After the Hours-of-Service Ruling: Research on 34-Hour Restart

As reported by Truckinginfo: Even as a federal court was recently upholding most of the hours of service rules, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has been working on a field study of the 34-hour restart as mandated in the new Hours-of-Service (HOS) rules; that could influence that provision in the future, and there's a move on Capitol Hill to force the agency to return to the old rules.

Congress ordered the study in last year’s highway bill, at the encouragement of the American Trucking Associations (AMA), which said the agency should confirm in the field the finding from a laboratory study that daytime sleep is not as restorative as nighttime sleep.

That finding is the scientific basis for the requirement that a driver take two periods off between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. during his 34-hour restart, and it figured prominently in the court’s decision to uphold the provision.

It remains to be seen if the data from the field study will be persuasive enough for the agency to reconsider its approach to the restart.

Data collection for the study was finished in July and the final report is expected later this year, said agency spokesperson Marissa Padilla.

Meanwhile, there is a move in the House of Representatives to cut off funding for implementation or enforcement of the new hours and return to the old rule.

An attempt by Rep. Richard Hanna, R-N.Y., and several others to attach the amendment to transportation funding legislation failed when House leaders withdrew the bill.

But Hanna will pursue the amendment, said Renee Gamela, his communications director.

“He’s been discussing the amendment with colleagues and we’re confident it would have strong, bipartisan support when it comes up,” Gamela said.

The amendment is supported by 16 trucking and shipping interests, including ATA, OOIDA and UPS, as well as the Transportation Intermediaries Association, the National Retail Federation and the National Grocers Association.

Hanna, joined by Reps. Tom Rice, R-S.C., Trey Radel, R-Fla., and Todd Rokita, R-Ind., said in a Dear Colleague letter that the new rule decreases driver flexibility and raises costs – complaints that have been aired by all of the industry interests.

Interactive Map Displays Traffic Fatality Rates Around The World

As reported by the Car Connection: We've already thrown a wet blanket on your day with a warning about traffic fatalities over the Labor Day weekend. Unfortunately, we have one more downer to share: an interactive map of traffic fatality rates around the globe, courtesy of the Pulitzer Center.

According to the Pulitzer Center, 1.2 million people die on Planet Earth's roadways every year -- and that figure is likely to get worse as the number of cars in service climbs. The problem is particularly bad for emerging nations. As the authors of the article explain:

The toll is highest in the developing world. Poor countries account for 50 percent of the world’s road traffic, but 90 percent of the traffic fatalities. Road accidents will soon become the fifth leading cause of death in these countries, leapfrogging past HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other familiar killers, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) most recent Global Burden of Disease study.

Grim as that sounds, the assertion makes sense. As we saw yesterday, developing nations lack the infrastructure (e.g protective barriers, well-lit roads) and safety regulations found in the developing world. Such things have reduced the number of traffic fatalities elsewhere on the planet.

What's more, in parts of the developed world, road traffic appears to have peaked. People in the U.S. and other countries are relying more on mass transit and other means to get around -- if they need to get around at all. (Thanks, whoever invented telecommuting.) In developing countries, those options are less available, forcing both motorists and pedestrians onto dangerous roads.  

Worst of all, traffic fatalities are part of a vicious circle, preventing poor nations from growing more rapidly. According to Jose Luis Irigoyen, a highway safety expert at the World Bank, in low- and middle-income countries, traffic fatalities reduce GDP by 1 to 3 percent. That's money that could otherwise be funneled back into developing countries. 

As you'll see from the map embedded below (click "view fullscreen" to review the most data), the Pulitzer Center has compiled fatality stats for most countries on the planet. Compare the U.S. fatality rate of 11.4 per 100,000 to that of other nations, like the Dominican Republic, Iran, and Thailand. Pay particular attention to the way in which people were traveling when killed: in a car, on a motorcycle, on a bike, or while walking.

The map is missing a good bit of information, but even so, it raises plenty of intriguing questions.  

How Nigeria Can Reap Benefits Of Space Technology

As reported by the Guardian: An expert has pointed out how Nigeria can become one of the world’s 20 largest economies by the year 2020.

The key, according to Prof. Tunji Ibiyemi of the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, University of Ilorin, is research on transforming raw materials to finished products.

Ibiyemi said no country can achieve development by giving out its raw materials cheaply to other countries only to buy from them finished products. Nigeria, he noted, is still in the category of nations that more or less throw away their raw materials.

The professor spoke in Abuja while delivering a lecture titled: ‘Prospects of Communications Satellite in Nigeria’s Vision 2020’, in commemoration of 50 years, since the launch of the world’s first communication satellite, Syncom2.

Ibiyemi, whose research interests include Biometric Signal Processing, Telecommunications (satellite and GPS), Software Engineering, and Embedded System Design, said the global carrier of the raw materials of knowledge economy is the satellite and the transformation process of raw materials to product is via human capital development.

 He said if Nigeria is serious about realizing the Vision 20: 2020 goal, then space technology and human capital development must be taken very seriously.

 Ibiyemi said a lot is achievable if government is committed to adequate funding of space technology and embarks on aggressive space technology development and human capital development.

 He advised the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) to establish a factory for the production of satellite parts.

The Director General of NASRDA, Prof. Seidu Onailo Mohammed, said there are approximately 1,107 satellites providing civilian communications and another 792 supporting military communications.

Mohammed said the communications satellite industry is a multi-billion dollar affair that gives high returns on investment.

He called on the private sector in Nigeria to invest in the sector, noting that 2011 alone yielded a return of $90b.

The DG noted that with a projected population of 392 million in the West Africa sub-region by 2013, Nigeria cannot afford to stand aloof.

“This is an opportunity for us to do research and know that Nigeria has opportunity in communications satellite. The population of West Africa is estimated to be about 390 million by 2013. That is enough opportunity and the private sector in Nigeria must key in to create jobs for our people and fast-track development technology in this part of the world.”

This year world’s communications satellite day marked the 50th year when the historic telephone conversation between the then American President John Kennedy and Nigerian Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, was recorded through Syncom2.

The launch of Syncom2 on July 26, 1963 symbolized the beginning of technological revolutions across the globe through the application of space science technology.

This event laid the foundation for Nigeria’s interest in space program, which culminated in the launch of its first communications satellite, NIGCOMSAT-1, 44 years later.

Coca-Cola Israel Provides Personalized Billboards with Geofence Technology

As reported by Media Bistro: After their global campaign in which people could buy personalized Coke bottles and cans, Coca-Cola Israel and Tel Aviv-based Gefen Team built a campaign around personalized billboards.

Users downloaded a special app, then entered their name. Using geofence technology, the billboard would sense the user’s nearness (using the GPS data from their smartphone, and the known GPS location of the signs) and display their name. Each user would receive a message notifying them their name was splashed for the street to see.

Coca Cola used Israel’s “main billboards,” meaning users would see their names in lights more than once. And no matter how finite, people love fame: during the campaign period, the app reached 100k downloads and ranked #1 in Israel’s app store.

It seems like an elementary gimmick, but it’s got new-technology legs and exciting potential. Maybe the next brand to use these billboards will display a full message, making commuters’ life that much more fun:  or maybe it's just the next step toward the 'Minority Report' like futuristic ad systems we will all come to know in the near future.

New atomic clock's precision 'groundbreaking'

As reported by CNN: If you follow scientific developments as if they were football games, this would be a good time to cheer "Tick-tick-tick-tick! Tick-tick-tick-tick! Go, clock, go!"

The reason for such enthusiasm? Researchers have released a study in the journal Science describing what they believe is the world's most precise clock.

You'd never need this level of precision for getting to work on time, but the clock could be used for scientific exploration and technological advancements in areas such as navigation systems, said study co-author Andrew Ludlow, researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado.

The rate of ticking of this timepiece -- known informally (and awkwardly) as the ytterbium optical lattice clock -- does not change by more than one part in 10^18, Ludlow said. In other words, if there is any variation in how a second is measured, it would be in about the 18th decimal place.

"The ytterbium optical lattice clock has demonstrated a groundbreaking, new level of clock stability," he said. "One could say that this is like measuring time over a hundred years to a precision of several nanoseconds."

How clocks work
Inside a clock is a mechanism that changes in some regular way, called an oscillator. Imagine, for example, a grandfather clock, whose pendulum swings back and forth denoting time. In a wrist watch there is often a crystal with an electrically oscillating signal.

Measurement between two ytterbium optical lattice clocks.  The researchers
built these clocks by trapping thousands of ytterbium atoms at high density.
Then they measured the activity of these atoms, which were kept at very cold
temperatures, using lasers.  This image shows how laser light, which is
pre-stabilized to an optical cavity, is used to independently excite two
ultracold ytterbium samples, each held in an optical lattice.  When comparing
the activity of the ytterbium atoms between the two samples (or clocks), the
researchers found very little differentce in ticking frequency between the two.

A particular number of "back and forths" corresponds to one second.

An atomic clock makes use of an electromagnetic signal -- in other words, light emitted at an exact, known frequency. At the core of the system, there is an atom. The light is used to excite an electron in the atom.

In this model, the excitation and de-excitation of an electron corresponds to a pendulum swinging right to left, but in an atomic clock, the "tick" denotes an unimaginably tiny fraction of a second.

The current gold standard for time is the cesium clock, a type of atomic clock that an international body of experts has used to define what is the unit of one second: About 9.19 billion oscillations. In this clock, a microwave light source is used to excite electrons in cesium atoms.

But the new atomic clock at NIST, described in the Science study, uses a different element: Ytterbium, atomic number 70. Optical light -- specifically, yellow light from a laser with a wavelength of 578 nanometers -- is used to excite the electrons of ytterbium atoms.

Whereas scientists talk about billions of oscillations per second in the cesium clock, oscillations per second in the ytterbium clock approach one quadrillion per second, Ludlow said.

The new clock is akin to a ruler that has markers for fractions of inches, compared to a ruler that only delineates inches. The first instrument would make more precise measurements.

The lattice of laser beams traps small numbers of
ytterbium atoms in pancake-shaped "wells."  A
yellow laser excites the atoms so that they switch
between lower (blue) and higher (yellow) energy
levels.

"You divide time into finer and finer intervals," Ludlow said.

In order to establish the precision of this clock, the scientists had to make two of them, to confirm agreement in the measurement of time.

The devices won't fit on your wrist, or even on your wall. Because of all the laser equipment and technology necessary for this level of precision, the atomic clock and all of its components occupy a space about the size of a dining room table, Ludlow said.

Efforts are under way to shrink the technology, however, particularly so that a version of it might be sent into space.

Potential uses
Researchers studying Einstein's theory of general relativity could make use of this clock to more precisely measure how time is different depending on the surrounding gravitational force.

Global positioning systems (GPS) already take this into account. Because they are farther from Earth than we are, and therefore experience less gravitational pull, their measurement of time as they orbit Earth is slightly different from what we perceive on the ground. A more precise atomic clock could measure the correctional factors even better.

Such clocks could also test alternative theories about the relationship between time and gravity.

There could be other applications for navigation and communications systems.

But you probably won't want one for your alarm clock. Ludlow said the total cost ranges on the order of a half-million dollars.

Accuracy
Although scientists have proclaimed that this is the world's most stable clock, they do not yet know as much about its accuracy. This is a subtle but important difference: The ytterbium clock has demonstrated incredible stability of measurement -- it always measures a second in the same way -- but we do not yet know if what it is measuring is a "true" second.

So, we'll have to wait to find out whether these clocks could be the most accurate in the world.

More research is needed. It's a story we hear time and time again.

If you could visualize Wi-Fi, what might it look like?

Wi-Fi is an energy field that is transmitted as waves.  This image
shows an idealized Wi-Fi data transmitted over a band that is
divided into different sub-channels, which are shown in red, yellow
green and other colors spanning the visual spectrum.

 As reported by the NY Daily News: Wherever we move around in a city, our bodies are passing through hundreds of electromagnetic waves. Artist and researcher Nickolay Lamm at MyDeals.com brought Wi-Fi, a certain type of wave, to life in these colorful images.

“I feel a lot of us take technology for granted and use it without appreciating the science that makes it work,” Lamm said in an email to The New York Daily News.
Lamm teamed up with Marilyn Vogel, a science professor at the National Hispanic University in San Jose, to help him visualize the invisible.

Data-transmitting waves, whether they come from radios, cell phones, or computers are essentially disturbances in our natural electromagnetic fields. The crest of Wi-Fi waves are understood by a computer as a 1. The troughs are equivalent to a 0. Ultimately, these chains of 1s and 0s form an intricate pattern that is then translated into the letters, numbers, and codes that make up websites.

Although color represents its own unique visible segment of the
electromagnetic spectrum, Lamm used red, orange, yellow, and other
colors to show the invisible Wi-Fi channels that make up the overall
Wi-Fi signal.  Wi-Fi fields are usually spherical or ellipsoidal.

“It’s kind of like a barcode,” Vogel told The New York Daily News. “It’s not really a pattern that the eye can detect, but a computer can.”

Wi-Fi waves are three to six inches from crest to crest--not as long as typical 'radio waves', but definitely not as short or as destructive as microwaves.

Routers, instead of sending out a single wave, take a range of wavelengths, chop them up and transmit them simultaneously. The average home Wi-Fi signal can project up to about 30 feet. They can pierce through walls easily, but water is an impediment. Plants and foliage can sometimes impede Wi-Fi signals.

The Wi-Fi that is available in public spaces is much more powerful and can transmit signals up to 150 feet. These boxes are everywhere in the modern city — strapped to trees, buildings, and lampposts.

That means that even though we can never see them, we are surrounded by these waves of data all the time.

Wi-Fi routers affixed to buildings, lamp posts and other objects
create a circular data field around them.  These antenna have an
omnidirectional signal that ideally extends equally in all
directions - until it is absorbed, reflected or 'canceled out'.
Cancellations or collisions between reflected waves - also called 'nulls'
 are like small holes in the overall network of electromagnetic
fields that comprise the Wi-Fi signal.

And since there is increasing demand among consumers for more connectivity, the amount of data in the air will just keep increasing.

Vogel says the takeaway from these images is about how humans play with the physical world to meet an increasing demand for digital connection. Consumers want access to more data and higher speeds.  But there is a limited amount of space on the electromagnetic spectrum and tech companies are fighting for spots.

“Given that the range of electromagnetic spectrum over which Wi-Fi can be transmitted is limited, the question is how we will meet increasing consumer demands for high speed data.”

Qualcomm Selling Omnitracs Transportation and Logistics Business

As reported by Truckinginfo: Qualcomm announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Omnitracs subsidiary to Vista Equity Partners, a U.S.-based private equity firm.

Omnitracs was a pioneer in in-cab communication, developing one of the first widely used satellite tracking and communications system for truck fleets, and today offers a variety of fleet management and telematics solutions.

The acquisition will include all of Omnitracs operations in the United States, Canada and Latin America, including Sylectus and FleetRisk Advisors, which were acquired by Omnitracs in 2011.

Vista will purchase Omnitracs for $800 million in cash. The deal is subject to federal anti-trust review and approval. Qualcomm says the acquisition is expected to be completed during the first quarter of its 2014 fiscal year.

Vista chose to acquire Omnitracs because of its strong position, product offerings, loyal and satisfied customers, and its highly talented and devoted employees, said Qualcomm in a statement.

“Leveraging its experience with numerous other vertically oriented software companies, Vista is uniquely qualified to help position Omnitracs for continued growth and will enable the company to strengthen and expand its product offerings.”

“We are long-term investors in enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses that are committed to being leaders in their fields,” said Robert Smith, chief executive officer and founder of Vista Equity Partners, in a statement.

Vista Equity Partners currently invests over $7.1 billion in capital in technology-based organizations.

“Today, the opportunity for fleet management and telematics is evolving rapidly, and we believe Omnitracs is well positioned to continue its leadership position as a stand-alone entity,” said Derek Aberle, executive vice president and group president, Qualcomm Inc.