Most Recent Posts

Today's mobile phones can do almost everything a computer can. But we still need them for their most basic purpose: making phone calls — especially in emergencies.

Yet existing technology can't always pinpoint a caller's location, particularly when a 911 caller is indoors.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed new regulations for wireless carriers to help address the problem, but so far, wireless providers are resisting the changes.

One of the first questions callers are asked when they call 911 is, "Where is your emergency?" It's also "absolutely the most important," says Steve Souder, director of the Fairfax County Department of Public Safety Communications in Virginia.

"We need to know where you are to send somebody. We don't need to know what; we don't need to know how; we don't need to know when," Souder says. "The 'where' is the No. 1 thing."

But that's become a much harder question for first responders in the past 20 years. First, the GPS on cellphones doesn't work as well indoors as it does outside.

Second, callers used to reach 911 via a landline, which was linked to a specific address — down to the apartment number. That's not true with cellphones.

Chris Frederick, a 911 call taker in Fairfax County, remembers when an 8-year-old called him on a cellphone because his parents had a medical emergency. The boy couldn't read very well, and his parents didn't speak English. So Frederick asked him to walk outside.

NPR/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Center for Health Statistics National Health Interview Survey

"And I said, 'Can you tell me what the number is on your house?' And he told me the number. It took about 10 minutes."

If the call had come in on a landline, Frederick says, identifying the house would have been instantaneous — the location would have just popped up on his computer screen.

With nearly half the children in the U.S. — like the boy Frederick helped — living in wireless-only households, situations like that are common. According to the National Emergency Number Association, around 210 million 911 calls come from cellphones every year. And about half of the people calling on a cellphone from indoors don't know where they are specifically.

The FCC regulates the cellphone industry, including wireless carriers like Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. Currently, the FCC requires cellphones to have technology that tracks a person to between 100 and 300 meters of where he is.

But as Jodie Griffin, senior staff attorney at the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, points out, "100 meters, which is the stricter end of the rules right now, is more than a football field."

And a football field is longer than some city blocks.

"When you're talking about someone who's outdoors, the ambulance may be able to arrive and just see where someone is in distress," Griffin says.

But if a caller is inside one of these buildings? Good luck.

So earlier this year, the FCC proposed new rules that would require vertical location information. That way, first responders could identify which floor a caller is on. The rules would also require location information within 50 meters — still longer than some apartment building hallways.

The new rules would apply to any phone, no matter what type.

So far, wireless providers are resisting the proposed changes. In filings with the FCC, Sprint said that the agency's timeline wasn't realistic.

In an email to NPR, Verizon said the company is "working with a variety of organizations across the ecosystem on a viable path forward."

The technology to meet those requirements is actually already available.

All Tech Considered

New Digital Amber Alerts Could Create A Backlash

Several companies have created systems that can better track a phone's location. The company TruePosition creates custom geolocation technology.

NPR Ed

Enlisting Smartphones In The Campaign For Campus Safety

"Special receivers are installed in the existing wireless operators' or carriers' cell towers," says Rob Anderson, TruePosition's chief technology officer. "Those receivers are able to very accurately measure the time the signals that are transmitted from the cellphones arrive at the various cell towers. And by making those time measurements, we can compute a position. And we measure those signals very precisely, on the order of nanoseconds."

Cities Project

Police Take Different Approaches To 'The Tyranny Of 911'

TruePosition's system doesn't require updates to every cellphone, but it does require cellphone carriers to add equipment to their towers.

Obviously, this would cost money — which companies would likely pass on to consumers in one way or another.

Public Knowledge's Griffin says the added cost could also raise another problem.

"The people who can't afford the newest smartphone, or can't afford to be on an LTE network, are going to be left behind if we just assume that we'll let the new technology that comes along in two years solve everything," she says.

The FCC is currently taking comments on the proposed rules. If they're approved, the regulations would still take at least a year to implement.

911 service

emergencies

emergency response

cellphones

geolocation

GPS

Imagine this: You have a great idea for an Internet startup. You're sure it will work. You are ready to be part of the global market. There's one big problem: You live in Iran, a country facing some of the most extensive financial sanctions imposed on any country in the world.

That was the challenge for a team of young Iranian entrepreneurs competing in the recent Startup Istanbul, where aspiring entrepreneurs got to pitch ideas to the founders of successful tech companies and venture capitalists at a conference in Turkey.

The Iranians came armed with hot business ideas and plenty of enthusiasm, their first time competing on an international stage.

"We are so glad that today we have teams who traveled from Tehran and they are going to pitch here," says Mohsen Malayeri, the 29-year-old founder of Avatech Accelerator who describes himself as a builder of startup communities in Iran.

'Startup Fever Is Everywhere'

Malayeri has organized more than a dozen startup weekends in nine Iranian cities for a generation excited about the prospects of a tech career in a country where 65 percent of the population is under 35 years old.

"The average (age) is like 23 to 25 usually, but we have people who are showing up, a 12-year-old guy with an idea, which is quite impressive," he says.

I meet Malayeri at Microsoft headquarters in Istanbul as the competition kicked off.

"Startup fever is everywhere," he says.

The HBO show Silicon Valley is now a big hit in Iran, where it can be downloaded from the Internet. The fever swept through the country two years ago and there are already multimillion-dollar startups generating jobs.

Mohsen Malayeri, the 29-year-old founder of Avatech Accelerator, is trying to build startup communities in Iran. He organized the trip to Istanbul, where an Iranian e-commerce company earned an honorable mention — trailing startups from Turkey, Belgium and Jordan. Deborah Amos/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Deborah Amos/NPR

The Iranian teams came to Istanbul to learn international best practices to build on those successes.

"They are going to pitch, they are going to hear feedback from the mentors and investors," says Malayeri.

There's a Silicon Valley vibe in the basement of Microsoft headquarters in Istanbul, and the Iranians fit right in. At long wooden tables, the clatter of keyboards and the familiar pings of e­mail alerts is the background music in an open space where new ideas are shared over endless free coffee and competitive pingpong matches. The young crowd represents a new tech culture in the region.

Companies from Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are among the more than 100 Internet startups at the event. Women have founded some of the most successful ventures. The pitches to investors reflect the vision across the region to build Internet companies that streamline everything and create jobs.

No Way Around Sanctions

One of the most promising Iranian companies is a pioneer in e-commerce. Though it's new, Zarin Pal's market potential is huge: Iran has a population of 80 million. Established in 2010, it already has a customer base of 6 million, says Mostapha Amiri, a co-founder.

Amiri was making the pitches at the Istanbul event. Sotoodeh Adibi, another founding member, was going over last-minute details with him.

"It is going to become very popular year by year," she says of Zarin Pal, which is based on the same model as PayPal.

Amiri is obviously nervous as he faces the panel of mentors who will help him shape the pitch. He has never done this before in English.

The mentors include a venture capitalist from Silicon Valley and a couple of successful startup pioneers.

“ We need their help to open the doors of our country.

- Tech entrepreneur Mostapha Amiri, on the role of international investors

Amiri has 10 minutes to outline his proposal and describe the Iranian market. He explains there is a young, connected population with no access to international credit cards due to sanctions. However, debit cards linked to Iranian banks are extremely popular.

Zarin Pal has built these links into a successful Internet business for the domestic market and now wants to offer the service to the 5 million Iranians who live abroad, Amiri explains.

If the team came from any other place in the Middle East, Zarin Pal would be an obvious candidate for investment. But the financial sanctions are still firmly in place, and that means the doors are closed to the global market. The mentors are impressed with the business model, but when it comes to sanctions, there's nothing they can do, they say.

Despite the warm applause, the Iranian team leaves the mentor session deeply disappointed.

"We need their help to open the doors of our country," Amiri says.

Investments, Not Boycotts

They voice the frustration of many young Iranians, born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They are eager for change, for jobs and for a role in building Iran's future.

American Dave McClure, one of the mentors at the Istanbul event, wants to help.

"Instead of boycotting countries maybe we should be investing in their entrepreneurs," says McClure, a founding partner of 500 Startups, which backs promising Internet business in the region — although "not in Iran yet, it's still illegal."

McClure encourages investment to counter the region's gloomy news narrative.

Here are the top Internet companies in Iran and their estimated value:

Digikala: $150 million

Aparat Group: $30 million

Caf Bazaar: $20 million.

Source: The Economist

"Young people without jobs is a problem, so, creating jobs is a way to fill that gap," he says.

McClure is convinced that regional investment is good for the U.S. "as a way to have a better foreign policy approach and probably increase national security." And he's willing to write a check to test it.

His latest venture is Geeks on a Plane, where he invites investors to travel to the region to finance the new tech culture. Tehran is on his wish list for next year.

He's a hero to Iranian entrepreneurs after a recent speech in Berkeley where he challenged wealthy Iranian-Americans to invest in Iran's tech culture rather than what he called expensive, "sexy sports cars." His speech went viral in Tehran.

Talking To Top Investors

On the closing day of the competition, the Iranian team was one of 14 companies the judges sent on to the finals. Amiri was on stage again in front of a panel of judges and a packed house. This is the pitch that counts.

"Hi, I'm Mostapha from Zarin Pal, we are the first Iranian e-wallet system," he begins in a bit of a shaky start.

He's honed the presentation over the four days of this event. He's learned to hit all the highlights. It's the first time an Iranian team has pitched in English.

Back home, the Iranian government still places restrictions on the Internet, banning access to Facebook and Twitter. But it is removing domestic barriers for these startup entrepreneurs. Many are encouraged by a government-backed increase in Internet speed and a mobile 3G connection now offered by two main operators in Iran.

Malayeri, Avatech Accelerator's founder and organizer of the trip, says the team has won just by coming to Istanbul.

"I'm not sure if there is any cash prize in place, but talking to top active investors is considered as a prize," he says, beaming.

As for the Zarin Pal team, their efforts were good enough to garner an honorable mention — the only one in the entire competition — and, more important, the attention of international investors. If the sanctions are lifted, these young Iranians want to be ready to jump quickly into the global market.

Iran

So it's 150 A.D., and you've just had a long day at the gym (or ludus), thrusting and parrying with your fellow Roman gladiators. What do you reach for to replenish your sapped strength? A post-workout recovery drink, of course.

Modern-day athletes often nurse their muscles with supplement shakes or chocolate milk after a workout. Similarly, gladiators, the sports stars of the Roman empire, may have guzzled a drink made from the ashes of charred plants – a rich source of calcium, which is essential for building bones, researchers report this month in the journal PLOS One.

"Plant ashes were evidently consumed to fortify the body after physical exertion, and to promote better bone healing," Fabian Kanz, a forensic anthropologist at the Medical University of Vienna who led the research, said in a statement. "Things were similar then to what we do today."

Evidence for this ancient dietary supplement comes from a second-century A.D. cemetery for gladiators in what was once the great Roman city of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. Kanz and his colleagues have been studying the remains buried there to unravel how these athletes lived. To figure out what they ate, the researchers examined the remains of 22 gladiators using stable carbon and nitrogen analysis.

Carbon can tell us about the plants these people ate, while nitrogen offers hints of their animal protein consumption. The gladiators were eating a pretty varied diet, the analysis showed. Some went heavier on the grains and greens, some ate more meat.

i i

This gladiator tombstone was excavated in a cemetery for these ancient power athletes in what was once Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey. Courtesy of Plus One hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Plus One

This gladiator tombstone was excavated in a cemetery for these ancient power athletes in what was once Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey.

Courtesy of Plus One

When the same tests were run on the remains of 31 regular folks from that era and region, they found the same sorts of variation. In other words, gladiators seemed to be eating the same way as everyone else.

But the researchers also decided to look at the trace elements of strontium and carbon in those old bones. And that's where a huge difference jumped out. Compared with the regular Joes, the gladiators had a much larger ratio of strontium to calcium.

"This is strong evidence that the gladiators were consuming something high in calcium to replenish their calcium stores that other people weren't and that didn't show up in the isotopes," says Kristina Killgrove, a biological anthropologist at the University of West Florida who studies imperial Rome through ancient bones.

The researchers wondered: If the gladiators weren't eating more meat than their contemporaries, then where was this calcium boost coming from? A nearly 2,000-year-old encyclopedia offered a tantalizing clue.

In his Naturalis Historia, published in the first century, Pliny the Elder wrote: "Your hearth should be your medicine chest. Drink lye made from its ashes, and you will be cured. One can see how gladiators after a combat are helped by drinking this."

Using ash in food and medicine wasn't limited to the Romans. The Hopis used ash from burnt plant leaves and pea pods to prepare blue cornmeal foods like piki bread and bivilviki dumplings. The ash provided essential elements like calcium, manganese, copper and iron.

It's a neat bit of detective work, and it ties in nicely with historical accounts, Killgrove says, but the case isn't closed.

The Salt

Fish Sauce: An Ancient Roman Condiment Rises Again

"It's entirely possible gladiators were drinking ash drink," she says, "but they haven't proven it." The problem? Dairy doesn't show up in isotopes, so the gladiators could have been chowing down on more cheese and yogurt than the rest of the population.

One other thing to note: Ancient texts don't always agree on the finer points of gladiator diets. For instance, Pliny credited the warriors' diet – a bean and barley mash was standard fare – for their endurance and toughness in battle. But Galen, a famous second-century physician who also did a stint as a gladiator doc, complained that this diet made the men soft and flabby.

Author Interviews

'Spartacus War': Story Of The Real-Life Gladiator

The thinking is that gladiators loaded up on carbs to create a layer of fat to protect them from cuts and slashes in the arena, says Barry Strauss, a classics scholar at Cornell University and author of The Spartacus War, about the most famous gladiator of them all.

"Call it a spare tire, if you will," he says.

Hmm, that's a far cry from the rippling muscles Russell Crowe sported in the 2000 film Gladiator. So were these ancient warriors more hunky or chunky?

"By and large, we are seeing them with their armor on," Strauss says. "They're not showing their abs, so I don't think we know. We do know they were sex symbols – there's a lot written about noble women hanging out with gladiators."

Footnotes: Since we're talking ancient history here, it seems appropriate to include some footnotes. Thanks to Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University for confirming that translation of Pliny on the ash drink (it's a fairly obscure reference), and to Susan Mattern of the University of Georgia for breaking down some of Galen's thoughts on food and medicine for me. Her book on the subject is called The Prince of Medicine: Galen And The Roman Empire. If you're curious about what bone biochemistry can reveal about history, Kristina Killgrove's blog, Powered by Osteons, is a fun read.

roman history

recovery drinks

food anthropology

roman diet

calcium

gladiator

diet

Spartacus

At The Greater Piney Grove Baptist Church in Atlanta, about 700 congregants jam the pews every Sunday morning at 10:30am. The church is near the edge of DeKalb County, and it's helping lead a "Souls to the Polls" drive.

In Georgia, Democrat Michelle Nunn is running an extremely tight race for Senate against Republican David Perdue, and the difference between victory and defeat could ride on the African-American vote. The push is on to get voters to turn out early – especially at black churches right after Sunday services.

This year, for the first time in Georgia's history, some polling places are open on Sundays. This Sunday - DeKalb County's first Sunday voting - Pastor William Flippin, Sr. urged his congregation to head straight to the polls right after service.

"I don't know if you have voted already, but please know that it is your civic responsibility," Flippin said. "People died for us to have the right to vote."

Democrats are trying feverishly to avoid what happened in 2010. That year there was abysmally low turnout among black voters, which happens often in midterm years. Core supporters for Democrats – like minorities, single women or young people – tend to drop off during the midterms.

In Georgia, more than one million African-Americans voted in the presidential elections of 2008 and 2012, but only 700,000 hit the polls in 2010. Democrats aren't taking their chances this year.

The Piney Grove church is in an area that's 55% African-American, and therefore one part of Georgia that could help Nunn win a Senate seat this November. That's if people turn out to vote.

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter also joined the congregation yesterday to help rally churchgoers to the polls and work to "help make Martin Luther King's dream become a reality in our state."

"We can do it, if we all work together, if we all go to vote, if we can be sure that all of our friends and relatives and neighbors go to vote, and vote early," Carter said.

Sunday voting caused some controversy in Georgia. Republicans grumbled about how it gave Democrats a boost. But Flippin says it's only fair that black voters get a chance on Sundays to mobilize.

"Many of our people still do not have professional jobs that they can take off or go into work late. You know, most corporations — they allow you to come late or come early on Election Day. Well, if you're working in a factory or job like that, they can't take off," says Flippin.

Piney Grove worshippers loaded up on two church buses, and with a caravan of cars following, drove to the voter registration and elections office in Decatur to vote.

On the bus, Evelyn Jackson of nearby Ellenwood said she's voting this midterm because something has to be done about the rampant joblessness. Georgia has the highest unemployment rate in the country, and Jackson says you can't trust a Republican to fix that.

"Republicans ... they care about money, and they care about people in their echelon. And they don't care about people who are lower middle class or poor," said Jackson. "I know people, there's one of the ministers, who's been out of work for, like, three years."

When the buses arrive at the polling place, a stream of other worshippers from other black churches converges with Piney Grove.

Thirty percent of all registered voters in the state are African-American. Allen Davis, a nurse, wishes more black Georgians actually knew that.

"I think if they know how powerful their vote is, they'll come out and vote," says Davis.

One potential stumbling block to getting more African-Americans out to vote is that most Democrats have spent this fall distancing themselves from a president so many black voters admire. But Darryl Yarber says he understands the practicality of that strategy.

"African-Americans are a little bit more savvy than that. They know what's going on. They know the reasons for the distancing. That's a reason we have such a crowd right now," said Yarber. "They understand what's going on. They understand the game."

And Yarber says electing a Democrat who will barely acknowledge President Obama is still better than letting the other side win.