Tag: technology

New Technology Being Implemented by Delta Airlines

Image Source: Pixabay.com

Recently, news came out stating that Delta Airlines was investing in a facial-recognition system that could make checking your bag at the airport twice as fast. Testing of the software is going to begin this summer at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

So how will this new technology work? Passengers will need to have a passport in order to participate. The machine will scan their passport, and then facial recognition will scan their faces to verify their identity. They can then drop their bags and proceed to security.

Delta plans to spend $600,000 on four self-service bag drop machines at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, however only one of the machines will be equipped with the facial recognition technology. Delta will collect feedback during the trial period before deciding whether or not to fully implement the new technology at all the self-service stations.

Delta claims that the system is not designed to store any information or facial images gathered by the machine.

Sp what do you think of this new technology that Delta Airlines is implementing in order to streamline their check in lines at the airport? Do you think it will make check in quicker or lines shorter?

 

Click here for more information: http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/15/technology/delta-facial-recognition-luggage/index.html

Fluid-filled Devices Created and Inspired by Legos

There are tools used for manipulating tiny amounts of liquid, known as microfluidic devices. Typically these devices are used to stimulate human blood cells or other biological features, perform blood tests, or even detect contaminants in human blood. Microfluidic devices  are used by the biomedical field as it allows many medical tests to be accomplished on a single chip. Microfluidic devices can also be used for drug screening, glucose tests and many other purposes.

Microfluidic Device. Image Source: By National Institute of Standards and Technology, via Wikimedia Commons

However, fabricating these microfluidic devices is not easy. It requires a different configuration of interior passages, demanding a brand new design that must be molded or 3-D printed each time. In a recent report by the Journal of Micromechanics & Microengineering states that “Scientists from the University of California, Irvine have created Lego-style blocks out of a polymer called PDMS. Their bricks contained minuscule channels, half a millimeter wide, that allowed liquid to flow from brick to brick with no leaks. New devices could be created quickly by rearranging standard blocks into various configurations.”

This new technology makes it easier for scientists to create these microfluidic devices more quickly and ready for use! Check out the Tweet below from Science News to see what the fluid-ferrying Lego devices look like!

Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/construction-tiny-fluid-filled-devices-inspired-legos?tgt=nr

Why So Few? Women in STEM

, via Wikimedia Commons”]Not that long ago, girls were actively discouraged from careers in science, technology, engineering and math. And women’s representation in STEM fields reflected this. In the 1960s, for instance, just one in every 100 engineers was a woman. The situation has improved, but today, women still make up only 27 percent of people working in science and engineering.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women make up 47 percent of the total U.S. workforce, but are much less represented in particular science and engineering occupations. They comprise 39 percent of chemists and material scientists, 28 percent of environmental scientists and geoscientists, 16 percent of chemical engineers and just 12 percent of civil engineers.

So what can be done? Perhaps we can encourage movie and tv directors to cast more women in STEM roles on television shows and movies. Pushing important STEM organizations, like NASA and others, to report on their internal demographics would make the issue more public and would have a big impact.

Here is some advice from women in STEM fields for girls who also want to pursue a career in these areas: Follow your passion, work hard, ignore the doubters and find peers who are just as into STEM as you are.

Follow this link to see some awesome women who work in a STEM related fields from all over the world:

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/blog/eureka-lab/women-stem-reach-stars