Technology

When Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) released a prototype sensor for allowing smartphones to smell, it didn't merely replicate what a human nose can do. Once deployed, the phone will be able to detect aromas far more precisely than human noses. What is the enterprise IT potential here Quite a bit.

Let's start with a few dangers. When employees smell smoke, electrical burning or a gas leak, companies lose valuable time trying to find the source, especially if the smell is coming from behind a wall. That's mostly because human noses are fine — to varying degrees, changing from person to person — at detecting smells, but the nose can quickly become accustomed to the smell. A smell-equipped phone, however, could indicate that the smell's concentration at this instant is x parts per million and that theconcentration increases when moving north and decreases when moving south. That alone could potentially save lives.

A kind of sanity returned to Windows' status in May as the outgoing Windows 7 finally dropped some significant user share while Windows 10 padded its tally.

According to U.S.-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 7 sloughed off 1.8 percentage points last month, accounting for 41.8% of the user share of all personal computers and 47.3% of all those running Windows in May. (The second number is larger than the first because Windows powered 88.4% of all PCs, not 100%.)

May's decline was the largest in nearly two years, excepting a late-2017 reset when Net Applications purged its data of criminal bot traffic.

The change from past months was dramatic: In both March and April, Windows 7 gained ground, exactly the opposite of what Microsoft wants to see as it pushes customers to adopt Windows 10 and rid themselves of the older Windows 7.

The images that appear on social media & happy people eating, cultural happenings, and smiling dogs & can actually predict the likelihood that a neighborhood is &healthy& as well as its level of gentrification.

From the report:

So says a groundbreaking study published in Frontiers in Physics, in which researchers used social media images of cultural events in London and New York City to create a model that can predict neighborhoods where residents enjoy a high level of wellbeing — and even anticipate gentrification by 5 years. With more than half of the worldpopulation living in cities, the model could help policymakers ensure human wellbeing in dense urban settings.

The idea is based on the concept of &cultural capital& & the more there is, the better the neighborhood becomes. For example, if there are many pictures of fun events in a certain spot you can expect a higher level of well-being in that areadenizens. The research also suggests that investing in arts and culture will actively improve a neighborhood.

&Culture has many benefits to an individual: it opens our minds to new emotional experiences and enriches our lives,& said Dr. Daniele Quercia. &We&ve known for decades that this ‘cultural capital& plays a huge role in a personsuccess. Our new model shows the same correlation for neighborhoods and cities, with those neighborhoods experiencing the greatest growth having high cultural capital. So, for every city or school district debating whether to invest in arts programs or technology centers, the answer should be a resounding ‘Yes!'&

The Cambridge-based team looked at &millions of Flickr images& taken at cultural events in New York and London and overlaid them on maps of these cities. The findings, as we can imagine, were obvious.

&We were able to see that the presence of culture is directly tied to the growth of certain neighborhoods, rising home values and median income. Our model can even predict gentrification within five years,& said Quercia. &This could help city planners and councils think through interventions to prevent people from being displaced as a result of gentrification.&

The team expects to be able to assess the health of citizens using the same method, overlaying pictures of food on maps in order to find food deserts and spots where cafes and croissants are on the rise. Just imagine: all those Instagrammed photos of your favorite sandwiches will some day help researchers build happier cities.