Tech for Good

2022-03-10 07:50:31 Prove your address

Here is another brilliant example of a software tech solution to a painful problem. More than 4 billion people globally don’t have a formal physical address, and it costs the world’s economy over $200 billion yearly. Getting delivery, registering a sim card, opening a bank account, getting the job - these are just a few examples of unresolved issues faced by people who don’t have a physical address included in the global address system.

Timbo Drayson was part of the team that launched Google Maps across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. While working in Nigeria, he experienced firsthand the lack of physical address problem. He realized that this was a huge issue, not just for every Nigerian but also for half the world. So, in 2014, he founded OkHi, an innovative addressing startup tackling these challenges in Nigeria with its technology.

Consumers go to OkHi’s website and create addresses by dropping a pin on their map with a virtual representation of their street. OkHi collects this address but uses location data from the consumer’s phone to actively check how long the phone spends at the address that the consumer saved. After a while, OkHi builds up a profile using its “AI-powered verification engine” to determine if the consumer resides at that address or not.

At the starting point, OkHi is building for the financial service sector. Their service integrates into a mobile banking or fintech app and enables them to digitally collect the accurate addresses of their customers, verify them, and onboard their clients. The company claims a product pilot showing that its address verification product is 30% more accurate, 4x faster, and 50% cheaper than the industry standard of sending a physical agent to a customer’s door.

OkHi charges its clients on a per transaction basis. So every time a business successfully verifies a customer’s address, it charges ~$1. OkHi claims to have “hundreds of thousands” of users.

Article on TechCrunch
OkHi website

#AI #software #identity Open / Comment

2022-03-08 11:27:01 The Interceptor

Dutch inventor Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup at 18 in his hometown of Delft, the Netherlands. The company's mission is to solve the oceans' plastic problem by doing two things - halt the trash entering from rivers and remove the existing plastics from the oceans.

Today, we are talking about capturing plastic from rivers, the primary source of ocean pollution. The company's research shows that about 1000 rivers (1% of all rivers on the planet) are responsible for 80 percent of global ocean plastic pollution. The Ocean Cleanup's Interceptor is an autonomous, 100% solar-powered catamaran diverting plastic from rivers and preventing it from entering the ocean.

Water passes through the center of the catamaran, moving plastic onto a netted conveyer belt. Water filters through and back into the river, and plastic goes from the conveyer belt into the shuttle. The shuttle automatically sorts the waste into six onboard dumpsters with a total capacity of 50 cubic meters each.

Interceptor works without any human operator, collecting up to 100 tons of waste per day. Once the dumpsters are nearly at capacity, operators receive an automated text message, collect the barge with dumpsters, empty them, and return the barge to the Interceptor to continue picking up debris.

The company has already built four Interceptors, two for Jakarta, Indonesia, and Klang, Malaysia. The other two will be installed in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Plus, two are in the works to be installed in rivers in Bangkok, Thailand, and Los Angeles.

#recycle #plastics #ocean #solar Open / Comment

2022-03-04 11:41:34 Green jobs on the rise

LinkedIn published an insightful report on green jobs rising globally. Green jobs are defined as requiring green skills that enable the environmental sustainability of economic activities.

Key takeaways from the report:

In the last five years, the number of Renewables & Environment jobs in the US has increased by 237%, in stark contrast to the 19% increase for Oil & Gas jobs;
The share of green talent increased from 9.6% in 2015, to 13.3% so far in 2021 (a growth rate of 38.5%);
While job postings requiring green skills grew at 8% annually over the past five years, the share of green talent has grown at roughly 6% annually in the same period. That means a rising deficit for green talent;
The fastest-growing green skills are in Ecosystem Management, Environmental Policy, and Pollution Prevention;
The top five fastest-growing green jobs between 2016 and 2021, in terms of annual growth, are Sustainability Manager (30%), Wind Turbine Technician (24%), Solar Consultant (23%), Ecologist (22%), and Environmental Health and Safety Specialist (20%);
The top 5 countries with the highest green skill intensity are the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and India.

You may read the full report here

#jobs Open / Comment

2022-02-24 11:39:15 There is no place for politics on TFG, but I am feeling so embarrassed for what is happening with my homeland Russia these days. War can't be right. Open / Comment

2022-02-22 12:02:43 Save on concrete

Cement is the most significant carbon dioxide emitter globally: its production contributes 7% of all CO2 emissions. Making cement involves burning calcium carbonate, which separates calcium and releases carbon into the atmosphere. In addition, the construction industry uses carbon-intensive materials, such as concrete and steel, inefficiently. The study by Cambridge University revealed that most commercial buildings in the UK are overdesigned by up to 50 to 60 percent.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed an elegant FoamWork solution to reduce construction's carbon footprint, particularly cement. They used 3D-printed formwork elements made from recyclable mineral foam to create a pre-cast concrete slab, which is lighter and better insulated while using 70 percent less material.

An autonomous robotic arm 3D printed 24 mineral formwork elements in different shapes and sizes. Then they cast and left to cure concrete around them, creating hollow cells throughout the panel. The internal geometry optimized to reinforce the slab along its principal stress lines created the necessary strength while drastically reducing the amount of concrete needed to produce it.

The FoamWork system uses an alternative material developed by Swiss start-up FenX made of a waste product from coal-fired power stations called fly ash. That helps to minimize the carbon footprint of the foam. The final FoamWork elements can either be left in place to improve the insulation of the pre-cast concrete slab or recycled and reprinted to create new formwork.

The researchers say they can customize the shape and configuration of the internal cells to create a range of concrete building elements from walls to entire roofs. With FoamWork, emissions through material consumption would be reduced in the concrete slab. The lower mass would also have secondary effects on the dimensioning of the entire load-bearing structure and would reduce efforts for shipping and handling on construction sites.

Article on DeZeen

#robotics #AI #3dprint #construction Open / Comment

2022-02-22 08:49:37 Here is the #weeksummary :

Paralyzed patients walk, swim, and cycle - a new spinal stimulation device allowing paralyzed men to regain mobility
iPhone Swap - a Finnish company offering its customers a sustainable choice to reduce waste by buying a professionally refurbished iPhone for less
Baloon satellites to space - a Canadian startup to deliver small satellites and payloads into space using rockets attached to balloons

Please share with anyone who may be interested in our stories.

Tech for Good Open / Comment

2022-02-18 14:03:03 Baloon satellites to space

Investments into space startups beat all records in 2021: $17 billion, up from $9 billion in 2020. And while there is a race to build bigger rockets for big payloads (hey, Starship), there is also the exciting tech on the other side of the payload spectrum.

A Canadian Spaceryde aims to deliver small satellites and payloads into space. Smaller projects may not afford ridesharing on SpaceX rockets, and those who can still have to deal with narrow launch schedules. So instead of launching rockets from the ground, the startup uses balloons to carry them into the upper atmosphere before launching. That makes its services highly customizable and affordable.

A hydrogen-filled balloon lifts the rocket to the outside edge of the atmosphere, where the air drag is not a problem. It also provides another benefit - the rocket design may be completely different. That's what Spaceryde is doing by building "fat" rockets with a perfect balance between structural integrity, fuel efficiency, and payload capacity.

A big part of the SpaceRyde value proposition is that small satellite companies may choose when to launch and the exact orbit they want. The SpaceRyde attaches a carrier that looks like a quadrotor drone to the rocket. The carrier uses software calculations to ensure the rocket is aligned correctly at launch.

The small payload space delivery market is growing incredibly quickly. We have already covered Indian Pixxel and Canadian Wyvern as consumer examples of these services. Spaceryde has already managed to get regulatory approval for launches and plans to carry live payloads for orbital and suborbital flights as early as 2023.

#space Open / Comment

2022-02-17 09:56:44 iPhone Swap

Today we have another simple but powerful startup idea that works.

Finland-based Swappie was co-founded in 2016 by Sami Marttinen (CEO) and Jiri Heinonen (CMO) with the simple mission to give their clients a way to upgrade their phones that is high quality, more affordable, and environmentally friendly. The startup refurbishes and resells used iPhones via its marketplace. It also gives a 12-month warranty.

The smartphone industry has a significant impact on the environment, and 85-90% of it comes during the manufacturing process. Apple, for example, says that iPhone 11 creation emits more than 56kg of CO2. Swappie offers its customers a sustainable choice to reduce waste by buying a professionally refurbished iPhone for less. I've looked up the prices for the new and Swappie-refurbished iPhone 12 128Gb in Greece: 849 and 679 euro respectively.

The smartphone market in Europe where the startup operates is worth over €100 billion but used or refurbished phones currently make up just over 10% of that, with only one in four pre-owned phones resold. In 2020, Swappie grew fivefold in revenue, proving it has rising demand and the ability to expand.

The startup's potential attracted investor interest: the company raised $40.6 million in 2020, closing another $124 million investment round this month.

30-seconds video
Article on TechCrunch
Website

#startups #phone Open / Comment

2022-02-15 17:31:07 Paralyzed patients walk, swim, and cycle

Three men paralyzed in motorcycle accidents have become the first success stories for the new spinal stimulation device developed by Lausanne's Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. They took steps independently on a treadmill within a day of their device's activation; and could stand, walk, swim, and pedal a bicycle after five months of rehab.

When trauma severely damages the bundle of nerves that make up a person's spinal cord, the brain's electrical signals no longer reach the body's muscles, resulting in paralysis. A wide implant, roughly the size of a pointer finger placed underneath the vertebrae, directly on the spinal cord, can re-create those signals and trigger leg movements.

The team designed software to activate the electrodes in patterns that produce movements. For example, using different stimulation patterns, the participants in the new study could swim, cycle, do leg presses and sitting forward bends. With the stimulation off, the abilities remain limited. However, it is interesting that one patient regained some ability to activate leg muscles without the device.

For now, sending commands to the device is cumbersome. Users must select their desired movement on a tablet, which sends Bluetooth commands to a transmitter worn around the waist. That device has to stay next to a "pulse generator" implanted in the abdomen, activating electrodes along the spine. But the next generation of devices should allow users to start the pulse generator by giving voice commands to a smartwatch.

In previous studies, patients needed more than a year of intense therapy to achieve overground stepping, which is quite impractical in most countries' current health care systems. But in a present study, after 4 to 6 months, all three participants could walk across the ground using only a walker for stability, making such therapy meaningful.

2-minute video
Article on Science.org

#medtech Open / Comment

2022-02-14 14:50:35 Here is the summary of the last week's posts:

The New Story of charitable organizations - the charity betting on tech and having a novel operational model
Tell friend from foe - Aigen, a US startup building solar-powered, autonomous robots that use computer vision to tell weeds from plants
Selfie made 1.5 million kilometers from Earth - The James Webb telescope with a photo of its mirrors

Guys, can you please tell me in the comments what you do for a living?

I'd like to make a poll to get our audience insights and need some options for it.

Have a great week,
TFG

#weeksummary Open / Comment