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Category: government – Page 77

And it can go faster than five times the speed of sound.

A team of researchers in China has built and tested a prototype hypersonic flight engine based on a design that was scrapped by NASA over 20 years ago, according to a report from the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

The prototype itself might not lead to a production version of hypersonic aircraft. Still, in a paper in the Journal of Propulsion Technology, the team behind the machine said “understanding its work mechanism can provide important guidance to hypersonic plane and engine development.”

NASA’s scrapped X-47C program is revived The original design was proposed by Ming Han Tang, a former chief engineer of NASA’s hypersonic program in the late 1990s. Tang’s Two-Stage Vehicle (TSV) X-plane design was at the center of the Boeing Manta X-47C program. However, before the program could verify the viability of the design, it was terminated by the U.S. government due to its high costs as well as a series of technical issues.

Continue reading “China’s New Hypersonic Aircraft Is Based on a Rejected NASA Design” | >

Skills shortages are easily brushed off as Covid collateral, but in fact, they are much more troubling signs of an education system that is not preparing people for the future of work. These issues stem from a union of education and employment that has been designed to fill specific criteria for the workforce, but the job market that young people are training for today will require a much greater emphasis on human skills to complement the repetitive tasks handled by AI and automation.

But bringing up young people with the human skills they need for a changing world of work is a mammoth task that must combine the powers of government, businesses, and dedicated organizations to reshape our education systems and integrate them with the communities they serve. I spoke with Justin van Fleet, Executive Director of the Global Business Coalition for Education (GBC-Education), about the need for a holistic and skills-centered approach to education, and how change needs to start as early as possible.

Full Story:

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The FlyZero aircraft is one of a range of aircraft being designed by the FlyZero program. The new concept will store hydrogen in cryogenic fuel tanks, keeping them at a temperature of minus 250°Celsius (minus 418°Fahrenheit). Two cryogenic tanks will be placed at the rear of the plane, while two smaller “cheek” tanks will be placed near the front of the plane to keep the aircraft balanced. The mid-size aircraft will have a wingspan of 54 meters, each of which will have a turbofan engine attached.

“These designs could define the future of aerospace and aviation,” said U.K. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng in the ATI’s statement. “By working with industry, we are showing that truly carbon-free flight could be possible, with hydrogen a frontrunner to replace conventional fossil fuels.”

In its statement, the ATI estimates that “highly-efficient hydrogen-powered aircraft” will “have superior operating economics compared to conventional aircraft from the mid-2030s onwards.” The ATI has received £1.95 billion ($2.6 billion) in funding since it was founded in 2013. The FlyZero concept program, which received £15 million of that funding, promises to allow travelers to fly with the same speed and comfort provided by airliners today.

Full Story:

Continue reading “A New Hydrogen Plane Can Fly Halfway Around the World Without Refueling” | >

The government wants to have a “search engine for faces,” but the experts are wary.

If you haven’t heard of Clearview AI then you should, as the company’s facial recognition technology has likely already spotted you. Clearview’s software goes through public images from social media to help law enforcement identify wanted individuals by matching their public images with those found in government databases or surveillance footage. Now, the company just got permission to be awarded a U.S. federal patent, according to Politico.

The firm is not without its fair share of controversy. It has long faced opposition from privacy advocates and civil rights groups. The first says it makes use of citizens’ faces without their knowledge or consent. The latter warns of the fact that facial recognition technology is notoriously prone to racially-based errors, misidentifying women and minorities much more frequently than white men and sometimes leading to false arrests.

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Clearview AI is about to get formal acknowledgment for its controversial facial recognition technology. Politico reports Clearview has received a US Patent and Trademark Office “notice of allowance” indicating officials will approve a filing for its system, which scans faces across public internet data to find people from government lists and security camera footage. The company just has to pay administrative fees to secure the patent.

In a Politico interview, Clearview founder Hoan Ton-That claimed this was the first facial recognition patent involving “large-scale internet data.” The firm sells its tool to government clients (including law enforcement) hoping to accelerate searches.

As you might imagine, there’s a concern the USPTO is effectively blessing Clearview’s technology and giving the company a chance to grow despite widespread objections to its technology’s very existence. Critics are concerned Clearview is building image databases without targets’ knowledge or permission, and multiple governments (including Australia and the UK) believe the facial recognition violates data laws. The tech could theoretically be used to stifle political dissent or, in private use, to stalk other people. That’s not including worries about possible gender and race biases for facial recognition as a whole.

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The Israeli spyware maker in the Pegasus surveillance scandal said Friday it was investigating reports the firm’s technology was used to target iPhones of some US diplomats in Africa.

Apple has begun alerting people whose phones were hacked by NSO’s spyware, which essentially turns handsets into pocket spying devices and sparked controversy this year after reportedly being used on activists, journalists and politicians.

“On top of the independent investigation, NSO will cooperate with any relevant government authority and present the full information we will have,” the firm said in a statement.

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Zindi is all about using AI to solve real-world problems for companies and individuals. And the South Africa-based crowd-solving startup has done that over the last three years they have been in existence.

Just last year a team of data scientists under Zindi used machine learning to improve air quality monitoring in Kampala as another group helped Zimnat, an insurance company in Zimbabwe, predict customer behavior — especially on who was likely to leave and the possible interventions that would make them stay. Zimnat was able to retain its customers by offering custom-made services to those who would have otherwise discontinued.

These are some of the solutions that have been realized to counter the data-centered challenges that companies, NGOs and government institutions submit to Zindi.

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The US tech industry seems to be unstoppable. In fact, it is the most valuable tech industry in the world. According to CompTIA, in 2022, the US tech market will represent 33% of the global market share — or approximately $1.8 trillion. The European technology industry is a dwarf in comparison to America’s FAMANGs– Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Netflix, which are worth approximately $6 trillion. Europe’s tech companies as a whole are worth about 30% of any one of the Big 4 American firms. SAP, by far the largest European technology corporation, is worth around 14% of Amazon or Microsoft. Only SAP makes it into the Fortune 500 in the Technology sector. But why are we seeing this trend? What makes the US tech market so much more valuable than counterparts in European markets. Federal research labs and Government grants accelerated core research across the US that helped to create new technology companies which are still household names today: HP, IBM and Google’s Alphabet all have their roots in government sector funding. Full Story:

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Biodiversity conservation, public health and improved livelihoods — dr gladys kalema-zikusoka, founder and CEO, conservation through public health.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, is the Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH — https://ctph.org/), a 16-year old non-profit organization, based in Uganda, that promotes conservation by improving the quality of life of people and wildlife to enable them to coexist in and around protected areas in Africa, and she has become one of the leading conservationists and scientists working to save the critically endangered mountain gorillas of East Africa.

Dr. Kalema-Zikusoka is also on the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) of the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/groups/scientific-advisory-group-on-the-…go)/about)

Continue reading “Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Founder and CEO, Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), Uganda” | >

Here’s a quick reminder that one of the expected results of the current pandemic is the slow, controlled, but inevitable destruction of the Canadian economy as government assets are secretly pulled out of circulation and redistributed to international bankers and their wealthiest clients.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is asking Parliament to approve billions in new spending during a brief four-week sitting in Ottawa, but is facing questions because it has not released a full accounting of how it spent more than $600Bln last year.

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