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The continued growth of wireless and cellular data traffic relies heavily on light waves. Microwave photonics is the field of technology that is dedicated to the distribution and processing of electrical information signals using optical means. Compared with traditional solutions based on electronics alone, microwave photonic systems can handle massive amounts of data. Therefore, microwave photonics has become increasingly important as part of 5G cellular networks and beyond. A primary task of microwave photonics is the realization of narrowband filters: The selection of specific data, at specific frequencies, out of immense volumes that are carried over light.

Many photonic systems are built of discrete, separate components and long optical fiber paths. However, the cost, size, and production volume requirements of advanced networks call for a new generation of microwave photonic systems that are realized on a chip. Integrated microwave photonic filters, particularly in silicon, are highly sought after. There is, however, a fundamental challenge: Narrowband filters require that signals are delayed for comparatively long durations as part of their processing.

“Since the is so fast,” says Prof. Avi Zadok from Bar-Ilan University, Israel, “we run out of chip space before the necessary delays are accommodated. The required delays may reach over 100 nanoseconds. Such delays may appear to be short considering daily experience; however, the optical paths that support them are over ten meters long. We cannot possibly fit such long paths as part of a silicon chip. Even if we could somehow fold over that many meters in a certain layout, the extent of optical power losses to go along with it would be prohibitive.”

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In new research, Texas A&M University scientists have for the first time revealed a single microscopic defect called a “twin” in a soft-block copolymer using an advanced electron microscopy technique. This defect may be exploited in the future to create materials with novel acoustic and photonic properties.

“This defect is like a black swan—something special going on that isn’t typical,” said Dr. Edwin Thomas, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “Although we chose a certain polymer for our study, I think the twin defect will be fairly universal across a bunch of similar soft matter systems, like oils, surfactants, and natural polymers. Therefore, our findings will be valuable to diverse research across the soft matter field.”

The results of the study are detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

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A group of “ethical hackers” has obtained access to sensitive systems and proprietary online data hosted by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the US after accessing multiple unsecured entry points in late April and early May. The group – Sakura Samurai – discovered configuration data for the lab’s NoVa experiment and more than 4500 “tickets” for tracking internal projects.

The Sakura Samurai team has previous experience probing the vulnerabilities of scientific and educational organizations, which hold critical information that if leaked could put those institutions at risk. “Fermilab was no different,” Sakura Samurai leader Robert Willis told Physics World. “Oversharing can be very dangerous, especially when it’s sharing credentials that could enable a malicious actor to take over a server with the potential to move across their network to access items that the organization wouldn’t even think of being vulnerable.”

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Circa 2020

Astronomers have found one of the largest structures in the known universe—a “wall” of galaxies that’s at least 1.4 billion light-years long. And given how close it is to us, it’s remarkable that we haven’t seen it before now.

What happened: An international team of scientists reported the discovery of the South Pole Wall in a paper published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal. The structure is basically a curtain that stretches across the southern border of the universe (from the perspective of Earth) and consists of thousands of galaxies, along with huge amounts of gas and dust.

What do you mean by “wall”? Galaxies aren’t just strewn randomly throughout the universe. Along huge strands of hydrogen, galaxies collect into larger groupings of massive filaments, separated by giant voids of nearly empty space. Each filament is basically a wall of galaxies, stretching for hundreds of millions of light-years. They’re the biggest structures in the known universe. Other identified structures include the Great Wall, the Sloan Great Wall, the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, and the Bootes Void.

Continue reading “Astronomers found a giant “wall” of galaxies hiding in plain sight” | >

www.iBiology.org.

Dr. Kate Adamala describes what synthetic cells are and how they can teach us the fundamental principles of life.

Life on Earth evolved once — this means that all biological systems on our planet are rooted in the same fundamental framework. This framework is extremely complex and we have yet to fully understand the processes inside each living cell. One way of understanding complex systems is to break them down into simpler parts. This is the principle of engineering the synthetic cell: to use our current knowledge of biology for building a living cell with the least amount of parts and complexity. Synthetic cells can be used to teach us about the basic principles of life and evolution, and they hold promise for a range of applications including biomaterials and drug development. Dr. Kate Adamala narrates an introduction to this exciting field.

0:00 Introduction.

Continue reading “Kate Adamala (U of M) 1: Synthetic Cells: Building Life to Understand It” | >

Splunk today announced it plans to acquire security software company TruStar for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will add TruStar’s cloud-native, cyber intelligence-sharing capabilities and automated processes to Splunk’s growing cybersecurity portfolio.

“TruStar will help us get even better at predictive threat assessments by strengthening our threat intelligence framework. This acquisition will allow customers to autonomously and seamlessly enrich their (security operation center) workflows with threat intelligence data feeds from heterogeneous sources,” Splunk president and CEO Doug Merritt told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview.

The pending deal is in line with Splunk’s philosophy that “security is a data problem,” he said. The announcement marks a return to M&A activity for Splunk and the massive $1.05 billion deal for SignalFX in 2019. The company also made four cloud-related acquisitions in 2020.

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