Category Archives: Technology

April 22, 2017 by Dee Depass, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Stratasys Ltd. employees ran a marathon of sorts earlier this month as they dashed to dozens of Twin Cities schools to introduce 3,500 students to the wonderment of 3-D printing.

The effort was the company's first large-scale effort to instantly reach out to thousands of students about the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math. It culminated with 93 students visiting the company's headquarters in a partnership with the national black sorority Delta Sigma Theta.

"So many kids and teachers and principals are intrigued about 3-D printing because they see it on TV, but a lot of times they don't get to engage with it. This changes that," said Jesse Roitenberg, Stratasys national education manager. "3-D printing makes sense to people when they can touch and feel and hold it. That's why Stratasys decided to accelerate its educational outreach."

In the past, a Stratasys employee here or there visited their child's school for career day. But for this "outreach week, we invited anyone in the company to go out to a school and talk about what they do for Stratasys and what Stratasys does," Roitenberg said.

About 80 employees helped with the effort that reached 31 schools. Each volunteer had an educational kit, videos and some fun 3-D printed products to introduce kids to the technology and what a career in manufacturing and engineering could look like.

The teens that visited Stratasys, from nine different schools, were part of the Deltas' Empowering Males to Build Opportunities for Developing Independence Scholars program. They gawked, squinted, pulled and giggled while using Stratasys design software and printers to convert digital drawings into 3-D salt shakers.

Stratasys, with $672 million in annual revenue, normally sells its large printing machines to manufacturers such as Airbus, Siemens, Ford Motor Co., Tesla and other industrial giants.

While the technology has grown into a $6 billion industry, the students of today are "the next generation (and) will be very key to taking 3-D printing to a whole new level," said Rich Garrity, president of Stratasys Americas.

While listening, Ronelle Porter, a 15-year-old high school student, scanned a table of sample products, grabbed a 3-D printed steering wheel and pretended to race it. He thumped a 3-D printed brake pedal to test its strength.

Nearby, Demond Bryant Jr., 16, felt the model of a heart that doctors had practiced on before doing actual surgery.

"I've never had this much of a hands-on experience with 3-D printing," he said. "I didn't know about its medical applications before. This is pretty cool."

In the station next door, Caleem Williams pressure washed a freshly printed velociraptor head until inches of molding gel slid off. That left him with a sharp-toothed little beast that became a keepsake keychain.

"These are cool. I've never seen this before in person. If I wasn't told this was 3-D printed, you would never know," said Williams, 17. Now he can't wait for his school to get a 3-D printer so he can make diorama models for his anatomy class. Chaperones for the day were black principals, engineers and financial experts from 3M, Medtronic, Optum, Bank of America, Ritchie Engineering, robotics firm CZX Solutions and Delta Sigma Theta.

"I know this is supposed to be for the kids, but this is just fantastic," said Michael Roberts from Optum as he peered through 3-D printed truck-engine housings. "I'm as excited about this as they are."

Miquel McMoore, a Stratasys recruiter, arranged the partnership with Delta EMBODI. The Deltas have several programs for girls. The EMBODI effort for boys, however, is in its third year, she said.

"I have been with Stratasys for two years. And this company fits exactly what EMBODI is," she said. "We are very STEM-focused."

Pleased that the students learned so much and had so much fun, "we will do this again," she said.

Explore further: 3-D printed operational drone with embedded electronics using aerospace-grade material

2017 Star Tribune (Minneapolis) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have 3-D printed a ready-to-fly drone with embedded electronics using aerospace-grade material.

New 3D printing technology unveiled this week sharply increases the size of objects that can be produced, offering new possibilities to remake manufacturing in the auto, aerospace and other major industries.

Stratasys, a leading maker of 3-D printers, is buying another 3-D printer manufacturer, MakerBot, for $403 million in stock.

(Phys.org) An announcement of a multicolor 3D printer capable of automating the creation of complex prototypes with different material properties was made this week by 3D printer manufacturer, Stratasys. Of interest to ...

The features of 3D printing are significant for the movie industry. The US animation studio LAIKA, relies on using the cutting edge software and 3D printing hardware to make its films. A new collaboration with Fraunhofer ...

General Electric is continuing its push into the digital realm, spending $1.4 billion to acquire two European 3-D printing companies.

Everyone experiences stiff muscles from time to time, whether after a rigorous workout, in cold weather, or after falling asleep in an unusual position. People with cerebral palsy, stroke and multiple sclerosis, however, ...

It may not be quite like the Jetsons, but for over a million dollars you too can soon fly around in a car.

Google's voice-activated assistant can now recognize who's talking to it on Google's Home speaker.

Facebook wants to read your mind.

Google Earth is getting a revival, as the 3-D mapping service reorients itself to become more of a tool for adventure and exploration.

Samsung's new Galaxy S8 phone is stunning. But its $100 price hike is hard to swallow.

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3-D technology is game-changer for recruiting future engineers - Phys.Org

Immigrants accounted for a little under 20 percentof all inventors during the late 19th and early 20th century, notesthe Harvard Business Review, with that numbersurgingto approximately 30 percent today.Their research is clearimmigrants are playing an outsize role in technology and innovation:

The largest share of immigrants were involved in developing medical technology inventions, such as surgical sutures. But medical technology accounted for just 1% of all U.S. patents. In areas that had a much larger effect on the U.S. economy at this time specifically electricity and chemicals, which accounted for 13.9% and 12.6% of all U.S. patents respectively immigrants were also strongly represented. Migrant influence was widespread, with migrant inventors accounting for at least 16% of patents in every technology area. The majority of immigrant inventors originated from European countries, with Germans playing a particularly prominent role.

Areas of technology with higher levels of foreign-born expertise experienced much faster patent growth between 1940 and 2000 than otherwise comparable technology areas, in terms of both the number of patents and a citation-adjusted measure of patent quality. That relationship isnt necessarily causal, however our results provide suggestive evidence that immigrant inventors played a key role in the development of Americas technology leadership.

Migrant inventors may have an outsized influence on innovation for two primary reasons. First, immigrant inventors like Nikola Tesla, who was born in Serbia, develop important ideas in their own right. Additionally, their insights may augment the skills of domestic inventors through collaboration. For example, in the 1940s Canadian immigrant James Hillier developed the first commercially viable electron microscope at Radio Corporation of America alongside Ladislaus Marton, a Belgian inventor, Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian inventor, and U.S.-born engineers.

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Harvard Business Review: Immigrants play 'outsize role' in technology and innovation - Daily Kos

In the next article of theseries, The Network Revolution: Creating Value through Platforms, People and Technology, authorsBarry Libert,Megan Beck, Brian Komar and Josue Estrada debut the concept of Social Change as a Platform.Libert is a Wharton senior fellow and CEO of OpenMatters; Beck is the firms chief insights officer. Komar is vice president of community engagement for Salesforce.org, the nonprofit reseller of Salesforce.com Inc. Estrada is the senior vice president of strategy and operations at Salesforce.org.

As Charles Dickens so astutely observed about life during the French Revolution in A Tale of Two Cities, it was the best and worst of times. One could say the same thing today. The Fourth Industrial Revolution of technology networks and platforms could usher in an era of mass societal disruption as well as unprecedented social cooperation. Whether the latter would prevail depends on the ability of nonprofit entities and the broader social sector to boost their collective impact by adopting the new business models that are disrupting the for-profit world. It would also depend on whether they can embrace what we call Social Change as a Platform or SCaaP.

During the turbulent 1960s, Bob Dylan wrote the following powerful lyrics for The Times They Are A-Changin that seems apropos for today. Come gather round people, wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown. And accept it that soon, youll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin, then you better start swimmin or youll sink like a stone. For the times they are a-changin. At the time, anti-war protests ruled the day. A generational collide over the future of America was afoot. And all the images of a nation coming apart at its seams were emblazoned across a new communications medium TV that was coming of age.

And so is it today. The Fourth Industrial Revolution what Klaus Schwab (founder of the World Economic Forum) defines as the fusion of technologies blurring the lines among the physical, digital and biological spheres is upon us. Meanwhile, nationalism is colliding with globalism, machine learning and artificial intelligence advancing geometrically, and global warming is on a direct path to changing the very nature of our planet. Despite these many challenges, this revolution, like the many that have preceded it, also comes with a great promise of opportunity.

To be sure, there are reasons for great optimism. In just the past 30 years, the global poverty rate halved with many of the poorest people in the world becoming significantly less poor. These gains mirror dramatic improvements in health and education including advances in life expectancy, child mortality, health care provision, among other important areas. Moreover, most of these gains predate the effective integration of digital technologies into the cause. In short, it is reasonable to argue that the potential for social changemakers armed with todays digital platforms in partnership with large and growing virtual networks can dramatically improve the human condition.

The potential for social changemakers armed with todays digital platforms in partnership with large and growing virtual networks can dramatically improve the human condition.

Self-organization Powered by Technology

Civil society the network of institutions that define us as actors in the civil sphere independent of governments is supposed to serve as the leader in promoting pluralism and social benefit. As Klaus Schwab notes that a renewed focus on the essential contribution of civil society to a resilient global system alongside government and business has emerged. Unfortunately, nonprofit groups, academic institutions and philanthropic organizations engaged in social change are struggling to adapt to the new global, technological and virtual landscape.

Legacy modes of operation, governance and leadership competencies rooted in the age of physical realities continue to dominate the space. Further, organizations still operate in internal and external silos far from crossing industry lines, which are blurring. And their ability to lead in a world that is changing at an exponential rate seems hampered by their mental models and therefore their business models of creating and sustaining value as well.

If civil society is not to get drenched and sink like a stone, it must start swimming in a new direction. This new direction starts with social organizations fundamentally rethinking the core assumptions driving their attitudes, behaviors and beliefs about creating long-term sustainable value for their constituencies in an exponentially networked world. Rather than using an organization-centric model, the nonprofit sector and related organizations need to adopt a mental model based on scaling relationships in a whole new way using todays technologies the SCaaP model.

Embracing social change as a platform is more than a theory of change, it is a theory of being one that places a virtual network or individuals seeking social change at the center of everything and leverages todays digital platforms (such as social media, mobile, big data and machine learning) to facilitate stakeholders (contributors and consumers) to connect, collaborate, and interact with each other to exchange value among each other to effectuate exponential social change and impact.

SCaaP builds on the government as a platform movement (Gov 2.0) launched by technologist Tim OReilly and many others. Just as Gov 2.0 was not about a new kind of government but rather, as OReilly notes, government stripped down to its core, rediscovered and reimagined as if for the first time, so it is with social change as a platform. Civil society is the primary location for collective action and SCaaP helps to rebuild the kind of participatory community celebrated by 19th century French historian Alexis de Tocqueville when he observed that Americans propensity for civic association is central to making our democratic experiment work. Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition, he noted, are forever forming associations.

But SCaaP represents a fundamental shift in how civil society operates. It is grounded in exploiting new digital technologies, but extends well beyond them to focus on how organizations think about advancing their core mission do they go at it alone or do they collaborate as part of a network? SCaaP requires thinking and operating, in all things, as a network. It requires updating the core DNA that runs through social change organizations to put relationships in service of a cause at the center, not the institution. When implemented correctly, SCaaP will impact everything from the way an organization allocates resources to how value is captured and measured to helping individuals achieve their full potential.

SCaaP requires updating the core DNA that runs through social change organizations to put relationships in service of a cause at the center, not the institution.

Digital Platforms Empower Social Change at Scale

To be sure, early adopters are already using technology to effectuate change at a pace and scale not previously available in the physical and digitally disconnected world. The marginal cost of delivery remains too high. But with todays technologies, with support from the board and management to make it happen, social change at scale is possible. Here are some organizations that are on the way to implementing SCaaP.

Just as Apple chose a platform approach when launching their App Store, these organizations are enabling their partners and contributors to share and co-create in the value chain they co-inhabit. Each has moved beyond allowing supporters to donate and promote, toward sharing real value through stakeholders talents and assets.

Tomorrows SCaaP

We are at the dawn of the SCaaP era. The future of social change as a platform is a world of connected platforms working to solve societys most pressing challenges more effectively as fast as possible. These platforms will supersede and encompass existing social change organizations. Those organizations that embrace social change as a platform will lead the way in helping to usher in this new era of connected social change platforms.

The core assets needed today to advance social change ideas, individuals and institutions continue to be the primary ingredients. What is changing and will continue to change, however, is the way these assets are assembled to deliver maximum social impact. Organizations can achieve SCAAP to the extent that those with a shared cause can gradually maximize shared capability (platforms) and minimize organization products. This represents a radical shift in approach.

Every organization relies on its information, capabilities and assets to be effective, but their networks are largely untapped or underutilized. Creating more value and scaling social impact requires the organizations leaders to leverage their networks, tapping into new sources of value, both tangible and intangible.

Value in the social impact supply chain will continue to come from new sources, for those who allow that to happen. Existing stakeholders in social change organizations will add value in new ways and new stakeholders will interact in new ways with the communitys resources and assets via the platform. SCaaP will increasingly bring all those actors and sectors together.

Philanthropic institutions supporting similar causes will be working together out in the open, ensuring all their resources and those supported through their grant-making are at the disposal of the community working to advance social change not any one individual or institution. These efforts will be focused on maximizing the way value is derived and how the agency is built, shared and advanced throughout the network.

The future of social change as a platform is a world of connected platforms working to solve societys most pressing challenges more effectively as fast as possible.

Key SCaaP Advantages to Nonprofits

Social change organizations that leverage their stakeholders networks as well as their tangible (programs and services) and intangible (expertise and relationships) assets will gain these and other advantages from embracing the SCaaP business model.

To succeed, a clear and understandable pathway to adopting SCaaP is necessary for this large, untapped market.

Seven Steps to Embracing SCaaP Today

Social change as a platform is first and foremost a business strategy, a theory of change that needs to be integrated into every organizations five-year strategic plan. That effort begins by identifying how and where an organization can accelerate the transition to a network-model across the entire organization. Specifically, organizations must assess their business model and inventory network assets, and start to reallocate resources and capital to networks as well as develop network key performance indicators (KPIs).

The biggest hurdle to SCaaP is changing the mental models and core competencies of the leadership team and board of directors. However, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions are better positioned to embrace SCaaP because they are more accustomed to imagining their community as active participants, instead of passive recipients. But it is critical that leaders significantly change how they embrace todays technologies.

With SCaaP, the nonprofit world will have the potential to enact social change on a scale previously unimagined. It is time to take up the mantle because doing so can unlock the future potential of every human being. People are worth it.

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How Technology Can Help Solve Societal Problems - Knowledge@Wharton

I was asked recently to name a book that changed my life. The book I chose was Cal Newports Deep Work, and for the most literal of reasons: Its changed how I lived my life. Particularly, its led me to stop scheduling morning meetings, and to preserve that time for more sustained, creative work.

Which is all to say that Im a bit obsessed with Newports work right now, and particularly his account of how the digital environment we inhabit is training us out of concentration and into distraction in ways that are bad for our minds, bad for our work, and ultimately bad for the world. So I invited him onto my podcast for a long, searching conversation about the role technology is playing in our lives.

In conversation, Newport doesnt disappoint. For him, the idea of deep work isnt a mere productivity hack its a path toward a better life, and a way of retaking control from technologies that are built to addict us more than theyre built to aid us:

Ezra Klein

There can be a way in which this conversation sounds like it is about making people into hyper-productive widget makers. One of the things I thought was interesting in the book was that your argument is that this is the way to work less, to have gotten enough done that at 5:00 pm, or whenever it is you leave, you can actually go home and spend the time with your family.

Cal Newport

If you prioritize depth, focusing intensely on things that matter, being skeptical of the shallow things that don't, it doesn't make you into an automaton. Actually, it embraces, and I think, amplifies, what makes you human. Doing deep thinking, for example, is a deeply human activity. It's something that only humans can do. It's immensely satisfying.

I'm a long advocate of what I call fixed schedule productivity, where I fix my work schedule first. That's the stake in the ground I start with. Everything else about my career decisions, how I work, what I take on, what I do in the day, all works backward from I want to be done at 5:30. I think my life is the opposite of hyper-scheduled.

I end the book with this quote. "A deep life is a good life." It's not just about making you more productive. A lot of the discussions that are just starting to emerge around technology in this time and its role, not just professionally, but in our lives, in our politics, are fascinating. I think people like Jaron Lanier and Douglas Rushkoff are writing books that are going to be seen as classics 25 years from now.

But Newport isnt just a philosopher of technology. Hes intensely practical about how to wrest your time and attention back from all the programs built to distract and obsess you.

Ezra Klein

Let's say you're listening to this, and you're persuaded, but you don't really know where to begin. What are the first three steps you would urge somebody to take?

Cal Newport

In terms of trying to actively promote depth in your life, start putting on your calendar some appointments with yourself to do deep work. Go a couple weeks out and treat those appointments like you would a doctor's appointment or a meeting with an investor. If someone tries to schedule something during that time, you say, "No, I'm busy from one to three, but here's when I'm available."

People understand the semantics around the meetings and appointments. They're willing to work around it. You don't have to explain why. Start with a moderate amount, say three or four hours a week. Have it on the calendar. Have it protected. And during those prescheduled times, maintain the zero-tolerance distraction policy. During those times, not a glance at the internet, not a glance at the phone.

The second thing is, take some step to start gaining back cognitive fitness. Most people are not willing, for example, to just blanket quit social media; but I would suggest a couple things. One, take social media applications off your phone.

I've had a lot of people who say, "I can give you 19 reasons why I have to use social media, why it's so important in my life," and then they do this experiment where they take it off their phone so it becomes 10 percent more difficult to log in to Facebook or Twitter. They stop using it altogether.

They realize, "Okay, wait a second. Maybe I was telling all these stories about the key role it plays in my life, and why I always have to be looking at it, but once I added just a slight impediment, I stopped using it altogether." I think it helps sort of reassess the value, but more importantly, you take the addictive aspects out of the service while still maintaining your access to the information or other value that you get out of it.

The third thing I would recommend is starting to schedule the time you do novel, distracting, stimulating things. You could schedule lots of times, but it should be scheduled times. Maybe after work, you say, "From 8 to 10, I'm going to break out the laptop and just go nuts, no holds barred. Social media, whatever. But until 8, none of it."

Or, "Okay, at work, I'm going to check my email, check on all of this at this time, this time, this time, this time." All the other times in between, even if you feel like you want to do it, you don't. This is all about just practicing that muscle of "I want stimuli, and I said no." Even if you've scheduled 25 blocks during the day when you're going to look at stimuli, that still gives you 25 blocks between those times where you're going to feel like you want to check stimuli and you say no. Every time you do that, that's helping to break the Pavlovian connection. That's usually how I get people started. Get it on the calendar, start cleaning up your cognitive fitness.

Most of the conversations on my podcast are how to think about things differently. This one is too, but its more importantly about how to do things differently, and why you should do them differently.

I can say, with no exaggeration, that talking to Newport has changed how I spend my time and how I think about the flashing icons on my toolbar. You may not agree with what he says, but its a perspective worth hearing.

You can listen to my full conversation with Newport (not to mention my past conversations with Chris Hayes, Tyler Cowen, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Arlie Hochschild, and more) by subscribing to The Ezra Klein Show on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or you can stream it off Soundcloud.

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Cal Newport on taking your life back from technology - Vox

The passing of veteran Mississippi newsman Bill Minor has been widely noted.

What may not be as readily known is a trait shared by many of his generation of pre-technology reporters the ability to observe, store and retrieve observations banked in their memories.

I met Minor in August, 1968, in Jackson, Mississippi. I had dropped out of the seminary in New Orleans to spend three months in Jackson working on a political campaign. The idea was to save money and return to New Orleans in December with enough in the bank for the January semester.

My job was simple, but mentally challenging for one who knew so little. I was to turn out a daily press release, get it approved by the boss and distribute it to the half dozen Jackson media outlets before the 4 p.m. news cycle at the wire services.

An experienced person could have written the material in an hour. It sometimes took me until 2 p.m. to get the final copy through the eyes of the boss, himself a walking almanac of national and state political facts.

My office desk was surrounded by a large dictionary, thesaurus and a congressional directory, plus file folders stuffed with information about state politics and government.

By contrast, as I made my rounds to distribute the press release, I noticed how lean the work spaces were for the citys news people. Jim Saggus at the Associated Press operated out of a tiny room on the news floor of The Clarion Ledger. Andy Reeses United Press International quarters were in an office building not much larger. Two chairs and a teletype machine pretty much filled the rooms. Desks at all the places were usually barren except for a manual typewriter. The same could be said for the the press room at the state capitol, where the only color was a green and white Draft Dot bumper sticker someone had slapped across a grey desk. The reference was to a failed dream of someone to get Dorothy Johnson in the 1967 race for governor. Her husband, Paul Johnson Jr., could not succeed himself.

These veteran news people did not need to look up a lot of facts. They already knew that Jamie Whitten was elected to Congress in 1941 and that Paul Johnson Jr. made his first try for governor in the same decade. It was in their heads.

In about 1970, Clarke Reed, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, invited columnist William F. Buckley to Greenville for a dinner speech. A group, including Bill Minor, boarded a small plane for Greenville. Afterwards, when we arrived back in Jackson, it was at least 10 p.m. Minor only had precious minutes to go somewhere and pound out the Greenville story before a midnight deadline. Next morning a complete account of the event was in the paper.

No big deal? Maybe not today. But that was a time before things were portable and quick. There were no personal computers, cellphones, email and all the available resources on the internet.

Today I drive to New Orleans once a week to teach an English composition class. The students are working adults. Most are soldiers, police officers and health field professionals.

I tell them to observe, soak up their impressions, store it in their memory and later retrieve it all out when they write an assignment.

Sometimes they smile and remind their teacher from another era that they have technology to make all this easier.

Yes, I smile back. Use all your technology and be grateful for it. But dont pass up the opportunity and enjoyment to train your mind to pay attention and store all the interesting things around you.

Comer lives in Plaquemine

Advocate readers may submit stories of about 500 words to The Human Condition at features@theadvocate.com or The Advocate, EatPlayLive, 10705 Rieger Road, Baton Rouge, LA 70809. There is no payment, and stories will be edited. Authors should include their city of residence.

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What we can learn by not using technology - The Advocate

"Flint should not have happened," said Keywell, the co-founder of more than a dozen companies, including Groupon, in the latest Boss Files podcast with CNN's Poppy Harlow. "If Uptake's tools would have been monitoring the water supply quality, then you would have known about the earliest indication and you would've solved it."

Uptake's analytics software helps predict and prevent failures and increase efficiencies across a range of industries -- from infrastructure to locomotives to health care. The company's goal is to use its data to provide its large, multinational clients increased productivity, reliability and safety.

Listen to the Boss Files podcast with Poppy Harlow and Uptake CEO Brad Keywell

"Now, human beings have to solve a problem, but we would've known about it the minute something turns on," he told Harlow. "It takes anecdote out of the equation, and it puts science and predictive insight into the equation."

Launched in 2014, Uptake has since reached a reported $2 billion valuation and now employs more than 700 people. In 2015, it was named hottest start up of the year by Forbes. It has also won some big clients, such as Caterpillar and Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

In this race to command a top spot as a provider of the Internet of Things, Keywell has some stiff competition -- including behemoth GE.

But it's a race the 47-year-old serial entrepreneur believes he can win.

Related: United Way CEO on Trump: Focus on policy, not personality

"Our core advantages are speed and agility and quality of execution, because we are eliminating, or all but eliminating drama, nonsensical politics and bureaucracy," Keywell said.

Keywell has a track record of making big ideas happen. Not only is he the co-founder of Groupon and several other startups, he also helped start Lightbank, a venture capital fund that has invested in more than 100 companies.

In 2011, he launched the now annual Chicago Ideas Week, one of the largest innovation and ideas gatherings in the world with more than 30,000 attendees and over 250 speakers.

"The primary goal was to sort of satiate my appetite for intellectual recreation, or curiosity, and just an acknowledgement that we didn't have what I thought we needed, in the Midwest, in Chicago."

Related: Wells Fargo CEO: I'd be ok with my kids calling our ethics line

And he's committed to seeing Chicago rise as a tech hub. "I would argue that Chicago is one of the centers of innovation between the coasts, if not the center of innovation," he said.

But it also means working on some tough issues, like Chicago's growing youth unemployment and violent crime.

When asked if the private sector could be part of the solution, Keywell doesn't hesitate to say "we can be part of it... when I hear about a good idea, I say 'Let's get involved.'"

Beyond Chicago, Keywell is also willing to tackle another problem facing the tech community: the lack of funding for women-led startups

The father of two daughters, Keywell said he is "strong believer" in creating opportunities for people across a range of backgrounds. "Creating opportunities is a good thing, and... I think it's mentorship that really makes a difference," he said.

"I'm in the game, and my two cents of the conversation is: What can we do?" he told Harlow. "I say to people that are part of my team 'Let's do everything we can do, to be part of the solution.'"

CNNMoney (New York) First published April 21, 2017: 6:08 AM ET

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Uptake Technologies CEO: Our technology could have detected ... - CNNMoney

Intel and Micron Technology have been working on a new-generation memory technology since about 2012. It's called 3D XPoint (not to be confused with 3D NAND), and it's absurdly fast. A good way to think of it is as a compromise between the speed of DRAM and the capacity of traditional flash storage. Unlike RAM, 3D XPoint is non-volatile (doesn't lose what it's storing when the power is off), and it's about four times denser. It's more expensive per gigabyte than NAND flash the current technology inside SSDs but it's faster in nearly every possible way, especially when it comes to latency and reading / writing small bits of data.

Now Intel has started shipping its first product with the new technology: the 375GB Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X. It's a $1520 PCIe card, working on the same NVMe standard that's popular for traditional SSDs right now.

Intel has offered a few publications a chance to check out the card, but for whatever reason it's being very secretive about its new storage baby. Reviewers like Billy Tallis from AnandTech and Paul Alcorn from Tom's Hardware had to access Intel's own servers remotely to test the card, instead of putting it inside their own computers for testing.

From looking through those tests, 3D XPoint appears great in nearly every way. For the right sort of tasks that are I/O limited but don't require terabytes of storage, 3D XPoint is the new king. While it's mostly just for enterprise right now, might require some changes in software to utilize to the utmost, and won't destroy the NAND or RAM markets anytime soon, it's nice to have a new challenger on the scene.

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Intel's next-generation SSD technology is finally ready and it's really, really fast - The Verge

Yosemite National Park wildlife biologist Ryan Leahy says he hopes the website keeps both people and bears safe. Ezra David Romero/Valley Public Radio hide caption

Yosemite National Park wildlife biologist Ryan Leahy says he hopes the website keeps both people and bears safe.

People love seeing black bears when they visit Yosemite National Park in California. But encounters don't always go well. The park has come up with a new way to keep humans and bears safe.

Fresno State University student Quiang Chang was walking recently with his friends along the rushing Merced River. It was his fifth time visiting Yosemite National Park, and he hadn't seen a bear.

But if they appear, Chang said, "I probably would just quietly ... just observe them and take a picture."

Keeping a healthy distance from bears is exactly what park officials want people to do. But training the public to think this way hasn't been easy, says National Park Service spokesperson Scott Gediman. Twenty years ago, human-bear encounters in Yosemite were very common.

"It was not atypical to have three or four vehicles broken into every night," he says.

Bears would rip open car doors or smash windows in search of food. But others are craftier. One park visitor even took a video of a bear opening a car door with its paws.

In 1998, there were 1,600 encounters with bears. Now, there are fewer than 100 every year, says Yosemite National Park wildlife biologist Ryan Leahy. That's because park rangers have worked to educate the public on storing food properly, and Leahy says they now use technology to track the bears.

An American black bear (they are often brown) is seen in Yosemite National Park. Rangers hope tracking the bears' locations will help prevent the animals from being hit by cars. Yosemite National Park via AP hide caption

An American black bear (they are often brown) is seen in Yosemite National Park. Rangers hope tracking the bears' locations will help prevent the animals from being hit by cars.

Leahy works in a cabin on the edge of Yosemite Valley. He's tracking bears online in real time using the GPS collars the animals wear.

In the past, he says, human interaction with bears often resulted in having to kill the animals. By using these tracking tools, fewer and fewer bears are killed. If a bear gets too close to people, Leahy's team can scare it away, catch it or relocate it.

Tracking data from the past few years points to another trend: Bears are being hit by cars, and speeding is now their biggest threat. Leahy says 28 were hit last year, and many of them died.

"You're talking about 10 percent of our bears potentially being hit by vehicles each year," he says. "Just slowing down a little bit will give you that stopping distance required to prevent a collision."

Black bears are tracked in Yosemite National Park using telemetry and GPS collars. Ezra David Romero/Valley Public Radio hide caption

Black bears are tracked in Yosemite National Park using telemetry and GPS collars.

The key, he says, is education. His team has created an interactive map-based website where the public can track the lives of selected bears and see general areas where they're hit the most.

Leahy says the bears' locations are delayed on the site so people aren't able to track them in real time. On the site, park visitors can also learn about how to be safe if a bear is around.

"So what we want to do with this website in a positive way is engage people before they get here: 'Hey, here's the real story about black bears in Yosemite National Park,' " Leahy says.

He hopes the site means fewer midnight calls with a dented car and either a dead or wounded bear.

Ezra David Romero is a reporter with NPR member station Valley Public Radio. You can follow him @ezraromero.

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Yosemite Rangers Use Technology To Save Bears From Cars : All ... - NPR

Amazon Lex,the technology powering Amazons virtual assistant Alexa, has exited preview, according to a report from Reuters this morning. The system, which involvesnatural language understanding technology combined with automatic speech recognition, was first introduced in November, at Amazons AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.

At the time, Amazon explained how Lex can be used by developers who want to build their own conversational applications, like chatbots.

As anexample, the company had demoed a tool that allowed users to book a flight using only their voice.

However, the system is not limited to working onlyinthe chatbots you find in todays consumer messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger (though it can be integrated with that platform). Lex can actually work in any voice or text chatbot on mobile, web or in other chat services beyond Messenger, including Slack and Twilio SMS.

Amazon has suggested it could be used for a variety of purposes, including web and mobile applications where the technology provides users with information, powers their application, helps with various work activities, or even provides a control mechanism for robots, drones and toys.

Chatbots in messaging and particularly in e-commerce bots is a solid entry point for Lexs technology, though. Consumers today have been frustrated bythe current crop ofchatbots that have clunky menus to navigate through, and a limited ability to respond to questions users asked. Lex, on the other hand, would allow developers to create bots that convert speech to text and those that could recognize the intent of the text, making the resulting bot more conversational, and more sophisticated than those on the market at present.

Lex, as a fully managed Amazon service, would also scale automatically as the bots usage increased, meaningdevelopers would only pay for the number of text or voice queries that Lex processes.

Amazons goal with opening up Lex to the wider development community could give it an edge in its ability to compete with other voice technology, like Googles Assistant or Apples Siri, for example. The company plans to take the text and recordings that people send to Lex-powered apps in order to improve Lex, and its ability to understand more queries, notes todaysreport.

This openness has been Amazons larger strategy with much of its Alexa platform. For example, it already had rolled outAlexa Voice Services which allowed developers to integrate Alexa into their own devices, like speakers, bedside alarm clocks, and more.

Alexas software isnt the only area where Amazon is embracing an open ecosystem. The company earlier this month said it would make the technology powering its Echo speakers available to third-party device makers as well. This includes the microphone array listening to Alexa commands, andthe proprietarysoftware that can recognize wake words, reduce background noise, and cancel out echos in large rooms.

By offering this to OEMs, other device manufacturers can build their own smart, voice-powered products even those that would competewith Amazons own Echo speakers.

Developers interested in Amazon Lex can get started here.

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Amazon Lex, the technology behind Alexa, opens up to developers - TechCrunch

Apple is widely expected to launch an OLED iPhone this year, which would be a first for the iPhone since its introduction 10 years ago. But a new report from Korea suggests that Apple is already working on a new screen technology that might debut with the Apple Watch Series 3 later this year. The next-gen wearable will have a new type of display, one that could then be used on future iPhone models, and potentially impact the bottom line of various Apple suppliers.

According to Business Korea, the Apple Watch Series 3 will have a micro-LED display rather than an OLED screen as its predecessors. If micro-LED sounds familiar thats because a flurry of reports in late 2015 and early 2016 claimed that an Apple team is working on this particular technology in a secret lab in Taiwan.

Micro-LED screens should be smaller than alternatives, and more energy-efficient. Business Korea notes that micro-LED displays would also be thinner and lighter than OLED or LCD screens. LG, the exclusive provider of OLED screens for the Apple Watch Series 1 and Series 2 is expected to take a financial hit to the tune of over $200 million when Apple makes the switch from OLED to micro-LED. The report says that Apple will actually begin mass production of micro-LED for the next Apple Watch in Taiwan at the end of the year.

The worry here is that once the technology is further perfected, Apple might fully make the jump from OLED to micro-LED. The report says that Samsung and LG would lose around $1 billion a year should they lose Apples business. Its not clear when Apple would be ready to use micro-LED display tech in bigger devices like the iPhone. The report says that Apple is likely to use OLED displays for the iPhone 9 that will be launched next year, but these panels would be manufactured by Chinese company BOE. Even in such a case, South Korean suppliers would lose some of Apples business.

Multiple reports in the past years have detailed the efforts of various display makers, including Samsung, LG, Japan Display, BOE, and others to win Apples OLED display orders. Currently, Samsung is in an advantageous position, being the exclusive supplier of the iPhone 8s OLED screen. Apple is likely looking to add more vendors to the mix, to make sure it has enough stock on hand, and that it can keep driving costs downwards.

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Apple is already using a screen technology that's better than OLED, report says - BGR