to come. Many countries are still largely shut down, while others are re-opening. Economies are initiating a reboot. Depending on the forecasting analysts, the 2020 automotive market may be down 10-15% in China and 15-25% in Europe and the USA. Even if it is too…

This story continues at The Next Web

How to avoid stereotypes when designing for global markets


Did you know we have an online conference about product design coming up? SPRINT will cover how designers and product owners can stay ahead of the curve in these unprecedented times.  Hello, Bonjour, Hola, 你好, Guten Tag, こんにちは, Привет, Merhaba, Jó Napot, Здраво! Designers at global companies frequently work with geographically distributed teams. We also regularly work on digital products designed for global consumption for clients located all over the world. Yet designers, forgetting there’s a wider world out there, continue to live in a bubble and tend to focus only on their local culture, traditions, and language. Cross-cultural design indisputably…

This story continues at The Next Web

3 possible scenarios for restoring public transport after COVID-19


The Dutch bike-transit system should be our guide to not only encourage public transport use, but to also make it more efficient and attractive by offering higher frequency service with even better coverage. How is that possible? As we seem to be reaching the light at the end of the COVID-19 quarantine tunnel, many of us question what this might mean for mobility, and particularly, for public transport. The lockdown has generally had the same impact all around the world: car journeys fell 50–80% and public transport ridership plummeted by even more, while cycling and walking had a relative increase. Asian…

This story continues at The Next Web

AI algorithms are puzzled by our online behavior during the coronavirus pandemic


At some point, every one of us has had the feeling that online applications like YouTube, Amazon, and Spotify seem to know us better than ourselves, recommending content that we like even before we say it. At the heart of these platforms’ success are artificial intelligence algorithms—or more precisely, machine learning models—that can find intricate patterns in huge sets of data. Corporations in different sectors leverage the power of machine learning along with the availability of big data and compute resources to bring remarkable enhancement to all sorts of operations, including content recommendation, inventory management, sales forecasting, and fraud detection. Yet, despite…

This story continues at The Next Web

Shifting to electric transport is still a game changer — even if it’s not charged by renewable energy


New Zealand is indeed well supplied with renewable electricity. In recent years, New Zealand has averaged 83% from renewable sources (including 60% hydropower, 17% geothermal, and 5% wind) and 17% from fossil fuels (4% coal and 13% gas). In addition to being cheap and renewable, hydropower has another great advantage. Its production can ramp up and down very quickly (by turning the turbines on and off) during the day to match demand. Looking at a typical winter’s day (I’ve taken July 4, 2018), demand at 3am was 3,480 megawatts (MW) and 85% was met by renewable sources. By the early…

This story continues at The Next Web