Providence Technology Group

Greater Sacramento Economic Council: a success story

Advanced.farm is a cutting-edge agtech company located just minutes from UC Davis – the country’s #1 agricultural science university — in the Greater Sacramento region. The company develops automated farm equipment, including robots for harvesting apples, tree fruit and strawberries. They’ve grown rapidly in the Greater Sacramento region thanks to the region’s excellence in agricultural research, talent and industry innovation. Keep Reading This Article at greatersacramento.com.

Buzly app taking California universities by swarm

Since its launch in the spring of this year, Buzly — the student-created communication app — has become a popular way for Sacramento State students to connect. The app has gained so much traction that, according to the app’s creator Srinjay Verma, it is to expand to 16 other universities in California, including UCLA, UC Davis and Chico State. A new version of Buzly will be released in the next couple of weeks, Verma said, which is aimed at fixing the app servers to make the experience more user-friendly. In a past interview with The State Hornet, Verma said that the goal of Buzly was to keep students more informed about their campus community and allow for an easier way for them to network. Keep reading This Article at statehornet.com.

Global Semiconductor Company Solidigm Builds Research and Development (R&D) Facility, Home to 1,900 jobs in Greater Sacramento

One of California’s largest semiconductor projects will create up to $1.2 billion in annual economic impact for the capital region Sacramento, California, Sept. 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Solidigm, a U.S.-based subsidiary of global semiconductor company SK hynix, Inc., along with the City of Rancho Cordova and the Greater Sacramento Economic Council (GSEC), announced the largest high-wage jobs project in Greater Sacramento’s history. After an exhaustive site search in the Greater Sacramento region, Solidigm chose the City of Rancho Cordova to build its global research and development (R&D) campus, which will be home to more than 1,900 professionals in highly paid technology jobs over the next five years with more than $100 million investment in the facility. This is the largest ...[Read More]

Sierra Northern Railway unveils new Hydrogen Powered, Zero Emission Switching Locomotive design concept

Sierra Northern Railway (SERA) unveiled the new look for its industry-leading Hydrogen Powered Switching Locomotive. This Zero Emission switching locomotive is moving forward and is slated to be completed on schedule. The California Energy Commission awarded $4,000,000 for the design, integration, and demonstration of a hydrogen fuel cell switching locomotive. The locomotive will prove the potential of hydrogen fuel-cell technology to reduce transportation air pollutant and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. SERA is retiring an older tier 0 diesel locomotive and replacing it with a zero-emission switching locomotive using cutting-edge hydrogen technology. The project involves the integration of an advanced hydrogen fuel cell, hydrogen storage, advanced battery, and systems control technologie...[Read More]

California Targets Tesla ‘Full Self-Driving’ With Newly Passed Bill

  Tesla may soon face a new legal battle in its former home state of California thanks to a bill that directly targets the naming of its controversial Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (but not really) software suites. This might sound like deja vu considering that the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles recently filed a complaint over Tesla’s allegedly misleading marketing tactics for the same software. However, this is a completely separate legal matter that could impact not only Tesla, but also any automaker that sells a vehicle with partially-automated software in the golden state. Keep Reading This Article at thedrive.com.

Clinical Trial Aims to Restore Speech to those who Lost it Due to Brain Injuries

With this study, UC Davis joins BrainGate, an ambitious consortium of universities and academic medical centers studying how brain-computer interfaces can be used to restore neurological function in people living with paralysis. The technology is also sometimes referred to as brain-machine interface or neuroprosthesis. The focus of BrainGate is to use this technology to “turn thoughts into action” for people living with paralysis. Some of the consortium’s studies have turned “neural” handwriting into text output to a computer and helped participants with paralysis control a robotic arm and hand. The researchers at UC Davis are focused on a condition known as anarthria, where people want to speak but are unable to control their vocal cords or mouth in a way that would produce audible speech...[Read More]

Modern Football Technology Accepted into Growth Factory, Receives Investment

Modern Football Technology, a football analytics software company, announced that it received pre-seed investment from Growth Factory and was selected to participate in the second cohort of the Growth Factory accelerator program. This milestone further validates Modern Football Technology’s mission to help football coaches at all levels simplify and elevate their use of technology to an elite level. “As we scouted for Sacramento-based venture backable companies with strong teams, traction, and market timing, MFT rose to the top of our applicant list. With MFT’s deep understanding of the problem, Growth Factory and our community of investors, partners and mentors are excited to support Christian and team as they help coaches move from data fatigue to football intelligence and beyond,” said ...[Read More]

Gizmodo’s Degrees of the Future

In the 1950s, a visionary college student might have pursued a degree in computer science, and helped create our modern digital world. In the 1990s, that same student might have studied biotechnology, and developed genetic engineering techniques that are solving today’s health crises. But what and where should a forward-thinking student study in 2022? To find out, Gizmodo partnered with the independent market research provider Statista to identify the top universities within fields of study that we believe will define the 21st century. We looked for programs offering the best education in 25 disciplines, and we asked actual students and practitioners in each field to tell us which schools are leading the way. Click here for a detailed methodology. Keep reading this article at gizmodo.com.

Lawmakers Consider Several IT-Focused Bills in California

Many proposed laws with potential significance to IT vendors may ultimately fail to clear the statehouse this session — and starting Monday, lawmakers will begin again the process of deciding which stay and which go. That’s because Aug. 1 is the date Assembly members and state senators return to the Legislature from their summer recess, which began July 2. So-called fiscal committees in both houses, where many of these bills currently reside, will have through Aug. 12 to “report” bills out for consideration by lawmakers en masse on the floor. Keep reading This Article at govtech.com.  

Medicine and the metaverse: New tech allows doctors to travel inside of your body

The world of technology is rapidly shifting from flat media viewed in the third person to immersive media experienced in the first person. Recently dubbed “the metaverse,” this major transition in mainstream computing has ignited a new wave of excitement over the core technologies of virtual and augmented reality. But there is a third technology area known as telepresence that is often overlooked but will become an important part of the metaverse. While virtual reality brings users into simulated worlds, telepresence (also called telerobotics) uses remote robots to bring users to distant places, giving them the ability to look around and perform complex tasks.  This concept goes back to science fiction of the 1940s and a seminal short story by Robert A. Heinlein entitled Waldo.  If we comb...[Read More]

Robot dog teaches itself to Walk, Roll Over

Scientists revealed a robot dog that can teach itself to walk in just one hour. In a video released by researchers, the 4-legged robot is at first seen flailing its legs in the air and struggling – but after just 10 minutes it can take steps – and by the one-hour mark it’s walking quite easily, rolling off of its back and even navigating being knocked over with a stick by one of the researchers. Unlike many robots, this one was not shown what to do beforehand in a computer simulation. Keep reading this article at dailymail.co.uk.

Adding More Data Isn’t the Only Way to Improve AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) gets its “intelligence” by analyzing a given dataset and detecting patterns. It has no concept of the world beyond this dataset, which creates a variety of dangers. One changed pixel could confuse the AI system to think a horse is a frog or, even scarier, err on a medical diagnosis or a machine operation. Its exclusive reliance on the data sets also introduces a serious security vulnerability: Malicious agents can spoof the AI algorithm by introducing minor, nearly undetectable changes in the data. Finally, the AI system does not know what it does not know, and it can make incorrect predictions with a high degree of confidence. Keep reading this article at hbr.org.