Uber and Self-Driving Cars

In 2015, ride-share company Uber partnered with Carnegie Mellon University to create the Advanced Technology Center. The goal was to make self-driving cars a consumer reality. The National Robotics Engineering Center was also involved with the project, and took on the task of researching vehicle safety.

In August, cars took to the streets of Pittsburgh. Currently, there are 14 autonomous Ford Fusion’s in Uber’s fleet. When a user requests a car, they’ll get one of the test Fusions, if available. A driver is also present for safety control.

Journalists got early access to the fleet, and reporters from NPR, TechCrunch, and Wired have all shared their experiences with Uber’s self-proclaimed cars of the future. The reporters’ stories are generally consistent with one another. The driver has the option to switch off the autonomous mode and go manual, as was the case for several obstacles in the road.

Uber refers to Pittsburgh as “the double black diamond of driving”: the city experiences four distinct seasons that create a wide variety of driving conditions. Its roads are also full of potholes, and the city arrangement includes a unique grid and several bridges. They’ve contrasted this approach with Google’s self driving cars, which operate exclusively in the Silicon Valley sun. Uber believes that all of these variables make Pittsburgh one of the more challenging cities for driving. They figure if they can perfect autonomous ridesharing there, then expansion to other cities will be easier.

In the long term, Uber envisions a world where even the safety driver isn’t necessary. Eliminating the human aspect of driving, they believe, will make roads safer.

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What We Know About The Chevy Bolt

The Chevrolet Bolt EV is due to be released later this year, and is expected to compete closely with the Tesla Model 3. Right now, it looks like Chevy will be beating Tesla to market. According to USA Today, The Model 3 is planned to be widely released in mid- or late-2017, with new orders not set for delivery until 2018.

Beating Tesla’s car to market could be good news for Chevrolet. GM’s entry-level company has boasted that the Bolt’s range can best that of its Tesla competitor. Chevrolet’s electric vehicle is expected to clear over 235 miles per charge, compared to the Model 3’s 215.

The Verge Transportation Reporter Jordan Golson took to the digital publication to share an extensive preview of the new electric vehicle, along with his notes from a test drive. The big takeaway? It doesn’t feel like an electric car. It feels like an ordinary four-wheeled road ready vehicle, and that familiar feel may be able to push consumers in the direction of electric vehicles.

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Google Duo Update

Late this past Summer, Google entered into the video messaging space when they launched Duo. In an announcement on the company blog, they highlighted the 1-to-1 video app’s simple design and intuitive interface. One of its primary goals is to provide users with a seamless video chat. To do this, the app will actively adjust call quality depending on available bandwidth. It can also switch between wifi and cellular data so that calls won’t drop when a signal does. Duo can also be used with an Android device to place calls to an iOS device. This lets it compete with FaceTime which is only compatible with Apple products.

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Aetna + Apple Watch

Aetna wants to make Apple Watches more accessible, reports CNET. The health insurance provider announced plans to launch a program that will allow partners to provide employees with the smartwatch for a reduced rate, and possibly for no cost at all. The brief report likens this decision to provide the technology to subsidizing gym memberships and activity trackers. The Apple Watch has already drawn some comparisons to popular fitness tracker fitbit, and it makes sense that an insurance provider would like to make it easier to access tools that can help monitor an individual’s health. At their most recent World Wide Developer’s Conference, Apple unveiled an improved HealthKit, a developer’s tool that stores health and wellness information across iOS and watchOS devices.

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EV Charging Solutions

Electric vehicle sales are climbing. But  some consumers are hesitant to make the switch because of concerns that EVs can’t carry them long distances. And as long as charging infrastructure remains sparse, this is a valid concern. But the problem of too few charging stations may have found a (temporary) solution in the sharing economy.

Scientific American profiled the “Airbnbs of charging”, networks that allow users to offer use of their private EV outlets. These listings supplement public outlets provided by cities, local entrepreneurs and corporate investments. Right now, there are 13,925 public charging stations in America. But taking private listings into account increase that number increases. This is true outside of the US, too. In Sweden, Renault Group’s Elbnb app has increased the number of available stations by 40%.

But the network of charging stations is not without its faults. There is no standardized outlet, so any given EV may not be able to plug into the station that’s available. There’s also the issue of time— it can take several hours to charge your vehicle. This presents an issue on an individual level (getting behind schedule on a business or road trip), and a shared one (potential wait times to use a private station). Before setting out on a trip, sometimes one isn’t sure of where charging stations will be along the route. The private model is an improvement but is a potential disaster for scheduling and trip planning.

Plugshare is a company that is trying to fix that. While they allow users to list their private stations, they also want to install charging stations alongside highways. This way, drivers can have a better idea of when and where they can charge.

Plugging in isn’t the only “charging” concern. What about money? As the article points out, using solar panels makes sharing your charger virtually free. But only a handful of states has legislation that clarifies the resale of electric energy. Some EV manufacturers like Tesla and Nissan are offering free use of their charging networks for a limited time. Others are charging fees based on time spent at the station or by the kWH.

This hasn’t solved all the problems, but there are plenty of solutions being explored.

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Fighting Mosquitoes with Mosquitoes

Since 2015, Zika has been a public health concern in most of the Western Hemisphere. But biotech startup MosquitoMate is furthering prevention efforts by attempting to sterilize disease-carrying mosquito populations.

For the past year, researchers have worked on a way to prevent the spread of the virus. The mosquito that transmits the virus, Aedes Aegypti, is more aggressive than other mosquito species. They bite humans both during day and night, and need a minimal amount of water to lay their eggs.

Wired has profiled the MosquitoMate’s experiments with mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia microbe. While scientists aren’t sure why,  Wolbachia disrupts the reproductive process. When the microbe is present in one or both mating mosquitoes, the resulting eggs are not able to hatch. MosquitoMate is basing their efforts on this research. The lab is infecting the eggs of Aedes Albopictus, a related mosquito that can mate with Aegyptius, with Wolbachia. The insects arethen released into Clovis California, a Zika hotspot. Hundreds of thousands are expected to be released by the end of summer to maximize potential mates for Aegypti females. Once the eggs are laid, they shouldn’t hatch. An upside to these efforts is that the males don’t bite; only females do, to lay their eggs.

The solution sounds straightforward but is still experimental. It’s also difficult to implement nationwide because different states have different processes for getting such a procedure approved. For example, the EPA oversees the procedure in California. The same procedure in Florida, on the other hand, involves more FDA oversight—  which can be slow to approve an experiment like this. The problem is compounded by the fact that Florida is one of the states with the highest Zika-transmission risk.

Bureaucratic hurdles aren’t the only issue MosquitoMate and similar labs face. The community needs to be on board too. Some are suspicious of the procedure, and others find the thousands of new mosquitoes— even though they don’t bite— to be a nuisance. Researchers are hopeful that Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes will reduce the disease-carrying agents, but it is suffering from a negative public perception. To combat this, the lab has been engaging in community education and outreach efforts.

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Tesla’s AutoPilot

An innovative step Tesla took four years ago is now putting them well ahead of the autonomous car competition. In 2012 the automotive manufacturer introduced an around the clock cellular internet connection. As MIT Tech Review’s Tom Simonite has pointed out, this connectivity has proved to be what Tesla needs to make it’s own self-driving cars smarter and safer.

Tesla can use this connection to gather data to help guide its initiative toward self-driving cars. This connection allow Tesla to retrieve data from drivers, observing how a human reacts and behaves on the road in a variety of situations, including light traffic vs. heavy traffic or clear vs. stormy conditions. This data is then used as a benchmark for its constantly self-driving technology.

But Tesla isn’t limited to just pulling observational data. According to Sterling Anderson, Tesla’s Autopilot Program director, the company can upload new software to cars on the road. This constant stream of data exchange has put the auto manufacturer ahead of its primary competitors like Google and (according to some rumors) Apple.

Eighteen months ago Tesla began installing new sensors onto its vehicles, under the premise that they were a part of a new auto-brake feature. But underneath that selling point was the fact that the sensors would also detect nearby objects on the road, enabling engineers to see exactly how drivers were reacting to them on a day-to-day basis. Anderson boasts that every ten hours Tesla receives one million miles of data, and since the sensors became standard in 2014 they have accrued 780 million miles’ worth of driver data.

This information only makes their autonomous software better, and if it performs well against the data, it’s uploaded to the cars for the feedback loop to begin once more. When the software is used on a self-steering vehicle, they can accurately see how well it holds up to a human standard. By leveraging a large data set from real world drivers, Tesla looks to be able to quickly iterate on its self-driving software.

Even though software updates are regularly being installed on Tesla’s vehicles, drivers needn’t worry about autopilot actually taking over when the driver is behind the wheel. But a major issue that Tesla needs to address if/when autopilot is made available is human responsibility. Some drivers, expecting self-driving cars to function free of error, can behave recklessly and find themselves unprepared to take over in case of a malfunction. Google, for example, ran tests where employees were allowed to use self-driving cars. The results were troubling: one employee, while traveling at 65 miles per hour, actually plugged in his cellular device to his laptop. Google has completely restructured its program, but Tesla is still convinced that Autopilot can coexist with responsible human driving practices.

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Hanergy’s Solar Cars

Chinese renewable energy company Hanergy has announced the launch of four models of solar-powered cars. These vehicles feature solar panels on the hood and the roof that, when fully extended, can provide a full charge in about six hours. Although Hanergy appears to be focused on the photovoltaic capabilities, they are best thought of as supplementary. With ideal conditions (cloudless, smogless skies) a full charge is only enough to power the cars for 50 miles. However, they do contain lithium-ion batteries to store energy, and can be charged at stations for longer trips.

Hanergy has been looking to develop solar-powered cars for some time now and had been ready to release prototypes in 2015, but an investigation into the possibility of artificially set stock prices put that work on hold.

Stephen Engle of Bloomberg news has provided some criticism of the car’s clean energy capabilities and company leadership. While the count of 50 miles per charge is lower than some would hope, Hanergy has projected that their cells’ solar energy conversion rate will increase from 31.6% to 42% by 2025.

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The Biggest Loser?

Earilier this summer, a special report from The New York Times shared several findings published in the journal Obesity that provide insight into health, nutrition, and lifestyle changes. By following up with contestants from the hit NBC reality show The Biggest Loser, a team of researchers from the NIH, Towson University, and the Washington DC VA Medical Center found out why former “losers” struggled mightily to maintain the weight losses they achieved on the show.

One contestant weighed 444 pounds when he was first featured on the primetime program. By the season’s end, he had shed 155 pounds, bringing him to a weight of 289 pounds. Since then, however, he regained 159 pounds, bringing him up to 448 pounds— four pounds heavier than he was before the show began. The article is full of similar examples of weight loss followed by the contestants quickly regaining weight—in fact, 13 of 14 contestants regained weight, and four are now heavier than they were before.

The researchers found that the contestants had a precipitous drop in their Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). The BMR determines how many calories a person burns at rest. In people who lose weight the BMR goes down, and the hope is that it will eventually recover. However for the contestants on The Biggest Loser after the conclusion of the show, their BMR remained low. One contestant had to eat 800 calories less a day to maintain his weight.

However, the show’s doctor, Robert Huizenga, questioned the BMR measurements (which were taken six years later) and said it is difficult for most contestants to find or afford adequate ongoing support from specialists and the time to continue to maintain an active lifestyle. Furthermore, the small sample size and lack of controls limited the power of the findings.

Another reason for the failure of the candidates to maintain their weight loss could be related to levels of the hormone leptin, which is involved in regulating hunger and satiety. By the end of the show the leptin levels of most of the contestants had plummeted and failed to recover, allowing hunger and satiety levels to go unchecked, which could explain the subsequent weight gain.

While obesity is a multifaceted issue, the study points out the difficulty in maintaining one’s weight after dramatic weight loss. Most experts recommend losing no more than two pounds per week. It’s not just so that you can adjust to a healthier lifestyle; it’s so your body can learn how to react to the changes.

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The Automotive and Tech Relationship

Bloomberg has shared a piece of data visualization that shows the relationships between automobile manufacturers and tech companies. The complex web highlights manufacturers’ desires to not lose out on profit, despite the (in some places) decreasing role that cars have in everyday life. 

Fiat Chrysler is used as an example. As long as manufacturers and tech companies develop new competing technologies, money is lost in the pursuit of systems that are effectively being researched twice-over. Furthermore, a marriage between the auto-industry and major tech companies ensures that risk— as well as profit— is shared in the long run.

The graphic reveals a few key takeaways. Uber leads the way as far as investors go, with support from Google, Toyota, Tata, and Microsoft. By contrast, Apple failed in partnerships with Daimler and BMW. However it has invested in Didi, a Chinese ride-share company. Didi, in turn, has partnered with Lyft.

Just as interesting as the flow of money is that of personnel. Sometimes, there is a change of personnel between two allied companies— as is the case of Google’s VP of Engineering heading to Uber. On the other hand, the head of Apple’s autonomous car project was hired away by Volkswagen.

Follow this link to see the graphic.

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Where Do We Stand on GMOs?

A critical review in Biotech is the latest voice in the conversation about GMOs and their place in society. The authors, Alexander Y. Panchina and Alexander I. Tuzhikovab, reanalyzed several studies that claimed “technology-related health concerns” with respect to GMOs. Panchina and Tuzhikovab say the evidence for such a correlation was weak, and that the results have contributed to the public opinion’s misunderstanding of GMOs. Their review aims to place the original results of those studies into the right context.

Several weeks after the review was published online, over 100 Nobel laureates signed an open letter to Greenpeace, an environmental NGO. In their message, they requested that the organization cease its efforts to block the introduction of Golden rice, a GMO strain of rice that scientists believe can reduce vitamin-A deficiencies in developing countries.

Richard Roberts, one of the organizers of the letter campaign, told the Washington Post that Greenpeace took an anti-GMO stance to “scare people” and “to raise money for their cause”. However, he is supportive of some of their other projects.

Greenpeace has responded to the letter by reasserting their claim that Golden rice has not been proven to reduce vitamin-A deficiencies, and that the strain will “pave the way for global approval of other more profitable genetically engineered crops.” Other anti-GMO arguments include the fear that genetically modified crops can “pollute” natural gene pools, and that the health effects of GMO consumption are still largely unknown. In order to address malnutrition, critics of GMOs argue for more diverse diets.

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Questions about the 49ers Roster… That aren’t Quarterback-centric

Even with the preseason underway the quarterback question in San Francisco isn’t dying down anytime soon, but there are still other positions that need addressing during the offseason. Since the QB question is taking up the time of most sports bloggers, SB Nation’s David Fucillo decided to explore the issue on his own.

Here are a few of Fucillo’s observations:

There’s a clear divide at Wide Receiver right now between tenured NFL performers and fresh draft talent. Torrey Smith will probably be starting, but for the other wideouts management must make a decision of whether to trust experience (Ellington, Simpson) or hopefully exceptional rookie talent (Rogers).

In 2015, the QB situation was exacerbated by a dysfunctional offensive line. The 49ers made some changes, but there is still a looming question of who will be starting at right tackle—  Erik Pears or Trenton Brown?

Ahmad Brooks is still a talented linebacker. He’s good enough to end up on the 53-man roster, and just got a contract extension. Fucillo doesn’t see a world in which Brooks isn’t succeeded by at least two solid linebackers to step up outside.

Running backs have a notoriously short prime, and even though Carlos Hyde has been dazzling on the field, his style of play is extremely physical. In 2016, seeing his snaps dwindle as he recovers from potential injuries may be a very real possibility. Running back by committee is slowly becoming more commonplace, and in the event of a Hyde loss the 49ers are going to need a few capable halfbacks to carry the load. 

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Roborace

Driverless cars have long been a fantasy, and they’re now bordering on the edge of reality. Well, technically, commercial reality— Google has been developing its autonomous driving technology for several years now. While we’re all acknowledging how convenient (and possibly safe) these new machines could be, the minds at Formula E and Kinetik are taking it one step further and considering the recreational implications of self-driving cars.

Formula E and Kinetic have partnered to create Roborace, a racing circuit that uses only driverless cars. Formula E is no stranger to taking chances with its racing technology— the “E” stands for “electric”, since their races feature only electric cars. Roborace would take that one step further, and in the process reshape conventions that we’ve come to expect from automobile racing.

Because the cars are self-driving, there would be no driver actually behind the wheel, and each team gets the same car. This puts an increased focus on the team of engineers who are designing the algorithms that dictate how these vehicles behave on the track and relative to the competition.

The next logical question is, “would anyone actually watch this?” And it’s a fair one, because billing your sporting event as showcasing the “best motor-offerings that engineers have to offer” could be a tough sell to a more traditional sports crowd. Introducing new technology to old sporting traditions is invariably met with some kind of backlash. One only needs to look towards the outcry over instant replay in FIFA to see how negatively some fans react to these kinds of developments.

But Roborace is betting on something else that will draw fans: speed. With no drivers’ lives at risk, old safety regulations can be effectively ignored. Roborace’s vehicles are boasting speeds of almost 200 mph, and there’s no reason to think that as it continues to evolve we won’t see that number increase. It’s delivering the satisfaction of speed in ways that most fans could have only dreamed of, and keeps its participants safe in the process. (featured image courtesy of Flickr)

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AstraZeneca Building Human Genome Library of 2 Million Sequences

Biopharmaceutical titan AstraZeneca is planning to build a massive database of the human genome. With over two million entries, this genetic library would allow researchers to explore under-researched genes that may be linked to certain diseases. If the project is successful, the database would be the largest of its kind. By comparison, it was only a little more than half a year ago that the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Institute’s UK10K project was considered the largest human genome database and it only contains 10,000 sequences.

Such an ambitious project comes with an appropriate price to match. While the exact number has yet to be disclosed, reports say that the price reaches well into the nine-digit range. Two million complete human DNA sequences is nothing to scoff at, and the the company is getting them from a variety of sources. AstraZeneca itself is supplying the first quarter, which conveniently come from their own patient trials. Human Longevity Inc., the firm that is doing the sequencing, will be supplying another 26,000. University of Helsinki is also providing AstraZeneca it’s own unique database. Finland has a relatively isolated human population, and AstraZeneca is hoping that they will be able to discover genes present in Finnish people that are absent in others.

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Tech, Twitter, and the NFL

Twitter has been struggling mightily as of late. There’s been an apparent revolving door of CEOs, and growth has stalled. Some analysts argue that the problem with Twitter is that the company can’t quite figure out what it’s supposed to do. Instagram is for photography, Facebook is for sharing personal updates and commentary on shared posts, and LinkedIn is for job seekers or those trying to expand their professional networks. Twitter tries to do a lot, but the overload of information, combined with its restrictive length for new posts, severely limits what can be done with the platform. But there may be some hope for the social media platform, and it’s coming from an unlikely source: the NFL.

Last month, Twitter announced a broadcast deal with the National Football League that will allow them to broadcast ten Thursday Night Football games (including the Cardinals at 49ers). This is a major development for both sides. For the reasons discussed above, the benefits for Twitter are many. Streaming the nation’s most popular sport will bring an influx of new users to the platform, and may give their executives some sense of what consumer want from their product. Journalists, celebrities, and spectators are going to be tweeting about every major televised debate from the big game to the big debate, but there are few (if any) legitimate contenders that offer coverage of the event right next to the conversation.

Twitter got the broadcast rights for $1 million per game, which is a relatively generous offer. As Bloomberg points out, Yahoo paid $17 million for the broadcast rights to one of the London games (Jacksonville at Buffalo— a far cry from a marquee matchup).

The upside of this deal is huge for Twitter, but what about the NFL? While they aren’t worrying about declining viewership, they are staying ahead of the competition. The League’s willingness to partner with Twitter over companies that would have offered more money shows that they are thinking of the future, and how consumption of live television factors into the modern (nonexistent) cable package. “Skinny bundling” is quickly become a norm rather than an exception, and it’s wise for the governing body of America’s most popular game to respect the changing viewing habits, rather than force them to remain chained to their couches in the archaic models of an older time.

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Implications of the 2016 49ers Season

Football season can’t come soon enough. The schedules have been released, the draft has ended, and OTAs are just about to begin. Fans just have to wait it out. But of course, that doesn’t put the brakes on chatter for what to expect in the fall. Over at the 49ers’ official website, Senior Reporter Taylor Price has been mulling over the implications of the schedule, and it’s going to be an interesting one.

For starters, the Rams’ move back to Los Angeles puts all the NFC West teams actually on the West. It remains to be seen what the athletic performance benefits are (if any) of the Niners no longer needing to travel to a different timezone to take on an intra-division rival. San Francisco’s very first matchup is at home against LA, on the first Monday Night game of the year. The Rams struck a deal with the Titans for the number one pick, and promptly scooped up quarterback Jared Goff. Here’s to hoping that San Francisco’s first-round pick, defensive end DeForest Buckner, can penetrate the line of scrimmage and play a major role in halting LA’s offensive production.

Also of note is the sheer difficulty that is the 49ers’ schedule. It has the toughest of all the clubs in the league, based on the average win percentages of all their upcoming opponents’ performances in the 2015-16 season. In the first three weeks the 49ers face a rejuvenated Rams team, the defending NFC Champs at Carolina, and an elite Seahawks squad on the road. No one promised the road back to the postseason would be a walk in the park, but getting there by defeating the best competition the league would be a good place to start.

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UK Study Finds Link Between Stroke and Fiber Intake

A recent study out of the UK has suggested an inverse relationship between dietary fiber consumption and stroke. Specifically, consuming between 18 and 25 grams of fiber will reduce the first instance of stroke by seven percent.

Researchers from the University of Leeds compiled data from a series of stroke-related studies that were published between 1990 and 2012. The find that increased fiber consumption reduced risk for stroke is particularly helpful for individuals who already suffer from risk factors for stroke. Those who are overweight, smokers, or suffering from high blood pressure may want to consider getting more dietary fiber into their diets.

The research news website Futurity suggests that in order to reap the benefits, you should be eating about seven more grams of fiber per day. They arrived at this number because the average amount of dietary fiber consumption in the UK (where the study was published) is about 14g, and the recommended is 18-25g. It goes without saying that how much more fiber you should be consuming is dependent on the individual. For example, if your average dietary fiber intake is only 3g, seven more puts you at 10g— far from where the research says you should be.

While the study is correlational and does not prove the linkage, the health benefits of fiber are well established in other disease processes such as colon cancer and Diabetes, and it seems plausible that there may be a relation here to stroke as well. Take a hard look at your nutrient sources, and seek out ways to boost your fiber intake.

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