Daily Archives: February 24, 2017

Do all lemurs look the same? Not to LemurFaceID, the new facial-recognition software customized to identify unique features in lemurs faces.

Crouse et al BMC Zoology 2017

When observing wildlife behavior in a natural setting, researchers typically need to keep their distance, making it challenging to identify individual animals and track their movements and activity over time.

One new method recently developed for observingred-bellied lemurstakes a high-tech approach to long-distance identification, using modified facial-recognition software.

Biologists collaborated with computer engineers to adapt software designed to recognize human faces, creating a new program dubbed LemurFaceID, which they described in a new study. The software detects unique features in lemur faces so that researchers can pinpoint individuals even in the absence of features such as scars or injuries, and without causing the lemurs undue stress that comes with capture. [Wild Madagascar: Photos Reveal Islands Amazing Lemurs]

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Five lemurs from Madagascar are now living at the San Diego Zoo. The ring-tailed and wide-eyed creatures live in a free-range exhibit called "Lem...

Previously, the most accurate means of identifying individual lemurs involved trapping and tagging the animals. But LemurFaceID only requires a frontal-view photo of a lemurs face a lemur mug shot which is then uploaded to a database and analyzed by algorithms tailored to work onlemur faces, evaluating variability in facial hair patterns and in other unique facial features.

Using LemurFaceID, scientists assembled a database from 462 photographs of 80 known red-bellied lemurs living in Madagascars Ranomafana National Park. In 100 trials, the software correctly identified individual lemurs from images with nearly 98 percent accuracy, the researchers reported.

We demonstrate that the LemurFaceID system identifies individual lemurs with a level of accuracy that suggestsfacial-recognition technologyis a potential useful tool for long-term research on wild lemur populations, the study authors wrote online Feb. 17 in the journalBioMed Central Zoology.

Red-bellied lemurs in Madagascar male (left) and female (right). Males have distinctive white coloration around their eyes, and the unique patterns help biologists to identify individual animals.

Joseph Falinomenjanahary

LemurFaceID offers a means for scientists to quickly determine if newly sighted lemurs are unique, and could help scientists track long-term individuals over the long term. The software could even track lemurs that have been poached and sold illegally, study co-author Rachel Jacobs, a biological anthropologist with the Center for the Advanced Study of Paleobiology at The George Washington University,said in a statement.

Facial-recognition softwaresuch as LemurFaceID could also be applied to other species that have similar variations in the patterns of their facial hair and skin -- for example, red pandas, sloths, bears and raccoons -- and could reduce the risk of injury that animals face from traditional capture and collar methods, the researchers wrote in their journal article.

We see lots of different potential applications for this, study co-author Stacey Tecot, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology, said in the statement. This is just the first step for us in taking this in many directions.

Original article onLive Science.

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New technology detects unique features in lemur faces - CBS News

Photo: Michael Cummo / Hearst Connecticut Media

Dream Payments CEO Brent Ho-Young video conferences with Clay Keller, right, inside Dream Payments' first U.S. office inside Comradity on Canal St. in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Dream Payments CEO Brent Ho-Young video conferences with Clay Keller, right, inside Dream Payments' first U.S. office inside Comradity on Canal St. in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Clay Keller, Dream Payments' cloud and network architect, discusses the company's first office in the United States in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Clay Keller, Dream Payments' cloud and network architect, discusses the company's first office in the United States in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Dream Payments first U.S. office is located at Comradity on Canal St. in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Dream Payments first U.S. office is located at Comradity on Canal St. in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Comradity co-founder Jim Kern discusses the positive aspects of having Dream Payments inside the Canal St. shared workspace in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Comradity co-founder Jim Kern discusses the positive aspects of having Dream Payments inside the Canal St. shared workspace in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Clay Keller, Dream Payments' cloud and network architect, discusses the company's first office in the United States in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Clay Keller, Dream Payments' cloud and network architect, discusses the company's first office in the United States in Stamford, Conn. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Canadian financial technology firm picks Stamford for U.S. launch

STAMFORD A growing Canadian mobile payments firm is swiping into southwestern Connecticut after winning one of the states top investment competitions.

The Toronto-based Dream Payments this week opened its first U.S. offices in the citys South End, in the Comradity co-working center on Canal Street. With the arrival in Connecticut, Dream executives said they found an ideal location for launching their services in the U.S. later this year and connecting with corporate partners.

Stamford seemed to be a great area in terms of being a tech hub, Brent Ho-Young, Dream Payments CEO, said in a video-conference interview this week. But its not only about tech, its also about where employees will enjoy living and working. We just heard really good feedback.

Founded in 2014, Dream grabbed the attention of Connecticut investors last year after entering the state-chartered investment and consulting organization Connecticut Innovations VentureClash investment challenge. Dream would win the competition, earning a $1.5 million investment from Connecticut Innovations to support the development of its U.S. operations.

We wanted to provide them a smooth landing and create a network in which they could come hit the ground running, said Matthew McCooe, Connecticut Innovations CEO. Were really confident that Dream will be a great success for Connecticut and for all the investors.

Comraditys collaborative environment highlighted the appeal of Stamford, Ho-Young said.

Youre not off on an island; youre with like-minded folks that are trying to accomplish big things, Ho-Young said. And youve got that support structure not only from CI, but the other startups that are on a similar mission.

Clay Keller, Dreams cloud and network architect, is the firms first Stamford-based employee. He will lead a Connecticut contingent that could eventually expand to about a dozen, covering areas including business development, account management and operational support.

I build, maintain and support all company environments and services, Keller said. Theres a push now to move our infrastructure off physical devices and go completely virtual network in everything. Im going to spearhead that initiative.

The other firms with offices at Comradity have welcomed the arrival of Dream, said the co-working spaces husband and wife co-founders, Jim and Katherine Kern.

The first time that Clay arrived, immediately there were people asking him about what his technology is and seeing some possibilities about how to integrate what Dream is doing with what theyre doing, Katherine Kern said.

Dream executives are targeting a fourth-quarter roll-out of their firms services in the U.S. Servicing several thousand businesses in Canada, the firm provides businesses with cloud-based mobile technology to accept debit and credit cards and contactless payment platforms like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. The firm also produces online reports and analytics, so clients can manage their businesses on mobile devices.

One of the reasons that we find Dream so attractive from our perspective is that we can easily facilitate the expansion of their operation in a fashion that is economically feasible for them and valuable for us because we like to be part of a growth operation, Jim Kern said. We are also very strong believers in the type of technology that Dream is bringing to the shores of the U.S.

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Canadian financial technology firm picks Stamford for US launch - The Advocate

Even as fanatic customers can be counted on to line up outside the Apple store for the latest iPhone, there are still millions of Americans who dont use a smartphone at all. For that matter, there are still plenty of happy owners of tube televisions, rotary dial telephones, film cameras, fax machines, typewriters and cassette tape players.

The accelerating pace of disruption means more and more products are facing an early retirement. But even as computers, electronics and health products move quickly from must-haves to museum artifacts, a small but loyal following often carries a torch for the old stuff, sometimes out of nostalgia, sometimes from sheer stubbornness. For them, familiar and functioning technologies are good enough.

My Big Bang Disruption co-author Paul Nunes and I refer to these have-wonts as legacy customers, users who simply refuse to migrate to disruptive innovations even after theyve become both better and cheaper, and even after almost everyone else has made the shift.

Legacy customers are a niche market, although not necessarily a bad one. Much of Brooklyn, it seems, has been turned over to rediscovering handmade goods which, ironically, are sold over the Internet.

But in some cases the devotion of the laggards can cause major headaches. When the market for outmoded products shrinks, most manufacturers just stop making them. By law, however, some technologies cant be put to sleep until regulators give permission usually long after the dying market has become unprofitable.

Car manufacturers must keep up to a decades worth of spare parts, for example, even for discontinued models. And the U.S. Postal Service, teetering on bankruptcy for over a decade, still has to deliver mail to 155 million households, even as first-class volume continues to decline precipitously.

As the post office has learned, the cost of keeping old technologies on life support skyrockets when expensive networks of equipment and people must be spread over a dwindling number of users.

Although the vast majority of consumers have long since abandoned the analog telephone network for better and cheaper Internet voice, to take another example, 5 to 10 million households still rely solely on the old system. But as equipment manufacturers exit and older workers retire, maintenance costs now far exceed what the remaining customers pay. Yet carriers cant junk the old technology without approval from the FCC and state regulators.

No surprise, our research found legacy customers are largely older consumers who long ago gave up trying to keep up with the latest and greatest. Many are perfectly happy with worse and more expensive products; perhaps even take pride in still knowing how to use them. I was slow to embrace smartphone technology myself, and I still resist upgrading to the newest models even when its clear they offer better value and more features that Id likely use.

But like me, legacy customers are often wrong about both the costs and benefits of embracing disruptive new products and services. As recently as 2010, 80 percent of profits at AOL came from subscribers, many of them older, paying $25 a month for dial-up service they no longer used, but who thought the fee paid for (free) email service.

Worse, data recently issued by the Commerce Department finds that 13 percent of Americans still dont use the Internet at all, even though its now available nearly everywhere. (More homes have access to Internet service than indoor plumbing.)

You might think the holdouts just cant afford it, which certainly remains an important factor despite programs that subsidize both wired and wireless broadband. But the real holdup is that non-adopters mostly older, rural and less-educated just arent interested in Internet access, at any price. As other factors such as price and usability fall, a perceived lack of relevance now dominates.

Public and private efforts to overcome that perception are crucial for two important reasons. The first is that the resistors are wrong the Internet has become the starting point for government services, news, employment, entertainment and, increasingly, health care and education. Life without it is increasingly and unnecessarily isolated.

The second is that non-adopters ultimately cost more to serve. Printing information is increasingly a waste of scarce resources as digital alternatives continue to get better and cheaper. And all of us pay for the waste. A few consumers may prefer standing in line at the bank branchto using an ATM or banking app, but the higher cost is spread over all customers.

To overcome the inertia of legacy customers, it may be appropriate for governments to step in. The United States has long had programs aimed at making broadband more affordable for lower-income Americans and more accessible for those living in sparsely populated areas. On Thursday, the FCC unanimously approved the allocation of up to $2 billion in additional taxpayer funds for rural broadband build-out in areas where private investment cannot be cost-justified. Total support for rural broadband could reach $20 billion over the next decade. (The devil, however, will be in the details. A government audit found that an earlier Agriculture Department effort to expand rural broadband wasted $3 billion of stimulus money.)

At the other end of the life cycle, some technology dinosaurs need help being euthanized. Here, regulators can serve as a catalyst, providing the final nudge for legacy customers. Once it was clear that smart LEDs would become better and cheaper than inefficient incandescent lightbulbs, for example, governments around the world began passing laws banning production of the older technology.

And while things got a little messy at the end, in 2009 Congress succeeded in turning off analog TV, switching the few remaining holdouts over to digital. To ensure no one had to go without Lets Make a Deal, lower-income families were given converter boxes for older tube TVs.

As a bonus, the more efficient digital signals have made it possible for the FCC to reclaim and auction prized radio frequencies to feed exploding demand for mobile services. So far, the auctions have deposited nearly $20 billion in the treasury, with additional auctions going on right now that will soon bring in much more.

Retirement rarely pays so well.

Read more from The Washington Posts Innovations section.

A new digital divide has emerged and conventional solutions wont bridge the gap

Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration. Heres why we often hate new stuff.

The big moral dilemma facing self-driving cars

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Listen, technology holdouts: Enough is enough - Washington Post