A Commerce Department agency plans to award approximately $1 million in grants for up to eight nonprofit organizations to support cybersecurity education and workforce development in local communities.

The department said Thursday the Regional Alliances and Multistakeholder Partnerships to Stimulate grant program is part of its Skills for Business initiative and will support the National Institute of Standards and Technology‘s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education.

“We are encouraging more employer engagement in local communities to influence education and training providers to develop job-driven training that provides the skills that businesses need,” said NICE Director Rodney Petersen.

RAMPS aims to facilitate collaboration between educators and employers with needs in cybersecurity talent in efforts to develop a workforce that meets industry requirements within the local or regional economy, the Commerce Department noted.

The department added RAMPS will work to align the needs of local business and nonprofit organizations with education and training objectives under NICE’s National Cybersecurity Workforce Framework as well as promote cybersecurity careers among students.

The opportunity is open for nonprofit U.S. organizations that plan to form a regional alliance with a K-12 school, local education agency, institution of higher education, college/university system or a local employer.

The deadline of applications is on July 12 with awards worth up to $200,000 each for a 15-month period.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has demonstrated a robotic prosthetic arm that features technologies which work to support brain control and strapless integration functions.

The Army said Wednesday Johnny Matheny — the research program’s test patient who lost his left arm to cancer – underwent procedures so he could use the remaining muscles and nerves of his left arm to control the prosthetics.

Matheny also went through an osseointegration process, where a metal device was surgically implanted into his bone to remove the need for a fiberglass cup and straps that are commonly used with most prosthetic arms, DARPA added.

Matheny the DARPA Demo Day the battery-operated robotic arm helps him carry up to 45 pounds.

Justin Sanchez, DARPA director of the biological technologies office, said Matheny’s robotic arm is part of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program which aims to provide near-natural upper extremity control for amputees in the military service.

Sanchez added DARPA wants to go beyond Matheny’s myoelectric control over the robotic arm and move forward to direct brain control through neural implants.

The planned system will work to facilitate a two-way signal transmission between the brain implants and prosthetic sensors so users can also experience sensation, Sanchez said.

The Department of Homeland Security‘s science and technology directorate has released its annual year in review in the form of an interactive web-based report to provide a guided tour of the agency’s developments in 2015.

S&T Deputy Undersecretary Robert Griffin made the announcement at the Internet of Things World Forum on the report that displays 37 projects that work to meet the directorate’s goals, DHS said Wednesday.

Griffin said that the web-based format of the report works to report the progression of the agency’s projects to a larger audience in comparison to print-based reports that includes Congress, DHS components, industry, responders and international partners.

The report also breaks down the agency’s framework to achieve its goals that include to be a responder of the future, build resilient communities and disaster-proofing societies within 20 years.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is near the release of a program designed to help military cyber warfighters plan and carry out missions in cyberspace, DoD News reported Thursday.

Frank Pound, a program manager at DARPA, told DoD News in an interview that the Plan X program is built to provide cyber operators “a unified architecture from which to conduct cyber operations or reason about cyber or visualize cyber.”

Cheryl Pellerin writes Plan X works to help military operators plan missions through assessment of routers, file servers, gateways and other components of the cyber terrain.

Pound noted that DARPA engineers developed applications that work to help cyber warfighters sense and detect activities on a network and used the Mitre Corp.-built Cyber Observable Expressions data model to define cyber space terms on the cyber warfare program.

DARPA will launch Plan X at the annual Cyber Flag and Cyber Guard joint exercises in Suffolk, Virginia, in June and deploy the program in 2017 for use by personnel at the Defense Department and U.S. Cyber Command, Pound said.