Moovit Powers Public-Transport Independence For The Blind

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January 12, 2022

After a partnership with transit app Moovit, visually impaired users of the WeWALK smart cane will be able to identify and navigate to bus stops and train stations, access real-time arrival information, and get live step-by-step guidance for the entire journey. (Courtesy of WeWALK and Moovit)

By Abigail Klein Leichman

Moovit, the world’s No. 1 mobility app, has begun a partnership with WeWALK enabling blind and partially sighted users to navigate public transportation independently.

Introduced in 2012 and acquired by Intel in 2021, the Israeli-developed Moovit app is used by more than one billion users in 3,400 cities across 112 countries in 45 languages. WeWALK is a UK startup that developed an award-winning smart cane for visually impaired people.

Moovit’s technology allows WeWALK users to identify and navigate to the correct bus stops and train stations; access real-time arrival information; get live step-by-step guidance for the entire journey; receive audio and text Get Off Alerts; and obtain service alerts regarding changes and disruptions on their route.

“This is a really important partnership for us, as it aligns perfectly with our mission to simplify urban mobility for everyone and make it more efficient and sustainable,” says Luke Redfern, Moovit’s UK and Ireland partnership manager.

“We were introduced to WeWALK earlier this year and it was clear we had a shared vision to make sure no one is left behind,” Redfern tells ISRAEL21c.

According to the World Health Organization, there are about 253 million visually impaired people worldwide, many of whom use a white cane.

While the standard white cane helps users avoid obstacles at ground level, it can’t help them navigate higher obstacles and it certainly can’t assist in finding the correct bus or subway station or planning the journey.

**Using a WeWALK cane on the street. (Courtesy of WeWALK and Moovit)**

This means many people with visual impairment simply don’t use public transportation, making them dependent on others to get where they need to go.

In fact, says Redfern, Moovit did a case study a couple of years ago in Toronto that revealed many of those in the disabled community had stopped using public transport because of a change to the system. In cooperation with a nonprofit organization, Moovit produced a white label application to solve this problem.

But the partnership with WeWALK reaches all Moovit users everywhere.

“WeWALK created a smart box that attaches to the white cane and shares sensory information from waist high and above through ultrasonic sensors and a vibrating handle,” says Redfern. It also has a voice assistant.

“We added to that, at no cost, a transport API which enables WeWALK app users to navigate to bus stops and get real-time information about when the train or tram is arriving, in addition to step by step guidance to get off at the right stop.”

A Bluetooth connection to the cane provides extremely granular information. For instance, the voice assistant may instruct the WeWALK user to “walk 100 meters in the 3 o’clock direction.”

**A WeWALK user on a subway train. (Courtesy of WeWALK and Moovit)**

Redfern notes that Moovit is constantly enhancing its own application and already offers features designed for people with vision impairment, color blindness, hand-motor impairment and mobility challenges.

A wheelchair user can find out if a particular bus has adequate space for the chair, for example.

Mobility is a basic human right

“We believe mobility is a basic human right,” says Redfern.

“We’ve spent the past 10 years investing heavily in making mobility available to everyone. So it makes total sense for us to work with WeWALK to enhance services to those in the disabled community, ultimately providing greater access to opportunities for employment, education and social activities.”

Jean Marc Feghali, WeWALK’s Head of Research and Development, said WeWALK’s mission of creating life-changing mobility tools is a collaborative process with word-leading partners.

“A prominent example is the delivery of efficient, usable and reliable access to public transport data. The WeWALK team’s lived experience of visual impairment only makes this need more apparent, a solution more critical, and our promise more personal,” Feghali said.

“Moovit’s partnership with WeWALK is an extraordinary step forward to realizing our mission, and our promise, of uncompromised visually impaired mobility.”

Next summer, Moovit and Mobileye — both Israel-based companies acquired by Intel — will launch MoovitAV, a six-passenger, road-ready electric autonomous vehicle (AV) for commercial driverless ride-hailing services in Tel Aviv and Munich.

Produced in association with ISRAEL21c.

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The Importance Of Businesses Communicating Success

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Birmingham Times

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January 12, 2022

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Peraton's new headquarters in Reston, VA. (Photo courtesy of Peraton)

By Dustin Siggins

When Peraton secretly began plans to buy a piece of Northrup Grumman and another rival firm for $10.5 billion, Peraton Chief Communications & Engagement Officer Matt McQueen knew he had a problem.

Once it became public, the deal would be hailed as one of D.C. defense contracting world’s largest tie-up in years – and the regulators, workers, investors and media would be surprised, skeptical and fault-finding. The trick, McQueen knew, would be to get each them onboard before the deal was announced. But how?

Here’s in an inside look on how Peraton and McQueen did the nearly impossible. McQueen thinks his blueprint could be useful to other companies undergoing pivotal changes amid a sea of stakeholders who hate sudden shocks. He spoke exclusively to Zenger.

“When Peraton made our acquisitions, the entire communications team — from marketing to PR to employee engagement — sprinted for six months,” McQueen told Zenger. “Our current and prospective customers, employees, and influencers needed to know that the larger and more complex Peraton was stronger than ever.”

Peraton, which is based the Washington, D.C., suburb of Herndon, Virginia, ended 2020 with $1 billion in annual sales. After acquiring government services firm Perspecta and several business segments from competitor Northrop Grumman in the first half of the year, the company is on track for annual revenues of $7 billion and industry-leading margins.

It was up to McQueen to develop and implement a strategy to show key stakeholders that the company was ready to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in weekly revenues and hire thousands of people per year to handle those new contracts. He cited publicly available information that the purchases gave Peraton a business backlog of $24.4 billion and a multi-year qualified pipeline in excess of $200 billion.

**Matt McQueen is Chief Communications & Engagement Officer for Peraton. (Photo courtesy of Peraton)**

“We had to inform three very diverse audiences that critical integration, growth, financial, and other information was provided in the right way to the right stakeholders through the right mediums,” McQueen said. “We couldn’t reassure government customers that the new Peraton could take care of current and future contracts while ignoring the 20,000 employees who do the actual work. But we couldn’t ignore public-facing branding because that would leave lots of people – staff, customers, investors, and lenders – missing out on a lot of important information.”

Here’s how McQueen’s team helped Peraton communicate to each of its target markets.

Current & prospective customers

Topline message: Show current customers that Peraton’s acquisitions would not interrupt current work, would provide more offerings in the future, and introduce prospective customers to Peraton’s new brand.

Tactics

Support Peraton employees who work with government stakeholders who needed to know how and when to make critical changes to paperwork, accounting transactions and other matters.
Engage government customers and influencers through targeted sponsorships, trade show appearances, and ads on subways and in two of the Washington, D.C. region’s three airports.
Create digital marketing assets for Peraton’s business development team to communicate to current and prospective customers.

Staff and prospective staff

Topline message: Show current and prospective staff that they have a pride of place at Peraton through the unique value they add to the company’s mission. Prove to both audiences that they will make a material impact on the government’s critical missions.

Tactics

Launch an internal integration hub and comprehensive weekly newsletter to keep staff up-to-date on where the acquisitions stood, where staff stood on jobs and benefits, and how staff roles were changing.
Coordinate with Peraton’s talent acquisition team to fill the employee pipeline with the right future staff. Peraton currently has about 2,000 open jobs, and plans to add thousands of more people each year.
Create trust with staff through virtual town halls where company leadership provided critical information about the acquisitions, and receiving feedback and questions from staff.

“Information and trust roll downhill, and leaders need to nip the rumor mill and staff anxiety during g acquisitions,” said Government Marketing University executive vice-president and co-founder Stephanie Geiger, who declined to specifically comment on Peraton’s acquisitions. “People speculate when a lack of information leads to uncertainty, and this causes problems such as reduced productivity and unnecessary staff departures. Companies with successful acquisition communications seek to maintain employee trust in the organization, earn staff buy-in to the bigger picture, and focus staff on driving the business forward.”

Industry influencers

Topline message: Saturate staff and customers with on-brand messages through industry influencers, including those in the press.

Tactics

Insights on Peraton’s future were shared with industry press through targeted press releases and interviews with company spokespeople.
Widespread advertising took place in industry press outlets, at industry events and in the region’s major travel centers – the Metro system, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and Dulles International Airport.
Thought leadership through white papers, industry panels and conference presentations showed the continuity of Peraton’s industry leadership, which was then propagated by industry influencers and press to all relevant stakeholders.

**Peraton is the nation’s largest mission capability integrator and supports customers across the globe, including those in Annapolis Junction, MD (depicted here). (Photo courtesy of Peraton)**

The effect of effective communications

McQueen and the rest of the Peraton communications team did it so well that one of the industry’s top influencers — Washington Technology podcast host and senior staff writer Ross Wilkers — praised them to Zenger.

“Peraton has set itself up to chase what was once considered the absolute ceiling for service and intellectual consulting contractors — $10 billion in annual sales,” said Wilkers. “I reported on their acquisitions because they fit the definition of news that moves the market. However, it wasn’t just that they expanded services and increased revenue seven-fold in less than a year — they created brand positioning as a leading IT provider to the entire federal government, putting themselves on par with the larger firms in their space who are traditionally viewed as industry leaders.”

What’s next for McQueen, who is also on boards for George Mason University’s Honors College and the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce? He told Zenger that he and his team are ready for whatever comes next, but “catching up with our families, friends and couches first wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

Edited by Matthew B. Hall and Bryan Wilkes

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Birmingham Likely to Host USFL’s Entire New Season Beginning in April

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Birmingham Times

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January 12, 2022

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By Ryan Michaels

The Birmingham Times

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Rep. Terri Sewell, With President Biden in Atlanta, to Defend the Right to Vote

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Birmingham Times

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January 12, 2022

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The Birmingham Times

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‘After He Put the Ring on My Finger . . . We Kissed. It Was the Perfect New Year’

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Birmingham Times

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January 12, 2022

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BY JE’DON HOLLOWAY-TALLEY

Special to the Birmingham Times

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Gas Prices Just Keep Going Higher And Higher

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Birmingham Times

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January 11, 2022

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The pain at the pump continues, with gasoline prices continuing to jump higher, particularly in California. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

By Daniel James Graeber

Demand for motor fuels in the U.S. economy does not warrant the current price at the pump, though analysts told Zenger they do expect these elevated prices to continue for most of the year.

Travel club AAA listed a national average retail price of $3.30 for a gallon of regular unleaded on Tuesday, unchanged from a month ago. While California’s state average of $4.65 per gallon distorts the picture, retail gasoline prices nevertheless remain at multiyear years.

Patricia Hemsworth, a senior vice president at Paragon Markets, said the elevated price at the pump does not match up with current demand for gasoline.

“Consumption is looking dismal now on the retail side,” she said.

Hemsworth said the U.S. market appetite is in a bit of a post-holiday slump, with gasoline imports from Europe to the East Coast on the decline. The price of crude oil, however, is keeping prices at the pump elevated.

The U.S. Energy Department explains that crude oil prices account for the bulk of what consumers see at the pump and those prices continue to march higher. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark for the price of oil, was trading above $81 per barrel on Tuesday and is up more than 7.5 percent over the few short trading days of 2022.

**Crude oil prices account for the bulk of what consumers see at the pump. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)**

Crude oil prices are edging higher on the back of security risks in Libya and Kazakhstan, both rich in oil reserves.

“The unrest overseas is giving the market enough pressure that oil isn’t really likely to respond to our sluggish consumption — for now — but that may change,” added Patrick DeHaan, the senior analyst at GasBuddy.

At home, higher prices caught the attention of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which said that runaway inflation could jeopardize recovery in employment. The cost of all consumers goods had increased by nearly 7 percent over the 12-month period ending in November, but it’s closer to 60 percent for energy goods.

**The U.S. government continues to forecast retail gasoline prices eclipsing recent highs. (U.S. Energy Information Administration)**

Attention, however, does little to arrest the sharp rise in commodity prices. Tom Kloza, the president of the Oil Price Information Service, said that even he’s surprised by current price levels given what seems to be lackluster demand. That said, prices are on pace to get even higher.

“A typical autumn-to-late spring rally points to RBOB prices in the $2.75–$2.97 per gallon range, which would equate to more than $4 per gallon for much of the country,” he said.

RBOB stands for reformulated blendstock for oxygenate blending and is considered a reflection of gasoline prices at the wholesale, not the retail, level.

The federal government said Tuesday, meanwhile, that it is expected the national average to hit $3.06 per gallon for 2022, 4 cents higher than last year’s average and 88 cents higher than the average for 2020.

Edited by Bryan Wilkes and Kristen Butler

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The Answer To Parkinson’s And Alzheimer’s Is All In Your Eyes

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Birmingham Times

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January 11, 2022

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Neuralight product manager Tali Band making a presentation. (Courtesy of Neuralight)

By Brian Blum

“Look into my eyes. What do you see?” the man says to his wife.

“I see Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and MS,” she replies.

Not the most romantic interchange.

But imagine if gazing into someone’s eyes were the key to diagnosing neurological disorders, which are the world’s leading cause of disability and cost some $800 billion a year in direct treatment expenses.

The correlations between “oculometrics” (the biometric measurement of the movement and condition of the eyes) and neurological conditions is a much-researched area of study, with over 750 papers published in journals such as The Lancet, Nature and Neurology.

Developing a technology that can decode the data from the eyes has proven to be challenging, however. No one has successfully made strides toward commercializing an oculometric approach.

Until now.

In October 2021, Tel Aviv and Austin, Texas-based startup Neuralight launched out of stealth with a $5.5 million seed investment and a goal of digitizing and even automating neurological evaluation and care.

You can only improve what you can measure

Neurological exams have traditionally relied on a subjective, manual assessment of symptoms.

Neuralight CEO Micah Breakstone. (Courtesy of Neuralight)

“The physician will ask 50 questions, like how hard is it to button your shirt? Or the doctor asks the patient to walk across the room so they can assess their gait,” explains Neuralight CEO Micah Breakstone.

The lack of objective criteria has prevented pharmaceutical companies from developing effective drugs. Breakstone notes that for dementia, studies have shown that two physicians looking at the same patient on the same day could have a 35 percent variable in diagnosis.

“We need a statistically significant result,” Breakstone says.

Neuralight’s technology is not a cure or a treatment for neurological disease.

Rather, the platform is meant mainly to accelerate pharmaceutical development, with an initial focus on Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis.

The platform automatically extracts microscopic eye movement measurements that serve as “digital endpoints” for neurological disorders.

A physician will record a short, five-minute video of a patient’s eyes. Neuralight’s imaging tools clean up the video, then artificial intelligence and machine learning get to work at deciphering what’s behind the eye movements.

Once Neuralight has extracted ocular metrics on a patient, it plans to sell the data to pharma companies. As Breakstone tells ISRAEL21c, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

Neuralight CIO Rivka Kreitman. (Courtesy of Neuralight)

“Digital endpoints are the future of neurology,” adds Rivka Kreitman, the company’s chief innovation officer and the former head of global innovative research and development at Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva.

“This technology has been the missing piece pharma has needed to make drug development for neurological diseases effective and ultimately more successful.”

Privacy compliant

In Breakstone’s ideal world, all the data extracted from videos by Neuralight would be processed on the Neuralight cloud, which he says is HIPAA compliant with all data de-identified (“We don’t need to see a patient’s face, only his or her eyes”).

Some organizations do want to keep the data in-house for privacy reasons; in those cases, Neuralight brings its own server.

Neuralight does not require eye-trackers, making the process simpler for patients because they don’t have to sit still for a relatively long period of time.

Neuralight Head of Engineering Vova Anisimov. (Courtesy of Neuralight)

Instead, a simple iPhone or even Zoom recording is fine. A Neuralight video recording takes 10 minutes vs. 40 minutes when working with an eye-tracker.

Neuralight’s AI “amplifies and augments standard video resolution so you can glean from standard video signals what you could traditionally do only with professional lab equipment,” Breakstone explains.

He likens the resolution to how satellites in space can make out the numbers on a car’s license plate using a similar kind of “super-resolution.”

Neuralight analyzes close to 100 parameters, including blinking rate, how quickly the patient can fix on a specific object, and the speed of pupil dilation (the latter is highly correlated with Parkinson’s).

Digital biomarkers

Neuralight CTO and cofounder Edmund Benami. (Courtesy of Neuralight)

Breakstone cofounded Neuralight with CTO Edmund Benami after Breakstone sold his previous startup, Chorus.ai, to ZoomInfo for $575 million.

“I could have retired, but that would have been a little empty,” he says. His grandfather suffered from Alzheimer’s, and that led Breakstone to want “to do something to make the world a better place, something I deeply believed in,” he tells ISRAEL21c.

“Digital biomarkers are very much in vogue,” he says, and investors agreed.

Initial funding for Neuralight came from VSC Ventures, Operator Partners, Clover Health CEO Vivek Garipalli and Noam Solomon, the CEO of Immunai.

While most of the 19-person team is in Israel, where R&D is based, Breakstone relocated to Austin to build up the company’s connections in the United States.

Neuralight has a working MVP (tech speak for “minimum viable product”) and Breakstone hopes to receive initial FDA clearance by the end of 2022 with the first commercial contracts signed in 2023.

Clinical trials are due to kick off in the next few months. Neuralight is in conversations with three large pharma companies.

Although neurotechnology is a booming industry, Breakstone says most of Neuralight’s competition “is doing things with devices, not with the eyes.” Boston-based Beacon Biosignals, for example, uses EEG data to create biomarkers for neurological disorders, which he says “will be harder to be adopted as a universal solution.”

Fortunately for the billion people suffering from neurological disorders, Breakstone feels that Neuralight is “on an urgent mission. We are building a value-driven company.”

For more on Neuralight, click here.

Produced in association with ISRAEL21c.

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Bowled Over: Goldfish Trained To Drive Their Mobile Tank

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Birmingham Times

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January 11, 2022

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In a recent experiment, six goldfish operated their own vehicle, proving that they were able to navigate even on land. (Ben-Gurion University)

By Diana Bletter

Everyone knows that fish can swim, but researchers at Ben-Gurion University have just discovered that fish can also drive.

In a recent experiment, six goldfish operated their own vehicle, proving that they were able to navigate even on land.

In a study published recently in the journal Behavioural Brain Research, the scientists described how they tested the navigational skills of the fish.

To determine whether these skills are dependent on being in water, the researchers built a robotic fish tank on wheels with a camera system that recorded and translated the fish’s movements.

The goldfish were able to control the vehicle by their movements, giving directions such as forward, backwards and side to side.

The scientists placed a visible target on the wall on the opposite side of the laboratory. The scientists then trained six fish, in their special wheeled tank, to reach the target.

After the training, which took several days, the scientists then placed obstacles and false targets in their way. Even when the fish bumped into a wall or hit the obstacles, they were able to change directions and drive their vehicle successfully to the target.

The study was conducted by Shachar Givon, a PhD student in the university’s life sciences department, and Matan Samina, a master’s student in biomedical engineering under the supervision of professors Ohad Ben Shahar and Ronen Segev.

The study, said Givon, suggests that a fish’s navigational skills are not dependent on its natural environment but is a basic ability.

The researchers also found that goldfish have “a cognitive ability to learn a complex task in an environment completely different from the one they evolved in,” Givon said.

The fish might not have use for a driver’s license, but they needed some training.

“Anyone who has tried to learn how to ride a bike or to drive a car knows, it is challenging at first,” Givon said.

Produced in association with ISRAEL21c.

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A Tall Story: Medieval Warhorses Were No Bigger Than Modern Ponies, Study Says

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Birmingham Times

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January 11, 2022

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Katherine Kanne examines a horse jawbone for a study on the size of destriers, or medieval warhorses. (University of Exeter)

By Martin M Barillas

Despite Hollywood’s depictions of armored knights astride stalwart, massive steeds, new evidence suggests that their mounts were actually much smaller than previously thought.

Medieval European horses, when knights were bold and tanks had not yet been invented, were less than 14.2 hands high, or about 4 feet 8 inches tall, where one hand amounts to 4 inches. By contrast, an average thoroughbred horse is about 16 hands, or 5 feet 4 inches high.

While movies frequently depict warhorses of 17 to 18 hands, medieval horses reaching 15 or 16 hands were quite rare even during the 13th and 14th centuries, when Europe’s royal stud network was at its height. A horse the size of a Shire or Clydesdale (17 to 18 hands) would have been considered by people of the Middle Ages to be very big indeed.

**Katherine Kanne of the University of Exeter measures horse bones found at Goltho, Lincolnshire, England, using calipers. (University of Exeter)**

European nobles spent large sums of money and took great care to breed, train and maintain the “Great Horse” used in combat. Having a horse and armor was what distinguished French chevaliers and Spanish caballeros (horsemen), for example, from mere peasants who went on foot. Horses were needed in warfare to break through ranks of infantry in the same way that tanks are used today.

The horse breeding tradition lives on at Sandringham, Norfolk, England, 100 miles north of London, where Queen Elizabeth II raises racing horses. But the oldest stud farm of all is at Einsiedeln Abbey, south of Zurich, in Switzerland, where Benedictine monks have been raising the Einsiedeler breed since A.D. 1064.

In a new study, archeologists and other experts aimed to determine the characteristics of the destriers, or warhorses, that medieval horse breeders were seeking to suit a wide range of functions, such as jousting tournaments and long campaigns.

**Katerine Kanne measures a horse leg bone, using calipers. The bone was found at Goltho, Lincolnshire, England. (University of Exeter)**

The study, published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, noted that the breeding and training of warhorses involved not only biological and cultural factors but also the temperament of the individual horses. The researchers examined the largest available dataset of English horse bones, dating from A.D. 300 to 1650 and found at 171 distinct archeological sites.

“High medieval destriers may have been relatively large for the time period but were clearly still much smaller than we might expect for equivalent functions today. Selection and breeding practices in the royal studs may have focused as much on temperament and the correct physical characteristics for warfare as they did on raw size,” said study co-author Alan Outram of the University of Exeter.

“Neither size nor limb bone robusticity alone are enough to confidently identify warhorses in the archeological record,” said study co-author Helene Benkert, also of the University of Exeter. “Historic records don’t give the specific criteria which defined a warhorse; it is much more likely that throughout the medieval period, at different times, different conformations of horses were desirable in response to changing battlefield tactics and cultural preferences.”

**Katherine Kanne measures the end of the humerus bone of a medieval horse, using a pair of calipers. (University of Exeter)**

Experts found the tallest Norman horse, estimated to be approximately 15 hands, or 5 feet high, at Trowbridge Castle in Wiltshire, southwest England. The horse was similar in height to small modern light riding horses. Horses reaching 16 hands first emerged during the High Medieval age from A.D. 1200 to 1350.

It was not until the post-medieval period (1500 to 1650) that horses’ average height grew, approaching the size of modern draft horse breeds, such as the Shire and Clydesdale, and the warm-blooded Hanoverian, Holsteiner, Oldenburg and Trakehner, which are bred for sports such as dressage and jumping.

“The warhorse is central to our understanding of medieval English society and culture as both a symbol of status closely associated with the development of aristocratic identity and as a weapon of war famed for its mobility and shock value, changing the face of battle,” said co-author Oliver Creighton, who led the research.

Edited by Siân Speakman and Kristen Butler