Daily Archives: May 23, 2017

All of which is to say, the line between these two industries is blurring. Now more than ever, it feels like high-tech fashion is on the verge of being more than just a gimmick. In the not-too-distant future, you could even be 3D printing your own shoes or clothes at home. Instead of going to a store, you'll buy designs straight from the designer. And we're quickly heading toward a world in which "wearable" will be more than a fancy word for a smartphone accessory. Think about it: Your Apple Watch is basically a brick if you don't have an iPhone paired with it.

Three-dimensional printing has come a long way and is no longer just for prototyping. Sportswear giant Adidas, for example, is on the way to making 3D-printed shoes a consumer product as part of an effort known as Futurecraft, which began in 2015. Earlier this year, it teamed up with Silicon Valley startup Carbon 3D on a new manufacturing technique called digital light synthesis, which mixes light and oxygen with programmable liquid resins to create 3D objects in a matter of minutes. Adidas says this technology will allow it to 3D-print sneakers on a large scale; it's planning to ship 100,000 pairs by the end of 2018.

While 3D-printed shoes may at first sound like a gimmick, the reason Adidas is betting on the technology is its customization potential. Imagine being able to walk into a store, hop on a treadmill, have your foot measured to a T and get a pair made based on your results in less than 24 hours. This approach means the shoes would match your footprint elements, including contour details and precise pressure points -- which, in turn, could give you the most amount of comfort.

Sponsored athletes already benefit from this, because brands typically custom-make designs for them, but the idea is to expand the concept to every consumer. That's the future Adidas imagines, one that's also going to depend on the company's Speedfactory, a manufacturing facility staffed by robots that can make products at a rapid pace and in high volumes. It's an automated assembly line that's straight out of a sci-fi film.

Vanessa Friedman, fashion director and chief fashion critic at The New York Times, says 3D printing will have a significant value for fashion companies down the road, especially if it transforms into a print-it-yourself tool for shoppers. "There's real sense that this is not going to happen anytime soon," she says, "but it will happen, and it will create dramatic change in how we think both about intellectual property and how things are in the supply chain." She adds: "Certainly some of the fabrications that brands can use will be dramatically changed by technology."

Nike, on the other hand, has been busy with self-lacing shoes. What started as a project inspired by nostalgia for the Mag -- a prop with power laces worn by Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in Back to the Future Part II -- has turned into something with larger implications. The HyperAdapt 1.0, which features a self-lacing system dubbed E.A.R.L. (Electro Adaptive Reactive Lacing), is essentially the consumer version of Nike's beloved Mag. The company says one of the reasons it created it is because athletes often complained about their shoes untying during workouts, and HyperAdapt solves that problem because it requires little to no effort when you're putting it on. It's a pricey solution, though -- each pair costs $720.

Still, just like high-definition TVs, they will in time go from being a luxury item to a run-of-the-mill commodity. While Nike isn't pitching HyperAdapt or E.A.R.L specifically to people with disabilities (particularly those unable to tie their own shoes), there's definitely potential there. Nike does have its Ease Challenge, a project that recruits outside designers and engineers to "advance and reinvent footwear design for athletes of all abilities." This year, Nike awarded $50,000 to the designer of a shoe with a heel counter that acts as a small door for your feet, removing the need to tie laces or use a shoehorn. The winner, Brett Drake, will work with the brand to create a prototype of the design and perhaps eventually bring it to market.

"This is the very first baby step toward having a truly adaptable shoe," Matt Powell, a sports-industry analyst at research firm NPD, says about Nike's E.A.R.L. technology. "It isn't just going to tighten or loosen laces; it could increase or decrease cushioning, it could ventilate or warm [the shoe]. This is a very, very small step in a long path of making footwear that is adjusting to our needs on the fly."

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Fashion and technology will inevitably become one - Engadget

Slightly less than a half-decade ago, Microsoft made one the most memorable announcements in its history: For the first time, it would design and sell its own PCs, in the form of a new line of Windows tablets known as Surface. And then, for the next few years, the company ignored the skepticswho were legionand not only stuck with the Surface, but used it as a tapestry for experimentation.

The company tried different screen sizes until it settled on the current 12.3. It attemptedtwiceto introduce a lower-cost, non-Pro incarnation of the Surface idea. It took signature Surface design elements like the hinged kickstand and svelte keyboard cover and refined them repeatedly in ways that were instantly noticeable. It identified design weaknesses, such as the wimpy magnetic power connector and dinky trackpad, and fixed them.

But the Surface Pro 4, which was introduced in October 2015, has been on the market for a long time by gadget standards. Earlier this month, Surface honcho Panos Panay told Cnets Dan Ackerman that Microsoft would only release a Surface Pro 5 device when its meaningful and the change is right. That led some folks to conclude that no successor to the Surface Pro 4 was imminent.

However, at a Surface event held in Shanghai today, Microsofts big announcement was a new Surface Pro. In fact, thats what the company is calling it: the new Surface Pro, without a model number. (Apple has been known to take a similar branding approach with iPads, including the new $329 model.)

The new Surface Pro doesnt reflect a fundamental rethink of the Surface Pro 4. But neither is it the sort of thing that tech nerds call a speed bumpthe same old model in the same old case with a slightly faster processor. Actually, theres quite a bit thats new:

One thing you might have expected the new Surface Pro to change remains the same: its approach to ports. It still has full-sized USB ones and a proprietary power connector rather than the more versatile USB-C. That design decisionwhich Microsoft also made for its new Surface Laptopreflects caution rather than a bold willingness to dump aging features. But its also defensible. Especially given that a lot of Surface Pro owners use it for pro-caliber purposes such as design worka group that tends to include people who prefer proven technologies over new standards and the need to futz with adapters.

When it comes to holding flashy media eventsand pleasing the Twittersphereincremental improvements of the sort seen in the new Surface Pro may be too subtle to inspire wild applause. But if this new model closely resembles the Surface Pro 4 in most respects that matter, it doesnt strike me as a failure of imagination on Microsofts part. Its just that the decisions the company made over multiple previous upgrades have resulted in a machine that doesnt require reimagining at the moment.

Which is not to suggest that its impossible to substantially improve the experience it offers. Its just that the most obviously fertile ground may be software-based improvements rather than hardware ones. Even after five years, the Surface Pros combination of tablet, detachable keyboard, and pen is a new idea that cries out for software designed with it in mind.

Indeed, Microsoft has been busy on that front. Its previewing a new app called Microsoft Whiteboard designed to let multiple people write and sketch on a shared blank slate. And when I met with Microsoft executives last week to get a sneak peek at the new Surface Pro, they devoted as much time to showing how Office leverages itwith features like a fancy set of drawing tools availabile across Word, Excel, and PowerPointas they did talking about the hardware.

Its entirely possible that the next new Surface Pro after the new Surface Pro will aim for great leaps forward. In his Cnet interview, Panay made reference to a theoretical Surface Pro Next that sounds like it might be such a device. For now, though, the new Surface Pros emphasis on sensible refinements is a sign that Microsoft has come closer to fulfilling the goals that Panay, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and former Windows chief Steven Sinofsky detailed on stage at the original Surfaces June 2012 launch event in Los Angeles than most people would have guessed. Including me.

Harry McCracken is the technology editor for Fast Company, based in San Francisco. In past lives, he was editor at large for Time magazine, founder and editor of Technologizer, and editor of PC World.

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Is Microsoft's New Surface Pro Ho-Hum? Nope, Just Mature Technology - Fast Company

Blockchain, the cryptographic technology behind the digital currency bitcoin, could also be adapted for environmental purposes, such as guaranteeing that fish sold to consumers comefrom labeled sources, such as these salmon farms in Norway.

Andrey Armyagov/Alamy Stock Photo

By Matthew HutsonMay. 22, 2017 , 2:00 PM

If youve heard of bitcoins, it may have been in the context of people using the digital currency to pay off ransom demands for the contents of their hacked computers or buy drugs on the dark web. But the underlying cryptographic technology, a growing chain of time-stamped records or blocks that is shared between many computers, forming a blockchain, could also be used to help save the environment, according to a commentary published today in Nature by Guillaume Chapron, an ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Riddarhyttan. Science spoke with him about the future of money, the government, and trust. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What is a blockchain?

A: The blockchainby which I mean the technology underlying all blockchainsis a protocol to build an immutable ledger, a database of transactions. You could say its a kind of decentralized supercomputer that creates trust.

Q: How can it help the environment?

A: Environmental problems emerge because we lack trust. The environmental crisis grows in a fertile ground, which is the multiplication of intermediaries. To take an example, if you buy a fish at the supermarket, the supply chain is very long. The supermarket might not even know where it came from. And so there are multiple opportunities for environmentally unsustainable goods to enter the supply chain. A blockchain-based supply chain would mean that when you buy a fish, you scan a QR code [like a bar code] with your smartphone, and you see every step. And you know that it cannot be falsified.

The blockchain can also change how we treat ownership. In many developing countries, land rights are not properly defined and a government or a company could claim a land that is owned by a local community. So if we were to put a land registry on the blockchain, it would be immutable. We could not falsify that land registry.

The blockchain can also influence policymaking. Blockchain voting is a very cheap and secure way of organizing elections. Now, if you want to organize an election on how to manage a natural resource, whether its a forest or fishery, you need to plan the infrastructure, you need the ballot boxes, you need to tell people to go out and vote that day. That takes a lot of money, a lot of time. And in the end maybe people may not trust the results. With a blockchain, you could vote with a smartphone and your cryptographic identity and achieve strong security.

The fourth way is by changing incentives. A blockchain can ensure that an event will happen. That sounds a bit strange, but if you put a contract on the blockchain, you can include business logic as computer code. When a condition is met, the contract will be automatically executed. For example, we could have satellites remotely monitoring biodiversity, and if we reach a certain amount of biodiversity in an area we could reward the local community with immediate and direct payment. You could say, How are you going to pay communities if they dont have bank accounts, which is the case for about 2 billion people on the planet? Then comes the blockchain again. They can simply create a bitcoin wallet as soon as they have access to the internet.

Q: Are there downsides to the blockchain?

A: There are several downsides. The first one is that the blockchain is still slow. It handles seven transactions per second, compared to 2000 for the Visa network. And then the big irony is that the blockchain is a giant sucker of energy, consuming almost twice that of the whole company Google. Whats needed is to develop a more energy-efficient algorithm. Another disadvantage is, if you have a bitcoin wallet and you lose your private key, your digital signature, then your bitcoinsare lost forever. What we need is to hide the cryptographic complexity in smartphone apps.

Q:Are a lot of ecologists interested in the blockchain approach?

A: Im not aware of any other academic papers that linkthe blockchain to how it can help the environment. We need more development. We have FinTech, which is using new computer technology to help the financial industry, but I am proposing the term SusTech, which is using new technology like the blockchain to help sustainability. And the other that has not been much mentioned before is cryptogovernance. We have cryptocurrency, like bitcoin. What I propose is to explore governance that relies on cryptography, through elections and contracts. When people understand more and more what the blockchain will allow, they will have more and more new ideas that we cant imagine today. My paper is intended to stimulate thinking.

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Can bitcoin's cryptographic technology help save the environment? - Science Magazine

Power grids are changing in dramatic ways with the rise of distributed energy resources (DER), storage options, demand management and all sorts of new technology. But existing centralized power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure was designed over 100 years ago under vastly different economic, market and environmental conditions. Bolting on todays state-of-the-art technology to yesterdays grid infrastructure is a challenging process that is made easier with sophisticated technology like intelligent inverters.

Inverters have been used by the solar power industry for decades to convert DC electricity generated by solar installations into AC power, but they lack bi-directional capability needed to both take power from the grid and feed power back into it (Solar is only uni-directional). Intelligent inverters like the ones being used at the University of St. Thomas Renewable Energy Facility in Minnesota are playing a leading role in grid modernization by packing multiple technologies into a single package.

Under existing standards, if the grid has a problem renewable energy sources must shut down. This is problematic because you have spent a lot of money on your solar arrays, your wind turbines, fuel cells, etc. and by code if the thing you are connected to has a problem, you must shut down even if you dont need to [because the renewable energy assets are performing properly], explained Minnesotas University of St. Thomas Professor Dr. Greg Mowry.

However, with intelligent inverters you have the ability to run a self-sustaining microgrid. One of the things an intelligent inverter helps you to do if the grid has trouble, is disconnect from the grid and run in island mode, said Mowry. The inverter has the intelligence to maintain voltage and frequency and handle load requirements so when the grid comes back an intelligent inverter can easily synchronize and reconnect to the grid. So, one of the things an intelligent inverter brings is the ability to continue supplying load independent of the state of the grid, he said. In other words, instead of just shutting down all renewable energy resources during a time of grid instability, these inverters provide another option.

These particular intelligent inverters supplied by Rhombus Energy Solutions, Inc. are also critical to Professor Mowrys microgrid research because he wants the ability to support and interact with the grid when its functioning, but if the grid has trouble he wants to be able to continue operating his microgrid.

Another powerful attribute of this technology is the ability to have several intelligent inverters interconnected with the grid that can communicate with each other to act as an intelligent autonomous system with or without the grid. Meaning they can essentially take over the utilitys job under certain conditions explained Rhombus Energys CTO & Director Joseph Gottlieb. In the event of a power failure, these devices can continue to supply power even in the absence of the grid and later reconnect to the grid when available, he said. For example, if there is a power outage at the University of St. Thomas, the section of the campus connected to Professor Mowrys microgrid will be able to continue running without grid-supplied power. This capability is often referred to as resilience.

The capabilities that intelligent inverters provide represent another case of technology outpacing regulations and standards. Sophisticated inverters, like the ones Professor Mowry is using, have the technical ability to do much more than standards currently permit. As such, Mowrys research focuses a lot on how inverters interact with the grid.

When you have various things connected to the grid it would be nice to have them function like other generation facilities. For example, DERs should be able to supply to the grid, ride through grid-based power failures and help manage power flow on the grid. They can be active participants in grid operations, but today that is not the situation, said Mowry.

The ways in which intelligent inverters communicate with the grid known as Protocols is actively being researched by Professor Mowry and his team. How do they work with the grid? One exciting thread of this research involves working with the local utility Excel Energy to safely connect to the grid when the Universitys microgrid is in island mode. The University of St. Thomas and Excel Energy will work on this next year, Mowry said.

The devil is in the details regarding what can be accomplished, as with any research and development activity, which is why the universitys microgrid serves as an ideal platform for a partnership between a corporation and an educational institution, Mowry explained. Rhombus Energy has a strong team that focuses on developing products, so if Professor Mowrys research proves something is technically achievable, Rhombus has the capability to commercialize it and bring it to market. The partnership enables future things to occur where the research can be realized in a practical manner that, down the road, does something useful, said Mowry.

Intelligent inverter technology has made a major leap forward by combining multiple capabilities into a single, powerful package. A major challenge in the past has been the need to buy multiple components, like a smart inverter plus a software suite to communicate with other devices and run upper-level control algorithms that help control microgrids or perform demand response functions. The Rhombus Energy inverters that Professor Mowry works with can do all of these things in single package.

These systems must have the ability to take on two critical functions. One is to supply power when no grid is present and the other is to support grid stability and provide cost-saving functions to allow quicker return on investment. The extension of these attributes to multiple interacting intelligent inverters on a microgrid (i.e. distributed control intelligence) is a next step in the evolution of smart inverters for controlling microgrids. These are truly exciting times in that the present generation of intelligent inverters give us impressive options now, with even more capability to follow in the very near future; capabilities which are unprecedented in the history of power.

Top image credit: Professor Greg Mowry at the Steger Wilderness Centers microgrid (credit: John Ratzloff)

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Intelligent inverters: At the cutting edge of grid-edge technology - Utility Dive

We are entering the age of ubiquitous sensing. Smart sensors will soon track our health and wellness, enable autonomous cars, and monitor machines, buildings, and bridges. Massive networks of small, inexpensive sensors will enable large-scale global data collection impacting the distribution of agriculture and water, environmental monitoring, disaster recovery, disease-outbreak detection and intervention, and the operation of cities. With this change in mind, MIT is creating a singular hub to unite experts as they develop a new generation of sensors, and sensing and measurement technologies.

On May 25-26, SENSE.nano will debut, marking the first center of excellence powered by MIT.nano, the 214,000 square-foot research facility taking shape in the heart of MIT campus. The center will empower people in the MIT community, engage industry leaders, and educate the public.

There is a thing we do extremely well at MIT: We lock arms and make progress that is beyond the scope of any one researcher, says Timothy Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor in the Department of Chemistry.

If you look at whats happening with sensors, youll see that many different disciplines have to come together. Ubiquitous sensing has so many aspects chemical, biological, physical, radiological, he says. With all this sensing research going on, we need a place to coordinate our synergies.

As part of the kickoff, a full-day symposium will feature experts discussing technical challenges, commercial and humanitarian needs, and the societal impact of ubiquitous sensor and sensing systems. In a nod to the everyday impact of this technology, NPR journalist Tom Ashbrook will lead a broad discussion on Sensing, Society, and Technology.

Novel sensors and sensing systems will provide previously unimaginable insight into the condition of individuals and the built and natural worlds, positively impacting people, machines, and the environment, says Brian W. Anthony, a principal research engineer at MIT and director of the Advanced Manufacturing and Design program, who is coleading the new center.

SENSE.nano will support collaboration between people from a range of specialty areas engineering, business, Earth science, electronics, computation, nanoscience, materials science, neuroscience, chemistry, physics, computer science, biology, and advanced manufacturing.

We want to use this event as an opportunity to strengthen the community and improve our connection to the local innovation and manufacturing ecosystem, adds Anthony. And to accelerate the rate at which our new sensing technologies and innovations are scaled-up and go out and impact the IoT enabled industries, advanced instrumentation, and beyond.

Vince Roche, CEO of Analog Devices, and Gururaj Desh Deshpande, founder of the Deshpande Foundation, will offer morning and afternoon keynotes. Framing the broad impact and opportunity of sensing technologies to the U.S. economy and the worlds societal needs. Analog Devices, a semiconductor company cofounded by Raymond S. Stata, is a cornerstone company in sensor products and advanced manufacturing in Massachusetts.

It is time for people to reach out and find the best ways to collaborate, he says. Were looking for input from the community, sensor and sensing system manufacturers, government, academe, and researchers to help us define the grand challenge focus areas within SENSE.nano.

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The future of sensory technology - MIT News

New York Times

Apple Pay Violates Patents Held by Security Technology Inventor, Lawsuit Alleges New York Times SAN FRANCISCO A small Boston company, founded by the inventor of a popular corporate encryption technology called RSA SecurID, sued Apple and Visa on Sunday, arguing that the Apple Pay digital payment technology violates its patents. The lawsuit ... Apple and Visa Sued Over Digital Payment and User Authentication Technology Used in Apple PayMac Rumors all 33 news articles »

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Apple Pay Violates Patents Held by Security Technology Inventor, Lawsuit Alleges - New York Times