Have you ever wondered how trees affect 5G signals? No?

Well, a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have. In fact, they spent the better part of a year studying the effects trees might have on 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) propagation, a fancy term that basically means transmission.

The mmWave band is one of the fastest forms of 5G, and the primary force behind 5G’s low-latency, high-data-transfer vision of the future. The catch is that it doesn’t travel very far and can easily be blocked by physical objects, from buildings to trees, limiting its practicality.

• Currently Verizon leads all US carriers in mmWave 5G availability, but its users only access the high-speed connection on average 0.8% of the time.

While it’s been known for a long time that trees can interfere with a 5G signal, researchers and telcos didn’t have the particulars on how big a problem our leafy friends could pose.

Now they do: Overall, trees caused an average propagation loss of around 35.3 decibels. If placed in a dense forest, that could translate to a 1,000x less-powerful 5G signal.

That may sound catastrophic, but Nada Golmie, wireless networks division chief at NIST’s Communications Technology Laboratory, told us that the impact depends on proximity to a tower’s signal.

Golmie also emphasized that the link budget, or configuration of transmission towers, can be adjusted as needed, feeding more power or connecting more towers to help a signal get through a congested area.

NIST’s prior 5G research covers the effects that non-tree objects like buildings, cars, or even glass might have on the strength of a 5G signal. All these data points can inform telcos trying to determine the optimal location for building new 5G towers.

• Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T didn’t return requests for comment on how they plan to integrate this research into planning the location of forthcoming 5G towers.

Zoom out: 5G operates on multiple parts of the spectrum, whether it’s low-band, mid-band C-band goldilocks spectrum, or mmWave high-band spectrum; 5G operators and telcos like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have competed over C-band, but telcos are trying to balance the desire of mmWave’s high speeds with its inability to travel long distances.

Click here to learn more about 5G and the trees.—JM

The days of sitting at an intersection while an interminably long train clambers along could soon be over.

A new startup co-founded by former SpaceX engineers is developing autonomous, battery-powered electric rail vehicles that can be as small as a single shipping container. Parallel Systems says its rail vehicles can carry nearly three times more capacity than a semi-truck, travel up to 500 miles between charges, and recharge in less than one hour.

• The company announced itself today, along with a $50 million Series A round led by Anthos Capital.

Big picture: The US has the largest rail system in the world, and today the railroad companies rely on huge volumes and very long trains to transport those loads. In some cases, this makes it difficult for rail to compete with the $700 billion US trucking industry, which are better-equipped to handle smaller loads and shorter distances.

• Parallel Systems aims to move smaller volumes and get closer to population hubs, which could make rail more aligned with current logistics trends.

Matt Soule, Parallel Systems co-founder and CEO, told Emerging Tech Brew that the team built its initial prototypes more than a year ago. The company is now ready to begin testing its second-generation vehicle to verify the autonomy, mechanics, redundancies, and braking performance, and to make sure the vehicles can be integrated into existing operations.

• Parallel Systems plans to commercialize its third-generation vehicle, but it hasn’t announced if it has any commercial partners or provided a timeline for those plans.

What’s next: Parallel Systems plans to add 60 engineers to the current team of 25 over the next 12 to 18 months as it builds out and tests its second-generation vehicle.

Getting the legacy railroads on board will be the key to realizing Soule’s vision. Parallel Systems says it’s working with railroad companies, though the startup would not share details about those relationships.

Click here to read more about Parallel Systems's plans, and how its tech works.—GD

Automakers aren’t just shifting cash to manufacturing electric vehicles—they’re spending more to advertise them, too.

Show me the money: In 2021, automakers spent $248 million on national TV ads featuring EVs, up 282% from $65 million in 2020, Bloomberg reports. Despite the spending surge, the amount invested in non-EV ads still eclipsed what was spent on electric.

• Automakers spent $3.1 billion advertising non-EVs on TV last year, and the share of EV ads jumped to 7.5% from 2% in 2020—a big increase, but from a small base.

The same trends apply to the number of ad spots: In 2020, there were 8,000 national TV ads for EVs, and in 2021, that skyrocketed to 33,000. Meanwhile, TV ads for non-EVs fell from 563,000 in 2020 to 531,000 in 2021.

Zoom out: The US market leader for EVs—Tesla—famously spends $0.00 on advertising its cars, preferring to instead rely on Elon Musk’s ability to drum up excitement for the vehicles. Legacy automakers, already accustomed to spending big to advertise their vehicles, seem poised to stick to the roads they know when it comes to EVs.

Click here to read on-site.—DM

Stat: Crypto-related job postings jumped 395% between 2020 and 2021.

Quote: “At our sole discretion we have voluntarily agreed to temporarily defer turning on a limited number of towers around certain airport runways as we continue to work with the aviation industry and the FAA to provide further information about our 5G deployment, since they have not utilized the two years they’ve had to responsibly plan for this deployment.”—an AT&T spokesperson to Protocol

Read: Some Kronos clients are still struggling to recover after the company suffered a ransomware attack a month ago.

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A few days ago, Wikipedia—the free internet encyclopedia beloved by all except high school teachers who encounter it in their students’ bibliographies—turned 21.

The site went live January 15, 2001, and was initially available only in English. Now it’s available in 325 languages, has over 300,000 editors, and is one of the most popular websites in the world.

• The first edit ever made to Wikipedia, per its archives, was the addition of “This is the new WikiPedia!” to its homepage.

BioNTech, the biotech company that created the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, has developed an AI–based “early warning system” for new coronavirus variants, per the Financial Times.

Working with a startup called InstaDeep, the company says it created a system that identified 90% variants of concern an average of two months before the WHO designated them as such.

But, but, but…The tool can only identify new variants of concern as early as it has the data, and without more expansive genomic surveillance, there’s no guarantee that will be particularly speedy.

• “A lot of scientists also flagged omicron on the day it was made available, but we’re still really limited by when we are able to sample such variants,” Emma Hodcroft, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Bern, told the FT.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Seven AI ethics experts predict 2022’s opportunities and challenges for the field
• Cleantech investment exploded in 2021—and that momentum could continue this year
• A year after rolling out, GM’s B2B electric vehicle arm has signed major partners