Daily Archives: May 2, 2020

With lockdowns across the world and social distancing, technology is playing a central role in communication. Increasingly, people are participating in religious services and concerts online through live-streaming. Pope Francis may have been speaking over the Easter holidays in a mostly empty St. Peters Basilica or St. Peters Square, but he was joined by thousands, if not millions, of persons through the internet and more traditional means such as television and radio. In many ways, COVID-19 is accelerating the use of technology in our work and social activities.

In Geneva, Brussels, London, New York, Kingston, Georgetown, and other cities across the world, many peopleare now working from home using the internet and conducting local and international meetings through some form of teleconferencing.

Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and senior officials have increasingly resorted to more frequent use of teleconferencing. In fact, recently the Heads of government have been holding emergency sessions on COVID-19s impact on the region.

Services, such as medical consultations, physiotherapysessions, and exercise classes, are now being provided through various internet applications.It seems that e-commercehas also increased significantly. Thus, COVID-19 is forcing many people to become much more familiar with technology, and its various applications.

Working from home has also raised again in Jamaica, and no doubt in other parts of the Caribbean region, the question of flexible working hours. Peopleworking from home, whether in the public or private sectors, are reported to be more productive and less stressed. Of course, this requires further study. In Jamaica, in 2014, the Employment (Flexible Work Arrangement) (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act was adopted but is yet to be fully implemented. COVID-19 is demonstrating that there could be merit in introducing some flexible working schedules where appropriate.

While many developed countries have been using technology in the workplace and have adopted flexible working hours, this is not the case in the Caribbean and other developing countries. In general, these countries are playing catch-up.

However, there are definite signs of improvement over the last 12 years, during which time Caribbean countries upgraded internet services and received teleconferencing equipment through a technical cooperation program. The CARICOM Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) Special Session on Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has, for many years, been looking at creating a Single ICT Space allowing for ICT harmonization and other legislative frameworksin CARICOM. Increased use of ICT, it is said, would aid the realization of the long-awaited CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Within the Caribbean, and especially in its public sector, it is necessary to ensure that institutions and employees have up-to-date, properly maintained equipment and are efficiently trained in how to use them.The service providers in the Caribbean also have to iron out all the kinks to provide a highquality of service at a price thatusers can afford.

To be honest, Caribbean residents are not actually receiving the best quality telephone and internet services from their principal providers. Security is an important issue as well and, of course, across the region cybersecurity policies and legislation need to be completed.

E-commerce, which is among the issues proposed for consideration in the World Trade Organization (WTO), needs to be properly addressed across the CARICOM region. This is where business is now being conducted especially among Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

The use of technology is also changing how diplomacy is being conducted, moving from face-to-facemeetings and very formal diplomatic notes and saving-telegrams to teleconferencing, emails, and social media portals like Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. This is not to say that there isnt still a place for diplomatic person-to-person contact, but diplomacy has clearly moved into the digital age.

The flexible working arrangements also need to be seriously examined for implementation. The experiences forced on the region and the rest of the world in this COVID-19 period clearly indicates that the use of technology for communication in various scenarios is workable.

So, whether people are prepared or not, the future of work is evident as COVID-19 preventative is propelling the world more into the digital age and the related reform of working procedures.

A few weeks ago when CARICOM Heads met to share ideas and experiences on measures related to COVID-19, Barbados Prime Minister Mottley said the presence of the coronavirus could be the regions time. Indeed, it could be the Caribbeans time to implement the many CARICOM proposals which are outstanding including proposals on agriculture and food security, trade in services, and most importantly, ICT.

Guest editorial adapted from CMC feature written by Elizabeth Morgan,a specialist in International Trade Policy and International Politics.

Excerpt from:

The Use Of Technology And Future Of Work Has Changed Because Of COVID-19 - caribbeannationalweekly.com

The "COVID-19 Impact on Airport Operations Market by Technology (Passenger Screening, Baggage Scanners, Smart Tag & RFID, E-gate & E-Kiosk, 5G infrastructure, Cybersecurity Solutions and Ground Support Equipment) and Region - Global Forecast to 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The airport operation technologies market in a realist scenario is projected to grow from USD 6.2 billion in 2020 to USD 11.2 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 12.6% from 2020 to 2025.

In the short term, the market is expected to see a huge drop from 2020 to 2021 (12.4%) and is expected to see a slight recovery from 2021 to 2022. The COVID-19 crisis has created a demand for facial recognition solutions that will have no need for human interference. At the same time, fingerprint scanners are expected to be phased out. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, various airports across countries have ordered thermal scanners and infrared scanners for passenger screening. For instance, demand for thermal imaging cameras that can detect fevers from a distance has soared as nations ramp up surveillance and quarantine measures.

The increase in demand for passenger screening and management systems at airports is anticipated to boost the growth of the market during the forecast period. However, the decrease in air passenger traffic across the globe is limiting the overall growth of the market.

Based on technology, the biometric solutions segment is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Technologies such as self-service and facial & voice recognition have been introduced for passenger identity, check-ins, and availing boarding passes. These technologies at airports have improved customer service, reduced operational costs, and increased revenues of airlines as well as airports. Airports with such technologies are able to cope with the COVID-19 outbreak better. Demand for smart passenger screening solutions is expected to surge post the COVID-19 pandemic in the long term, as airports will strive to maintain vigilance levels.

The spread of COVID-19 is posing serious challenges for airlines, airports, and their ecosystems. In the long term, however, the pandemic could help catalyze investments in new technologies and radically reshape the industry.

Asia Pacific is estimated to lead the airport operations market in 2020 Airports Council International (ACI) Asia-Pacific warns that the prolonged duration of the COVID-19 outbreak will significantly impact the region's airports and prevent them from achieving previously-forecasted growth prospects. The airport association urges regulators and governments to implement well-defined adjustments and relief measures tailored to suit local-level contexts. According to ACI World estimates, Asia Pacific is impacted the worst, with passenger traffic volumes down 24% for the first quarter of 2020 compared to forecasted traffic levels without COVID-19. After fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, China's aviation industry is moving into the recovery stage, and it is unsurprising that Chinese airlines are the ones bucking the global trend and adding capacity. Moreover, Chinese airports are deploying 5G-powered robots for terminal operations, which can help reduce the chances of spreading COVID-19 as well as increase the handling capacity of passengers.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Introduction

2 Research Methodology

3 COVID-19 Impact on Airport Ecosystem

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Impact on Airport Value Chain

3.2.1 Equipment Suppliers

3.2.2 Ground Operators

3.2.3 Service Providers

3.2.4 Technology Providers

3.3 Macro Indicators

3.3.1 Drivers

3.3.1.1 Demand for Smart Technologies and Management Systems at Airports

3.3.2 Restraints

3.3.2.1 Decrease in Passenger Traffic

3.3.2.2 Reduction in Airline Capacity Utilization & Flight Operations

4 Short-Term Strategies of Airport Technology Companies and Operators

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Impact on Airport Operators

4.2.1 Maintaining Current State of Operations

4.2.2 Health and Safety of Staff, Passengers, and Other Stakeholders

4.2.3 Cost Control and Managing Working Capital

4.2.4 Managing Suppliers, Vendors, and Customers

4.2.5 Capacity Building to Mitigate Similar Threats

4.3 Impact on Airport Technology Companies

4.3.1 Product & Service Offerings

Story continues

4.3.2 Enhanced Customer Support

4.3.3 Contract Management

4.4 Winning Strategies by Airport Technology Companies

4.5 Publisher Viewpoint

5 COVID-19 Impact on Airport Operation Customers

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Strategic Shifts in Airport Operations

5.2.1 Business/Operating Models

5.2.2 Revenue Mix & Cost Structure

5.3 Airport Operations

5.3.1 Capacity Utilization and Cost Optimization

5.3.2 Technology Use Cases and Innovation

5.3.3 Spending & Investment Priorities

5.3.4 Risk Management and Business Continuity

5.4 Airport Business Strategy

5.4.1 Connected/Smart Airports

5.4.2 Digitalization Trends

5.4.3 Enhancing Passenger Experience

6 Impact of COVID-19 on Airport Operation Technologies Market, by Technology

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Impact on Airport Operation Technologies Market, 2018-2025, (Usd Million)

6.2.1 Baggage Scanners

6.2.2 Passenger Screening

6.2.2.1 Handheld Scanners

6.2.2.2 Walk-Through Metal Detectors

6.2.2.3 Full-Body Scanners

6.2.3 E-Gate & Kiosk

6.2.3.1 Smart Biometric Systems

6.2.3.2 Smart Boarding Systems

6.2.4 Cybersecurity Solutions

6.2.5 Smart Tags & Rfid

6.2.6 Ground Support Equipment

6.2.7 5G in Airports

7 Regional Analysis

7.1 Introduction

7.2 North America

7.3 Europe

7.4 Asia Pacific

7.5 Rest of the World

8 Appendix

8.1 Knowledge Store: Publisher's Subscription Portal

8.2 Author Details

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9cs0gs

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200501005413/en/

Contacts

ResearchAndMarkets.comLaura Wood, Senior Press Managerpress@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

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COVID-19 Impact on the Airport Operations Market by Technology and Region - Global Forecast to 2025 - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Yahoo Finance

In the rough business climate caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple has taken pride in going beyond "competent business as usual" to help. But the company and its trillion-dollar peers should now take the initiative to gather testing data that governments globally are failing to handle. Livesand their profitsdepend on it.We have never before needed a doughnut this badly

We previously detailed a variety of ways Apple has voluntarily assisted in the global coronavirus pandemic, ranging from using its supply chain expertise to source masks for frontline healthcare workers to using its design capabilities to fabricate millions of face shields and other needed gear. Apple has also contributed to causes including food assistance for those hit hardest economically by the pandemic, developed remote education resources for teachers and parents, and worked to develop a secure technical basis for tracking the spread of the virus in a way that doesn't allow governments and malicious third parties to track user behaviors for other purposes.

In its most recent quarterly earnings conference call, Apple's chief executive Tim Cook specifically addressed this.

"In this difficult environment, our users are depending on Apple products in renewed ways to stay connected, informed, creative, and productive," Cook said. "We feel motivated and inspired to not only keep meeting these needs in innovative ways but to continue giving back to support the global response, from the tens of millions of face masks and custom-built face shields we've sent to medical professionals around the world, to the millions we've donated to organizations like Global Citizen and America's Food Fund."

Yet there is something else that Apple and its rich corporate peers can uniquely do: assist in compiling testing data on large numbers of people. This data is desperately needed because it will inform us of the real extent of the pandemic and how the virus behaves.

Despite many efforts by scientists worldwide to determine how fast the virus is spreading, what affect it has on the infected, why some are apparently able to asymptomatically carry the virus, and whether people who are infected have gained immunity to reinfection and for how long, we still do not have a clear picture needed to make effective public policy decisions ranging from how quickly we can ease restrictions to whether it is safe to send kids back to school, or whether people who have developed antibodies can return to work safely.

Globally, there are fears that various governments are hiding the true extent of the virus for political reasons to avoid looking incompetent or to reveal any weaknesses. The United States is actively working to portray China as having falsely obscured the true extent of its infections. Even in the U.S., there is widespread ignorance of whether people who are dying with COVID-19 symptoms are actually infected, have been exposed to the virus but died due to other issues, or have died from common causes such as heart attacks or strokes without any COVID-related symptoms or a diagnosis, yet which many have been caused by damage from the virus.

We simply do not know the answers to many of these questions. There are also political reasons for obscuring the truth.

Additionally, the widespread desperation to try to find the truth has green-lit a variety of tests that are simply not accurate enough to provide useful results. A study of the tests that were rushed into use in the U.S. without the typical, time-consuming approval process of standard FDA certification has indicated that many antibody tests now being used are giving false positives so often that their results are creating additional chaos.

There are now groups on Facebook and elsewhere that are actively promoting conspiracy theories that suggest that the entire pandemic is a globalist effort to enslave individuals and force the vaccination of people in order to curtail their freedoms. Without clear, non-political data on what is actually happening, we will continue to suffer from bad public policy based on bad data, without a clear understanding on what is actually going on.

And as mistakes are made by public officials relying on data that is not accurate, trust in authority and science will erode and more people will be driven in desperation to believe anything that that seems plausible. This will be disastrous for society, for individuals, and for the economy.

Regardless of political affiliation, the executive and legislative branches of federal and state governments in the United States are losing credibility largely due to decisions made without a clear foundation in accurate data. People are growing less and less confident in governments to provide testing, given that weeks have passed and promises of widespread testing being widely available have turned out to simply be untrustworthy.

This presents a huge opportunity for companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft to work together in their own self-interest to create public confidence in corporate activity, as well as public policy shaped by accurate, real-world data. These companies already have intimate access to their customers and audiences. Most people would be more willing to trust these companies than their elected political overlords, many of whom they've just witnessed making wildly embarrassing mistakes.

Heading into the pandemic, Apple rapidly identified several ways it could help. One way was to take its existing research it had already made to create a secure system for finding lost hardware for its "Find My" app and adapting this to develop a safe and secure way to track potentially proximal transmissions with virus-infected individuals and communicate this data without revealing the identities or location of any users.

Governments from the UK to France to Australia quickly jumped on the idea of using coronavirus panic to roll out their own widespread surveillance systems to track viral transmission that they could then perpetually use to also track other activities ranging from drug use to money laundering to human trafficking and other crimes. Other governments would also love a system that enabled them to track terrorists or dissidents or even political rivals.

Yet, Apple has stridently pushed to make its COVID-19 tracking system independent from politics and to maintain control over the system, allowing it both the power to enable and to shut it down once the pandemic is over.

If Apple and other major global corporations similarly pursued widespread testing, they could assure users that their tests would not be used to further political oppression or other partisan efforts, collecting data that scientists could use to inform responsible, intelligent public policy no matter what politicians would like to have happen. We desperately need this non-partisan, non-nationalist, non-political, non-racist data to inform public policy and to convince skeptics of the need to continue what may be difficult and expensive best practices needed to save lives and safely reboot global economies.

We have never before needed trillion-dollar corporations to jump in and check the power of our politically motivated governments. We desperately need their help to deliver reliable testing data that our governments are failing to competently gather on their own. And it is in the financial interest of these big companies to deliver reliable testing data because as long as we suffer through incompetent political squabbles that erode peoples' trust in their own governments, these corporations will also suffer dramatically from economic uncertainty and the building contempt for sloppy public policy directed by ideology rather than data and facts.

Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft could start by rapidly testing their own workers, followed by opt-in testing provided to their customers. Leveraging their relationships with users, these firms and others could begin compiling real-world data that would help inform epidemiologists and other scientists working to better understand how this virus works, how it affects the infected, how safe the exposed are to reinfection, what risks there are to individuals with preexisting issues that make them vulnerable, and how to best spend public resources in mitigating the damage caused by the virus and its spread.

Without this data, these companies may end up watching some segments of their customer base die unnecessarily while others retract in fear without a solid basis in understanding what degree of social interaction is safe and needed to resume normal work. This pandemic is clearly hitting some people far harder than others. It is the responsibilityand in the best interestsof our tech giants to help protect the vulnerable and empower the capable to do as much as they can to avoid infection and also avoid irrational fear of a still largely mysterious enemy virus.

We desperately need the testing data only they can be trusted to deliver for us. Will they help?

See original here:

Apple must expand its COVID tracing technology into large scale testing - AppleInsider

If you don't feel comfortable signing up to the Government's COVIDSafe tracking app, then you probably won't be happy to hear about the pandemic drone.

Software being developed at the University of South Australia in conjunction with Canadian drone manufacturer Draganfly could see drones used to monitor the health of people, including spotting sneezes and tracking whether they have a fever.

It is just one way technology could be used to track and slow the spread of a virus like COVID-19.

But experts warn that new surveillance technologies must include privacy safeguards before they are adopted.

Professor Javaan Chahl, who holds positions with the University of South Australia and the Department of Defence, is developing software for the pandemic drone.

The device uses thermal cameras and artificial intelligence to measure some of the indicators of coronavirus in groups of people: heart rate, body temperature, coughing and sneezing.

"Heart rate can be measured in two different ways," he told 7.30.

"From a drone, we normally would measure it by a subtle change in skin tone that's associated with each heartbeat.

"And it's caused by changing the volume of blood in the skin. It also causes slight movement."

The drone would also be able to detect a cough from "15-20 metres away", while heart rate can be detected within 6-8 metres with only a "very small" margin of error.

It could also be used to monitor social distancing.

While still six months from completion, Professor Chahl hoped it would be used to collect data on a large scale and track patterns of behaviour to paint a broad picture of the spread of COVID-19 in a city, rather than monitor individuals.

"When you look at thousands of people, or millions of people, you'll start to see a trend," he said.

"And I think we don't have systems in place to surveil for that, particularly.

"It would be very useful to know how many people are suffering from symptoms associated with respiratory distress.

"So, if you see a lot of people coughing and sneezing and with elevated heart rates and breathing rates and fever, okay, that's good to know.

"And if that's increasing, that's very important to know."

Professor Chahl does acknowledge the technology could also be used to watch and target individuals if a future user wanted to.

Breaking down the latest news and research to understand how the world is living through an epidemic, this is the ABC's Coronacast podcast.

"All such technologies carry a risk with them," he said.

"I might think it's a very bad idea to use drones to chase people around who might be sick. But perhaps others might have different ideas.

"And it's very hard to restrain them from using it like that once the genie is out of the bottle."

Police in the US city of Westport, an hour north of New York, were trialling the software along with Draganfly, but pulled out last week over privacy concerns.

"There's a lot of discussion going on at the moment about how we manage that privacy so that you don't take away people's freedom, or start imposing on them unnecessarily," Professor Chahl said.

"But you do want to watch for the presence of this infectious disease. So there's a lot of challenges."

Artificial intelligence expert Professor Toby Walsh urged a cautious approach towards adopting technologies like the pandemic drone.

"I think the devil is in the detail: how it's rolled out, what safeguards are put in place," he said.

"There's every reason that this technology could be a useful tool in our armoury with rolling back the restrictions and allowing people to go about somewhat more normal lives.

"But, equally, there are concerns that you'd have about people's privacy and about whether when normality has returned, that we are not finding ourselves in a big brother surveillance state."

Several places in east Asia, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, have taken a more technology-driven approach to fighting coronavirus, successfully slowing the rate of transmission without enforcing the same strict lockdowns seen in Australia and some European countries, and keeping shops and restaurants open.

Everyone who lands in Hong Kong must download a mandatory phone app and wear a wristband for two weeks while in compulsory quarantine.

The app and wristband work together to track the user's whereabouts, along with regular video calls from health officials.

Professor Walsh doubts that level of surveillance would go down well in Australia.

"These are extraordinary times, but I think those are extraordinary measures that I suspect most people in Australia would find too much down the road to taking us to what [authors] George Orwell, Huxley and other people have warned us about the surveillance state that we could be in," Professor Walsh said.

Another distinct feature of Hong Kong's tech-driven approach to tackling the virus is the routine use of temperature checks, which are a common sight at the entrance to restaurants, offices, shopping malls and government buildings across the city.

Australian entrepreneur Rustom Kanga hopes that temperature-taking technology will soon be more widespread here.

His company iOmniscient has developed an automated fever scanning system which can operate through CCTV cameras to check the temperatures of people in crowds.

He claimed it was accurate "to about 0.2 of a degree Celsius".

"Now and in the future, we will be releasing the lockdown, there'll be lesser restrictions," he told 7.30.

"And in those environments we are going to still have to keep track of everyone.

"We are going to have to monitor people to make sure that there is no one round with a fever, because the fever is the first external indication, usually, of an infection of the coronavirus."

Dr Kanga said the software used artificial intelligence, including facial recognition, to automatically read the body temperature of "hundreds of people" at once in a crowd and alert authorities if someone had a fever.

The system could then track them through a network of cameras until they could be identified by a staff member or official.

"It uses what is called a thermographic camera, which is a camera that can detect the heat of things in the environment," he said.

"In this case, it's detecting the temperature of a person's skin."

Dr Kanga believed the technology could be useful in places where people are still gathering in groups such as schools, pharmacies, shops, defence facilities, hospitals and prisons.

"Today there is no real checking in public areas of whether people have fevers," he said.

"A system like this will give them an early indication that there's someone who potentially has a fever."

The use of facial recognition technology is highly controversial and concerns have long been raised by civil liberties groups about its use in public spaces and about the potential for authorities to use it to track citizens.

But Dr Kanga said his software "anonymised" faces by default and people would only be identified when requested by the user.

"Everyone's face can be redacted so that nobody sees anything," he said.

"However, if there's a person with a fever, that person's image is sent to the smartphone or the paramedic so that he can be checked out."

Professor Walsh said technologies like this could be part of Australia's approach, but won't replace the need for social distancing.

"It's worth pointing out those modern technologies are not going to be a panacea," he said.

"They're not going to allow us to go back to our normal lives, we are still going to have to social distance, we are still going to have to keep ourselves isolated physically as much as possible from each other until we have a vaccine.

"And, until that point, our lives are going to be somewhat on hold."

Read more:

A 'pandemic drone' and other technology could help limit the spread of coronavirus and ease restrictions sooner, but at what cost? - ABC News

As I have said for years, rural Missouri desperately needs better Internet coverage. Updating broadband Internet services throughout not only northwest Missouri, but also all of our state, has been a priority of mine since before I came to the Missouri Senate. The Legislature has worked on this crucial issue for quite some time; however, we are now getting some additional help.

Thanks to the governor and the Missouri Department of Economic Development, our state is in line to receive approximately $3 million in grants to establish broadband Internet coverage in rural Missouri. I believe more than 4,000 people will benefit from this additional funding.

In my opinion, we have learned, over the course of the last month, just how crucial reliable Internet service is to our ability to function. Now that we are all teachers for our children, having the tools needed to get classwork from one point to another is extremely important. Beyond this, just having the ability to connect with the world in everyday life depends more and more on a fast online connection. However, for too many people in small towns across our state, this is something yet to be realized. I am hopeful this grant will help remedy the situation.

The providers who will do the work say it will probably take the rest of the year to finish these projects. This is not to say everyone will suddenly have high-speed Internet, but I am confident that these grants will go a long way in providing Internet access to rural Missourians. From virtual workstations to online learning and e-commerce, I believe a reliable, fast Internet connection is an important part of our ability to stay connected to the world around us. It isnt just about Netflix and social media, this technology gives us the ability to access critical services, learn outside of the classroom and so much more.

As always, please feel free to call, email or write with your ideas or concerns.My Capitol office number is 573-751-1415, my email is dan.hegeman@senate.mo.gov and my mailing address is Room 332, State Capitol Building, Jefferson City, MO 65101.

Dan Hegeman is the 12th District State Senator.

Read more:

Highlights from Hegeman: Getting rural Missouri the technology it needs - The Maryville Forum

At 13 years old, Arman Roy knew what he wanted to do with his life.

After reading an article about local businesses in Detroit pulling together to bring internet to its poorest neighborhoods and residents, the always smiling teenager turned to his father Priya and said, Dad this is the kind of work I want to do. This is what we need to do to make sure that all kids can have access to the internet and technology.

Just like that, the always active boy scout found his inspiration and his lifes calling. That calling combined his two favorite things technology and helping people.

He always had a thirst for knowledge, Priya said. He really had a creative talent when it came to technology. Anything tech-related, he was on it.

Arman tragically passed away in his sleep on April 9, 2019 at 15 years old, but his dream was far from over.

We always knew that had such a caring soul, but after he passed away, hundreds of people came to talk to us about how he helped them and the things he did for them, his mother Manisha said. His gift and his passion was technology, but he was really so much more than that and I think that is what inspired so many people to carry on his legacy.

Arman Roy passed away at the age of 15. His family and friends created the Arman N Roy Foundation to fulfill his legacy of providing technology to children that can't afford it.Courtesy of Priya Roy

With some many people ready to help fulfill Armans dream, within two months, the Arman N Roy Foundation was created. Its goal was to put technology into the hands of youth who needed its help to create a more hopeful future.

The words I use are magical and miraculous because immediately after Arman passed away, a bunch of family and friends thought 'how can we continue to inspire the world, Manisha said. We wanted to take that gift and carry on this legacy. One thing led to another and now we have the most devoted and passionate people that feel this is one of the most important things that we need to do in the world.

In its first year, the foundation has supported projects in 13 different communities across New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania impacting over 2,500 youth.

Collectively, the Arman N Roy Foundation has donated over 100 devices such Chromebooks, iPads, virtual reality headsets, robotics kits and much more

The foundation was set to begin a tech training program for homeless youths when the coronavirus hit. Seemingly overnight schools closed leaving many children around the state without the means to participate in remote learning. Just like that, the importance of fulfilling Armans dream was as critical as it has ever been.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

The COVID-19 pandemic has made hope hard to find at times and the foundation for a boy whose name in Hindi means hope has risen to the occasion.

It pivoted to address immediate needs to help out families and children that need help. Some of its COVID-19 related projects include donating 10 iPads to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York to help connect patients in quarantine with their families and funding a project for 15-year-old Warren student Mathew Nunes, who is using 3D printers to make face shields for first responders. The funding for Nunes came through the foundations Armans Hope Jar program, where people can submit their projects online for potential funding.

It also has donated Chromebooks to Evas Village Hope Residence for Homeless Mothers in Paterson and Covenant House in Newark - a residential homeless shelter - as well as games, activities, books, and snacks to Visions and Pathways at Risk Youth Homeless Shelter in Bridgewater. It made monetary donations to Donors Chooses COVID-19 relief initiative and provided groceries and monetary donations to the Flemington Area Food Pantry.

The foundation plans to continue funding projects to help children in need as the coronavirus pandemic continues and beyond.

Arman knew that the digital divide existed and we created a foundation to help bridge the gap, Priya said. Then COVID happened and it almost reaffirmed that what we were doing was right and needed. We do feel like this all happened for a reason and that we are all connected in a larger way to really help others."

Mathew Nunes was selected as a recipient for funds from the Arman N Roy Foundation's Arman's Hope Jar project. The 15-year-old has been making face shields for first responders with 3D printers.Courtesy of Priya Roy

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Richard Greco covers Mercer County news for NJ.com and may be reached at rgreco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Richard_V_Greco. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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15-year-olds life mission preserved through foundation providing technology to children in need - NJ.com

There is widespread agreement that the only way to safely reopen the economy is through a massive increase in testing. The US needs to test millions of people per day to effectively track and then contain the covid-19 pandemic.

This is a tall order. The country tested only around 210,000 people per day last week, and the pace is not increasing fast enough to get to millions quickly.

The urgency to do better is overwhelmingly bipartisan, with the most recent legislation adding $25 billion for testing a few days ago. Fears are growing, however, that testing might not scale in time to make a difference. As Senators Lamar Alexander and Roy Blunt wrote last week, We have been talking with experts across the government and the private sector to find anyone who believes that current technology can produce the tens of millions of tests necessary to put this virus behind us. Unfortunately, we have yet to find anyone to do so.

We believe that it can be done. The scientific community has the technological capabilities today to test everyone who needs it and enable people to come back to work safely.

To be clearthe senators are right that simply scaling up current practices for covid testing is insufficient. However, with a bit of innovation, the US can meet the need without inventing entirely new technologies. The necessary scale can be achieved by deploying the fruits of the last decade of innovation in biology, including the dizzying advances in DNA sequencing, genetic engineering, industrial automation, and advanced computation.

We speak from experience. We have worked with and helped engender many of these technologies across academia and industry. Scaling them for widespread testing will require investment, infrastructure, and determination, but nothing technologically or logistically infeasible.

Tests for mass screening may have different requirements and characteristics from the tests run in clinical labs today that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. So what might a solution look like?

It must be scalable, meaning tens or hundreds of thousands of tests per day per facility, or at-home tests. It must be sensitive to early stages of infection, detecting the actual virus rather than immunity to it. And it must be less bound by health insurance and regulatory constraints, to allow fast and broad testing, contact tracing, and isolation. These differences do not mean lower standards. In fact, screening at this scale will require stringent requirements for safety, accuracy, and reliability.

The life sciences community is rising to the challenge. We are repurposing our labs to advance new centralized and at-home methods that solve the bottlenecks preventing testing from reaching global scale. This community is moving fast, with shared purpose and a commitment to open collaboration. As a result of these efforts, several promising avenues are emerging.

Some rely on DNA sequencing tools that have improved a million-fold since the completion of the Human Genome Project nearly 20 years ago. Not only can these tools now read trillions of base pairs of human DNA every day, but they can be readily repurposed to test for the presence of coronavirus at mass scale, using instruments that already exist across the country. Some methods, such as SHERLOCK and DETECTR, harness CRISPR DNA and RNA recognition tools to enable rapid, distributed testing in doctors offices and at other sites. Other efforts are removing critical bottlenecks, such as sample purification, to make the existing approaches more scalable.

There are additional possibilities, and the US needs to place bets on several of them at the same time. Some of those bets might fail, but the severity of the moment requires that we try. Chances are, we will need more than one of them.

As important as the diagnostic technology itself is the need to fuel innovation at all stages of the testing process, including sample collection, regulation, logistics, manufacturing, distribution, scale-up, data infrastructure, and billing. These are solvable problems. The solutions may sometimes differ from current clinical testing conventions, but these are not conventional times.

Maybe cotton swabs or saliva can be used for collection rather than traditional nasopharyngeal swabs, which are in critically short supply. Maybe mass screening tests dont have to have the tested persons name and date on every collection tube but could instead include a bar code that you snap a picture of with your phone. Maybe these tests can be self-administered at home or work rather than conducted by trained professionals in clinical settings. Maybe samples from low-risk, asymptomatic people can be pooled together for initial testing and further screened only in the event of a positive result. This would allow many more samples to be analyzed at once.

State or federal regulatory agencies could make these adjustments to conventional practices more easily if they were willing to treat mass screening for bringing people back to work differently from the testing used in clinical settings. In addition, mass screening efforts will require unconventional partnerships with private companies, nonprofits, universities, and government agencies to support the logistics, collection, manufacturing, scale-up, and data infrastructure to make such a system possible. All this can be done, and some of it is already starting to be donebut we must not lose hope.

The United States capabilities in the life sciences and information technology are unmatched in the world. The time is now to rapidly build a massively scaled screening program that will save lives while allowing us to reopen our economy and keep it open. This can be done, but it will require urgency and determination to make multiple, simultaneous bets on infrastructure, regulation, and technology, as well as collaboration to put it all together.

We have united before to face far greater challenges as a nation, and we can do so again.

Sri Kosuri is cofounder and CEO of Octant and an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. Feng Zhang is the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MITs McGovern Institute, a core member of the Broad Institute, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and cofounder of Sherlock Biosciences. Jason Kelly is cofounder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks. Jay Shendure is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the University of Washington School of Medicine and scientific director of the Brotman Baty Institute.

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The US already has the technology to test millions of people a day - MIT Technology Review

Chinese automaker BYD has developed new battery technology for its upcoming electric car BYD Han. The latest battery technology will have a better energy density that will eventually add more electric range. It looks like Chinese automakers are all set to provide potential alternatives for Teslas best-selling electric cars like the Model 3 and Model Y.

The company calls it the Blade Battery Super Launching technology. These will be lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries integrated with new Cell-to-Pack (CTP) technology. As per the claims, this technology will provide an energy density of 160 Wh/kg, which is similar to the energy density of Model 3.

Additionally, CTP will further boost energy density by around 50%. Furthermore, with this in-house developed Blade Battery technology, the upcoming EV BYD Han will have a range of around 373 miles (600 km). However, the said range will be based on the NEDC cycle, which when converted to EPA will be equivalent to 265 miles.

Apart from an impressive range, BYD Han will be no less when it comes to performance. The top-end variant will be able to sprint from 0 to 62 mph in as quick as 3.9 seconds.

The latest BYD Han will have both, a Front-Wheel Drive (FWD) and an All-Wheel Drive (AWD) powertrain option available. As per the sources, the FWD version will provide an output of 163 kW (218 BHP). However, the AWD generates a power of 200 kW (268 BHP) from the rear motor and 163 kW (218 BHP) from the front, thus giving a combined output of 363 kW (486 HP).

As per some other sources, the electric car will have two battery options a 65 kWh and a 77 kWh battery pack.

Considering the electric range of 373 miles and performance figures, it could be a potential Model 3 alternative if the prices still remain under $25,000. However, many automakers who are trying to make affordable electric cars are still far behind in next-gen technologies like autonomous driving.

Talking about the price, the company has not given any hint on the prices. However, the electric car was scheduled to launch in June 2020 but due to the coronavirus pandemic, the launch event got delayed.

Nevertheless, we hope the electric car will hit the roads by the end of 2020.

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Electric Car BYD Han To Have More Range With New Battery Technology - Fossbytes

Large numbers of people around the globe have been forced into solitude due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, social distancing is utterly at odds with our drive for social connection, the cornerstone of human evolution.

Suddenly confronted with a lack of social interactions, many of us are now experiencing more loneliness. We are missing that reassuring hug or shoulder pat from another human things we might normally expect in times of adversity. To cope, we try to fill the void with online social activities, such as synchronized Netflix viewings, games and video chat dance parties. But do these help?

When we spend quality time with another person, we experience intrinsic joy. Brain scanning studies show that subcortical brain regions, such as the ventral striatum, which plays an important role in motivation, are activated when receiving monetary and social rewards.

Loneliness can be seen in the brain. SpeedKingz/Shutterstock

When we feel lonely and rejected, brain regions associated with distress and rumination are activated instead. This may be due to evolution driving us to establish and maintain social connections to ensure survival. Lonely people also have a more negative focus and anxiously scrutinize peoples intentions. Sometimes this can become so strong that it makes us feel even more lonely creating a vicious cycle.

Not everyone relishes social connection to the same extent though. People with a more extrovert personality type seek more social activities, have access to larger social networks, and report lower perceived loneliness. People who score highly on neuroticism tend to report more perceived social isolation.

Loneliness has for some time been recognized as a significant threat to physical and mental health and has been found to be predictive of mortality.

So how can you best cope with loneliness and isolation? Analysis has suggested that the most successful interventions find ways to address the distorted thinking that loneliness creates. So if you are feeling lonely, try identifying automatic negative thoughts such as assuming people dont want to hear from you and reframing them as hypotheses rather than facts.

Another recent review of literature found that targeting coping strategies can also be beneficial. It discovered that approaches such as joining a support group to remove feelings of loneliness work particularly well. Emotion-based coping strategies, such as lowering expectations about relationships, were not as effective.

Social media is often vilified in public discourse. But many people who are self-isolating now rely on online social tools. An important aspect missing in instant messaging and social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, however, is the nonverbal cue such as a smile, gesture or glance. These allow us to gauge the tone and context of a social encounter. When this information is missing, we perceive fewer friendly cues from others.

So while online tools can be helpful during periods of isolation, embodiment and social presence are nevertheless missing. But there are ways to boost the rewards of online communication. One study used augmented reality to enable two people to interact with each others video chat images and found that they reported a higher sense of social presence and a more engaging experience. Similarly, participating in shared activities benefits the formation of close relationships with others. So whether it is a virtual pub quiz or a dance party, this may be particularly valuable during the lockdown.

Robots designed to engage us on a social level could also help isolated people feel less lonely, as they carry the benefit of embodiment. In a randomized control trial with Paro, a cuddly baby seal robot, residents in a care home who interacted with it reported reduced feelings of loneliness.

Research from our own laboratory seeks to identify how robotic features or behaviors influence our ability to feel socially connected to these machines. For example, a new study highlights that people conversationally engage with a humanoid robot to a similar extent as another person, and more so than with a voice assistant like Alexa or Siri.

New advances in mobile brain imaging technologies, along with the increasing social sophistication of some robots, provide opportunities for examining how people establish and maintain social connections with robots in real-time.

While the rise of social robots appears futuristic, they are already moving out of factories and into our homes, supermarkets, and hospitals. They even have new social roles in the coronavirus crisis for example as supermarket assistants, reminding shoppers of new health and safety rules.

Until we all have a sophisticated social robot to keep us company, perhaps the best remedy is to keep in touch with our loved ones online, especially through shared activities. And lets focus on the fact that close human contact will soon be safe again.

This article is republished from The ConversationbyEmily S. Cross, Professor of Social Robotics, Macquarie University and Anna Henschel, PhD Candidate in Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Glasgowunder a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The neuroscience of loneliness and how technology is helping us - The Next Web