#wireless networking

Kev: What is your WiFi password?

Server: Well today is only my first day at this location but it’s probably the number 8 repeated 8 times. That’s the password for everything here.

Spoiler alert, that was the password.

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The universe underwent a turbulent youth 10 to 12 billion years ago, as shown in this illustration. Stars formed at very high rates, but many of these newborn stars died quickly in supernova explosions that produced the chemical elements beyond helium – the building blocks of planets like our and life like us. In the same period, supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies devoured large amounts of the gas around them, producing strong jets and outflows. The combined energy from numerous supernova explosions and black hole jets created powerful “winds” that blew these elements out of the galaxies, into intergalactic space. (Akihiro Ikeshita)

The even Industrial LTE router   distribution of iron throughout the Perseus cluster has allowed astrophysicists to tell the billion-year-old story of how exploding stars and black holes sowed the early cosmos with heavy elements.

New evidence that iron is spread evenly between the galaxies in one of the largest galaxy clusters in the universe supports the theory that the universe underwent a turbulent and violent youth more than 10 billion years ago. That explosive period was responsible for seeding the cosmos with iron and other heavy elements that are critical to life itself.

Researchers from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), jointly run by Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, shed light on this important era by analyzing 84 sets of X-ray telescope observations from the Japanese-US Suzaku satellite. Their results appear in the Oct. 31 issue of the journal Nature.

In particular, the researchers looked at iron distribution throughout the Perseus cluster, a large grouping of galaxies about 250 million light-years away.

“We saw that iron is spread out between the galaxies remarkably smoothly,” said Norbert Werner, an astrophysicist at KIPAC and lead author of the paper. “That means it had to be present in the intergalactic gas before the Perseus cluster formed.”

The even distribution of these elements supports the idea that they were created at least 10 billion to 12 billion years ago. According to the paper, during this time of intense star remote monitoring   formation, billions of exploding stars created vast quantities of heavy elements in the alchemical furnaces of their own destruction. This was also the epoch when black holes in the hearts of galaxies were at their most energetic.

“The combined energy of these cosmic phenomena must have been strong enough to expel most of the metals from the galaxies at early times and to enrich and mix the intergalactic gas,” said co-author and KIPAC graduate student Ondrej Urban.

To settle the question of whether the heavy elements created by supernovae remain mostly in their home galaxies or are spread out through intergalactic space, the researchers looked through the Perseus cluster in eight different directions. They focused on the hot, 10-million-degree gas that fills the spaces between galaxies and found the spectroscopic signature of iron reaching all the way to the cluster’s edges.

The researchers estimate that the amount of iron in the cluster is roughly equivalent to the mass of 50 billion suns.

“We think most of the iron came from a single type of supernovae, called Type Ia supernovae,” said former KIPAC member and co-author Aurora Simionescu, who is currently with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency as an International Top Young Fellow.

In a Type Ia supernova, a star explodes and releases all its materiverizon industrial routeral to the void. The researchers believe that at least 40 billion Type Ia supernovae must have exploded within a relatively short period on cosmological time scales in order to release that much iron and have the force to drive it out of the galaxies.

The results suggest that the Perseus cluster is probably not unique and that iron – along with other heavy elements – is evenly spread throughout all massive galaxy clusters, said Steven Allen, a KIPAC associate professor and head of the research team.

“You are older than you think – or at least, some of the iron in your blood is older, formed in galaxies millions of light years away and billions of years ago,” Simionescu said.

The researchers are now looking for iron in other clusters and eagerly awaiting a mission capable of measuring the concentrations of elements in the hot gas with greater accuracy.

“With measurements like these, the Suzaku satellite is having a profound impact on our understanding of how the largest structures in our universe grow,” Allen said. “We’re really looking forward to what further data can tell us.”

The research was supported by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and by the US Department of Energy.

Publication: Norbert Werner, et al., “A uniform metal distribution in the intergalactic medium of the Perseus cluster of galaxies,” Nature 502, 656–658 (31 October 2013); doi:10.1038/nature12646

PDF Copy of the Study: A uniform metal distribution in the intergalactic medium of the Perseus cluster of galaxies

Image: Akihiro Ikeshita

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Illustration of a voltage-induced memor Industrial VPN router y effect in monolayer nanomaterials, which layer to create “atomristors,” the thinnest memory storage device that could lead to faster, smaller and smarter computer chips. Cockrell School of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

Engineers worldwide have been developing alternative ways to provide greater memory storage capacity on even smaller computer chips. Previous research into two-dimensional atomic sheets for memory storage has failed to uncover their potential — until now.

A team of electrical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Peking University scientists, has developed the thinnest memory storage device with dense memory capacity, paving the way for faster, smaller and smarter computer chips for everything from consumer electronics to big data to brain-inspired computing.

“For a long time, the consensus was that it wasn’t possible to make memory devices from materials that were only one atomic layer thick,” said Deji Akinwande, associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “With our new ‘atomristors,’ we have shown it is indeed possible.”

Made from 2-D nanomaterials, the “atomristors” — a term Akinwande coined — improve upon memristors, an emerging memory storage technology with lower memory scalability. He and his team published their findings in the January issue of Nano Letters.

“Atomristors will allow for the advancement of Moore’s Law at the system level by enabling the 3-D integration of nanoscale memory with nanoscale transistors on the same chip for advanced computing systems,” Akinwande said.

Memory storage and transistors have, to date, always been separate components on a microchip, but atomristors combine both functions on a single, more efficient computer system. By using metallic atomic sheets (graphene) as electrodes and semiconducting atomic sheets (molybdenum sulfide) as the active layer, the entire memory cell is a sandwich about 1.5 nanometers thick, which makes it possible to densely pack atomristors layer by layer in a plane. This is a substantial advantage over conventional flash memory, which occupies far larger space. In addition, the thinness allows for faster and more efficient electric current flow.

Given their size, capacity and integration flexibility, atomristors can be packed together to make advanced 3-D chips that are crucial to the successful development of brain-inspired computing. One of the greatest challenges in this burgeoning field of engineering is how to make a memory architecture with 3-D connections akin to those found in the human brain.

“The sheer density of memory storage that can be made possible by layering these synthetic atomic sheets onto each other, coupled with integrated transistor design, means we can potentially make computers that learn and remember the same way our brains do,” Akinwande said.

The research team also discovered another unique application for the technology. In existing ubiquitous devices such as smartphones and tablets, radio frequency switches are used to connect incoming signals from the antenna to o wireless m2m ne of the many wireless communication bands in order for different parts of a device to communicate and cooperate with one another. This activity can significantly affect a smartphone’s battery life.

The atomristors are the smallest radio frequency memory switches to be demonstrated with no DC battery consumption, which can ultimately lead to longer battery life.

“Overall, we feel that this discovery has  low cost cellular router real commercialization value as it won’t disrupt existing technologies,” Akinwande said. “Rather, it has been designed to complement and integrate with the silicon chips already in use in modern tech devices.”

Publication: Ruijing Ge, et al., “Atomristor: Nonvolatile Resistance Switching in Atomic Sheets of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides,” Nano Letters, 2018; DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b04342

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ITER is based on the ‘tokamak’ concept of magnetic confinement, in which the plasma is contained in a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel. The fuel—a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen—is heated to temperatures in excess of 150 million°C, forming a hot plasma. Strong magnetic fields are used to keep the plasma away from the walls; these are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma. Credit: ITER.org

ITER researchers working to help bring fusion power to the commercial market completed a critical step this week, successfully testing their technology that serves to insulate and provide structural integrity to the central sol Intelligent Traffic Enforcement  enoid of the tokamak reactor.

Imagine a world without man-made climate change, energy crunches, or reliance on foreign oil. It may sound like a dream world, but University of Tennessee, Knoxville, engineers have made a giant step toward making this scenario a reality.

UT researchers have successfully developed a key technology in developing an experimental reactor that can demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy for the power grid. Nuclear fusion promises to supply more energy than the nuclear fission used today but with far fewer risks.

Mechanical, aerospace, and biomedical engineering professors David Irick, Madhu Madhukar, and Masood 3g   Parang are engaged in a project involving the United States, five other nations, and the European Union, known as ITER. UT researchers completed a critical step this week for the project by successfully testing their technology this week that will insulate and stabilize the central solenoid—the reactor’s backbone.

Watch as Susan and Ned Sauthoff of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory become shadows, in the glow of an animation of an actual  Overhead Line Monitoring  fusion reaction.

ITER is building a fusion reactor that aims to produce ten times the amount of energy that it uses. The facility is now under construction near Cadarache, France, and will begin operations in 2020.

“The goal of ITER is to help bring fusion power to the commercial market,” Madhukar said. “Fusion power is safer and more efficient than nuclear fission power. There is no danger of runaway reactions like what happened in nuclear fission reactions in Japan and Chernobyl, and there is little radioactive waste.”

Unlike today’s nuclear fission reactors, fusion uses a similar process as that which powers the sun.

Since 2008, UT engineering professors and about fifteen students have worked inside UT’s Magnet Development Laboratory (MDL) located off of Pellissippi Parkway to develop technology that serves to insulate and provide structural integrity to the more than 1,000 ton central solenoid.

Researchers and staff at UT’s Magnet Development Laboratory prepare the central solenoid mockup for the vacuum pressure impregnation process

A tokamak reactor uses magnetic fields to confine the plasma—a hot, electrically charged gas that serves as the reactor fuel—into the shape of a torus. The central solenoid, which consists of six giant coils stacked on top of one another, plays the starring role by both igniting and steering the plasma current.

The key to unlocking the technology was finding the right material—a glass fiber and epoxy chemical mixture that is liquid at high temperatures and turns hard when cured—and the right process of inserting this material into all of the necessary spaces inside the central solenoid. The special mixture provides electrical insulation and strength to the heavy structure. The impregnation process moves the material at the right pace, factoring in temperature, pressure, vacuum, and the material’s flow rate.

This week, the UT team tested the technology inside its mockup of the central solenoid conductor.

“During the epoxy impregnation, we were in a race against time,” Madhukar said. “With the epoxy, we have these competing parameters. The higher the temperature, the lower the viscosity; but at the same time, the higher the temperature, the shorter the working life of the epoxy.”

It took two years to develop the technology, more than two days to impregnate the central solenoid mockup and multiple pairs of watchful eyes to ensure everything went according to plan.

It did.

This summer, the team’s technology will be transferred to US ITER industry partner General Atomics in San Diego, which will build the central solenoid and ship it to France.

ITER—designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power—will be the world’s largest tokamak. As an ITER member, the US receives full access to all ITER-developed technology and scientific data, but bears less than 10 percent of the construction cost, which is shared among partner nations. US ITER is a Department of Energy Office of Science project managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Images: ITER.org; University of Tennessee

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Scientists at MIT have developed new nanoparticles that simultaneously enable both MRI and fluorescent imaging in living animals, helping scientists to track specific molecules produced in the body, monitor a tumor’s environment, or determine whether drugs have successfully reached their targets.

In a paper appearing in the November 18 issue of Nature Communications, the researchers demonstrate the use of these new particle VPN gateway  s, which carry distinct sensors for fluorescence and MRI, to track vitamin C in mice. Wherever there is a high concentration of vitamin C, the particles show a strong fluorescent signal but little MRI contrast. If there is not much vitamin C, a stronger MRI signal is visible but fluorescence is very weak.

Future versions of the particles could be designed to detect reactive oxygen species that often correlate with disease, says Jeremiah Johnson, an assistant professor of chemistry at MIT and senior author of the study. They could also be tailored to detect more than one molecule at a time.

“You may be able to learn more about how diseases progress if you have imaging probes that can sense specific biomolecules,” Johnson says.

Dual action

Johnson and his colleagues designed the particles so they can be assembled from building blocks made of polymer chains carrying either an organic MRI contrast agent called a nitroxide or a fluorescent molecule called Cy5.5.

When mixed together in a desired ratio, these building blocks join to form a specific nanosized structure the authors call a branched bottlebrush polymer. For this study, they created particles in which 99 percent of the chains carry nitroxides, and 1 percent carry Cy5.5.

Nitroxides are reactive molecules that contain a nitrogen atom bound to an oxygen atom with an unpaired electron. Nitroxides suppress Cy5.5’s fluorescence, but when the nitroxides encounter a molecule such as vitamin C from which they can grab electrons, they become inactive and Cy5.5 fluoresces.

Nitroxides typically have a very short half-life in living systems, but University of Nebraska chemistry professor Andrzej Rajca, who is also an author of the new Nature Communications paper, recently discovered that their half-life can be extended by attaching two bulky structures to them. Furthermore, the authors of the Nature Communications paper show that incorporation of Rajca’s nitroxide in Johnson&rsquo Industrial 3g router  ;s branched bottlebrush polymer architectures leads to even greater improvements in the nitroxide lifetime. With these modifications, nitroxides can circulate for several hours in a mouse’s bloodstream — long enough to obtain useful MRI images.

The researchers found that their imaging particles accumulated in the liver, as nanoparticles usually do. The mouse liver produces vitamin C, so once the particles reached the liver, they grabbed electrons from vitamin C, turning off the MRI signal and boosting fluorescence. They also found no MRI signal but a small amount of fluorescence in the brain, which is a destination for much of the vitamin C produced in the liver. In contrast, in the blood and kidneys, where the concentration of vitamin C is low, the MRI contrast was maximal.

Mixing and matching

The researchers are now working to enhance the signal differences that they get when the sensor encounters a target molecule such as vitamin C. They have also created nanoparticles carrying the fluorescent agent plus up to three different drugs. This allows them to track whether the nanoparticles are delivered to their targeted locations.

“That’s the advantage of our platform — we can mix and match and add almost anything we want,” Johnson says.

These particles could also be used to evaluate the level of oxygen radicals in a patient’s tumor, which can reveal valuable information about how aggressive the tumor is.

“We think we may be able to reveal information about the tumor environment with these kinds of probes, if we can get them there,” Johnson says. “Someday you might be able to inject this in a patient and obtain real-time bi branch networking  ochemical information about disease sites and also healthy tissues, which is not always straightforward.”

Steven Bottle, a professor of nanotechnology and molecular science at Queensland University of Technology, says the most impressive element of the study is the combination of two powerful imaging techniques into one nanomaterial.

“I believe this should deliver a very powerful, metabolically linked, multi-combination imaging modality which should provide a highly useful diagnostic tool with real potential to follow disease progression in vivo,” says Bottle, who was not involved in the study.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Publication: Molly A. Sowers, et al., “Redox-responsive branched-bottlebrush polymers for in vivo MRI and fluorescence imaging,”Nature Communications 5, Article number: 5460; doi:10.1038/ncomms6460

Image: Christine Daniloff/MIT