Daily Archives: May 4, 2017

Imagination, which relies on the iPhone maker for half of its revenues, said it did not believe Applewas able to do so without using Imagination's technology in some form, and said it hoped to reach an amicable agreement going forward.

On Thursday, it said it had "been unable to make satisfactory progress with Apple to date regarding alternative commercial agreements" and hoped to reach a deal "through a more structured process".

The dispute does not involve legal action but is the formal process for reaching an agreement under the contract between the two companies.

"Imagination has been unable to make satisfactory progress with Apple to date regarding alternative commercial arrangements for the current licence and royalty agreement," it said.

"Imagination has therefore commenced the dispute resolution procedure under the licence agreement with a view to reaching an agreement through a more structured process. Imagination has reserved all its rights in respect of Apples unauthorised use of Imaginations confidential information and Imaginations intellectual property rights."

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Imagination Technologies opens dispute with Apple over iPhone chip - Telegraph.co.uk

By Ahmed Hashmi

Fourteen years ago, at its 2003 annual energy conference here in Houston, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) presented a bold vision of how digital technology might transform the world of oil and gas production. The industry, it declared, is standing on the crest of the digital oil field of the future, which will enable petroprofessionals and field workers to benefit from total asset awareness (i.e., the ability to monitor and manage all operational activities in real time or near real time, regardless of location).

At the time, the vision was compelling. Today, this vision is a reality.

Indeed, the oil and gas industry now uses data and high-speed telecommunications to help increase production, grow reserves more rapidly and make cost and capital inputs more efficient. My company, BP, has long been at the forefront of digital oilfield technology, thanks to a program known as Field of the Future. Many of the digital technology building blocks needed for a Field of the Future did not exist in 2003, which meant we had to create custom-built systems and solutions.

In the years that followed, BP invested heavily in infrastructure and capability. In fact, since the 2003 CERA conference we have installed more than 1,200 miles of fiber optic cable on seafloors in the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea and the Caspian Sea. We also have built high-end collaboration and monitoring centers linking onshore and offshore teams, while launching a number of strategic partnerships aimed at boosting our digital capability. Thanks to these efforts, BP has grown our high-performance computing capacity by a factor of 1,000.

In recent years, we have pioneered a number of digital technologies that have enabled us to build out a massive data lake, which provides our engineers and technicians with real-time visualization and analytics of all our wells and plant data.

For example, our BP Well Advisor program integrates data from wells with predictive tools, to help operators improve decision-making. Not only has this made our operations safer, but it also has made them far more efficient, saving hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing unproductive drilling time.

Meanwhile, BP has discovered several hundred million barrels of resources by using advanced seismic imaging algorithms devised at our Center for High-Performance Computing. In addition, production optimization technologies have helped us increase our daily oil and gas production by thousands of barrels.

In short: Since the term digital oilfield was first introduced, BP and other companies have tested and successfully deployed a wide range of new technologies. We have learned first-hand how to overcome the cultural and process challenges of introducing digital technologies to safety-critical, performance-driven offshore environments.

Looking ahead, as computing power increases and sensor technology becomes more sophisticated, there will be further possibilities for a digital transformation everywhere in the upstream from subsurface imaging, project engineering and operations, to finance, supply chains and logistics.

This is the kind of transformation that excited me in 2003 and continues to drive me today.

Waves of digital technology will keep coming at us. Pervasive sensing, high-end analytics and visualization, digital twins of equipment and facilities, automation, remote operations, cognitive computing all of these offer intriguing possibilities and have been exciting subjects to explore at this weeks Offshore Technology Conference here in Houston.

Ahmed Hashmi is BP head of upstream technology.

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OTC Commentary: How digital technology is transforming oil - FuelFix (blog)

At Decision Sciences International Corp.s Poway headquarters, a 20-foot shipping container sits beneath a car-wash size scanner.

After about a minute, images of the containers contents pop up on a nearby TV screen, complete with a color-coded identification of the objects based on how they interact with naturally occurring subatomic particles.

Its not a pretty picture. Theres ammunition, firearms, TNT, alcohol and currency inside. If shielded nuclear material were in the container, the companys technology would identify it, too, said Chief Executive Dwight Johnson.

If youre (a customs) officer and you had a manifest that said its all furniture, youd stop right now, said Johnson. Its not all furniture.

Last week, Decision Sciences said it received a contract with the Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs to install one of its next-generation cargo scanning systems at its main port.

Though a pilot project, Decision Sciences is betting it will lead to further deployments of its technology, which is licensed from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and has been refined for more than a decade.

In terms of total volume, Singapore is the second-largest port in the world, said Johnson. So this is a very important event for Decision Sciences.

The 70-employee company is one of a handful of firms working on new technology to better scan cargo containers, which became a priority after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

These new systems aim to push beyond todays passive radiation detection and active high-energy X-ray based scanning which do well uncovering smuggled nuclear material but arent as good at finding narcotics, guns and other conventional contraband.

The way to look at the next generation systems is going from human inspection of a projected image to materials identification, said Robert Ledoux, chief executive of Massachusetts-based Passport Systems, which recently deployed a next-generation scanning system in Boston.

The real bottleneck in the existing systems is if you find an anomaly, your only option without materials identification is to de-van the cargo, and that can take tens of hours and cost a lot of money, he said.

Passport System identifies guns, drugs and other contraband based on their atomic number a measure of their density. But it still uses high-energy X-rays in its scanning process.

Decision Sciences scanning technique is passive. It doesnt use X-rays beams to create three-dimensional images or identify whats in a container.

Instead, it tracks naturally occurring subatomic particles called muons, as well as electrons, to call out a containers contents.

Muons are like electrons but heavier with 200 times the mass. Theyre also very short lived. But when they hit something, they deflect at a particular way, giving clues as to what the material is.

The company says its machine learning software uses this information -- along with the behavior of nearby electrons -- to uncover not only shielded nuclear material but also narcotics, firearms, cigarettes, smuggled people and other contraband.

Its scanner consists of thousands of vacuum-sealed aluminum tubes, each filled with an inert gas mixture and an proprietary electrode. The software creates an image of whats in the container and color codes it based on how these objects react to these naturally occurring subatomic particles.

Each year, more than 11 million maritime containers arrive at U.S. ports. Another 13 million come in via by truck and rail, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Since 9-11, every container entering the U.S. by sea or land is scanned by radiation detectors over concerns that terrorists might try to smuggle nuclear weapons into the country.

In addition, Customs agents target about 5 percent of ocean-going containers as high risk. Those containers are subject to X-rays to get an image of whats inside. No nuclear materials have ever been found.

Decision Sciences thinks more containers can be scanned faster with its technology.

What I think we have is a platform technology, lets call it charged particle tomography, said Stuart Rabin, head of New York-based Nine Thirty Capital and chairman of Decision Sciences board of directors. If you have a passive product that can be deployed in multiple locations and scan a large percentage of the volume, it opens up all sorts of applications.

It took years to get the technology right, said Johnson. Some of the original patents go back 10 years, but I would say it has been in the last couple of years that the product fundamentally changed.

In 2012, Decision Sciences, at its own cost, installed an early version of the system at a port in the Bahamas to collect data.

Rabin declined to say how much the companys car-wash size scanning systems cost. He also wouldnt reveal how much money has been invested in the company, which Rabin said is mostly privately funded.

Last year, it did receive a contract from the Pentagons Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office with a potential value of $5.2 million.

While the company is focused on cargo containers at ports for now, it sees the potential to expand into other industries, such as sporting event security or protecting critical infrastructure.

Ledoux of Passport Systems called his companys technology more imaged based and comprehensive than Decision Sciences system, but also likely more expensive because it generates an X-ray beam.

Its apples and oranges, but I think the government wants to test both and that is a good thing, he said.

mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com;

Twitter:@TechDiego

760-529-4973

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Why this company's scanning technology is a smugglers' nightmare ... - The San Diego Union-Tribune

The frequent use of explosive devices in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has given birth to a new type of war injury that clinicians are now labeling the invisible wound of war: multiple mild traumatic brain injuries, or mTBI.

Recent research has shown that multiple exposures to explosions, even from a safe distance from flying shrapnel, may damage the brain. But we still have no idea how strong a blast needs to be to cause trauma. Now, researchers are working on advancing new technology that can accurately measure blast strength, and whether or not it causes an mTBI.

Since 2010, there have been more than 361,000 service members diagnosed with some form of traumatic brain injury, according to the US Defense Departments Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center. The three different forms of TBIsevere, moderate, and mildall manifest in different ways ranging from memory loss and extended unconsciousness to a simple headache. Mild TBI tends to go unnoticed. One blast may not cause effects like memory loss or slurred speech, the telltale signs of brain trauma, and, especially while in theatre, theres really no easy way to diagnose the condition, says Alex Balbir, director of Warrior Care Network and Independence Services at the Wounded Warriors Project.

The brain has very interesting ways of responding to these mild traumas, says Balbir. Its only after a few [mTBIs], thats when you start to see the effects of the trauma like memory loss and slurred speech.

In an effort to fill that technology gap, Timothy Bentley, and his team at the Office of Naval Researchs Warfighter Performance Department in Arlington, Virginia, have engineered new sensor technology that could give medics on the battlefield a clearer idea of whether or not an injury actually occurred after a blast. The coin-sized sensors, placed in service members helmets and tactical gear, detect the impact of a blast wavewhich moves faster than the speed of soundand assign it a number, a measure of blast strength. The number is then run through an algorithm that computes how a service member was hit by a blast, which sensors were activated based on their placement, and then tells medics if the service member needs to get off the field immediately or not.

If the algorithm shows a possible mTBI, medics in the field have the service member hold a mouse-sized toolnicknamed the brain gaugethat stimulates the fingertips through eraser-sized vibrators. The brain gauge vibrates each finger for a different length of timeif a service member cant recognize which vibrations last longer, its highly likely he or she has suffered an mTBI.

The combination of the sensors, algorithm, and brain gauge would make for the first-ever medical determinant on whether or not an mTBI occurred.

That would be a huge improvement over the militarys current solution: a precautionary 24-hour stand down policy. Service members who are within 50 meters of any kind of explosion have to go for a medical evaluation that consists of mainly checking vital functions before going back outwith a minimum of 24 hours kept off the field. That policy, some say, doesnt take into consideration former injuries. For example, someone standing beyond the 50-meter threshold who has had multiple mTBIs could be affected worse than someone who has never had an mTBI standing within the threshold.

Its like if you have a big earthquake hit San Francisco, says Charles Marmar, director of the Cohen Veterans Center at New York Universitys Langone Medical Center. The bridge that falls probably wont be the Golden Gateits been fortified. The one that collapses could be the one miles away that is a bit more rickety.

And the policy has also been contested, says Steven Flanagan, chair of rehabilitation medicine at the Langone Medical Center. Theres evidence coming out that shows if you prescribe immediate rest and compare that to someone who wasnt prescribed rest, [the latter] actually got better much quicker, he says. Theres still a great deal to learn here. But generally, though, folks will get better on their own [without rest]. In other words, argues Flanagan, the 24-hour policy has no known benefits.

That means a lot of time squandered, says Bentley. Since service members have to stand down in all blast situations, that could mean even the smallest of explosions can hamper a mission. If youre within 50 meters of a firecracker, thats 24 hours wasted, he says.

The sensors being tested by Bentley could solve for these problems, he says, and inform policy changes grounded in better data. The research, which runs a price tag of $30 million and a five-year lifespan, is currently being tested on animals and at bases using electrical shockwaves. Bentley says that within the year, the technology could start being tested on those who spent (and some who continue to spend) lots of time in close proximity to explosions.

Another goal, Bentley says, is to apply data collected in the military to the civilian world, such as in football where multiple concussions have been recognized to cause severe brain injuries later in life for players. Though there are no current plans to sell the sensors to institutions like the National Football League, Bentley says theyve tested it during football games on military bases, and it seems to work.

Weve tested this on thousands of athletes at this point, and with those athletes you can predict and see what sort of and how severe their injury is and how long their recovery will take, Bentley says. This is a big deal and weve made a lot of progress. Its only a prediction and only statistical, but we now have a personal measure of your exposure.

Experts said its just a matter of time before this technology could be used in the civilian world, which desperately needs it. During a House Committee on Armed Services Hearing, military scientists touted their rates of brain trauma-related death to be far lower than that in the civilian world2% compared to 10%and much of that has to do with the research and funding that has gone into projects like Bentleys. If the sensor, algorithm, and brain-gauge tools prove to be substantially effective over the next three years while in testing, they could make all the difference in any profession that has to deal with the threat of head trauma.

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The US military has a new technology to finally solve the concussion crisis - Quartz

HOUSTON The oil industry's top equipment and services suppliers this week are hawking vastly cheaper ways of designing and equipping subsea wells, aiming to slash the cost of offshore projects to compete with the faster-moving shale industry.

At the Offshore Technology Conference, the industry's annual gathering of floating rig and subsea well suppliers, sales pitches this year are all about cost savings and faster time to first production. With U.S. crude priced CLc1 under $50 a barrel, offshore projects with their typically high costs and long-lead times are now borrowing from leaner shale in the competition for oil company investment.

Low oil prices have soured new exploration in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, for instance, but production volumes there have remained strong due to the long lead times of these projects. Gulf of Mexico producers are expected to add 190,000 barrels per day this year to output now running about 1.76 million bpd.

Tool and services companies are offering new technologies that can do several jobs, taking the place of multiple devices or highly-paid consultants.

National Oilwell Varco Inc (NOV.N) is exhibiting software it touts as performing much like a drilling expert, sorting through vast amounts of data to find ways to speed production and reduce downtime.

The new software "takes actions a person would do and runs them automatically. It's low cost and it's simple" said David Reid, National Oilwell Varco's chief marketing officer.

Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N) is showing a new tool called DeepFrac that it said eliminates several steps now required to complete underwater wells. That saving pares the price of a well by up to 40 percent, speeding first production and lowering the break-even cost for producers.

"This helps sharply cut some of the risk of drilling an offshore oil well and, we believe, sharply reduces costs for our customers," said Jim Sessions, a vice president of technology at Baker Hughes.

Graham Hill, an executive vice president at KBR Inc (KBR.N), detailed the construction company's plan for a cheaper floating production vessel, saying the new vessel fits producers' tight budgets. KBR can hope to earn more by selling extra features.

"This is like ordering a Ford," he said. "There's a base package, and you can add extras."

Richard Morrison, president of BP plc (BP.L)'s Gulf of Mexico region, said the industry has accepted that crude prices will probably stay low, meaning oil producers like BP must work with services providers to reduce the multibillion dollar cost of offshore projects.

"That break even point can't come back to $80 a barrel, so I've got to figure out ways to work with my supplier over the long-term to keep that in check," he said during a presentation.

Morrison touted BP's use of new seismic imaging technology that helped identify 1 billion additional barrels of "possible resources" at four of its U.S. Gulf of Mexico offshore fields. The technology enhances existing seismic images to find oil hidden beneath salt structures deep underground.

Just weeks away is a coming Vienna meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries where OPEC and other oil producers are to decide whether to continue production curbs past June.

If OPEC fails to continue the curbs, oil prices could fall again, making a difficult market worse, said Charles Cherington, a co-founder of Intervale Capital, a private equity investor in oilfield services.

Assuming OPEC continues the existing curbs, Cherington said the best the industry can hope for this year is crude "gets to the low to mid $50s (a barrel)" or half what it fetched at this time three years ago.

Few oilfield suppliers are generating steady profits, he said, and "in the short run, we don't see the market getting much better," he added.

Marc Gerard Rex Edwards, chief executive of rig provider Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO.N), on Monday reported its first quarter earnings declined on revenue down 25 percent from a year ago.

"I think we're beginning to see the signs of a bottom," he told Wall Street analysts, adding: "But I'm not exactly calling a bottom in the market at this particular moment in time."

(Reporting by Jessica Resnick-Ault, Liz Hampton and Ernest Scheyder, Writing by Gary McWilliams; Editing by David Gregorio)

NEW YORK As rapid growth in U.S. shale production grabs headlines and threatens to upend attempts by OPEC to balance oil markets, a more unsung sector of the U.S. industry is also hitting new output highs - the offshore Gulf of Mexico.

LAUNCESTON, Australia The heat came out of China's iron ore imports in April, with vessel-tracking and port data suggesting a decline of several million tonnes from the near-record levels recorded in March.

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Slumping oilfield services sector bets on new offshore technology - Reuters

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By Michael Cooney

Online News Editor, Network World | May 4, 2017 9:18 AM PT

In detailing its third quarter 2017 financial discussion Extreme CEO Ed Meyercord said the company was locked and loaded as it worked toward combining and integrating the two companies Avaya and Brocade it is in the process of purchasing.

Extreme a lot of work ahead as it combines Brocade's data center business and the network technology of Avaya Holdings which is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy both of which it said it would acquire in March. Extreme added that it has now integrated another buy it made, Zebra wireless with great success. Extreme said that in the third quarter alone four of its top 10 deals came from the Zebra side.

+More on Network World: Juniper takes a swipe at Extremes network buying spree, plans+

In the end, Extreme said it expects the Avaya and Brocade deals to push its revenues to over $1 billion for its Fiscal 2018 year which begins July 1.

The company is now working on a technology integration roadmap which it could talk about as soon as June 2 when it holds an investor conference in New York.

We will benefit from the newly refreshed platform releases for both Avaya and Brocade with VOS and SLX platforms and advanced fabric technologies that bring security, visibility, automation, resiliency and flexibility into the data center and campus networks at any scale, Meyercord said.Each of our companies has been driving independently toward a bright-box model, a common technology base where we support simple form factors built on merchant silicon and a common Linux base. Our collective vision is to provide the industry's first fully customizable networking platforms powered by a set of services and functions access through a cloud -- a common cloud library of features.

+More on Network World: Avaya wants out of S.F. stadium suite, not too impressed with 49ers on field performance either+

A few other key updates gleaned from the financial call include:

A full transcript of Extremes third quarter conference call is available from Seeking Alphas website here.

Cooney is an Online News Editor at Network World and the author of the Layer 8 blog, Network World's daily home for the not-just-networking news. He has been working with Network World since 1992.

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Extreme offers glimpse of integrated Avaya, Brocade technology future - Network World