Posts Tagged: "NASA"

This week in our nation’s capital, the U.S. Senate is the lone house of Congress that will host hearings on tech and innovation topics. On Tuesday, Senate subcommittees will explore national security concerns related to big tech use of user data along with NASA’s efforts to improve the STEM workforce. On Wednesday, a few legislative hearings will commence to look at bills related to government AI, cybersecurity and geothermal innovation, among other tech subjects. Elsewhere in D.C., the Center for International and Strategic Studies explores the future of the electrical grid and China’s efforts towards techno-governance.

This week in the nation’s capital, subcommittees in the House of Representatives will hold a series of technology-related hearings focused on online competition in data privacy, artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing in the financial sector, Internet consumer protections and NASA’s goal to speed up the return of a manned mission to the moon. The House Investigations Subcommittee will also hold a field hearing outside of D.C. exploring innovation in lead mitigation employed within the state of New Jersey. Elsewhere in D.C., the R Street Institute will discuss their theory on the national security implications of patents, the Brookings Institution will look at the impact of digital technologies on African entrepreneurship and the American Enterprise Institute hosts an event exploring the impact of globalization and robotic innovation on the workforce.

This week in the U.S. Capitol and Washington D.C area., technology and innovation hearings in the House of Representatives will focus on tech at the Environmental Protection Agency, small business contract programs at the Small Business Administration, NASA’s deep space exploration program and sustainability technologies for the transportation sector. Over in the Senate, committee hearings will look at the mineral supply chain for clean energy tech and the regulation of extremist content on digital platforms in response to mass violence. The week kicks off with a discussion at the Brookings Institution of the impacts of federal data privacy legislation, while the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will host a mid-week event on data-driven innovations in drug development.

This week in our nation’s capital, the House of Representatives hosts a series of hearings in the middle of the week on various technology topics including carbon mitigation efforts, modernizing information technology systems in Congress, sustainable chemistry innovations and examination of the White House’s science budget. In. Elsewhere in D.C., the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation explores law enforcement use…

The U.S. Senate gets busy today with hearings on the tech world’s impacts on America’s youth as well as NASA’s plans for manned missions on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. On Wednesday, Senator Coons and Representative Stivers will reintroduce the STRONGER Patents Act, which is aimed at strengthening the patent system and promoting innovation. NASA’s plans to commercialize low Earth orbit will also be discussed in the House of Representatives, along with biometric technologies employed by the Department for Homeland Security and cybersecurity threats to the U.S. energy grid. Around the U.S. capital, both the Brookings Institution and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation will look at tech issues involved in the current trade war between the U.S. and China. ITIF will also explore the potential use of antitrust law to break up American tech giants on Thursday.

Today, April 3, the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing titled Trailblazers and Lost Einsteins: Women Inventors and the Future of American Innovation—a topic that also was considered last Wednesday by the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet in their first hearing of the term. The House hearing was titled, Lost Einsteins: Lack of Diversity in Patent Inventorship and the Impact on America’s Innovation Economy and, like today’s Senate hearing, focused on a recent report on female inventorship released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and featured testimony on how to improve rates of female inventorship from a collection of women in fields having strong ties to the U.S. patent system. Susie Armstrong, Senior Vice President of Engineering for Qualcomm, Inc., said that, for companies like hers that were trying to take the lead in 5G mobile networks and other areas of innovation, more great tech minds from underrepresented communities were needed. An inventor herself who helped create single packet data communications that allowed cell phones to access the Internet for the first time, Armstrong said that Qualcomm had produced educational initiatives like the Thinkabit Lab, which partners with school districts and libraries to encourage students to innovate in the Internet of Things (IoT) sector.

Clean sources of groundwater are incredibly important to the general population of the United States. More than 50 percent of the U.S. population relies on groundwater sources for their drinking water according to The Groundwater Foundation. These groundwater sources are susceptible to contamination from various sources including chemical storage tanks, uncontrolled hazardous waste sites, residential and commercial septic systems, road…

NASA will enter into a range of different patent license agreements from no-cost evaluation licenses up to exclusive license. The agency’s goal in licensing technologies is to reach the widest distribution possible for the commercialized technology. To some, it may seem unusual that exclusive licenses would be part of NASA’s licensing options if the goal was truly the widest distribution possible. “We’ll only grant an exclusive license if we believe that exclusivity leads to the widest distribution,” Lockney said, noting that there were a couple of examples where such a situation could play out. An exclusive license for the broadest possible distribution could make sense if the technology was being commercialized in a medical device and a single multinational company offers an incredibly broad distribution model; such was the case with a flexible insulating plastic material for use with pacemaker wires recently licensed by NASA with Medtronic. In other situations where multiple companies occupy the same market, NASA might grant an exclusive license to one company if it’s determined that, without the exclusivity, none of the firms could invest adequately in commercializing the technology.

NASA recently launched a new version of its Home & City website featuring a redesigned, interactive interface designed to give users a sense of the scope of technologies originally developed by NASA which they encounter in their lives, sometimes on a daily basis. According to Derek Wang, NASA’s public outreach manager for the Space Technology Mission Directorate, the approximately 130 technologies included in the Home & City website is less than one percent of the thousands of technologies which NASA has developed and then spun-off to commercial partners.

This week is a very busy one on Capitol Hill where hearings on various subjects related to technology and innovation are concerned. The House of Representatives will hold hearings on Chinese threats in innovation supremacy as well as nuclear energy and the American Innovation Act of 2018. The Senate will host hearings focused on quantum information science, consumer data privacy and reducing health care costs through innovation. Both houses will hold hearings to look at activities going on at the nation’s space exploration agency, NASA.

This week in Capitol Hill hearings, automated systems for providing railroad safety control, innovative Medicare initiatives and the Army Futures Command are discussed in the House of Representatives while the Senate explores advances in nuclear fuel technologies and emerging modes of transportation.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, August 11th, NASA plans to launch the Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft that is outfitted with various scientific instruments meant to study the near-Sun environment. At its closest, the Parker probe will collect data at 3.8 million miles from the Sun where it will experience temperatures reaching 2,500°F.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently announced the agency’s remotely-piloted Ikhana unmanned aircraft successfully completed its first flight within the National Airspace System (NAS) without the use of safety chase aircraft. This accomplishment is an important step towards the incorporation of unmanned aircraft within the NAS for various applications including the monitoring of forest fires, search and rescue operations and even general aviation.

A joint hearing of the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and the House Subcommittee on Space was recently convened to discuss the responsibilities of various U.S. government agencies on space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic management (STM) efforts. The hearing occurred just days after the administration of President Donald J. Trump issued Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3) to set a new national space policy to address issues related to both SSA and STM including tracking the existence of space debris, encourage commercial activities in space and improve the national security of the United States in a world where foreign powers are increasing their presence in space.