Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Researchers Use Cell Phones, Facebook For Green Measurement

University of California Los Angeles researchers said this week that they have created a project which allows users to connect their cell phones and an application, as well as the Facebook social networking web site, to measure their personal impact on the environment. The UCLA researchers said that their new project, the Personal Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) lets users upload data from GPS-equipped mobile phones, to calculate carbon emissions and how people's driving and other travel affects the environment. The application maps out a person's travel, and estimates the amount of carbon emissions from that travel, as well as such things are exposure to pollution. UCLA said the application and project is currently in private beta. The project--part of a larger effort to use cell phones to collect sensor data--was developed at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science in collaboration with the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto.

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