Global Digital Store – Ebooks and Softwares

Tag: Faster

  • Spring-powered shoes could help us run more than 50 per cent faster

    Spring-powered shoes could help us run more than 50 per cent faster

    A spring-powered exoskeleton that minimises the amount of energy our legs lose when running could help boost human running speeds by more than 50 per cent
    Spring-powered shoes could help us run more than 50 per cent faster
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    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2238609-spring-powered-shoes-could-help-us-run-more-than-50-per-cent-faster/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home

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  • This drone can play dodgeball—and win

    This drone can play dodgeball—and win

    Using a novel type of cameras, researchers from the University of Zurich have demonstrated a flying robot that can detect and avoid fast-moving objects. A step towards drones that can fly faster in harsh environments, accomplishing more in less time.

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    https://techxplore.com/news/2020-03-drone-dodgeballand.html

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  • Amazon deforestation looks set to hit a record high in 2020

    Amazon deforestation looks set to hit a record high in 2020

    Deforestation of the Amazon has continued at record levels this year, leading observers to warn the rainforest is disappearing faster than ever before
    Amazon deforestation looks set to hit a record high in 2020
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    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237048-amazon-deforestation-looks-set-to-hit-a-record-high-in-2020/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home

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  • The unmet need for social context in family planning

    The unmet need for social context in family planning

    New evidence on the relationship between sexual health and social context finds a strong association between gender equality, education and family planning

    Twenty-five years ago, two global events – the International Conference on Population and Development and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing – formally recognized that women’s health and reproductive choices cannot be separated from the social context of their lives.

    Now, researchers have created a dataset which brings together national surveys from 74 countries, representing 3 million women. For the first time, it allows them to describe trends in demand/use of modern contraceptives alongside social and economic indicators.

    The data is published in The Lancet Global Health and is authored by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization.

    It shows that, over time, women are more likely to have their demand for modern contraception met in countries where gender equality and their educational opportunities improve.

    Gender equality and education increases access to modern contraception

    Trends in sexual activity and demand for use and use of modern contraceptive methods in 74 countries: a retrospective analysis of nationally representative surveys finds that met need for modern contraception is strongly correlated with positive shifts in social structures.
    For every 0.1-point increase in a country’s gender development index, it found a 6.7% rise in women who were sexually active and did not want to conceive. Of those women, an additional 13.5% used modern methods to prevent a pregnancy.

    Expectations of every girl’s right to education also made a difference. Each extra year in schooling is linked to an increase of 2.3% in demand, and a 4.7% increase in use of modern contraceptive methods.

    “This study shows how every woman must negotiate her reproductive autonomy within the social framework in which she lives, responding to barriers and opportunities as they emerge,” says Dr Lale Say, one of the authors of the study and Unit Head at WHO and HRP.

    “Gender equality is both a precondition and a driving force for securing women’s reproductive health and rights – as well as the sustainable development targets, which are our best chance for delivering health and well-being for all.”

    Global trends reveal new challenges in family planning

    Overall, the data reinforce global trends: more time spent sexually-active and single, postponement of parenthood, and the near-universal desire for smaller families.

    The study also highlights where action is needed at country-level to avoid family planning services falling behind demand.

    Out of the 74 countries analyzed, 42 showed an increase in demand for contraception. Only 37 countries show an increase in use of a modern method to prevent pregnancy.

    Although unmet need for contraception declined in 34 countries, it increased in 14 countries. Significantly more progress is needed, and faster, to ensure each girl and woman is able to access the sexual and reproductive health services she needs.

    Barriers and solutions to reproductive health and rights

    Gender equality can affect contraceptive use in many ways. From the personal and political degree to which women are free to choose their sexual activity, to accessing family planning services it can also shape any power imbalances within personal relationships. This study supports recent efforts by WHO to adopt a broader, integrated concept of sexual and reproductive health – and to translate it into a framework for policy and practice.

    The authors argue that family planning targets in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development will not be met without a profound shift: from focus on ‘access to contraception’, to broader aspects of sexual health and social context.

    Since reproductive health and women’s empowerment are intertwined, trends in contraceptive use can also reveal progress towards another global target: progress towards gender equality.

     

    The unmet need for social context in family planning
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    https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/10-03-2020-the-unmet-need-for-social-context-in-family-planning

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  • Enabling battery-powered silicon chips to work faster and longer

    Enabling battery-powered silicon chips to work faster and longer

    A team of researchers from NUS have invented a novel class of reconfiguration techniques that adaptively extends both the minimum power consumption and the maximum performance of digital circuits, well beyond common voltage scaling. Such extended adaptation allows digital silicon chips to operate at lower power during normal use, and at higher performance level when necessary.

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  • Discovery of accurate and far more efficient algorithm for point set registration problems

    Discovery of accurate and far more efficient algorithm for point set registration problems

    A point set registration problem is a task using two shapes, each consisting of a set of points, to estimate the relationship of individual points between the two shapes. Here, a “shape” is like a human body or face, which is similar to another body or face but exhibits morphological diversity. Taking the face as an example: the center position of the pupil of an eye varies depending on individuals but can be thought to have a correspondence with that of another person. Such a correspondence can be estimated by gradually deforming one shape to be superimposable on the other. Estimation of the correspondence of a point on one shape to a point on another is the point set registration problem. Since the number of points of one shape could be millions, estimation of correspondence is calculated by a computer. Nonetheless, up to now, even when the fastest conventional method was used, it took a lot of time for calculation for registration of ca. 100,000 points. Thus, algorithms that could find a solution far faster without affecting accuracy have been sought. Furthermore, preliminary registration before automated estimation was a prerequisite for the conventional calculation method, so algorithms that do not need preliminary registration are desirable.

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  • Fighting hand tremors: First comes AI, then robots

    Fighting hand tremors: First comes AI, then robots

    Robots hold promise for a large number of people with neurological movement disorders severely affecting the quality of their lives. Now researchers have tapped artificial intelligence techniques to build an algorithmic model that will make the robots more accurate, faster, and safer when battling hand tremors.

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  • Integrating electronics onto physical prototypes

    Integrating electronics onto physical prototypes

    MIT researchers have invented a way to integrate “breadboards”—flat platforms widely used for electronics prototyping—directly onto physical products. The aim is to provide a faster, easier way to test circuit functions and user interactions with products such as smart devices and flexible electronics.

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  • Father, son bond over engineering a record-smashing roadster

    Father, son bond over engineering a record-smashing roadster

    Sandia National Laboratories manager Joel Wirth, a mechanical engineer by training, studied a problem with his car. The weight was too far back, making the car fishtail whenever he drove it faster than 200 mph.

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