A smart fluorescent antenna for Wi-Fi applications

A charged argon gas in the fluorescent lamp emits Wi-Fi signals. Credit: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA

A new invention uses ionized gas in fluorescent light tubes to transmit Internet wireless frequency signals throughout a building with the aid of already existing electrical wiring.

Due to continuously evolving applications, the electronic communications industry requires high performance and speed efficient systems. However, the physical limitations of microwave devices limits further improvements in current technology. This predicament has led to growing interest in the use of plasma as a conductive element in microwave devices due to their unique and innovative properties, which corresponds with traditional metallic antennas.

Matter exists in four different states: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Plasma is a type of gas in which the atoms are ionized -- they have both free negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. These charged particles can be controlled by electromagnetic fields, allowing plasmas to be used as a controllable reactive gas.

This invention employs an ionized gas enclosed in a tube as the conducting element of an antenna. When the gas is electrically charged or ionized to plasma, it becomes conductive and allows radio frequency signals to be transmitted or received. When the gas is not ionized, the antenna element ceases to exit.

The invention features a smart fluorescent antenna with a 3G/3.75G/4G router for Wi-Fi applications. The antenna operates at the 2.4 GHz frequency band, which is suitable for Wi-Fi applications. A commercially available fluorescent tube, measuring 0.61 metres in length by 0.25 metres in diameter, is used as the plasma antenna. The gas inside the tube is a mixture of argon and mercury vapour, in the ratio 9:1. The tube is energized by a 240 V current, provided by a standard AC power supply. A glowing tube indicates that the gas inside the tube has been ionized to plasma and forms a plasma column. In this state, the plasma column becomes highly conductive and can be used as an antenna.

A coupling sleeve is positioned at the lower end of the tube, which is used to connect the plasma tube to the router. The function of the coupling sleeves is to store the electrical charge. When the gas inside the tube is sufficiently ionized into a plasma state, it becomes conductive and allows radio frequency signals to be transmitted or received.

Measurements indicate that the plasma antenna yields a return loss over 10 dB in the 2.23 GHz to 2.58 GHz frequency band. The antenna's ability to operate as either a transmitter or receiver in this particular frequency band was verified through a series of wireless transmission experiments.

The performance of this antenna was measured using the Wi-Fi Received Signal Strength 
Indicator (RSSI) technique. The product was tested for a month in the Universiti Teknologi MARA's High Frequency Antenna Laboratory. Our results show that the signal is stronger and more stable compared to others signals.

One advantage of this product is its low cost. The Wi-Fi signal can be transmitted into other rooms using only one router with a splitter cable. The fluorescent tube has dual functionality, thereby reducing the cost of buying additional antennas. Commercial antennas are made from metal elements while this invention uses plasma element as its source of material. Normal antennas can only transmit and receive radio frequencies, while this product not only can be used for transmitting and receiving radio frequency signals, but as a light emitting device as well.

Source: Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)

Volunteers can now help scientists seek Ebola cure in their (computer's) spare time

The Scripps Research Institute’s Professor Erica Ollmann Saphire is leading the new effort against Ebola. Credit: Photo courtesy of The Scripps Research Institute.

Although some medical therapies show promise as treatments for Ebola, scientists are still looking urgently for a definitive cure.

For the first time, anyone with access to a computer or Android-based mobile device can help scientists perform this critical research -- no financial contribution, passport or PhD necessary. In fact, volunteers can be asleep, traveling or on a coffee break when they help researchers search for an Ebola cure.

Beginning today, anyone can download a safe and free app that will put their devices to work when the machines would otherwise be idle. With their collective processing power, the computers will form a virtual supercomputer to help The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) screen millions of chemical compounds to identify new drug leads for treating Ebola. 

Meanwhile, the devices will remain fully available for normal use by their owners.

This citizen science effort is possible through a partnership with IBM's (NYSE: IBM) World Community Grid, which has been making similar data-driven health and sustainability initiatives possible for 10 years as a free, philanthropic service to the science community. 

The "Outsmart Ebola Together" volunteer computing project announced today is being run by the Ollmann Saphire laboratory at TSRI, which has mapped the structures and vulnerabilities of the proteins comprising the Ebola virus.

The best candidate compounds that emerge from this crowdsourced effort will be physically tested in the lab to pinpoint their effectiveness against real virus infection. The most promising compounds will then be modified to perform even better, at lower concentrations, and with fewer side effects. Subsequent drug trials could ultimately lead to an approved medicine.

Crowdsourcing this citizen science effort will dramatically accelerate the process of identifying a cure. The speed and scale of a drug search is essential, as this particularly lethal disease continues to spread and mutate. Once believed to be less of a widespread public health risk than other communicable diseases because of its existence in mainly isolated regions, Ebola now carries a higher risk of spreading farther because people are more mobile than ever before.

"Our molecular images of the Ebola virus are like enemy reconnaissance," said Dr. Erica Ollmann Saphire of TSRI, one of the largest private biomedical research institutes in the United States. "These images show us where the virus is vulnerable and the targets we need to hit. In the Outsmart Ebola Together project, we will be able to harness World Community 

Grid's virtual supercomputing power to find the drugs we need to aim at these targets."

IBM's World Community Grid has successfully run other projects that search for drug candidates for both high- and low-profile diseases -- such as AIDS, cancer, malaria, Dengue fever, and influenza. It has enabled multiple breakthroughs, such as helping the Chiba Cancer Center in Japan discover seven new drug candidates to fight childhood neuroblastoma. The IBM-managed program also hosts projects that have led to important scientific advances in renewable energy and water purification technology.

"It is a privilege to partner with The Scripps Research Institute to advance the process of identifying an Ebola cure," said Stanley S. Litow, IBM's vice president of Corporate Citizenship and president of the IBM International Foundation. "It is only fitting that IBM's World Community Grid 10-year anniversary of accomplishments coincide with the launch of perhaps one of the most critical scientific and humanitarian efforts."

Conceived and managed by IBM, and powered by IBM's reliable and secure SoftLayer cloud technology, World Community Grid provides computing power to scientists by harnessing the unused, surplus cycle time of volunteers' computers and mobile devices. The software receives, completes, and returns small computational assignments to scientists. The combined power contributed by hundreds of thousands of volunteers has created one of the fastest virtual supercomputers on the planet, advancing scientific work by hundreds of years.

Nearly three million computers and mobile devices used by more than 680,000 people and 460 institutions from 80 countries have contributed virtual supercomputing power for vitally important projects on World Community Grid over the last 10 years. Since the program's inception, World Community Grid volunteers have powered more than 20 research projects, donating more than one million years of computing time to scientific research, and enabled important scientific advances in health and sustainability. IBM invites researchers to submit research project proposals to receive this free resource, and invites members of the public to donate their unused computing power to these efforts at worldcommunitygrid.org.

TSRI also invites members of the public to support Dr. Saphire's crowdfunding campaign at www.crowdrise.com/CUREEBOLA to secure resources needed to analyze the enormous volume of data generated by Outsmart Ebola Together.

The software used for screenings in the Outsmart Ebola Together project is called AutoDock and AutoDock VINA, developed by the Olson laboratory at TSRI.

World Community Grid is enabled by software developed in 2002 by Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) at the University of California, Berkeley and with support from the National Science Foundation. The BOINC project choreographs the technical aspects of volunteer computing.

Source: Scripps Research Institute

Self-repairing software tackles malware

Eric Eide, University of Utah research assistant professor of computer science, stands in the computer science department's "Machine Room" where racks of web servers sit. It is on these computers that Eide, U computer science associate professor John Regehr, and their research team created and tested A3, a suite of computer applications that defeat malware and automatically repair the damage it causes. The project could help lead to better consumer software defenses.
Credit: Dan Hixson/University of Utah College of Engineering

University of Utah computer scientists have developed software that not only detects and eradicates never-before-seen viruses and other malware, but also automatically repairs damage caused by them. The software then prevents the invader from ever infecting the computer again.

A3 is a software suite that works with a virtual machine -- a virtual computer that emulates the operations of a computer without dedicated hardware. The A3 software is designed to watch over the virtual machine's operating system and applications, says Eric Eide, University of Utah research assistant professor of computer science leading the university's A3 team with U computer science associate professor John Regehr. A3 is designed to protect servers or similar business-grade computers that run on the Linux operating system. It also has been demonstrated to protect military applications.

The new software called A3, or Advanced Adaptive Applications, was co-developed by Massachusetts-based defense contractor, Raytheon BBN, and was funded by Clean-Slate Design of Resilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts, a program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The four-year project was completed in late September.

There are no plans to adapt A3 for home computers or laptops, but Eide says this could be possible in the future.

"A3 technologies could find their way into consumer products someday, which would help consumer devices protect themselves against fast-spreading malware or internal corruption of software components. But we haven't tried those experiments yet," he says.

U computer scientists have created "stackable debuggers," multiple de-bugging applications that run on top of each other and look inside the virtual machine while it is running, constantly monitoring for any out-of-the-ordinary behavior in the computer.

Unlike a normal virus scanner on consumer PCs that compares a catalog of known viruses to something that has infected the computer, A3 can detect new, unknown viruses or malware automatically by sensing that something is occurring in the computer's operation that is not correct. It then can stop the virus, approximate a repair for the damaged software code, and then learn to never let that bug enter the machine again.

While the military has an interest in A3 to enhance cybersecurity for its mission-critical systems, A3 also potentially could be used in the consumer space, such as in web services like Amazon. If a virus or attack stops the service, A3 could repair it in minutes without having to take the servers down.

To test A3's effectiveness, the team from the U and Raytheon BBN used the infamous software bug called Shellshock for a demonstration to DARPA officials in Jacksonville, Florida, in September. A3 discovered the Shellshock attack on a Web server and repaired the damage in four minutes, Eide says. The team also tested A3 successfully on another half-dozen pieces of malware.

Shellshock was a software vulnerability in UNIX-based computers (which include many web servers and most Apple laptops and desktop computers) that would allow a hacker to take control of the computer. It was first discovered in late September. Within the first 24 hours of the disclosure of Shellshock, security researchers reported that more than 17,000 attacks 

by hackers had been made with the bug.

"It is a pretty big deal that a computer system could automatically, and in a short amount of time, find an acceptable fix to a widespread and important security vulnerability," Eide says. 

"It's pretty cool when you can pick the Bug of the Week and it works."

Now that the team's project into A3 is completed and proves their concept, Eide says the U team would like to build on the research and figure out a way to use A3 in cloud computing, a way of harnessing far-flung computer networks to deliver storage, software applications and servers to a local user via the Internet.

The A3 software is open source, meaning it is free for anyone to use, but Eide believes many of the A3 technologies could be incorporated into commercial products.

Other U members of the A3 team include research associate David M. Johnson, systems programmer Mike Hibler and former graduate student Prashanth Nayak.

Source: University of Utah

The Earthquake simulation tops one petaflop mark

Visualization of vibrations inside the Merapi volcano. Credit: Alex Breuer/Christian Pelties

A team of computer scientists, mathematicians and geophysicists at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and Ludwig-Maximillians Universitaet Muenchen (LMU) have -- with the support of the Leibniz Supercomputing Center of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities (LRZ) -- optimized the SeisSol earthquake simulation software on the SuperMUC high performance computer at the LRZ to push its performance beyond the "magical" one petaflop/s mark -- one quadrillion floating point operations per second.

Geophysicists use the SeisSol earthquake simulation software to investigate rupture processes and seismic waves beneath Earth's surface. Their goal is to simulate earthquakes as accurately as possible to be better prepared for future events and to better understand the fundamental underlying mechanisms. However, the calculations involved in this kind of simulation are so complex that they push even super computers to their limits.

In a collaborative effort, the workgroups led by Dr. Christian Pelties at the Department of Geo and Environmental Sciences at LMU and Professor Michael Bader at the Department of Informatics at TUM have optimized the SeisSol program for the parallel architecture of the Garching supercomputer "SuperMUC," thereby speeding up calculations by a factor of five.

Using a virtual experiment they achieved a new record on the SuperMUC: To simulate the vibrations inside the geometrically complex Merapi volcano on the island of Java, the supercomputer executed 1.09 quadrillion floating point operations per second. SeisSol maintained this unusually high performance level throughout the entire three hour simulation run using all of SuperMUC's 147,456 processor cores.

Complete parallelization
This was possible only following the extensive optimization and the complete parallelization of the 70,000 lines of SeisSol code, allowing a peak performance of up to 1.42 petaflops. This corresponds to 44.5 percent of Super MUC's theoretically available capacity, making SeisSol one of the most efficient simulation programs of its kind worldwide.

"Thanks to the extreme performance now achievable, we can run five times as many models or models that are five times as large to achieve significantly more accurate results. Our simulations are thus inching ever closer to reality," says the geophysicist Dr. Christian Pelties. "This will allow us to better understand many fundamental mechanisms of earthquakes and hopefully be better prepared for future events."

The next steps are earthquake simulations that include rupture processes on the meter scale as well as the resultant destructive seismic waves that propagate across hundreds of kilometers. The results will improve the understanding of earthquakes and allow a better assessment of potential future events.
"Speeding up the simulation software by a factor of five is not only an important step for geophysical research," says Professor Michael Bader of the Department of Informatics at TUM. "We are, at the same time, preparing the applied methodologies and software packages for the next generation of supercomputers that will routinely host the respective simulations for diverse geoscience applications."
Besides Michael Bader and Christian Pelties also Alexander Breuer, Dr. Alexander Heinecke and Sebastian Rettenberger (TUM) as well as Dr. Alice Agnes Gabriel and Stefan Wenk (LMU) worked on the project. In June the results will be presented at the International Supercomputing Conference in Leipzig (ISC'14, Leipzig, 22-June 26, 2014; title: Sustained Petascale Performance of Seismic Simulation with SeisSol on SuperMUC)

Source: Technische Universitaet Muenchen