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In partnership with InQtel Emerge, DARPA is expanding its successful Embedded Entrepreneurship Initiative to aggressively accelerate 150 DARPA-backed technologies out of the lab and into products. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2021-02-23a https://twitter.com/DARPA/status/1364260191311642630/photo/1

The 15-member commission calls a $40 billion investment to expand and democratize AI research and development a “modest down payment for future breakthroughs,” and encourages an attitude toward investment in innovation from policymakers akin that which led to building the interstate highway system in the 1950s. Ultimately, the group envisions hundreds of billions of dollars of spending on AI by the federal government in the coming years.


The National Security Commission on AI report makes recommendations ranging from 5G and China to immigration policy and civil rights.

You’ve heard of Apple’s famous walled garden, the tightly controlled tech ecosystem that gives the company unique control of features and security. All apps go through a strict Apple approval process, they are confined so sensitive information isn’t gathered on the phone, and developers are locked out of places they’d be able to get into in other systems. The barriers are so high now that it’s probably more accurate to think of it as a castle wall.

Innovative silicon solutions provider HPQ Silicon Resources Inc. (“HPQ” or the “Company”), announced that it has received the TREKHY® system, a portable hydrogen-based mini-power generator, jointly developed by the French companies Apollon Solar SAS (“Apollon”) and Pragma Industries SAS (“Pragma”).

While continuing to work with Apollon on the development of new generations of more efficient silicon powders for hydrogen production, HPQ signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Apollon and Pragma to study the commercial potential of the TREKHY® autonomous power generator in Canada.

The TREKHY® provides energy on demand. The system uses a compact fuel cell to provide electrical power. The integrated fuel cell combines hydrogen and oxygen to provide useful electricity + H2O. Hydrogen is produced through a chemical reaction resulting from contact between water and a powder bag. Each bag delivers 30W of power for more than one hour. (Video of the system in operation). In January 2021, a Japanese distributor purchased 300 TREKHY® systems to equip the survival shelters of the Japanese Civil Security.

We’ve all met people so smart and informed that we don’t understand what they’re talking about. The investment advisor discussing derivatives, the physician elaborating about B cells and T cells, the auto mechanic talking about today’s computerized engines—we trust their decisions, even though we do not completely grasp the meaning of their words.

An international team of scientists has developed a system that can generate random numbers over a hundred times faster than current technologies, paving the way towards faster, cheaper, and more secure data encryption in today’s digitally connected world.

The Aidan Meller Galley (www.aidanmeller.com) is Oxford’s longest established specialist gallery dealing in Modern, Contemporary and Old Master works.

Today we are joined by Aidan Meller, the Gallery Director, who with 20 years’ experience in the art business, works closely with private collectors, is often consulted by those who wish to begin, or further develop their collections, and is the creator of the Aidan Meller Art Prize, a valuable resource for the development of the arts.

Aidan regularly has original works in the gallery by the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, as well as older works such as John Constable, Turner and Millais, was involved in a discovery of a collection of Pre-Raphaelite cartoons for stained glass, is working with other experts in the field of scientific procedures for the authentication of artwork, and has been interviewed on a variety of current affair topics including the exhumation of Salvador Dali.

On today’s show we are going to be focusing on a rather new artist in the Meller portfolio, and that would be Ai-Da (www.ai-darobot.com), the world’s first ultra-realistic, humanoid, artificial intelligence (AI) robot artist, who makes drawings, painting, and sculptures.

Ai-Da is named after the mathematician Ada Lovelace, combines the latest in computing, robotics, and AI innovations, including those developed at Leeds University, and University of Oxford, and represents a fascinating milestone in AI innovation, human collaboration and creativity.

Once, holograms were just a scientific curiosity. But thanks to the rapid development of lasers, they have gradually moved center stage, appearing on the security imagery for credit cards and bank notes, in science fiction movies—most memorably Star Wars—and even “live” on stage when long-dead rapper Tupac reincarnated for fans at the Coachella music festival in 2012.

Quantum Encryption, Privacy Preservation, And Blockchains — Dr. Vipul Goyal, NTT Ltd. Cryptography & Information Security Labs


Dr Vipul Goyal is a senior scientist at NTT Research (a division of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, a telecommunications company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.) and an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where he is part of the Crypto group, the theory group, a core faculty at CyLab (CMU security and privacy institute) and the faculty advisor of CMU Blockchain Group.

Previously, Dr. Goyal was a researcher in the Cryptography and Complexity group at Microsoft Research, India.

Dr. Goyal received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Goyal is broadly interested in all areas of cryptography with a particular focus on the foundations of cryptography. Currently his research topics include secure multi-party computation, non-malleable cryptography, and foundations of blockchains.

Dr. Goyal is a recipient of several awards such as a JP Morgan faculty fellowship, a 2016 ACM Computer and Communications Security test of time award, a Microsoft Research graduate fellowship, and, a Google outstanding graduate student award.

Dr. Goyal was also named in the Forbes magazine 30 under 30 list of people changing science and healthcare in 2013.