Daily Business Report: Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021
XCOM Labs unveils extended reality platform
Successful public demonstration of the first of a kind wireless, multi-user extended-reality
platform that unlocks new possibilities for commercial applications
XCOM Labs, the technology startup co-founded in 2018 by the former Qualcomm CEO and executive chairman Paul Jacobs, has come out of stealth mode to make its first public technology demonstration: a high-performance wireless extended reality system.
In addition to being the first public demonstration of an XCOM product, the technology itself marks the biggest technological advancement in extended reality (XR) in some time. Until now, there’s been a lot of hype around the potential for AR/VR, but even the most advanced hardware and software delivered a limited, impractical and often nauseating user experience. XCOM’s system finally makes things like remote training, education and location-based entertainment feasible.
The demonstration was made for a group of military and defense leaders during the first public unveiling of the system. Attendees wore Microsoft HoloLens 2 Mixed Reality headsets equipped with small, lightweight radios enabling multiple users to move freely, simultaneously and seamlessly through a highly detailed photorealistic interactive digital environment showcasing training, education, telemedicine, smart warehousing, and science XR use cases. The featured wireless XR system used millimeter wave spectrum in the globally available 60GHz unlicensed band, although the underlying technologies can be applied to 5G as well.
“We’ve combined advanced wireless and multimedia technology to create the next level of immersive experiences,” said Matt Grob, chief technology officer at XCOM Labs. “XCOM wireless XR is engineered for remote collaboration, learning and specialized training, battlefield simulation, telemedicine, industrial automation, smart warehouses, location-based entertainment and more. We anticipate this technology will open the flood gates for developers to create next generation XR experiences.”
TOP PHOTO: An XCOM Labs technician interacting in a virtual work using the company’s immersive, seamless and wireless XR system.
Mayor’s ‘Homes for All of Us’
housing package moves forward
As part of his continuing commitment to create housing opportunities for all San Diegans, Mayor Todd Gloria announced that a major piece of his “Home for All of Us” housing initiative is moving forward with the San Diego Planning Commission set to take up the first of two Housing Action Packages today
“Homes for All of Us,” which Gloria announced in July, features two Housing Action Packages, each consisting of a suite of amendments to city development regulations and property use that streamline housing production.
The City Council is expected to consider the first Housing Action Package early in 2022. After that, a second Housing Action Package will be prepared to potentially include additional statewide measures, recommendations from the Middle-Income Housing Working Group, and additional amendments to the city’s Land Development Code related to the production of more housing.
UC San Diego helps expand Parkinson’s
Progression Markers Initiative
After a decade of pioneering research, the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research will see a major expansion. Entering its most ambitious phase yet, the clinical study will grow its in-clinic recruitment from 1,400 to 4,000 participants by the end of 2023.
This is the latest step in PPMI’s mission to maintain the most robust open-access Parkinson’s data set in the world.
University of California San Diego School of Medicine joined PPMI shortly after its launch in 2010, and is now one of nearly 50 clinical sites around the world participating in the expansion. The international effort seeks to identify biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease to promote development of better treatments, potential cures and perhaps even prevention of the disease.
The router in your home might be intercepting some
of your Internet traffic, but it may be for your own good
The router in your home might be intercepting some of your Internet traffic and sending it to a different destination. Specifically, the router can intercept the Domain Name System traffic — the communications used to translate human-readable domain names (for example www.google.com) into the numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that the Internet relies on. That’s the finding from a team of computer scientists at the University of California San Diego, which they presented at the Internet Measurement Conference on Nov. 3, 2021.
Why does this matter?
“The primary concern is privacy,” said Audrey Randall, a Ph.D. student in computer science at UC San Diego and first author of a paper on this subject. “When you visit a web site, you first have to do a DNS lookup for that site. So whoever gets your DNS traffic gets to see all the sites that you’re visiting. In principle, you get to choose who performs your DNS lookups and you might pick a company that you trust not to sell your data or a company that uses robust security to protect their logs. But if your DNS traffic is being silently intercepted and routed elsewhere, then someone else gets to see all that information.”
General Atomics finalizes DOE Rare Earth
demonstration plant project contract
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) confirmed that it has finalized negotiations with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office for facility design and engineering in preparation for the construction and operation of a Rare Earth Element (REE) Separation and Processing Demonstration Plant.
General Atomics is teaming with GA Europe’s Umwelt-und-Ingenieurtechnik GmbH (UIT), Rare Element Resources Ltd. and LNV, an Ardurra Group Inc. company to begin the 40-month project to design, build and operate the REE separation and processing demonstration facility in Wyoming.
Trish Boaz retiring as executive director
of San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy
Trish Boaz, executive director of the San Dieguito River Valley Conservancy since 2013, is retiring. Boaz and her husband Scott are moving home to San Luis Obispo, where they will be closer to family.
Boaz began an 18-year career at the County of San Diego, where she helped create the county’s Multiple Species Conservation Management Plan, managed the County Trails program, and, as chief of the Resource Management Division, negotiated the acquisition of more than 7,100 acres for open space.
To pay for those deals, Boaz leveraged $44 million of county funds with $47 million from private, federal, state, and regional sources.
During her term as SDRVC executive director, Boaz developed and energized programs and projects supporting the key pillars of the Conservancy—Conservation, Education and Recreation—and led the Conservancy’s efforts to raise funding for the Birdwing Open Air Classroom at the San Dieguito Lagoon, Coast to Crest trail alignment at Pamo Valley, habitat restoration projects on 45 acres, Phases 2 and 3 at the River Path Del Mar, and acquisition of 118 acres at Del Dios and the San Dieguito Lagoon
Continuing Education graduate brings Indonesian
fine dining to San Diego
San Diego College of Continuing Education graduate and chef Rie Sims brings the taste of Indonesia to San Diego at the Warung RieRie. The fine-dining restaurant went viral on TikTok after just opening in May with reservations booked until September 2022.
Sims grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia where she cooked alongside her father, an international spokesperson for aviation safety. “I was introduced to cuisine from around the world at an early age. When my dad visited a country, he would cook the traditional staples from there and I would write down the recipes,” she said. “He would tell me to cook with my heart, because when someone makes you food, they give you their heart.”
Before moving to San Diego with her husband Dave Sims, Rie managed surf schools for Billabong and directed films in Indonesia.
At 41, she became the co-owner of Warung RieRie, and has since achieved international success.
SD Council adopts first-ever climate resiliency plan
The San Diego City Council has adopted the city’s first-ever climate adaptation and resiliency plan designed to address the effects of climate change in the region. The plan, titled Climate Resilient SD, provides strategies to prepare, respond and recover from potential climate change hazards, as well as how the proposed investments can improve local communities.
Climate Resilient SD implements key strategies of the city’s Climate Action Plan and fulfills legislative requirements to integrate climate adaptation into the city’s General Plan. Specifically, it looks at San Diego’s primary climate change hazards: extreme heat, wildfires, sea level rise and flooding and drought.
XIFIN expands into pharmacy market
with acquisition of OmniSYS
XIFIN, a health IT company headquartered in San Diego, best known for its revenue cycle management platform and support for top diagnostic laboratories in the U.S., announced its entrance into the pharmacy market through the strategic acquisition
of OmniSYS, a provider of technology solutions for the retail pharmacy industry serving more than 30,000 pharmacies, including four of the top five national chains.
The transaction builds on XIFIN’s acquisition of Computerized Management Services in July 2021 and expands on the company’s role as a top provider of solutions and services that streamline and optimize the billing and claims process, provide health care leaders with greater business visibility, and support patient engagement.
This strategic acquisition comes at a crucial time as pharmacies transition from traditional drug dispensing business models to the pharmacist as a provider of enhanced medical care that requires technology solutions that facilitate communication between pharmacies, payors, laboratories and patients.
Agencies partner to boost water
supplies for Southern California
The San Diego County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California have reached an agreement that will provide water to parts of Southern California facing extraordinary supply constraints due to cutbacks on the State Water Project.
Under a deal approved by Metropolitan’s Board of Directors and previously authorized by the San Diego County Water Authority’s Board of Directors, Metropolitan will secure additional groundwater in 2022 from the Semitropic Water Bank in Kern County. Metropolitan can use that water to serve areas in the northwest and northeast parts of its service area that aren’t connected to its Colorado River supplies and are heavily reliant on limited State Water Project supplies.
Gretel and Illumina partner to develop
synthetic data for genomic research
Gretel.ai announced a collaboration with San Diego-based Illumina Inc. the global leader in DNA sequencing and array-based technologies, to create privacy-protected, synthetic genomic data that can be accessed by medical researchers anywhere.
The announcement includes the release of a successful study the partnership conducted, which proves the viability of significant new use cases for synthetic data in genomics and related fields including medical diagnosis, biotechnology, forensic biology, virology, and biological systematics.
Beyond health care and life sciences, synthetic data has already proven effective in privacy-related use cases in other industries, such as finance and gaming, to help augment small data collections and balance biased datasets.
Quidel Corp. infographics helps educate
consumers on Lyme disease
With Lyme disease being identified in record numbers throughout the country, a series of consumer-friendly infographics has been released by Quidel to help educate Americans on its characteristics, warning signs, seasonality and areas of prevalence. The infographics can be found at LymeDiseaseAnswers.com.
One infographic, for example, displays the early warning signs of Lyme disease—which could include headache, fatigue, a bulls-eye rash and muscle aches—while a second infographic depicts such late-stage symptoms as nerve pain, shortness of breath, brain fog and heart palpitations. There is an infographic showing the relative sizes of the larva, nymph and adult ticks; while still another infographic illustrates the evolution of these ticks through spring, summer, fall and winter.
SDSU ranks in top three for students studying abroad
San Diego State University is third in the nation for the number of students who studied abroad during the 2019-20 academic year, an often transformative experience that reflects the university’s ongoing commitment to developing global leaders.
The ranking in Open Doors 2021, released last month by the Institute of International Education (IIE), is SDSU’s highest ever in the annual report — four steps above the previous year’s ranking and the sixth consecutive year of a top-10 placement.
Only New York University, the perennial No. 1 institution of higher education in the Open Doors tally, and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities surpassed SDSU’s total of 1,634 students studying abroad in 2019-20. SDSU was the only California university in the top 15.
