Plastic is one of the most serious problems of the 21st century. This is not due to the raw materials or production processes, but to the fact that 32% of plastic packaging worldwide is not recovered (whether by landfill, incineration, or recycling). They end up uncontrolled in the environment. A complete decomposition of plastics…

In Part 4 of this series, we detailed edge computing and gateways for industrial machinery. Now consider the various protocols and communications leveraged in IIoT connectivity — for example, the SCADA, MES, and ERP architectures we already covered in Part 1 and 2 of this series. These are the most involved in IT/OT (operational technology) […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Saturday for more outside regulation in several areas in which the social media site has run into problems over the past few years: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, Zuckerberg said governments and regulators rather than…

Elon Musk’s Boring Company has recently announced it is dropping plans of the Los Angeles underground tunnel plans after concerns from residents, according to USA Today. The LA transit initiative said Tuesday that it was going to withdraw plans for a tunnel, under Interstate 405, after a settlement with community groups sued the city when…

With the increased role of technology in health care and health care administration, concern over cybersecurity continues to increase. Cybersecurity sessions at health care conferences are often packed as industry leaders attempt to hammer out solutions that balance the need for data security and privacy of patient data. As part of the Administration’s ongoing efforts…

In Part 1 of this story, PDD examined the issues of product safety and labeling. In Part 2, we examine the challenges of IoT-connected products and misuse of products Hackers Love Smart Products Today, numerous products are made into smart products that have integrated sensors and software built into their designs via a wired or wireless…

At the 30th Annual Product Liability Conference held recently at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, there was a lot of talk about safely integrating IoT when designing products. This went hand-in-hand on how to prepare individuals on how to effectively use smart products without misusing them. But, in order to ensure products aren’t misused,…

Teoka Williams recently filed suit against Beaumont Health, located in Dearborn, Michigan, claiming the hospital violated the Civil Rights Act when it barred her from entering the room of a patient who’d complained about having a black nurse. According to the lawsuit, Williams overheard a patient in her care say she didn’t want a “black bitch”…

A co-founder of Jefferson Airplane is accusing a New York City hospital of destroying his musical career with a botched tracheotomy after heart surgery in 2016. A lawsuit filed by Marty Balin against the operators of Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital alleges the singer and guitarist lost part of his tongue and has a paralyzed…

When Michigan-based hospital system Beaumont Health recently announced a hefty settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, the organization leadership undoubtedly expected their legal troubles were over. Instead, the subsequent unsealing of the provoking whistleblowers’ lawsuit has opened the not-for-profit health system up to a potential new challenge, as three cardiologists named in the legal…

Accountable care organizations were among the key initiatives of the Affordable Care Act, designed to help control soaring Medicare costs. ACOs were expected to save the government nearly $5 billion by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It hasn’t come anywhere close. Last week, the Trump administration proposed an overhaul to the program, which was designed…

As the FCC on Wednesday opened its annual inquiry into whether high-speed internet is being deployed to all Americans fast enough, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel dissented, asserting that the national minimum of 25 Mbps is too slow. In her dissenting statement to the FCC’s 14th Broadband Deployment Report Notice of Inquiry, Rosenworcel said it “fundamentally errs”…

Following an outcry from patient safety advocates, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) scrapped a plan that would have largely eliminated the requirement that hospitals report infection rates. The new rule announced last week maintains the practice of mandatory reporting for hospitals and public disclosure of the data. Leah Binder, CEO of the…

The judge who allowed AT&T’s mega-merger with Time Warner was clearly wrong in concluding the marriage won’t harm consumers, the Trump Justice Department argued Monday in challenging the decision. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon misunderstood the complexities of the booming pay-TV market and the nature of AT&T’s competitors, the department’s antitrust regulators asserted in their…

Joseph James Pappas, recently identified as the lead suspect in the murder of Houston surgeon Mark Hausknecht, MD, was confronted by police late last week. Facing apprehension by law enforcement authorities, Pappas turned his weapon on himself and committed suicide, reports the Houston Chronicle. “The potential threat to the city from an accused murderer considered…

Houston police this week named a suspect in the murder of Mark Hausknecht, MD, a surgeon who was fatally shot last month as he bicycled to work at Houston Methodist Hospital. Authorities identified the shooter as Joseph James Pappas, a 62-year-old white male who resides in Houston. It’s believed the motive is the death of…

A cardiologist at Virginia Commonwealth University has filed a $15 million defamation lawsuit against his employer and several colleagues. Tiziano Scarabelli, MD, PhD, claims his complaints about protocols that could compromise patient safety led to a concerted effort to drum up cause for firing him. “We have no comment on the pending litigation beyond stating…

A federal appeals court this week rejected a lawsuit challenging restored FCC rules regarding ultra-high frequency TV stations. The District of Columbia court reportedly dismissed the challenge on technical grounds, which leaves the policy known as the UHF discount in place. The FCC, during the Obama administration, implemented new standards that required broadcasters to count…

Stepping into the land of the Trump resistance, Seema Verma flatly rejected California’s pursuit of single-payer health care as unworkable and dismissed the Affordable Care Act as too flawed to ever succeed. Speaking Wednesday at the Commonwealth Club here, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said she supports granting states flexibility…

ZTE will continue to be able to use U.S.-made technology after congressional leaders abandoned an effort to reinstate a Commerce Department ban on the practice. The Washington Post reports that a compromise version of a must-pass defense bill would not include Senate language that would have restored the department’s “denial of export privileges” order —…

DARPA today announced its Artificial Intelligence Exploration (AIE) program, a key component of the agency’s broader artificial intelligence (AI) investment strategy aimed at ensuring the United States maintains an advantage in this critical and rapidly accelerating technology area. AIE will constitute a series of unique funding opportunities that use streamlined contracting procedures and funding mechanisms…

A new industry-backed report suggests that curbing the current delays in installations of small cellular infrastructure could generate tens of billions in economic development. The analysis, compiled by Accenture and commissioned by CTIA, said a 12-month reduction in current timelines would translate to an additional $100 billion for the U.S. economy over the next three…

New York City this week announced a $20.8 million settlement with a group of nurses in a dispute stemming from a municipal policy about public employees’ access to retirement with full pension benefits. City workers employed in professions deemed “physically taxing” were allow to retire at the age of 50 — as long as they…

IT experts at Monash University have devised the world’s leading post-quantum secure privacy-preserving algorithm – so powerful it can thwart attacks from supercomputers of the future. The Lattice-Based One Time Ring Signature (L2RS) enhanced security and privacy-preserving features enable large transactions and transfer of data without risk of being hacked by quantum computers and privacy revoked by unauthorised users.…

A who’s who of CEOs, engineers and scientists from the technology industry—including Google DeepMind, the XPRIZE Foundation and Elon Musk—have signed a pledge to “neither participate in nor support the development, manufacture, trade, or use of lethal autonomous weapons”. Released in Stockholm at the 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), the world’s leading…