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Preventing School Shootings in Texas: App encourages youth to collaborate with officials

In a world dominated by smartphone usage, a developer has created a solution for bridging the gap between an unlikely duo: law enforcement officials and students. How so? By way of an app, of course.

Developed by Microassist, a primary training vendor for the State of Texas, the DPS (Department of Public Safety) application, iWatch Texas, will allow teachers, students and parents to report anything deemed suspicious, which in return could save numerous lives.

“It’s the first statewide mobile app of its kind in the U.S. that helps citizens track, identify and report on potential criminal activity. With the rise of the mobile generation, organizations with mission critical content – like DPS – greatly benefit from expanding their reach to a wider and technologically oriented audience,” said Microassist’s CEO, Sanjay Nasta in an official press release on the company’s website.

“Making sure the information is forwarded to the correct agency is a big part of this. Before, the information might now go to the right people, might not go in a timely manner, might not be there when the information is needed,” said Lieutenant Nick Bristow of the Collin County Sheriff’s Office. “[The application] gives law enforcement and school administrators a chance to intervene before it’s too late.”

The app already encompasses useful features, such as information on most wanted fugitives, sex offenders and human trafficking. Reports are transmitted to the Austin Regional Intelligence Center (North Texas Fusion Center in McKinney for the Dallas/Fort Worth area) where the information is then vetted and passed along to analysts from local, state and federal agencies. The information is used to gather intelligence and vet security threats, and is then passed on to local law enforcement agencies and school districts, respectively.

The suspicious activity reporting feature mentioned in this article will have a separate application in the future, according to an article by NBCDFW. The iWatch Texas application, along with an official overview, can be found by clicking here.

Are you developing an application that can save lives? Did you know your R&D experiments could be eligible for the R&D Tax Credit and you can receive up to 14% back on your expenses? To find out more, please contact a Swanson Reed R&D Specialist today or check out our free online eligibility test.

Who We Are:

Swanson Reed is Texas’ largest Specialist R&D tax advisory firm, offering tax credibility assessments, claim preparation, and advisory services. We manage all facets of the R&D tax credit program in Texas, from claim prep & audit compliance to claim disputes.

Swanson Reed regularly hosts free webinars and provides free IRS CE and CPE credits for CPA’s. For more information please visit us at www.swansonreed.com/webinars or contact your usual Swanson Reed representative.

“Be seen. Be safe.”: Smart helmet pairs with Apple Watch, signals via hand gestures

The days of pushing signal lights on a bike’s handle bars are over—say hello to the Lumos helmet. The helmet (compatible with iOS) allows riders to signal which way they will turn with nothing more than a hand gesture.

To do so, riders simply pair the helmet with their iPhone via Bluetooth, which is then calibrated with the appropriate hand signals via the Apple watch. When in use, the hand motions that were calibrated are then displayed via 11 LED lights, almost like the blinker on a vehicle.

This innovative Lumos helmet not only protects cyclists that choose to go on a midnight ride, but it also offers various impressive tracking qualities, such as distance traveled, speed, and time. The helmet can even sense when a rider is applying the brakes to slow down, which again, looks similar to when a vehicle puts on the brakes; except it’s on the back of the rider’s head.

The Lumos website describes its product as “the world’s first smart bike helmet that beautifully integrates lights, hard brake, turn signals, and helmet into a single cohesive whole.” The helmet is weatherproof and safety certified. It also boasts a rechargeable battery and integrated lights. Check it out for yourself by clicking here.

“Lumos started with a pair of engineers asking themselves how they could improve their own cycling experience and safety on the road. We loved commuting to work by bike, but all too often it’d feel so dangerous. So we decided to make a solution. A helmet that can make us and our intentions more visible. We announced the idea out to the public and fellow cyclists seemed to love it. The rest is history.”

Are you developing a technology that helps with the well-being and safety of cyclists? Did you know your R&D experiments could be eligible for the R&D Tax Credit and you can receive up to 14% back on your expenses? To find out more, please contact a Swanson Reed R&D Specialist today or check out our free online eligibility test.

Who We Are:

Swanson Reed is the largest specialist R&D tax credit consulting firm in the United states. We solely provide services related to the R&D credit and are the only firm in the United States to offer free live webinars on a daily basis. Click here for more information.

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The Longevity of Batteries: From lithium-ion to lithium-sulfur, latter signals new age in battery life

It’s 2018, and when your phone battery dies, it feels like you die along with it–at least temporarily. Not being able to check social media, keep up with work emails, or access a map with directions to the latest craft beer taps seems (almost) anxiety inducing; for me it does, anyway. By way of the brilliant minds at The University of Texas at Dallas, the post-mortem phone blues may occur less frequently, thanks to their research and development efforts to create an efficient lithium-sulfur battery.

According to Dr. Kyeongjae “K.J.” Cho, a professor with research interests in renewable energy at UT Dallas, lithium-sulfur batteries “are less expensive to make, weigh less, store almost twice the energy of lithium-ion batteries and are better for the environment.”

“A lithium-sulfur battery is what most of the research community thinks is the next generation of battery,” Cho said. “It has a capacity of about three to five times higher than lithium-ion batteries, meaning if you are used to a phone lasting for three hours, you can use it for nine to 15 hours with a lithium-sulfur battery.”

To make the lithium-sulfur battery more efficient than a traditional lithium-ion battery, Cho and other researchers discovered that molybdenum, a metal that easily forms compounds with other elements, improved stability and compensated for the poor conductivity of sulfur, which makes lithium-sulfur batteries more practical. There are downfalls, however.

In an article for Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers explain, “Despite many advantages, Li–S batteries are plagued with practical issues that limit their applications: (1) the poor electronic conductivity of sulfur that retards electron transfer during the charge/ discharge processes; (2) the formation of intermediate polysulfides generated during cycling, which leads to the shuttle effect and increases the impedance of both electrodes; (3) the intrinsic issues of Li-metal anodes, which are often associated with uncontrollable dendrite formation during repeated Li deposition and dissolution processes; and (4) the formation of an unstable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer between the electrolyte and Li metal due to inhomogeneous deposition of Li. These issues lead to the reduction of Coulombic efficiency and the subsequent fast termination of battery life.”

Despite the downfalls, it’s arguably a matter of time before R&D initiatives, such as the one above, brings forth a commercially available lithium-sulfur battery.

Are you developing a rechargeable energy solution? Did you know your R&D experiments could be eligible for the R&D Tax Credit and you can receive up to 14% back on your expenses? To find out more, please contact a Swanson Reed R&D Specialist today or check out our free online eligibility test.

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Toyota makes generous research donation

Toyota has donated its Erlanger Kentucky engineering and research facility to become an innovative educational center serving the region.

One of the buildings at the Erlanger headquarters is now being donated to the Ignite Institute at Roebling Innovation Center, name after famed engineer John A. Roebling. The donated facility is a 183,000-square-foot Quality and Production Engineering Laboratory and will serve as a science, technology, engineering, art and math education center.

Toyota hopes that this enduring gift will inspire the next generation of local workers to be creative, engaged, highly skilled, tech-savvy and work-ready problem solvers.Toyota’s goal through the donation of its research facility is to create a lasting positive impact by helping to prepare students for the next generation of jobs, and they encourage other large companies and businesses to do the same.

The school will allow a capacity of 1,000 students from grades 9-12, with the first class expected to take place in the 2019 school year. Through Toyota’s generous donation, Boone County Kentucky will be able to offer it’s students the best education in research, development and innovation. The entire school will be based on a project-based learning and real industry-case methodology, which aims to empower students and offer them the opportunity of a lifetime throughout their schooling and also after they graduate.

Following the donation, the Kentucky Government announced a $6.8 million construction of research facilities grant to further develop the facility to suit the requirements and environment of 9th-12th grade schooling. This partnership between Toyota and local education of Kentucky serves as proof that the state is on track to become the nation’s unparalleled hub of engineering and manufacturing excellence.

To find out whether your company is eligible for a state research credit for construction of research facilities Contact a Swanson Reed specialist.

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New Congressional Support for Patent Tax Breaks

As the need for innovation and economic growth in America becomes more apparent, Congressional tax writers are becoming more accepting to new tax breaks for corporate innovation.

These intellectual-property tax breaks, also known as a “patent box” or “innovation box” have already been established in multiple developed countries, leaving America behind once again in the universal race for innovation.

Countless U.S. businesses, especially the high-tech and drug industries, have been promoting the idea behind a patent box for awhile now as an incentive to keep their research and business in America.

A patent box enforces an extremely low tax rate on business income that is a result of intellectual property. For example, the U.K.’s patent box imposes a 10% rate for these profits, which is half of the country’s general corporate rate.

In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, Senator Charles Schumer of New York (D.), one of the leading supporters of the U.S. patent box said, “we have to protect ourselves. Whether it’s high tech, pharma or high-end manufacturing, we believe research is best kept here….These are our crown jewels.”

The patent box in return will help create jobs and promote higher wages, which is high on America’s to-do list.

The Pfizer Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ian Read said that a patent box would “foster the creation of well-paying R&D and manufacturing jobs in the United States.” And that the U.S. “now lags behind the most major economies and some emerging economies in tax incentives for R&D,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio (R.), another big supporter in Congress, is in full agreement. In the same article, Portman states, “for years, the U.S. has been uncompetitive because we have the highest corporate rate in the developed world. Now, there is another reason that the U.S. is falling behind — patent boxes. By standing still, the U.S is falling behind and it is U.S. workers and wages that suffer.”

Even though the advantages of being a patent-box country are indisputable and the support is high, the realistic and political hurdles of implementing the idea is still weighing heavy on lawmakers. Regulating who and what qualifies for the patent box seems to be the biggest concern at the moment.

*UPDATE :

On July 8, 2015, the International Tax Reform Working Group released its Comprehensive Tax Reform Report. The group, co-chaired by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), focused on seven different topics, including creating a patent box regime.

The Report predicts that innovation capital and workforces will be pulled towards countries with a patent box and says that “the anticipated impact of the new nexus requirements on innovation box regimes will have a significant detrimental impact on the creation and maintenance of intellectual property in the United States, as well as on the associated domestic manufacturing sectors, jobs and revenue base.”

While indicating that the adoption of a patent box will come along with many issues that will have to be settled beforehand, such as what types of intellectual property should be covered, the Report advocates that the U.S. needs to act quickly or else we will get left behind.

“The co-chairs agree that we must take legislative action soon to combat the efforts of other countries to attract highly mobile U.S. corporate income through the implementation of our own innovation box regime that encourages the development and ownership of IP in the United States, along with associated domestic manufacturing.”

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A Plan to Keep America the Home of Innovation

On Tuesday, May 12th, Governor Chris Christie of New jersey gave a policy speech at The University of New Hampshire in Manchester in which he revealed his proposal for economic growth in America.

He called his strategy the “Five-Point Plan for Four Percent Growth,” which consists of:

pro-growth tax reform,
getting regulation under control,
launching a national energy strategy,
creating incentives and removing disincentives to work,
ensuring that America is the home of innovation.

He harped on his final bullet point, stressing the importance of America remaining the home of innovation in the world and explained that for this to happen, “we need to take steps today to preserve the building blocks that got us here.”

According to Christie, our first step is to “spend less on entitlements and more on research that leads to innovation.” As government spending on entitlements and health care has skyrocketed, research and development investment has been stagnant.

For example, last year spending on Medicaid went up 16.2%, while the budget for the National Institutes of Health went up 0.1% and the budget for the National Science Foundation declined 4.3%.

“Yet it is this exact investment in basic R&D, in such areas as bio-medical research, materials science, and high performance computing – delivered in a large part through individual investigators at universities – that has laid the vital groundwork for so much innovation in America’s fastest growing industries, such as technology and biotech. America will not remain the home of innovation if we allow our crown jewels – the great research universities that lead the world – to wither on the vine,” said Christie.

Christie suggested making the R&D tax credit permanent to boost private sector innovation. He stated that in 2009, over 12,000 companies, including over 5,000 manufacturers, used the R&D tax credit.

Christie voiced that remaining the leader in innovation would also require more focus on education and assurance that new, growing companies have access to capital.

He closed with asking the American people to look around them and understand that something has to be done. Unfortunately, innovation on it’s own can not dig us out of this rut when we are surrounded by heavy regulation and a lack of investment in our economy, said Christie.

“Other countries are adopting pro-growth policies and making forward-looking investments. In a competitive world, with talent distributed across the globe, the right to be the home of innovation has to be earned. It is not given.”

Click here for the full speech.

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