A research team headed by scientists at Michigan State University (MSU) has made some pretty remarkable discoveries about pandas recently, thanks to the data they have collected regarding the habits of these gentle giants.

The team fitted five pandas with GPS tracking collars, monitored their daily behaviors and discovered that the routines of these animals were not typical. Typically, mammals fall into one of three categories regarding their activity levels:

1. Nocturnal – They are active only at night.
2. Diurnal – They are active during the day.
3. Crepuscular – They are active twice a day, at dawn and dusk.

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Geofencing, an ever-increasing well-known feature of workforce and location-based fleet management systems, is cropping up in its own right as an enabling technology. It is positioned to play an important role in new application development.

In their most basic sense, geofences are virtual perimeters on a map. It could be a circle, square, or another shape that is designed to suit a specific purpose. Much like a physical fence, geofences may be used for automatically monitoring and recording entry and exit of an area that is within the ‘fence’.

Events can be set in motion when a device approaches, enters or leaves a geofence by being able to leverage the location-aware capabilities of mobile computers, smartphones and other devices. New application possibilities using geofence alerts are opened up. Read the rest of this entry »

On his third day of what was supposed to be an 80-mile swim from Wisconsin to West Michigan across Lake Michigan, Chris Lechner began hearing a voice in his head telling him he was in trouble.

He began struggling with 6-foot waves during his last stretch of solo swimming which he started on Saturday, August 8. Only a quarter of a mile from shore, he began getting pulled by a riptide pulling him south of his planned destination.

He started to become paranoid once he realized that no matter how much he pushed and how hard, he was not getting any closer to shore. What he was doing, however, was swimming in circles.

He claimed he was beginning to lose his ability to make judgements and felt as if his mind was getting fuzzier regardless of how strong he felt.

Lechner called a friend for help using his satellite phone. The friend then alerted the Coast Guard which came and rescued Lechner around 11pm Monday close to Saugatuck Dunes State Park. Read the rest of this entry »

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is made to regulate the amount of hours that truck drivers are allowed to operate to keep them from driving fatigued and improve highway safety. The US Department of Transportation is duty-bound and required to use the best science available when developing these regulations.

The Hours of Service regulation was published in December 2011 in the Federal Register for the Drivers Final Rule was effective in February 2012 and the remaining provisions compliance date was July 1, 2013.

Basically, although the rule was complicated, it came down to a couple of updated requirements. The first was that drivers were required to take a 30 minute break to rest within their first eight hours of their shift. This is to keep them alert while driving on the road. The second was for them to take a ‘restart’ which is a 34-hour rest period once every 7 days.

Also required was that at least two periods of resting should be between the hours of 1am and 5am. This would allow the drivers to get a very real rest allowing them to catch up on their sleep before they began another long work week. This would reduce the drivers’ hours from 82 hours to 70 hours. Read the rest of this entry »

Technology has certainly come a very long way, and hitchBOT is the prime example of just how far. This robot, which was equipped with a GPS tracking, hitchhiked its way across Canada last summer. It started out in Halifax, Nova Scotia and journeyed all the way to Victoria, British Columbia, covering a total of 10,000 kilometers in a span of 26 days. During its journey across Canada, hitchBOT was picked up by a 19 different travelers.

And that’s not the only adventure that this high-tech robot had; it has also visited cities across Germany, including Munich, Cologne, Berlin and Hamburg, as well as the Netherlands.

hitchBOT was slated to run its wheels again on a trip across the United States this past summer. Outfitted with a sticker that read, ‘San Francisco or Bust’. The trip across the US started in Salem, Massachusetts and was supposed to end in San Francisco , California.

However, just two weeks into his journey, hitchBOT hit a bump in the road and his trip was cut short. It did manage to cross a few items off of its travel itinerary, including landmarks in Boston and New York City, thanks to the help of strangers, but on August 1, 2015, his trip was halted when it was destroyed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Read the rest of this entry »