NewsBrief August 16, 2019

How One City Saved $5 Million by Routing School Buses with an Algorithm

(Route Fifty) The yellow school bus has remained largely unchanged since it first debuted in 1939. But while the buses look the same, their routes have grown infinitely more complex in the past 80 years, as the number of students, schools, and road systems grow and change. Drawing bus routes for Boston Public Schools involves challenges unique to the city. BPS allows parents to select their child’s school from a list of about ten options, in an effort to reduce inequalities that might result from isolating students to their neighborhoods. Read More

CBO Estimates DoD Spending to Reach $776B by 2034

(ExecutiveGov) The Congressional Budget Office released a report stating that the Department of Defense’s projected $718B spending from 2020 to 2024 would increase to $776B or 13 percent by 2034. CBO assessed DoD’s Future Years Defense Program which includes the department’s projected costs for programs within a five-year period. CBO predicts that total costs for the 2020 to 2024 period would be 2 percent or $78B higher than 2020 FYDP estimates, and that costs for the 2020 to 2034 period would increase by 4 percent or $472B. Read More

New supercomputer will let nuclear security agency do ‘1.5 quintillion calculations per second’

(fedscoop) The National Nuclear Security Administration is upping its computing power with the purchase of new supercomputer it says will help drive the development of artificial intelligence to maintain the U.S. nuclear stockpile. NNSA announced the $600 million deal Tuesday morning with Cray, a supercomputing company that regularly contracts with the government. Read More

DOD watchdog announces JEDI review

(FCW) The Pentagon’s internal watchdog announced it was reviewing the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program — a massive, single-award cloud computing buy with a ceiling value of $10 billion that is set to be awarded in the coming weeks. In an Aug. 13 email to reporters, a spokeswoman for the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General said in its first public statement on the matter that “a multidisciplinary team of auditors, investigators and attorneys” has been assembled to review the program. Read More

DHS bug bounty program gets $44M price tag

(fedscoop) TA Department of Homeland Security bug bounty program, as proposed by legislation being considered in the House, would cost $44 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. On July 17, the House Committee on Homeland Security requested CBO perform a cost estimate of H.R. 3710, the Cybersecurity Vulnerability Remediation Act, which calls for DHS to establish a bug bounty program. Read More

U.S. Air Force Completes A-10 Re-winging Program

(AIonline) After nearly a decade of work, the U.S. Air Force has completed the task of re-winging 173 Fairchild A-10C Thunderbolt IIs, sufficient to equip six combat squadrons. Over 100 further A-10s are currently in the Air Force inventory with three more squadrons, some of which may also be re-winged in a follow-on program that has yet to be launched. Boeing was awarded a $1.1 billion contract in 2007 to start building replacement wings at its Macon, Georgia facility. Read More

Researchers Quantify Cost Targets for Storage of Renewable Energy

(AZO Cleantech) Energy storage cost will be crucial in estimating how much renewable energy could help in decarbonizing electricity. However, to what extent should energy storage costs decrease? Researchers at MIT have found a solution to this in a study reported in Joule on August 7th, 2019. They measured cost targets for storage technologies to allow wind and solar energy with storage to attain competitiveness with other on-demand energy sources. They also investigated the types of batteries and other technologies that can help achieve these goals. Read More

Can Uber Elevate Commit to $700/hr eVTOL Flight by 2023?

(CleanTechnica) Even the FAA likes the idea of electric vertical take-off & landing (eVTOL) and more traditional electric airplanes, or “electric conventional take-off & landing (eCTOL) aircraft.” Joking a bit, however, acting FAA chief Dan Elwell said at Uber Elevate’s Elevate Summit in Washington, DC: “When I put my FAA regulator hat on, I’ve got a whole new bucket of stuff to lose sleepover.” Can Uber Elevate meet its targets, such as $700/h eVTOL flight and cost parity with road transport? Read More

Why The New T-Mobile Should See Significant Margin Expansion

(Forbes) The merger between T-Mobile (NASDAQ:TMUS) and Sprint (NYSE:S) looks set to come to fruition, with the U.S. Department of Justice approving the deal in July 2019. In this analysis, we take a look at the potential cost structure of the combined entity using standalone historical data for T-Mobile and Sprint and arrive at projections using expected merger-related costs and synergies. We assume that the deal will close by the end of 2019, with 2020 being the first full year post the merger. Read More

South Africa puts initial universal healthcare cost at $17 billion

(Reuters) PRETORIA (Reuters) – South Africa published its draft National Health Insurance (NHI) bill on Thursday, with one senior official estimating universal healthcare for millions of poorer citizens would cost about 256 billion rand ($16.89 billion) to implement by 2022.The bill creating an NHI Fund paves the way for a comprehensive overhaul of South Africa’s health system that would be one of the biggest policy changes since the ruling African National Congress ended white minority rule in 1994. Read More