My Google Map Blog

Tag: Environment

8 Ways Technology Is Improving Your Health

by admin on Apr.04, 2017, under Uncategorized

We hear all the time about how technology is bad for us. Since the introduction of computers, we spend more time sitting at a desk than moving around at work. We have created this sedentary lifestyle that is causing havoc in our overall life.

What if I were to tell you that technology has produced benefits? Would you believe me if I said that technology is good for your health?

Most of you wouldn’t look at first. Well, you may be able to think of a couple of ways that the computer has helped, but you are still stuck on all the negatives that ‘experts’ have shared in the past. The problem with the ‘experts’ is that they are only focused on the negatives. They haven’t looked at so many of the benefits.

So, that’s what we’ll do today. We’ll consider all the ways that technology improves our health. We’ll discuss just how it has boosted results in certain areas of healthcare and what it does for us daily.

Technology Is Everywhere in Medicine

Before we do move onto all the benefits, it’s worth discussing just how technology is used. It is found everywhere in medicine. Think about the x-ray machines, MRI scanners, and even the research equipment used daily.

There are people using it every day of the week to find cures to ailments, discover why diseases spread and creating ways to prevent the diseases. There are individuals performing tasks far more accurately than they ever did before, with keyhole surgery now a popular option for some of the most routine medical needs.

And the technology isn’t just in the hospital. It’s used in your own doctor’s office and even at home. It’s used to prolong life and create a better quality of life for those on around the clock care.

The improvements don’t just lead to better physical health. They support better mental health, which in turn improves the physical health. Technology improves connections and relationships, offering support to everyone.

We can’t get rid of technology. If we did, we would suffer greatly. Here are just eight ways that technology is improving our health and our lives.

It Pushes Us to Do More Activity
Sure, technology has led to us sitting more. And sitting is the new smoking when it comes to health problems. However, technology has also helped to push us to do more activity.

We just must take the examples of the Fitbit, pedometers, and apps that track our steps. They all encourage us to meet our daily targets—setting personal targets to get us to walk more and meet the goals that we know are realistic to us. While there is the goal to walk at least 10,000 steps a day, that just doesn’t seem realistic for many. The pedometers and smartphone apps give us more control.

The chances are that as we get closer to a goal, we’re going to work harder to achieve it. We see how we do daily and look for ways to improve the chances of meeting those goals. They don’t mean getting to the gym daily. They just involve getting out and doing more. Some can involve doing home workouts and even walk on the spot to increase our step count.

There isn’t much that we need to do to set up these pieces of technology. Most of them involve some type of phone app or computer software just to sign up and create free accounts. We sync devices, and we get to go off and work our ways to being healthier and fitter.

The devices also come with different settings. Some are just designed to count your steps. They’re basic items to get you to do a little more throughout the day. Those who want to increase the amount of exercise they do and track their heart rate will be able to get more advanced options. Some will have exercise modes, count stairs, count calories burned, and even monitor your sleep.

The aim for so many of these new devices isn’t just to improve your activity levels. They are there to improve your overall lifestyle. Devices are set to help you live a healthier and more fulfilling life, helping you monitor your sleep patterns and make sure you drink enough water throughout the day. There’s more to them than just improving one element of your life and making sure your whole body and mind are working together to create a better quality of life.

These apps and devices can also monitor your weight loss efforts. They help you stick within a healthy BMI, so you focus on protecting your heart health. You will feel better for it, knowing that you can keep yourself from accidentally going over regarding calories throughout the day or over a certain weight. Of course, being within a healthy weight range is essential to help keep yourself healthy overall.

These are all personal devices. There’s no major cost for them, with many of them available for less than $200. Some of the apps are completely free to download, so you don’t even need to spend a penny on technology to improve your health.

For full article, please refer to https://www.positivehealthwellness.com/fitness/8-ways-technology-improving-health/

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Could a conman get false information into Google Maps or Google Earth?

by Timothy Whitehead on Sep.08, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

We recently got a query by a reader asking whether or not it is possible for a conman to put a fake address into Google Earth. The short answer is yes.

Google gets its information from a large number of sources. The Earth is a very big place, so the amount of data involved is simply staggering. Errors, of course, do exist. These come in many forms, such as an island that didn’t exist, or the time that Google lost a city in Florida. When Google once removed the name “Persian Gulf”, Iran threatened to sue because the name is a very sensitive issue in the region.

Borders are often a contentious issue. It may be simply a case of borders being in the wrong place due to errors in the data supplied to Google, or border disputes, where two countries disagree about where their shared border is. Google method for the latter is to share data based on international mapping standards data – which they illustrate by showing disputed borders in red, or showing different borders depending on which country you are using the product from. Also, when new countries are formed, it may take Google (and all other mapping companies) a little while to update their maps.

One of Google’s sources of information is the general public via three main routes: the ‘report a problem’ feature in Google maps, the more sophisticated Google Mapmaker that Google released in 2008, and Google My Business (formerly Google Places). The last one is primarily for business address listings, whereas the first two deal with more general mapping information.
The processes for changing mapping data have a number of verification systems in place. However, since it is often impossible to verify the validity of all updates. Google mapmaker works on a system of reputation whereby your edits require less verification as you gain reputation. Google My Business encourages you to verify your address or phone number. None of the systems are totally fool proof, but the same system can be used to correct inaccurate data that works its way into the system.

map of fake street
An example of information that really shouldn’t have been allowed into Google Maps.

map of conman road
This appears to be a genuine road.

So why would people want to put false information into Google Maps? Here is a story of a restaurant which closed down because, the owner claims, its listing on Google Maps showed that they were closed on what were formerly its most popular days. His lawyer thinks that a competing restaurant sabotaged the listing. Earlier this year Bryan Seely went public, saying that he used to do ‘map jacking’ for profit but decided to go public in the hopes of getting a job at Google. As a publicity stunt, he managed to intercept calls to the FBI and Secret service by placing false contact information for them on Google Maps.

It is important to keep in mind that, for example, in the vacation rentals business where scams are quite common, the information in Google Maps may be correct, but when you arrive at your destination and knock on the door, you could discover that the person you wired your down-payment to does not own the property. No one wants that kind of thing to happen.

map of imaginary road
Imaginary road really exists!

Google Maps and Google Earth mapping data should always be treated like Wikipedia: an extremely useful resource, but not guaranteed to be correct.

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Using Google Earth and goats to combat wildfires.

by Timothy Whitehead on Aug.26, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

We have brought you many stories in the past involving Google Earth and wildfire. For example, stories about people and organizations using Google Earth to monitor wildfires in progress, coordinate rescue operations, map global fire data and simulate forest fires.

But, prevention is better than cure, so to take it a step further, here is a story about how Shea Broussard and business partner Tony Shafer created FlameMapper.

goat mapper website

Using historical data of fire paths, they map out the ideal places to graze the goats so as to stop wildfires from spreading. They use the Google Earth plugin to display the map on their website and use GPS and the map to decide where to place electric fencing which is moved around to control where the goats graze. The electric fencing also helps to keep mountain lions from eating the goats, but despite this they have lost 5 goats to a local mountain lion over the last 2 years.

where the heard is
The site also shows the current location of the goats. They do not track the mountain lions….

Has it worked? According to Shane:

We have yet to have a big wildfire come through the community. We are about 2 years overdue for a wildfire when you look at the fire history.”

Carefully planned grazing is not the only thing they are doing to prevent fire, they are also planting lots of Oak trees.
Shane:

We are currently growing 12,000 Oak trees with the Los Angeles County Fire Department Forest Division. Oak trees simply reduce fire intensity. Reduced fire intensity can save lives.”

For more, watch this YouTube video by Smile TV or read this story

My sister is a farmer in Livingstone, Zambia, and she too uses goats for creating fire breaks. She doesn’t have anything as sophisticated as FlameMapper, but does use Google Earth and GPS for planning where to put the fire breaks.

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Google Earth instrumental in discovery of new chameleon species

by Timothy Whitehead on Aug.19, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

Back in 2005 Julian Bayliss, a biologist at London’s Kew Gardens, discovered a brand new rainforest that had previously never been studied — and he found it using Google Earth. We told you about it in May this year, and you can watch a short video about the discovery below.

Since then, many new species have been discovered at the location, known as Mozambique’s ‘sky islands’, including a snake, a butterfly, and most recently, the recent discovery of four new pygmy chameleon species.

Rhampholeon nebulauctor. Credit: Julian Bayliss.
Rhampholeon nebulauctor. Credit: Julian Bayliss.

Rhampholeon tilburyi. Credit: Krystal A. Tolley.
Rhampholeon tilburyi. Credit: Krystal A. Tolley.

Rampholeon Maspictus. Credit: William R. Branch.
Rampholeon Maspictus. Credit: William R. Branch.

Rhampholeon Bruessoworum. Credit: Julian Bayliss.
Rhampholeon Bruessoworum. Credit: Julian Bayliss.

Find the full story on Fauna & Flora International.

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Geology in Google Earth

by Mickey Mellen on Aug.12, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

We’ve shown you a lot from George at MyReadingMapped over the years, and he’s back with another one. This project is called the “Google Map of Geology”, and George describes it as follows:

My latest project is a Google Map of Geology which matches up examples of faults, eskers, monadnocks, folds, fabric, depressions, roof pendants, rift valley, kettles, hoodoos, and the like, that can be seen in Google Map and Google Earth with their geologic terminology. I was surprised to discover that much of the details like stratum, joints, lava field fissures, dykes, talus, etc. can actually be seen in a satellite image and that a specific rock the size of a tor can be plotted.

geology

It’s an amazingly detailed map that George has clearly put a lot of time into. Check it out for yourself on his website, or you can grab this KML file to view it directly in Google Earth.

Nice work, George!

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Using Google Earth to track environmental impact

by Mickey Mellen on Aug.08, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

We have discussed the amazing work that Google Earth Outreach does quite a few times on here, and they continue to assist with amazing projects around the world.

They recently released a video that showcases some of the work that they’ve done with nonprofit organizations in Canada. Check it out:

The organizations involved in this include:

  • “Caribou Migration,” by Golder Associates Ltd & Hugh Stimson
  • “I Am Fish,” by the David Suzuki Foundation
  • “Canada’s Boreal, the World’s Largest Intact Forest,” by Pew Environment Group
  • “Voices on the Land,” by Okanagan Nation Alliance, Gregory Kehm Associates & Ecotrust Canada
  • “Oil & Water Map,” by the Living Oceans Society
  • “Natural Capital,” by the David Suzuki Foundation

For more, check out the official Google Earth Outreach website.

(via +Google for Nonprofits)

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Exploring the possibilities of a new dam using Google Earth

by Mickey Mellen on Aug.07, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

In British Columbia there is a proposal to build a new dam at “Site C” to help generate affordable clean energy to the region. It sounds like a wonderful idea, but with any project of this size there are certainly downsides to consider as well. In particular, according to this report(PDF):

The District of Hudson’s Hope, a community of 1,100 people in the heart of the Peace River Valley, will be impacted more than any other municipality by the proposed Site C dam.

site c screenshot

The video below explores the project, hears from involved parties, and makes great use of Google Earth to add context to the area and some rough looks at what the result of the dam would look like.

Details on the project can be found at hudsonshope.ca, though their short-term focus (understandably) has shifted to wildfires in the area. You can also view this PDF or this article on Common Sense Canadian to learn more.

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Mapping the Ebola outbreak in Google Earth

by Mickey Mellen on Aug.05, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

A few months ago we showed you some great maps that showed the spread of Ebola and MERS, but given the continued spread of Ebola we felt it’d be a good time to dig into them again.

George at MyReadingMapped has continued to update his Ebola map, showing the increasing spread of the virus. You can view his map in Google Earth by loading this KML file.

ebola in Google Earth

Additional Ebola-related maps can be found via this post on Google Maps Mania. Keir has found a few interesting maps around the web, including this one from Channel4.com and this one Al Jazeera.

If you find any other useful maps, please leave a comment and let us know.

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Using Street View cars to check for gas leaks

by Mickey Mellen on Jul.30, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

Most of you have heard about Google’s issues with Street View card and wi-fi sniffing. Regardless your thoughts on that, you’re bound to appreciate what the cars are now able to sniff: gas leaks.

According to an article by Trevor Mogg on Digital Trends, Google is beginning to test out cars that include methane sensors to check for gas leaks.

From the article:

The initiative turned up “thousands” of leaks from utility pipes beneath the streets, providing officials with data on pollution “that used to be invisible,” EDF’s Fred Krupp wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

Fortunately these leaks don’t pose any immediate threat to safety, and the utilities will monitor and deal with the more serious ones. However, EDF noted that such gas “has a powerful effect on the global climate, packing up to 120 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide.”

Here is an early map that has been generated by this new data:

street view methane sniffing

It’s a great idea, and hopefully it will be added to additional cars over time. There’s seemingly quite a few other pieces of data that could be useful to measure when you have an army of GPS-tracked cars driving around; weather data, road quality, etc. It’ll be interesting to see where this goes in the future.

Be sure to check out the full article on the Digital Trends website.

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Using Google Earth to enhance urban agriculture in Rome

by Mickey Mellen on Jul.29, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA

Urban agriculture can be a great thing, but can be difficult to effectively plan and manage. Flavio Lupia, along with other researchers from the National Institute of Agricultural Economics in Rome have been making great use of digital mapping tools to help research and plan ideal locations around the city.

ge olives

You can read more about their work in this PDF document, which goes into detail about their work, such as:

The current version of the database contains more than 4,000 polygons spread over a total surface of about 35,000 hectares with a total farmed area of 400 hectares. The geodatabase was realized by interpreting the high resolution images of Google Earth for the year 2007 and 2013 allowing further analysis on the temporal evolution of the phenomenon.

Beyond that, here are some additional thoughts from Flavio:

  • Despite in Italy there are some private and governamental bodies producing regularly very high resolution aerophotogrammetric scenes the restriction and policy distribution of the data don’t allow researchers to perform this kind of analysis.
  • Although in Italy, especially during the last year, the concept of open-data is becoming more and more common this is still a theoretical idea since public administrations have releases very few geospatial data.
  • GE allows to perform the photointerpretation process, the digitalization and the multi-temporal analysis with an easy to use single tool.
  • The entire mapping project employed only human resources (researcher for the photointerpretation), no costs for tools and images acquisition and pre-processing thanks to GE.
  • Even if the radiometric and spatial resolution of the GE imagery are lower than those provided by the Italian public bodies, the researchers demonstrated the fitness-for-use of GE for mapping urban agriculture. The images are sufficient to discover cultivated parcels as small as 8 square meters in size and allow to photointerpreters to use all visual element to identify cropping activities (tone, color, texture, pattern, etc.).
  • Since 2011 GSV report the timestamp in the GE status bar. This helped researchers to have a clear idea about the acquisition time during the “virtual field check”. Nonetheless some limitations in the usability of GSV exist: 1.the temporal mismatch between GE imagery used for parcels identification (year 2013) and GSV (2011-2012). 2.the temporal variation among the single images of GSV, in fact scenes acquired in different times are woven together to form a continuous coverage along the streets (in our study area we found GSV images acquired in 2011 and 2012).

It’s an excellent use of Google Earth, and it should help result in great things for the city of Rome.

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