President Trump has signed an executive order launching a new program to direct federal resources toward the development of artificial intelligence to improve national security and the quality of life of citizens. The American AI Initiative has five key principles and one of those is directing federal agencies to prioritize investments in research and development efforts related to AI, the White House said Monday. 

The initiative calls for agencies to provide federal data and computing resources for researchers and industries, develop guidance for development and use, expand the workforce through training and fellowship programs and promote an international environment that backs innovation and protects the country’s advantage in the field of AI.

The document also calls for the assistant to the president for national security affairs to oversee the action plan seeking to safeguard the country’s AI leadership and submit the plan to the president within 120 days of the EO’s release.

The U.S. Army patented a net-carrying grenade-sized weapon that the service built to catch and deter unmanned aerial systems, C4ISRnet reported Monday. 

The grenade works in a standard 40mm launcher and features sensors that detect the target before launching the net onto the drones. Initial testing of the tool showed it can effectively engage and stop a UAS threat, according to the patent. 

“The performance of this invention goes further than any previous system proposed which merely launches a net directly at a UAS,” the document states. 

The patent also indicates the net used in the grenade could also counter boats, boat propellers, moving land vehicles and stationary land vehicles.

The Department of Health and Human Services is proposing to streamline patients’ access to electronic health information and mandate providers’ use of open data sharing platforms to foster transparency, HHS said Monday.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have issued the proposed rules calling for the healthcare industry to implement standardized application programming interfaces to enable easy and free access to patient health data through devices such as smartphones.

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HHS also wants to implement provisions under the 21st Century Cure Act that prohibits “information blocking” by providers and directs public access to comments on pricing data. Users will be allowed to report providers or hospitals that are participating in information blocking.

According to CMS Administrator Seema Verma, around 125 million patients will receive easy access to their health claims data once health insurers are mandated to share information with the public by 2020. The proposed healthcare delivery system regulations support the MyHealthEData effort aiming to streamline the flow of healthcare information.

The rules will cover programs such as Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicare Advantage as well as qualified health plans in the federally-facilitated exchanges.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has found a method to improve security for smart manufacturing systems with blockchain that provides tamper-proof transmission of data and traceability of information in the production process. NIST issued a report on Monday detailing how blockchain can help detect and deter potential digital threats in the manufacturing process.

The agency said the technology provided NIST engineers a digital thread replacing two-dimensional blueprints with 3D instructions capable of being electronically exchanged and processed during the manufacturing process. 

“Blockchain gives us both capabilities, we can build trustworthiness into digital manufacturing networks,” said NIST engineer Thomas Hedberg, author of the report. 

NIST said the Unified Modeling Language allows engineers to apply blockchain to the smart manufacturing network. UML enables users to monitor the flow of data, who is executing data exchanges, how and when the exchanges are taking place.

NIST is working with IBM, Lockheed Martin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University and other 30 organization to promote using blockchain for smart manufacturing. The agency intends to increase its partnerships with industry and academia to support the initiative. 

NASA plans to reduce the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission’s orbit around the red planet to support data exchange between the agency and its future rovers on Mars. The space agency said Monday that it will lower MAVEN spacecraft’s elliptical orbit from 3,850 to 2,800 miles above the planet’s surface to serve as data-relay satellite for the Mars 2020 rover. 

MAVEN features an ultra-high-frequency radio transceiver to share data between Earth and the rovers or landers on Mars. NASA said the reduced orbit will provide the spacecraft with a stronger telecommunications antenna signal.

“It’s like using your cell phone,” said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of Colorado, Boulder. “The closer you are to a cell tower, the stronger your signal.” 

NASA launched MAVEN to study how Mars lost its atmosphere and continues to analyze the structure and composition of the planet’s upper atmosphere until it begins new communications tasks. The agency expects the spacecraft to continue operations through 2030.