Innovation & Tech Today -- Vol 8/Issue 2 by Innovation & Tech Today

Volume 8 / Issue 2

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FROM THE PUBLISHER

Charles Warner, Publisher/ Editor-in-Chief

“ The real value of NFTs will likely come in the longterm and have more to do with verifying banking and real estate transactions.”

Dear readers, Throughout the course of history, I’m unable to think of a time where our world has changed so rapidly in such a short amount of time. I suppose the ice age or the extinction of dinosaurs fit in that category. But when you think that 100 years ago we didn’t even have penicillin, computers, widespread phone usage, automatic transmissions, plastic, chemotherapy or interstate highways (or paved roads). If you think about how much each one of those individual events changed our lives, it’s hard to think of a more cataclysmic shift in culture and lifestyle. Now, we’re seeing another major shift. With the dot com bubble firmly in the past we’re looking at yet another new world. I’m not talking about pandemic-era nuclear war threats, though. Today we’re talking about the changes brought about by blockchain technology. The focus of this issue is on Crypto, NFTs and Web3 technology for a reason. These three specific developments have kicked off another major phase of change in our nation. With regard to cryptocurrencies, many nations are actively considering whether to develop their own digital currencies. This single innovation is changing the way everything from businesses to governments to the entire global economy compete and plan for the future.

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Every day we’re seeing companies continue to stick their feet in the digital water testing out a variety of strategies to find out how to leverage the technology to their benefit. NFTs are also a new frontier that sprung to life right as COVID-19 became a household term. They’re growing by leaps and bounds every month, but it’s not all about crazy ape pictures and celebs looking to cash in. The real value of NFTs will likely come in the long-term and have more to do with verifying banking and real estate transactions. So, even if your NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey fell from $2.9 million to $14,000 ( this actually happened), there is still a lot of reason to be excited about the technology. Finally, we come to the rise of Web3. The internet is taking a new shift toward a more decentralized existence that hands some of the power back to the consumer. The ability to control your own data, for example is a huge change. For this issue, we’ve taken multiple dives into each of these subjects in an effort to make them more digestible to the newbie. We hope that when you finish reading, you’ll have a better understanding of these topics and, with any luck, find a way to get involved. To the next 100 years,

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SINCE LAST ISSUE IT’S A DIFFERENT WORLD NOW

In the months since our previous issue hit newsstands, the world has turned a bit upside down. In 2022 a post-pandemic world, things just keep getting crazier. Russian leader Vladimir Putin, not one to be outshined by a global pandemic, asked the world to hold his beer while he launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine. Now, instead of worrying about microscopic germs, the focus of the world is on avoiding nuclear conflict. The threat hasn’t been more real since the Cold War. Who knows where we’ll stand by the time you’re reading this? To circle back on Steve-O for a quick update, Jackass Forever finally hit theaters and took the film industry by storm like few things since the pandemic began. Paramount+ even dropped a free early release already where it can be watched — if you’re brave enough. It’s not for the squeamish! The shipping crisis Robert Yehling did an in-depth dive on continues to look just as it did. The southern California coast continues to look more and more like a giant shipyard with a view. Companies like Tesla, GM, Ford, and others are now looking for new ways to circumvent those delays by producing more products in the United States. So there is an upside, but that’s going to take time. The James Webb Space Telescope is looking more and more promising as we’ve seen its first stunning image. Hopefully, in time for the next issue, we’ll be able to bring you a major photo essay of images that are out of this world. In the meantime, our Innovator Profile for this issue is on Charlie Atkinson. He has worked on the JWST project since its inception in 1998 and currently serves as the chief engineer. We also did a podcast with him, so if you want a full picture, check that out when you finish the book as well. Here’s a QR code that will get you straight to the video.

SPECIAL THANKS TO: James Hobson and the team at Hacksmith, Brian Boothe/Warren Betts Communications, Elizabeth Darden and Melanie Beck/Electrolux, Jillian Rosone/Kohler, Emmanuel Oquendo/BrainHi

PUBLISHER/EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Charles Warner cwarner@goipw.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Shane Brisson shane@goipw.com MANAGING EDITOR Corey Noles ASSOCIATE EDITORS Patricia Miller Jeremy Glowacki STAFF WRITER Aron Vaughan AUTOMOTIVE EDITOR Michael Coates TECH ZONE EDITOR Robert Yehling CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Lee Allen Steve Broback Michael Coates John Gaudiosi Curtis W. Hill Chris Mellides Andrew Rossow Joshua Schweigert David Wallach CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Mary Roche SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Steven Higgins VIDEO/PODCAST PRODUCER Alan Tuszynski SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR Crystal Segovia Gomez SENIOR DIRECTOR, DEVELOPMENT David Marble Distribution CMG Printing Publication Printers

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INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

contents 72 Feature Story Hackmsith James Hobson Cover Photo: Courtesy of Hacksmith Industries Compositing: I&T Staff

Departments 8 Event Wrap Ups

24 Pet & Family Tech

10 By the Numbers

92 Product Revolution:

12 Quick Bytes

Work-From-Home Must

16 DENT Files

Haves

18 Crypto

95 Events Calendar/

22 Travel Tech

Coming Next Issue

20 Web 3.0

96 The Lighter Side

26 Innovator Profile

Charlie Atkinson, Chief Engineer JWST

30 Connected Car BMW Sees it’s Future in the Metaverse 32 A New Kind of Hybrid

34 CryptoNFTToday The Ultimate Guide 36 Blockchain 101: Getting Started in Cryptocurrency 38 Trading Cards Find a New Home in NFTs

40 Is Web 3.0 the Path to the Future? 42 NFTs: A Fad or the Future

44 Outdoor+Adventure The Last Tepui 48 Fliteboard: Riding Above the Waves 50 Outdoor+Adventure Gear Guide: Golf Tech

54 Health Tech How AI & Blockchain Tech Can Help Fight the Next COVID-19 56 HealthTech Gear Guide: Wearables

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

contents 58 Gaming+Entertainment Brain Games, StarTalk, and All Things Science with Chuck Nice 62 Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser — A Walkthrough 66 U nderserved Gaming Communities Need Better Infrastructure

68 Connected Life Vintage Tech: How Nostalgia is Shaping Modern Trends 70 F rom a Dumb House to a Smart, Sustainable Home: The Shower PLUS Bonus Smart Home Gear Guide

76 Tech Zone: North Carolina Where Innovation Begins 78 V egetable, Animal and Mineral North Carolina’s Economy Has it All 80 H ow Fritsch USA Creates Tomorrow’s Applications and Solutions

82 Tech Zone International: Puerto Rico 86 Sustainability Today OAC is Creating the Model for the Future of Construction Intelligence 88 Bringing Soul & Health to Sustainability

90 STEM Today Micromilling of Uniform Nanoparticles for Space Applications

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90 VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

Event Wrap-Ups Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer Parks Associates annual executive conference Smart Energy Summit: Engaging the Consumer kicked off 2022 with a focus on sustainability. The market firm’s first in-person event of the year was held over three days from Feb. 28 to March 2, at the Omni Hotel in Frisco, TX. Several keynote speakers featured from industry leaders Google, Emerson, TXU Energy, and more. Panels addressed post-COVID energy issues and a variety of other topics including consumer behaviors in energy efficiency, the next stages of growth for EVs and energy management solutions. Photos courtesy of Smart Energy Summit

Lightapalooza Lightapalooza, held Feb. 22 – 24 at Dallas Hilton Anatole, marked the first lighting conference exclusively for the custom integration (CI) industry. The conference was based on three principles: Learn, Connect, and Grow. In the Learn portion of the event, attendees had the opportunity to take eight hours of lighting fundamentals training, 16 hours of lighting design workshops, eight hours of expert panel discussions, and nearly 24 hours of manufacturer training sessions. Organizers gave people in the industry the opportunity to Connect by networking over three days with others in the CI space. Attendees could talk lighting during breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in the evening at a fully stocked (and immaculately lit) bar. The Grow principle helped set companies new to the CI category on a path to success by enabling younger companies to learn from industry experts at the many panel discussions and during Connect times.

Photos courtesy of ETHDenver

ETHDenver 2022 ETHDenver is the largest and longestrunning Ethereum event in the world. Keeping with the blockchain ethos, the conference aimed to create the first eventbased decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The founders achieved this by creating SporkDAO, a member-owned community. $SPORK holders directed the community’s events, investments, and interests. The two-week series of events began Feb. 11, kicking off the virtual #buidlathon. The ramp-up to the opening ceremony included Technical Talks and workshops, open source meetups, events and parties, and even an NFT scavenger hunt. Speakers, panels, and workshops dominated the weekend following the opening ceremony, and the #buidlathon came to a close in true Colorado style with a Rocky Mountain retreat in Breckenridge for some R&R.

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Beyond Meta 2022 Beyond Meta 2022, an event in Tampa held at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), on April 15 and 16, centered around helping students bridge the gap between gaming for fun and building a career in the burgeoning field. The Tampa-based event kicked off with a Madden 22 tournament, which was won by local gaming professional Tim Anselimo. Panels on several key aspects of the industry including eSports streaming and how to become an influencer, cryptocurrency and blockchain, music and a communitycentered discussion on how to grow the STEAM industry in the Tampa area. Beyond Meta 2022 was hosted by High Point Gamer, an organization headed by Army veteran Derek Watford, that brings eSports local communities.

While plenty of things in our society rarely change, no market has seen a shift like that of currency over the last decade. In 10 short years, we've seen a shift away from an entirely analog currency. Now the world's largest governments, including the U.S., are investigating ways to take their currencies digital — and that day is coming soon. We’ve scoured reports to put hard numbers on that transformation and to illustrate just how much cryptocurrency has grown in the world economy.

The number of banks in the U.S. and Europe exploring blockchain tech by 2018

552 Million

The amount financial institutions have spent on blockchain-powered projects

The number of countries to have adopted or researched a national cryptocurrency

20 Billion

60 $ 270Billion

Expected blockchain annual revenue by the end of 2024

The percent of blockchain market value that comes from the financial sector

Total value of blockchain transactions as of mid-2021

15 % 24 % 86 %

The percentage of IT professionals who have invested in various cryptocurrencies The percentage of surveryed companies expecting to spend $5-10 million on blockchain

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

The number of tech-savvy executives who see high potential

6,000

Different types of cryptocurrency

How much Bitcoin rose from February through October 2021

200 46 Million +

Active crypto exchanges

The number of Americans who invested

Source: www.guru99.com and statisticsanddata.org/ Illustrations via iStockphoto.com

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I’m Busy This Weekend; Let’s Take a Raincheck for 2115 Waiting for the next big film release is an exercise in patience. But fans anticipating one particular film will be waiting a whole lifetime — and then some — for its release. 100 Years: The Movie You Will Never See has a release date of Nov. 18, 2115. Little is known about it, other than the fact that director David Rodriguez and writer/actor John Malkovich centered the plot around what they imagine the world will be like 100 years in the future. The makers of 100 Years: The Movie You Will Never See have already released three trailers that give a glimpse into the futuristic and technologically powered world. Unfortunately for our generation, that is likely all we will ever see of the mysterious soon-to-be time capsule. (PRNewsFoto/LOUIS XIII)

Courtesy of Bored and Hungry

Bored and Hungry: California’s First NFT-Themed Restaurant is Open for Business The first restaurant to accept Ethereum and ApeCoin opened in April, showing the marketing potential of translating web3 into the real world. Bored and Hungry, a California NFT-themed fast food restaurant opened on 7th Street in Long Beach California on April 7. Entrepreneur Andy Nguyen invested $267,000 to purchase Bored Ape #6184 and two Mutant Apes from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection of NFTs to receive access to the IP ownership rights and community granted to holders. Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders receive free meals and are verified via token gating — a system that authenticates NFT holders through their crypto wallets. Nguyen and his partner Kevin Seo also launched the world’s first NFT-backed restaurant group called the Food Fighters Universe (FFU) in May.

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Courtesy of The Hertz Corporation

Hertz Plans to Make 20% of its Fleet EVs by the End of 2022

Vehicle rental company The Hertz Corporation is making sustainability a top priority, integrating thousands of EVs into its fleet. Customers are turning to EV rentals more in recent years to minimize their carbon footprint and reduce travel costs. The company will buy up to up to 65,000 cars from Swedish-based electric vehicle company Polestar over the next five years. The addition follows a previous order of 100,000 Tesla Model 3s, which was one of the biggest EV purchases ever made. Hertz announced it plans to make EVs 20% of its fleet by the end of 2022, and the recent mass purchases are putting the company on track to reach its goal. The fleet of Polestars became available this spring and will reach North America later this year.

Particle Sizing You Can Count On.

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BD N | C C OFFI OI CI C A ED

ZED LI RA

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Now Apple Inc., the lion at the top of the tech food chain, has reached the milestone of being worth 11 Disneys. This is no small feat, as Walt Disney Inc. has been buying up a significant amount of real estate in the entertainment sector, recently acquiring 20th Century Studios Inc., for $71 billion and Lucasfilm Ltd. for over $4 billion.

CE NT

DIGITAL C UR R

Fedcoin Could be the Future of the Digital Dollar The Federal Reserve is jumping on the cryptocurrency bandwagon and considering implementing a government-backed digital dollar. Fedcoin, a digital currency based on blockchain technology is coming closer to being a reality, as President Joe Biden signed an executive order in March tasking the federal government with researching potential uses for a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC. More than 100 countries are considering a government-regulated digital currency, and China has already soft-launched its own digital renminbi. Opponents claim a Fedcoin would strip citizens of their financial freedom, as it would give the government the ability to track all transactions in an economy and prohibit transactions for any reason. Political arguments aside, digital currency is here to stay, and governments don’t want to be left behind. That means the Fedcoin could be coming to a crypto wallet near you within the next few years.

Big tech just seems to keep getting bigger. And despite anti-trust laws and efforts from Congress to curb the appetites of the Big Five (Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft), the leviathans of the industry show no signs of losing momentum any time soon.

Apple is Now Worth 11 Disneys

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

But those numbers pale in comparison to the tech titan, which recently reached a market cap of $2.7 trillion, making Apple the third largest company in the world by market valuation. With all its might, it’s no surprise the company is also becoming a contender in the world of streaming, as Apple TV’s original Coda won Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars.

Moxi is Lightening the Load for Hospital Workers Meet Moxi. If you are a frontline health worker, she could be your new best friend. Austin, TX-based robotics firm Diligent developed the AIpowered nurse assistant to relieve some of the excessive stress put on people in the healthcare field since the beginning of the pandemic. Moxi is programmed with similar algorithms to self-driving cars, which enables it to glide around hospitals with ease. Some of the tasks she can perform include retrieving records for patients and moving needed items to personnel around the hospital. The fleet of Moxies zooming around large hospitals will significantly reduce the amount of time nurses spend on their feet, allowing them to focus more on patients. Diligent has raised more than $30 million in its latest investment round for its flagship robot, after a hugely successful initial rollout in Austin.

DEPARTMENTS / DENT Files

Can Technology Make Humans “Super”? By Steve Broback

Dr. Nathan Lents, Ph.D. (professor of biology, John Jay College) moderated a conversation with Dr. Brian Brown (professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai), Dr. Alessia Baccarini (assistant professor, genetics and genomic sciences, Tisch Cancer Institute), and Dr. Michael Petrascheck (associate professor, Department of Molecular Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute.) Together, they discussed how modern science has the potential to make people “super.” Lents provided some background on how humans have used technology as an extension/ enhancement to our bodies for millennia. He cited the stone chopper developed in Paleolithic times (approximately 2.5 million years ago), used mostly for butchering, “as the most important piece of technology that humans have ever invented.” The stone chopper is recognized as the first time humans offloaded functionality from our bodies to our tools. This changed the evolutionary pressure from shaping our bodies to perform work to, instead, inventing tools which perform the work for us. The development of fire is also a major gamechanger in human development. Fire meant humans could offload the work of our mouths and our stomachs. This allowed us to quickly consume a wide variety of nutritious food, especially meat, for which our mouths are poorly designed. From this point forward, never again would our species be forced to wait around for mutations to emerge to help us solve our survival challenges. We humans became able to reshape our environment instead of just reacting to it. Because of fire and the enhanced

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

nutrition it enabled, our brains swelled with the gray matter of calculating interneurons and the white matter of trillions of neuronal connections. In the modern era, we have learned to literally “hack” our immune systems with vaccines. Vaccines serve as a form of human enhancement because they trick the body into mounting an immune response to a pathogen that a person might one day face. Brown — who specializes in

Photo: iStockphoto.com/powerofforever

At the San Diego Comic-Con “Special Edition” in November 2021, we had the good fortune to host a conversation among scientists that delved into how the technology of the modern world is changing how humans evolve. Here are a few key takeaways and some thoughts about what we can expect in the not-so-distant future.

the development of new DNA and RNA-based therapies — described the power of the immune system. He stressed it is the only cellular system that can change its genetics after you’re born. It can actually evolve. Much of the excitement surrounding nearterm human augmentation surrounds the potential of mRNA vaccines. These vaccines can be developed at lightning speed. Dr. Brown said the initial COVID-19 vaccines were completed within weeks of the Jan. 10, 2020 posting of the virus genome. Their versatility also allows them to be used against non-traditional maladies like

cancer, and can even be used to suppress an immune response, which is what you need for diseases like diabetes or multiple sclerosis. Baccarini and Petrascheck delved into genome editing via CRISPR, sharing examples of “super” animals and people that were born with a naturally occurring myostatin gene mutation which caused “super-strength.” Myostatinrelated muscle hypertrophy manifests as reduced body fat and doubled muscle mass. The condition provides a physique that comes close to what we see in comic book heroes. For those who aspire to become a super-criminal, one might consider engineering a mutation to the SMARCAD1 gene, which manifests as the lack of fingerprints. The scientists stress that before we consider making these changes intentionally, one needs to remember that these modifications always come at a price. Petrascheck says with the myostatin mutation described above, “If you run into a famine you’re probably going to be the first one to starve.” More feasible (and far less scary) in the short term, is the promise raised by the rapidly evolving science of human-machine interfaces. Iron Man serves as the ultimate example of human augmentation via machine and AI, and we are getting closer to that ideal all the time. Brown cited the stunning progress of ECOG (electrocorticography), where an electrode plate is put in direct contact with the brain’s surface to measure electrical activity. Paralyzed humans via ECOG can now communicate with others via their thoughts being translated into text. Brown claims “The next step will be plugging into your brain for navigating virtual worlds” where humans can reinvent themselves to perform all kinds of “super” activities not available in the physical world. These and other super-human technologies are the natural evolution of our extension and enhancement of our natural human capabilities — starting with fire and evolving to today’s technologies. ■

DEPARTMENTS / Crypto

Is Mainstream Adoption of Cryptocurrencies Imminent? By Joshua Schweigert On Wednesday, March 9, President Joe Biden released an executive order regarding cryptocurrency and how his administration intends to approach the rapidly growing industry in 2022. The executive order included these key components: • Examining the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies. • Measurement of six critical components, including consumer protection, financial stability, illicit activity, U.S. competitiveness, financial inclusion, and responsible innovation. • Potentially exploring the options of creating a digital USD. The executive order takes a fundamentally positive approach toward cryptocurrency. However, after the release of this executive order, the question remains: Is mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency imminent in the U.S.? It’s evident that Joe Biden and his administration are interested in the rapidly fastgrowing industry and intend to pursue cryptocurrency regulations at some level over the next few years. In the briefing room fact sheet released with the executive order, Biden’s administration fully recognized the monumental growth cryptocurrency has seen over the last five years, moving from a $14 billion market cap to a $3 trillion market cap. Crypto is a steamrolling train that’s not slowing down anytime soon. There are still some genuine concerns regarding cryptocurrency and its ability to keep a stable market while protecting investors. One of those concerns revolves mainly around a specific cryptocurrency identified as

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Photo: iStockphoto.com/ipopba

Stablecoins. Stablecoins try to pin their market value to an external reference. An example of a Stablecoin is USDT (Tether) and its parallel value to the U.S. dollar. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, stated that she’d like to see congress introduce regulations for that sector, mainly addressing the commitment of Stablecoins to being entirely backed by dollars held in reserve. Another considerable concern for cryptocurrency is investor protection. Chainalysis released a report at the beginning of 2022, stating that losses from 2021 to 2022 had nearly doubled from $7.8 billion to $14 billion. The two most common contributions to these monumental losses are scams and hacks. Social media is a prime target for crypto theft, as they often con regular everyday investors into essentially handing over their crypto, promising returned gains. In February, the DOJ (Department of Justice)

homed in on a young married couple with local New York authorities and made an arrest for alleged conspiracy to launder $4.5 billion in cryptocurrency that was a part of a hack back in 2016 through Bitfinex. As cryptocurrency and the tech behind it continue to develop, it’s abundantly clear that improving security needs to be a priority, most notably within the realm of DeFi apps. Moreover, in Biden’s executive order, he also clearly stated that he intends to work with industry professionals and financial advisors in potentially pursuing a form of digital currency. Companies such as Microsoft, Starbucks, NewEgg, AMC, and others, have already adopted Bitcoin, among other cryptocurrencies, as accepted payment methods. It’s apparent as long as the cryptocurrency industry and its leaders work diligently with the U.S. government on regulations and improving its systems, mass adoption does seem imminent. ■

DEPARTMENTS / Web 3.0

The Vision and Challenges of a Decentralized

Web3.0

By Chris Mellides As an emerging innovation, Web3 (Web 3.0) and the accompanying metaverse is a shift from the internet as we know it with adoption being a certainty. When the internet arrived, its implications weren’t immediately known and yet this technological achievement, while considered a tool, was still in its infancy and not the Web2 that we know it to be today. The current iteration of the internet deals with users creating consumable content through social channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Web3 promises to introduce a virtual reality (VR) element that experts stipulate will bridge Web2 with augmented reality and an interface that uses visuals and auditory cues to further democratize the internet and provide a unique user experience. The internet will differ from what we experience now, in that it will largely evolve through pre-established algorithms, which will shift and change at the whim of the users who create, consume and interface with this new technology, according to XR Today, an online publication focused on emerging tech.

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Photo: Adobe

The associated metaverse would work in tandem with the third generation of the web and is associated with the augmented reality, artificial intelligence (AI), and threedimensional spaces that Web3 will utilize. Content will be created and consumed, and users will be thrust into a new world where interacting with augmented reality and 3D surroundings will become the new normal. However, it is yet to be seen how users might treat this forthcoming innovation. The benefits of Web3 will be in the decentralization of the internet experience and an evolutionary leap in the way that we interact with online content creation and consumable media. On the other hand, the challenges of this new iteration of the internet will likely be in its widespread adoption and how long it will take to leave the hands of the few and into the grasp of the many. According to Patrick Parker, CEO of SaaS Partners, an advisement firm that specializes in marketing and growing companies through enterprise software and services, Web3 is a certainty, and developers ought to pay attention

to this new internet iteration. “[Web3 is] going to take us at least 5-10 years to really get there… we’re going to need massscale hardware upgrades to both servers and end-user devices as current mobile and IoT devices are not prepared for the Web3 ‘revolution,’” Parker said. IoT (Internet of Things) devices are defined as hardware that, enabled with sensors, communicate with the internet, and can readily be observed in homes and offices in products like laptops and mobile devices. Competition in this space has pushed major companies, like Google and Amazon, to hurry products to market with privacy and data security being a major concern to consumers. The future of Web3 is one where consumers will further the democratization and proliferation of the Internet. Small and major companies will be scrambling to innovate and fill in the gaps. The jump from where the internet presently stands to where it will take us remains to be seen. Yet we wait with bated breath for the future of tomorrow. ■

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DEPARTMENTS / Travel Tech

COVID-19: Effects on Present and Future Commercial Airline Travel By Chris Mellides Travelers weary of commercial flight during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic are returning to airports with renewed confidence. With so many flyers embarking on their next dream vacation or business excursion, it’s easy to forget that booking travel online isn’t without its share of hurdles. We’ve all been there before. Reveling in the excitement that comes with booking that dream vacation only to be met with the wide array of travel sites and the noise that comes along with snapping up the best deals. Often, travelers will need to abide by the whims of a given country’s legalities when all they want to do is plan a great vacation, whether by air or sea. One such company that looks to quicken the process is Sherpa. The Canadian online company partners with airlines like Lufthansa, British Airways and American Airlines, along with major cruise lines and travel agencies. In doing so, it provides a means of allowing travelers to find requirements for travel identification restrictions before they leave the house. Booking with a company like Sherpa helps to demystify booking on a burgeoning heap of travel sites that may not be as inclusive when it comes to the laws that dictate a particular country’s travel requirements and provides users with a convenient means of pre-filling an eVisa and eTA form when booking their next location. Meanwhile, a company like Troop will combine data that aids business leaders in booking their next oversea meetings based on obtaining objective information rather than information that’s opinion-centric in nature. Bridging the divide between travelers and those airlines, hotels and cruise lines is made easy. In the case of Sherpa, navigating rules and

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Photo: iStockphoto.com/izusek

restrictions in foreign countries makes it a must for travelers of any stripe. A peer-reviewed collection of works provided by ScienceDirect includes a sample of data that was collected from several travelers in Norway, whose attitudes toward flight travel during the COVID pandemic are made bear. “…the crisis generated by the COVID-19 outbreak has become the most intense and longlasting in the history of commercial aviation,” according to the paper which also states that, “worldwide the supply of seats by airlines in 2020 declined by 50% compared to 2019, the number of passengers fell by 60%, and airlines lost $371 billion in passenger operating revenues.” The sample data was collected last year and shows that younger travelers were not burdened

by the pandemic and would continue to fly. Older passengers, on the other hand, showed a “greater concern and a reduction in air travel.” The paper that this information was featured in titled: “An Assessment of Air Passenger Confidence a Year Into the COVID-19 Crisis: A Segmentation Analysis of Passengers in Norway,” provides ample information, and its authors suggest that the data collected from Norwegian travelers provides a good crosssection of what the expected attitudes’ of travelers are the world over. “The COVID-19 crisis has become the most intense and long-lasting in the history of aviation. There is already a significant literature on the immediate impact of the outbreak, as well as on speculation on the future evolution of the industry.” ■

DEPARTMENTS / Pet & Family Tech

New Tech for New Parents: Hacks for Greater Peace of Mind By Aron Vaughan

For parents of any age, keeping your child safe is the number one priority. And for new parents, the second priority is probably trying to preserve a little mental clarity and get a semi-decent night’s sleep. From getting your newborn on a consistent sleep schedule to figuring out how to attach a seatbelt to an overcomplicated booster seat, the world of parenting is filled with little challenges and puzzles to solve. For many bumbling fathers, simply remembering your baby is in the back seat on the way back from a long day of errands is an accomplishment. Thankfully, in 2022, technology is by our side every step of the way, helping to scale back the challenges of parenting and put (at least some) of the puzzles on easy mode.

Modern Monitoring Nothing contributes to peace of mind more than knowing your baby is sleeping safely and comfortably. Babies are at a heightened risk of suffocation and strangulation while sleeping, so parents are constantly worrying whether their child is breathing safely in his or her crib. Babies also sleep deeply, so it can be difficult to discern whether they are breathing properly. Video monitors have come a long way in recent years, and products like the Nanit Pro Smart baby

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Sleep Easy Getting children to conform to a consistent sleep schedule can be tiresome in itself. The trick is to have a structured bedtime routine while also making it fun instead of a chore.

monitor take all the newest technology available in baby monitoring and roll it into one device. First and foremost, the Nanit is a video monitor. It provides a clear view at all times of the entire crib — even in the dark. The kit comes with a swaddle that has a customdesigned pattern that is detected by the camera, enabling real-time breathing monitoring. The camera can then send an alert to a paired app on your phone if anything is wrong. Additionally, the app includes sleep metrics with video history, sleep tracking, and even sleep coaching.

Starting this process early will ensure progression to a regular nighttime routine happens smoothly. The Hatch Rest does just that. With 11 soothing sounds, a customizable nightlight, sleep programs, and a time-to-rise feature, your child will be able to get to sleep and learn a bedtime schedule over time. The Rest also adapts to your child’s growth by offering different features for each stage of development. With a soft light that provides white noise for newborns, the comfort of a nightlight for preschoolers, and a color-coded time-to-rise tool for older children, the Rest covers all the bases.

A Little Security Goes a Long Way While the challenges are still significant, today’s parents have it a little easier than previous generations. Of course, mothers will tell you there is no substitute for the instinctual “eyes in the back of their head,” but the products that are now available can provide an extra layer of security and convenience. ■

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Innovator Profile

Engineer Charlie Atkinson Shares On His 23 Years Building JWST By Corey Noles The average American stays at one job for just more than four years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Charlie Atkinson is quite the exception, and to be fair, he has a much cooler job than the average American. Atkinson is a chief engineer at Northrop Grumman and has been leading the James Webb Space Telescope ( JWST) project since 1998. While most people only recently learned about the project, Atkinson and a team of skilled engineers and scientists began working on it nearly a quarter-century ago. Working on a project over such a span of time comes with a variety of challenges such as changing technology, advances in science, the political landscape and even personnel changes. Atkinson recently sat down with Innovation & Tech Today to chat about the experience, the project and its future.

Courtesy of Northrop Grumman

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But at some point, you have to stop evolving the design and really focus on implementing it. And so while new technologies could come into fruition, you need to say, “Hey, can’t do it because it would have ripple effects into the rest of the design.”

Courtesy of Northrop Grumman

Innovation & Tech Today: So, how did you become involved in [JWST] back then? Because for most people, this is still something they heard of six months ago probably. Charlie Atkinson: So, prior to this, I worked on the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which was an extremely exciting program and broke a number of paradigms in terms of what X-ray telescopes can do in terms of just the size and the resolving power and the overall collecting area of that telescope.

CA: Yeah. That’s a really interesting question. For JWST, we knew at the outset that there were 10 new technologies that had to be invented to enable JWST. So we built what we called a technology roadmap, which mapped out, “Okay, here are these 10 new technologies. What do we need to do to bring them to the point where they can be demonstrated and they’re ready to be used for JWST?” And we also identified some enhancing technology. So if this particular technology matures and is available, let’s insert it into the program at this point.

Now, that said, we were able to take advantage of a number of emerging technologies in areas that didn’t affect directly the design of the observatory. So, for instance, when laser radar systems came into existence and were available to us, we used them to help with the alignment of the overall telescope and observatory. And advanced data acquisition systems were introduced that allowed us to have over 600 channels of accelerometer data during the vibration testing that were all synchronized to the point we could actually monitor a shock wave that went through the observatory structure. We did scrutinize other technologies that were coming to bear. The battery is a great example of that. We had a design that had a battery that was well known and we’d used on other missions, but as recent as June of 2020, the company that had built the battery that we were going to use had a new one and it was much more capable, but had exactly the same size electrical interfaces, safety systems, et cetera. So it was a direct replacement for the one that we had. So we made the decision in June after

I’d worked as a subcontractor to what was then TRW, who was the prime contractor for putting together Chandra, and TRW then became Northrop in 2002 … So, when I got the opportunity to come work at Northrop Grumman, I jumped at the opportunity and started working on a number of different programs, but it was JWST that really piqued my interest because of the amazing engineering challenges that it represented. I remember saying to some of my coworkers, “I really want to build that.” And so, I feel very privileged to have been able to do so. I&T Today: When thinking of a project that takes decades, how do you accommodate for changes in technology over that amount of time? Because some things, it’s got to be difficult to foresee what could be available to you 10 years ahead of now?

Courtesy of Northrop Grumman

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Innovator Profile and the sun shield is intended to protect the telescope from that light and that heat. The warm side of the sun shield is, I think, it’s 185 degrees Fahrenheit at some of the warmest places. And then on the cold side, it’s minus 388 Fahrenheit. So, a huge temperature difference, but similar to a corollary to a sunscreen that you put on yourself to avoid a sunburn and this would be the equivalent of a sun protection factor of a million. I&T Today: Does having a temperature variance on one side or the other that is so dramatic affect the materials you’re able to use, I assume?

Courtesy of Northrop Grumman

studying it and making sure there were not going to be any other ramifications of introducing it, we made the change. I&T Today: I’ll bet it was. I know that JWST is an infrared telescope. Could you explain loosely the light spectrum and what it means to see in infrared? CA: Yeah. So, it’s a great question. So light travels in waves in the same way that sound does and the best corollary I can think of to describe the spectrum of light is the sound spectrum. So, infrared has longer wavelengths or is lower frequency than other light, just like the bass on your car radio. I&T Today: Like AM versus FM? CA: Yeah. I can do that. But just like with your car radio, to get a full idea of what the music sounds like, you need the combination of the bass, the treble and the mid frequency — otherwise you’re not getting a full picture, if you will, of what the music or whatever it is you’re listening to, sounds like. And the same thing with astronomical objects. To get a full picture of what celestial objects are made up of or are doing or the processes involved with them, you need to look at the full range of the light spectrum.

Some of the best images that I’ve seen from astronomical surveys or astronomical objects are when they combine imagery from the Hubble, which operates in the visible a little bit, in the ultraviolet, a little bit in the infrared, combine that with Chandra, which sees X-rays, and with Spitzer, which sees in the infrared. And with that full combination of the electromagnetic spectrum, you get a really good picture of what’s going on. I&T Today: One of the challenges that is interesting to me is that sitting at Lagrange 2, how does JWST handle the amount of heat that has to be blasted at it pretty much constantly? CA: Yeah. So that’s what that big tennis court size sun shield does for us. So, the JWST will always be oriented with the telescope and the science instruments on the opposite side of the sun and the Earth, Courtesy of Northrop Grumman

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CA: Oh, absolutely. A large part of the engineering challenges that we had in designing the observatory was to accommodate those huge temperature differences. And a lot of material characterization had to be performed to ensure that strength and stiffness and all the other mechanical properties of materials were as we need them to be in the environments that they’re going to be in.

much more powerful it is than Hubble, the different technologies going in, I’m assuming this could be night and day from what we’ve seen from Hubble over the years even, as impressive as those images are? CA: Yeah, well, agreed. And akin to how much more capable Hubble was versus prior observatories, the amazing things that Hubble has shown us, expect the same advances and leaps forward from JWST. And the same was true of Chandra. Chandra was so much more capable than previous X-ray observatories, and we’ve learned so much about the high-energy astrophysics around us from Chandra as a result of that. So, yeah, agreed. It’s going to be incredible. Courtesy of Northrop Grumman

Courtesy of Northrop Grumman

I&T Today: Okay. Is there a long delay in communication back and forth with JWST or are you able to operate it reasonably close to real-time? CA: It’s very close to real time. We’re a million miles away, and it’s handfuls of seconds to get data. It takes more time to get it processed on the ground than it does for it to get to the ground. I&T Today: So, do you remain on the James Webb Telescope project moving forward or do you move on to the next mission? I wasn’t sure how Northrop Grumman’s role is played once it’s off the ground.

Courtesy of NASA/JWST

The good side is that once temperatures are achieved, JWST’s thermal environment is extremely stable. We don’t go through eclipses like other lower orbit satellites do, like the Hubble and Chandra so we have a very stable thermal environment, which is really beneficial for very long observations JWST’s intended to use. I&T Today: Wow. And are you still thinking by about June we’ll start seeing some images? CA: That’s the expectation, yeah, is that the early release science should be coming out around that timeframe.

I&T Today: Will there be any big lag before the public sees anything or do you think there’ll be an eagerness to show the world what you’re finding? CA: I think a little of both. I know that the astronomical community is anxious to share what they first find. I think they’ll need to collect the data and analyze it and make sure that they understand what they’re seeing before they release it so that’s just a natural part of the process. But, yeah, I think they’re really anxious to get the information out there. I&T Today: And in looking at a difference in how much farther out it is from earth, how

CA: So, a little bit of both. We’re responsible for supporting the mission through the commissioning, through the June timeframe. And then, because we’ve got a lot of the subject matter experts and the people who built the observatory working at Northrop Grumman, we will have what we call a factory support team who will be there to help troubleshoot problems if there are any, to help with software updates, to keep the mission moving as efficiently as possible. For me, personally, JWST is very dear to me. I’ve spent, like you said, almost 25 years on it. And just like with Chandra, which was launched in 1999, I still stay plugged into Chandra, and I expect to do the same thing with JWST. ■

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CONNECTED CAR

BMW Sees its Future in the

METAVERSE

Automotive Company Builds a Digital Twin of its Factories with Nvidia Tech By Michael Coates

Photos courtesy of BMW

Building a new automotive factory is a billion dollar investment. Retooling an existing factory can also mean hundreds of millions of dollars of expense. On the other hand, increasing manufacturing efficiencies go straight to the bottom line. Efficient manufacturing is a key element in building a successful automotive company. Ask Elon Musk about the impact of “manufacturing hell” on Tesla’s bottom line. Enter the latest technology tool — the ability to build a digital twin of a factory, replicating the

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building, its assembly equipment, robots and even its employees. Using software from Nvidia that allows for design collaboration in a shared virtual space that also follows all of the laws of physics, BMW Group is the first auto company to try out this advanced system. Digital humans trained with data from real workers can simulate ergonomics and efficiencies of a new plan. The early returns on this new technology venture are encouraging. Milan Nedeljkovic, member of the board of management of BMW AG responsible for production, said he expects to see a big impact.

“These new innovations will reduce the planning times, improve flexibility and precision, and at the end produce a 30% more efficient planning process,” Nedeljkovic said. He characterized the software as a “revolution” for BMW’s planning processes. BMW has 31 factories around the world building 40 different models and employing 57,000 workers. Each model has more than 100 options, so the variations are significant. BMW says there are 2,100 possible ways to configure a typical new model. Essentially, the cars end up as custom productions. But those custom

CONNECTED CAR productions mean endless variations in the manufacturing process. Worldwide Collaboration BMW’s thousands of planners, product engineers, facility managers and lean manufacturing experts from different corporate locations now collaborate in this metaverse to design, plan, engineer, simulate and optimize the company’s manufacturing processes. Those designs can take place before a physical factory is built or can be tested on an existing virtual factory floor. Planners can even travel virtually into the simulation with a motion capture suit to record task movements that can then be applied to the design. Since the laws of physics apply in this metaverse, the results from this simulation can be expected to be born out when they’re put in place in the real world. The teams from BMW use software like Revit, Catia or point clouds to design and reconfigure its factories. Factory reconfiguration is a regular thing in the automotive world, triggered with every new model or every significant change in an existing model. Being able to work through these changes in a full digital twin of a factory allows the impact on workers and machines to be sorted out before the moves are made in reality. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is also active in these digital factories, where different use cases can be put into place using AI. BMW predicts use of this technology will end up reducing planning times, improve flexibility and produce a more efficient planning process.

The Nvidia software involved in the BMW project includes its Omniverse Enterprise platform that enables global 3D design teams to work together simultaneously across multiple software suites in a shared virtual space. Two enduser applications are used: Nvidia Omniverse Create, which accelerates scenes composition and allows users to affect real-time assembly, lighting, simulation and rendering of scenes, and Nvidia Omniverse View, which gives photorealistic rendering and powers collaborative design and visualization of architectural and engineering projects. Drawing on its extensive experience in the gaming world, the end result is, when Nvidia and BMW say digital twin, a viewer of images from that factory would be hard-pressed to differentiate them from similar ones from the physical factory. In addition, the Nvidia Isaac platform manages virtual robotics, while the Nvidia EGX edge computing platform provides a basic program that can run on local desktops and laptops throughout an organization like BMW. This is taking a “software-defined vehicle” to a whole new level. As Nvidia Founder and CEO Jensen Huang said about this software: “The science-fiction metaverse is near.” It’s taking the Musk concept of machines building machines to another level. In addition to BMW, Nvidia said more than 400 companies and 17,000 users have downloaded the software to explore applications in a variety of fields. ■

BMW’s digital twin factory allows planners to work in a simulation to plan the future. This simulation shows not just the hardware, but the humans building the cars. All of the details of the factory floor are creating in the Nvidia Omniverse version of a BMW factory

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CONNECTED CAR

A NEW KIND OF

HYBRID EV Startup Marries Gaming and Driving (sort of) By Michael Coates The software-defined car has become a running meme for the auto industry over the last few years. Each new car is presented as a way to create ongoing revenue streams with drivers. A new EV startup is taking the meme, er, car, up another notch with a computer-defined car built around a state-of-the-art gaming computer. The car, the Indi One, is a mash-up of the vibrant Los Angeles car culture, the growing gaming subculture in town and the pervasive Hollywood entertainment industry. The company behind the car is Indi EV, which has spent the past four years designing and engineering a compact crossover with a vehicle integrated computer (VIC) capable of allowing livestreaming and the possibility of capturing images through its five high-definition cameras that can be edited and uploaded from inside the car. With a look reminiscent of the BMW i3, but with a significant LA vibe in its color palette, the Indi One announced its first reservations at the recent New York Auto Show. Instagram influencer Yena Kim of Menswear Dog and Global Green USA CEO William Bridge are first in line. IndieEV head of design Andre Hudson, who’s had stints with General Motors and Hyundai, told Innovation & Tech Today that he expects deliveries to start a year from now. He added that the car will be assembled in the U.S. at a yet-to-be-disclosed plant. The five-passenger Indi One will come in two trim levels and nine colors. The basic single motor rear-drive model will be available in one

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color — Pacific Pearl (white). Its motor will produce 275 horsepower (hp) and make 0-60 mph runs in about 6.75 seconds, according to IndieEV. The retail price will be $45,000, which is in line with several other new EV models of varying specs. The range is 240-250 miles, according to Hudson. The high-end AWD model has two motors (475 hp), a bigger battery pack, eight color choices, the VIC setup, and an estimated 300 miles of range. It will retail for $69,000. Both models sit on oversized tires (with 21- or 22-inch rims) with three screens for the front seats — a 12-inch driver cluster and two 15-inch displays. The far right display is the passenger/ gamer’s realm, capable of running AAA/VR/AR games. In the premium model the gaming setup is driven off a separate Windows computer, while the middle display that shows the vehicle’s functions and entertainment system uses a Linux base. The setup will also include a software development kit so third-party developers can create their own games and apps for the setup. Hudson wasn’t willing to talk about the company financing other than to say it was

privately funded — at this point primarily from a single individual. A little digging explained some of the gaming/automotive crossover; the individual listed as founder of the company is Shi Hai, a gaming industry veteran. It looks like another long shot, but it could be a fun one to test drive if you’re a gamer. ■

CONNECTED CAR

Photos via Indi One

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Background photo: iStockphoto.com/monsitj

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Blockchain 101 A Simple Guide to Get You Started Are you a total crypto noob? Then this is the place to start. It even includes a handy glossary to get you through the plethora of crypto words you keep having to smile and nod to when your friends are talking.

NFTs as Collectibles This is an interview with Jason Howarth of Panini America, the historic trading card company. They were among the first to deep dive into the NFT game. In this interview, he tells us why, and how he sees the role of NFTs in trading cards in the future.

Is Web3 the Path to the Future? Web3 is a phrase we’ve been hearing for a couple of years now, but how much do you really know about it? Our team dove in and did the research so you can find out what you need to know in this one-stop shop for all things Web3.

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BLOCKCHAIN 101:

Getting Started in Cryptocurrency By Chris Mellides If you’re reading this, odds are you’re new to the crypto world — which can seem like a daunting task to the uninitiated. We’ve put together this guide to walk you through the process and explain the lingo in hopes of making your venture into blocks and tokens a little less painful. A blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that logs information. It’s kept secure and is accessible to participants connected to the network of computer systems on the blockchain. Each time there is a new transaction, that information is made available on participants’ ledgers. This information is encrypted and cannot be changed. Often, these participants remain anonymous or operate under various pseudonyms. A DLT is a decentralized database that is created and used by several of these participants. They take advantage of the DLT and use it as a means of handling digital money, which in the past was a concept that was viewed as being too risky and little was known about its true value. It wasn’t until the advent of Bitcoin when the volatility of the digital currency market began to normalize, which drew interest from investors. Creating a currency out of thin air creates questionability as to the true value of that currency. Before Bitcoin, trust in cryptocurrency was hard to come by.

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Photo: iStockphoto.com/D-Keine

GLOSSARY TERMS: Bitcoin uses blockchain databases to solve this problem. This widely accepted form of cryptocurrency is managed by many participants who cannot artificially increase or decrease its value. Previously, older databases were under the control of a single person in charge who, in theory, could inflate the value of the digital currency he or she creates and become a millionaire overnight. Getting started in cryptocurrency is easier than you think, and before you get started it’s important to understand how you want to store your first “coin.” To do this you’ll need to create a crypto wallet. A crypto wallet is a place where you can store your cryptocurrency. If you’d rather not be beholden to a particular exchange or want a more secure means to purchase, creating a “cold wallet” is a viable option if you’d like to take that approach. A cold wallet allows you to direct your coins to it and differs from conventional crypto wallets in that you’re able to store your coins offline. This will prevent your investment from online attacks, but there is always a risk of losing your holdings. There is a multitude of cryptocurrencies on the market. So, choosing a reputable coin is paramount. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most widely traded, while thousands of others are less so. After you’ve decided how to store your first coin, it’s time to select an exchange to purchase your crypto assets. Purchasing these assets can be done by making payments by various means, including bank transfers and thirdparty transaction applications like PayPal or Venmo. Recognizing

whether certain exchanges are right for you often means checking to see if those exchanges charge fees for certain debit cards and bank transfers. Before you make your initial investment, you’ll have to create an account. First, you must verify your identity to be sure that your legitimacy as a buyer is sound. You’ll need documents such as a state-issued photo identification card or a birth certificate, and a proof of address is also necessary. This process may take several days for verification, so patience is key. Next, you’ll have to decide on your investment. A single bitcoin costs thousands of dollars. However, you have options to purchase a fraction of an expensive cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, though there are far less costly coins that you can invest in that won’t break the bank. As with any investment, it’s important to prepare for potential losses. Since the cryptocurrency market can be unpredictable, it’s important not to invest more than you can afford to lose. Losses are a reality, and a single coin’s value can soar, remain steady or crash as its worth fluctuates. Once you choose an exchange and you’ve set up your digital wallet, you’re all set to make your coin purchase. Bitcoin and its various derivatives can be used at thousands of merchants. And as cryptocurrency grows in popularity purchasing goods and services is on a path to becoming more common. Converting cash into coins is yet another option and can be done by visiting a Bitcoin ATM. When you convert cash, you’ll receive a QR code that can be used to send coins to your digital wallet. ■

Altcoins A category that includes all coins other than Bitcoin, the first and most successful of all the cryptocurrencies. Ethereum and Ripple are altcoins. Bitcoin Bitcoin is the most trusted form of cryptocurrency and can be used to make purchases and transfers. This coin can be worth thousands of dollars and participants can own a fraction of a bitcoin or may invest in many other coins that are cheaper but are far less volatile as there tends to be less trust ascribed to other coins.

operated, yet publicly transparent, blockchain. DLT DLTs, or “decentralized databases” are managed by several participants who take advantage of these secure means of handling digital money to continue investing, selling and transferring those funds. Hardware Wallet A physical device, similar to a USB stick, that stores cryptocurrency in its encrypted form. It’s considered the most secure way to hold cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin ATM This form of technology allows participants the means of converting cash to be added to a digital wallet by providing a scannable QR code.

Initial Coin Offering In order to raise funds, the creator of a cryptocurrency will put an initial batch of its coins up for purchase. This is an initial coin offering.

Block The blockchain is made up of blocks. Each block holds a historical database of all cryptocurrency transactions made until the block is full. It’s a permanent record, like a bag of data that can be opened and viewed at any time.

Public Key This is your unique wallet address, which appears as a long string of numbers and letters. It is used to receive cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain A blockchain is a form of a distributed ledger technology, also known as a DLT. Blockchains keep logs of detailed transactions updated across the ledgers of all the participants who have access to the blockchain on the same network of computers. The data is kept secure and protected. Consortium Blockchain A privately owned and

Token The “coin” of a cryptocurrency is a token. Effectively, it’s the digital code defining each fraction, which can be owned, bought and sold. Wallet A digital wallet is usually provided to a participant when he or she purchases coins on an exchange. Those that do not wish to be tied down to a particular exchange and want a more secure way of protecting their investments can opt for a “cold wallet” that coins can be directed to.

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Trading Cards Find a New Home in NFTs How Panini is raising the bar when it comes to blockchain trading cards. By Charles Warner and Corey Noles early. You saw an opportunity with the blockchain. You knew that there was something here. It’s perfect for collectibles because you have the unique serial number and you have this… Were you guys the first and did you know it would be as big as… I mean, I don’t even think it’s gotten there yet. I think it’s still getting there. What were your internal discussions like?

The trading card industry has been resurrected from a doomed fate over the last two years. As COVID-19 began to rage around the planet, in a wave right behind came the rebirth of the once massive trading card industry. In short order, retail outlets like Target and Walmart began rolling out expanded sections to cater to the crowd. Traffic picked up in various small hobby shops around the nation, as well as on eBay. With an increase in interest came the normal increase in value of new and existing cards. At that same time, a new avenue for collectibles was growing in popularity: NonFungible Tokens. As companies, sports leagues and entrepreneurs began to jump on the train, trading card companies did as well. Panini America, a branch of the Italian card company dating back to 1961, jumped into the land of NFTs with both feet. Recently, Jason Howarth, VP of marketing for Panini America, joined Innovation Tech Talks for an in-depth chat about the moves Panini has made. Following are excerpts from that interview. Follow the QR code to listen to the full interview as well. youtu.be/JJB8l-NMN6Q

Innovation & Tech Today: What would you say the state of collecting cards is right now? Jason Howarth: I’d be lying, but the absolute truth is, I mean, you’d expect me to say this, but the absolute truth is that the trading card category has never been healthier than it is right now, both at the hobby shop level, at the mass retail level with retailers like Target and Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods and so on. And then in the online space. And so across all sports. So great strength in the NBA and the NFL, great strength with UFC and the growth that we’ve seen there in the last year, NASCAR, you name it. And the power of our brands, whether that be our Prizm brand, which is just an absolute monster in the trading card space globally, we do that product across all sports. I&T Today: So Jason, we know NFTs are here. They’re everywhere. You guys were way

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JH: So as I mentioned earlier, we started thinking about blockchain in 2018. And when we started thinking about it and then fast forward to 2020 when we launched our private blockchain platform on our website at paniniamerica.net in January of 2020, we started thinking about, “Okay, how do we engage the consumer? How do we help them understand blockchain? And what are the steps that we need to do to get them to understand that?” All of the steps were not things we really liked. It was like, “Okay, we have to go tell them to get a crypto wallet. Then we have to go tell them to buy a cryptocurrency. But we can’t tell them which one to buy.” Then they’ve got to figure out all that stuff. And now they’re finally ready to buy one of our products. I’m like, “No, no, no, we need to get paths to buy the product.” So we decided that we would, on our blockchain platform, introduce that to consumers where they could buy in U.S. currency. So even today, you can still buy our NFTs on our blockchain platform at paniniamerica.net in US currency. In the next six weeks, we will be starting to accept forms of cryptocurrency as another form of payment. But when we launched it in January of 2020, no one was talking about the non-fungible token part of the blockchain, NFTs. We were like, “Okay, that’s just the engine that makes the

Photos courtesy of Panini

train run down the track of blockchain. That’s just what you need to have to live on the blockchain and be able to carry that and form additional chains and create this history around that asset.” … And to introduce it, we launched 100 card set of the best athletes across all sports. And yes, we were the first to do it, in January of 2020, but we launched it with the best athletes in 100 across all sports and we tied it to a physical card.

there’s a value and now there’s a premium to it. So that’s how we went through and started to explain and educate the consumer. And as we started to progress in the platform, we started selling just purely NFT assets or purely blockchain assets, no physical card tied to it. It was just a digital asset that looked like the physical card.

So consumers and collectors understood the value of the physical card. When you have an autographed Kobe Bryant or Ja Morant or you name it in the product as a physical card, you know what the value of that card is from a physical point of view. You might not fully understand what the value is of the digital asset that’s tied to it. But at least you understand that

JH: Exactly. And so we’ve always been a believer that we wanted to replicate the physical experience that we talked about earlier of sharing that joy of opening up a pack and that experience of what’s inside and the reveal of the card and all those other things. And so we weren’t able to do that on the individual card side of it. And then in July of 2021, we launched

I&T Today: Yeah. It almost squeezes out the average collection.

the pack format, starting with the NBA. And it really replicated the physical experience where you open up the pack of cards on the site, and you’ve got three to five cards that are there and you touch it and it flips over. But we launched in July of 2021 with the NBA packs. And we followed that up with Major League Baseball Players Association, and then followed that up with UFC, then launched the NFL packs during the season and we just launched the French soccer league on our site as well. And then we’ll be rolling into FIFA World Cup NFTs here in the next few months as well. And that cadence continues to build because they’re replicating the experiences and the physical card side. So we have so many different dynamic products that we can launch into the NFT space as a result. ■ VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

Is Web

the Path to the Future? From Web1 to Web3 and beyond, here’s how we got to today. By Aron Vaughan

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

rom newspapers to radio and television, mass communication has traditionally been a one-way street. Sure, readers could send a letter to the editor of their favorite newspaper or magazine, and musicians could spend afternoons poring through thousands of fan’s letters, but the level of interaction between creator and consumer was always limited. Then, the advent of the internet changed everything. The paradigm of mass media shifted, albeit slowly, to a more interactive model. The first version of the internet, Web1, was characterized by media uploaded from institutions. Established entities like governments and corporations owned the largest amount of real estate on the newlyintegrated world wide web. Information was still being passed down to the masses from the man in the high tower, but now consumers could access it from the comfort of their own homes. “Content creators were few … with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content,” said Graham Cormode, professor of computer science at the University of Warwick. The massive growth early internet companies enjoyed during the Web1 years reached a crescendo in 2000 when the “dot com bubble” finally burst. The Nasdaq fell 78% from its 400% increase at the height of the boom, precipitating the death of Web1. From its ashes, a new paradigm emerged. Web2 Web2 is characterized by greater interaction between creator and end-user. Early forms of social media like AOL chat rooms and Friendster paved the way for the robust, instantaneous sharing of all forms of media we enjoy today. End-to-end communication is at the heart of Web2. Content is dissected, ingested, manipulated, and thrown back into the digital cosmos for the process to be repeated over and over again ad infinitum. Platforms that constitute Web2 have

integrated their massive network of user profiles into a digital brain. The network is composed of individual strings or lines that connect to each other, similar to the way neurons are connected by synapses in the brain. When one string is broken, by someone deleting his or her social media profile, for example, links have already been created between other nodes – profiles – that interacted with the deleted node. Because of this interconnection, the multiplicity survives by constantly changing and connecting to new nodes. The result is a complex network that adjusts and changes in response to the creation and destruction of individual links. However, the digital brain that has manifested through Web2 is still dependent on human interaction for its neurons to fire and to create new connections. The Semantic Web We are now transitioning into a new era of digital communication that invites AI and machine learning into the existing paradigm. Web 3 promises to take the brain established by its previous iteration and give it a higher degree of autonomy. In 2001, world wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee published an article in Scientific American about what he believed would be the future of the internet. The semantic web, as Berners-Lee named it, would be readable by humans and machines. Both content and context would be important to programs, bringing syntax (the way sentences are constructed) and semantics (the meaning of the sentence) together. The result of assimilating the two is a more intuitive internet that better analyzes content and metadata, combining relevant data for greater efficiency and convenience for the user. Websites will be able to learn from users and become more intelligent. One example of the way Web3, or the semantic web, is already being implemented is how Amazon recommends products to a buyer based on what other users have browsed or purchased. It may seem like a small advancement, but

features like this are the building blocks for an AI-powered, fully integrated web experience. Web3 Berners-Lee’s semantic web is still in its early stages, and it may be years before his prophecy is fully realized, but the current direction of Web3 is something the web founder may not have anticipated. Web3 is becoming a decentralized network that gives users more privacy and security while continuing to ramp up end-to-end communication. The advent of the blockchain and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have provided people with a higher level of ownership over content in the digital space. Instead of everyone’s data being stored on a single server, people now have the choice to store their digital assets independently. Individual crypto wallets are encrypted and belong solely to the owner of the wallet. The same is true of NFTs. This gives people power over their data in a way that wasn’t possible until recently. Meanwhile, the creation of the metaverse is combining blockchain technology with virtual reality. It takes social interaction to an even higher level than Web2 by placing avatars in the same 3D virtual environment. Many of the bars and clubs in the metaverse have VIP areas that can be purchased with cryptocurrency via the blockchain and digital real estate has sold for millions in the cyber world. Where the internet goes next is open to speculation. The semantic web may be relabeled as Web3.5, as the third iteration seems to be moving more toward decentralization and interactions in 3D space. Web3 is the path to the future, but maybe it is only a rest stop on the way to a fully realized AI network that would constitute a true digital brain. Users will have to embrace a reality of more intuitive online marketing While watching from the window of his or her digital penthouse until then. ■

VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

Why Did NFTs Get So Popular? According to Nonfungible, an NFT data company, NFTs saw a 26x volume growth year over year in the first quarter of 2021 from 2020, equating to $1.5 billion in sales. In March 2020, a digital collage NFT by artist Beeple sold for $69 million at auction house Christie’s, securing the NFT as a legitimate — and lucrative — commodity.

Photos iStockphoto.com

The idea behind NFTs makes sense. Around 2013, people realized they wanted to trade assets and collectibles other than Bitcoin using the newly popular blockchain. The problem arose when people had to decide what to do with the shiny new technology. Like financially irresponsible lottery winners, enthusiasts started buying everything in sight, even if it was a pixelated image of a man with a mohawk created by an algorithm.

NFTs: A Fad or the Future? A More Critical Look By Aron Vaughan

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Blockchain technology is moving at a blinding speed. NFTs, in particular, took the world by storm, providing investors an opportunity to become digital art collectors. The whirlwind of NFT madness swept up all kinds in its ascent to blockchain celebrity status. Investors scurried to fall in line, blindly following the Bored Ape’s siren call. Celebrities, eager to expand their wealth and cultural influence (or relevance), jumped at the chance to board the moving train by releasing their own collections. Aspiring elites reached a new level of pretentiousness by flaunting their newly purchased 8-bit CryptoPunks on social media. Now, after more than a year of being able to process the phenomenon after the initial NFT gold rush, we should all slow down, take a moment for reflection and ask a crucial question: What does the future look like for NFTs?

Shortly after NFTs began appearing on the Bitcoin blockchain, Ethereum created a smart contract layer that allowed buyers to leverage more of the capabilities of blockchain technology. Enter the flood of digital assets like CryptoKitties and bona fide NFT platforms like singer John Legend’s OurSong. The success is also due, in part, to the historic run of cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum. NFTs seemed to offer the perfect solution to people who missed the crypto boat. If one bitcoin was worth $5 in January 2012 and reached an all-time high of over $68,990.90 in 2021, surely a Bored Ape could fetch a cool mill in 2030 — if the AI apocalypse isn’t in full swing yet. The Fall of a Short-Lived Empire Cryptocurrency and NFTs have in common the fact that their value is determined by the collective. The difference is, crypto is falling in line with traditional markets more and more as mainstream investors wade into the pool. In addition to those investors, there is a significant X-factor at play. NFT values are at least in part propped up by hipsters who judge the inherent value of a piece by how sleepy a

cartoon ape looks. This alone, however, is not a sound long-term investment strategy. As the glossy sheen of novelty is stripped away by time, we are beginning to see cracks in the armor of NFTs. In March 2021, Jack Dorsey, thenCEO of Twitter, auctioned his first tweet as an NFT on the “Valuables” platform run by Cent, a blockchainpowered social media network. The 15-year-old tweet — “just setting up my twttr” — was purchased by crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi for 1,630.58ETH, which was worth an estimated $2.9 million at that time, according to NBC. Estavi attempted to sell the blockchain-authenticated tweet NFT on OpenSea, an NFT trading platform, in April 2022. The highest bid was worth $9,968, a $2,905,867 drop in value. Herein lies the original sin of NFTs — value is highly subjective and many of the digital pieces stretch the definition of “collector’s item” to its limit. In mid-May, weekly NFT sales plunged 50% to $255 million from $505 million in the prior week, following a recent crypto crisis that saw Bitcoin fall below $30,000 for the first time since its meteoric rise in 2021.

Decentraland and the Sandbox. Acura, Estee Lauder, HSBC and JPMorgan Chase are just some of the names buying virtual real estate in the metaverse, but the more esoteric NFT could become the most prestigious asset to hold in your virtual hands. Picture yourself in your Decentraland mansion you recently purchased for a sickening amount of money — paid in full with the latest altcoin, of course. You want to peacock for your comrades by showing off the opulent piece of real estate. But the walls are missing something … Art! So you transfer your Azuki avatar collection from your crypto wallet and plaster them all over the white abode. Now you and your friends can bask in the subjective beauty of anime-inspired headshots. But that is merely the tip of the iceberg. Digital clothing sold as unique NFTs can adorn your virtual body. You will undoubtedly receive VIP treatment at the growing number of nightclubs in the space. Access to exclusive clubs featuring popular artists is also often provided by purchasing NFT tickets.

If established cryptos can’t hold their value through fluctuations in the global economy, there isn’t much hope for the nascent NFT market.

While NFTs are still reveling in their moment in the sun, a shift seems be approaching. The combination of high market volatility, subjective value, and an emerging lucidity from the hype of the past few years have led to an increased instability in the NFT market.

Finding a Home Verified ownership of digital art does have a place in the world — but not the one in which we live and breathe. The metaverse is becoming more mature as time goes on. Corporations are even setting up shop in the virtual landscape of

They could still rise to greatness, but the current shakiness of the market means a more cautious approach should be taken. Do your homework and know the research. There is still money to be made in the market, but there is also still plenty to be lost.

CRYPTONFT TODAY — A NEW WEEKLY FEATURE In April, we beta-launched CryptoNFTToday. This new weekly feature at innotechtoday.com includes the hottest news from throughout the crypto world over the past week. In the same format as our 5 Things to Know posts each week, CryptoNFTToday gathers the biggest stories and puts them into bite-sized morsels. The stories are designed to keep you informed with just a few short minutes of your time. You can also visit us on Twitter @CryptoNFTToday and sign up for our new newsletter by following the QR code below.

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VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

Presented By

The Last Tepui National Geographic’s Latest Documentary Takes Viewers Deep Into the Heart of the Amazon Rainforest By Aron Vaughan Exploration and adventure are intrinsic to our DNA. Humans have been obsessed with unlocking the mysteries of the great unknown since the beginning of our shared history. Whether it’s uncovering the secrets of lost civilizations or reaching the farthest edges of our Blue Planet, humans are a species of pioneers. In the last century, our innate penchant for discovery has even seen us launch data gathering equipment into the solar system and beyond.

Amazon to reach the base camp, set up shop at the site and explored the surrounding area for new species, while the rest of the crew crossed the Rubicon into the dense jungle with the ultimate goal of setting foot upon the primordial paradise that lies on the edge of the quartzite cliff face of Weiassipu. The wall climb was executed deftly and with relative ease — barring the ascent of a particularly difficult section of the wall known as a roof. The epic adventure into the wilderness was not in vain. Means and his colleagues collected what they believe to be five new species, including a new species of Stefania found in the cloud forest below Weiassipu. All are currently being studied to confirm his findings. Other rare species found on the expedition include MacConnell’s Pebble toad, the Roraima tree frog and the Kanaima tree frog.

And while we have scoured almost every inch of our planet’s surface, there are still virgin regions that boast diverse micro-ecosystems. Ecologist Bruce Means, Ph.D., has been studying amphibian and reptile biodiversity of the woodlands, swamps, and bogs of the Florida Panhandle and making expeditions into the vast wilderness of northeastern South America for over 40 years. At 80 years old, his latest effort to “bag and tag” previously undiscovered amphibian and reptile species brought him deep into the Amazon rainforest in the heart of Guyana. Means and his expedition team, which included free solo climber Alex Honnold, were tasked with charting the rainforest’s last unexplored tepui — an “island in the sky” teeming with biodiversity. Formed on the bed of a primordial sea 1.7 billion years ago, tepuis can give unprecedented insight into the evolution of all life on Earth. The reason the Weassipu tepui had not yet

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

been explored is fundamentally a logistic one; much of the wildlife exists on a plateau extending from the side of the sky-high archipelago. This is where Honnold and his worldrenowned climbing skills come into play. After establishing a base camp at Double Drop Falls deep within the Amazon rainforest, Honnold, fellow professional climbers Federico Pisani and Mark Synnott, and director Dr. Taylor Rees and her production crew hacked through five miles of untouched rainforest to the base of Weiassipu. Means, after traversing the harsh terrain of the

Means has been a conservationist for almost as long as he has been in the field of ecology, and the discovery of these unique animals will also help in the fight to conserve the biodiversity within the Amazon. I had an opportunity to talk with Honnold and Rees about the expedition, the first ascent of Weiassapu’s cliff face and what the discoveries mean for conservation in the region. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Innovation & Tech Today: How did this ascent compare to others in terms of difficulty? Alex Honnold: Well, it wasn’t nearly as difficult

AH: I would say it’s difficult for sure. It’s very exciting to be in that kind of position in the middle of nowhere in the jungle, but it’s not like cutting-edge climbing. We were there to serve the greater expedition, to make it up the wall, to look for species of frogs, to help Bruce get into this place. The climbing was cool, but it wasn’t really the most important part. We spent 10 days walking to the wall, and then a couple of days climbing the wall. The bulk of our time was spent navigating the jungle and exploring.

as sometimes, but that wasn’t really the point. The point was to go to this incredible new place, and to explore a new wall. To give Dr Means, give Bruce an opportunity to complete his Elevational Transit. Basically, look for species along the way. The difficulty – I would say – it was a challenging climb, but it wasn’t cutting edge by any means. But it’s cool, it’s a very nice rock, it’s a good climb, it’s an incredible location. Really we were there more to support Bruce, and to facilitate the science. I&T Today: As someone who spends a lot of time in nature, have you always had a passion for ecology, biology, and zoology? If not, did you gain a new appreciation through this? AH: That’s one of the most interesting things about this trip, I’m outdoors a lot, and I would say I love nature, but I’ve never really loved the jungle. I don’t know that much about biology, and Bruce’s passion for biology was so infectious that I came out of the trip with a much greater appreciation for the wealth of species in the jungle. I definitely care way more about the whole ecosystem there, after the trip than before. Hopefully, that’s something that people can take from the documentary as well. His passion for the whole web of life there is pretty incredible. I&T Today: How gnarly was that roof? In the documentary, there was that point where all of it seemed okay, but that seemed a little difficult.

I&T Today: What’s next for you on the agenda? Any new first descents? Biologist Bruce Means (left) and Climber Alex Honnold. (National Geographic/Renan Ozturk)

AH: I’m mostly focused on fatherhood for a little bit. I actually do have another show with Nat Geo coming up this summer, that’s an expedition agreement. That is actually the only trip I’m really doing this year because of fatherhood. In many ways, this upcoming trip is inspired by this trip to Guyana.

(Above) Change to Honnold and the team trekked through the Amazon jungle for days on their mission to discover new species. Photo: National

Geographic/Renan Ozturk

Being in the jungle with Bruce, and seeing the opportunities for basic science on the climbing trip, made me realize that if I’m going to do other climate expeditions like this in the future, I should probably have a scientific component to it. Basically, it should try to be slightly more useful than just climbing. We’re doing something very similar in Greenland this summer with climate science, and also through National Geographic.

I&T Today: Taylor, what drew you to the project?

VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

Presented By

Taylor Rees: That’s a great question. I’ve always loved stories that combine real adventure with science. Science and ecology can be a subject that not everyone is quite as excited about as Bruce, but when you really think about it, it’s just like climbing.

We had this opportunity to travel through the jungle with 80 Akawaio porters, cooks, and people that are involved in this kind of stuff. Just even the interexchange of ideas, and learning from them, and how they’re

The climbing team settled into a wall camp at night on the tepui face.

Science is an exploration to understanding a living environment. To combine this adventure with Alex who we’ve known, and worked with forever, and is a good friend, and to learn from Bruce just seemed like a really cool combination. There’s also a great potential for impact, not only just to help people, in general, become aware of this Galapagos in the sky, but to be inspired by Bruce’s curiosity. As Alex said, to take that into their own lives, and backyards, and be “Earth is amazing.” It’s great to look around.

(National Geographic/Renan Ozturk)

(Below) Biologist Bruce Means in front of Double Drop Falls.

movements. I&T Today: How’s Bruce the expedition? Both physically, and emotionally? TR: I was just on a PR event with him two seconds ago, and he is rearing to go back. He was trying to come up with the title of the sequel. I&T Today: Do either of you plan on going back? Is there more to explore? Are there

(National Geographic/Renan Ozturk)

more species to be found? Is there more to do in conservation there? AH: I would say there are definitely more species to be found. There’s definitely more to be done in conservation.

(Below) Dr. Means is looking for new species of frogs.

I&T Today: How difficult is it to make this area in Guyana a protected region? How much did the expedition help in protecting the status of the area? TR: That’s a great question. There’s a lot of different ways that conservation happens, whether it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site or a federally established national park. INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

support those conservation

doing? How is he feeling after

(National Geographic/Ryan Valasek) TR: We had a lot of gear. We shot the entire thing on Sony, so we were working with Sony’s smaller Mirrorless Alpha One, a 7S111 camera, as well as their FX6. The hardest part was that the jungle was extremely wet, and the lenses were constantly fogging. Everything’s getting moldy, we had lenses that literally grew mold in them. As Alex said, we had a five-person film crew, and we brought a lot of gear.

hope the film will inspire and

(National Geographic/Ryan Valasek)

I&T Today: What kind of gear did you take with you for filming? Is there anything that you took specifically for a project like this, where you’re in the middle of the jungle, that you wouldn’t have on Federico Pisani makes a first ascent up other sets? the cliff face of Weiassipu. AH: I think the real question is which gear didn’t break.

approaching this all was amazing. We

I personally would like to go back to climb on some different objectives. Some of the walls there are quite a bit bigger, steeper, and more impressive than the wall that we climbed in the show. We were there because it hadn’t been climbed before, and because it was part of Bruce’s Elevational Transit. It totally made sense for Bruce’s research, but from a strictly climbing perspective, there are some bigger tepuis in other parts of, mostly Venezuela. Federico Basani, who’s on the trip

What I think we are really inspired to see is that the Amerindian indigenous communities down there are organizing. They have what is called COCAs, Community Organized Conservation Areas. I think what we’re all learning in this time period, is that when the people of a region can be really integrated into conservation that’s best.

with us, the two of us have talked a little bit about going back to some of the other more extreme tepuis at some point in the future. It’d be more of a strictly climbing trip. I think there’s incredible opportunity in the whole region for all of the things you described. ■

Presented By

Riding Above the Waves By Michael Coates

Photos courtesy of Fliteboard

Surfing has always been the classic surfer vs. nature battle. It’s a surfer, a board and a wave — winner take all. Enter the Fliteboard. The Fliteboard is to the surfboard what electric cars are to skateboards. Or what hydrofoils are to traditional harbor craft. It’s a bit of both. What we’ve got here is an eFoil, an electric surfboard that rises above the water, powered by an electric motor. In its latest version, Flite — the Australian-based creator of the Fliteboard — has upped the ante by boosting its batteries, using a quieter and more powerful motor and lightening up the whole package through the use of titanium. The Fliteboard Series 2.2 is a triumph of technology, upgrading its eFoil that was first introduced in 2018. Flite founder David Trewern, a serial entrepreneur who also once held a world record for kite-surfing, summered up the Series 2.2 as “the melding of all of our technology into an even quieter ride with twice the potential power and more control.”

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Titanium plates replace aluminum ones from the earlier design, dropping weight and increasing impact resistance. This version also incorporates 21700 cells — the style found in electric cars like Tesla — in its battery to boost performance, along with a new thermal management system. The board’s already quiet, small motor (60mm in diameter) is even quieter and it’s packaging for travel has been redesigned to be 40% smaller. Flite is also planning to add an app that will allow Fliteboard riders to connect with the global community of riders, allowing for competitions and the sharing of ride data from eFoilers. That community has grown considerably since this company launched four years ago. It claims sails of 6,500 Fliteboards to owners in more than 90 countries. The boards are distributed through 200 partners worldwide. The world of electric marine watersports is growing with Flite claiming some serious marks. The company claims the record for the faster eFoil speed (55 km/34 mph/29 knots) and also

surfing the biggest waves ever ridden (Nazare) on an electric hydrofoil. The Fliteboard Series 2.2 is currently available for $12,645 USD. The company spokesperson said it plans to continue to innovate and offer improvements on its boards in the future. It also offers three other models — the Pro, the Ultra and the Air for riders of varying skill levels. The eFoils also have a variety of different wings and other accessories that can enhance the rider’s experience. ■ The video of the big ride is at youtube.com/ watch?v=ZgxxRuEQ3Ug or scan the code.

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How AI and Blockchain Technologies Can Help Fight the Next COVID By Aron Vaughan

Artificial intelligence is being utilized in almost every piece of tech these days. Machine learning and computer vision are making self-driving cars and robot assistants a reality. But AI is more than just a tool for convenience and robotic friendship. Some of the most remarkable advances attributed to AI are in the healthcare field, and more applications for the novel technology are being pursued every day.

Photo iStockphoto.com/Morsa Images

Novel Technology for a Novel Virus COVID-19 forced scientists and researchers in medical science to find innovative solutions at a rapid pace. Operation Warp Speed, a collaboration between the U.S. government and private companies to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, was aptly named. Less than 12 months from the identification of the SARSCoV-2 pathogen, a vaccine was developed. The speed of the rollout can be attributed in large part to the technology implemented in its development process. Messenger RNA, viral vectors, and spike protein technology played the biggest role, but AI aided in creating a model for the vaccine. Researchers used natural language processing models, a subbranch of AI, to understand the virus’ structure to predict which immune response a potential treatment would trigger. This is how the vaccine method and what its contents would be were determined.

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Photo iStockphoto.com/blackdovfx

Blockchain’s Role in Tracing Identifying virus origins and targeting early outbreaks before they spread to a global scale are crucial procedures in preventing the spread of another coronavirus and subsequent pandemic. Blockchain tracking technology can help health organizations and local governments stop outbreaks at the source, minimizing the need for widespread lockdowns that disrupt daily life and hinder the perpetual motion of the economy. Early warning systems require swift identification of the starting point of a virus. Early COVID infections were traced back to retailers or shoppers at the Huanan Seafood Market of Wuhan, China. However, the tracing process was slow and required multiple strategies to implement. Metric tons of food cross geographical borders on a daily basis, so tracing infections back to a source can be logistically difficult and time-consuming. Through the blockchain, analysts can track monetary transactions back to markets where infected animals are sold and discern where, and from what source, a virus initially spread.

AI Analytics More data mean more solutions. Preventing the spread of disease requires real-time information and analytics. Advances in big data analytics through AI are revolutionizing how data are collected in health emergencies like COVID-19. AI algorithms can sift through data collected from smart devices, bench-top analyzers, and hospital or pharmacy records to create a comprehensive network of relevant data for scientists to analyze. The amount of time it would take humans to collect and sort through that extent of raw data would render the information almost useless, as a virus could have already spread to other regions and mutated into new variants.

Photo iStockphoto.com/gorodenkoff

With a network of virus-detection sensors powered by AI and location tracking technology, local advisories and quarantines can be implemented quicker and with more accuracy, saving lives and alerting nearby regions of infections.

Photo iStockphoto.com/cgtoolbox

AI’s Role in T Cell Mapping AI models can improve current vaccines and provide the building blocks to create new ones by targeting previously unmapped T cells. Immune defense works by using white blood cells to identify pathogens in the body and mount a defense reaction against them. The immune system then stores information on previously encountered pathogens like a biological recordkeeping book. White blood cells, or lymphocytes, contain B cells that produce antibodies against pathogens, and T cells that destroy the targets. T cells target viruses by locking onto surface proteins on virus cells and destroying them. The problem for scientists when creating effective vaccines is finding which T cells lock onto which proteins. “An individual is estimated to carry more different T cell keys than there are stars in the Milky Way,” according to Medical Life Sciences News. A new AI model developed by researchers at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki improves current vaccines and provides the building blocks to creating new ones by finding new lock and key combinations of previously unmapped T cells. “The AI model we created is flexible and is applicable to every possible pathogen — as long as we have enough experimentally produced key-lock pairs,” said Emmi Jokinen, M.Sc. and a Ph.D. student at Aalto University. “For example, we were quickly able to apply our model to coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 when a sufficient number of such pairs were available.”

Photo iStockphoto.com/DKosig

A Future Without Pandemics COVID presented unique challenges to everyone. Unprecedented public policies were implemented at varying degrees around the world, scientists were faced with solving a global pandemic with little information to work with and people were cut off from family and friends. However, the experience gained during the rise of COVID in every sector paired with advances in AI and blockchain technology can facilitate a new understanding of how to combat pandemics. With the current tools at our disposal, novel viruses can be mitigated so the scale of the pandemic will hopefully never be seen again. ■

VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

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Brain Games, StarTalk, and All Things Science: An Interview With By Corey Noles All photos courtesy of National Geographic/Mike Taing

Comedian, podcaster, actor, and self-professed “science geek” Chuck Nice is a busy guy. His most recent ventures have seen him operate at the intersection of pop culture and science. Nice co-hosts StarTalk with Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, where he provides humorous commentary to aid the insights of the popular astrophysicist, and Playing with Science alongside Gary O’Reilly. But Nice isn’t just there to provide comic relief to a discussion on topics that can be confusing for the 99% of us who are non-scientists; he has a genuine love for the field. We sat down with Nice to talk about Brain Games, his career, and his innate love of all things science. Innovation & Tech Today: You’re a man of a variety of talents and projects, I mean, comedian, actor, podcast host, Brain Games host, seems like you’ve got a lot to juggle these days? Is that difficult? Chuck Nice: It is. But two things help, one, I meditate, and two, I end every day with a big tumbler of scotch. I&T Today: You seem to be a really natural fit for the Brain Games audience. Watching those first few episodes. I’m seeing you look comfortable, you look at home. How did you land in Brain Games? CN: Interesting. I think it has to do with the fact that, increasingly I have been moving into the science space, and as a fan, but also as a science communicator, I never really call myself a science communicator, because I think it’s a disservice to people who are science communicators, for me to include myself in that brood. However, it’s just something that has kind of naturally happened to me.

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Chuck Nice

So, Terry Danuser of Nat Geo, who is familiar with me and my comedy through StarTalk on Nat Geo, may have had something to do with it. No one’s ever told me the actual story, but all I know is that he, Jo [Sharon], and Casey at Magical Elves said, “All right, let’s just look at this guy.” And then it was like, “Okay, this makes a lot of sense.” And when I did the audition, and I very rarely do this — after the audition, I say to myself, “Man, I hope I get that.” Of course, you hope you get every job for which you audition. But what you don’t want to do is be hopeful about getting the job, because 90% of the time you’re going to be disappointed.

Team Dad and His Girls

So the answer is always no, and then every once in a while somebody goes, “Well, wait a minute, maybe.” And so that’s how you get jobs in entertainment. But after I did the audition, I was like, “God, I hope I get this job, man. This is just so much fun, and it’s everything that I love, it’s science, it’s games, it’s talking to people, it’s joking around, and you learn something, you can’t get better than that.” I&T Today: Yeah, for sure. I’ve watched Brain Games for years, and there’s always a moment where my mind is just blown. Does that still happen to you as a host?

Team Elephants

CN: Yeah, but it happens before the show, because they give me a packet, so I get the brain science that’s attached to the game, I get the game, what game we’re going to play. So I know the science behind the game before we do it, but even reading it, I tend to say, “Oh my goodness, that’s pretty amazing.” I&T Today: How did your interest in science come to be?

Chuck Nice presenting the trophy to the episode’s winning team.

Host Chuck Nice of Brain Games: On the Road.

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All photos: National Geographic/Mike Taing

NASA, and you know one of the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel and Climate Change.” And they’re like, “Damn.” And I’m cheating, I know who’s going to be on the show, I go read their stuff before I sit down with Neil. Because all I want to do is be a part of the conversation, and be able to ask questions of stuff that I want to know, just like the people who are listening, and I can’t do that if I don’t know what I don’t know.

(Above) Host Chuck Nice watches as the West Coasters complete the “Word Waterfalls” brain buster. (Top right) Host Chuck Nice watches as the West Coasters high five. (Bottom right) Robyn runs on stage as Team Settlers of California competes in “The Missing Link.” (This Photo) Host Chuck Nice laughs with Team Settlers of California.

CN: Interesting that you ask, because people think that I started working with Neil, and then I started liking science. It’s just the opposite. I have liked science and loved science since I was in elementary school, and I’ve been kind of closeted about it. Listen, let’s be honest, a kid that goes to school, knows all about culture, and maybe curses so that he seems a little bit more like an adult, and wears all the great fashion — that’s the cool kid. The kid coming to school talking about dark matter, the expansion of the universe, gravity waves — let’s invite him to every party. “Hey man, get over here. You hear this guy

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

talking about gravity waves from the collision of two black holes? You’ve got to hear this. Get over here.” No, no, that’s not happening. So what ends up happening is, you keep all that stuff inside, and on the outside you present all that other stuff. And that’s kind of what my whole life was until I had to come out of the closet, because I’m working with this astrophysicist, and I’m talking to all the top scientists in the world, and quite frankly, whenever you do that… So people think that I’m just there, and a lot of people say, “Oh man, you’re so smart.” Like, “I hear you talking to these scientists, the chief scientists of

I&T Today: You and Neil have such a fun dynamic together, and I’ve always felt like your opposite senses of humor play a role in that. CN: Yeah, because “Neil is funny …” He’s a funny guy, and he gets the joke when I make a joke. So when we first started, people were a little upset, they were like, “Why is Neil sitting with this dude? And this guy is interrupting the science.” And Neil would say, “Just relax, we’re going to get to the science. Let us just have some fun while we do it.” And once again, that’s what I love about Brain Games, is the fact that we’re going to get to the science, and you’re not even going to know that we got to the science, because by the time we get to the science, you will have experienced the science, you will have seen it. It will become experiential, and then when you learn about what you just experienced, it now resonates in a way that it

would not have, and the same thing happens [with] StarTalk. I don’t want to sound self-important, and I don’t want to make people think that I’m bigger than I am, but I really feel like when you watch this show, it’s doing a service. Watch it with your kids, they may say, “Oh man, I never knew that.” And then they may be sparked, their curiosity might be sparked, and they might want to learn more, or they might say, “Chuck is so annoying, we can’t watch this ever again.” But then make them watch it anyway, because they’re going to learn something, damn it. I&T Today: Well, nice thing about Brain Games too is that, I have four kids, they’re all 16 and up, they’re not into documentaries and stuff like that, but they love Brain Games. CN: Yeah. Isn’t it funny? So people say, “Oh my God, you’re the new host of Brain Games, I love that show.” I haven’t heard anybody say, “So you’re the new host of Brain Games, what a piece of crap that is.” Yeah. “I can’t believe that, man, why would you do that? Why’d you take that job?” No, people love this franchise. They love it. And I’m really just happy to be the guy who’s running point right now for it. I&T Today: I guess one last question I

(Above) Team Bomb Schells and the FAB 4 find out who the winner is from Host Chuck Nice. (This Photo) The Wolfpack team celebrates a challenge victory.

wanted to ask, do you have any advice for young people considering STEM careers today? CN: As a dad with two students, in two separate STEM academies, who are both on AP tracks, and who are both honors students, they are also both adopted, so they did not get any of my stupid gene, I’m joking, I am joking, I’m joking. They are my biological children, just in case they hear this interview, kids, you’re not adopted, you’re not. Let me just say this, STEM is where the future is. We live in a society now, and we’re soon to live in a global society, where, I hate to say this, the lion’s share of physical labor is going to be done by machines.

If we don’t all destroy ourselves first, the lion’s share of physical labor will be done by machines. Two things are going to have to happen. One, there’ll be a little bit of universal income, the other thing that’s going to happen is, we’re going to have to transition into a state where critical thinking and scientific discovery, the scientific method, and evidentiary process is what drives our economy, and our society, and that’s science. ■ Follow Chuck on Twitter, @ChuckNiceComic, and online at ChuckNiceComic.com. Brain Games: On The Road is available on Nat Geo and streams on Disney+. VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

Disney World’s Latest Resort Is Out of This World Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser offers short cruises to a galaxy far, far away. By John Gaudiosi Walt Disney World Resort - The Walt Disney Company continues to expand its Star Wars universe beyond the traditional movies, TV shows, video games, comics, merch, toys, and novels. The latest experience is exclusive to Walt Disney World, just outside Hollywood Studios’ 14-acre Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge land. Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser offers the most immersive Star Wars experience you’ll find on this planet, although the two-night, two-and-a-half-day cruise will cost you $5,000 to $6,000. A True Homage Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser may be listed as another resort amidst Disney’s four theme parks and two water parks, but it’s definitely nothing like the other traditional hotels spread throughout the sprawling property. From the moment you drive up to the Galactic Starcruiser Terminal and take the launch pod up to the Halcyon starcruiser, you and your family become part of a live-action role-playing experience that combines video game design, live theater, costumed characters and aliens, and of course, lightsabers. For Star Wars fans, this is a dream come true, especially if you have kids who are into the lore. Scott Trowbridge, portfolio creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, said this is an offering designed for people who love Star Wars and people who love people who love Star Wars. “We’ve made it safe and fun to dress up and play Star Wars, but you don’t need to dress up,” Trowbridge said. The Halcyon starcruiser is the jewel of the Chandrila Star Line, and your voyage celebrates 275 years of lavish cruises. Han Solo and Princess Leia honeymooned aboard this 100cabin Corellian MPO-1400 model starcruiser. And the massive ship was built in the same

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Photo: Disney/Kent Phillips

shipyards as the Millenium Falcon. Speaking of the Falcon, that beloved ship makes an appearance in your adventure, along with its hairy co-pilot, Chewbacca. Doug Chiang, vice president/creative director, Lucasfilm Creative, said that in Star Wars films and TV shows, the experience is guided by the filmmakers. “With Halcyon and Galaxy’s Edge, we’re allowing guests to create their own story,” Chiang said. An Immersive Star Wars Experience Chiang said the Halcyon bridges use design aesthetics from all of the films. George Lucas designed all of the guidelines, allowing the Galactic Starcruiser to combine prequel aesthetics with those in the original trilogy. “A lot of details aboard the Halcyon are the same fidelity as we create for feature films,”

Chiang explained. “It’s the same materials and fabrics we’d use in our movie sets. To design something where there are no tricks — the view you see out your window into space is in realtime. You’re allowed to go everywhere on the ship, which is like one giant movie set. And over the two-and-a-half days experience, the suspension of disbelief is never broken.” Trowbridge and his team of Walt Disney Imagineers have been developing the interactive storyline and the technology that enables this level of immersion for the past six-and-a-half years. The experience was developed in tandem with Galaxy’s Edge, which opened in two phases in June and December 2019. Those who have visited that land in Florida or its identical twin at Disneyland in Anaheim, are familiar with the timeline that’s set between the events of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. That allows characters like Chewie,

Rey, and Kylo Ren to play a role in both the Halcyon experience and Galaxy’s Edge. “As we were developing Galaxy’s Edge at the same time as Starcruiser, we thought about what characters could exist across the two experiences,” said Wendy Anderson, executive creative director of Walt Disney Imagineering. “It’s unlike anything anyone has done before because it’s so rooted in Star Wars canon and what the passengers bring as they choose if they want to play in the underworld or aid the First Order or join the Resistance.” Photo: Disney/Matt Stroshane

Trowbridge explained that the stories that start aboard the Halcyon experience will follow passengers down to the land as part of the shore excursion to Black Spire Outpost on Batuu. “What happens there, the way we integrate the attractions, the different lens that we give our Halcyon passengers to see those attraction experiences and other new experiences that we invite them to have on the land, and then have the results of those experiences, the results of those choices, follow you back up to the ship,” Trowbridge said.

Photo: Disney/Kent Phillips

From the moment you step off the shuttle pod and into the ornate lobby of the Halcyon, guests mingle with aliens, crew, and droids, including SK-620 and D3-09. The story takes a dark turn when First Order Lieutenant Harman Croy boards the ship with stormtroopers to seek out any Resistance fighters. That opens up the ability to choose sides and either help the Resistance members embedded on the ship’s crew or turn them over to the First Order. Depending on whether you choose to follow the Light side or the Dark side, you’ll be given secret missions to perform down on Batuu using the Data Pad (which is unlocked on the Play Disney Parks app). Passengers will also receive Lightning Lane passes to ride Millenium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run and Rise of the Resistance, which tie back to the events on the Halcyon and culminate in an epic Hollywood-style battle that takes place in 360 degrees as you stand in the lobby. Without giving away the plot points, which will be fun to experience first-hand, there are opportunities to rescue Chewbacca and come

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ship). The more you are out and about interacting and role-playing, the more fun you’ll have over the course of the cruise. Your AI Guide to the Star Wars Universe Of course, this being Star Wars, when you are in your cabin, you can keep up with the events across the ship via D3-09, a very unique virtual robot that is housed in each of the 100 rooms. “D3-09 is one of our first AI experiences,” said Trowbridge. “She fills you in with rumors and scuttlebutt about the cruise. She’s been on the ship for 275 years and she really wants to hear from you. She learns and changes based on the conversations you have with her. We’re trying to make you feel like you’re having real, meaningful interactions.” Photo: Disney/Caitlyn McCabe

Photo: Disney/Matt Stroshane

Photo: Disney/David Roark

Food Photos: Disney/Kent Phillips

face-to-face with the hulking, hairy Wookie aboard the starcruiser. That alone is something that die-hard fans (many of whom cosplay for the cruise experience) will find worth the price of admission. Also, the entire experience has been designed for children and adults to play together. From the video game bridge experiences that offer four styles of interactivity and giant immersive screens to see the action unfold to the physical button and lever puzzles in the ship’s engine room to playing a fourplayer holographic Sabaac card game in the SubLight Lounge to learning the ways of the force with lightsaber training (with added light shields for more interactions), interactivity unfolds on multiple levels given the live actors

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that constantly play a role in your cruise. “Depending on who you meet, you can trust them or double-cross them as you want your story to unfold,” Anderson said. “As a result, each passenger’s cruise experience will be different, just as each cruise will be unique.” The term “cruise” is used often to describe the Halcyon, and for good reason. This hotel doesn’t have the fancy pools and amenities that guests are used to in resorts like the Polynesian Village, the Grand Floridian, and the Beach and Yacht Clubs. What you’re paying for here is immersive theater set in the Star Wars universe, and since the story takes place throughout the ship, your cabin is mostly used for sleeping (not unlike the experience on a Disney Cruise Line

D3-09 will also play a role in progressing your personalized story forward during the cruise. The way that the story intersects with traditional cruise staples like elaborate dinners with live entertainment from Twi’lek Gaya and her band in the Crown of Corellia dining room really keeps you immersed. Authentic Tatooine Cuisine Also, the elaborate cuisine that ties into Star Wars planets and lore is both colorful and tasty like the Bantha Beef Sirloin and the Tip Yip Chicken. There are also plenty of new alcoholic beverages like the Pod Chaser, Hoth Frost, Mooja Twist and Mandalore Sling. And just like a cruise ship, breakfasts and lunches are buffet style and casual, while dinners are assigned seating with more formal wear (in this case, Star Wars attire, including the exclusive Chandrilla Collection available in the ship’s gift shop). The price tag alone shows that this Star Wars experience isn’t for everyone. And if you’re not into Star Wars, you’re not going to reserve one of the 100 cabins aboard the Halcyon. But for those who are fans, the smaller number of passengers allows the fully immersive experience to unfold in a very personal way. Crew members will know your name, and as their stories progress, it’s like being part of an entertaining Star Wars movie experience, or at least as close as you can get to one in the real world. ■

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Underserved Gaming Communities Need Better Infrastructure Arena founder Chase Thompson weighs in on NFT Gaming By Andrew Rossow Aside from Axie Infinity, there seems to be a major backlash by gamers hesitant to jump aboard the NFT bandwagon in the deeper push to Web3. The concern grew stronger after GameStop announced its $100 million fund for game developers in early February. Following its announcement, GameStop has continued to acknowledge the fears that many of its customers have with respect to digital ownership and this new infrastructure of NFTs — recognizing the rapidly-changing gaming marketplace. On its face, gamers are understandably agitated over how games are currently monetized, where historically, gamers have been subjected to premium downloadable content, subscriptions, loot boxes, and microtransactions that haven’t always been well-received. But then you have major companies that announce NFT markets and the gaming economy seems to jump out of their seats ready to welcome it. As for developers and the overall community, the relationship is tense to say the least. The ongoing message most of the market’s NFT gaming projects are touting is the idea of “community” and a “gamer-first” mentality — which is hard for many to accept, considering the barriers that exist between developers and fans. By 2023, the estimated number of gamers is expected to reach just over 3 billion people, with play-to-earn (P2E) gaming becoming more integrated into our gamer economy as the world

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of blockchain and Web3 continues to evolve. Unfortunately, gamers have been left out to dry for far too long due to an archaic infrastructure and hierarchy that is controlled from the top-down by publishers and developers. As Web3 continues to drive gaming companies to shift their mindset on how they utilize gamers as well as distribute content, the push for appreciation and adequate compensation are top priorities. Following the conclusion of ETHDenver 2022, we spoke with Chase J. Thompson, founder and CEO of the P2E platform Arena about the need to better automate gaming communities. “With the massive number of gamers that engage in community gaming, it’s ironic that nobody is really building for these communities, let alone providing any opportunities to advertise or reach these communities,” says Thompson. Through its platform, Arena provides the

necessary infrastructure to allow gaming moderators and administrators to continue effectively managing their communities by providing the tools and resources that would otherwise need to be organically created from scratch — referring to multiple Google Sheets, word processing software, and other materials associated with a particular gaming league. “This model also affords opportunities for gamers to be compensated for their time and attention by measuring scores, records, achievements, and in-game metrics that are almost always left out of conversations. In February, Arena announced a partnership with competitive gaming league and DAO League of Degens (LoD) that pits NFT communities against one another in different gaming events. “Ever since we launched Arena we have set out to be pioneers in this industry and bring innovative ideas to the table to change the gaming industry,” Thompson explained. “League of Degens will not only bring a new

dimension to gaming, but it will give individuals more enhanced ways of earning money. We see this as getting very competitive very quickly especially as the prize pool grows and more teams join.” It’s worth mentioning that Arena is also working with CryptoDads, one of LoD’s launch partners to help better shape the gaming infrastructure community. One of the biggest takeaways from this year’s ETHDenver was the drive for each exhibitor and executive to get right back to building. For many, Web3 is an opportunity for many to do things right this time — referencing back to when the internet first came into existence and industries were not yet taking it seriously. “My advice to entrepreneurs in the gaming space is to not sleep on crypto,” Thompson notes. “It’s a pervasive technology and it’s going to permeate every aspect of life, including the internet and our economy. You are going to want to be in front of this trend and not play catch-up.” ■

VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

connected life

Vintage Tech: How Nostalgia is Shaping Modern Trends By Aron Vaughan Everything is better

through the eyes of

nostalgia. That Peking duck from a restaurant in a town you moved away from

years ago, the classic N64 game that seemed so real when, in reality, it still used 8-bit graphics, the best

friend from college who you forgot irritates the hell out of you (and still won’t pay for dinner).

Yes, sometimes it’s better

to let sleeping dogs lie and reminisce fondly on days past.

Of course, the free market

has other ideas. And that’s

not necessarily a bad thing. Yesterday’s technology

harnessed some tangible and intangible resources

that got lost in the sands of

time, to the detriment of the modern consumer.

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Photo: iStockphoto.com/ lechatnoir

Vinyl It’s no secret that vinyl has made a resurgence in the last decade. The analog medium saw an 18.5% yearover-year increase in sales in 2020 alone. Renewed interest in vinyl is not exclusive to hipsters, either. Music lovers are choosing to spin LPs and 45s instead of bluetoothing music from their phones to their AirPods because records just have more soul.

That majestic sonic landscape is how we have traditionally experienced music. In digitizing music, we break an analog wave up into separate bits, and process the information that way, making it much easier to work with. Unfortunately, in doing so, we produce a main wave that consists of millions of small sections — like a picture composed of millions of dots creating an image of high resolution.

It’s all about the harmonics. Any music — any sound in fact — consists not only of the main frequency, but also all of the countless sub-harmonics and superharmonics created by that fundamental note. Now, with analog, the initial note is seamless — continuous — so that its harmonics are unbroken.

Music, when played live, is a continuous wave. Vinyl preserves this, and in doing so, preserves its soul. No matter how many bits of information are stored and transported using “lossless” methods, there will always be a piece missing, no matter how infinitesimal. And the audiophile knows it — somehow — deep in his or her subconscious.

connected life

Nostalgia Worship Sometimes companies play on nostalgia by updating classics simply to ignite consumer interest. The tactic is more than welcome, however, when the product in question had a number of admirable qualities to begin with. To this end, Sony dropped an updated model of its classic Walkman mp3 player in February. There are myriad benefits to having a device where music is stored locally rather than streamed. Firstly, for rural or mountainous areas with a spotty internet connection, a device that has your favorite hiking playlist is invaluable. Secondly, the updated Walkman has an abundance of built-in upgrades that rival high-end stereos. The Sony Walkman NW-WM1ZM2 uses a full amplifier that is manufactured and made to fit inside the tiny bodies of the new music players. The result is a powerful amp that is capable of reproducing sounds at a greater dynamic range.

Sony fitted various FT CAP3 capacitors that offer large electrical capacitance and low resistance for the purest possible sound. Sony has also included DSEE Ultimate — a technology used extensively in their premium audio products. The algorithm allows any sort of music file in the player to be played at 16-bit 44.1/48kHz lossless audio, filling the gaps that are created when music is compressed and restoring all the acoustic subtleties and dynamic range lost due to the compression. For the collectors, the new Walkman even comes in a gold and copper plated model that is designed for function as well as being an object of envy. The digital grounding from the material combination ensures cleaner electrical signals from the internal components to produce cleaner, richer, expansive, and more accurate sounds. Best of all, it can still be taken on those mountain hikes because the chassis is made with rigidity in mind.

Sony Walkman NW-WM1ZM2

Another Brick in the Wall Marketing departments may initiate the resurrection of many classic products, but in some cases, companies don’t have any other choice but to breathe new life into the greatest hits of decades ago. This is certainly the case with Nokia’s famous “brick” phones from the early 2000s. Smartphones are a monument to human achievement. Advanced computers that live in our pockets are the stuff of 1950s sci-fi. But, everyone loves a comeback story, and the brick is making a case for its place in the new world for several reasons. 1. Constant connectivity can be exhausting. The heyday of the Nokia 3310 was a simpler time. People could interact with the world without the endless distractions of social media and mobile gaming. For some, smartphones have become a legitimate addiction, and those brick-style phones could be the methadone needed to wean away from the digital monkeys on our backs.

2. It takes a substantial amount of energy to power a smartphone, which means most phones stay charged for less than a day. The 2017 Nokia 3310 boasts 22 hours of talk time and 27 days of standby. The 2022 re-launch of the classic phone stays charged for a shorter amount of time but has 5G capability and an improved camera, so there is something for everyone. For people who are living off-grid or hiking the Pacific trail, the 3310 offers specs the new iPhone couldn’t possibly live up to. 3. It’s called a brick for a reason. The 3310 is virtually indestructible. Repairs on smartphones happen often and are almost as costly as the initial purchase. For people who work in highly physical jobs, a brick could save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per year. Trends come and go, and technology will continue to move forward at a blistering pace, but there are some feats in style and engineering that can’t be surpassed. That is why we will always be looking backward for inspiration to update modern classics. ■

2017 Nokia 3310 3G

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connected life

From a Dumb House to a Smart Sustainable Home Revolutionizing the shower experience with LED Lights, Voice-Powered Apps and Steam Therapy By Aron Vaughan Spring is not just a time for cleaning out last year’s junk; it’s a time of revival, new life, and most importantly — new upgrades to the home. Out with the old, but also in with the new, as the cliche goes. A good day starts with a good morning routine, which is why bathroom and kitchen tech are so important to health and wellness yearround. Starting your day off with a shower that mimics standing beneath a cleansing waterfall — or a steam session that revitalizes the body and mind and shakes off the stresses of the previous day — helps you manifest a little calm before stepping out into the world. The fact that you can do all this while jamming out to your favorite morning hype song makes the prospect of upgrading your shower to an integrated smart system almost a necessity. ThermaSol is at the forefront of shower tech and three of its new innovations in the space synthesize perfectly to create the best shower experience on the market.

HydroVive No ultimate shower experience is complete without a multi-sensory rainhead. The HydroVive by ThermaSol offers full-spectrum LED lighting, top-ofthe-line speakers, and a rainhead with 300 neoprene jets that can be set between 40 and 80 psi. The speaker system is equipped with Bluetooth capability and sound settings that include volume, treble, mid-range, and bass. If that’s not enough, a stereo RCA input is included so you can hook your showerhead up to a receiver.

SteamVection Steamhead The benefits of steam therapy have been known for centuries. Steam showers are believed to help circulation, tone body tissues, alleviate pain, and relax nerves. Shower tech like ThermaSol’s SteamVection steamhead brings these benefits into the home so you can integrate steam therapy into your daily routine. The SteamVection steamhead uses the science of convection to deliver floor-to-ceiling temperature uniformity throughout the shower space. This is a major upgrade to most steam showers which have a variable heat range. You can also take the therapy experience to the next level by adding essential oils to the steam. The whisper quiet system enables you to listen to a guided meditation or simply enjoy silence and steam together. Models are available in a circular or square design and ThermaSol offers 15 different finish options so the system complements any shower/bath aesthetic. ThermaTouch This is the tech that brings everything together. The ThermaTouch voice or touch-activated pad manages all aspects of the smart shower and steam experience: lights, music, precision water and temperature control, and shower outlet selections. It also features an integrated app store with platforms including live TV, sports, news, music, health and wellness, and streaming, so you can be informed on the latest news before sitting down to eat breakfast. And in true innovative fashion, ThermaTouch has smart home assistant compatibility, allowing users to remotely control the smart shower with Alexa, HomeKit, or Google Assistant. ■

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Kitchen & Bath Showcase Icera iWash S-11 | $743 | icerabath.com

Icera’s latest addition to the iWash product line, the iWash S-11, enhances the functionality of a traditional toilet while featuring upgrades to its predecessors. The iWash has a tankless, instant ceramic water heating system and a slim profile at only 5 inches tall. Some of the most appealing highlights are its self-cleaning capability and energy-efficient LED nightlight for ultimate efficiency and convenience. Other features include an oscillating front and rear wash bidet spray, adjustable water temperature and pressure, and adjustable nozzle position. Frigidaire Gallery 30’’ Freestanding Electric Range with Air Fry | $1,449 | frigidaire.com Air frying is the latest cooking trend due to its ease of use and health benefits compared to traditional frying. The Frigidaire Freestanding Electric Range with Air Fry combines a traditional convection oven with an air fryer. The result is an all-in-one appliance that pairs even multi-rack baking with a powerful convection fan and a third heating element that evenly circulates hot air throughout the oven. And, the 3,000W quick boil element and 30-minute light oven cleaning feature put in the top-of-line category for traditional ovens even without the addition of the air fryer.

Kohler Sensate Touchless Residential Bathroom Faucet | $707 | kbbonline.com

Touchless faucets are becoming a must-have for homeowners, paring convenience with sanitation — a high priority in a post-COVID world. Debuted at CES 2022, the Kohler Touchless Bathroom Faucet is the brand’s first offering in the category. The faucet operates by battery, has temperature control, and can be turned on and off with the wave of a hand. What makes Kohler’s faucet stand out is its vacation mode, ensuring the faucet won’t turn on during extended stays away. The sleek, yet rustic design offered in a variety of colors will fit into any home while still offering the best tech available.

GE Profile Ultrafresh System Dishwasher | $1,249 | geappliances.com GE’s Microban Antimicrobial Technology in the new Ultra Fresh Dishwasher System makes this appliance a standout in its category. Microban technology keeps treated surfaces 99% cleaner than unprotected surfaces, and smart dishwasher algorithms introduce clean air and reduce moisture, refreshing the wash system to help prevent the growth of bacteria. Interior filters are also treated with Microban technology. GE has introduced Wi-Fi to its latest dishwasher, so owners can monitor performance, check status and automatically reorder detergent using a mobile device. With these features and many others, the Ultra Fresh Dishwasher is truly the definition of a smart appliance.

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H A C K FEATURE STORY

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“Real-Life Tony Stark” James Hobson Talks Proto Sabers, Content Creation and Engineering His Way to Making Comic Book Concepts a Reality By Aron Vaughan Photos Courtesy of Hacksmith Industries

rowing up, I was determined to become the world’s first superhero. How hard could it be?

I spent my days transforming my basement into a real-life Batcave, to the exasperation of my parents, and exploring the mechanics of automatic grappling hooks. Twenty years later, I still have not fulfilled my dream of becoming the world’s first superhero, but there is one man who is getting pretty close. James Hobson, better known as The Hacksmith, is an engineer and content creator based in Ontario, Canada, who brings movie, video game and comic book concepts to life. Referred to as “the real-life Tony Stark” by many, Hobson is the closest thing to Iron Man in the world today. Since his first major build, an exoskeleton from the 2013 sci-fi movie Elysium, Hobson has created some of the most wellknown gadgets and weapons in comic book lore, including Thor’s hammer, Captain America’s magnetic shield and even the world’s first working retractable lightsaber. Hobson has collaborated with some of the top content creators in the world. He recently provided a working lightsaber to Jimmy Donaldson, the man at the helm of YouTube’s highest-earning channel, Mr. Beast. His social media presence has skyrocketed since his early videos, amassing over 12.4 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. Although I fell short of becoming the world’s first caped crusader, I did recently get the chance to speak with The Hacksmith himself about some of his heroic achievements featured on his Make it Real series on YouTube. Innovation & Tech Today: You give back to the community by showing kids what they can do in STEM by bringing comic book concepts to life. Is that something that you thought about when you were getting into it or was it an organic thing that?

James Hobson: Yeah, it was pretty organic. It definitely wasn’t something I even thought about when I first started making YouTube videos, but then we started getting comments from kids being like, “Whoa, I didn’t know this was engineering, this is cool.” And then the crazy thing is since we’ve been doing it for so long, the amount of comments we’ve gotten is like, “I went to engineering school because of you.” And now it’s been four or five years, we get comments being like, “I just graduated engineering school because I was inspired by your videos.” And it’s just like, whoa, that’s really cool. And we say we inspire lots of people and I’m sure we do, but it’s almost like we don’t even realize the impact that we have. Like you said, all it takes is one person that we inspire who goes into engineering and then maybe solves some world problem because they figured out this thing or the first Iron Man comes out because I inspired some kid by showing what I can do on YouTube. And it’s pretty cool. I&T Today: I know it’s a balance between the social media content and time at the warehouse coming up with these things. So how do you balance that time? And what are you doing more of these days? Are you more focused on content creation or being in the shop? JH: It’s constantly changing. As the business has grown, it’s constantly changed. I realized I’ve stopped doing things that I like doing and got caught up in the boring part of the business. I’m trying to work my way back to doing more of the creative. I do really enjoy problem-solving. I’ve actually been working on a few projects off-camera just because, the other thing is, depending on how you film the video, it can take the fun out of making something. And that’s something that I’ve been burnt out with for a while now. So I’m actually working on a collapsible Hawkeye bow that has a full draw weight string that will auto-deploy. Lots of people have made a collapsible bow before, but it uses

S M I T H FEATURE STORY

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FEATURE STORY /

an elastic string. I’m trying to make one that you can actually whip out the auto string and shoot an arrow in a matter of seconds. I’m fairly confident I’ve figured it out 99% of the way. And I’m really excited to actually finish that. And then maybe once I finish it, I’ll be like, okay, I’ll figure out how to make a video about this because it’s actually pretty cool. We’re actually working on a flying Dr. Strange cloak right now. I&T Today: Can you tell me a little bit about that? JH: So over a year ago now, I came up with the idea of doing a digital stunt wire system. Five years ago when I got my garage, we made basically, we called it the adult jolly jumper and we just put some pulleys in the ceiling. We had some sandbags attached to ropes and attached it to a harness and basically, it made you weigh half as much so you could jump and do backflips and things. It was pretty fun. It was just something we wanted to do at the time. And that sparked the idea last year where I’m like, “What if we had really powerful winches and you had those ropes on winches and you could precisely control those winches and move you around.” So then the concept became, “Oh, so we could make a digital stunt wire system where you

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could have on an iPad, basically the 3D space you’re in, and you could literally click and drag and be like, I want this person to go from here to here. I want them to jump up onto this box and then jump off and land over here.” So the first project we’re going to do with that is we’ve modified a Doctor Strange cloak to have support in the shoulder. We’ve attached this fishing line to it, and now this cloak can fly around the shop anywhere. And it looks amazing. The really neat thing is in the movie, it was just full CGI. We’ve made this cloak, this practical effect that actually is real. And just hearing the cloak fly, it’s just like this, actually, it won’t look great, but I’ll show you the video on my phone, through the webcam and*Hobson showed me a clip of the cloak flying around his warehouse that suggested sentience in the inanimate piece of fabric. JH: Does that not look like the movie? I&T Today: Yeah. That looks exactly like the movie. It literally looks like it is flying around by itself. That is awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about what inspired you to start Hacksmith Industries and the Make it Real series.

JH: Basically, throughout school, my first job, me and my now business partner would work on cool projects just because we wanted to. In the beginning, I used to document them on my blog and sometimes I’d take videos because it turned out I like making videos, too. And it was just a good way to document and share a project, because unless I can let you see physically or hold a project that I made, it is hard to show you what it is. So I found that by making a video, I could share exactly what it is and how it works. And I kept doing that and then YouTube opened up the partner program when I was graduating back in 2012 and I was like, oh, it’d be really awesome to make money off the internet, doing what I already want to do. That’s when I started making YouTube videos and came up with Make it Real and the Hacksmith. I did that for a few years, but didn’t have any traction. Finally, I do the exoskeletons project and that one really took off. It was my first viral project and it gave me the courage that, “Oh, people are interested in this kind of thing, this might be a possibility.” Fast forward a year and I bought a house with a really big garage because I saw having a big workshop as the ability to make bigger and cooler projects. And I quit my job at the end of the year and put everything into the channel.

FEATURE STORY I had maybe six months of savings to make it happen. And luckily that summer is when I did the Captain America electromagnet shield. And that video really popped off and the channel grew from a hundred thousand subscribers to half a million in a month.

Is it possible to have an armored suit with an exoskeleton? Totally. Is it going to be able to do the stuff that it does in the movie? Not quite.

favorite comic book character of all time? I’m guessing it’s either Iron Man or Captain America, but I could be way off.

I&T Today: What is your biggest achievement from your Make it Real series and what was the hardest thing to bring to life?

I&T Today: So how far away would you say you are from a full Iron Man suit with some sort of flight capability? I know you have the pulsars, I know that you have the helmet and you may have some sort of AI Jarvis system within that helmet.

JH: Definitely the power loader. We’re still revising it, we’ve actually got some exciting upgrades since the big test video. We’ve got a full control panel built in, we added a 360 camera system to it so you can actually see where you are at all times.

JH: Wolverine. Fellow Canadian. He’s the one who, if I could choose any powers, it would be his super strength and regenerative healing. I figure I’ve already got the brain. Iron Man’s possible. If I had Wolverine’s powers and Tony Stark’s intellect, I’d be unstoppable.

JH: I’d say we’re still pretty far away. I do actually want to do a Mark 1 suit at some point because that’s actually the most realistic and practical. Maybe not the flying part so much, that’s one of the biggest challenges is the movies keep getting more and more ridiculous.

It is definitely the most complicated piece of engineering we’ve done, most expensive project, most time-consuming project. And it’s definitely our biggest and best project so far.

I&T Today: It’s a high bar. JH: The physics just is, so it’s always a challenge managing expectations, too. Even like building a standard Iron Man suit, let’s say Mark 2, it’s such a small suit, the G-forces if you accelerate the way he accelerated you would become pudding on wayside. Him smashing into a wall is game over, in the movie it’s no problem. There’s a lot of real-life limitations that unfortunately make a lot of parts of the suit just not possible.

I&T Today: What did it feel like when you got the Guinness World Record for the first working retractable lightsaber? It was definitely our last biggest project that really grew the channel a lot, like a couple million subscribers, which is awesome. We want to chase that next project that outdoes that. It’s kind of hard though. A lightsaber is kind of one of those, it’s up there, was probably one of the most sought-after sci-fi items out there. I&T Today: So you’ve made the Captain America shield, you’ve made the Iron Man helmet and the gloves. Who is your

I&T Today: Finally, where do you see Hacksmith Industries in five years? JH: About a year ago, we actually bought 18 acres of land, and it’s the future home of HERC, Hacksmith Engineering Research Campus. The hope is to turn that basically into a real-life Avengers campus kind of thing. Be able to build absolutely anything in-house, and hopefully at some point be able to run some kind of summer camps or bring other people there. It’s hopefully going to be a bit of a maker’s Mecca. Basically, we got the shop, we got the tools, we got the toys. You got a cool idea, come on over. Let’s make it together kind of thing. My ambition is endless, which is a blessing and a curse. I might never be happy with how much success Hacksmith Industry sees, but it also keeps me hungry to continue growing the company and making it as big as possible and hopefully have the biggest impact it can on the world. ■

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TECH ZONE

NORTH CAROLINA

North Carolina 76

North Carolina’s ascension from its agrarian roots to one of the nation’s — and world’s — most important centers of innovation, technology, industry and research has been nothing short of astonishing. Once the nation’s 49th-ranked state economically, North Carolina now ranks 5th. Companies ranging from incubator start-ups to Fortune 100 giants continue to stream into the big three business megacenters — Greater Charlotte, the Research Triangle and Piedmont Triad — with no end in sight.

from new college graduates to white-collar executives and some of the world’s most renowned life sciences and medical researchers?

How did this former poverty-stricken state of tobacco, cotton, food crops and not much else transform so completely into such a vibrant hub, and an employment hotbed for everyone

The state and its various business hubs packaged this with the stunning natural beauty, moderate year-round weather and tourist havens that lie from the Smoky Mountains to

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Within the answer lies a blueprint for creating a business environment that covers all the bases. North Carolina combined growing universitybased research and work programs, highly beneficial incentives and tax abatements, and the willingness to open up to new types of industry with a top-to-bottom government focus on innovation, technology and job creation.

the Atlantic Ocean, promoted the state through sports events (the Duke-North Carolina basketball rivalry being the biggest) and an evergrowing golf footprint. The state put the icing on the cake with lifestyle, its buildout incentives and home prices that made it very hard to say “No”. When the businesses arrived and/or expanded, the people came: from 1950 to 2020, the population in the 16-county Research Triangle area, centered by Raleigh and Durham, jumped from 350,000 to nearly 2.1 million. The Research Triangle Park was the magnet that drew everyone into the state. It began with the vision of Gov. Luther Hodges in the 1950s, a collaboration between Duke, North Carolina,

NORTH CAROLINA

TECH ZONE

WHERE INNOVATION BEGINS By Robert Yehling Photo: iStockphoto.com

and North Carolina State, the campuses of which all border the park. The Research Triangle we know today took firm root in 1965 when IBM built a 600,000 square-foot facility for its 360 computer. Within the next decade, Chemstrand Burroughs Wellcome, Northern Telecom and others moved in. The park’s reputation for innovation was fully apparent by the early 1980s: IBM developed the UPC Barcode and Scanner; Burroughs created AZT, the drug that stopped the death march of HIV/AIDs; and Chemstrand was into its fourth generation of Astroturf. Today, the Research Triangle Park is home to more than 300 companies employing 55,000 people, including American Airlines, Bank of America, Caterpillar, Cisco Systems, Dell EMC,

Delta Electronics, DuPont, GlaxoSmithKline, General Electric, Nvidia, Verizon and many, many more. And that’s just one of the three cogs that are driving North Carolina’s economy and business presence through the 2020s. Once solely an agricultural and ag services economy, North Carolina now brings together global footprints in aerospace & defense, advanced manufacturing, automotive, truck and heavy machinery, biotech and pharmaceuticals, business & financial services, energy, food processing & manufacturing, IT, life sciences, plastics & chemicals, textiles, and tourism. The $56.4 billion drug and pharmaceutical presence is #3 in the nation, and research, testing and medical labs rank fifth in America. All in all, life science transactions alone add up to more than

$100 billion in sales from North Carolina. And it keeps growing. In March, the Research Triangle opened the Lilly Science and Technology Center, its new hub for biotech and IT training on the RTP campus of Wake Forest University — one of 20 colleges and universities partnering with business for research and workforce development, a great way to ensure quality employees for generations to come. In addition to directly contributing $1.1 million to the new center, Lilly has committed to a $1.4 billion expansion in business development in North Carolina in the next two years. North Carolina’s innovation and technology presence is hot and is going to stay as hot as the coastal summers. ■

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NORTH CAROLINA

Vegetable, Animal and Mineral: North Carolina’s Economy Has it All

Vast lithium and other mineral deposits are the largely unsung heroes of North Carolina’s robust economy. By Aron Vaughan North Carolina is known as the Silicon Valley of the East by many due to the emergence of the Research Triangle — a common nickname for the metropolitan area in the Piedmont region of North Carolina anchored by the cities of Raleigh and Durham and the town of Chapel Hill. It is also home to three major research universities: North Carolina State University, Duke University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, respectively. According to the 2022 North Carolina Tech Association industry report, the tech industry contributes over 20% to the overall state employment. The state is continuing to grow in many key metrics, placing fourth in STEM programs and ranking in the top 15 states in percentage of women in the tech industry, percentage of change in STEM education program completions, state spending per student for higher education, start-ups from universities and tech industry employment growth. North Carolina is also in the unique position of operating at both ends of the technology production line. While STEM graduates fresh out of university are funneling into companies like Altaro, Cloudpay and Grail, mining communities west of the Research Triangle are providing the rare minerals needed to power the latest smartphone filled with all the revolutionary apps we couldn’t live without, as well as machinery and lithium batteries for EVs. North Carolina’s varied and complex geology is reflected in the diversity of its mineral industry. Long established production of a variety of industrial minerals including feldspar, mica, lithium and pyrophillite allow the state to maintain a position in the top 21 mineral

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producers by value in the nation. “Typically, North Carolina’s annual mineral production exceeds $500 million dollars,” according to North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality. Lithium’s Potential Lithium is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal mined from pegmatite and recovered from the mineral spodumen, both of which are abundant in the mountains of west North Carolina. The industrial mineral is crucial to the production of electric vehicles — and anything that requires a lithium-ion battery. While lithium mines shut down in the state in the 1980s due to sources from Bolivia, Chili and Nevada being available at a lower cost, North Carolina may soon see the substantial deposits of the precious mineral fueling the region’s economy once again. “Those resources in Nevada and South America are reaching their maximum reduction rates,” said David Miller, state mining specialist for North Carolina’s Department of Enivornmental Quality. “So with the boom in lithium, they’re coming back to the lithium spodumene, which North Carolina and South Carolina are blessed with a rich belt of.” Lithium conversion plants are still continuing to operate in the state, however. “The conversion of brine to metal is occurring in North Carolina as it always has,” said Miller. “Albermarle Lithium never shut down that process. The conversion of spogemene to the lithium substrate is not currently occurring in North Carolina. This is what these companies are exploring.”

Restarting lithium mines would create much needed national and global supply, but the initial cost of getting the process moving is a significant one. “To my way of thinking, it would be a very large capital investment made in these regions of North Carolina,” said Miller. “You know the old adage that money multiplies by three times when you invest it in industry; the numbers have been kicked around for what it’s gonna cost to start these plants. It would be a significant economic impact on North Carolina.” Despite this, Miller is optimistic about lithium’s potential to further increase North Carolina’s booming economy in the near future. “The lithium industry has the potential of becoming a huge industry in North Carolina,” said Miller. “It’s not going to happen overnight, but it’s a world class deposit. As long as there’s a price that can meet the cost, they will probably be buying lithium for years until they find whatever the next big metal is.” North Carolina’s Minerals Fuel Our Industries Lithium is far from the only abundant mineral in North Carolina crucial to the tech and other industries. Quartz, a naturally occurring form of silicon, is used in integrated circuits (ICs). If you apply an alternating voltage to a crystal, it causes mechanical vibrations. The cut and the size of the quartz crystal determine the resonant frequency of these vibrations or oscillations. Thus, it generates a constant signal, according to escomponents.com. ICs can be used for a variety of purposes including amplifiers, video processors, computer memory, switches, and microprocessors.

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Quartz is one of several minerals powering a robust mining industry through Tarheel country. Lithium, however, may be the mineral leader of the future as companies begin searching for US based sources for the mineral that makes electric vehicles possible.

ICK

STA TS

North Carolina is a state with a growing economy and a tech sector that is quite literally booming. From the Research Triangle to the coast or back to the mountains, this growth is widespread and explosive. It’s happening for a variety of reasons, and we’ve selected a few below to give you more of a big picture view of the state.

10.5 Million Total Population

4.8 Million Housing Units

65.7% of Housing is Owner-Occupied

$932 Median Rent

$182,100 Median House Price

32% Population Percentage with

Bachelor’s Degrees or Higher

North Carolina also boasts the largest phosphate mining operation in the country, according to Miller, and has a robust pyrophyllite mining industry.

$199.3 Billion Annual Statewide Payroll

“We’ve probably got about 12 gym operations,” said Miller. “There are plenty of gem mines out there that will be more than happy to let you for pan for emeralds and sapphires and all those good things. There’s a very nice sapphire deposit west of Winston-Salem.” North Carolina’s economy has undergone a major shift in the last few decades from mainly agricultural, to the eastern tech beacon of the country. Yet, throughout the changing tides of industry, the state has quietly been providing the resources for every industry across the board — not least of which being tech. And soon, the state could release its vast reserves of lithium, a move that would see its economy skyrocket over the coming years. ■

287,058 Woman-Owned

Businesses

183,380 Minority-Owned Businesses

$2.9 Billion

Amount in Loans Given to Businesses Under $1 Million

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Amethyst, aquamarine, emerald, hiddenite, ruby and sapphire are among a few of the gems that lure collectors from around the world to visit North Carolina. While some discoveries are due to industrial mining activities, many are the result of hobbyist gem and specimen mining, according to the Aurora Fossil Museum. The plethora of

964,280 Small Businesses

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The Crown Jewel “Of course, the real crown jewel is the gem industry,” Miller said.

$56,642 Median Income per Household

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Pyrophyllite is a high alumina mineral that, in North Carolina, occurs exclusively within hydrothermally altered felsic volcanic rocks of the Carolina Slate belt, and is used as an aluminum filler and in continuous casting — a manufacturing process that allows metals and metal alloys to be shaped then solidified without interruption.

diverse gems has supported a continuous tourist industry that attracts established gem collectors and inspires students to become passionate about geology.

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NORTH CAROLINA

How Fritsch USA Creates Tomorrow’s Applications and Solutions By Robert Yehling Germany], and better overall costs and expenses. Add in how family-friendly North Carolina is, and it was an easy decision for Fritsch to set up here in the emerging Chatham Park Development,” she added.

Melissa Fauth and her team walked into a genesis situation. When the century-old German manufacturer Fritsch International hired her in 2014, she left a multibillion dollar firm not knowing what to expect. Two years later they named her as president and CEO of U.S. operations, Fritsch established a U.S. base in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, and a riveting journey in materials science, micromilling, collaboration, research and groundbreaking product development was underway. “I began by supporting work with U.S. distribution,” said Fauth. “However, it was evident that we didn’t have a direct link between sales, distribution and trends, or what Fritsch brings to long-term relationships, like application development with collaboration that results in whatever the client needs — from whatever material they’re working with. “I was very familiar with the Research Triangle. Between the universities, research centers and businesses ranging from startups to longstanding organizations, plus the close proximity to a [South Carolina] logistics company that also works with BMW, we had quicker transit time [for products from

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Specializing in manufacturing of applicationbased laboratory instruments and evolving client products and solutions through micromilling processes, Fritsch works from its Pittsboro, NC base with all industries from — electronics to automotive materials, hemp to feed crops and meat processing, pharmaceuticals to mining, aerospace, energy and everything in between. They utilize 15 different instrument technologies and 8,000 SKU items that they can configure — to grind material for quality or RoHS testing, or to recycle and reclaim — and to create new material solutions beyond what clients, in many cases, never before considered possible in their own labs. They work with universities, government, as well as private research and quality labs, their own global laboratory professionals, government agencies and private industry in a far-flung collaboration that benefits all, and which the public rarely sees. They are creating tomorrow’s industrial solutions, innovating and providing solutions on the spot. “It’s really fun, and we establish great working partnerships with clients,” Fauth said. “Everyone is excited about the groundbreaking work they’re doing. Even with NDAs in place, generally speaking, there are aspects of milling processes and its applications that can be shared across industries, between institutions and companies, to help each other in different ways. One project combines collective experience from Fritsch, shared research input from NASA and Los Alamos Engineers, and a battery company, to achieve an objective that the battery company wasn’t otherwise able to do prior to implementing these instrument

technologies and parameters.” Another Fritsch esteemed project is its collaboration with the Curtis Hill Team of NASA’s Marshall Center to figure out a solution for the International Space Station: how to create needed materials or use instruments with limited power-generating ability in orbit? “There is a need to sinter materials for use in their work,” Fauth explained. “In order to sinter something in a very high-temp furnace, they wouldn’t have the power up there. They found that by using a (micro)mill like our Pulverisette 7 premium line, or our scaled-up Pulverisette 5 premium line, they were able to get particles significantly smaller and more homogeneous, packed in a different way that was more advantageous, using less power. In putting different elemental products and compounds together and running them in the mill, they’re able to create new materials in a much more beneficial way. This led to new applications we’re working together on, like one for Mars with materials for 3D printing. “For me, for us all, it’s been an honor to work with NASA and our National Labs; I never could have imagined that. Nor could I have imagined them coming to me and saying, ‘This solution exceeds anything we’ve tried before.’ That means a lot.” Fritsch has many stories like this — and many more to come. But for Fauth and her team, it’s the big picture that creates one of the most important next-gen work teams in the Research Triangle. “We get to help people with real-world problems, real-world developments, and reaching the next level in our communities, our societies, and our technology in both earth and space,” she said. “It’s super fulfilling for all of us, super meaningful. None of us have had this experience at any other place we’ve worked.” ■

investpr.org/tech2022 +_info:

An emerging tech hub in sync with your vision A unique ecosystem filled with opportunities for collaboration, innovation, and growth is now taking shape in Puerto Rico. + Vibrant network of investors and entrepreneurs + Perks of living in a tropical paradise + 4% corporate tax rate for export services

Game-Changers, welcome home.

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Puerto Rico’s Investment in the Tech Industry is Paying Off By Aron Vaughan Puerto Rico is quickly becoming a prominent tech hub and a major driver of economic growth. The rapidly growing technology scene is bolstered by more well-known tech companies that have established operations such as Honeywell and AWS. Smart local government incentives that are attracting even more startups. As a result of the robust tech infrastructure, Puerto Rico’s talent in STEM and related fields is growing faster than ever. The vibrant startup ecosystem and growing community of entrepreneurs has created such a high demand for skilled tech professionals, leaders from the public and private sectors onisland are working together to determine how best to meet the ever-growing need. Universities and technical colleges are answering the Tech sector’s call to arms by pivoting toward STEM programs. According to Holberton School Puerto Rico, a college that focuses on STEM programs, founders of local tech firms cited access to talent as their biggest obstacle. The need for talent is not only centered on technical skills, but also on soft skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, and communication. Holberton School Puerto Rico is a “Boot Camp” for STEM Careers Holberton School employs an accelerated curriculum to get students working in their desired fields in 20 months. Founded by Silicon Valley tech engineers who understood the frustration companies in California were experiencing in hiring qualified candidates fresh out of school, Holberton aims to produce graduates ready to enter the job market immediately. Students don’t pay tuition while actively enrolled. Instead, they begin payment after landing a job in their desired field — a structure

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

The Holberton School offers an accelerated program that gets STEM students into their desired fields in 20 months. Photo courtesy of The Holberton School.

that has proven effective in regions like Puerto Rico with a burgeoning tech ecosystem that needs new tech talent to fill the roles that have opened up. Since Holberton School opened its doors in 2016, the world’s most innovative companies have noticed. Graduates have found jobs at LinkedIn, Google, Tesla, Docker, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Pinterest, Genentech, Cisco, IBM, and more. “Our graduates are in really good companies,” said Puerto Rico campus director Mercedes Diaz. “The average salary is close to $60,000, which is about 40% higher than an entry-level job in software development. They can hit the ground running when they start working.”

“The students that have gotten amazing jobs in Puerto Rico,” said Holberton Puerto Rico founder and investor Adam Beguelin. “We’ve seen students making $80,000 a year in Puerto Rico for Puerto Rican companies.” STEM Graduates are Fueling Puerto Rico’s Economy Statistics support the idea that Puerto Rico is churning out the next generation of STEM mavericks. Sixty percent of graduates of the 80+ accredited universities and colleges on the island hold a STEM degree — outpacing the STEM graduation rate of the next U.S. state by six times. Puerto Rico also offers the sixthhighest availability of scientists and engineers in the world, according to the World Economic

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TECH ZONE

Emmanuel Oquendo (CEO) and Israel Figureoa (CTO) started BrainHi, a software company focusing on the Health Tech sector, in 2017. Photo courtesy of BrainHi.

roots in Puerto Rico, we’re proud that we’ve been recognized by some of the country’s leading market research firms, and listed alongside some of the country’s largest AI players. We’re committed to helping Puerto Rico emerge as a tech hotbed for AI services as we continue to innovate new AI solutions that augment human work and effective decision making.”

Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, and ranks second in Latin America and the Caribbean for digital skills amongst the population, according to a study by Ducker Frontier Latin America. These impressive stats are due in part to the University of Puerto Rico, which has played a prominent role in furthering the development of the island’s booming biotechnology sector via ready-to-work graduates. The Biotechnology Development and Training Center on the Mayagüez campus of the University of Puerto Rico is a public-private initiative with personalized training programs for students and employees with degrees in science and engineering, as well as for pharmaceutical professionals who wish to make the transition to science. The University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez has offered a five-year degree in industrial biotechnology over the past few years, with programs at three other universities. The result of these programs is a prosperous economy fueled by life sciences, biotechnology, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, agroecology,

aerospace, electronics, computing, engineering, and construction. Established Companies Need Talent Wovenware founder and CEO Christian Gonzalez is one of the beneficiaries of the steady stream of young STEM professionals. Founded in 2003, Wovenware is a Puerto Ricobased tech company that has thrived during the island’s tech renaissance. The company specializes in nearshore software development, web services, software by design, custom application development, legacy application integration, big data, deep learning, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. In short, “it is an ideal place for STEM graduates looking to put their newly learned skills to use. A leader in AI, Wovenware is a prime example of the innovation taking place on the island. “From our headquarters in San Juan, Wovenware has been providing a variety of advanced AI solutions to government and commercial markets across the country,” said Wovenware COO Carlos Melendez. “With our

Company culture has always been a top priority to Gonzalez and his team. Along with providing customer-centered service to its clients, Wovenware is dedicated to bringing local professionals into the fold to continue building the tech community’s presence in San Juan and abroad. “There’s a vibrant, enthusiastic and welleducated base of students eager to become the next generation of software engineers and data scientists right here on the island,” said Gonzalez. “We’re committed to giving them opportunities to shape their futures and contribute to the goal of making Puerto Rico a premier destination for tech innovation.” On-Island Innovation One of the many small to medium-sized tech businesses on the island, Puerto Rico-based software company BrainHi is reinventing how medical offices and hospitals communicate with patients. Established in 2017, days after Hurricane Maria, founders Emmanuel Oquendo and Israel Figueroa discovered that medical practices in Puerto Rico miss half of all the calls they receive due to the lack of staff and doctors. To provide a solution to the issue, they built an AI assistant that picks up office missed calls, answers frequently asked questions, and schedules appointments. After Covid-19, BrainHi also expanded its tech to work with all kinds of businesses like VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

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pharmacies, credit unions, restaurants, and schools. In 2018, it became the first Puerto Rico-based company to join Y Combinator, a large startup accelerator that has helped launch giants in the tech industry including Airbnb, Doordash, Coinbase and many others. According to Oquendo, there is a small but vibrant community of leaders that are committed to laying the foundation in Puerto Rico for entrepreneurs like him to be successful.

research and development, scientific, management, and information technology companies, marketing consulting services, and companies centering around the development of computer programs.

An Established and Thriving

According to Puerto Rico’s Department of Economic Development and Commerce, between 2015 and 2019, grantees under the Act added fiscal revenues totaling $210 million and 35% of all grantees were local firms.

Small businesses, entrepreneurs, and the

Tech Scene Government incentives created in the wake of the global financial crisis have contributed to the growth of the tech industry in Puerto Rico. availability of STEM-savvy graduates to step into tech fields are the primary vectors that acted as the catalyst for what is now a thriving tech scene in the Caribbean

“Some of the important groups moving [the industry] forward include Parallel18, Guayacán, the Eship Network of Professors in the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, and some successful engineers and entrepreneurs that have become angel investors,” Oquendo said. Government Incentives Have Helped Puerto Rico Move Closer Toward Economic Success Economic development has been an uphill battle for the island in the last few decades, with Puerto Rico taking a significant financial hit during the Great Recession of 2008 and having to rebuild much of its infrastructure after several major hurricanes and earthquakes. Yet Puerto Ricans continue to prove themselves to be “resilient,” according to Gonzalez, with many ushering in the move toward a thriving technology sector that is supported by the business community and Puerto Rico’s government. In 2012, Puerto Rico enacted Act 20 and Act 22 — both of which have now merged into parts of Act 60 — to promote the exportation of services by companies and individuals from Puerto Rico, and the relocation of high-networth individuals to Puerto Rico. Formerly known as Act 20 and now a chapter under Act 60, tax incentives have been designed specifically for companies to establish and expand their export services businesses from Puerto Rico. Companies officially operating under the Act see their Export Services Income (ESI) taxed at a reduced rate of 4%. Many of Act 60’s list of eligible services are geared toward the tech industry. Included under the umbrella of Act 60’s benefits are data processing centers, companies that focus on

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Holberton graduates average a salary close to $60,000 — 40% higher than most entry-level jobs in software development. Photo courtesy of The Holberton School.

Act 60 also attracts new residents to Puerto Rico by providing a total exemption from Puerto Rico income taxes for individuals on all interest and dividends realized after he or she becomes a bona fide resident of Puerto Rico, according to global law firm DLA Piper. Individuals who move to the island and maintain a residence for more than half a calendar year are encouraged to share their talents with local businesses and startups.

With many skilled graduates opting to continue their careers on the island, rather than shipping off to Silicon Valley, it is likely advances in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, and other technologies of the future will proliferate in Puerto Rico in the next few years. And, according to Gonzalez, the endless summer climate the island offers doesn’t hurt in attracting outside tech talent either. ■

INTERNATIONAL

TECH ZONE

PUERTO RICO

By the Numbers 45,451 Total Businesses

73.8

51.8

Billion

in Total Exports (2019)

3.264 Million Population

Billion

Total Annual Retail Sales

Billion

in Total Imports (2019)

17.9

Billion

3,424

Total Payroll 2020

77.5%

People with a HS Education or Better

Square Miles

3.07

Million

Number of Annual Tourists

110,300

Median Property Value

VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

OAC is Creating the Model for the Future of Construction Intelligence By Aron Vaughan Technology in the construction industry has been evolving for over 6,000 years. As one of our most basic necessities, construction and architecture chart back to the earliest days of civilization during the neolithic age. While leaps in knowledge and application eventually led to the creation of mysterious pyramids, towering castles, mesmerizingly intricate Gothic cathedrals and ultimately the almighty skyscraper, we don’t often connotate the terms “cutting-edge technology” and “construction.” But modern companies are reconciling the two terms by using innovative approaches to the industry’s most pressing problems. The Necessity of Utilizing Advanced Technology According to OAC Services, Inc. Chief Innovation Officer Chris Heger, adopting new technology to meet the growing needs of clients in the construction industry is not just good practice, it is a necessity. “If you go to Oxford and you look at the oldest library, all it had was floors, walls, and a roof,” said Heger. “And the only thing that worked really was the hinges on the doors and the windows, and now we are into extremely complex conference rooms.” One way OAC is addressing these complexities is by

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

implementing technologies like photogrammetry, a tool that allows information about physical objects and the environment to be obtained through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant imagery and other phenomena. Essentially, the technology allows OAC to create a 3D model, known as a Digital Twin, of a building using previously collected data. The 3D rendering can be better understood by clients than schematics and blueprints, leading to better communication and understanding between architect, contractor and customer. “From a client experience side, when we do the Digital Twin, we’re able to bring the project in all its complexity, right to our client’s desktop,” said Heger. “And that to me is such a huge experience change for them because they can’t read drawings. Typically, they don’t understand all the lingo, jargon, acronyms, et cetera. But when you blow that situation up in 3D on their desktop, they understand exactly what the issue or challenge is. They get a better sense of the value that the designers come, contractors, owners, representatives are bringing to them and they can participate in the solution.”

(Left) OAC Chief Innovation Officer Chris Heger and CEO Shawn Mahoney

Forwarding construction intelligence often means implementing methodologies used in other industries. OAC is looking at schedules differently by using advanced project controls like regression. It is also applying production theory, the economic process of converting inputs into outputs, to construction. “We’re looking at dollars per square foot hour, and we haven’t found very many people that are doing that, and we’re applying it to construction,“ Heger said. Analytics on Steroids “The technology is now available to really do some analytics on steroids,” said OAC CEO Shawn Mahoney. “We’re looking at things in a lot more different ways for the benefit of sustainability, health and worker safety. I mean there are just benefits across the board.” The potential to save lives as well as the planet are among those benefits. OAC’s building sciences team regularly conducts facility evaluations and building envelope designs. On one such project, the team found, via drone surveillance among other methods, that a 25story, fully-occupied apartment

tower in Seattle had significant structural deficiencies.

we could get from Oregon,” Heger said.

“We’re really interested in using drones and other technology to survey buildings,” said Mahoney. “And then if we see something, we can investigate.”

OAC has built a model other companies in the space can adopt, raising efficiency levels, and in turn, increasing sustainability.

They ultimately determined the building had to be demolished – a decision that may have saved the lives of the 200+ residents who lived there. “It wasn’t fixable, so they made the decision to tear the building down and had to relocate everyone,” said Mahoney. “[There were an] amazing amount of failures and deficiencies in the building that required it to come down.” Sustainability and Drones? The Future of Efficiency Efficiency and sustainability often go hand in hand; so do efficiency and profitability. While OAC has strived to build its company with ESG (environmental and social governance) in mind, not all companies in the industry consider sustainability a top priority. “We’re trying to actually think about ESG in this also as we’re doing it. So, do we really need to get that door from Europe? Or sometimes something we would get from Europe or India or China

Through the utilization of photogrammetry, OAC knows the exact amount of materials that need to arrive at a site. “Most of the time when, if I’m doing work on-site, people order an extra five to 15% of extra material and that gets cut and gets thrown in the dumpster,” Heger said. This means extra diesel to bring the materials to the site, resulting in increased cost and carbon emissions. Additionally, in an effort to cut down carbon emissions, OAC puts GPS trackers in all of its heavy equipment. The routes of the machines are regularly analyzed to find out where efficiency can be improved. Big Business Needs Bigger Ideas Since 1955, OAC has been building the U.S. one project at a time. Now, with modern tools at their disposal, the OAC team is able to approach projects with maximum efficiency to achieve maximum sustainability. ■

“ most of the time when, if i’m doing work on-site, people order an extra five to 15% of extra material and that gets cut and gets thrown in the dumpster.”

Photos courtesy of OAC Services, Inc.

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Bringing Soul & Health to Sustainability An Interview with Soul Doctoring Author Dr. Gayle Randall By Robert Yehling better part of 40 years addressing the direct relationship between taking care of ourselves, taking care of the planet and engaging in sustainable lifestyles and business practices in your profession as a doctor — and also in your works, talks and podcasts. Could you break down this dynamic, and why taking care of ourselves is so directly related to how we care for and treat the planet?

When Dr. Gayle Randall first set out to write Soul Doctoring: Heal Yourself, Heal the Planet 25 years ago, she envisioned a book focused on self-care and the many underlying causes of disease. She sought to merge her many years of training from a number of American Indian teachers with her longstanding practice as a medical doctor and integrative medicine pioneer to present a 360-degree view of what causes disease, and how we can recognize our own ailments and how to care for ourselves better. Things have changed. With the planet and climate in a crisis state, endangering everything from our health to the future course of our environment, businesses and nations, she switched gears. She completely overhauled her original manuscript and brought together the core aspects of personal physical and mental health, diet, sustainable living and business, lifestyle and work choices to arrive at a book that has never tackled sustainability, health care, and the future of the planet so directly. In so doing, she began spreading the word through her influential Soul Stories podcast, weekly fireside chats on health, wellness and sustainability on Instagram TV, and a social media platform growing as rapidly as the regenerative farms and next-gen food operations with which she is deeply involved. Our careers often take many turns, and become more purposeful as we gain experience, but few can

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Dr. Gayle Randall: As I focused on healing people and addressing my own environmental concerns, I began to notice connections between personal and planetary healing. First of all, when we heal personally, we become clearer and more aware, and begin to turn our attention outward to others and the environment around us. The connections we make through self-healing expand our vision and understanding of how all things are connected. I&T Today: When you think of sustainability, what are the images, ideas or issues that come to mind first for you? argue with the uniqueness of a trained gastroenterologist and co-founder of one of the nation’s first integrative medicine centers mixing her work with the Regeneration Generation that is beginning to take sustainability to the next level. Innovation & Tech Today caught up with Dr. Randall on the eve of the May 31 launch of Soul Doctoring (Transformation Media Press) in traditional and online booksellers nationwide. Innovation & Tech Today: You’ve spent the

Dr. Randall: Sustainability is wonderful; it is all about holding our own, treading consciously on the earth, being mindful in our business practices and use of resources. However, in today’s state, we are rapidly approaching critical boundaries — carbon debt, clean water shortage, reduction in diversity, rapid desertification and loss of resources. We need solutions that not only stop but reverse damage. That leads to regeneration. Regeneration is rebuilding and restoring what we’ve lost to improve the situation. We need to

turned away from past poor environmental/ unsustainable practices with bold and ambitious strides to enhance a sustainable future — Nestle with its “Generation Regeneration” programs, Walmart with the world’s largest usage of solar panels among businesses, and so on. What do you feel these and others need to do next to drill deeper and make sustainability a part of their work culture? And how they source materials and buy products?

sustain and regenerate our land, air, water and ourselves, and we need to direct our businesses even more so to engage in practices that sustain and regenerate as well. I&T Today: What is your assessment of where we stand with climate change and environment — and what specific new steps should businesses take, beyond simple sustainability measures, to contribute to the solution while also growing their businesses and creating more fulfilling, healthier jobs? Dr. Randall: Businesses, like individuals, needs to take the planet and the impact of their actions into consideration in every choice they make. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a tech company, a clothing company or a manufacturer. If we can all adopt this mindset, it would improve the planet and attitude of those implementing such interventions, and activate more businesses to do the same. For instance, in the clothing industry, a long-time practitioner of wasteful behavior, pressure has been put on the ‘fast-fashion’ companies to take into account the way they manufacture and distribute, where they manufacture, how much transportation — and gas — they need to distribute, how to better use water resources, working with local workers, etc. This is causing others to follow suit. I&T Today: If you were a business owner in technology or an industry outside your own, how would you educate or inform employees on self-responsible steps they can take, in their daily jobs, to heal the planet? And create a healthier, more sustainable work experience for themselves? Dr. Randall: I would set up systems where employees get rewarded for following suggested actions that are regenerative: going more towards digital vs. paper communication and data storage and transfer; take into account the “miles” on products or consumables and determine the potential for repurposing them before choosing them, things like that. Employees and managers could be rewarded with recognition, promotion, bonuses or time off for coming up with new ways to apply regenerative modalities in the workplace. I&T Today: In Soul Doctoring: Heal Yourself, Heal the Planet, you really make it a point to share the science behind medicine, behind diet/nutrition, behind our

environmental issues, in a candid and deep way — far more than a typical healthcare provider. Can you discuss the vital importance of everyone knowing the “how” of “how this works”, the science, as well as the spiritual and practical aspects that you also write about? Dr. Randall: I have had years of experience understanding the whys and hows of things in medicine, from my years practicing many different modalities with many thousands of patients. To me, understanding the science makes me more interested in the practice, and that’s what I really focused on in Soul Doctoring: for the reader to understand how disease or unease happens in their life, how their lifestyles, environment and attitudes play a part just like chemicals in certain foods or the environment, but also the good chemicals. Take polyphenols, for example, chemicals that are antioxidants and good for you. Then you understand they come from olive oil, cocoa, dark chocolate, green tea, strawberries, red wine, blueberries, etc. When you put these together. When you gain an even deeper understanding that they are only generated in large amounts in organic food grown in microorganism-rich soil, you might change your behavior to prefer organic foods. Which sustains and regenerates resources at the same time. I&T Today: Many major corporations, such as Walmart, Unilever, Nestle and so many others, have either partially or entirely

Dr. Randall: I think they need to keep their eyes on the ball and increase their efforts. Look at just the last couple of years, the choices they’ve made to keep the notion of regeneration close in their choices and actions. That’s keeping the eye on the ball. Moving forward into the future, they can take further account into not only what they have done, but what they still have yet to do. Things like sourcing materials and employment locally, wasting less, buying from like-minded suppliers and manufacturers, and always to keep repurposing in mind when designing new products. I&T Today: Besides the book, you’ve built out quite a social platform the past few years, between your YouTube Channel, the Soul Stories podcast (now over 5K downloads), your weekly IGTV shows and Instagram. What response have you been seeing, and comments from viewers/listeners, to your (and your guests’) messaging about sustainability, right living, self-care and finding our purposeful role in all of this? Dr. Randall: People’s interests are peaking. I started the podcast because I wanted another forum to hear from people who have increased consciousness on the planet or created something great that encourages people to learn from them. Also, I’ve noticed more and more people coming into the regeneration generation, being concerned, and being willing to do things to improve personal and planetary states of health, whether in their homes, places of business, or the community or world at large. ■ DR GAYLE RANDALL’S Soul Stories podcast is available on all podcast platforms. Her Instagram TV “fireside chats” appear every Friday at 9 p.m. EDT. Soul Doctoring: Heal Yourself, Heal the Planet will be on sale May 31 through traditional bookstores, Amazon.com and most online booksellers.

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PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Micromilling of Uniform Nanoparticles for Space Applications By Curtis W. Hill and Lee Allen Fritsch micromills have enhanced one NASA lab’s ability to develop optimized ceramic nanoparticulate materials for demanding research projects, including energy storage and thermoelectric device applications Our laboratory, at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, develops materials and processes for NASA’s exploration missions and the International Space Station. This involves developing and optimizing materials properties for very demanding applications in energy storage, power generation, and other advanced application areas. The challenge of developing new materials and processes demands laboratory equipment with advanced capabilities. For instance, the ability to produce uniform nanoparticles is critical for our development of advanced ultracapacitors for energy storage, thermoelectric devices with high figure-ofmerit, and materials for NASA’s Nuclear Thermal Propulsion system. However, ceramic powder received from suppliers typically has a fairly wide range of particle sizes and is not consistent enough for our high-performance materials research. We have investigated and tested various milling machines and processes, including ball mills and vibratory mills. Although these techniques help reduce D50 particle size as well as improve particle size distribution, the resulting powders are still of insufficient quality for our demanding research.

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Fritsch’s Pulversette line of micromills are capable of ultrafine grinding results down into the nanometer particle size range.

We have been working with Fritsch’s

the materials to be milled. The micromill uses

Pulversette line of micromills for the past couple

rotation speeds of up to 1,100 rpm and an

of years to develop much smaller and more

acceleration force of 95g for a resulting energy

uniform particles, as these micromills are

application roughly 150% greater than that of

capable of ultrafine grinding results down into

classic planetary mills. This extraordinary

the nanometer particle size range (Figure 1).

milling energy results in more economical and

The laboratory-size mills use smaller, very hard

efficient milling of particles, providing us with

media to achieve extraordinary milling energy.

considerably finer grinding results in shorter

We use stainless-steel milling bowls lined with zirconia, although mills are available in several other materials and capacities depending upon

times. Although grinding media is available in different sizes and materials, we use hardened

PRODUCED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Above left: Scanning electron micrograph of a sintered ultracapacitor device, showing good sintered density resulting from uniform particle size Above light: scanning electron micrograph of sintered doped ZnO thermoelectric device. Chart: Particle size distribution curve of as-received and milled barium titanate nanopowders.

of D10 to D90 particle size distribution and particle distribution curve (Figure 2), has allowed us to optimize these processes, resulting in ultracapacitor devices with good sintered density resulting from the uniform particle size (Figure 3). Thermoelectric research We also develop thermoelectric materials that can be used for power generation subsystems on long-range missions and habitats. This research involves optimizing sintering of various doped ceramic nanopowders to increase electrical conductivity and reduce thermal conductivity.

ZrO2 media with diameters of 0.5–2.0 mm. We have reduced milling times by an order of magnitude, and the resulting powders are much higher quality in terms of reduced particle sizes and improved particle size distribution. These high-quality ceramic powders have enabled several trajectories of research applications, a couple of which are highlighted below. Ultracapacitor research Our ultracapacitor development has focused on optimizing dielectric properties of perovskite ceramic powders for ultrahigh Photos courtesy of Fritsch and NASA

permittivity, low dielectric loss, and high dielectric breakdown. The resultant materials can be used as solid- state energy storage devices to replace electrochemical batteries, and they can be used as very high-voltage triggers for propulsion systems. We have been developing processes to increase grain boundary characteristics of these materials to store charge and to significantly increase sintered density of the devices. The ability to micromill ceramic particles into low nanometer particle sizes, with corresponding improvement

Our ability to micromill powders with <50 nm particle sizes has enhanced these research efforts in allowing us to investigate the effect of substantially increased grain boundary surface area, and the effects of the various materials and dopant modifiers at these extremely small particle sizes. Figure 4 shows the microstructure of a sintered doped ZnO thermoelectric device. ■ About the authors — Curtis W. Hill is senior materials engineer with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s Engineering and Science Services and Skills Augmentation (ESSSA). Contact Hill at curtis.w.hill@ nasa.gov. Lee Allen is materials engineer with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Contact Allen at lee.r.allen@ nasa.gov. Marshall Space Flight Center is located on Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala.

VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

PRODUCT REVOLUTION

Logitech Litra Glow — Purpose-built for streaming, Litra Glow is the fastest way to bring a premium lighting experience to any desktop or laptop. TrueSoft combines premium components with an advanced diffusion design to deliver full-spectrum LED light with cinematic color accuracy. Whether you’re shooting a YouTube video, streaming on Twitch, or just working from home, Litra Glow ensures you always look your best. You can also download Logitech’s free G HUB desktop app to control brightness, color temperature, power and more right from your desktop. $60

Meeting Owl Pro —Meeting Owl Pro is the perfect all-in-one, 360-degree camera, mic and speaker for collaborative hybrid teams. The multi-use recording device captures everything with its 360-degree setup so everyone can be seen and heard. With the 1080p camera, it’s like you’re in the room even though you’re sitting in on a meeting from the comfort of home. You can also hear everyone as if they’re there as far as 18 feet away with the 360° tri-speaker. $1,000

Jarvis Bamboo Standing Desk — The Jarvis adjustable height desk is the best stand-up desk on — and for — the planet. The bamboo is sourced from sustainable forests where it is grown without pesticides or fertilizers. With a capacity of 350 pounds and dual motors, Jarvis can handle a heavy workload and more. This is where practicality meets sustainability, all in a stand-up design that benefits your overall health while you’re burning the midnight oil. $509

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

Rocketbook Smart Reusable Notebook— The Rocketbook Core notebook provides a classic pen and paper experience, yet is built for the digital age. The letter size edition is 8.5 in. x 11 in. and contains 32 pages. The executive size edition is 6 in. x 8.8 in and contains 36 pages. Users have the option of a dot-grid pattern or lines on each page. The Rocketbook notebook has erasable pages, is infinitely reusable and includes one Pilot FriXion pen and one microfiber towel. $35

PRODUCT REVOLUTION Belkin Boost Charge 15W — Clear counter or desk space and get rid of annoying wires for good. It couldn’t be easier to use this wireless charging stand; just place your phone on the pad and start charging instantly. The Belkin BoostCharge has 15W of power for faster wireless charging, charges at two different angles, charges through most lightweight cases, is Qi-Certified for safety, and has an LED light indicator to confirm correct, safe charging. A 24W Quick Charge 3.0 power supply included. $45

Samsung Smart Monitor M7 Series — The monitor for every side of life. Get work done without a PC, with the installed Microsoft Office 365 or by remote access to your office computer. Then switch to pure entertainment with the on-board one-stop entertainment system. With 4x the pixels of Full HD, the SMART Monitor delivers more screen space and amazingly life-like UHD images. The monitor includes built-in speakers and voice-assistance enabled remote control, Samsung DeX Wireless, and Apple AirPlay2 Compatibility. From $370

Couchmaster CYCON2 — Get ready to sit back and relax while taking care of business with the Couchmaster CYCON². The Couchmaster CYCON2 is the ultimate couch desk from Nerdytec, giving you the power to work or play from the comfiest spot in the house. Couchmaster offers the best ergonomics for long gaming or work sessions. Experience the pinnacle in gaming comfort! $177

Razer Pro Click Mini — Make the world your office with the Razer Pro Click Mini — your perfect go-to mouse for productivity on-the-go. It includes two wireless modes and features up to 725 hours (30 days) of battery life. One AA battery can be used to make the mouse ultra lightweight, or you can double up for longer life. Connect with up to 4 devices and use it to control your desktop, laptop, Android tablet and TV screen. You can also customize your experience with seven independently programmable buttons. $45

VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

PRODUCT REVOLUTION

Razer Pro Type Ultra — The Razer Pro Type returns in top form to revolutionize your workstation. Back by popular demand and greatly refined through community feedback, this resilient ergonomic keyboard promises a quieter, more luxurious experience with every keystroke. Built for the grind, this keyboard is built to power you through your work week with three modes including wired, Bluetooth, and 2.4 GHz. Connect with up to four devices and use it to control your desktop, laptop, Android tablet and TV screen, and customize your keyboard to best suit your style by remapping keys, recording macros, and creating personal shortcuts for your creative tools or office programs. $160

Arlo Wireless Video Doorbell — Keep watch over your doorstep with the convenience of a wire-free, batteryoperated video doorbell that gives full coverage of sight from head to toe. Easily set up on any access point to your home or business. The wireless Arlo Video Doorbell features HD video with HDR, instant smartphone alerts, two-way audio, Night vision, a wide 180° viewing angle and direct Wi-Fi connection capability. An Arlo Secure 3-month trial is available at purchase. $200

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

HUANUO Lap Desk — Practical and green, the HUANUO lap desk is built with an environmentally friendly engineered wood panel and dual cushions for comfort and support. The unique design allows the desk to function as a laptop stand, work stand, reading desk and table desk to work more comfortably while watching TV, sitting outside or on the road. Features including a tablet holder and phone holder so you can keep your devices in one place add to the overall convenience and organization of the desk. $50

Trust GXT 258 Fyru Streaming Microphone — Of all things, the microphone you use has the biggest effect on your recordings. It has to capture voices and instruments in the highest possible quality. That’s why the Trust GXT 258 Fyru 4-in-1 Streaming Microphone is built to deliver crystal clear and rich recordings of near-professional studio quality. The Fyru allows for recording in four different ways, optimized for any situation. Opt for bidirectional if you’re recording a duet or conducting an interview. Stereo is the go-to pattern to record a stereo music setting, or you can capture all surrounding sounds with the omnidirectional pattern, which is perfect if you’re hosting a group-podcast. $120

EVENTS Keep up with the latest in tech events. Bookmark the Innovation & Tech Today calendar and stay up to date.

Next Issue The Outdoor Tech and Cybersecurity Issue Bold New Frontiers in Augmented Reality With the creation of the metaverse, augmented reality is rapidly finding its way to the forefront of everything from video games to commercials. In the next issue, we will take a deep dive into all things augmented reality — including its role in the future of the world. It’s so much more than Pokemon GO. The metaverse made its way into Super Bowl commercials and parties alike this year, with alcohol manufacturers opening virtual bars for the event. So, what does the future of the metaverse look like? Pick up the next issue to see.

Subscribe Today and Save! Save off the newsstand price and don’t miss a single issue of Innovation & Tech Today. Subscribe now and continue to get insightful coverage of all the new innovative tech !

Cybersecurity in Your Home Office Never before has cybersecurity in business been a bigger and more complicated issue. With unprecedented numbers of workers around the world working from home, the landscape of business cybersecurity has been upended. It’s tough enough to thoroughly secure a business in one location, but now it’s become equally important to ensure employees have the necessary means in their homes as well. The shift in paradigm has led to new businesses and new equipment. What do you need to know to ensure you’re protected?

Home Audio Engineering Masterpieces The home audio world has come so far, even in just the last 10 years. In our next issue, we’ll showcase several absolute masterpieces in home audio engineering. From the homes of celebrities to others, some of the setups you will see are sure to blow your mind. In homes being built today, it’s not uncommon to spend far upward of $50,000 (into the hundreds of thousands) on having the perfect home audio theater set up. Ever wonder how the other half handles its home audio? You’re about to find out.

VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2 INNOVATION & TECH TODAY

The Lighter Side

Draw Four As we wait for COVID Season 4 to drop here in the United States, rumor has it, it’s doing blockbuster numbers in Europe.

running around Wal-Mart with their masks off, Florida, vaccines and general good ol’ USA fuckery.

Quite frankly, that’s subjective. If you’re a parent, it could be something as simple as a video baby monitor. If you're an urban hipster, the evolution of e-bikes and scooters could be near the top of your list. If you’re a better-than-average 20 something then the many filters and body-altering options on an app like Facetune is game changing as you “build your following.”

A quick free download from the app store and once again we were able to play UNO together. And while I couldn’t see her, it made me feel more connected than the Life360 app I use to make sure she’s in class and not “darty,” (day party for you old folk). My son, my wife and my parents in Hawaii all downloaded the UNO app and at different times during the day, a phone would light up and the game would continue. Simple and easy. It was a message that we were all there for each other and — at least for a few moments —, things were okay.

This may fall flat on many of you, but I liked lockdown. Not the thousands of people dying part, but the slowing things down part. Until Michigan went, well … all Michigan, for a brief moment in our history, people from around the world rallied together to make sure we fought a hidden killer. We were taking walks with their families, checking in on old friends, and when folks would say “how are you?” They meant it.

While we tried plenty of time-killing distractions, Uno became our go-to game. It’s easy to learn, you don’t have to think that much, anyone has a chance at winning amongst my kids, it kills time and most importantly, it’s easy to do while drinking wine. Hours passed playing Uno as we tried to avoid the onslaught of devastating news and also gave our dog time to recover between epic walks. Then, well, you know the rest: riots, weirdos

INNOVATION & TECH TODAY | VOL. 8 / ISSUE 2

things were nowhere near “normal,” they were speeding up in a different direction, into the unknown. As the world turned in on itself, a single IM changed my definition of “amazing tech.” From 500 miles away, I got an invite from my daughter to play UNO on my phone.

We get asked a lot at our humble magazine and what we think are the most innovative products or technologies of our time.

Board meetings and Power Points got replaced with board games and sidewalk chalk art. Families across the globe, while scared, also got a reset, got to know each other and got to be close again, without travel sports, daily commutes or anything else to get in the way.

By David Wallach

Admittedly, the UNO has slowed down as life speeds up again, but the notices still show up on a rainy day or a weekend morning. When that notice pops up, it’s not only game on, it’s a reminder of the time the world took a pause and we all went for a walk. Together.

COVID became politicized, neighbors took sides and the walks got replaced with angry tweets, unfriending and general discontent for anyone with an opinion that didn’t coincide with their own. My oldest went back to college to try and continue with as normal of an education as she could, while the other two sat at home and tried to learn on a computer. Technology was becoming how we learned, how we killed time at night and what we looked at as we fell asleep. The moment of peace had passed, and while

The greatest technology of my time is the tech that brought my family together, made us smile, relived the stress of well, everything and kept us going through the cattywampus times that are our new reality — connected games that you can simply click on, share and play with someone special thousands of miles away or next to you on the couch. Connected games that you can simply click on, share and play with someone special thousands of miles away or next to you on the couch. Though they are often overlooked, this kind of elegant, fun, tech can help you relieve the crushing anxiety of a world under attack or the melancholy feeling you get on a rainy day April day. They are innovation and tech at its finest. ■

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Innovation & Tech Today -- Vol 8/Issue 2

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