One GPS/GNSS Device for Every Person on the Planet by 2022

7 billion devices with GPS/GNSS capabilities are predicted to
be available by 2022, with smartphone functionality making up a
significant portion of the overall $344 billion GNSS market.

As reported by Spar Point Group: By 2022, the number of GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receivers and devices in use is predicted to hit seven billion. That’s nearly one GNSS device for every person crowding the planet, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) said in its third market report on the positioning technology.

Today, the installed base of GNSS devices is over two billion, and most of those are in Europe and North America. In the future, however, most of this growth will be driven in regions outside Europe and North America, the report said.

GNSS is a system of satellites that provide geospatial positioning with global coverage through receivers using available GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, and other middle Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites, typically hovering about 10-20 miles above the planet.

Multi-constellation GNSS receivers grab market share
Today, multi-constellation receivers, which use all navigation signals in view, are becoming more widely available on the market with more than 70 percent of GNSS models SBAS (Satellite Based Augmentation System) capable. These devices offer increased availability of signals, especially in urban environments, and more robust performance in professional applications such as surveying. GLONASS is the second constellation of choice for users after GPS, the report said.

Global GNSS-enabled markets are forecast to grow to $344 billion per year by 2022, according to the report, which also said core revenues - attributable to direct GNSS functionality and service - are expected to reach $138 billion over the period.

Countries will increasingly implement regulatory measures to promote the use of GNSS, for example in emergency location sharing or search and rescue operations, which will further drive growth in Europe and North America over the next five to 10 years, according to the report.

The report analyzes key market segments: location-based services, road, aviation, maritime, agriculture, surveying, and rail.

It's estimated that smartphone location based services will
make up 47% of the overall revenue for the market, (down
from the current 90% share of the market) with vehicle
based services making up 46.2% of the market.

Smartphones dominate
The market for Location-based services (LBS) includes smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, laptops, fitness and people tracking devices, and mobile data revenues.

For example, LBS devices increasingly support navigation and other services in the Road market segment, which is cannibalizing the share of personal navigation devices (PND) in the market, the report said.

Smartphones comprise 90 percent of LBS devices sold, and new smartphone capabilities “will dominate global GNSS revenues and with other integrated technologies they are entering into other market segments, not only LBS,” according to the report.

However, with the growing penetration of tablets and increased GNSS usage in digital cameras, the smartphone share is expected to decrease over the next decade, the report said.

Chinese Appliances are Shipping with Malware-Distributing WiFi Chips

As reported by Geek: Was the iron in the last hotel room you stayed in made in China? Bad news: it may have been hiding an insidious little chip designed to infect your computer with spam-serving malware.

It’s not just irons that are being used as tiny trojan horses, either. Dashboard cameras, cell phones, and tea kettles have also been found inconspicuously outfitted with the malicious chips. They’re reportedly capable of latching on to any computer within 200 meters that’s attached to an unsecured WiFi network… like the ones in many hotels and coffee shops.

Shipments of modified small appliances are apparently popping up in Russia, but that could just be the tip of the iceberg. It’s entirely possible that the Russian gadgets were the first to be spotted and that similar malware gear has already been shipped to other corners of the globe.

It’s bad enough that you can’t trust that unfamiliar USB charger you were just about to plug your smartphone in to, but now you can’t even trust the iron you were going to use to press your slacks.

So what are these sneaky Chinese appliances up to? Right now, it looks like they’re only looking for unsuspecting drones to add to someone’s spam-serving army. Once a machine has been compromised, though, it’s possible that those in control would push additional malware to a victim’s machine.

They may even start sniffing WiFi traffic for usernames, passwords, and payment data being passed around in the open. Until security researchers learn more, you may want to unplug the iron in your next hotel room right after you inspect the mattress for bed bugs.

Thieves Pose as Truckers to Steal Huge Cargo Loads

As reported through the AP news wire: To steal huge shipments of valuable cargo, thieves are turning to a deceptively simple tactic: They pose as truckers, load the freight onto their own tractor-trailers and drive away with it.

It's an increasingly common form of commercial identity theft that has allowed con men to make off each year with millions of dollars in merchandise, often food and beverages. And experts say the practice is growing so rapidly that it will soon become the most common way to steal freight.

A generation ago, thieves simply stole loaded trucks out of parking lots. But the industry's widening use of GPS devices, high-tech locks and other advanced security measures have pushed criminals to adopt new hoaxes.

Helping to drive the scams, experts say, is the Internet, which offers thieves easy access to vast amounts of information about the trucking industry. Online databases allow con men to assume the identities of legitimate freight haulers and to trawl for specific commodities they want to steal.

Besides hurting the nation's trucking industry — which moves more than 68 percent of all domestic shipments — the thefts have real-world consequences for consumers, including raising prices and potentially allowing unsafe food and drugs to reach store shelves.

News reports from across the country recount just a few of the thefts: 80,000 pounds of walnuts worth $300,000 in California, $200,000 of Muenster cheese in Wisconsin, rib-eye steaks valued at $82,000 in Texas, $25,000 pounds of king crab worth $400,000 in California.

The Hughson Nut Co. fell victim twice last year, losing two loads valued at $189,000. Each time, the impostor truckers showed up at the Livingston, Calif., nut processor on a Friday with all the proper paperwork to pick up a load of almonds.

On the Monday following the second theft, a customer called to complain that the almonds had never arrived in Arizona. The company's quality assurance manager, Raquel Andrade, recalled getting a sinking feeling: "Uh-oh. I think it happened again."

The thefts are little-known and seldom discussed outside the world of commercial trucking. Companies that have been victimized are often reluctant to talk about their losses. But crime reports and Associated Press interviews with law enforcement and industry leaders reveal an alarming pattern that hurts commerce, pushes up consumer prices and potentially puts Americans' health and safety at risk.

"In the end, the consumer winds up paying the toll on this," said Keith Lewis, vice president of CargoNet, a theft-prevention network that provides information to the insurance industry.

The economic results go beyond adding a few nickels or dimes to retail prices. The "consequential damages" from stolen cargo easily run into the millions of dollars, far exceeding the value of the lost shipments. For example, a stolen load of pharmaceuticals might necessitate a worldwide recall of every drug with that lot number to ensure none of the product ends up back in the market in case it gets tampered with.

Stolen food shipments pose similar health concerns.

"It might be low value, but that load of poultry could be high-risk," Lewis said, explaining that if it spoils and gets back into the supply chain, hundreds or thousands of people could get sick.

The scheme works like this: Thieves assume the identity of a trucking company, often by reactivating a dormant Department of Transportation carrier number from a government website for as little as $300. That lets them pretend to be a long-established firm with a seemingly good safety record. The fraud often includes paperwork such as insurance policies, fake driver's licenses and other documents.

Then the con artists offer low bids to freight brokers who handle shipping for numerous companies. When the truckers show up at a company, everything seems legitimate. But once driven away, the goods are never seen again.

The thieves target mostly shipments of food and beverages, which are easy to sell on the black market and hard to trace. Some end up on the shelves of small grocery stores. Others go to huge distribution warehouses like the one authorities raided in August in North Hollywood, Calif. It was filled with stolen steaks, shrimp, energy drinks, ice cream and other frozen foods.

Last year, carriers reported nearly 1,200 cargo thefts of all kinds nationwide, about the same as the previous year, according to CargoNet, a division of Verisk Crime Analytics, which estimated losses that year at nearly $216 million. Since many thefts go unreported, the real figure is almost certainly far higher.

The most common crime is still the "straight theft" of trailers left unattended in parking lots or at truck stops. But CargoNet says the new trucking scams are growing at a rapid 6 percent each quarter. Of the average three to five truckloads stolen each day in the United States, at least one involves what are known in the industry as fraudulent or fictitious pickups.

The thefts emerged three or four years ago and are now "the latest, greatest thing" for organized groups seeking to steal freight, said J.J. Coughlin, vice president for law enforcement services at LoJack SCI, a supply chain protection company.

LoJack examined 947 cargo thefts last year and identified 45 of them as fictitious pickups. So far this year, the number of fictitious pickups has probably already doubled, Coughlin said. The average loss last year was more than $170,000 per incident.

Although cargo thieves prey on companies across the nation, the hot spots are places with shipping ports or rail hubs. California leads the nation. Large numbers of thefts have also been reported in Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Scott Cornell, national manager of a special investigation group focusing on supply chain security at the insurance company Travelers, said the thieves take advantage of the Internet, which allows them to do "so many things online where nobody sees you," including setting up a company and bidding on loads.

Within a few years, Lewis said, identity theft-related scams are expected to become the most prevalent method of cargo theft.

Experienced thieves know where the major manufacturers are located. And some are savvy enough to pick out which brand of electronics or appliances to steal by bidding on loads posted online. Someone wanting to steal a truckload of copper, for instance, would target shipments coming out of Carrollton, Ga., where a major copper-wire manufacturer is located.

Food and beverages were the most commonly stolen items, accounting for 23 percent of all thefts last year, followed by metals at 16 percent, and electronics and household goods at 12 percent each. Other products made up the remaining 37 percent, including pharmaceuticals at 3 percent, according to CargoNet's 2012 report.

One reason food shipments are popular targets is because they have a lower value than electronics or pharmaceuticals, which are often more heavily protected. Plus, food generally does not have any serial numbers to trace.

The loads are also difficult to recover. Companies often do not know they have been scammed until their shipments fail to show up, usually four to five days after they were stolen, Coughlin said.

By that time, the goods have probably already been sold on the black market.

The trucking and insurance industries are fighting back, urging freight brokers to take extra precautions, such as checking information before awarding shipping contracts to unfamiliar truckers.

The California Farm Bureau Federation warns about clues that could indicate a suspicious hauler: temporary name placards or identification numbers on the truck, abrupt changes in the time of the pickup and lack of a GPS tracking system on the truck.

Another suggestion is to get a thumbprint from the truck driver.

"This is growing at such a rapid, scary rate," said Sam Rizzitelli, national director for transportation at Travelers Inland Marine Division. "It warrants a lot of attention."

UPS Switching to Natural Gas to Raise Efficiency of Its Big Rigs

As reported by the Blade: Package shipping giant UPS Inc. is expanding the fuel-efficiency of its trucking fleet, and part of that effort will include building a new Liquefied Natural Gas fueling station at its Maumee cargo facility at 1550 Holland Rd.

The facility will be ready by next May, and it is among nine new LNG stations Atlanta-based UPS is building in Ohio, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The company already has begun construction on four other LNG stations in Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and California.

Mike Chavez, manager for UPS plant engineering, said the cost of the Maumee station will not be disclosed, but the company is spending $68 million to construct all 13 of its LNG stations. The Maumee location will not create any jobs, he said.

Liquefied Natural Gas is predominantly methane that has been reduced to a liquid state and has a higher energy density than diesel. That makes it more cost efficient to transport over long distances where natural gas pipelines don’t exist. In a tractor-trailer fleet, LNG enables a vehicle to go farther on the same volume of fuel.

UPS has already purchased 1,000 LNG-fueled tractor-trailers that will displace more than 24 million gallons of diesel fuel annually. The company has used LNG-powered vehicles since 2002.

“The natural gas industry needs companies to commit to using natural gas to help establish a reliable alternative to traditional fuel, and that is just what UPS is doing,” David Abney, UPS chief operating officer, said in a statement. “The UPS strategy is both environmentally friendly and economically viable. LNG is becoming more readily available, plus it’s more insulated from market volatility than diesel fuel.”

Mr. Abney said that UPS’s goal is to reach one billion miles driven by its alternative fuel and advance technology fleet by 2017. It already has more than 2,700 alternative-fuel and advanced technology vehicles in use, including all-electric, hybrid electric, hydraulic hybrid, compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas, liquid propane gas, and biomethane.

Mr. Chavez said the company’s diesel-powered tractor-trailers will be retired as they wear out. The company will be running LNG-powered tractor-trailers to the Maumee facility, which is why it needed an LNG fuel station in the Toledo area.

Scientists Want to Turn Smartphones Into Earthquake Sensors

As reported by The Verge: For years, scientists have struggled to collect accurate real-time data on earthquakes, but a new article published today in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America may have found a better tool for the job, using the same accelerometers found in most modern smartphones. The article finds that the MEMS accelerometers in current smartphones are sensitive enough to detect earthquakes of magnitude five or higher when located near the epicenter. Because the devices are so widely used, scientists speculate future smartphone models could be used to create an "urban seismic network," transmitting real-time geological data to authorities whenever a quake takes place.

The authors pointed to Stanford's Quake-Catcher Network as an inspiration, which connects seismographic equipment to volunteer computers to create a similar network. But using smartphone accelerometers would be cheaper and easier to carry into extreme environments. 

The sensor will need to become more sensitive before it can be used in the field, but the authors say once technology catches up, a smartphone accelerometer could be the perfect earthquake research tool. As one researcher told The Verge, "right from the start, this technology seemed to have all the requirements for monitoring earthquakes — especially in extreme environments, like volcanoes or underwater sites."

Solar Flares: X-Class

As reported by The Christian Science Monitor: Don't be distracted by Star Trek's M-class planets or X-Men's First Class of students – while the terms have been appropriated by science fiction, M-class and X-class solar flares are very real.

Two enormous solar flares – an X1.7 and X2.1 class, respectively – erupted from the surface of the sun on Friday morning. The smaller flare peaked at 4:01 a.m. EDT, while the X2.1 solar flare peaked seven hours later, at 11:03 a.m. EDT.

The last time the sun released an X-class flare was on May 14, 2013, but there were two weaker M-class flares on Thursday.

The steady stream of solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and other solar storms are associated with the solar maximum. Solar storms occur on a roughly 11-year cycle, but the "maximum" isn't a one-day peak, but a prolonged period of more than a year.

The minimum-maximum pattern is more of a gentle sine wave, like a system of rolling hills and valleys, than like the jagged peaks of a heart monitor, says Art Poland, an astrophysicist with George Mason University.

"We're just on the other side of the top of the sine wave right now," says Dr. Poland. "You get your biggest flares and biggest magnetic disruptions on the way down."

It's hard to pinpoint the precise timing of a solar maximum, especially in advance. In recent years, NASA was estimating the maximum would come in 2011, or 2012, or maybe 2013. "You only know afterwards," says Poland, who is the project scientist on SOHO, an observatory orbiting the sun. "You're pinning real data to a sine wave, and it's not a perfect sine wave, so it's hard to tell."

The first X-class flare of the current solar cycle occurred in February 2011. The largest X-class flare so far in this cycle was an X6.9 on Aug. 9, 2011.

What's an "X-class" solar flare?

Solar flares are classified by strength. When the system was created in the mid-1960s, the smallest solar flares were classified as C-class, moderate flares were M-class, and the largest were X-class. Since then, more refined instruments have been able to measure even smaller flares, called A-class and B-class. 

How GPS Has, and Has Not Transformed Trucking

Portions reported by The Wall Street Journal: One icon of American popular culture of the 1970s was the long-haul trucker, a free-range rebel in jeans and a Peterbilt hat. Think Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit, hauling a load of Coors beer eastward from Texas. Or Clint Eastwood (and his orangutan Clyde) in Every Which Way but Loose. Or of the truckers in the song “Convoy,” tearing up their log sheets, triumphing over Smokey, and rockin’ into the night. The spirit of the American West firmly relocated itself from pioneer to cowboy to trucker, at least for a little while.

Fast-forward 30-some years: That untamed maverick is harder to find and the open road has gotten a lot less wild. In one short generation, technology, from on-board computers to GPS systems, transformed some truckers from free-range rebels to carefully monitored employees whose lives are a bit more like cubicle-bound office workers than the iconoclasts of yore.

In the days before GPS, a driver could, if he chose, take leisurely breaks at truck stops then make up the time by racing at 80 miles an hour down the highway, possibly endangering himself, other motorists and company profits.

So most companies that had to get stuff across the country refused to take on the risk and hired freelance drivers who owned their own rigs. Owner-operators, the logic went, would be responsible because they had to account for the cost of wear and tear on their trucks—and the consequences of reckless endangerment. Or, at the very least, any screw ups would cost the driver, not the company.

But this situation of owner-operators hauling on a contract basis was less-than-ideal for some companies. Drivers did little to help out with loading or unloading at the warehouse or taking care of special loads, something the company could ask drivers to do if they were full-time employees.

Along came better monitoring via on-board computers or GPS. This fundamentally changed the playing field. Companies could keep reckless behavior in check and benefit from more coordination and extra help at the warehouse. Companies dumped the freelance operators and once again hired their own. (A 2004 study confirms this.)

Call it a victory for the productivity-enhancing effects of information technology, weighed against a loss of autonomy and independence of the trucker on the open road.

Gary Bojczak, who worked for a construction company in northern New Jersey, discovered the personal effects of these trade-offs  Earlier this year, Bojczak got his 15 minutes of fame (and a $32,000 fine) for jamming the satellite signals of a newly installed air traffic control system at Newark Airport. Bojczak hadn't procured his illegal GPS jammer for the purposes of disrupting civil aviation. He merely wanted to keep his boss from tracking his whereabouts at all times.

Increasingly sophisticated software is able to detect employee misbehavior even in the absence of direct monitoring by flagging suspicious patterns.  And the benefits – at least for the company’s bottom line – are being felt across many industries; where performance can be monitored real-time.

If workers aren't doing anything wrong, one might argue, they shouldn't mind being tracked.

So is there still room for mavericks in the trucking industry?  The short answer is 'Yes'.  They still have the opportunity to roam throughout the country, rubbing elbows with their compatriots at truck stops along the way; but also emulating those most famous traits of the cowboy and the wild west - hard work, dependability, and taking on the tough jobs that demand durable character an adventurous spirit and a can-do attitude.  Technology will never take that away from them.