Monthly Archives: July 2017

Bad news for criminals who are trying to remain hidden, nameless and faceless. New technology can predict what a terrorists face looks like from less than a drop of blood or single strand of hair.

Called the Parabon Snapshot, this new groundbreaking technology can take traces of DNA and literally put a face to the crime.

From a terrorist who built a bomb intended to kill hundreds of Americans through to a thief who stole your grandmother's handbag, this is the sort of American innovation that makes it hard for a bad guy to stay anonymous.

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Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) funded this exciting innovation and Parabon NanoLabs created it. DTRA safeguards Americans by focusing on combating weapons of mass destruction around the clock.

In war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, there are networks that build improvised explosive devices or IEDs. As such, there has been an urgent need to provide enhanced tools to help military teams identify, track, dismantle and defeat terrorist networks.

Similarly, terrorist plots such as the recent attacks in Manchester, Brussels and Paris have involved explosive devices so investigators immediately searched for clues to identify the bombmaker or possible bomb making network.

Snapshot is one very exciting solution for both the military and law enforcement. If the bombmaker left any trace of DNA, then the tech can take it and read the DNAs code to build a composite image of the bombmaker.

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Whats the picture like?

This new technology can build a picture, but how good is it? Extremely good.

Snapshot can predict the shape of a persons face. Within the face, it will predict the terrorist or criminals eye color and hair color. The tech can reveal skin color, going so far as to add the degree of freckling or pigmentation.

And it can accurately predict not just the appearance of the criminal, but also biogeographic ancestry in great detail as well.

How does it work?

In the simplest terms, the Parabon Snapshot uses DNA to build a picture of what a criminal looks like.

Effectively, Snapshot reverse engineers the DNA to provide a picture. It can do this because DNA carries genetic instruction that dictates a persons physical characteristics. Snapshot understands how this genetic data translates into physical appearance.

If you give Snapshot a DNA sample, it can then read thousands of the genotypes also known as genetic variants and translate them into a visual image of a perpetrator.

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Why is it used?

This is a big leap ahead for the use of DNA in capturing terrorists and criminals.

Just like how each persons fingerprint is unique, the same is true for DNA. A forensic DNA sample from a crime scene or terrorist strike can be matched to a database, for example, to try to identify the culprit.

But now if there is no match in a database, then there is still a way to use the DNA to put a face to the crime.

Investigators can use the DNA as a human blueprint too and have Snapshot transform it into a picture.

Capturing criminals

Early adopters in law enforcement, military and counter terrorism team have had great success with this new tool. It has been so successful that in that short span of time, Snapshot has been used by more than 80 agencies and Snapshot analysis has been undertaken in ten countries.

Investigators have been using Snapshot to help solve tough current criminal cases as well as crack cold cases.

Detectives from the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland, for example, recently used the Parabon technology to create a composite for a suspect in a series of unsolved burglaries and rapes that occurred between June 19, 2010 and Sept. 2, 2012.

The technology has also reportedly been used by police in Florida to make arrests related to a 2011 homicide.

Rockingham County Sherriffs Office in North Carolina also used Parabon technology during its successful investigation intothe murders of Douglas "Troy" andLaDonna French.Although there was lots of different DNA at the crime scene, there was no police database match. In Januray 2015,a month after the debut of Parabon's Snapshot service,Rockingham County Sherriffs Office contacted the company. Jos Alvarez, Jr. was arrested for the murder in August 2015.

In July 2016 Alvarez pled guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

Other applications

Beyond a military and law enforcement tool, Parabon says it is developing other potential applications for their research, including the ability to predict the risk of developing Alzheimers Disease.

Allison Barrie is a defense specialist with experience in more than 70 countries who consults at the highest levels of defense and national security, a lawyer with four postgraduate degrees, and author of the definitive guide, Future Weapons: Access Granted, on sale in 30 countries. Barrie hosts the new hit podcast Tactical Talk where she gives listeners direct access to the most fascinating Special Operations warriors each week and to find out more about the FOX Firepower host and columnist you can click here or follow her on Twitter @allison_barrie and Instagram @allisonbarriehq.

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New DNA technology creates digital 'sketch' of terrorists' faces - Fox News

Many business leaders argue that technology is taking the "human" aspect out of human resources. However, from recruiting to hiring to connecting teams worldwide, the argument can be made that technology is greatly improving the human experience.

Related: A New Wave of HR Technology Is Disrupting the Market

Consider the case of Sarah Wilson, director of talent acquisition and principal staff officer at the Toronto bookstore, Indigo: Wilson has been using AI recruiting software to help personalize the hiring process.

"We started using Ideal.com last year, and we saw results within the first week," Wilson told me. "I think some people dismiss AI because they think it will hurt their candidate experience. We saw it as an opportunity to further improve ours."

The HRdirector said she didn't want hiring scenarios for her company that resembledthose of most large retailers, where candidates hear no response. Instead, AI technology helped her team cut out many time-consuming administrative tasks. This decreased the response time for getting back to applicants and helped her team spend more time with candidates they wanted to meet in person.

While Wilson was able to effectively use HRtech to improve the candidate experience, in general a balance between tech and human interaction can be hard to achieve. Here are four ways companies can use technology to improve the human experience:

Human connection is the end goal for business leaders, and HR tech is providing them the time to grow meaningful relationships.

"Both HR and recruiting professionals get caught up in the monotonous tasks associated with their jobs," Mahe Bayireddi, CEO of Phenom People, a talent-relationship marketing platform in Horsham, Pa., explained via email. "Where many people view HR tech as a human replacement, I view it as a bridge to a very apparent gap between HR and recruiting technology and the human element the industry has lost sight of in the past."

Bayireddi said he believes HR pros get overwhelmed with mundane tasks, making it impossible for recruiters to be more personal in their communications. By using automated technology, they're able to focus on building relationships and bringing on the best talent for their teams.

Tip: Help employees be more productive and motivated in their relationships by first understanding what tasks are holding them back. Before signing up for automation software, ask team members what tasks are preventing them from honing-in on the human element of recruiting and HR. Then, research which software can take care of these tasks and free up their time to target the best job candidates.

Related: Why Tech Is HR's Friend, Not Its Enemy

There's no doubt that things move fast in a startup. So, leaders often forget to stop and ask employees for feedback.

Steffen Maier, co-founder of Impraise, a performance-management software company in New York City, said he believes that letting feedback slip out of view can be detrimental to an entire organization.

"The emergence of feedback apps helped to change this by encouraging employees to ask for feedback when they need it, instead of waiting for an annual review," Maier said via email. "Creating an environment in which it's okay to ask for feedback, whether from your manager, reports or colleagues, means that information flows more freely throughout the organization."

Enhancing feedback, especially by offering the option of anonymity, gives managers the information they need to have a more meaningful dialogue with their employees.

Tip: Use a feedback or communication platform to perform a company-wide anonymous survey on employee or organizational matters. From pay and benefits to after-work activities, Maier has improved employees' performance and work experience by using their feedback.

The immersion of video in HR tech is fast evolving how leaders do business worldwide. Gayle Wiley, chief people officer at Lifesize, a video, audio and web-conferencing company based in Austin, puts her company to the test by using video conferencing for her recruiting needs.

"Externally, I use video-conferencing for interviewing candidates who are not located nearby," Wiley explained. "Internally, it is my main communications vehicle for conducting productive meetings with our entire global workforce -- for performance reviews, town hall meetings, onboarding of new employees, training and development and more."

With today's increasingly dispersed workforce, one-click face-to-face interactions are crucial in building the human experience. Co-workers who were once able to connect only over the phone or via email are now able to see one another and interact as though they were in the same room.

Tip: If possible, try the following exercise: Spend a few days communicating with people in your office via phone, email and on messaging platforms. Then, after a day or two of limited facial contact, connect with people via video.

Take notice of the deeper connection with co-workers that's restored through your return to face-to-face discussion. Now, imagine the connections being missed due to the absence of these personalized interactions.

With evolving tools, employers are able to take what were once limited standard procedures and create improved, more expansive experiences for their teams. Such experiences are especially relevant for employee perks and benefits.

Tip: With tools like Maestro Health, an employee health and benefits platform, employers are able to offer complete solutions in a personalized and simpler format. The platform allows users to be shown and to choose from a variety of health benefits to find the ones that are right for them.

Related: This Tech Start-up is Helping Companies Cut HR Expenses

Whether in the health and benefits arena or as part of the overarching employee experience, employees want perks that meet their individualized needs -- not everyone else's. With HR tech, they now have the tools to do this through improved, personalized human experiences.

Waldorf, Md.-basedHeather R. Huhmanis a career expert, experienced hiring manager and president ofCome Recommended, a content-marketing and digital-PR consultancy for job-search and human-resources technologies. She is the...

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4 Ways Technology Improves the Human Resources (and Human) Experience - Entrepreneur

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. - The Missouri Department of Transportation is hoping to test driverless technology on some of its fleet as soon as next year.

June 28 was the deadline for companies to submit proposals to MoDOT on autonomous technology. Now, it is reviewing those proposals with hopes to have a vendor on board by late July.

"It's not like your autonomous car where you plug in an address and it just goes," said Chris Redline, Assistant District Engineer for MoDOT. "What this is going to do is follow the truck in front of it. We're talking low speeds. We're talking under 15 miles per hour. This would not be to get to the job site, this would be when we get to the job site."

It's part of an ongoing effort by the department to reduce work zone crashes and injuries involving TMAs, or Truck Mounted Attenuators. TMAs are a sort of crash cushion designed to crumple when hit.

"These crash cushions are designed to smash up," said Redline. "When they smash up, it reduces the energy, so the vehicle comes to a much slower stop than if they just crashed into the back of a dump truck. It saves countless lives every single year."

Since 2014, MoDOT has had 82 crashes involving TMAs.

"There's a person inside each of those 82 vehicles that has friends and family," said Redline. "We'd like to get our people out of those vehicles, and a driverless truck would make that happen."

Michael Suber is one of those drivers. His TMA was hit in January of this year.

"We were patching potholes on US-50 and I was following the pothole patcher," he remembers. "I noticed a truck coming close to me so I hit my panic lights to try and get him to get over in the passing lane. He did not and he his the TMA I was in. Pushed me over 100 feet. We were both taken to the hospital."

Suber had whiplash and other back issues, both caused by the crash.

"I couldn't pick up my kids, couldn't play with them, all because of someone's negligence," he said. "This is serious. This is our lives in danger."

Redline said MoDOT will be getting all of the equipment up to speed this year, with the hope to start testing the driverless technology in 2018.

"During the testing, we are always going to have a driver in that vehicle," he said. "That's part of the testing, and that driver will always have the ability to take over. It's a statute that a driver has to be present, and if we ever want to remove the driver, we need a statute change to allow it to be driverless."

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MoDOT to test driverless technology in metro area - KSHB

In Brief Scientists have found a way to introduce a quantum principle into wireless charging systems. This innovation could expedite charging time and functionality while doing away with the previous limitations of wireless charging tech. A Better Range

While wireless chargingis an improvement over amess of entangled wires, the technology does not solve the issue of mobility your phone still needs to remain in one place to charge. This could change with the development of a new type ofcharging.

Current wireless charging devices operate using an electromagnetic field. For the power transfer between the charger and the device to remain optimal, the distance between the two must remain fixed. However, ateam out of Stanford has created a charger that cantransfer power to moving devices up to a meter away. Their research has been published in Nature.

The system uses a quantum mechanical principle called parity-time symmetry. Essentially, this means their charger can automatically adjust its power flow depending on the situation. The researchers demonstrated their device using an LED bulb. When the bulb moved further away, the distance was mitigated by the charger. This allowed the bulb to retain its brightness despite the motion.

Though this study only demonstrates the technology at a minor level, if scalable, it could essentially enable us to charge devices at the optimum rate despite a varying distance. This has exciting applications in a number of fields beyond just allowing you to comfortably use your phone while charging it.

Theoretically, it could revolutionize our ability towirelessly charge electric vehiclesas charging devices could be built into roads to charge the EVsas they drive past.The study also cites the potential to charge medical implants more efficiently. These devices are all implantedat slightly different depths, which can make charging them using existing technology complicated. This new technology would give patients the ability to move around while charging, as well.

While the teams technology is still in its nascent stages and has only charged a single moving LED so far, the concept has the potential to radically change how we power our lives in the future. Now, its just a matter of scaling it up.

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A Quantum Principle Could Change Wireless Charging Technology Forever - Futurism

Defense ties have long underpinned Indian-Israeli relations, but a string of deals signed this week reflected wider cooperation that could benefit Indian companies seeking advanced technologies and could pave the way for Israeli firms to access millions of consumers.

On Wednesday, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said India signed several agreements with Israel on science, agriculture and technology, as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic visit to the country, 25 years after both nations established diplomatic relations.

The agreements included the decision to create a bilateral technology innovation fund worth $40 million for research in industrial development, and to establish a strategic partnership in water and agriculture to focus on water conservation, waste-water treatment and its reuse for agriculture and desalination, among other deals.

Richard Rossow, senior adviser and Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies at CSIS, said that while Israel has historically been a supplier of defense equipment to India, the two countries have natural synergies in other areas.

"Israel's becoming a more important defense partner for India, a source of great technology, not just in the defense space, but in biotechnology (and) agriculture," he told CNBC's "Street Signs" on Thursday. "A lot of the things were reflected in that joint statement."

Rossow said that closer ties could lead to more investments from both countries.

"India's good at large-scale things, like call centers and software development, but Israel's doing package software. India's doing back-office biotech research, but Israel actually has products that are out there in the global markets more than India does," he said.

"So it could be Israeli companies looking for a larger production base, in which case India's ready to go."

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India, Israel expand cooperation from defense to science, agriculture and technology - CNBC