The Department of Homeland Security invites commercial, academic and government organizations to participate in a new technology demonstration and assessment program that seeks to address the capability gaps facing urban emergency response communities.

DHS’ science and technology directorate plans to hold an event this October in an effort to find emerging technologies that city first responders can potentially use in the event of a critical situation, the department said in a FedBizOpps notice published April 21.

The directorate will collaborate with New York City-based emergency response agencies to review capability gaps and potential technologies as part of the DHS S&T Urban Operational Experimentation program, according to the department.

DHS will accept technology demonstration applications from the public and private sectors until May 13.

Desired capabilities for the Urban OpEx initiative include incident management, communications and tracking, counter-unmanned aircraft, optical head-up display, wide-angle thermal imaging camera, video analytics and handheld mobile detection and collection systems.

The White House’s office of science and technology policy will conduct a series of four public workshops to discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with the adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools.

Ed Felten, deputy chief technology officer at the White House, wrote in a blog entry posted Tuesday that OSTP will co-host the events with the National Economic Council, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions between May 24 and July 7 in Washington, New York City, Seattle and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The White House will use input from the workshops to draft a public report later this year, he said.

Felten also noted that a subpanel of the National Science and Technology Council will hold its initial meeting by the second week of May to discuss technological advancements in the field of AI and machine learning.

He said the NSTC’s subcommittee on machine learning and AI will also work to leverage such platforms to change the way federal agencies deliver government services to the public.

The U.S. Air Force is looking at ways to connect Apple iPads on the Defense Department‘s classified network, USAF Chief Technology Officer Frank Konieczny told FCW in an interview posted Tuesday.

Sean Lyngaas writes that Air Force CTO Frank Konieczny discussed with FCW how new developments in mobile device security and features built to organize information work to integrate iPads to Air Force networks.

Konieczny said the Air Force’s IT governance body will further investigate a proposed trial deployment of iPads on NIPRNet — DOD’s unclassified network — and work on a pilot project to start in the summer or fall.

The service branch will run security tests on the product before it is introduced into Air Force networks due to potential risks posed by iPad electronic transmissions, the report added.

Boeing accommodated NASA astronauts at its St. Louis facility to aid in the preparations for the launch, flight and return operations aboard the company’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, the space agency said April 27.

Stephanie Martin and Steven Siceloff write that commercial crew astronauts Suni Williams and Eric Boe tested the cloud-based training simulators designed to run astronauts and mission controllers through all phases of a mission.

Williams said the touchscreen displays on the simulators facilitate versatility in training.

“We can run multiple simulations by just changing software and then put that same software into a bigger crew simulator, which we will use to train the whole crew for a spaceflight,” she added.

NASA said it will send the Boeing part-task trainers to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for the daily practice of astronauts.

A simulator for the full Starliner flight deck will also eventually be shipped to Johnson, the space agency noted.

According to NASA, Boe and Williams have been selected alongside Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley for test flight training aboard the Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon.

The two spacecraft are slated to transport crew to and from the International Space Station.

The Federal Trade Commission and Lockheed Martin have received recognition at an American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council event for FTC’s identity theft recovery website developed by Lockheed.

Lockheed and FTC received the “Impacter Dynamite Award” at the 2016 ACT-IAC Igniting Innovation Awards event for IdentityTheft.gov, a website that works to assist identity theft victims, the company said Tuesday.

“The FTC received more than 490,000 identity theft complaints in 2015, which represents a 50 percent increase from 2014,” noted Scott Gray, vice president of information technology and security solutions at Lockheed’s information systems and global solutions unit.

Lockheed IS&GS created the online portal, which the company said provides a platform for consumers to report identity theft cases and access information on recovery.

Consumers can use tools available on IdentityTheft.gov to report their complaints to police, credit bureaus and the Internal Revenue Service, the company added.

IdentityTheft.gov, which launched on Jan. 21, also features Web chat and call center support.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to introduce and expand a series of incentive schemes across DHS headquarters components in an effort to recruit and retain cyber professionals, Federal News Radio reported Tuesday.

Jared Serbu writes Paul Beckman, chief information security officer at DHS’ headquarters, said the department plans to renew the bonus program on an annual basis after it started pilot tests of the initiative within the national protection and programs directorate in 2015.

Beckman told Federal News Radio that the program aims to provide cyber professionals up to 25 percent in additional bonuses based on their positions and certifications achieved.

Serbu reports that the agency’s bonus scheme is in accordance with the recruitment authorities under the Border Patrol Agent Pay Reform Act of 2014.

Beckman also noted that DHS will work to leverage direct hire authorities for cybersecurity and information technology management jobs as stated in the Office of Personnel Management’s GS-2210 series in order to grow its pool of cyber professionals.

He said he plans to launch a program within DHS that would give job offers to top 5 percent of students who completed cybersecurity-focused programs that universities and colleges offer in the National Capital Region, according to the report.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Director Arati Prabhakar told her audience at an Atlantic Council event that artificial intelligence is still in the infancy stage as new technologies emerge, FedScoop reported Monday.

Billy Mitchell writes that the research agency invests in the advancement of AI and looks to address its limitations in what Prabhakar refers to as the “second wave of AI.”

“It’s a wave that is about machines that learn,” said Prabhakar.

“It’s been fueled by new GPU architectures, by new algorithms and especially by the vastness of data that’s available for these systems to train on,” she added.

The DARPA director also discussed AI’s limitations compared to humans in areas such as image identification, FedScoop said.

Prabhakar also noted that a human element will always be present throughout the “third wave” advancement of AI to a stage where machine learning will affect Defense Department decision-making on the battlefield, the report said.

A team of scientists at NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center has built a passive thermal-control technology designed to integrate with miniaturized satellites used for space research.

Allison Evans, project principal investigator, and her team members created the thermal-control unit by repurposing a large panel of louvers that were initially used on spacecraft in the 1960s, NASA said Tuesday.

The agency noted each unit comprises a boron nitride nano mesh-based back plate, aluminum front plate and flaps and bimetallic springs.

Evans and other Goddard scientists have evaluated the performance of the technology through a benchtop lifecycle test, thermal-vacuum test cycles and a vibration test.

NASA plans to demonstrate the small thermal-control system during the maiden flight of a newfangled six-unit CubeSat known as Dellingr and built by a team of agency scientists and engineers at the Goddard facility.