At the end of May, Walmart announced an expansion of its drone-delivery service. By the end of the year, the retail giant plans to offer the service from 34 locations in six states. When the service started, it was only offered from a single store in Arkansas and with this expansion; they hope to reach up to 4 million households.

The service will operate between 8AM and 8PM and deliver packages weighing less than 10 pounds. The service will be operated by a company Walmart has invested in--DroneUp. There will be a charge of $3.99 for the delivery. The order is packed into a box and a DroneUp pilot flies the drone to the customer’s location, easing the box gently down on the front lawn with a claw-like device at the end of a sturdy cable.
This program expansion is forecasted to take hundreds of deliveries within a few months to more than a million drone deliveries a year. Walmart is clearly targeting the one or two items that are purchased with quick last-minute trips. The press release stated that the top-selling item at one of the early hubs is Hamburger Helper.

The Wall Street Journal reported that both UPS and FedEx are experimenting with drones but aren’t offering an actual service yet. Alphabet (Google’s parent) has its own drone service called Wing with limited offerings in Virginia and Texas. Wing is also operating in Australia and through the first quarter of 2022, they claim deliveries of over 200,000 parcels.
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And we can’t forget Amazon. As we wrote in Technology This Week Issue 8-49, the company is still experiencing problems with its drone efforts. The big difference for Amazon’s program is that they want the drones to be autonomous rather than piloted. Because of their commitment to “certified pilots,” Walmart will have a tougher time scaling up their efforts. Drone flights, by regulation, must be ‘line-of-sight’ flights. Stores will have to have control towers in their parking lots and are limited to a 1.5-mile radius for deliveries.
We will all keep our eyes on Walmart during the rest of 2022 to see if they will be successful in their new drone efforts. It could be a chance for Walmart to surpass Amazon in a critical technology area in the new retail arena!

Walmart was late in actively addressing competition with Amazon in ecommerce. In its new efforts to meet Amazon’s challenge, the company announced that it has plans to open four new fulfillment centers.

These fulfillment centers are where online orders will be packed and shipped. They are the first of a new breed of logistics for Walmart. The technology-heavy investments they are making involve robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Walmart said they were working with Knapp, an international logistics provider, to replace their current 12-step manual process with a new 5 steps and doubling the number of orders a location can fulfill in a day. Instead of moving product with people, the new approach will have robots shuttle skiffs to stagers directly, eliminating the need for floor personnel to walk up to nine miles or more a day.

"These four next-generation [fulfillment centers] alone could provide 75% of the U.S. population with next- or two-day shipping on millions of items," David Guggina, Senior Vice President of Innovation and Automation at Walmart U.S., wrote in a blog post.

When the four new centers join the company’s existing 31 dedicated e-commerce fulfillment centers, Walmart believes it will be able to reach 95% of the U.S. population with next- or two-day shipping. And with its 4,700 physical stores, the company could offer same-day delivery to about 80% of the U.S.

Both Walmart and Amazon are focusing on their weaknesses as compared to each other. Walmart is spending billions on logistics and automation and Amazon is spending billions on new physical stores, particularly for groceries (where Walmart dominates.)

Walmart’s new fulfillment centers will be located in Joliet, Illinois; McCordsville, Indiana; Lancaster, Texas; and Greencastle, Pennsylvania—with each planning to hire over 1,000 new workers. 
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Amazon currently has 253 fulfillment centers, 110 sortation centers, and 467 delivery stations in North America, not to mention hundreds of thousands of drivers and over 100 Amazon Air cargo aircraft at the end of 2021.

One of the proven methods of fighting cancer tumors is by injecting the tumor with a stimulant that will recruit immune cells to destroy tumor cells. Usually, this is done by injecting directly into the tumor, but it can be challenging when the tumor is in a hard-to-reach location.

Stanford’s new research has developed a new synthetic molecule that combines a tumor-targeting agent with another molecule that triggers the immune system to attack the tumor. The immunotherapy can be administered intravenously and can target either a specific location or multiple tumors.

The research team has just completed testing on laboratory animals and they were able to induce complete tumor regression in half the test population infected with aggressive triple negative breast cancers with just one injection. They had similar results from a group of mice infected with pancreatic cancer.

“We essentially cured some animals with just a few injections,” said Jennifer Cochran, PhD, the Shriram Chair of the Department of Bioengineering. “It was pretty astonishing. When we looked within the tumors, we saw they went from a highly immunosuppressive microenvironment to one full of activated B and T cells — similar to what happens when the immune-stimulating molecule is injected directly into the tumor. So, we’re achieving intra-tumoral injection results but with an IV delivery.”

Building on Earlier Research. The work in this study builds on that done in 2018 by Ronald Levy, MD and Edit Saga-Barfi, PhD, both of Stanford School of Medicine. That study used the same immune-activating agent and a different one injected directly into the tumor site. The results of that trial were complete tumor eradication, elimination of distant metastases and also blocked recurrence in mammary tumors. The research group then launched a clinical trial in people with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“The surprising result of the new research was that the sculpting of the tumor microenvironment by this intravenously administered molecule was identical to that achieved by injecting immune stimulating agents directly into the tumor,” Levy said. “This is a big advantage because it’s no longer necessary to have an easily or safely injectable tumor site.”

Next Steps. Before any human testing can occur, much more research needs to be done. The level of optimism is high in the research team because the tumor-targeting portion of the PIP-CpG molecule (PIP) appears to recognize proteins called interns. Because these are found at high levels on the surface of many cancer types, there is a possibility for an off-the-shelf treatment for patients with a variety of cancer types.
Cochran and her team have coupled the PIP-CpG molecule with probes that can be visualized with near-infrared imaging or positron emission tomography. This gives them the tool to track the location of hard-to-see cancers.
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“These integrin-targeting molecules act like guided missiles,” Cochran said. “They can deliver toxic drugs or imaging agents. Now we’re using them to deliver a signal that riles up the immune cells to fight the tumor.” That signal, CpG, mimics a pattern of DNA common in bacteria and viruses but rarely found in vertebrates.
“After more than 10 years of work on PIP, it is rewarding to experience this convergence of expertise from laboratories around Stanford, which allowed us to develop a highly promising new cancer treatment strategy,” Cochran said.

This is your annual WAKE-UP CALL! All those CDs and DVDs you’ve burned over the last decade to back up all those precious pictures, music and movies may experience bit rot. That’s right. They may be damaged by scratches or temperature and humidity variations. Most commercial CDs and DVDs will survive better than your own custom discs, but they all are prone to have problems after sitting for a long period.

Before you finish this article, please go over to YouTube, and watch EposVox’s video on how to recover data from your optical discs. It’s a 12-minute investment that will provide you with an incredible amount of information on how to keep from losing all those precious pictures, movies and even music you’ve stored on optical media.

I would recommend getting two USB optical drives from different manufacturers. That way, if one drive doesn’t read a given disc, you can try the other and see if there is any difference. If you have a tower and can install an optical drive in a bay, that would be even faster for most operations. 

Next, invest in a good piece of bulk file copy software. Here are two products that work with both Mac and Windows.

TeraCopy. It’s one of the best-known bulk copy software products on the market today. It works to copy files between computer systems and multiple media sources, regardless of the operating system. If the software encounters an error while copying files, it will try again to recover the file. If the recovery doesn’t work, it will skip the file and go to the next file and then provide a log of files with problems at the end of the job. It’s available for Windows and Macintosh.

UltraCopier. This open source software works across platforms, including Windows, Mac and Linux. This software can handle any file copy process, regardless of the size and destination. Ultracopier is faster than your default system tools for copying files. Plus, it provides advanced features, which include start/resume copy processes, searches through the copy list, and speed limits.
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Finally, after you’ve copied all your super valuables to your computer and extra external disk drive, you should include all of it in your overall backup program. That means you have an extra copy on a separate device locally and a copy on a safe cloud storage solution.

The single most important factor in surviving a battlefield injury is the combat medic. The medic is first on the scene and can administer help within the Golden Hour or even Golden Ten Minutes. Quick, effective medical procedures can be the difference between life and death.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Raytheon BBN to lead a team to develop an augmented reality device that will provide the combat medic with a virtual assistant. The system will use a set of AR goggles, which will provide visual information on 50 different medical procedures.

Medics are highly trained in the most common battlefield injuries, but they aren’t doctors or surgeons and often have no experience in little-used procedures which may be needed at a moment’s notice. This is why DARPA is working on its Medical Assistance, Guidance, Instruction and Correction (MAGIC) system. 

MAGIC uses a pair of augmented reality goggles equipped with audio and video sensors and special artificial intelligence software that can act as an assistant to monitor the situation and advise the medic on how to proceed.

Raytheon will use machine learning technology to ‘teach’ the system both medical skills and situation assessment skills. The initial prototype will study 2,500 stereo videos and almost 50 million images. The machine learning process will review the historical data and synthesize useful concepts and solutions from that data.

When the AI software is ready, MAGIC should be able to provide spoken suggestions to medics or project visual overlays on the scene to guide their hands through needed medical procedures. The system will also provide events timing from engagement to final hand-off to field hospital personnel. MAGIC will also provide dosage guidance for in-field medications.

A first prototype is expected in about 18 months.
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"The combat medical environment is challenging and chaotic," said Raytheon BBN scientist Brian VanVoorst. "Our goal for the Raytheon BBN MAGIC AI tool is to help support personnel to provide guidance as needed without disrupting their concentration."

In our Issue 8-44 [the All Metaverse Issue] we talked about how consumers will migrate to virtual worlds for more and more of their on-line shopping. We now have the first research which confirms that statement. A recent report from CommerceNext, in partnership with Bizrate and The Commerce Experience Collective (CommX), explores whether consumers are really engaging with the metaverse, social commerce and livestream shopping.

Here’s what the research found:

As expected, almost half of those in the survey have never heard of the metaverse and only 5% are familiar with it. The remaining 47% have only a limited understanding of the new virtual worlds. Over 80% of respondents have never used virtual gaming worlds like Second Life or Fortnite. Those that are using virtual gaming represent only 26% of Generation Z respondents.

With the above generalities, it was remarkable that 41% of all respondents said they would like to be able to shop for real-life products in 3D or virtual worlds in the future.

Today, the biggest attraction to virtual commerce is through social platforms. Some 43% of online shoppers say they buy products promoted via social media and 19% purchase products featured on TikTok, Instagram or Talkshop Live.

Livestreams also provide a source of information and desired content in the virtual worlds. The survey found that 54% of shoppers haven’t heard of livestream shopping, 32% recognize the term and 4% have made purchases via the channel. Respondents that used livestreaming said that discovering new products and new facts about known products was a driving force in their use of livestreaming.

Even with the above positive feedback, the study reveals that the metaverse and livestream shopping are lagging behind the hype. It doesn’t, however, mean that retail planners and marketers shouldn’t prepare for eventual adoption.

“Get in early,” advises Raj De Datta, CEO at Bloomreach, which chairs The Commerce Experience Collective. “Initially it was thought that digital goods and services would make up the lion’s share of revenue in the metaverse. But what we’re actually seeing is a crossover from the digital world into the physical, with consumers spending real money on physical products.”

It's clear that while we are treading water waiting for metaverse adoption, we need to be testing alternative strategies to see which ones have the most potential.

“Whether we’re talking about traditional brick-and-mortar, e-comm or the metaverse, brands that focus on a personalized, tailored experience are the ones that will end up rising to the top,” De Datta said. 
He recommends testing ideas with your existing customer base. 
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“You might consider a digital pop-up shop that caters to a specific existing customer who has already exhibited certain preferences in your e-commerce environment,” he noted. “This kind of cross-pollination is a highly strategic way to engage in a test.” 

Most of us think of May 5th as “Cinco de Mayo” and look forward to an after-work margarita. But May 5th is also World Password Day and Apple, Google and Microsoft used this day to announce their support for the passwordless standard from the FIDO Alliance (fast identity online).

The three companies jointly announced that they have committed to building support for all the mobile, browser, and desktop platforms that they control in the coming twelve months. This means that passwordless authentication will come to iOS and Android mobile operating systems, Chrome, Edge and Safari browsers, and Windows and macOS desktop environments.

The FIDO Alliance announced that it won’t be long before users will be able to use a fingerprint reader, face scanner or even a mobile phone instead of passwords to conduct online business securely.

“Just as we design our products to be intuitive and capable, we also design them to be private and secure,” said Kurt Knight, senior director of platform product marketing at Apple. “Working with the industry to establish new, more secure sign-in methods that offer better protection and eliminate the vulnerabilities of passwords is central to our commitment to building products that offer maximum security and a transparent user experience — all with the goal of keeping users’ personal information safe.”

At Microsoft, Alex Simons, corporate vice president for identity program management, said that tomorrow’s digital products need to be safer and easier to use. "The complete shift to a passwordless world will begin with consumers making it a natural part of their lives," he said in a statement.
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FIDO said the three technology leaders will implement over the next year. We’ll likely hear many more details from all three, as each has their annual developer conferences this spring/summer. FIDO is already used by a wide variety of device makers and service providers. With Apple, Google and Microsoft supporting the interoperable standard, it will make a passwordless future much more attainable.

We all do everything we can to keep our phones charged, but the time will come when you’ve run the battery down to where you must charge it during the day rather than in the evening while you sleep. Everyone knows you can’t go from zero to full charge in 10 or 15 minutes. But following a few simple rules will help you charge your phone quicker.

Completely Turn Off the Phone. This will not work if you’re waiting for an important call, but when you can, shutting the phone off completely will provide the fastest charge. You may not think that anything is happening when you’re charging, but when the phone is still on, it’s constantly polling its cellular service and even potentially updating apps in the background. All that activity slows the charging process. 

Use a Wall Charger, Not Wireless Charging. Whenever possible, use a plug-in wall charger. We know you can plug a USB cable into your PC or laptop, but that will almost always result in longer charging time. Even if you’re using a charger with lower wattage, an outlet will usually charge faster most of the time. While wireless charging pads are perfect for overnight use, a gold old-fashioned cable plugged into the wall is always better when you have little time to spare.

Don’t Use Your Phone While It’s Charging. It’s so tempting to fire off an urgent text or scroll through Instagram, but leave it alone. It will charge faster.

Consider Getting a Fast Charger. Nowadays, Apple and most Android makers don’t provide a charger with their phones. If you are still using a charger from an earlier phone, it’s probably a slow 5W model. You’re going to need at least a 20W charger to fast charge most current models. Also remember that there is a limit on wattage. You can’t buy a 100W charger and expect a 10-minute recharge. As an example, the iPhone 13 Pro Max has a charging ceiling of 27W.

Here are two of the better fast chargers:

• ArcStation Pro 40W Dual Charger from Spigen. If you have multiple phones in your household and fight for the charger, this dual charger will solve your problems. At 40W, you can fast-charge two phones at once. If one port is being used on its own, it can provide up to 30W for charging larger devices.
• Anker 725 Charger (Nano II 65W). This charger is a multi-tasker. The top port gives 20W of power for phone charging while the bottom can hit 45W. When every device you own is hitting that low power range, this is the charger you want around. Despite its power capabilities versus lower-wattage chargers, it’s still a very small adapter.
  
  

Last December’s Issue 8-25 had an article about the first tests of the SpinLaunch system for substituting a centrifuge spinning mechanism to hurl light-weight satellites into sub-orbit.

Now, NASA has said they are going to test SpinLaunch’s unusual launch technology. Rather than use a first stage rocket to get the launch vehicle out of our atmosphere, SpinLaunch uses an electric centrifuge to hurl the payload like a discus.

While the company’s kinetic launch system is unusual, it has the potential to affect positively both the environment and the cost. But it isn’t for all launches. Obviously, no one is suggesting its use for manned missions or super-heavy payloads.

The company says that SpinLaunch is ideal for any launch vehicle weighing in at under 440 pounds. The key is ruggedizing the packaging so it can take the punishment of 10,000 G force and being released at a speed of over six times the speed of sound (around 5,000 mph.) Once the vehicle is released, a second-stage rocket can take over and provide the power to get the package into orbit.

To quantify the benefits of the SpinLaunch approach, the company says that they can save up to 70% of the fuel by eliminating the first-stage rocket and that also means no need for the expensive launch structures needed with traditional launches. In essence, hurling the vehicle will use a quarter of the fuel at a tenth of the price!

NASA’s interest has led them to sign a Space Act agreement with SpinLaunch to develop and integrate a NASA payload for a slower sub-orbital launch. The payload will take measurements which will be analyzed by both NASA and the company. They are planning this first test for later this year. SpinLaunch is working on a timetable for a first orbital launch in 2025.

“SpinLaunch is offering a unique suborbital flight and high-speed testing service, and the recent launch agreement with NASA marks a key inflection point as SpinLaunch shifts focus from technology development to commercial offerings,” said SpinLaunch Founder and CEO Jonathan Yaney in a press release. “What started as an innovative idea to make space more accessible has materialized into a technically mature and game-changing approach to launch. We look forward to announcing more partners and customers soon and greatly appreciate NASA’s continued interest and support in SpinLaunch.”
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SpinLaunch has developed a render video on YouTube showing how this remarkable system will work.

Physicists from the University of Arkansas have successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current.

“An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery.

The findings, titled "Fluctuation-induced current from freestanding graphene," and published in the journal Physical Review E, are proof of a theory the physicists developed at the U of A three years ago that freestanding graphene—a single layer of carbon atoms—ripples and buckles in a way that holds promise for energy harvesting.

The idea of harvesting energy from graphene is controversial because it refutes physicist Richard Feynman’s well-known assertion that the thermal motion of atoms, known as Brownian motion, cannot do work. Thibado’s team found that, at room temperature, the thermal motion of graphene does, in fact, induce an alternating current (AC) in a circuit, an achievement thought to be impossible. 

In the 1950s, physicist Léon Brillouin published a landmark paper refuting the idea that adding a single diode, a one-way electrical gate, to a circuit solves harvesting energy from Brownian motion. Knowing this, Thibado’s group built their circuit with two diodes for converting AC into a direct current (DC). With the diodes in opposition allowing the current to flow both ways, they provide separate paths through the circuit, producing a pulsing DC current that performs work on a load resistor.

They also discovered that their design increased the amount of power delivered. “We also found that the on-off, switch-like behavior of the diodes actually amplifies the power delivered, rather than reducing it, as previously thought,” said Thibado. “The rate of change in resistance provided by the diodes adds an extra factor to the power.” 

The team used a relatively new field of physics to prove the diodes increased the circuit’s power. “In proving this power enhancement, we drew from the emergent field of stochastic thermodynamics and extended the nearly century-old, celebrated theory of Nyquist,” said coauthor Pradeep Kumar, associate professor of physics and coauthor. 

According to Kumar, the graphene and circuit share a symbiotic relationship. Though the thermal environment is performing work on the load resistor, the graphene and circuit are at the same temperature and heat does not flow between the two.

That’s an important distinction, said Thibado, because a temperature difference between the graphene and circuit, in a circuit producing power, would contradict the second law of thermodynamics. “This means that the second law of thermodynamics is not violated, nor is there any need to argue that ‘Maxwell’s Demon’ is separating hot and cold electrons,” Thibado said.

The team also discovered that the relatively slow motion of graphene induces current in the circuit at low frequencies, which is important from a technological perspective because electronics function more efficiently at lower frequencies. 

“People may think that current flowing in a resistor causes it to heat up, but the Brownian current does not. In fact, if no current was flowing, the resistor would cool down,” Thibado explained. “What we did was reroute the current in the circuit and transform it into something useful.” 
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The team’s next objective is to determine if the DC current can be stored in a capacitor for later use, a goal that requires miniaturizing the circuit and patterning it on a silicon wafer, or chip. If millions of these tiny circuits could be built on a 1-millimeter by 1-millimeter chip, they could serve as a low-power battery replacement.