Providence Technology Group

Amazon.com Inc. will make its Prime Air drone delivery service available in Lockeford, California, later this year, the company announced today. The news marks an important milestone for Amazon’s drone delivery efforts. After launching Prime Air in Lockeford, in San Joaquin County south of Sacramento, the company plans to bring the service to additional locations. Amazon said that it intends to expand the availability of the service “in months and years to come.” For Lockeford residents, Prime Air will become available as a delivery option on Amazon’s e-commerce marketplace. The company’s drones will be capable of ferrying “thousands of everyday items” to users at a top speed of 50 miles per hour. A Prime Air drone can reach a maximum altitude of 400 feet during flight, then descend to cus...[Read More]

              California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday announced that Liana Bailey-Crimmins, the state’s chief technology officer, will serve as the new statewide chief information officer and director of the California Department of Technology. Bailey-Crimmins, whose new role requires state Senate confirmation, would take the top spot from deputy CIO Russ Nichols, who’s been serving as CDT’s acting head since the state’s former CIO, Amy Tong, joined Newsom’s Cabinet in February as secretary of government operations. Liana Bailey-Crimmins (LinkedIn) For Bailey-Crimmins, the new role follows a 30-year career in government in which she’s served as CIO and CISO of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and CIO of California Correctional Health Car...[Read More]

Veterinarians and researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a new way to detect leptospirosis, a life-threatening bacterial disease, in dogs using artificial intelligence. Leptospirosis is caused by the Leptospira bacteria, according to American Veterinary Medical Association, and it is typically found in soil and water. Infection in dogs can result in kidney failure, liver disease and bleeding in the lungs, with early detection being a matter of life or death, UC Davis said in a news release. Keep reading this article at newstribune.com.

  Etched in dirt, a narrow furrow is the only clue that the grasslands of Lime Ridge Open Space will soon be restored to their original splendor, cleared of dangerous power lines that could ignite nearby subdivisions. The undergrounding project, costing $3.75 million a mile, represents the beginning of a 10,000-mile-long effort by Pacific Gas and Electric to bury the state’s distribution lines to cope with the growing risk of winds and wildfires linked to global warming. “It is a one-time investment to eliminate essentially all ignition risk related to power lines, with the added benefit of reducing reliability issues,” said Jamie Martin, who oversees PG&E’s undergrounding initiative. “It’s permanent risk reduction.” The utility long resisted calls to bury its power lines as being...[Read More]

UC Davis Health physicians have performed the first single-anesthesia diagnosis to treatment of lung cancer using a fully robotic approach in the UC Health System. The procedure, known as robotic-assisted bronchoscopy, allows for the diagnosis and removal of a lung cancer mass during one surgery. It reduces anxiety and unnecessary waiting time for patients. Traditionally, when a patient is diagnosed with a suspicious nodule or mass in their lung, they are referred to a pulmonologist, who may perform a lung biopsy to confirm if it is cancerous. Keep reading This Article at medicalxpress.com.

Low-wage service workers don’t get enough credit — or cash — according to Mike Pieri, co-founder and chief product officer of EyeRate. To help rectify that, his Elk Grove-based business will generate employee bonuses from a platform that hosts positive customer reviews. Launched in 2019, EyeRate is the brainchild of Pieri and three other co-founders: Ray Weisberg and Michael and Mitchell Arredondo. Each worked previously in service industries, from restaurants to car washes to retail chains. But these low-wage positions didn’t give them a chance to make extra cash and get recognized for working hard, Pieri says. Keep reading This Article at Comstockmag.com

ROSEVILLE (CBS13) – Many drivers pass Roseville Galleria every day without knowing their license plates are detected by special cameras—but this is not the typical red-light camera. Instead, this camera aims to use the information it captures to stop the bad guys from breaking the law. One of the best pieces of evidence for law enforcement is video evidence of someone committing a crime, said Lt. Jeff Kook of the Roseville Police Department. It’s video evidence that can also prevent a crime, and 70% of crime is committed with a vehicle, Kool said. The department explains in a video that it switched to a software program called Flock Safety in 2021. Not only are area law enforcement agencies using the program, but so are private entities like businesses and homeowners associations, accordin...[Read More]

Stephanie Dupzyk is used to solving problems. For more than two decades, the 51-year-old Sacramento-based mother of two has helped run a thriving tech company that finds software solutions and cuts IT costs for some of the biggest companies in the world. But she was at a loss when it came to fixing one of the toughest issues she’s ever faced: helping her family care for her beloved mother-in-law as she descended into the abyss of Alzheimer’s. “My mother-in-law, Alice, was very able-bodied and rambunctious, her mind was going, but her body was stronger than ever,” Stephanie tells me over the phone. Keep Reading This Article at MSN.com.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) has awarded a team of researchers from the University of California campuses at Merced, Berkeley and Davis a two-year grant to simulate urban air mobility in the San Francisco area, and to draft regulations for this highly complex form of travel. The guidelines and best practices the team creates could help get advanced air mobility — featuring flying buses, air taxis and drone deliveries — off the ground around the state. Raja Sengupta, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley who specializes in systems and transportation engineering and directs the CalUnmanned Research Lab, is the project’s lead principal investigator (PI). Brandon Stark, director of the University of California Center of Excellence on Unmann...[Read More]

The State Department of Water Resources (DWR) plans to use helicopter-based technology to gather information about California’s groundwater aquifer structure, including the Livermore Valley basin. “The data collected during these surveys will provide a better understanding of California’s groundwater systems, and in turn support more informed and sustainable groundwater management and drought preparedness and response approaches,” said Steven Springhorn, DWR’s technical assistance manager for the state’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Keep Reading this article at independentnews.com.

California state officials are in the process of hiring executives and staff members to work at the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA), the new state agency that is tasked with regulating data privacy starting in January 2023. The CPPA is the enforcement mechanism for the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), the new data privacy law California voters approved via the passage of Proposition 24 in the November 2020 election. The CPRA will largely replace the existing California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which was passed by the California State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2018. The same privacy rights advocates who initially wrote CCPA subsequently wrote the CPRA out of concern that politicians were watering down the CCPA. Since CPRA was passed by t...[Read More]

A new Stanislaus County program uses 3D printers, robotic arms, virtual reality headsets and other advanced technology to introduce students to opportunities in major local industries. The Career Inspiration Center is run by the Stanislaus County Office of Education. Seventh- through 12th-grade students spend a day exploring careers in agriculture, manufacturing, technology or health. The goal is to expand students’ perception of local jobs and get them thinking about how to pursue careers they would enjoy. Keep reading this article at MSN