Category Archives: Technology

July 27 (Reuters) - Wiliot, a technology company backed by Amazon Web Services (AMZN.O) and Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O), said on Tuesday it raised $200 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

The company, which makes chips that can be embedded on product packaging to help track items during their manufacturing, shipping, and sale, did not disclose the valuation at which the funds were raised.

Its technology can be integrated into vaccine vials and food packaging, among others. Wiliot says it aims to expand the internet-of-things network to include everyday products.

The company was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Israel, with a presence in California, Germany, Ukraine, Australia and Taiwan.

The investment marks another major bet on Israeli growth companies from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T). In recent months, SoftBank has also invested in artificial intelligence-based facial recognition startup AnyVision and cloud firm Redis Labs. read more

Wiliot also counts the investment arms of Samsung Group and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) among its backers.

The company plans to use the fresh funds to expand its operations in preparation for the upcoming launch of its V2 product.

Amit Lubovsky, director at SoftBank Investment Advisers, will take a seat on Wiliot's board as part of the deal.

The company raised $70 million in a previous funding round in February last year.

Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru and Jane Lee in San Francisco; Editing by Aditya Soni

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Amazon-backed Wiliot raises $200 mln in investment led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 - Reuters

Hudson County Community College (HCCC) will sign an articulation agreement with New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) on Tuesday, July 27 at 2 p.m.

The signing will take place at HCCCs Culinary Conference Center, located at 161 Newkirk Street in Jersey City.

HCCC President, Dr. Chris Reber, will be joined for the signing by NJIT Provost and Senior Executive Vice President, Dr. Fadi Deek. Also attending will be HCCC Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Darryl Jones; HCCC Associate Vice President for Continuing Education and Workforce Development, Lori Margolin; HCCC Acting Associate Dean for Business, Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management, Dr. Ara Karakashian; HCCC Dean of Academic Affairs and Assessment, Dr. Heather DeVries; NJIT Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs and Student Services, Dr. Basil Baltzis; NJIT Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies, Dr. Laurent Simon; NJIT Martin Tuchman School of Management Dean, Dr. Oya Tukel, and Assistant Dean, Melodi Guilbault.

This new agreement will provide pathways for our students to become highly skilled, data- and technology-driven business professionals at one of the nations highly regarded polytechnic universities, Dr. Reber said. We are excited to collaborate with NJIT on this venture.

Expanding access to STEM education is a core component of NJITs mission as well as its vision of being a preeminent public polytechnic research university with local and global impact, said Dr. Deek. Removing barriers of entry creates exciting academic and professional opportunities and we look forward to welcoming students from HCCC.

Under the terms of the HCCC-NJIT agreement, students who earn an Associate of Science in Business Administration degree at HCCC will be able to transfer seamlessly to Bachelor of Science degree programs in Business, Business Online Accelerated Entrepreneurship, and Financial Technology at the NJIT Martin Tuchman School of Management.

Additional information about the HCCC Associate of Science in Business Administration degree program may be obtained by emailing Janine Nunez, Recruiter, atjNunez@hccc.edu, or phoning (201) 360-4640.

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Hudson County Community College Partners with New Jersey Institute of Technology for Seamless and Successful Transfer to Baccalaureate Business...

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An emerging breed of tools are using machine learning and other methods to automate parts of the software development process. GitHub, for example, launched such a tool last month that suggests code while a programmer is developing it. Amazon has also created CodeGuru, a tool to help automatically find performance bottlenecks in software. Facebook has Aroma, which can also provide code-to-code recommendations. And my own team at Intel Labs has built a tool (currently only for our in-house use) that autonomously detects errors in code.

This kind of automated coding is called machine programming. One of its most interesting capabilities is code semantic similarity, which attempts to autonomously determine whether two code snippets show similar characteristics or achieve similar goals. This has only recently become achievable due to advances in compute, access to big code data such as IBM/MITs new Project CodeNet which includes approximately 14 million code samples, and and new machine learning algorithms.

By harnessing the power of code semantic similarity, the industry can develop automated systems to help CIOs ensure developer teams are maintaining the same level of productivity despite increased software and hardware complexity, all the while addressing the software developer talent shortage and combating burnout.

Code semantics similarity could also be used in tools that translate between programming languages (i.e., transpilers). Historically, software systems that convert a programs source code in one programming language to another was out of reach. However, recent advancements in transpilation could be critical for large, global organizations that have traditionally coded in more specialized legacy languages.

Imagine a world where, instead of spending many years manually translating an entire organizations code bank from COBOL to Python, a machine programming system could do it all for you in just a few days. The beginnings of such systems already exist and are even used in some tech companies today, such as Adobe. For example, Adobe Photoshop, as I understand it, is using verified lifting to convert C/C++ to Halide in its current version.

Code semantics similarity systems such as machine inferred code similarity (MISIM) will not only help an organization to update its entire code system; they will also open up the talent pool. Updating an organizations code base to a modern programming language from older legacy languages that are less understood by todays software developers will make recruiting easier as more developers are familiar with these newer languages (e.g., moving from FORTRAN to Python). CIOs might even see a reduction in coding errors because new-age languages tend to be easier to work with and handle much of the system complexity internally.

Code semantics similarity systems can also recommend code. GitHubs Co-Pilot, which I mentioned earlier, for example, is designed to learn what the intent of a piece of software is and then recommend improved (or more complete) versions to help the developer.

When fully realized, such code recommendation systems have the potential to raise the software quality and productivity of both novice and expert developers by providing them with improved alternatives. Ultimately, this will help CIOs and their IT departments keep up with software demands without hiring additional employees or spending money on new resources. The blue-sky vision of these recommendation systems is to improve the productivity of all developers.

Semantics similarity systems can also work in tandem with developers to autonomously detect errors in code.

The landscape of software development is growing in complexity due to software and hardware heterogeneity. Development teams are also expected to produce software at an increasing pace. Machine programming may be the only fiscally viable way forward for CIOs and the software development they oversee. So this is the right time to begin testing out emerging machine programming tools and seeing how to best implement them in your organization.

Justin Gottschlich founded and leads the Machine Programming Research group at Intel Labs. He is also principal investigator and co-founder of the joint Intel/NSF CAPA research center. In academia, he has appointments as the industrial advisory board chair and executive director for the PRECISE Center at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), and is also an adjunct assistant professor at Penn in the Computer and Information Science Department

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Why machine programming should be the next technology you invest in - VentureBeat

During COVID-19, firms experienced unprecedented shocks. Their supply chains were disrupted as were their relationships with customers and workers; demand plummeted, as no one knew what would happen next. The dual shocks pushed firms to look for new ways to stay afloat and navigate their businesses. But in some cases, the crisis became an opportunity for innovative businesses, especially those that increased the adoption of digital technologies. How widespread was the innovation? Will it be enough to foster a productivity-driven recovery?

An initial analysis of novel data collected between April 2020 and January 2021 from Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania, suggests that the pandemic triggered some innovation. Still, it was limited to low-hanging fruits and varied depending on firm size and previous technology investments. A mix of financial constraints and managerial capacities likely limited deeper and more widespread innovation in firms.

COVID-19 lockdowns, workforce restrictions, and limited access to inputs (60 percent of firms reported problems obtaining inputs) reduced firm productivity and supply capacity. At the same time, demand slumped or shifted toward new products and services. These shocks were compounded by unprecedented uncertainty about the virus, the extent and duration of public policy responses, and future outlooks. These channels affected firms and sectors differently and in a manner that required businesses to adopt novel solutions or risk going out of business.

Firms needed a moment, but they did react. Initially (April-August 2020), most firms (more than 60 percent on average) did not implement any adjustments to the way they carried out their business. However, the share of firms that adopted some innovation steadily increased over time. By the end of January 2021, close to 60 percent of firms had either expanded the use of or invested in new digital technology, or introduced product innovation (Figure 1).

The challenges from the pandemic were multifacetedfrom the disruption in the availability of inputs to the need to guarantee safe working conditions for workers or recreate broken relationships with customersand so were the firms adjustments. Some firms reorganized production and distribution processes (process innovation, like takeaway and delivery in the hospitality industry). Others revamped their products to meet the customers needs (product innovation). We find that while both types of innovation were common to all three countries, on average, process innovation occurred more frequently than product innovation.

Firms responses were much more nuanced and complex than what the aggregate numbers suggest. Among the firms that did not increase their digital technologies usage, a minority (9 percent) did not use ICT (information and communication technologies) before COVID-19 and did not start using them during the crisis. Similarly, there were businesses that were already using ICT and did not increase usage during the crisis (55 percent). By the end of the second wave, about 90 percent of firms were using digital technologies for their business and almost one-third of firms had either started using or increased their use during the pandemic (Figure 2).

A higher intensity in the use of digital technologies could already contribute to a faster recovery. It could induce productivity gains and reduce the persistent productivity gap previously found between European and U.S. firms. However, digital technologies are complex and heterogeneous and can affect the opportunities of growth and convergence across different firms and local economic contexts unevenly.

For digitization to spur a productivity-driven recovery, it must concentrate on business functions with the highest potential to spur upgrade and firm growth (according to recent World Bank research). In these three countries, we find that digitization has concentrated in business functions such as marketing, sales, and business administration (Figure 3), which can be considered low-hanging fruits with less potential for spurring productivity at the firm level. So far, digitization is making very limited inroads in areas such as production and supply chain management, which require complex organizational changes.

More opportunities await firms with the possibility of expanding and incorporating digital technologies toward optimizing production capacity and more efficient supplier management. Given these findings, in our next blog, we will address the question of what could be preventing firms from expanding the use of digital technologies.

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Leveraging digital technology during the pandemic - Brookings Institution

(WTRF) Heres a look at the weeks top headlines.

Its been labeled the forgotten epidemic, but no matter what we call it, overdose deaths are reaching record numbers.

93,000 people died of an overdose nationwide last year.It appears COVID accelerated the crisis. In West Virginia alone, there were more than 1,200 fatal overdoses, a 45% increase from the previous year.In Guernsey County, theres a new upgraded 911 system that could allow emergency responders to save more lives.

Its called the Carbyne-C Live System and allows the dispatcher to see the scene of an emergency as well as hear the callers voice.If the caller is on a cell phone, the dispatcher texts them a link.When the caller clicks on the link, it creates a video feed.It also allows people in need who cant speak to silently text the 911 system to get help.

In Wheeling, theres a new mobile unit in town to help with unsolved gun-related crimes.

Wheeling police get help with unsolved gun-related crimes

The National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or NIBIN, assists law enforcement in linking unsolved cases through ballistic evidence.A weapon in question is test fired in the mobile unit, the shell is collected and analyzed, and then police get a list of possible similar results to be reviewed by a trained technician.

Weirtons former city manager suddenly announced his resignation during a city council meeting this week.

Joe DiBartolomeo did so after accusing multiple council members of violating state law.Assistant City Manager Dee Ann Pulliam is filling the duties of the role now, and mayor Harold Miller stays the city will begin the process next week to permanently fill the position.

Its the weekend country music fans have been anxiously awaiting. the Blame My Roots Festival is back in Belmont County!

A jam-packed performance schedule featured headliners Miranda Lambert and Neil McCoy, and even some local favorites.After taking a break last summer, organizers say the festival tripled in size with a bigger stage and thousands of people relaxing on the grounds listening to live music.

Stay with 7News for the latest headlines all week long.

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Overdoses reach record numbers and new technology could help saves more lives: Here are the weeks top headlines - WTRF

I can use all the help I can get trying to manage my three big, willful dogs at home and in the outdoors. So I understand the desire to apply the same tech solutions that have made work and home more convenient, more connected, and safer to dog ownership. Ive tried connected dog trackers with great enthusiasm. But after some testing, I found them all lacking. Let me save you time and money by explaining where they went wrong and point you toward the products and training approaches that actually work.

Whistle, Fi, and Halo all fall into a new category of product known as connected dog collars. Each one offers some degree of location or activity trackingor in the case of Halo, training and geofencingwhile connecting to your smartphone through Bluetooth, cellphone signal, or WiFi. These arent the only connected dog collars on-sale right now, but these three products are the most well known, and together represent all technologies currently available in the space.

Whistle currently offers two devices: an $80 motion-based fitness tracker and a $150 unit that adds live GPS tracking. Both are small, unobtrusive, and clip to your dogs existing collar. Using the Whistle app, you can define a perimeter around your yard and receive an alert if your dog leaves that area. In addition to tracking exercise intensity and duration, Whistles motion sensors are equipped with algorithms designed to identify and alert you of problem behaviors like licking and scratching. Fitness tracking plans start at $5 per month; location trackingstarts at $8.25. Battery life for the GPS tracker is said to be three days if the dog is away from your WiFi connection.

The $150 Fi Series 2 collar offers a very similar feature set to Whistle. It provides GPS location tracking and alerts if your dog leaves a designated area, as well as activity tracking. Its main advantage appears to be battery life, with up to three weeks of run time if your dog is away from WiFi signal (which I assume it will be on any walk). Fis monthly subscription starts at $7.50 per month.

By offering a shock-based training and geo-fence aid, Halo promises substantially more function than Whistle or Fi. And, for $1,000-per-collar, with a $2.70 monthly subscription fee, it better. But Halos unique selling point is clear: with the tagline The go-anywhere wireless fence, the brand says its product will contain your dog within custom areas you can define anywhere, at home or away. Halo works with celebrity dog trainer Cesar Millan and runs owners through a mandatory 21-day training school on the app that teaches them how to humanely and productively apply shock training to their dogs. You need to recharge your Halo collar every night.

Take your dog for a walk around town, and youll probably notice that the number of signal bars on your phone varies as you walk past tall buildings, through heavily wooded areas, or up and down hills. Thats because the UHF radio frequencies that your phone uses to communicate with a cell tower must travel in a straight line between source and receiver. In other words,cell phone signal is line-of-sightphysical obstructions between your phone and a tower can block it.

The problem likely gets worse if you take your dog on a hike outside of town. While all of these devices are capable of receiving location information from GPS satellites, they transmit that location to your phone using cellular phone networks. The potential for problems double, because were talking about two devices here: the collar on your dog, and the phone in your hand. The second either one of those loses its cell signal, you lose the ability to track your dog.

This problem was evident testing Whistle back in Los Angeles, where I used to live. My favorite spot to hike the dogs there was Runyon Canyon, a mega-popular city park in the Hollywood Hills. There, we found cellphone blackout areas at the bottom of the parks canyons and the crowded trailhead on the parks south side. Whistle wasnt able to track dogs or communicate with my cell phone through parts of the most popular dog park in LA.

Borrowed or rented a car lately? Shared a wireless speaker with your partner? We all know how challenging it can be to pair your phone with another device using Bluetooth, maintain that connection as you leave and return to an area, and share a device with multiple users.

Bluetooth-enabled devices transmit radio signals on the same frequency as other wireless gadgets, like baby monitors and cordless phonesthe same frequency emitted by microwaves and fluorescent lights. All of our homes and public spaces are packed full of devices that compete for that frequency or interfere with it. Smart collars also use Bluetooth to communicate with your phone when theyre in close proximity for functions like setting changes, or in the case of Halo, training inputs.

The first step to using any shock collar is to put it on your dog, and begin testing to see what degree of shock is needed to elicit a response. As Ive explored at length, the humane use of shock in dog training relies on finding the minimum effective dose that works on your dog. The goal isnt to hurt them; its to establish a clear and immediate communication cue. So new Halo in hand, I fitted it to our middle dog, Bowie, used my paired phone to set the shock function to its lowest setting, and began pushing the test button in the app to transmit shocks.

Or at least I thought I did. An athletic 75-pound husky-German shepherd mix, Bowie is a tough little guy, so I wasnt surprised when Id moved through the first half of shock intensity without seeing any sort of reaction. I kept turning the level up and pushing the button to fire the shock until Id reached the maximum level. The apps interface kept telling me it was working, but Bowie was just sniffing around like usual, unbothered. So I pushed the shock button a few more times. All of a sudden, Bowie did a giant backflip while letting out an awful yelp. Turns out my phone hadnt been communicating with the collar, so the first shock he received was at one of the highest levels. I took his collar off and didnt try it again until a couple weeks had passed.

Aside from trouble reliably transmitting training cues, Bluetooth also suffers from a limited range (typically 30 feet or so, not enough to cross my backyard) and generally unreliable connection. The technology throws a wrench in the ability of any of these products ability to provide consistent training cues or assured safety.

The Global Positioning System is a series of 24 satellites launched and controlled by the Department of Defense. Each of those satellites constantly transmits its location and the exact time. To determine its location, the GPS receiver on your device looks at the signals transmitted by at least four of those satellitesand compares the time it took those signals to arrive to calculate its position on earth in three dimensions.

Buildings, trees, terrain, and other obstructions can block satellite transmissions. So while the best-case scenario accuracy level for any of these devices is seven feet or less, that number can rapidly grow, depending on your surroundings.

While simply tracking a dog, temporary variances in location accuracy shouldnt be a major problem. If your dog is 100 yards ahead of you on the trail, it doesnt really matter if your display is saying 99 or 110 yards. But variances in accuracy can cause issues when it comes to geo fencing.

Testing Whistle and Fis escape alert functions by having a friend leash up one of the dogs and walk them away from the house, neither product proved able to reliably provide an alert of the dogs escape until they were well away from the house. In some cases, that alert came after theyd moved a couple blocks away, across a couple of major roads.

In the case of Halo, location accuracy problems proved more fundamental. I wanted to use it to contain the dogs within the yard of our cabin. Since its located near Glacier National Park, there are large predators like grizzly bears and wolves in the immediate vicinity, but the lake its located on also freezes over in the winter, and that ice is often of dubious thickness. Keeping the dogs in the yard is a matter of life or death.

I tested Halos accuracy by holding two collars in my hand and moving around and off my cabins property. I was sometimes able to walk out onto the ice with no feedback from the collars whatsoever, and up into the wooded hills on the other side, again with no reaction from the collars. In other cases, the collars would skip the audible warnings and move straight to applying shocks. Sometimes, the shocks would come at the precise border Id defined, and other times those shocks would occur ten yards or more past that point.

Fitting the collar to Wiley, our oldest, and most strong-headed dog, I noticed him receive a correction at the border of the property, then continue his adventure onwards, unchecked.

Given that the purpose of a shock collar is to provide consistent, immediate, clear training cues, this is incredibly problematic. By failing to reliably alert my dogs of the border of the property, they werent able to receive effective training to stay within it. And by applying shock unpredictably, Halo created the risk of frightening the dogs and causing them to run further into danger.

I have since given the collars to friends who live on a ranch outside of town, here in Montana. Their property is all grassland, with an unobstructed view of the sky and covered in strong, consistent cellphone signal. Its not near any roads or other major dangers. In that best-case environment, they have found that Halo is able to keep their small dogs from visiting the nearest neighbors, several hundred yards away.

Despite the frustrations I ran into testing these collars, I am successfully able to keep my dogs contained at home, at the cabin, or in camp and can even track them when theyre off-leash. Heck, I even know how much exercise they get. Heres how.

To keep our dogs in the yard and off the busy street we live on here at home in Bozeman, Montana, I built a six-foot tall fence. The total cost? $5,000. Or only $2,000 more than the cost of three Halo collars. And that fence is 100 percent reliableas long as my friends remember to shut the gate.

At the cabin, Ive installed a sort of aerial dog run by tensioning a strong rope at head height between two trees. Clipping the dogs leashes to that allows some small degree of outside activity and bathroom breaks. No matter how I hang it, the dogs always find a way to get tangled, but it is safe. No dog has gotten out on the ice or chased a moose yet.

In camp, I just rely on the recall Ive built into each dog with years of consistent positive reinforcement training. Theyre a ways from being absolutely reliable with a simple call, but I also choose to camp a long ways from other people, so its not a huge issue.

I use a Garmin Astro 430and T5 collars. The system isnt cheap, starting at $650 for the handheld device and a collar, and $250 for each additional collar. And its not without its own problems: the interface isnt very user friendly, the handheld receiver runs on expensive lithium batteries that have to be fed every few hours of use, and the collars use a proprietary charger that you have to buy a new collar to replace. But man, this thing is reliable.

Unlike the collars mentioned above, Garmin employs a radio transmitter (the big antennae you can see the my dogs wearing in the photo on top of this article) to transmit the location of each device back to the handheld receiver. That gives the Astro a nine-mile range between human and dog, even in heavily wooded mountains. The collars are also made from the kind of robust materialsnickel-plated steel hardware, polyurethane-coated nylon strapsthat have stood up to all of the abuse our dogs can throw at them for two years with no signs of wear. While the big antennae might seem awkward, our dogs have never gotten them stuck on anything, and so far as I can tell, dont even notice theyre there.

Each of the dogs got about ten miles of moderately-paced hiking in last Saturday. How do I know that? I clipped on their leashes, put on my boots, and took them on a ten-mile hike. I can tell how far we went by looking at a map and watching the terrain we cross. I can gauge how theyre doing by observing their body language. And I can determine if it was enough exercise by whether or not they fall asleep when we get home. I dont need an app to tell me that stuff, and neither do you.

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The Unsuccessful Intersection of Dogs and Technology | Outside Online - Outside

If you have attended a baseball game recently at Wild Things Park, then you might have noticed the four small silver tube-like objects fixed atop the home teams dugout along the first-base line.

Are they security cameras? Do they have something to do with the Frontier Leagues live video streaming package that started this season? Are they radar guns?

They are high-speed cameras that are part of the Yakkertech system that was installed at the ballpark this spring. Yakkertech is an imaging system that uses multiple cameras to instantly measure data from a pitch and batted ball.

They have cameras directed at all the reference points from the pitchers mound to home plate. They track the velocities and spins at those points and it instantly collects all the data and combines it all and visualizes it, Wild Things general manager Tony Buccilli explained.

Yakkertech yakker is an antiquated term for a big-breaking curveball is an Arizona-based company that specializes in collecting high-speed data about the movement of a baseball and many other things about the sport.

This does the exact same things you would see in a major league park. It picks up the same things, Buccilli said. It is telling us how much depth there is on a pitch, how much its spinning, horizontal movement, vertical movement. Its giving everything you would get a traditional major league ballpark and more.

Yakkertech is more of a startup but their technology has been getting glowing reviews.

While Major League Baseball has used Statcast to supply similar data at its games since 2015, Yakkertech is creating a niche for itself at the college and independent league levels.

Yakkertech ownership reached out to management of the Frontier League. They made a trip to Florida for the league directors meetings and made a presentation, Buccilli explained. Owners at that point voted to move forward with it as a collective group. They provided two options for teams in the Frontier League to get Yakkertech. One was a no-cost and another was a cost-associated for equipment. The differential was based upon who would own the player data. Every team but one went with the free option because it was just a complete unknown. Would we need this information?

The equipment at Wild Things Park was installed days before Washingtons home opener. Frontier League deputy commission Steve Tahsler said in addition to Washington, Yakkertech systems have been installed and are up and running at ballparks in Florence, Windy City, Sussex County and New Jersey.

What the system does is instantly provide data about each pitch thrown during a game, ranging from velocity and spin rate to break and movement. It also measures a batted balls exit velocity, trajectory and distance. For example, during the Wild Things last homestand, Washingtons Grant Heyman hit a towering home run over the videoboard beyond the right-field wall in a game against New York. The Yakkertech system gave an estimated distance of 437 feet for Heymans blast.

Yakkertech also can give information about other facets of the game, such as player movement. It can even track if a pitch is in the strike zone or not, and gives an end-of-game percentage of correct ball/strike calls made by a home-plate umpire.

The only drawback is the Yakkertech information is not yet transferable to the videoboard at Wild Things Park, which is why the pitch speed is no longer displayed during games.

While the wealth of Yakkertech information is new to Frontier League teams, it has been helpful resource for major league scouts.

The biggest beneficiaries of this data are MLB teams, Buccilli said. Its interesting now that this data is here. I have (MLB) teams asking for specific things, largely spin rates. They ask, Whats his spin rate on a fastball? Whats his spin rate on a breaking ball? They want to see beyond statistics being a great measuring stick of talent, they want to make sure the spin rates play to what MLB teams are prioritizing.

I even had an MLB scout in the stands ask about a pitchers spin rate. He was a guy in the Frontier League who had very good stats, but after getting the information the scout said he could see why his breaking ball is a little flat. He thought maybe the pitchers stuff might not play well at the next level. Another team signed him. Each team looks for certain things.

The information Yakkertech takes from each game is fed into a database and stored by one of its partners, BaseballCloud. Buccilli said the amount of data about the Frontier League is minimal at this point.

We can take all the information and get answers. What is a guy throwing? What is he throwing on certain counts? What zones does he work in? You can really break it down, but I dont think we have a large enough sample size to make all those kinds of judgments, he said.

The game is going more toward math than people. Look at how much hype there is about exit velocity. Thats all people talk about these days. Pitch speed, spin rate, exit velocity, estimated distance, peak velocity, speed out of the hand, speed at home plate. All of that data has its place, but I dont try to bog myself down with those numbers. You can find a number to prove or disprove just about everything.

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Wild Things technology feature tells tale on pitchers - Observer-Reporter

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We conclude our series on the Federal Lab Consortium and the business of federal tech transfer with a look at the operational arm that keeps it all going. Its called the TechLink Center, and its housed at Montana State University. Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked about it with the Centers new executive director Brett Cusker.

Tom Temin: Mr. Cusker, good to have you on.

Brett Cusker: Very pleased to be here, thank you.

Tom Temin: And we should begin with your own background. You are a retired Air Force Colonel, and you were in the tech transfer business for the military somewhat before coming over here. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Brett Cusker: Thank you. Yep, I have served 25 years in the Air Force and ended up in the acquisition community finishing my career at the Air Force headquarters level and running command and control system acquisition. And thats what got me connected to the technology transfer world, as well as the Small Business Innovation Research world. So coming out of this service, was looking for employment and found an opportunity here with TechLink, as the doodies primary partner for technology transfer, made an application and very thankfully got hired a few years ago, and then took over as executive director, as you mentioned recently.

Tom Temin: And youre in some beautiful territory, we might also add. But tell us about the TechLink Center. What specifically does it do and which federal labs does it do it with?

Brett Cusker: So the MSU TechLink Center is a part of the Montana State Universities system Montana State is a land grant university of the state of Montana and all land grant colleges have an economic development mission. So MSU was defined as a Center for Economic Development back in 1996. And our first federal partner actually was NASA. And we were helping them connect with industry partners, regionally, the success that we saw there, got us noticed by the Department of Defense, and we have been the DVDs primary partner for industry outreach nationwide since 1999. And so our main purpose is to find those small, non traditional companies out there that could benefit from licensing intellectual property that the Department of Defense has patented. And we are experts in the field of licensing all my folks, Ive certified licensing professional credentials, and most of them have patents in their own right. So we have a very, very experienced group of people here that know the art of licensing federal DoD property, intellectual property, as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Tom Temin: I almost want to ask you how the sushi is in Montana, because when you think of startup innovation companies, you would think theyre all on the coasts. And yet youre in Montana, trying to find these companies. How does it work in a day to day sense?

Brett Cusker: Yeah, so day to day what we have is a really aggressive marketing outreach campaign thats centered. Really on our website, its techlinxcenter.org, where you can go and find all of the available intellectual property for the Department of Defense, as well as whats available through the Department of Veterans Affairs in one place. We are the only location that entrepreneurs can go to, and search for intellectual property that might help them in their business development efforts. And we love to promote the opportunity that tech transfer gives because through tech transfer, businesses of all sizes have partnered with the Department of Defense and VA labs, using their intellectual property that significantly cuts time and resources from their own R&D efforts and has successfully brought new products and services to market with speed and efficiency.

Tom Temin: And I want to say that as someone who has a kid read the Lafayette radio catalogue at night, your site is really a cornucopia of various technologies. Im looking at high performance PCB based Yageo capacitor for greater than 100 watt applications, overlapping vein mufflers, small low power solar radiometers. I mean, this is real stuff youve got listed here. These are available for licensing in other words.

Brett Cusker: thats absolutely correct. And licensing terms can vary based on the company needs. So one of the things that my folks have been successful in doing is not only explaining and cord connecting interested licensees with the laboratory and the inventors themselves, but also creating a really unique strategy for how to license that intellectual property, whether it be an exclusive license for all fields of use, or a partial exclusive license or a non exclusive license, every case is different. Every agreement is different. And at the end of the day, what TechLink is doing and why the department offense has paid us to do this. We dont take any money from any of these deals were paid for by the Department of Defense and the VA to help broker win-win agreements as a center of excellence really an experts that understand the licensing ins and outs, as well as the opportunity that that license offers to both the government and that industry partner.

Tom Temin: We were speaking with Brett Cusker. Hes executive director of The TechLink Center at the Montana State University. And what makes a good outfit, startup or maybe an established company, to be a place to which you can transfer technology? How do you know, hey, this is a great place?

Brett Cusker: So we have worked with businesses large and small. Whats really interesting about federal tech transfer as envisioned, through the enabling legislation back in the 80s assistance, and wildland vital acts was, there was a desire by Congress to connect with non traditional small entrepreneurial companies in order to see these basic research advancements within the Department of Defense and federal laboratory system, find a home and connect with those small, innovative, agile companies that can take this baseline technology, further develop it into something thats commercially viable, or in the case of the Department of Defense, something that will provide a capability that doesnt currently exist within the department and reduces the overall cost of innovation for both the Department of Defense and that industry partner. So in terms of companies, we see about 95% of our companies are small, or very small, were talking less than 100. employees, several are startups, as you mentioned, even less than 10. And these are people that have an idea and drive a capability and a capacity and maybe even a track record of success of licensing intellectual property. A key piece of their application is a commercialization plan. Its part of the requirements to license federal intellectual property, there has to be a commercialization plan, the expectation is that licensee will actually do something with the innovation. And so our team here at TechLink will help that licensing, or that firm actually write their commercialization plan so that theres good confidence on the government side that this licensee will take the innovation and do something with it and be successful.

Tom Temin: And can more than one company license a particular technology?

Brett Cusker: Thats an excellent question. And the answer is yes. And as I mentioned earlier, theres lots of different flavors of licenses, you can have an exclusive license for all field of use, which would mean that nobody else is going to be able to take that invention and do something with it. You could have an exclusive license for certain fields of use, you can have a partial exclusive license and a non exclusive license. Theres lots of different resources through the technology transfer tools that Congress has given our country for really tailoring the kind of licensing agreement that makes the most sense to that industry partner, as well as the government agency that owns that IP.

Tom Temin: And can licenses cross domains from which the original technology came or was intended, Im looking at something here a adjustable clamp device for aircraft, pretty nifty little gadget. The idea here is adjustable clamp that can be mounted to aircraft. And you can route wires and do different things without the need for adhesive. You can do it with a simple screwdriver if Im looking at this, right. But maybe something not connected to aircraft could use the same type of clamp, maybe a car with a lawnmower.

Brett Cusker: Thats very observant. And youre exactly right. Were seeing multiple uses for innovation, it may have been a desire by the Department of the Navy, for example, to create a baseline capability that addresses a very specific problem to the maritime environment. But that innovation very well could be a solution in another domain as well. And so yes, we see a lot of different applications and of these innovations going in directions maybe that that researcher that Principal Investigator didnt even realize it could go to and theres been a lot of excellent success in that cross domain area.

Tom Temin: And do you ever walk through, say an airport or through a factory or somewhere and say, golly, I helped license that?

Brett Cusker: Yeah, in fact, there are several interventions that have come out of DoD labs that are in practical use on a day to day basis, whether its cargo loader at that airport, or even different manufacturing capabilities and carts, just it kind of runs the gambit, anything that you can think of in any kind of genre, the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs is probably researching the next great advancement.

Tom Temin: And you have metrics on the annual value to the government of the tech transfer licensing agreements.

Brett Cusker: We sure do. In fact, if you go to the techlinkcenter.org, we have an impacts page that unpacks the impact of technology transfer for the Department of Defense and other federal agencies that we have supported asking that very question has there been a return on investment and does this work and so if the very thankfully my organization has been researching the success of technology transfer through an economic impact studies since 2009, and we are renewing for the third time licensing impact study just this year, so were keeping a running total of the six They have not only the licensees, but the interventions and the innovations that are coming out of the Defense Department. Its a very significant success story, not only for our own organization, but certainly demonstrating that the intention of tech transfer is meeting and exceeding the expectations that were set all the way back in the 1980s.

Tom Temin: Order of magnitude is it millions, tens of millions, billions a year?

Brett Cusker: Billions, yes. It has been billions of dollars worth of impact across all these different licenses over time.

Tom Temin: Well, Im hoping to license the Vulcan Fire Torch. I dont know what that is, but it sounds like a lot of fun. Brett Cusker is executive director of the TechLink Center at Montana State University. Thanks so much for joining me.

Brett Cusker: Well, thank you. Its a pleasure to be here with you today.

More here:

What it takes to keep federal technology transfer going - Federal News Network

Congress is mulling a number of proposals aimed at investing in technology and traditional scientific research and development that could make huge strides on racial diversity in science.

Why it matters: The proposals come as science institutions face pressure to hire and cultivate more teachers of color, diversify research fields and ensure that there is greater diversity in the STEM workforce overall.

Congress is mulling a number of proposals aimed at investing in technology and traditional scientific research and development that could make huge strides on racial diversity in science.

Why it matters: The proposals come as science institutions face pressure to hire and cultivate more teachers of color, diversify research fields and ensure that there is greater diversity in the STEM workforce overall.

Details: The U.S. Senate last month passed the mammoth U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, also known as the Endless Frontiers Act. The bill focuses on making major investments, on the order of about $250 billion, in the federal funding of scientific research and development.

What they're saying: The whole meritocracy system that we believe science is based on is not actually applied the same way to Black, Hispanic, Native American people and people with disabilities, Yaihara Fortis Santiago, associate director for postdoctoral affairs and trainee diversity initiatives at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told Nature after the death of George Floyd.

The bottom line: More money won't solve the entire problem. But pending science research and development legislation, combined with additional funding contained in infrastructure spending proposals, would be a bold step toward diversifying STEM fields.

The rest is here:

New federal actions aim to tackle diversity in STEM fields - Axios

Shed of Tangshan Interchange Toll Station / AESEU Architectural Technology and Art studio

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Text description provided by the architects. In 2019, ATA design team received the task of designing a toll station for Tangshan Interchange of Shanghai-Chengdu Expressway. As the most important transportation hub in the east of Nanjing, the owner hopes to show the image of Tangshan as the "East Gateway of Nanjing" through the shed of Tangshan Interchange, and it is also an important node for the peripheral transportation organization of the 2021 Jiangsu Garden Expo Park.

Audience group, value, and viewing way.In view of safety, economy, and functionality, transportation facilities such as toll shed usually adopt standardized styles and sheds usually adopt large-span steel structures to meet the traffic needs of lanes. Pillars are set as supporting structures on toll islands or at both ends of stations, and the roofing materials are mostly metal profiled plates or membrane materials. Each toll station is identified with a different station name to show its difference. Standardized structural components can effectively reduce the construction cost and ensure the reliability of the structure. In recent years, highways have improved the comfort and experience of drivers and passengers by building special service areas, and local governments also regard highway exits as the display of the local image, so they have higher requirements for the form of toll station sheds.

Generally, the way to improve the image of the toll shed is to do some two-dimensional modeling on the facade of the shed to meet the perspective of normal pedestrians. But is it applicable to drivers and passengers on expressways? These are the three points that need to be made clear in design, which are Audience group, value, and viewing way. For drivers, station name signs, lane signs, toll deduction signs and gate bars need to be paid attention to first when driving. The modeling of the station shed and the space under the shed are more focused on the overall space perception than the detailed modeling. Passengers in the rear row look at the outside from the side windows. Therefore, the probability of observing the space under the shed is higher than that of the facade of the shed. Because the manual toll collection channel is set by the outside road, drivers and passengers will have more opportunities to observe the shed from the lower side while waiting in line. According to these line-of-sight analyses, large-scale physical features and regular spatial language are more likely to impress people than complex transformed concrete images. Therefore, how to shape the space under the shed and extend people's experience from two-dimensional facades to three-dimensional spaces provides a new thinking aspect for design.

Standardization and locality.From the perspective of economy and safety, the use of standardized steel members to build large-span structure selection is in line with the identifying characteristics of toll sheds as transportation facilities. Therefore, grid structure and truss structure are the mainstream of structural forms, and columns are often supported at the four corners and the middle according to different spans. However, standardized industrial components are easy to appear monotonous due to their lack of changes, and it is difficult to show their characteristics, especially how to show the local characteristics of buildings, which is a difficult problem faced by architects.

The locality of architecture is not a static concept but coexists with the contemporariness of architecture. The humanities, history, and topography around the site are of course the local characteristics of the building, but the current construction technology level, the difficulty of obtaining materials, and the cost constraints under the expressway system are also the local elements of the building in the contemporary context.

In this project, the design team tries to find a balance between the standardization and richness of the structure and uses the expressive force of the structure itself to present the localization characteristics of the building. The design team adopted the structure of the bifurcated support column & folded plate roof. The bifurcated support column consists of standard steel bars supported vertically and obliquely in the plane. The roof is a space folded plate structure composed of cross beams. The interface dimensions of the inclined steel support bars are divided into three categories, which are smaller and smaller according to the stress characteristics, and finally connected with the roof beams.

Considering the unobstructed line of sight and the safety of vehicle traffic, the bifurcated support column is arranged in the upper space of the toll island but does not enter the upper space of the driveway. The standard steel brace forms different cross column forms through different combinations, and the cross column is in different positions on different toll station islands. In this way, the space under the shed is rich in structural and physical changes, and these changes are more attractive to observe at low speed. The skylight on the roof allows natural light to enter the shadow area under the shed, making the space bright and full of layers, which draws on the impression of the hall space where guests are received in traditional buildings. Its purpose is to make tourists feel like passing through the hall into the inner chamber when they pass through the tool shed, and the opposite view of the shed is the main mountain range of Tangshan, hence named The shed with mountain view.

At night, the light-receiving surface and the light-receiving surface are reversed, the folded roof is illuminated from below, the grid of repeated array strengthens the twists and turns of the roof, and the bifurcated supporting columns in the light are visually staggered and overlapped, so the shed is as impressive as a temple in the forest.

Detail nodes.When using structure as the element of spatial expression, an important principle is that each component truly reflects its stress characteristics and each structure plays its role. For example, the size change of section steel of cross column from bottom to top corresponds to the change of bending moment, the tension rod is clear at a glance, the web areas of the cross columns and beams are closed by aluminum plates, which is used as a bridge box for cables. However, on the one hand, the purpose of exposing the structure at the intersection node is to facilitate the daily maintenance of bolts, and on the other hand, is to realize the crossing of cables here.

When we chase the ambitious curve modeling created by computer algorithms, the method of analyzing the basic problems of architecture by using the basic means of design is still applicable in traditional architecture. It can also create a building space with controllable cost, practical function, and profound influence with the publicly available materials and simple and reliable construction.

Read more:

Shed of Tangshan Interchange Toll Station / AESEU Architectural Technology and Art studio - ArchDaily