All Features
Ben Bensaou
Not every CEO can be the next Steve Jobs, constantly conjuring up game-changing new ideas and revolutionary products. But what all CEOs and senior leaders can be are champions for innovation within their own organizations. They are the ones who can help give their employees the freedom and space to…
Kara Baskin
Which companies deploy machine intelligence (MI) and data analytics successfully for manufacturing and operations? Why are those leading adopters so far ahead—and what can others learn from them?
MIT Machine Intelligence for Manufacturing and Operations (MIMO) and McKinsey & Company have the…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Recently I was interviewed by Rocky Buckley, a strategic business coach and creator of the Power Persona Project. We discussed an aspect of success that I wish I could give to everyone: the concept of a positive temperament or mental state. So I decided to share the conversation.
Rocky: Is success…
Theodoros Evgeniou, Ludo Van der Heyden
Technology has always been a double-edged sword. While it’s been a major force for progress, it has also been abused and caused harm. From water power to Fordism, history shows that technology is neither good nor bad by itself. It can, of course, be both, depending on how it’s used.…
Wade Schroeder
On May 12, 2021, President Biden signed the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. Among other items in the order was a requirement that every vendor that supplies the federal government with software must provide a software bill of materials (SBOM) with their product.
Given that…
NIST
As a step toward improving our ability to identify and manage the harmful effects of bias in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommend widening the scope of where we look for the source of these biases—beyond the machine…
Danielle Underferth
As municipalities clamor for a slice of President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill, one Johns Hopkins scientist is re-examining one of the basic elements of road-building: Determining the width of road lanes. But determining the width that provides the highest level of safety,…
Nanoscribe
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antibiotic resistance is now one of the greatest threats to global health, food safety, and development. This immunity of bacteria is a natural evolutionary process, and that is further accelerated by the misuse of antibiotic treatments. For more…
Aliyah Kovner
To combat a pandemic, science needs to move quickly. With safe and effective vaccines now widely available, and a handful of promising Covid-19 treatments coming soon, there’s no doubt that many aspects of biological research have been successfully accelerated during the past two years.
Now,…
Kenny Tsang
The e-commerce industry is forecast to see substantial growth in 2022. Retail e-commerce sales in 2021 totaled $4.9 trillion, and may reach $5.42 trillion this year. Exponential growth in the sector has given rise to an ecosystem of millions of third-party sellers on sites such as Amazon that make…
Adam Zewe
Multiple programs running on the same computer may not be able to directly access each other’s hidden information. But because they share the same memory hardware, their secrets could be stolen by a malicious program through a “memory timing side-channel attack.”
This malicious program notices…
Duxin Sun
It takes 10 to 15 years and around $1 billion to develop one successful drug. Despite these significant investments in time and money, 90 percent of drug candidates in clinical trials fail. Whether because they don’t adequately treat the condition they’re meant to target or the side effects are too…
David Chandler
Scintillators are materials that emit light when bombarded with high-energy particles or X-rays. In medical or dental X-ray systems, they convert incoming X-ray radiation into visible light that can then be captured using film or photosensors. They’re also used for night-vision systems and for…
V R Vijay Anand
As the world moves toward a new, post-pandemic normal, industries must leverage digital transformation at an accelerated pace. This is already happening. According to IBM, 67 percent of manufacturers have accelerated digital projects since Covid-19.
Although improved operational efficiency is…
Maggie Overfelt
Machine learning has the potential to drastically improve efficiency and the quality of care in hospitals by tackling hard-to-predict problems like ICU occupancy or which patients are likely to be readmitted.
Yet, a big barrier to any technology working optimally is getting full buy-in from its…
Prashant Kapadia
In four years, more than 30 percent of businesses and organizations will include edge computing in their cloud deployments to address bandwidth bottlenecks, reduce latency, and process data for decision support in real time. Edge computing accomplishes this by bringing the businesses’ computational…
Pennsylvania Manufacturing Extension Partnership
Founded in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, in 1876, Hendrick Manufacturing provides custom metal solutions to a wide range of industries. As a family-owned and operated business, Hendrick has come a long way from its origin as the first commercial manufacturer of perforated metal screens.
During the…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
When I was a kid, I was enamored of cigarette-smoking movie stars. When I was a teenager, some of my friends began to smoke; I wanted to smoke too, but my parents forbade it. I was also intimidated by the ubiquitous anti-smoking commercials I saw on television warning me that smoking causes cancer…
Gleb Tsipursky
‘I don’t see how we can replace the serendipitous idea generation of hallway conversations,” said Saul, the director of quality management for a 1,500-employee enterprise software company, during a planning meeting about the company’s post-vaccine return to the office. “If we don’t return to the…
Barnaby Lewis
Harran blinks in the sunlight, adjusting his eyes. He’s an inquisitive child, enthusiastic for all things new, yet still he struggles to understand what he’s looking at. A man is pressing marks—triangles or wedges—into a piece of clay, explaining that in this way he can speak to people, even when…
Sana Kazilbash
The 3MF Consortium recently announced its latest volumetric design extension for encoding geometrical shapes and spatially diverse properties through a volume-based description. The organization, which seeks to advance a universal specification for 3D printing, is currently calling for public…
Theodoros Evgeniou, Caroline Zimmerman
This isn’t a new story: A novel technology disrupts society, bringing with it many benefits but also major risks and costs. We saw it during the Industrial Revolution, which vastly improved the average living standard but also led to poor labor conditions and environmental degradation, all within a…
Silke von Gemmingen
Lettuce is a valuable crop in Europe and the United States. But labor shortages make it difficult to harvest; finding sufficient seasonal labor to meet harvesting commitments is one of the sector’s biggest challenges. Moreover, with wages rising faster than producer prices, margins are tight.
In…
Ben Bensaou
For many organizations, the biggest challenge of innovation isn’t coming up with good ideas—it’s making sure those good ideas are noticed and acted upon. This is a particular challenge for multinationals, such as global pharmaceutical and health company Bayer, which have thousands of staff spread…
Lisa Anderson
Global supply-chain disruptions are rampant. Manufacturers and business owners now routinely deal with triple and quadruple lead times, widespread shortages, escalating prices, and transportation delays. Every link in the supply chain is out of alignment. Think of the imbalance as a sixth-grader on…