houck2040/tees huggingface dataset:
dr jeyavijayan "jv" rajendran assistant professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university was awarded the 2022 office of naval research (onr) young investigator award for his research proposal to develop the next generation of tools to bolster hardware security when designing software and hardware vulnerabilities can and do occur patching software vulnerabilities found once distributed into the field is much easier for companies who can easily send patches to fix any issues however when it comes to hardware it is much more difficult to patch after the design process has concluded rajendran has proposed a new methodology to find these vulnerabilities during the design process so that these faults can be fixed prior to the final distribution stage fuzzing techniques which are automated testing methods that insert invalid malformed or unexpected data into a system to reveal defects and security faults are shown to be highly effective in detecting software vulnerabilities but the current proposals aimed at fuzzing hardware suffer from various limitations these include a limited scope of applicability error proneness inadequate evaluations provided and limited prospects for future improvement through this three-year funded project rajendran will work to solve all these challenges and bring the state-of-the-art fuzzing-based vulnerability detection techniques to hardware through the novel hardware fuzzer called steelwool which does not require any modification to the target processor and utilizes existing hardware simulation tools and techniques so it is easily integrated with existing hardware design this award gives me the confidence that i can pick my own topic for which i have taken no course for during my phd or during grad school; and i can contribute a solution to a problem i aim to solve which is exciting rajendran said in addition to this award rajendrans research has received many other honors such as the national science foundation faculty early career development program award the association for computing machinery's special interest group on design automation outstanding young faculty award the institute of electrical and electronics engineers ceda ernest s kuh early career award and the texas a&m engineering experiment stations genesis award for multidisciplinary research the onr young investigator program provides support to academic scientists and engineers who are in their first or second full-time tenure-track academic appointment have received their doctoral degree in the past seven years and show exceptional promise for executing creative research
dr robin murphy raytheon professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has been named a 2021 american association for the advancement of science (aaas) fellow for founding the search-and-rescue robotics field pioneering the field of human-robot interaction and informing policy and practice in rescue robotics worldwide founded in 1848 the aaas is the worlds largest general multidisciplinary scientific society and is also the publisher of the science family of journals elected annually the aaas fellow is one of the most distinct honors bestowed in the scientific community the 2021 class of fellows spans 24 disciplines and includes 564 engineers scientists and innovators who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements in their respective fields murphy is one of the 26 new fellows honored in the information computing and communication section she has deployed ground aerial and marine robots to nearly 30 disasters in five countries starting with the 9/11 world trade center collapse and also including hurricanes katrina and harvey the fukushima daiichi nuclear accident and the kilauea volcanic eruption in more than 150 articles and an award-winning book disaster robotics murphy has documented the science behind the robots and the need for artificial intelligence and human-robot teaming additionally she has founded the institute of electrical and electronics engineers international symposium on safety security and rescue robotics the new class is featured in the aaas news and notes section of the january 2022 issue of science and they will be recognized for their achievements later this year during an in-person gathering view the complete list of 2021 fellows on the aaas website
the secureamerica institute (sai) and the advanced robotics for manufacturing (arm) institute are partnering to investigate how robotics and automation in manufacturing can enhance the resiliency flexibility and competitiveness of us industrial base supply chains thanks to a $5 million grant award from the us department of commerces national institute of standards and technology (nist) the project plans to create the robotics and automation decision framework for agility and resilience (radar) this framework will allow small and medium-sized manufacturers (smms) to systemically evaluate the cost-to-benefit ratio of integrating robotics and automation for aiding response to supply chain disruptions due to public health crises like covid-19 and additional economic threats dr eleftherios iakovou sais manufacturing supply chain director and principal investigator on the project sees the award as an exciting and potent validation of the unique footprint sai has established and a way for the institute to provide innovative solutions to national priorities the radar end-to-end supply chain framework encompasses macro-scale and micro-scale modeling along with physical demonstration by bringing together interdisciplinary capabilities of elite partners from sai and arm including the texas manufacturing assistance center general electric deloitte georgia institute of technology and morgan state university to serve the requirements set by nist iakovou said the project is particularly valuable because it empowers smms who form the backbone of the nations industrial base iakovou continued small manufacturers often lack the scale and human capital needed to increase their use of automation and robotics to position themselves favorably in the sophisticated next-generation cost-competitive agile and resilient supply chains of americas future we are delighted to work with the team at the secureamerica institute on this important project said arnie kravitz chief innovation officer at the arm institute our work will help smaller manufacturers make better decisions in the face of the current and future pandemics radars funding is provided by the american rescue act and is part of a larger $54 million initiative by nist to award high-impact projects for pandemic response research and development across eight manufacturing institutes in the manufacturing usa network
wildfires have devastated communities globally in recent years urging researchers to continue their pursuit of finding new ways to help protect lives and property researchers led by a texas a&m university professor have created a coating treatment with the potential to mitigate the spread and damage of fire without many of the drawbacks typically associated with fire retardant solutions leading the team is principal investigator dr jaime grunlan leland t jordan '29 chair professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering and his former graduate student dr thomas kolibaba who is currently a nuclear regulatory commission postdoctoral fellow at the national institute of standards and technology "if the pandemic hadn't happened fire would have been a top story this past couple of years due to major fires in places like california and australia " grunlan said according to the national fire protection association home fires result in billions of dollars in property damage each year and are the leading cause of fire deaths as a native of the pacific northwest kolibaba said he hopes to see this coating become accessible to the average person allowing those who live in high-risk areas to treat their own homes and property with the coating to protect against fire damage "the solution could be sold put into a backpack sprayer like what many people use for staining wood siding or spraying herbicides on farms and then applied to structures of concern such as houses fences and barns during fire season to keep their homes safer " kolibaba said the team shared their findings during the 2022 american chemical society spring meeting on march 22 the group's test showed that when exposed to flames wood treated with the coating saw less heat released during burning produced less smoke and developed a layer of char on the surface that helped to protect the wood underneath all features that could help to reduce fire damage and spread in addition to protecting structures and homes grunlan said this coating technology could also be applied to a variety of materials often found in furnishings including foam and fabric and vehicles like cars planes and trains the developed coating is also environmentally benign thanks to its water-based nature and adds very little weight to the material to which it is applied grunlan said their approach improves upon other coating technologies seeking to achieve similar results but include drawbacks like substantial added weight and toxic properties for people or the environment "the ability to make wood or wood composites such as oriented strand board or plywood 'self-extinguishing' without changing any other beneficial properties will be a tremendous benefit to everyone " grunlan said "forests homes and buildings will be much safer"
demand response a measure taken to reduce the energy load in response to supply constraints within the texas electric grid has been a topic of recent conversation as we continue to question the stability of the electric grid after the wake of winter storm uri just one year ago demand response can enhance the reliability of the grid through renewable energy penetration and also significantly reduce price volatility or fluctuation in the wholesale electricity market to reduce the energy load across the entirety of the states grid traditional demand response studies focus on reducing the energy load in high population centers such as houston and dallas however dr le xie professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at texas a&m university and his team found that focusing on a few strategic locations across the state outside of those high-population areas is much more cost-effective and can have a greater impact on the price volatility of the grid a machine learning algorithm is utilized to strategically select these demand response locations based on a synthetic texas grid model this research was published in the february issue of the journal iscience suppose todays electricity demand results in high prices and yesterdays electricity demand resulted in low prices said postdoctoral researcher ki-yeob lee who designed the algorithm used in the paper can we move todays electricity demand closer to yesterdays electricity demand so that this change can result in low prices if this is not successful can we move todays electricity demand closer to the day before yesterdays electricity demand based on this simple idea our machine-learning algorithm searches for the day where electricity results in low prices and the amount of demand response is minimal although previous studies have demonstrated the benefits of demand response in mitigating price volatility there is limited work considering the choice of locations for maximal impact we're taking a technology-agnostic approach xie said we're showing the current market design and the consequences of this design by pointing these things out we can hopefully reduce the price volatility of the grid which we believe would be best for society in addition to xie and lee contributors to the research include dr xinbo geng dr sivaranjani seetharaman and dr srinivas shakkottai from the electrical and computer engineering department at texas a&m; dr bainan xia from breakthrough energy; and dr hao ming from southeast university in china who received his doctorate from texas a&m
researchers at texas a&m university have found a way to control the charge of nanoparticles on a two-fluid interface to create a more stable system in which its charge can also be switched and controlled the ability to change the charge of nanoparticles on a two-fluid interface specifically an oil-water interface would result in a surface that could acclimate itself to fit many diverse applications such as a more durable firefighting operation and even controlled release in certain medications based on this idea we proposed a concept that this will be a ph-responsive material if we change the ph value we can control the molecular diffusion said dr qingsheng wang associate professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering and holder of the george armistead ‘23 faculty fellowship at texas a&m the teams research was published in the american chemical societys journal acs applied materials & interfaces emulsion is a mixture of two or more incompatible and unmixable liquids much like oil and water that can be stabilized by the interference of solid particles these solid particles tightly assemble at the fluid-fluid interface like swim lanes in a lap pool to prevent coalescence this process is known as pickering emulsion the success of this system is ultimately made possible by the use of graphene quantum dots (gqds) containing zwitterionic properties using several sheets of gqds stacked together the research team is able to not only stabilize emulsion but also control the molecular diffusion on the interface by adjusting its ph values much like flipping a light switch these sheets together measure less than 5 nanometers in thickness to put this into perspective the average human hair is anywhere from 80 000 to 100 000 nanometers wide the functionalized gqds are composed of nanocarbon materials containing zwitterionic structure which is formed from nanoparticles that contain an equal amount of both positive and negative charges while still remaining electronically neutral after the nanoparticles are added to the interface they separate the two fluids by making one side hydrophobic and the other side hydrophilic this electronic makeup also makes it possible to control the overall ph of the interface by adjusting the ph values these gqds can be finely tuned to both block and unblock an oil-water interface changing the nanoplatelets on the interface to the same charge means that they will be disassembled thus creating a more stable emulsion system this is going to help us design a good system in high-performance fire suppression in addition because we can control the release this could be promising for drug delivery and enhanced oil recovery wang said usually this is very difficult to do and sometimes if we can control the release but the system itself is not stable it may only be possible to do one or two cycles of this before the system collapses the research team consists of chemical engineering doctoral student rong ma and former chemical engineering doctoral students dr minxiang zeng now a research scientist at the university of notre dame and dr dali huang now a process engineer at formosa plastics corporation
a team of scientists and researchers from the us army engineer research and development center (erdc) the premier research and development center for the us army corps of engineers traveled to texas a&m university recently for a firsthand look at the ever-expanding capabilities and innovative research underway at the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) center for infrastructure renewal (cir) located on the rellis campus cir operated by tees and the texas a&m transportation institute is a state-of-the-art facility that researches and tests solutions to issues involving the state and nations infrastructure it attracts significant research participation from academia industry and government and educates the workforce needed to build and maintain better roads bridges tunnels sewers water supplies telecommunications and electrical grids dr anand puppala cir interim director and tim green cir strategic advisor for national security initiatives took the visitors to several labs to observe the testing of large-scale structures and materials the impacts of hypersonic speeds the use of new materials for 3d printing the use of drones and artificial intelligence to detect cracks in bridges or track flooding and the effects of corrosion in infrastructure such as concrete-encased rebar dr dimitris lagoudas senior associate dean for research and associate vice chancellor of engineering research explained how visits like these strengthen the relationship between tees and the army corps of engineers the corps vast reach and knowledge of infrastructure needs across the entire country combined with our facilities expertise and education create a productive partnership that benefits everyone he said representatives from tees and erdc exchanged challenge coins representing the applied technologies and research aspect of the continued partnership between the two agencies challenge coins are a century-old army tradition used to instill pride and reward soldiers for hard work and excellence the extraordinary work being done in these labs and the engineering education we deliver are our responsibility and our contribution to national security said dr john hurtado interim vice chancellor for engineering and dean of the college of engineering we welcome the opportunity to share our expertise with the government dr david pittman director of the us army engineer research and development center was joined on the tour by six fellow researchers at erdc we work to address the nations toughest challenges while striving to make the world a safer and better place pittman said strong partnerships are key for us in accomplishing that mission and we appreciated the opportunity to visit with a great academic partner like texas a&m university to further build that kind of collaboration
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messenger ribonucleic acid (mrna) vaccines have become more popular as they can help prevent viral infections ranging from zika to covid-19 but their thermal stability remains a drawback to store and transport mrna vaccines requires ultracold freezers and cold-chain assurance making it costly and challenging to provide vaccines to rural and developing communities the national institutes of health (nih) awarded dr qing sun assistant professor in the artie mcferrin department of chemical engineering at texas a&m university $18 million through the stephen i katz early stage investigator research project grant using deep learning sun aims to develop mrna vaccines that are thermally stable and relax the stringent conditions needed for mrna vaccine preparation storage and distribution it is important in the future to improve the thermal stability of mrna vaccines so that if there are other infectious diseases we can respond quickly and distribute vaccines more efficiently said sun using this grant we will focus on using artificial intelligence to develop a system for thermally stable mrna vaccine development messenger rna vaccines function by triggering an immune response within the body protecting us from infection when exposed to pathogens with the onset of the pandemic the importance of vaccinations has grown being able to transport vaccines at cheaper cost without the need for extremely cold temperatures is critical for fighting against covid-19 and other infections such as rabies and influenza to help with this issue sun proposed using a deep-learning platform that has shown success in natural language processing to nucleic acid feature prediction tasks this interpretable end-to-end model can predict mrna vaccine secondary structures directly from sequence information the model has been shown to reduce mrna degradation in solution and mammalian cells after transfection the central dogma of molecular biology states that dna makes rna makes proteins said sun by changing the codons in the mrna structure we can make the same proteins to trigger immunogenic effects but with a much more stable mrna secondary structure with the ability to screen over thousands of mrna vaccine sequences through the deep-learning platform she can predict mrna sequences that are more stable when exposed to higher temperatures she plans to validate the model performance by producing the predicted top-performance mrna vaccine sequences and testing their stability and efficacy in her lab in the future sun hopes her production process can serve as a framework for other mrna vaccine processing for rapid response to pandemics outside of covid-19 by improving the thermal stability of the covid-19 mrna vaccines we could redesign all other mrna vaccines for the better she said i hope to see our deep-learning method applied to predict rna secondary structure stabilities and to study biological functions of rna molecules including noncoding rna riboswitch and therapeutic rnas the method can potentially play critical roles in cellular and viral machinery to inspire novel antibacterial antitumor and antiviral functions
sun is the principal investigator on the project she will conduct the research in her lab on the texas a&m campus with support from a team of graduate students postdoctoral researchers and lab technicians the stephen i katz early stage investigator research project grant is an r01 grant which funds creative early-stage investigators research ventures in which no preliminary data is needed
currently there is little research focused on understanding mechanisms and drug discovery of lymphatic vascular diseases however conditions such as lymphedema a buildup of fluid in the body when the lymph system is damaged impact more than 200 000 people every year in the united states alone dr abhishek jain assistant professor in the department of biomedical engineering at texas a&m university has taken his expertise in organ-on-chip models and applied them to a field theyve never been used in before creating the first lymphangion-chip to engineer this new device jains team first developed a new technique to create microfluidic cylindrical blood or lymphatic vessels consisting of endothelial cells which line blood vessels it could then use this technique to create a co-cultured multicellular lymphangion the functional unit of a lymph vessel and successfully recreate a typical section of a lymphatic transport vessel in vitro or outside the body we can now better understand how mechanical forces regulate lymphatic physiology and pathophysiology jain said we can also understand what are the mechanisms that result in lymphedema and then we can find new targets for drug discovery with this platform the project is in collaboration with dr david zawieja from the texas a&m college of medicine their research was recently published in the journal lab on a chip collaborations with dr zawieja and others in the department played a crucial role jain said they introduced me to this topic and provide their longstanding expertise that has made it possible for us to create this new organ-on-chip platform and now advance it in these exciting directions using contemporary experimental models jain said the impact of this work is far-reaching because there is a new hope for patients with lymphatic diseases they can now learn about the biology of these diseases and reach a point where they can be treated the most exciting part of this research is that it is allowing us to now push the organ-on-chip in directions where finding cures for rare and orphan (understudied) diseases is possible with less effort and money jain said we can help the pharma industry to invest in this platform and find a cure for lymphedema that impacts millions of people
manufacturing limitations affect the development of products and technologies ranging from pharmaceuticals and health care to energy harvesting semiconductors and biotechnology stifling innovation with high costs small build areas and slow production times researchers at texas a&m university are seeking to implement a new method of manufacturing 3d nanostructured surfaces consisting of multiple materials by using a high-throughput high-precision technique dr dorrin jarrahbashi assistant professor in the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering is part of a team recently awarded a three-year grant from the national science foundation to continue their pursuit of the advancement "the created technology can be used in multiple applications and expedite the technological advances in sectors where cost or low-speed production inhibits manufacturing multifunctional nanostructured components " said jarrahbashi jarrahbashi is working alongside co-principal investigator dr amir asadi assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution "the results from this research will equip multiple us industries with a new scalable manufacturing technique and thus benefit the us economy and society with increased domestic job opportunities and more public access to smart technology " said asadi
jarrahbashi said that the team has established a new in-house spray-deposition manufacturing technique it uses supercritical carbon dioxide (co2) to assist with atomization and create very fine and uniform micron-size droplets containing nanoparticles by engineering the self-assembly of multiple materials inside the deposited droplets they can fabricate multifunctional nanostructured components all without the need for costly preparations or the use of hazardous solvents the new process will allow for large-scale reduced-cost fast manufacturing of 3d nanostructured surfaces with sizes ranging from a micrometer to a centimeter examples of functional coating applications include wearable electronics smart textiles and paints antennas and electronic devices the use of this new spray deposition technique along with the combination of multiple materials including polymer carbonaceous and ceramic nanomaterials and tailored patterns is also expected to enable new levels of multifunctionality "nanostructured surfaces often fabricated by depositing and patterning nanomaterials on desired substrates are essential to provide functionalities such as structural electrical thermal magnetic optical and audio in many devices " asadi said "this project supports the development of a manufacturing process that enables scalable and high-precision manufacturing of multifunctional nanostructured surfaces with multiple materials without the need for costly preparations or use of hazardous solvents" the team is seeking to overcome the challenges of current methods such as slow and costly treatments and a narrow selection of materials limited by compatibility and small build areas their proposed method focuses on the use of nontoxic water co2 and pristine nanomaterials that can be integrated into existing manufacturing lines or additive manufacturing stations to integrate large volumes of nanomaterials with high precision the team has filed a patent on this developed technology and expects to start a semi-industrial manufacturing line to start producing new sensors based on light filtering and functional coating solutions that address the needs of different industry sectors they also plan to enhance the current spray system by designing new nozzles for the supercritical co2-assisted atomization technique to prepare for scalable manufacturing of multifunctional surfaces
high-fidelity touch has the potential to significantly expand the scope of what we expect from computing devices making new remote sensory experiences possible the research on these advancements led by a pair of researchers from the j mike walker '66 department of mechanical engineering at texas a&m university could help touchscreens simulate virtual shapes dr cynthia hipwell is studying friction at the finger-device level while dr jonathan felts is researching friction in the interaction between single skin cells and the glass of the touchscreen interface the two are bringing together their respective areas of expertise to apply friction principles at the microscopic level to finger-device interaction mechanics hipwell highlighted the significance of the pursuit by comparing it to the technologies currently available for conveying immersive and accurate information through high-fidelity audio and video "we can view digitally recorded or remotely transmitted audio and video on a screen with great detail " said hipwell oscar s wyatt jr '45 chair ii professor "we do not yet have that same capability with touch on a touchscreen imagine you could feel the skin of a snake that lives on another continent or the fabric of clothes you want to buy online"
another application of this technology which has received high levels of interest recently is the augmentation of immersive virtual environments such as the proposed metaverse the touch sensations that would be required to really immerse yourself into a reality that is fully digital requires huge advancements in touch perception said felts associate professor and steve brauer jr '02 faculty fellow what weve done is essentially created an entirely new way to modulate the perception of touch that hasnt existed before" the team is working to show that it is possible to mimic the unique mechanical and thermal sensations associated with different surface textures and shapes their recent publication in the journal science robotics demonstrates the potential for translating these sensations on a touchscreen by using temperature variation alone rather than expressing them through ultrasonic vibrations or electroadhesion methods "we were actually surprised by the magnitude of the friction increase we were able to achieve " hipwell said "its magnitude is competitive with current surface haptic devices meaning that there is another option for friction modulation in surface-haptic device rendering"
another exciting development hipwell said is that their research has shown that it is possible to localize the friction to the outer layer of the skin and at least at swipe speeds control friction without making the device feel hot as the research continues felts said many of the questions remaining involve how readily the approach can be incorporated into consumer devices and commercialized "can it be scaled down can it respond quickly enough can it mimic a wide range of surfaces can it be affordable we think these are fair criticisms yet we look forward to using this phenomenon to improve our basic understanding of haptic feedback and pursuing miniaturization and commercialization avenues " he said the team is continuing their work to address challenges facing the approach by further exploring the complexities of the finger-device interface and variations that occur due to environmental and skin-property differences they also hope to look at design improvements for miniaturization and integration into touchscreens
with the goal of ensuring that innovative technology- and science-based ideas become a reality the texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) is entering its eighth year with a new cash award the winners circle legacy prize in its first seven years the competition successfully generated and awarded $24 million in seed funding to support texas-based companies with high growth potential these funds have helped more than 40 finalists execute their ideas and advance product development now these winners want to contribute a portion of their success to fellow entrepreneurs competing in the 2022 competition this may
as a past competitor and direct beneficiary of the texas a&m new ventures competitions generosity it is spark biomedicals pleasure to give back to the community that gave so much to us said daniel powell co-founder president and chief executive officer of spark biomedical tnvc is building a special community of entrepreneurs and innovators that we are proud to be part of powell won the 2019 competition and spearheaded the initiative to pool funds together among previous winners with eight companies contributing in total the winners circle legacy prize offers an added opportunity for finalists to win seed funding in the form of cash beyond the main prize pool for the development of new or advanced technology the 2022 winners circle legacy prize includes sizable sponsorships from gaitiq elemental coatings ictero medical koda health m&s biotics sano chemicals spark biomedical and starling medical we are so proud of this new award not only because of its direct impact on the companies the cash will help at a time when they need it most but also because it speaks to the impact of the competition itself said chris scotti director of new ventures at texas a&m innovation partners and chair of the tnvc committee these companies benefitted from and believe in tnvc to the extent they are willing to write checks back to a new generation of texas best startups and this is only the beginning as our pool of winners and their companies grow we believe the award will grow as well feeding a continuous cycle of innovation and entrepreneurship so important to our societytnvc was founded in 2015 to promote the commercialization of emerging technology and provide a pathway for entrepreneurs to successfully complete the journey from concept to marketplace led by the texas a&m engineering experiment stations office of commercialization and entrepreneurship in partnership with texas a&m innovation partners the texas a&m university system and generous sponsors the competition continues to nurture the states entrepreneurial ecosystem by attracting a wide variety of technology innovations and companies that span the state of texas twenty companies representing industry within the health care manufacturing energy agriculture infrastructure and cybersecurity market segments will compete for a finalist position at the two-day in-person competition the total prize pool is expected to exceed $500 000 each company will have the chance to earn one of six awards for the main prize one of five for the elevator pitch and a host of other prizes including the winners' circle legacy prize where winners are selected by the sponsors to learn more about the teas a&m new ventures competition and the opportunity to become a sponsor visit the texas a&m new ventures website
capturing and storing carbon dioxide (co2) deep underground can help combat climate change but long-term monitoring of the stored co2 within a geological storage site is difficult using current physics-based methods texas a&m university researchers proved that unsupervised machine-learning methods could analyze the sensor-gathered data from a geological carbon-storage site and rapidly depict the underground co2 plume locations and movements over time lowering the risk of an unregistered co2 escapeproject lead dr siddharth misra the ted h smith jr 75 and max r vordenbaum 73 dvg associate professor in the harold vance department of petroleum engineering used seed money from the texas a&m energy institute to begin the researchthe project was designed to facilitate long-term co2 storage at low risk said misra current physics-driven models are time consuming to produce and assume where the co2 is in a storage site we are letting the data tell us where the co2 actually is we are also providing rapid visualization because if you cannot see the co2 you cannot control it deep undergroundincreasing levels of co2 in the atmosphere raise global temperatures because the gas absorbs heat radiating from the earth releases it back to the earth over a long time and stays in the atmosphere far longer than other greenhouse gasessince more co2 exists than can be easily filtered out by earths natural processes its essential to keep it out of the air by other means sequestering the unwanted gas underground isnt new but monitoring its presence within a geological site is challenging because co2 is invisible quickly moves through cracks and escapes without detectioncurrent physics-driven models rely on statistics or numerical calculations that match known physical laws backed by research results however the latest geological sensors yield an enormous amount of data suggesting a lot of variety exists in subsurface compositions than was previously thought physics-driven models dont include the information because such variations arent fully understood but misra knew that data contained knowledge useful to the situationmisra and keyla gonzalez his graduate researcher began by showing where the co2 was spatially since the entire subsurface data set had to be mined for clues they used unsupervised machine learning to locate the co2 unlike supervised machine learning where computer algorithms are taught which data will answer a specific question unsupervised learning uses algorithms to sift through data to find patterns that relate to the parameters of a problem when no definite answers to a question exist yet
first the algorithms assessed the presence of co2 in the data using five broad or qualitative ranges from very high concentrations down to zero traces of it colors identified each range for a 2d visual representation with the brightest color for the highest content and black for no co2 these generalizations sped up pinpointing the plume's location how much area it covered and its approximate size shape and densitythe algorithms learned several workflow methods to read data and model the co2 misra and gonzalez couldnt rely on only one method to find the right answer because using unsupervised learning meant no real solution to the problem existed yet and any answer found would have to be confirmed rigorously so each answer was compared against the others similar results proved the solutions were unique to finding only the co2 no matter which methods were used
more data was needed to track the movement of the co2 through time so the algorithms were taught to sift through and evaluate data in different formats such as crosswell seismic tomography because the algorithms were already geared to a purely data-driven approach and visualized on a general level the spatial-temporal maps were quickly generated no matter what information was used again similar results proved the researchers were on the right trackmisra and gonzalez published a paper on the research in the journal expert systems with applications gonzalez has graduated and took a position with tgs an international energy data and intelligence company that was impressed with the workthe next step will be the combination of rapid prediction rapid visualization and real-time decision making something the us department of energy is interested in said misra even though the work was hard and required a lot of confirmation to validate i can see so much potential in research like this many more applications and breakthroughs are possible unsupervised learning takes more effort but gives so much insight
its been 50 years since man walked on the moon in those 50 years astronauts have primarily explored low earth orbit now that nasa is preparing to return to the moon its time to reevaluate the practicality of the spacesuit dr ana diaz artiles assistant professor in the department of aerospace engineering at texas a&m university and graduate student logan kluis have been working on developments for the smartsuit a new spacesuit architecture that would create a safer and better spacesuit environment for extravehicular activity (eva) on planetary surfacesthe smartsuit is a spacesuit architecture proposed by diaz artiles that focuses on three key improvements to the current suit design; increased mobility enhanced safety and informed interaction between the environment and the astronaut most recently diaz artiles and kluis in collaboration with dr robert shepherd associate professor at cornell university have been developing prototypes of soft-robotics assistive actuators for the knee joints the current spacesuit has been designed for microgravity conditions; in these conditions astronauts dont need to walk or move around using their lower body they typically translate themselves using their upper body said diaz artiles now when you are on a planetary surface astronauts are going to need to walk bend kneel pick rocks and many other similar activities that require a better mobility in the lower bodythe soft-robotic knee prototypes they have developed work by using gas pressure to expand the internal chambers so that they push against each other as each one expands the actuator bends and by using a soft material the actuator forms to the human body creating a more comfortable fit and potentially reducing the risk of injury soft-robotics would allow the actuators to conform to the astronauts body greatly increasing their comfort compared to more rigid hard surface actuators said kluis
being inside the current spacesuit is like being inside a pressurized balloon the astronaut has to fight against the suit which is not only difficult but expends energy that astronauts will want to conserve when conducting eva missions that energy spent moving against the suit contributes to the metabolic cost which the assistive robotic actuators would be able to reduce by 15% based on simulations specifically developed to investigate the effects of these actuatorsif youre out collecting samples and doing tests you spend a lot of energy said kluis so when we go to missions like the moon and mars were either going to have to bring all that food or were going to have to grow it so any sort of savings you can have on that energy would be very helpfultheir recent work focused on actuators for the knee joints but ultimately their objective is to integrate actuators into a full-body layer enhancing motion in several body joints that layer would press relatively hard against the astronaut providing extra mechanical counterpressure (mcp) which increases mobilitypressure and mobility have an inverse relationship said diaz artiles the more pressure you have in the spacesuit the lower the mobility the less pressure you have the easier it is to move aroundthis pressure refers to the gas pressure the spacesuit provides to protect the wearer the pressure of the atmosphere is about 147 pounds per square inch (psi) the current spacesuit provides about 43 psi which pushes against the astronauts body and contributes to the balloon effect but if a full-body soft-robotic layer could provide 10 psi for example that would lower the amount needed for the suit to only 33 psi: less pressure and more mobilityimagine wearing a really tight under armour or really tight leggings that pressure pushing down on your body would be in replace of or in addition to gas pressure said kluis so the idea with the smartsuit is that it would use both mechanical pressure and gas pressure
another benefit to using mcp is that it could also lower the risk of decompression sickness (dcs) dcs can happen when the gas pressure surrounding us decreases relatively fast so the nitrogen in our bodies emerge as bubbles inside our body tissues the current solution to avoiding dcs within the spacesuit consists of breathing pure oxygen for up to four hours before conducting an eva by implementing mcp astronauts can spend less time on prebreathe requirements and more time on the exploration without extra concern of dcsdiaz artiles and her team continue to work on the smartsuit architecture and the actuator prototypes are a promising development in creating a more accommodating and resourceful spacesuit for future planetary missions their end goal would be for it to feel like the wearer is moving without the spacesuit on and without breaking too much of a sweatspacesuits are directly related to space travel which is exciting and theyre at the forefront of that said kluis so its always fun getting to work on new technologies that can be implemented or be part of that evolution into the next spacesuit the results of their research were published in npj microgravity aerospace medicine and human performance and at the 50th international conference of environmental systems
fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (ie thermoplastic composites) are emerging in industries as a replacement for metals due to their durability and lightweight composition however achieving high levels of both strength and toughness in thermoplastic composites is challenging hindering their ability to be manufactured at fast ratesfunded by the national science foundations (nsf) faculty early career development (career) award dr amir asadi assistant professor in the department of engineering technology and industrial distribution at texas a&m university has developed a method using hybrid nanomaterials capable of creating high-performance thermoplastic composites with favorable mechanical properties within minutes
as an extra layer of security several online services have adopted push notification-based two-factor authentication systems whereby users must approve login attempts through a mobile device in current authentication systems especially the "tap to approve" approach there is no explicit link that indicates correspondence between the user's browser session and the notification they receive on their device this vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker to address this issue a team of researchers that includes dr nitesh saxena professor in the department of computer science and engineering at texas a&m university has designed new easy-to-use methods to counter the vulnerabilities in push notification-based two-factor authentication systems "the mechanisms we designed have a similar usability to the original push notification-based authentication method but they improve security against concurrent login attacks " said saxena "if a user receives two notifications the notification that corresponds to the browser's session of the attacker will differ therefore the user should be able to detect that something is amiss and not accept the wrong notification" the team's paper describing the research was published in the proceedings from the 2021 institute of electrical and electronics engineers' european symposium on security and privacy (euros&p) one of the premier venues presenting cutting-edge cybersecurity research push notifications are clickable pop-up messages sent directly to a user's mobile or desktop device via an installed application they can appear at any time and show various things such as the weather breaking news missed calls or text messages reminders etc they can also be utilized as second-factor authentication (or password-less authentication) which works as an additional layer of security to protect users' online accounts from attackers with push notification authentication a push notification is sent directly to a mobile device usually a smartphone registered to an online account alerting the user that a login attempt is taking place the user can then review the notification details and either approve or deny the request by tapping a button one of the main advantages of this method is that it's a simple way to authenticate login attempts that don't require the users to remember and manage complex passwords for their accounts over the past few years there's been a sharp increase in the adoption of push notification-based authentication systems like duo-push and authy they have also been commercially adopted by major software and service companies like google twitter and several academic entities while this method is fundamentally more user-friendly than the one-time password method it contains several security risks one of which is called a concurrency attack introduced in saxena's research
threatcasting aims to converge widely varied perspectives into a cohesive story around a possible scenario and a set of affected stakeholders developed by brian david johnson a futurist and professor at arizona state university it provides data to anticipate a future state or outcome and all the variables that must occur for that state or outcome to become reality