Sun's Magnetic Field to Reverse: triggering some new space weather

As reported by National Geographic:

The sun's magnetic field, which spans the solar system, is just months away from flipping, observatory measurements show.

"This change will have ripple effects throughout the solar system," solar physicist Todd Hoeksema of Stanford University said in a statement.

Hoeksema is the director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory, one of just a few observatories around the world that monitors the sun's polar magnetic fields.

The sun's magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years during the peak of each solar cycle as the sun's inner dynamo reorganizes itself.

This next reversal—which will be only the fourth observed since tracking began in 1976—will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24.

During a magnetic field reversal, "the sun's polar magnetic fields weaken, go to zero and then emerge again with the opposite polarity," explained solar physicist Phil Scherrer, also at Stanford, in the statement.

Scientists are already seeing signs of the reversal happening, and this time there's a twist: Data from Wilcox show that the sun's two hemispheres are oddly out of sync, with the North Pole already beginning to change and the South Pole racing to catch up.

Soon both poles should be completely reversed. "It looks like we're no more than three to four months away from a complete field reversal," Hoeksema said.

What Does a Reversal Mean?

A reversal of the sun's magnetic field will have consequences throughout the solar system since the domain of the sun's magnetic influence—called the heliosphere—extends far beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, which are racing toward interstellar space.

A NASA depiction of the heliospheric current sheet.

Playing a central role in solar field reversals is the "current sheet," a sprawling surface that juts out of the sun's equator where the sun's slowly rotating magnetic field induces an electric current.

The current itself is small—only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter—but there's a lot of it, and the entire heliosphere is organized around it.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Scherrer likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball.

As the Earth orbits the sun, our planet dips in and out of the wavy current sheet, and the transitions can stir up stormy space weather around us.

The geometry of the current sheet can also affect Earth's exposure to cosmic rays, which are high-energy particles accelerated to the speed of light by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy.

Cosmic rays pose a threat to astronauts and space probes, and some researchers say they might also affect the cloudiness and climate of Earth.

The sun's current sheet functions as a barrier to cosmic rays, preventing them from penetrating into the inner solar system. And a wavy, crinkly current sheet appears to create a better shield against these energetic particles.

Additionally, the earth's magnetic field also acts as a partial shield against the subsequent 'local' space weather generated by the sun - the combination of which provides a low radiation zone for habital life on earth.  Particles generated by the sun's electromagnetic storms that filter through the earth's magnetic shield show up as the Aurora Borealis light displays at high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions.

Location, Location, Location: Protecting or Releasing your location data

Geo-fencing can be used to determine when a vehicle or a
mobile device is in a particular area.

Continued from our prior article: Part of what makes modern tracking possible is the ability to tie together a vast array of records using location data. In years past, records would be correlated using someone’s Social Security number — until identity theft and privacy concerns curbed the practice. Now location is becoming the uniting element that makes it possible to link the bits of someone’s life together.

The act of pooling location data, however, can often break the protections that keep personal details private. Unless proper controls are in place, commercial firms may be able to determine religious and political beliefs and even map out someone’s circle of friends. Police and national security agencies may implement similar methods for different purposes.

Geofencing is a technique that can be used to determine the members of a social network.

One establishes a virtual perimeter around a particular point, then uses location data to note who enters the enclosed area. The perimeter, for example, might be around a concert venue — which enables music promoters to gain insight into ticket-buying fans. The perimeter does not, however, have to be centered on a fixed place. One can set a geofence around a person’s cell phone. Over time it would be possible to see who came into contact with that individual and discover who their acquaintances are

“With current location information,” said Leger, “you can you discern over time who somebody’s friends are.” Some companies are already doing this, she said.

Correlating position data can uncover previously
unknown social networks.

Moreover, this is not the kind of analysis that has to be done in real time. If the data has been saved, a network map can be prepared retrospectively — and some companies save such information indefinitely, said Leger. Although the commercial value of such analysis is not yet clear, such details could be used to map out the connections between criminals or terrorists confirmed Leger.

That kind of in-depth analysis, however, is still relatively unusual, said Arthur Berrill, vice president of technology at DMTI Spatial and a contributor to the Location Forum’s privacy guidelines.

The biggest potential curb on the use of location data is not regulation, which so far has been lagging, but consumer reaction — especially when they feel their privacy is at risk. Only 26 to 28 percent of app buyers say ‘Yes,’ when asked if they want to share their location information, said Khan. A 2011 survey by the White Horse Digital Futures Group found that nearly a third of those who knew about location apps, but chose not to use them, cited privacy concerns.

“They sort of freak me out. I’m not sure that it’s good to always let others know my location,” said an Atlanta, Georgia, woman in her 20s told the surveyors.

The issue with privacy, said Khan, is that people do not understand the benefits of sharing their location.

“When you get an app on an iPhone, one of the first questions you get asked when you download that app is ‘Are you willing to share your location?’” he says. “And most people say ‘No.’ And the reason . . . is because that is not the question to ask. Because you haven’t first told people what they are going to get if they share their location.

What you should be saying is, ‘Thanks for downloading this app, by sharing your location you are going to get A, B and C. Now, would you like to share your location?’ You are going to get a lot more yeses if you take that approach than the approach they have today where they ask if you want to share your location without explaining why.”

It is not clear, however, that everyone understands the implications of agreeing to share their location.

“If you have a news app that asks you ‘Can I use your location data?’ and it’s a free app, more than likely people will say ‘Yes,’” explained Leger. “But if that same pop-up said ‘Can I use your financial information?’ You’d probably hesitate because you already have a preconceived notion of the sensitivity of that financial information. People do not have a preconceived notion of the sensitivity of location data.”

Location, Location, Location: GPS and social awareness

An example of a poorly parked vehicles in Europe.

As reported by Inside GNSS:
In a part of the world where frustrated drivers will park anywhere, including squarely on a sidewalk, a local newspaper is using location data to shame car owners into shaping up.

The Village, a Russian online publication serving Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev; created a free app that notes a badly parked vehicle’s make, color, and license plate information when users snap its picture.

The information and photo are broadcast as a pop-up ad that appears on the screens of computers in the area immediately around where the car is parked — exposing the offender’s behavior to co-workers, family, and friends.

In a particularly diabolical twist, Village readers are forced to forward the screen-blocking pop-up ad via a social network like Facebook to be able to resume reading.

A free app provided by the Village, used to shame owners
that park their vehicles badly.

The app is able to target the zone around miscreant drivers, in part, because computers’ IP addresses indicate their location and many cameras and smartphones embed location data in the photos they take.

Although Russian pedestrians might be thrilled to deliver a little payback, not everyone is so sanguine. Increasing awareness of the ways location data is being used, and worries over personal privacy, have led consumers to regularly opt out of sharing location information and triggered protests when tracking is discovered.

Recent revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) has approval from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to broadly gather and store location information likely have made matters worse, even though NSA has issued assurances that it is not actually doing so.

That public aversion to location surveillance could be bad news for the rapidly growing cadre of commercial firms that collect, sell, analyze, and use location data — 70 percent to 80 percent of which is derived from GPS technology.

Asif Khan, founder and president of the Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) in Toronto, said he sees some 30 to 40 new location-based service (LBS) apps every week. The LBS market is growing exponentially, he suggested, although estimates are hard to come by because so many widely varying applications are springing up.

The largest segment of the industry is location-based advertising, Khan told Inside GNSS, where some $1.2 billion in ads will be bought this year — a figure he expects to grow to $6 billion by 2015.

Unquestionably, more and more companies are jumping into the location data game. AT&T recently changed its privacy policy to allow it to sell “anonymized” location data about its subscribers. Verizon already sells such information. Google recently spent $1 billion to buy the Israeli company Waze, a social network provider whose members provide traffic and road condition updates to other members — information that could potentially be added to Google maps.

Other uses for such data exist as well. Khan told attendees at the Future Space 2013 conference in Washington that Google has plans to provide the data for traffic control. The information could help localities ease congestion without a huge investment in infrastructure.

Waze is worth it - if only for the crowd-sourced traffic report

An example of the crowd-source traffic
information  on Waze that allowed us to
identify the need for an alternate route.

Reported by Thomas L. Grounds with iTRAK: While taking a drive up to Denver Colorado this past weekend, I was able to test out the Waze application I had downloaded for free on my iPhone.  Waze is a GPS based navigation app which provides turn-by-turn navigation, as well as user submitted travel times and route details.

Driving from Colorado Springs to Denver is typically a 30-40 minute drive each way.  On the way up to Denver, my wife and I noticed that traffic was fairly slow and heavy on I-25 headed south.  On our way home, my wife asked if I could check the traffic on I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs - so we could potentially take an alternate route at Castle Rock, just south of Denver.

Once we were beyond that point we were essentially committed to staying on I-25. I quickly explained why traditional traffic updates were a potential problem for us - that most of the updates come over special receivers on FM, Bluetooth or satellite radio systems, and generally cost a monthly fee to subscribe to.  Since we don't often travel outside of our area, this isn't really cost effective.

Additionally, not all areas are covered by the service. Heavily populated areas like LA, and New York - certainly, but probably not the small areas that we typically drive to on the weekend.  So, the question was - could a smartphone app save the day?

A screen shot of the response we
received from the new Google Maps
application on my iPhone.

I initially checked the traffic using a Google Maps app - but it indicated that it didn't have coverage for our particular area - which was surprising since the Denver metropolitan area covers a fairly large geographical area and has more than 2.6 million people in the vicinity.  I also checked my twitter account to see if the Denver Post had any updates that might have been relevant; there were several about local flooding, but none that seemed applicable to our drive down I-25.

Then I switched to Waze.  When asked for a route to my home (a setting it had created just after the app was downloaded), it quickly came up with a route down I-25 for us.  But when I checked the crowd-source traffic information it gave us the bad news - traffic was at a stop on the highway.

Lucky for us the information came back in enough time so that we were able to setup an alternate route home through Sedalia CO on highway 67; a rough and mountainous road through Deckers CO, but much more scenic - and perfect for a weekend drive.

It looks as if Waze does not quite have all of the traffic information integrated into the routing application yet.  The app continued to try and route us down I-25 to the traffic jam till we forced a route to Sedalia, and then to Deckers before heading home.  Nevertheless, the update regarding the traffic, and our ability to avoid it made it worthwhile.

Waze is being acquired by Google in a buyout estimated to be worth about $1B USD.

Wuhan uses GPS to address food waste pollution

As reported by Zdnet.com: The Chinese city of Wuhan (武汉) [referred to as the Chicago of China] is equipping waste collection trucks and trash cans with a digital weighing and GPS device to combat the problem of "gutter oil", or illegally recycled cooking oil.

The initiative will begin operations from December when legislation mandating the integrated collection and processing of kitchen waste kicks in, according to a China Daily report Monday. The new regulation defines edible oil waste as a combination of water and oil collected from kitchen ventilators, oil water separators or sewage facilities.

The integrated system will monitor all waste in the Hubei (湖北) capital [meaning 'north of the lake'], including food leftovers, scrap materials, and edible oil waste from food and beverage outlets, canteens, and factories dealing with food processing and production. It must be implemented in all restaurants bigger than 80 square meters.

Companies will be set up in each district to manage the collection and transport, Chen Jian, director of construction for the Wuhan Urban Management Bureau, said in the report. He added that anyone or organization found in violation of the regulation will be subject to fines.

The China Daily report noted that 621 vehicles, of which 195 will be used for edible oil waste, and 25,800 garbage cans--which all food facilities are required to use--will be equipped with the GPS and weighing system.

Chen explained that to ensure no food waste is collected to make gutter oil, the system which records GPS as well as weight data will be installed on the collection trucks, garbage cans, and oil cans of oil-water separators. "We can clearly know what the vehicles are doing, how much food waste is loaded or uploaded, and can track the vehicles with a click of a mouse in the office," he added.

The devices will measure the weight of the food waste and the data kept for at least two years, as required by the new regulation, by the producer, waste collector, and transporter and processor of the food waste.

"If the weight of the food waste collected from a restaurant decreases sharply, we will investigate where the food waste goes," Chen said, adding that the new initiative is forecast to handle 60 percent of the city's food waste by end-2015.

The daily kitchen waste output in Wuhan is 1,100 tons, 55 percent that of the country's capital Beijing. The Hubei capital plans to build five waste treatment facilities, with capacity to process 200 metric tonnes of food waste each day. These plants will also produce methane and compost from the food residue.

The integrated collection and processing will also reduce pollution from the food waste to the abundant water resources, said Yu Xiao, vice-president of Wuhan Environment Sanitation Science Research Institute.

Wuhan has a 3,500-year-long history, and is one of the most ancient and civilized Metropolitan cities in China; more ancient even than Beijing.  "The famous cooking culture in Wuhan results in a large amount of food waste, which puts the large number of lakes and rivers in the city under pollution risk, as food waste usually will be deserted after the oil is extracted before the integrated collection and processing," he said.

Why Does GPS Use More Battery Than Any Other Antenna Or Sensor In A Smartphone?

The iTRAK® WebApp™ utilizes the
smartphone or tablet's GPS signal
to locate the device, as well as
the fleet tracking devices associated
with it - using Google Maps.

As reported by Forbes: GPS is expensive (with regard to power usage) because it is a very slow communication channel — you need to communicate with three or four satellites for an extended duration at 50 bits per second. There is no time division as in other communication mechanisms, necessitating powering the antenna for the entire duration of any communication. Worse, while the GPS is on, the system cannot enter into a sleep state. Mobile devices such as Android and the iPhone achieve their battery life largely because they can aggressively and quickly enter into and exit from sleep states. GPS prevents this.

GPS’s battery draining behavior is most noticeable during the initial acquisition of the satellite’s navigation message: the satellite’s state, ephemeris, and almanac. Acquiring each satellite takes 12 to 30 seconds, but if the full almanac is needed, this can take up to 12 minutes. During all of this, your phone is unable to enter a deep sleep. A-GPS (Assisted GPS) partially solves this, by sending the navigational message to your mobile device over your cellular data network or even Wi-Fi. As the bandwidth of either of these greatly dwarves the 50bps of the GPS satellites, the time spent powering the GPS antenna or avoiding deep sleep is greatly reduced.

Nonetheless, even with A-GPS, using your GPS is a noticeable battery hog. This is again due not to powering the GPS itself, but by preventing the phone from going to sleep. Compounding the cost, most mapping software is processor-intense. A well-designed app can make a significant difference here; Google Maps boasts several optimizations to reduce battery consumption from GPS usage.

Is implementing a harassment-proof EOBR solution possible?

Electronic On-Board Recorders, have been mandated by
the FMCSA - however, the order has been vacated by
a Federal Appeals court till the issue of potential
'harassment' has been resolved.

As reported by LandLinemag.com: Back at the drawing board after being forced by the courts to vacate its initial rule on electronic on-board recorders, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is still trying to figure out how to prevent carriers from using EOBRs to harass drivers.

Solving the issue of driver harassment related to the use of electronic on-board recorders continues to be a tall task for the agency.

The agency recently requested information from the Owner-Operator Independent Driver's Association (OOIDA) and other stakeholders about a survey of commercial drivers the FMCSA intends to conduct on the issue of harassment. In response, OOIDA is urging the agency to ask the right questions of the right people or miss the mark altogether.

The FMCSA’s driver survey is not happening by chance.

In 2011, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of OOIDA and forced the FMCSA to vacate its initial rule that would have required electronic on-board recorders, or EOBRs – also known as electronic logging devices, or ELDs – for motor carriers that have unsatisfactory safety ratings.  A recent award was made to two estates by Celadon for a total of $18.5M, where an EOBR device indicated that the driver was using cruise control at 65MPH on an icy road in bad weather, while possibly sleep deprived, right before the fatal crash.

Even with the first EOBR rule vacated, Congress chose to include a provision in the current highway bill that orders the agency to pursue an industry-wide mandate as pushed by the American Trucking Associations and The Trucking Alliance, a group of large carriers consisting of J.B. Hunt, Maverick, Schneider, Knight and others.

In a recent notice in the Federal Register, the FMCSA released some sample questions it could ask drivers about harassment by carriers. In response to that notice, OOIDA says a pending survey can be effective only if it asks the right questions of the right people while accurately defining “harassment.”

“Driver harassment is a little examined issue that affects highway safety and drivers’ work and quality-of-life issues. There is no program or program element currently at FMCSA that protects drivers from motor carrier harassment,” OOIDA President and CEO Jim Johnston stated in comments to the agency.

The survey must focus on drivers who have already been operating with EOBRs, he added.

“In order to respond to the Seventh Circuit’s concerns, FMCSA’s survey should contain carefully crafted questions as to how motor carriers propose to use EOBRs to support what they consider to be legitimate productivity goals. By the same token it must include a comprehensive set of questions to drivers so that they may identify the potential for harassment.”

OOIDA surveyed drivers on its own in 2011 and offers that up for consideration as the agency tweaks its own survey questions.

The OOIDA survey showed that 42 percent of drivers of EOBR-equipped trucks had been contacted by their carriers to ask why their truck was stopped, while 37 percent said their carriers told them to get back on the road regardless of why they were stopped. Thirty-four percent of EOBR drivers reported that their motor carrier audited or changed their logs to suit a particular purpose such as adding available time to their driving clocks.

When it comes to data, OOIDA questions how it will be collected and used by carriers and law enforcement without violating a driver’s rights.

“Using an EOBR to monitor a driver’s personal use of a vehicle amounts to unconstitutional surveillance,” OOIDA Executive Vice President Todd Spencer told Land Line.

“Even company trucks are used for personal conveyance,” Spencer said. “Certainly, companies may feel like they have the right to monitor the movement of that equipment, but personal use should be separate from government surveillance.”

Definition questioned
FMCSA’s sample survey defines harassment as, “an act by a motor carrier, involving the use of information available through EOBR technology (either alone or in combination with other technology) to track a commercial motor vehicle driver’s hours of service and requiring the driver to violate federal hours of service rules or fatigue or ill driving restrictions.”

Based on what drivers told OOIDA, the Association offers to add the following to the definition, that a carrier shall not use EOBRs “in a manner that distracts drivers while operating a commercial motor vehicle or that wakes, disturbs or otherwise interrupts a driver’s quiet use of his/her off-duty time; and … for a use other than that related to compliance with the hours-of-service regulations or monitoring productivity.”

In closing, OOIDA urges the FMCSA to continue to explore the harassment issue.

“If not done properly, this survey has little potential to shed much light on driver harassment and coercion,” Johnston stated.