Two ex-Tesla Motors employees have launched a green ride-sharing taxi service, called Drivr Green Personal Transportation, which uses Tesla Model S electric sedans rather than gasoline vehicles
Amid growing popularity of Uber and Lyft, a new ride-sharing service that only uses electric vehicles has emerged in Cincinnati, Ohio. The service is known as “Drivr Green Personal Transportation” and has been created by two former Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) workers.
According to an article in Green Car Reports, Drivr is positioning itself as a premium alternative to the likes of Uber and Lyft, whereby consumers will get to ride in luxurious fully-equipped Tesla Model S sedans instead of regular gasoline-powered taxis. Drivr charges customers $2.50 per mile with a minimum payment of $15 per journey. It can cater to a maximum of four persons at a given time and much like other competing services, users can search and hail cabs online and on-the-go using the mobile application.
In addition, Drivr facilitates seamless door-to-door service and the Tesla cars offer LTE Wi-Fi, smartphone-charging, a 17-inch navigation-screen for the passenger to observe the route-taken, and a 200-watt sound-system, the usage of which is free for all customers.
Currently, Drivr has only three Tesla Model S electric sedans as part of its fleet with around seven drivers, but plans to grow rapidly. The startup is in the process of leasing ten more Tesla vehicles in the next few months as well as increasing the number of its drivers to 30.
Drivr’s co-founder Brandon Beard notes that the company is targeting consumers inclined toward on-demand service. He added that the target market includes a substantial amount of consumers whilst mentioning that its drivers do around ten airport runs on a daily basis.
Drivr Green Personal Transportation was founded last year in February through the joint efforts of Brandon Beard, a digital product design specialist, and Nick Seitz, who has on previous occasions collaborated with several startups. At that time both individuals were working for Tesla Motors in a part-time capacity.
Mr. Beard previously noted that he was a huge fan of Tesla and along with Nick Seitz saw great potential in green transportation given the rising popularity of ride-sharing apps. Drivr subsequently began operations in August 2014.
2014 was Earth's warmest year on record, scientists say
Earth's average surface temperature was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
December also was the warmest month ever recorded, and was among five months that set records, the agencies reported Friday.
The combined land and ocean surface temperature was 1.24 degrees above the 20th century average of 57 degrees, according to NOAA. December's average global temperature was 1.39 degrees above that 20th century average. The four other months that set records were May, June, August and September, NOAA said. October tied for warmest, according to the agency's report.
The data add to a two-decade string of record warmth planetwide. Except for 1998, the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2002, according to NOAA.
The increase in global average surface temperatures was driven in part by an all-time record year for ocean temperatures, and it came despite a decidedly colder winter driven by a "polar vortex" in much of the U.S., according to the agencies. That cold anomaly was overwhelmed by many other hot anomalies planetwide, agency officials said.
"This was very clearly the record warmest year in the ocean records," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "It wasn’t quite the warmest year in the land records, but combined, this did actually give the warmest year” for the planet surface.
Notable areas of unusual warmth included Alaska, the Pacific Coast of the U.S., Europe, Siberia and Australia, he said.
The scientists said the rising trend can be attributed to the warming effect of human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels that add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
“Greenhouse gas trends are responsible for the majority of the trend that we see,” Schmidt said. Because such emissions continue to rise, he added, “we may anticipate further record highs in the years to come.”
Last year's high bested three years that were influenced by the ocean circulation phenomenon known as El Niño, which usually pushes land temperatures upward, according to the agencies. Last year was not considered an El Niño, year, although the Japanese Meteorological Agency has said December appeared to be the beginning of a mild El Niño. U.S. agencies have not agreed.
“It’s unlikely we’ll have anything more than a weak El Niño as the year progresses,” said Tom Karl, head of NASA's National Climatic Data Center in North Carolina.
Snow cover in northern latitudes during season transitions was of particular concern, Karl said.
“We see significant decreases in spring and early summer months," he said. "It’s important because that’s when the sun is high. A lot of additional heat is gained because there’s less snow to reflect the sunlight back to space.”
Sea ice levels were at record lows in the Arctic, but remained high in the Antarctic, Schmidt noted.
“This last year was about the sixth lowest annual anomaly for Arctic sea ice,” said Schmidt. “In the Antarctic, 2014 was actually the highest Antarctic sea ice extent, which is a little surprising given the warmth on the rest of the planet.”
Antarctic sea ice extent is not as closely linked to surface temperature trends, and is influenced by many local factors, including winds linked to the hole in the ozone layer and additional fresh water from melting land ice sheets, Schmidt said.
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The Twitter account for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) was hacked on Monday by individuals claiming to be part of the Islamic State, the militant group formerly known as ISIS.
"ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base," read a message posted to CENTCOM's account by the hackers. "With Allah's permission we are in CENTCOM now."
Information tweeted out from the CENTCOM Twitter account by the hackers included contact information for high-ranking military officials. Pro-Islamic State messages were also tweeted from the account.
At least 3.7 million people including more than 40 world leaders are marching throughout France on Sunday in a rally of national unity to honor the 17 victims of a three-day terror spree that took place around the French capital.
The French Interior Ministry said the rally for unity against terrorism is the largest demonstration in France's history, more than the numbers who took to Paris streets when the Allies liberated the city from the Nazis in World War II.
The ministry said between 1.2 million and 1.6 million marched the Paris streets. But it said a precise account is impossible given the enormity of the turnout in the capital.
The aftermath of the attacks remained raw, with video emerging of one of the gunmen killed during police raids pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and detailing how the attacks were going to unfold. Also, a new shooting was linked to that gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, who was killed Friday along with the brothers behind a massacre at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in nearly simultaneous raids by security forces.
"Today, Paris is the capital of the world," said French President Francois Hollande. "Our entire country will rise up toward something better."
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were among the leaders attending, as were top representatives of Russia and Ukraine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron were alongside Hollande at the front of the crowd, estimated to be around one million people, Sky News reports.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is in Paris this week to attend a meeting on fighting terrorism, but did not participate in the march.
Before the march began, a moment of silence was observed for the 17 who died in the violence.
As the march progressed through Paris Sunday, small groups sang the French national anthem while giant letters spelling out the word “Why?” were attached to a statue in the Place de la Republique, Sky News reports.
Idriss Nouar, 41, told the Guardian that people took to the streets to seek “closure.”
“For three days we have been glued to our television screens, we cried, we lit candles- we didn’t know what to do or how to explain how we felt,” he said. “Today, here, with the chants, the clapping, the slow walking, it’s a way of expressing our distress and it’s some kind of closure.”
Southeast of Paris, in Saint-Etienne, around 60,000 people joined a march from the city’s rail station to its town hall.
Rallies were also planned in London, Madrid and New York -- all attacked by Al Qaeda-linked extremists -- as well as Cairo, Sydney, Stockholm, Tokyo and elsewhere.
"We are all Charlie, we are all police, we are all Jews of France," Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Saturday, referring to the victims of the attacks that included employees at Charlie Hebdo, shoppers at a kosher grocery and three police officers.
“It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity,” he said at a speech in Évry, south of Paris.
Leaders from France’s Jewish community said after a meeting with Hollande Sunday that the French leader had told them new security measures would be in place at all Jewish institutions over the next two days.
"We have decided to live our Judaism and we will continue to live normally, as we can't give in to violence", said Roger Cukierman, President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions, according to the BBC.
The three days of terror began Wednesday when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi stormed the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people. Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen said it directed the attack by the masked gunmen to avenge the honor of the Prophet Muhammad, a frequent target of the weekly's satire. On Thursday, police said Coulibaly killed a policewoman on the outskirts of Paris and on Friday, the attackers converged.
While the Kouachi brothers holed up in a printing plant near Charles de Gaulle airport, Coulibaly seized hostages inside a kosher market. It all ended at dusk Friday with near-simultaneous raids at the printing plant and the market that left all three gunmen dead. Four hostages at the market were also killed.
The bodies of the four French Jews killed at the grocery store will be buried in Israel, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
Netanyahu said he had "acceded to the request of the families of the victims of the murderous terror attack" and directed "all the relevant government bodies" to assist in bringing the bodies to Israel. A funeral is tentatively set for Tuesday.
Five people who were held in connection with the attacks were freed late Saturday, leaving no one in custody, according to the Paris prosecutor's office. The widow of the man who attacked the kosher market is still being sought and was last traced near the Turkey-Syrian border.
Early Sunday, police in Germany detained two men suspected of an arson attack against a newspaper that republished the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. No one was injured in that attack.
"The terrorists want two things: they want to scare us and they want to divide us. We must do the opposite. We must stand up and we must stay united," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told French TV channel iTele on Sunday.
It was France's deadliest terrorist attack in decades, and the country remains on high alert while investigators determine whether the attackers were part of a larger extremist network. More than 5,500 police and soldiers were being deployed on Sunday across France, about half of them to protect the march. The others were guarding synagogues, mosques, schools and other sites around France.
"I hope that we will again be able to say we are happy to be Jews in France," said Haim Korsia, the chief rabbi in France, who planned to attend the rally.
"I hope that at the end of the day everyone is united. Everyone, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists," added Zakaria Moumni, who was at Republique early Sunday. "We are humans first of all. And nobody deserves to be murdered like that. Nobody."
At an international conference in India, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the world stood with the people of France "not just in anger and in outrage, but in solidarity and commitment to the cause of confronting extremism and in the cause that extremists fear so much and that has always united our countries: freedom."
Posthumous video emerged Sunday of Coulibaly, who prosecutors said was newly linked by ballistics tests to a third shooting -- the Wednesday attack on a jogger in a Paris suburb that left the 32-year-old man gravely injured. In the video, Coulibaly speaks fluent French and broken Arabic, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group and detailing the terror operation he said was about to unfold.
The Kouachi brothers claimed the attacks were planned and financed by Al Qaeda in Yemen.
Given that France’s prime minister declared that his nation is “at war…against terrorism and radical Islam,” two Sunday news show hosts asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder if America is engaged in the same battle.
First up, Chuck Todd of “Meet the Press”:
Todd: The French Prime Minister this morning declared that France is at war with radical Islam. Would you say the United States is at war with radical Islam?
Holder: Well, I would say we are at war with terrorists who commit these heinous acts and who…use Islam. They use a corrupted version of Islam to justify their actions. We are bound and determined to hold them accountable, to find them wherever they are. And then to try to…come up with ways in which we prevent young people who become attracted to this radical ideology, becoming members of these groups and perpetrating these heinous acts.
Next up, George Stephanopoulos on “This Week”:
Stephanopoulos: …France is at war with radical Islam. Is the U.S. at war with radical Islam?
Eric Holder: Well, I certainly think that we are at war with those who would commit terrorist attacks and who would corrupt the Islamic faith in the way that they do, to try to justify their terrorist actions. So that’s who we are at war with. And we are determined to take the fight to them to prevent them from engaging these kinds of activities…
Active older people resemble much younger people physiologically, according to a new study of the effects of exercise on aging. The findings suggest that many of our expectations about the inevitability of physical decline with advancing years may be incorrect and that how we age is, to a large degree, up to us.
Aging remains a surprisingly mysterious process. A wealth of past scientific research has shown that many bodily and cellular processes change in undesirable ways as we grow older. But science has not been able to establish definitively whether such changes result primarily from the passage of time — in which case they are inevitable for anyone with birthdays — or result at least in part from lifestyle, meaning that they are mutable.
This conundrum is particularly true in terms of inactivity. Older people tend to be quite sedentary nowadays, and being sedentary affects health, making it difficult to separate the effects of not moving from those of getting older.
In the new study, which was published this week in The Journal of Physiology, scientists at King’s College London and the University of Birmingham in England decided to use a different approach.
They removed inactivity as a factor in their study of aging by looking at the health of older people who move quite a bit.
“We wanted to understand what happens to the functioning of our bodies as we get older if we take the best-case scenario,” said Stephen Harridge, senior author of the study and director of the Centre of Human and Aerospace Physiological Sciences at King’s College London.
To accomplish that goal, the scientists recruited 85 men and 41 women aged between 55 and 79 who bicycle regularly. The volunteers were all serious recreational riders but not competitive athletes. The men had to be able to ride at least 62 miles in six and a half hours and the women 37 miles in five and a half hours, benchmarks typical of a high degree of fitness in older people.
The scientists then ran each volunteer through a large array of physical and cognitive tests. The scientists determined each cyclist’s endurance capacity, muscular mass and strength, pedaling power, metabolic health, balance, memory function, bone density and reflexes. They also had the volunteers complete the so-called Timed Up and Go test, during which someone stands up from a chair without using his or her arms, briskly walks about 10 feet, turns, walks back and sits down again.
The researchers compared the results of cyclists in the study against each other and also against standard benchmarks of supposedly normal aging. If a particular test’s numbers were similar among the cyclists of all ages, the researchers considered, then that measure would seem to be more dependent on activity than on age.
As it turned out, the cyclists did not show their age. On almost all measures, their physical functioning remained fairly stable across the decades and was much closer to that of young adults than of people their age. As a group, even the oldest cyclists had younger people’s levels of balance, reflexes, metabolic health and memory ability.
And their Timed Up and Go results were exemplary. Many older people require at least 7 seconds to complete the task, with those requiring 9 or 10 seconds considered to be on the cusp of frailty, Dr. Harridge said. But even the oldest cyclists in this study averaged barely 5 seconds for the walk, which is “well within the norm reported for healthy young adults,” the study authors write.
Some aspects of aging did, however, prove to be ineluctable. The oldest cyclists had less muscular power and mass than those in their 50s and early 60s and considerably lower overall aerobic capacities. Age does seem to reduce our endurance and strength to some extent, Dr. Harridge said, even if we exercise.
But even so, both of those measures were higher among the oldest cyclists than would be considered average among people aged 70 or above.
All in all, the numbers suggest that aging is simply different in the active.
“If you gave this dataset to a clinician and asked him to predict the age” of one of the cyclists based on his or her test results, Dr. Harridge said, “it would be impossible.” On paper, they all look young.
Of course, this study is based on a single snapshot of an unusual group of older adults, Dr. Harridge said. He and his colleagues plan to retest their volunteers in five and 10 years, which will provide better information about the ongoing effects of exercise on aging.
But even in advance of those results, said Dr. Harridge, himself almost 50 and an avid cyclist, this study shows that “being physically active makes your body function on the inside more like a young person’s.”
