The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has unveiled a competition that seeks to develop new biometric systems designed to recognize and capture complete fingerprints without the need for human operators.

The Nail to Nail Fingerprint Challenge aims to increase matching performance for forensic and live fingerprint recognition through technology platforms whose performance is comparable to that of conventional rolled biometric systems, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Thursday.

IARPA will conduct the contest through two stages in the fall of 2017 and will award $325,000 in total prizes to finalists.

The agency will conduct a final live test in the Washington, D.C. area to allow finalists to test and evaluate their systems and compare their fingerprint captures with ground truth data in September.

Interested participants have until March 17 to register for the challenge.

The U.S. Navy has registered trademarks for a sea glider that serves as a teaching aid for science, technology, engineering and math classes.

The service branch said Tuesday that Joseph Teter, director of technology transfer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Carderock division, collaborated with intellectual patent attorney Michael Badagliacca to obtain the trademarks for SeaGlide through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

“We wanted to make them widely available because SeaGlide is garnering more and more interest from schools and organizations wanting to participate,” Teter said.

“Our primary mission in regards to SeaGlide is reaching as many schools and having plenty of exposure, so that as many kids as possible are at least — even if they don’t go into STEM fields — getting a better understanding of engineering,” said Michael Britt-Crane, lead developer of SeaGlide.

SeaGlide was developed through a cooperative research-and-development agreement between the Carderock division, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

Britt-Crane noted that the unmanned vehicle has reached depths of up to 25 feet in Carderock’s basin and could serve as test modules larger drones that operate in the ocean.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has implemented a program that works to integrate credentials from common access cards into mobile devices, Federal News Radio reported Wednesday.

David Thornton writes Jeremy Corey, lead engineer for the Defense Department‘s public key infrastructure, said DISA’s Purebred program is a key management server with an application installed on a mobile device.

Corey added Purebred derives user’s credentials based on certificates placed on CACs.

The program also works to reduce the time it takes to input a credential into a digital device from 22 minutes to three minutes, Thornton reported.

Purebred is available for iOS, Android and BlackBerry phones as well as tablets.

Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) and Chris Coons (D-Delaware) have proposed a bill that seeks to establish a new Senate committee that would conduct investigations on cybersecurity issues.

The proposed Senate Select Committee on Cybersecurity would consist of 21 members from various panels in the upper chamber that include the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee and would draft legislation and develop recommendations, Gardner’s office said Wednesday.

“Cybersecurity policy is one of the most complex and significant challenges facing Congress, yet the Senate’s structure to investigate and address cyber issues is diffuse and inadequate,” Gardner said.

“This has led to an uncoordinated policy response to recent cyber attacks on government agencies, businesses, and infrastructure.”

The bipartisan bill seeks to provide “Congress the tools to comprehensively investigate and respond to cyber intrusions, take proactive steps to protect against and respond to future attacks, and hold the executive branch accountable for its actions,” Coons said.

Andrew Blake also reports for the Washington Times the proposed legislation would provide the new Senate panel authority over domestic and foreign cyber risks as well as state-sponsored cyber attacks.

Three House lawmakers have called on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to postpone work on a robotic space repair initiative until DARPA completes a review that seeks to determine whether the program complies with the National Space Policy, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.

Colin Clark writes the policy bars the government from developing or buying systems that compete with commercial platforms and that Orbital ATK said it believes its system competes with DARPA’s Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites program.

The RSGS program seeks to develop robotic tools designed to repair damaged space satellites.

Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma); Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee; and Barbara Comstock (R-Virginia), chair of the House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee on research and technology; called for the assessment of the RSGS initiative through a letter sent to DARPA Director Steven Walker Wednesday.

Orbital ATK’s Space Logistics subsidiary developed the Mission Extension Vehicle system that is scheduled for launch in late 2018 and in-orbit testing with an Intelsat-built satellite by early 2019, the report added.