From Samsung’s virtual reality experience to robots carrying the Olympic torch, technology has been on display prominently at the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea. NBC reports here.
Cognizant, a large tech company with a downtown Des Moines office, is making a $100 million play in STEM with the creation of a nonprofit foundation. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math, and it’s a big deal in Iowa, where the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council, Future Ready Iowa, the Iowa Business Council, and […]
Iowa City-based IDx, an artificial intelligence diagnostics company working on a system to detect a leading cause of blindness, has won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for expedited review. IDx-DR uses AI to check for diabetic retinopathy. The FDA ruled the system is a “breakthrough device” that qualifies for expedited review. That designation is […]
Successful Farming reports that farms are turning to technology at a time when laborers can be hard to find. In the Corn Belt, that can mean bigger rigs with more automation — though some startups are working on smaller units that drive themselves. In California, Driscoll’s is developing robotics to pick strawberries — typically the job […]
Iowa State University’s Keith Vorst is working with major corporations to find new uses for recycled plastics to save money, keep the materials out of landfills and reduce pollution. Vorst, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition, leads the Polymer and Food Protection Consortium. “We’re creating technologies that will have companies mining landfills and the […]
Police in Zhengzhou, China, are wearing high-tech sunglasses equipped with facial-recognition technology to check crowds at transit centers and elsewhere for suspects, the Straits Times reported. Human rights groups have questioned the practice, but it has already led to the arrest of seven suspects accused of crimes that ranged from human trafficking to hit and runs, and […]
Gallup and Northeastern University checked U.S. adults’ thoughts on how artificial intelligence (AI) will affect their lives, their work, educational choices and potential interventions from higher education, government and private industry. Among the key findings of the study, conducted via mail survey of 3,297 from Sept. 15 through Oct. 10, 2017: — Seventy-six percent of Americans “agree” or […]
Here in Iowa, where wind energy alone provides more than one-third of the power supply, it may not sound that impressive that 18.3 percent of the nation’s installed capacity is from renewable energy sources. But the federal government’s 2016 Renewable Energy Data Book shows the renewable industry is growing across the country. Among the tidbits: Renewable energy […]
Revolution, the Washington, D.C.-based investment arm of AOL-founder turned venture capitalist Steve Case, debuted a new “Ecosystem Playbook” last week that includes at least two Des Moines sources, Gravitate’s e-newsletter the Pull reported. The document draws ideas and insights from 33 cities visited on the “Rise of the Rest” bus tours, which stopped in Des Moines in 2014. The […]
Three ISU students have created Bit to Byte, a cryptocurrency funded project to provide learning resources for financially challenged and underrepresented youth. August Domanchuk and Xander Apponi, computer engineering freshmen, and technical communications freshman Jacob Hemmerich want to create student-led communities in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
