Group items tagged

"The smart homes market was valued at USD 79.13 billion in 2020, and it is expected to reach USD 313.95 billion by 2026 and register a CAGR of 25.3% over the forecast period (2021 - 2026). Across real estate companies and the architect ecosystem, the 'new normal' defined through the social distancing results in a requirement to go back to the redesign basics and reinvent the residential real estate product by factoring in new-age designing, efficiency, and innovation. As the redesign happens, the need for a totally new set of amenities has resurfaced and gained prominence. What the customer will need in the 'new normal' has undergone a revolution in the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is leading to a paradigm shift in residential spaces."

"Corrosion is a dynamic process, more so than even most corrosion engineers realize. It typically has a number of influencing factors that can vary with time and process variables, and so cause corrosion events or upsets to occur. The reason for the lack of appreciation of this situation is that historically long time intervals associated with inspections and off-line measurements do not afford the opportunity to correlate corrosion excursions with operating and process parameters This paper illustrates the importance of implementing an appropriate and correspondingly dynamic means of corrosion appraisal to help manage industrial processes and related corrosion prevention treatments, and to minimize corrosion upsets and failures, and maximize the availability of the plant assets. Value statements are provided that show the potential savings associated with online, real-time corrosion monitoring."

The article discusses emissions at ports around the world and focuses on a measurement of a port's affects on the environment through a measurement called Port Environmental Index (PEI). The PEI consists of standards that will allow the tracking of emissions and effects on the environment for the port over time. The internet of things (IOT) will allow real time monitoring. (alterenate link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X20308888)

"The directive sets essential quality standards at the EU level. One requirement of the directive is that a total of 48 microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters must be regularly monitored and tested. When transposing the Drinking Water Directive into national law, EU member states can set higher but not lower standards. The limits of the microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters are specified in the annexes to the Drinking Water Directive. For water meters, this means that the measurement accuracy must be maintained for all types of water that comply with the parameter limits specified in this document. This can pose a real challenge in terms of the measurement accuracy and particularly the measurement stability of water meters for some of the parameters"

"This book tells a tale of innovation, disruption, and transformation. Mobile money, e-money, e-float, e-wallets, mobile banking, however you characterise it, is not just a cool app. It s a killer app, the first for mobile phones in the developing world. It s also a disruptive innovation that threatens incumbent businesses and is sparking new business formation and entrepreneurship. Nowhere is this mobile money phenomenon more prevalent and successful than in Kenya. In five years, 19 million Kenyans, more than 70% of the adult population, have signed up for mobile money services. Fifteen million are customers of M-PESA ( M for Mobile and pesa means money in Swahili). Now, one out of every two people in the world who sends money over a mobile phone is a Kenyan. Mobile money is the rare case in which an African country is the global market leader and an exporter of innovation." The author says, "It has been so successful in these markets because it leapfrogged the payment card industry," he said, "which requires expensive ATM and Point of Sale (POS) networks to function. ATMs and POS Terminals require regular maintenance and, with ATMs, regular liquidity balancing. By leveraging third party retail outlets and making the phone the primary means of exchange, mobile money bypassed the need to distribute ATMs and POS Terminals. The reverse is true in the US: mobile money isn't leapfrogging the payment card industry, it's augmenting it."

Designers should ensure that spaces for all six modalities of work will be available as needed for both hypersensitive and hyposensitive occupants. While the right sizes and combinations of space will vary for each organization, the key is to provide a seamless array of choices. Spaces should easily adapt to the needs of people with work styles and behavioral needs at both ends of the spectrum. They also must be exceptionally flexible to integrate new technologies over time and, as more people continue to work remotely after the pandemic, to blend real and virtual work environments. Our current design is old and un-informed. We are ripe for a huge disruption in this space. I saw some recent pictures of Tesla's office. It's lame. How can you expect excellent and group breaking work when the environment is meh.

Oil prices keep going up and up. And two of the most famous names in private equity are stepping down from the company they founded nearly half a century ago. Plus, the billionaire space race may not be much of a race, after all, because Elon Musk is so far ahead. Musk can spread the cost across so many products. He is winning contracts with NASA. He also landed moon lander (3 Billion). He has real scale...the risk is starship.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is evaluating Space Exploration Technologies Corporation's (SpaceX) Starship/Super Heavy program, in particular a proposal to operate the Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle at its existing Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas and conduct launches originating from this site. This could be real trouble for Musk. If the FAA makes his life difficult, how will he react?

Treasury's just-released Climate Action Plan establishes five priority actions to strengthen and build upon Treasury's climate resilience and adaptive capabilities: (1) rebuilding programs and capabilities that may have atrophied or stagnated in recent years; (2) addressing climate change impacts and vulnerabilities across the range of Departmental operations, including administrative, manufacturing, and law enforcement activities; (3) ensuring a climate-focused approach to managing Treasury's real property portfolio footprint; (4) enabling procurement management to fully consider climate change realities; and (5) providing, measuring, and accounting for a financial investment approach appropriate to the Department's climate objectives.

Yea this isn't a scan hit I need to post but an amazing find. Short article but includes a video demo and link to the website. Called the Pilot, one company has created a tiny wireless earbud that fits in your ear and translates the language you hear into the language you understand. The earphones work in conjunction with an app, but it works offline as well. People have been bound by language for centuries, and it looks like those barriers will soon be broken down by this tiny little device.

We just moved years closer to viable quantum computers. A company has revealed the results of benchmarking experiments that demonstrate how an advanced error-suppression method increased the probability of success for quantum computing algorithms to succeed on real hardware. And the new method increased the likelihood of success by an unprecedented 2,500% The new results were obtained via several IBM quantum computers, and they also showed that the new quantum logic gates were more than 400 times more efficient in stopping computational errors than any methods seen before. "This is the most powerful error-suppression technology ever demonstrated, and delivers an enormous competitive advantage to users," said CEO and Founder of Q-CTRL Michael J. Biercuk, who's also a professor, in the release. "These simple-to-use techniques will likely enable organizations to achieve useful quantum computing years ahead of current projections."

Self-driving commercial trucks could regularly operate alongside the motoring public on U.S. highways sooner than many may think, particularly as the industry moves beyond prototypes to real-world, on-road testing. However, the shift likely will be gradual and largely dependent on commercial truck OEMs, regulations, and gaining public acceptance.

IoT uses electronic sensors connected directly to assets to gather and report critical information to remote locations. This permits continuous, real-time and accurate monitoring of pipelines, vessels and tank farms.