Stopping Smartphone Thefts

Just minutes after he bought the new iPhone 6, thieves attacked a man in Towson.
Jessica Kartalija reports the theft of smartphones is growing worse, while new technology is aimed at stopping violent thefts.
He camped out all night to get his hands on the new phone.
“I thought I have to get it; I have to have the 6 Plus,” said Braden Myers. “I wanted to get 6 Plus, too.”

But Myers never imagined that within minutes of buying one at Towson Town Center…

“A fist straight across my face in the jaw, knocking me down into the ground. Him grabbing my phone and trying to grab it out of my hand. I held onto it with all my might,”

Myers said.

It happened right outside the Stony River Restaurant.
“I swung back, hit him, which ended up pushing into the street, then the other guy hit me from the back of the head,” Myers said.
“They tried to take the victim’s cell phone. They did not succeed in taking it,” said Elise Armacost.
It happened in broad daylight. When people ran to help, the thieves took off.

Myers was lucky. Last year, more than 1.5 million Americans had their smartphones stolen—and many of the thefts were violent. In an effort to crack down on the number of thefts, the new iPhone 6 comes with kill switch technology. Now with an activation lock, if a thief tries to turn off “Find My iPhone” or even if they wipe the device entirely, they will not be able to reactivate it.

“You don’t really see that coming but immediately it hit me and I was like, `Wow, this is actually happening,’” Myers said.
The thieves weren’t able to take his phone and, aside from a few bruises, Myers is fine.

“Little sore but I’ll be fine by tomorrow,”

he said.
Police say it’s always a good idea to stay alert and, if possible, walk around with your cell phone in a purse or in your pocket.

SmartChips in Sport Tech

Devin Harris says he was unfazed last season when he and his Mavericks teammates were asked to wear tracking devices during practices.

Nor was Harris surprised when the Mavericks became the only NBA team to implement Readiband sleep-monitoring watches.
“They just want to collect data,” Harris says with a shrug. “We’ve got a lot of stuff that we do that’s a little bit different, but if it helps us get better, I don’t think anyone will object to it.”
When your boss is tech innovator Mark Cuban and you play for probably the most cutting-edge team in America, sports science is ingrained in the culture and data collection is deemed essential to deriving a winning equation.
Therefore it is small wonder that the Mavericks have an athletic performance director, 34-year-old Jeremy Holsopple, who says, “We are constantly beta-testing several technologies.”
To Cuban, it’s just common sense. Amid a microchipped society that has transformed our phones into GPS navigators and motion sensors and enables us to find beloved lost pets, why wouldn’t sports teams tap science and technology’s ever-evolving possibilities?
Mavericks training camp begins in nine days. The team’s American Airlines Center basement practice court gleams in wait, thanks to a resurfacing and repainting.
Meanwhile, upstairs in the locker/weight room area, Holsopple is already tinkering in his makeshift laboratory.
This is the second season in which the Mavericks will utilize beeper-sized devices that were conceived by Australia-based Catapult Sports. The technology monitors and assesses players’ training loads, with a primary goal of limiting soft-tissue injuries — muscle, ligament and tendon.
The device emits and receives GPS and accelerometer signals, weighs about one ounce and is worn under practice jerseys, tucked into a pouch positioned near the top of the spine. The device emits real-time data on accelerations, decelerations, changes of direction and jumping (height and frequency).
Using the data, which Catapult calls “the world’s first bio-analytics platform,” sports teams monitor daily and weekly leg-loads and adjust workouts accordingly. The data also helps quantify the progress of players who are rehabbing from injuries.
Catapult says its clients include about one-third of NBA teams and half of the NFL — including the Cowboys. Baylor and at least two other Texas schools that Catapult declines to name are among the company’s roughly 25 college football clients.
“Anything that makes us smarter about our players’ health is a win for us,” Cuban says. “Catapult certainly has helped.
“Data acquisition is critical to being proactive with every element of player health and performance, and Catapult is a key product for us in that area.”
How strongly does entrepreneur and Shark Tank personality Cuban feel about Catapult’s merits? In March he purchased a minority share of the company and became an advisor, saying his dual purpose was to “make some money and beat somebody’s ass.”
So where does Cuban draw the line between maximizing his investment and preserving the Mavericks’ potential competitive edge?
“Winning comes first,” he says. “I’m here to answer questions for Catapult and give them guidance. But they know I’m not calling any other NBA teams to make introductions.”

MileStone by Austrailian Solar Tech

Novatec Solar – a company majority owned by Australia’s Transfield Holdings – has commissioned a solar thermal energy demonstration plant in Spain that is based on a new type of molten salt storage technology.

The Germany-based Novatec Solar says the new plant uses a process called direct molten salt or DMS technology – where inorganic salts are used as a heat transfer fluid rather than oils.

This means that the plant can operate at temperatures well above 500°C, resulting in a significant increase in power yield. This means that costs are lowered significantly and the solar plants can act as baseload generators if required.

Andreas Wittke, CEO of Novatec Solar, which is 85% owned by Australia’s Transfield Holdings, says this means that the technology will be able to operate on a “commercial” basis.

“The successful commissioning and the initial results of the DMS demo plant have confirmed our expectations of the technology,” he said in a statement.

“We are delighted that we can now offer solar thermal power plants with molten salt technology and thermal storage on a commercial basis.”

The use of DMS technology is being used at the 110 MW Crescent Dunes power tower unit nearing completion in Nevada, which will be the largest solar thermal plant with storage in the world.

Novatec Solar will use DMS with its linear Fresnel technology, which has been deployed as a demonstration “solar booster” at the Liddell coal generator in NSW (pictured), and is being mooted for a renewables-based replacement for the Collinsville coal-fired power station in Queensland.

Photosynthesis Tech

Two down, one to go. Researchers have completed the second of three major steps needed to turbocharge photosynthesis in crops such as wheat and rice, something that could boost yields by around 36 to 60 percent for many plants. Because it’s more efficient, the new photosynthesis method could also cut the amount of fertilizer and water needed to grow food.

Researchers at Cornell University and Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom successfully transplanted genes from a type of bacteria—called cyanobacteria—into tobacco plants, which are often used in research. The genes allow the plant to produce a more efficient enzyme for converting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into sugars and other carbohydrates. The results are published today in the journal Nature.

Scientists have long known that some plants are much more efficient at turning carbon dioxide into sugar than other plants. These fast-growing plants—called C4 plants—include corn and many types of weeds. But 75 percent of the world’s crops (known as C3 plants) use a slower and less efficient form of photosynthesis. Researchers have been attempting for a long time to change some C3 plants—including wheat, rice, and potatoes—into C4 plants. The approach has been given a boost lately by novel high-precision gene-editing technologies that are being applied to the C4 Rice Project (see “Why We Will Need Genetically Modified Foods”).

The Cornell and Rothamsted researchers took a simpler approach. Rather than attempting to convert a C3 plant into a C4 plant by changing its anatomy and adding new cell types and structures, the researchers modified components of existing cells. “If you can have a simpler mechanism that doesn’t require anatomical changes, that’s pretty darn good,” says Daniel Voytas, director of the Center for Genome Engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Instead of mimicking C4 plants, the researchers borrowed a three-part photosynthesis mechanism from cyanobacteria. First, proteins form a special compartment within a plant cell that concentrates CO2; second, the compartment contains a speedy enzyme for converting that CO2; and third, the cells use special pumps in their membranes to usher CO2 into the cells.

Earlier this year, the researchers engineered cells to form the special CO2 compartments. The new research takes care of the second part—the speedy enzyme. They’re collaborating with other researchers on the third part, the pumps. Ultimately the researchers will need to put all three parts together in the same plants.

Maureen Hansen, a professor of molecular biology and genetics at Cornell, says the advances won’t be seen in commercially grown food crops for at least five or 10 years.

To do that won’t be a simple matter of transplanting one or two genes. It will require transferring 10 to 15 genes, and making sure the genes are stable, says Dean Price, a professor of medicine, biology, and environment at Australian National University. Price was not involved in the current research. Only then can extensive field testing begin, along with the regulatory process for genetically modified crops.

The approach will likely be limited at first to a few plants that researchers are particularly good at genetically modifying, such as potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. However, Price says, there are genetic workarounds that could quickly make it possible in a wider range of crops.

Tech for Democracy

Information is more available and accessible than ever before, and we are witnessing the power of the crowd to respond to news events with greater impact. As technology continues to play a larger role in our everyday lives, we must ask ourselves what ultimately is the responsibility of technology when it comes to the dissemination of information?

At Fundly, we see thousands of campaigns daily, from a small-town parent raising money for her kid’s school to massive fundraising efforts by some of the world’s largest charities. We also see polarizing campaigns such as the one started by a teacher from North Carolina that raised over $150,000 in a few days to help feed the children of Ferguson, Mo.

The Role of Technology

While the campaign to feed the students of Ferguson was mostly well-received by the public, there were a string of complaints from individuals who felt that supporters of the campaign were making biased, and in some cases offensive, comments on our site. Their upset was understandable, but when you look at the role of technology you see that it facilitates democracy, including the good and the bad that goes with it.

We receive angry emails every day demanding that we take down specific campaigns. Our job as a technology platform, however, is to remain un-biased and allow everyone to have an equal voice. It would be irresponsible of us to take down campaigns based on the demands of a vocal minority, unless there is a clear violation of our terms of service.

I’m not advocating for racist remarks on crowdfunding sites. In fact, our terms of service prohibit this, and I’ve had to remove racist comments from the “Feed Ferguson” campaign. However, beyond our basic terms of service, people have the freedom to raise money for the things they care about, no matter what they are. We may not like some of their campaigns or positions, but if we want to protect all of our democratic rights, we must allow them.

Tech Investment

A few years back, Nick Carr and others predicted information technology would become so commonplace that it would cease to be a competitive differentiator.

Well, it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. A new survey finds that enterprises that dive into technology investments tend to come out ahead in the end. Furthermore, those enterprises that embrace DevOps are proving to be a step ahead of the competition.

These are the takeaways of a study of 1,450 executives, commissioned by CA Technologies, which finds that technology-driven enterprises who are investing in new innovation and development capabilities are growing revenue at more than twice the rate of those not-so-technology inclined.

The survey data also indicates that enterprises are backing away from IT outsourcing, and bringing more software development back in-house. Over a four-year period, the percent of software development done in-house will have increased 11 percentage points, from 33 to 44 percent. This maps to another industry survey by Computer Economics that also finds a reduction in IT outsourcing.

As the survey’s authors put it: “Bringing more software development back in-house is a recognition that these skills need to be a core part of enterprises’ DNA, but sometimes the pressure to expand your application footprint means you can’t grow skills organically fast enough. When this becomes an issue, enterprises are turning to software acquisitions as a way to get the talent and technology they need.”

A surprisingly high level of software acquisitions — presumably meaning buying a software developer or the rights to code — point to the evolution of businesses of all types to software companies. Fifty-two percent report that they have either made a software acquisition or plan to in the next 12 months. Only 19 percent say they have no plans to do so.

It’s not clear how cloud factors in this equation. One school of thought would suggest companies would be less intimately involved with application development, since they may be using cloud services. However, it’s also likely that many enterprises — from outside the software industry — are becoming cloud service providers themselves.

Guide to Blind

At the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Guadalajara, Mexico, researchers have developed special lenses for the blind.

The idea is to turn traditional glasses into a navigation device to allow users to freely move from a specific point while avoiding both static and moving obstacles. It uses ultrasound technology, sound sensors, GPS and an artificial voice to guide the user.

Similar “smart” glasses have already been developed, but what sets this Mexican-made device apart is their use of ultrasound technology to detect translucent objects.

Researcher Alfonso Rojas Dominguez explained:“The “Smart Guide” project is trying to develop intelligent glasses to help visually-impaired people in their everyday lives; recognising documents, recognising tickets, colours, and also to help them with their mobility, recognising obstacles, directions to get to their destination via GPS, ultrasonic sensors and via a pair of cameras that process images through the lenses.”

Bouncing ultrasonic waves off surrounding objects, the technology can also read different colours and writing on objects and surfaces.

The aim is to sell the device at a retail price between 800 and 1,200 euros.