The Department of Agriculture has released this year’s report on its technology transfer efforts to address various issues affecting farmers, foresters and the rest of the agriculture field. USDA said Friday that its latest Technology Transfer Report lists 320 new innovations developed in USDA laboratories over fiscal year 2018. The report also noted the achievement of 471 licenses, 120 patent applications and 67 actual patents. 

“Innovations produced by USDA scientists and through public-private partnerships add value to American agriculture and the U.S. economy, create jobs and help American producers compete in the global marketplace,” said Sonny Perdue, USDA secretary. He added that each dollar invested in USDA research returns $20 to the country’s economy.

Examples of transferred USDA technologies in fiscal 2018 include a coconut oil-based insect repellent, a nitrate-filtering system, soy-based resin for waterproof paint, a Zika virus detection method and a genetics-based swine vaccine.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is updating its Face Recognition Vendor Test to include new sets of algorithms developed by private sector participants, Fedscoop reported Friday.

NIST, who launched the FRVT effort to establish facial recognition technology standards and evaluate industry-developed algorithms, expects to report about a factor of 3 reduction in error rates for mugshot identification in the coming months. That’s on top of the factor of 20 percent reduction in error rates between 2013 and 2018.

Mei Lee Ngan, computer scientist at NIST, told attendees at a Security Industry Association event that Microsoft, whose technology has been able to process front-facing pictures only, now has the capacity to match side photos and mugshots with a 91 percent accuracy. The Department of Homeland Security’s Biometric Technology Center conducted a similar effort called Biometric Technology Rally which made use of real-life scenarios and volunteers to test participants’ facial recognition capabilities.

“There’s a percentage of [algorithms] that are really good and very capable, but there is this long tail of facial recognition algorithm developers that just don’t do that good of a job,” Ngan said. “So the technology hasn’t been commoditized yet.”

The Special Operations Command is planning to deploy a mobile application capable of performing biometric activities on the field, National Defense reported Friday. 

Glen Cullen, USSOCOM’s program manager for sensitive site exploitation under the program executive office for special reconnaissance, surveillance and exploitation, told audiences at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Florida that the app will use touchless fingerprint technology to minimize errors usually made by traditional bimoetric platforms.

He added that the app will provide users the freedom to no longer carry large devices to collect information for intelligence-related missions. USSOCOM expects to select a contractor for the effort next spring and field the app by 2021.

The Food and Drug Administration warned that insulin pumps manufactured by Medtronic in 2012 may bring potential cybersecurity and health risks to patients, Nextgov reported Friday. According to a separate statement, other users may access a nearby MiniMed insulin pump wirelessly and manipulate its settings to cease or over-deliver insulin to patients.

FDA noted that these activities may lead to diabetic ketoacidosis or high blood sugar. FDA validated that 4,000 MiniMed users are affected by the issue and has partnered with distributors to confirm additional users of the insulin pumps. According to Pamela Reese, global communications director at Medtronic, the firm has notified customers of the concerns and clarified that the affected devices do not have the capacity for wireless updates.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has launched a four-year effort to develop new genetics-based applications addressing two public health issues. DARPA said Thursday that its Preemptive Expression of Protective Alleles and Response Elements or PREPARE program aims to control protective genes for defense against influenza and ionizing radiation. 

“Researchers working within the PREPARE program seek to improve rates of survival and recovery in catastrophic scenarios for which reliable and scalable countermeasures don’t currently exist,” said Renee Wegrzyn, PREPARE program manager.

The agency has identified five teams to pursue projects under the program. Three of which will focus on Influenza, and two others will address ionizing gamma radiation. All teams will work to propose at least one new medical product to the Food and Drug Administration for review. The teams will coordinate with FDA across the program to keep projects within regulatory standards.

The PREPARE participants are: 

• Columbia University Irving Medical Center
• DNARx
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• University of California, San Francisco
• University of Massachusetts Medical School

Avaya Holdings announced on Monday that the company has been named the winner of the 2019 Unified Communications Product of the Year Award for its Avaya Device Adapter Snap-in solution by TMC, a global integrated media company helping clients build communities in print, in person and online. 

“Avaya Device Adapter allows CS1000 customers the ability to leverage existing desktop devices with the benefits of using these devices with Avaya IX Workplace. Avaya IX Workplace is a sleek, unified communications tool that provides you with one-stop access to voice, video, team chat, calendar, meetings and more,” said Mike Kuch, Avaya’s senior director of Product Marketing. 

“This provides an optimized approach, as the user can keep the phone and features they are used to while also experiencing a true UC client with Avaya IX Workplace on their Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices. It also provides customers with outstanding investment protection, a core part of Avaya’s solution development philosophy.” 

Avaya IX Workplace also enables users to achieve the full benefits of a cloud-based, fully integrated team collaboration environment. Users can create and enter team rooms organized by a variety of categories with members both inside and outside of the organization, essentially breaking down the existing boundaries of communications infrastructures.

“It gives me great pleasure to honor Avaya as a 2019 recipient of TMC’s Unified Communications Product of the Year Award for their innovative solution, the Avaya Device Adapter Snap-in,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. 

“Our judges were very impressed with the ingenuity and excellence displayed by Avaya in their groundbreaking work on this key innovation of their Avaya IX Workplace UC platform,” he added. 

About Avaya Holdings Corporation

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Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, said the U.S. Navy plans to upgrade launchers on its Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers to accommodate hypersonic missiles, Defense News reported Sunday.

“Vertical launch system has been a real game-changer for us. We can shoot any number of things out of those launchers,” Moore said at a conference of naval engineers. “We’ll probably change those out and upgrade them for prompt strike weapons down the road.”

The report said equipping surface ships with hypersonic weapons would boost the service’s strike capabilities needed to counter Chinese and Russian air defenses. The military branch is also considering an upgrade to its air and missile defense radar system – AN/SPY-6 – aboard its DDG destroyer ships.

“We are looking at a scaled-back version of the Air and Missile Defense Radar to back-fit the Flight Is and Flight IIs, similar to how we are looking for a version of the [Enterprise Air Search Radar] developed for [the Ford-class aircraft carriers] to back-fit on some of the old Nimitz-class,” Moore said.