Storms on Jupiter are disturbing the planet's colorful belts

Radio, IR and optical observations show evolution of plumes and their impact on belts and zones
Date:August 22, 2019
Source:University of California - Berkeley
Summary:Coordinated observations of Jupiter in early 2017 by six ground-based telescopes and
Hubble allowed astronomers to study the evolution of bright plumes and connect them with
cloud movements deep in the planet. They show that these plumes originate 80 kilometers below
the surface cloud deck and rise up quickly into the stratosphere, where supercooled ammonia
freezes to form ammonia ice clouds. The plumes create disturbances in the belts and even change
their color.
Storm clouds rooted deep in Jupiter's atmosphere are affecting the planet's white zones and
colorful belts, creating disturbances in their flow and even changing their color.

Thanks to coordinated observations of the planet in January 2017 by six ground-based optical
and radio telescopes and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a University of California, Berkeley,
astronomer and her colleagues have been able to track the effects of these storms -- visible as
bright plumes above the planet's ammonia ice clouds -- on the belts in which they appear.
The observations will ultimately help planetary scientists understand the complex atmospheric
dynamics on Jupiter, which, with its Great Red Spot and colorful, layer cake-like bands, make it
one of the most beautiful and changeable of the giant gas planets in the solar system.
One such plume was noticed by amateur astronomer Phil Miles in Australia a few days before
the first observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile,
and photos captured a week later by Hubble showed that the plume had spawned a second plume
and left a downstream disturbance in the band of clouds, the South Equatorial Belt. The rising
plumes then interacted with Jupiter's powerful winds, which stretched the clouds east and west
from their point of origin.
Three months earlier, four bright spots were seen slightly north of the North Equatorial Belt.
Though those plumes had disappeared by 2017, the belt had since widened northward, and its
northern edge had changed color from white to orangish brown.
"If these plumes are vigorous and continue to have convective events, they may disturb one of
these entire bands over time, though it may take a few months," said study leader Imke de Pater,
a UC Berkeley professor emerita of astronomy. "With these observations, we see one plume in
progress and the aftereffects of the others."
The analysis of the plumes supports the theory that they originate about 80 kilometers below the
cloud tops at a place dominated by clouds of liquid water. A paper describing the results has
been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal and is now online.
Into the stratosphere
Jupiter's atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of methane, ammonia,
hydrogen sulfide and water. The top-most cloud layer is made up of ammonia ice and comprises
the brown belts and white zones we see with the naked eye. Below this outer cloud layer sits a
layer of solid ammonium hydrosulfide particles. Deeper still, at around 80 kilometers below the
upper cloud deck, is a layer of liquid water droplets.
The storm clouds de Pater and her team studied appear in the belts and zones as bright plumes
and behave much like the cumulonimbus clouds that precede thunderstorms on Earth. Jupiter's
storm clouds, like those on Earth, are often accompanied by lightning.
Optical observations cannot see below the ammonia clouds, however, so de Pater and her team
have been probing deeper with radio telescopes, including ALMA and also the Very Large Array
(VLA) in New Mexico, which is operated by the National Science Foundation-funded National
Radio Astronomy Observatory.
ALMA array's first observations of Jupiter were between Jan. 3 and 5 of 2017, a few days after
one of these bright plumes was seen by amateur astronomers in the planet's South Equatorial
Belt. A week later, Hubble, the VLA, the Gemini, Keck and Subaru observatories in Hawaii and
the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile captured images in the visible, radio and mid-infrared
ranges.
De Pater combined the ALMA radio observations with the other data, focused specifically on the
newly brewed storm as it punched through the upper deck clouds of ammonia ice.
The data showed that these storm clouds reached as high as the tropopause -- the coldest part of
the atmosphere -- where they spread out much like the anvil-shaped cumulonimbus clouds that
generate lightning and thunder on Earth.
"Our ALMA observations are the first to show that high concentrations of ammonia gas are
brought up during an energetic eruption," de Pater said.
The observations are consistent with one theory, called moist convection, about how these
plumes form. According to this theory, convection brings a mix of ammonia and water vapor
high enough -- about 80 kilometers below the cloud tops -- for the water to condense into liquid
droplets. The condensing water releases heat that expands the cloud and buoys it quickly upward
through other cloud layers, ultimately breaking through the ammonia ice clouds at the top of the
atmosphere.
The plume's momentum carries the supercooled ammonia cloud above the existing ammonia-ice
clouds until the ammonia freezes, creating a bright, white plume that stands out against the
colorful bands encircling Jupiter.
"We were really lucky with these data, because they were taken just a few days after amateur
astronomers found a bright plume in the South Equatorial Belt," said de Pater. "With ALMA, we
observed the whole planet and saw that plume, and since ALMA probes below the cloud layers,
we could actually see what was going on below the ammonia clouds."
Hubble took images a week after ALMA and captured two separate bright spots, which suggests
that the plumes originate from the same source and are carried eastward by the high altitude jet
stream, leading to the large disturbances seen in the belt.
Coincidentally, three months before, bright plumes had been observed north of the Northern
Equatorial Belt. The January 2017 observations showed that that belt had expanded in width, and
the band where the plumes had first been seen turned from white to orange. De Pater suspects
that the northward expansion of the North Equatorial Belt is a result of gas from the ammonia-
depleted plumes falling back into the deeper atmosphere.
De Pater's colleague and co-author Robert Sault of the University of Melbourne in Australia used
special computer software to analyze the ALMA data to obtain radio maps of the surface that are
comparable to visible-light photos taken by Hubble.
"Jupiter's rotation once every 10 hours usually blurs radio maps, because these maps take many
hours to observe," Sault said. "In addition, because of Jupiter's large size, we had to 'scan' the
planet, so we could make a large mosaic in the end. We developed a technique to construct a full
map of the planet."
The VLT data were contributed by Leigh Fletcher and Padraig Donnelly of the University of
Leicester in the United Kingdom, while Glenn Orton and James Sinclair of the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in California and YasumaKasaba of Tokyo University in Japan supplied the
SUBARU data. Gordon Bjoraker of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and
MátéÁdámkovics of Clemson University in South Carolina analyzed the Keck data.

Hurricanes drive the evolution of more aggressive spiders

Date:August 20, 2019
Source:McMaster University
Summary:Researchers who rush in after storms to study the behavior of spiders have found that
extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones may have an evolutionary impact on
populations living in storm-prone regions, where aggressive spiders have the best odds of
survival.

Researchers at McMaster University who rush in after storms to study the behaviour of spiders
have found that extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones may have an evolutionary
impact on populations living in storm-prone regions, where aggressive spiders have the best odds
of survival.

Raging winds can demolish trees, defoliate entire canopies and scatter debris across forest floors,
radically altering the habitats and reshaping the selective pressures on many organisms, suggests
a new study published today in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
"It is tremendously important to understand the environmental impacts of these 'black swan'
weather events on evolution and natural selection," says lead author Jonathan Pruitt, an
evolutionary biologist and Canada 150 Chair in McMaster's Department of Psychology,
Neuroscience &Behaviour.
"As sea levels rise, the incidence of tropical storms will only increase. Now more than ever we
need to contend with what the ecological and evolutionary impacts of these storms will be for
non-human animals," he says.
Pruitt and his team examined female colonies of the spider known as Anelosimusstudiosus,
which lives along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the United States and Mexico, directly in the
path of tropical cyclones that form in the Atlantic basin from May to November.
To conduct the research, scientists had to tackle many logistical and methodological challenges
which included anticipating the trajectory of the tropical cyclones. Once a storm's path was
determined, they sampled populations before landfall, then returned to the sites within 48 hours.
They sampled 240 colonies throughout the storm-prone coastal regions, and compared them to
control sites, with particular interest in determining if extreme weather -- in this case areas
disturbed in 2018 by subtropical storm Alberto, Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Michael --
caused particular spider traits to prevail over others.
As a species, A. studiosus is divided into two sets of inherited personality traits: docile and
aggressive. The aggressiveness of a colony is determined by the speed and number of attackers
that respond to prey, the tendency to cannibalize males and eggs, the vulnerability to infiltration
by predatory foreign spiders, among other characteristics.
Aggressive colonies, for example, are better at acquiring resources when scarce but are also more
prone to infighting when deprived of food for long periods of time or when colonies become
overheated.
"Tropical cyclones likely impact both of these stressors by altering the numbers of flying prey
and increasing sun exposure from a more open canopy layer," explains Pruitt. "Aggressiveness is
passed down through generations in these colonies, from parent to daughter, and is a major factor
in their survival and ability to reproduce."
The analysis suggested that after a tropical cyclone event, colonies with more aggressive
foraging responses produced more egg cases and had more spiderlings survive into early winter.
The trend was consistent across multiple storms that varied in size, duration and intensity,
suggesting the effects are robust evolutionary responses, says Pruitt.

Australian men's life expectancy tops other men's

Date:August 22, 2019
Source:Australian National University
Summary:Australian men are now living longer than any other group of males in the world,
according to new research.

Australian men are now living longer than any other group of males in the world, according to
new research from The Australian National University (ANU).

The study introduces a new way of measuring life expectancy, accounting for the historical
mortality conditions that today's older generations lived through.
By this measure, Australian men, on average, live to 74.1.
The news is good for Australian women too; the study shows they're ranked second, behind their
Swiss counterparts.
Dr Collin Payne co-led the study, which used data from 15 countries across Europe, North
America and Asia with high life expectancies.
"Popular belief has it that Japan and the Nordic countries are doing really well in terms of health,
wellbeing, and longevity. But Australia is right there," Dr Payne said.
"The results have a lot to do with long term stability and the fact Australia's had a high standard
of living for a really, really long time. Simple things like having enough to eat, and not seeing a
lot of major conflict play a part."
Dr Payne's study grouped people by year of birth, separating 'early' deaths from 'late' deaths, to
come up with the age at which someone can be considered an 'above-average' survivor.
"Most measures of life expectancy are just based on mortality rates at a given time," Dr Payne
said.
"It's basically saying if you took a hypothetical group of people and put them through the
mortality rates that a country experienced in 2018, for example, they would live to an average
age of 80.
"But that doesn't tell you anything about the life courses of people, as they've lived through to
old age.
"Our measure takes the life course into account, including mortality rates from 50, 60, or 70
years ago.
"What matters is we're comparing a group of people who were born in the same year, and so
have experienced similar conditions throughout their life."
Dr Payne says this method allows us to clearly see whether someone is reaching their cohort's
life expectancy.
"For example, any Australian man who's above age 74 we know with 100 per cent certainty has
outlived half of his cohort -- he's an above average survivor compared to his peers born in the
same year," he said.
"And those figures are higher here than anywhere else that we've measured life expectancy.
"On the other hand, any man who's died before age 74 is not living up to their cohort's life
expectancy."
Dr Payne says there are a number of factors which might've contributed to Australia jumping
ahead in these new rankings.
"Mortality was really high in Japan in the 30s, 40s and 50s. In Australia, mortality was really low
during that time," Dr Payne said.
"French males, for example, drop out because a lot of them died during WW2, some from direct
conflict, others from childhood conditions."
Dr Payne is now hoping to get enough data to look at how rankings have changed over the last
30 or 40 years.
The research has been published in the journal Population Studies.
Stardust in the Antarctic snow
Iron-60 discovery in the Antarctic provides information on the environment of solar system
Date:August 20, 2019
Source:Technical University of Munich (TUM)
Summary:The rare isotope iron-60 is created in massive stellar explosions. Only a very small
amount of this isotope reaches the earth from distant stars. Now, a research team has discovered
iron-60 in Antarctic snow for the first time. The scientists suggest that the iron isotope comes
from the interstellar neighborhood.

The rare isotope iron-60 is created in massive stellar explosions. Only a very small amount of
this isotope reaches Earth from distant stars. Now, a research team with significant involvement
from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has discovered iron-60 in Antarctic snow for
the first time. The scientists suggest that the iron isotope comes from the interstellar
neighborhood.

The quantity of cosmic dust that trickles down to Earth each year ranges between several
thousand and ten thousand tons. Most of the tiny particles come from asteroids or comets within
our solar system. However, a small percentage comes from distant stars. There are no natural
terrestrial sources for the iron-60 isotope contained therein; it originates exclusively as a result of
supernova explosions or through the reactions of cosmic radiation with cosmic dust.
Antarctic Snow Travels around the World
The first evidence of the occurrence of iron-60 on Earth was discovered in deep-sea deposits by a
TUM research team 20 years ago. Among the scientists on the team was Dr. Gunther
Korschinek, who hypothesized that traces of stellar explosions could also be found in the pure,
untouched Antarctic snow. In order to verify this assumption, Dr. SeppKipfstuhl from the Alfred
Wegener Institute collected 500 kg of snow at the Kohnen Station, a container settlement in the
Antarctic, and had it transported to Munich for analysis. There, a TUM team melted the snow
and separated the meltwater from the solid components, which were processed at the Helmholtz-
Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) using various chemical methods, so that the iron needed
for the subsequent analysis was present in the milligram range, and the samples could be
returned to Munich.
Korschinek and Dominik Koll from the research area Nuclear, Particle and Astrophysics at TUM
found five iron-60 atoms in the samples using the accelerator laboratory in Garching near
Munich. "Our analyses allowed us to rule out cosmic radiation, nuclear weapons tests or reactor
accidents as sources of the iron-60," states Koll. "As there are no natural sources for this
radioactive isotope on Earth, we knew that the iron-60 must have come from a supernova."
Stardust Comes from the Interstellar Neighborhood
The research team was able to make a relatively precise determination as to when the iron-60 has
been deposited on Earth: The snow layer that was analyzed was not older than 20 years.
Moreover, the iron isotope that was discovered did not seem to come from particularly distant
stellar explosions, as the iron-60 dust would have dissipated too much throughout the universe if
this had been the case. Based on the half-life of iron-60, any atoms originating from the
formation of Earth would have completely decayed by now. Koll therefore assumes that the iron-
60 in the Antarctic snow originates from the interstellar neighborhood, for example from an
accumulation of gas clouds in which our solar system is currently located.
"Our solar system entered one of these clouds approximately 40,000 years ago," says
Korschinek, "and will exit it in a few thousand years. If the gas cloud hypothesis is correct, then
material from ice cores older than 40,000 years would not contain interstellar iron-60," adds
Koll. "This would enable us to verify the transition of the solar system into the gas cloud -- that
would be a groundbreaking discovery for researchers working on the environment of the solar
system.

New Nano-Thermometer Takes

Temperature Inside Single Cells
TOPICS:FluorescenceNanotechnologyRice University
By MIKE WILLIAMS, RICE UNIVERSITY AUGUST 22, 2019

Rice University chemistry lab uses fluorescence of molecular motors to sense conditions.

How do you know a cell has a fever? Take its temperature.

That’s now possible thanks to research by Rice University scientists who used the
light-emitting properties of particular molecules to create a fluorescent nano-
thermometer.

The Rice lab of chemist Angel Martí revealed the technique in a Journal of
Physical Chemistry Bpaper, describing how it modified a biocompatible
molecular rotor known as boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY, for short) to reveal
temperatures inside single cells.

The molecule is ideally suited to the task. Its fluorescence lasts only a little while
inside the cell, and the duration depends heavily on changes in both temperature
and the viscosity of its environment. But at high viscosity, the environment in
typical cells, its fluorescence lifetime depends on temperature alone.
It means that at a specific temperature, the light turns off at a particular rate, and
that can be seen with a fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscope.

Martí said colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine challenged him to develop the
technology. “Everybody knows old thermometers based on the expansion of
mercury, and newer ones based on digital technology,” he said. “But using those
would be like trying to measure the temperature of a person with a thermometer
the size of the Empire State Building.”

The technique depends on the rotor. Martí and Rice graduate student and lead
author Meredith Ogle constrained the rotor to go back and forth, like the flywheel
in a watch, rather than letting it rotate fully.

“It pretty much wobbles,” Martí said.

“What we measure is how long the molecule stays in the excited state, which
depends on how fast it wobbles,” he said. “If you increase the temperature, it
wobbles faster, and that shortens the time it stays excited.”

The effect, Martí said, is conveniently independent of the concentration of

BODIPY molecules in the cell and of photobleaching, the point at which the
molecule’s fluorescent capabilities are destroyed.

“If the environment is a bit more viscous, the molecule will rotate slower,” Martí
said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s colder or hotter, just that the viscosity of
the environment is different.

“We found out that if we constrain the rotation of this motor, then at high
viscosities, the internal clock — the lifetime of this molecule — becomes
completely independent of viscosity,” he said. “This is not particularly common
for these kinds of probes.”

Martí said the technique might be useful for quantifying the effects of tumor
ablation therapy, where heat is used to destroy cancer cells, or in simply
measuring for the presence of cancers. “They have a higher metabolism than
other cells, which means they’re likely to generate more heat,” he said. “We’d like
to know if we can identify cancer cells by the heat they produce and differentiate
them from normal cells.”
Nanomachines Power Color-Changing
Artificial ‘Chameleon Skin’
TOPICS:NanoparticlesNanotechnologyUniversity Of Cambridge
AUGUST 21, 2019

Researchers have developed artificial ‘chameleon skin’ that changes color when
exposed to light and could be used in applications such as active camouflage and
large-scale dynamic displays.

The material, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, is

made of tiny particles of gold coated in a polymer shell, and then squeezed into
microdroplets of water in oil. When exposed to heat or light, the particles stick
together, changing the color of the material. The results are reported in the
journal Advanced Optical Materials.

In nature, animals such as chameleons and cuttlefish are able to change color
thanks to chromatophores: skin cells with contractile fibers that move pigments
around. The pigments are spread out to show their color, or squeezed together to
make the cell clear.

The artificial chromatophores developed by the Cambridge researchers are built

on the same principle, but instead of contractile fibers, their color-changing
abilities rely on light-powered nano-mechanisms, and the ‘cells’ are microscopic
drops of water.

When the material is heated above 32C, the nanoparticles store large amounts of
elastic energy in a fraction of a second, as the polymer coatings expel all the water
and collapse. This has the effect of forcing the nanoparticles to bind together into
tight clusters. When the material is cooled, the polymers take on water and
expand, and the gold nanoparticles are strongly and quickly pushed apart, like a
spring.

“Loading the nanoparticles into the microdroplets allows us to control the shape
and size of the clusters, giving us dramatic color changes,” said Dr Andrew
Salmon from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, the study’s co-first author.

The geometry of the nanoparticles when they bind into clusters determines which
color they appear as: when the nanoparticles are spread apart they are red and
when they cluster together they are dark blue. However, the droplets of water
also compress the particle clusters, causing them to shadow each other and make
the clustered state nearly transparent.
At the moment, the material developed by the Cambridge researchers is in a
single layer, so is only able to change to a single color. However, different
nanoparticle materials and shapes could be used in extra layers to make a fully
dynamic material, like real chameleon skin.

The researchers also observed that the artificial cells can ‘swim’ in simple ways,
similar to the algae Volvox. Shining a light on one edge of the droplets causes the
surface to peel towards the light, pushing it forward. Under stronger
illumination, high pressure bubbles briefly form to push the droplets along a
surface.

“This work is a big advance in using nanoscale technology to do biomimicry,” said

co-author Sean Cormier. “We’re now working to replicate this on roll-to-roll films
so that we can make meters of color-changing sheets. Using structured light we
also plan to use the light-triggered swimming to ‘herd’ droplets. It will be really
exciting to see what collective behaviors are generated.”

The research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

New Compound Could Help Improve Heart

Attack Recovery
TOPICS:BiomedicalHeartDiseaseVirginia Tech
By WHITNEY SLIGHTHAM, VIRGINIA TECH AUGUST 19, 2019
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC scientists discover potentially protective compound.

Imagine there were a drug that you could take soon after a heart attack that could
reduce damage by protecting healthy heart muscle tissue.

“Cardiologists say that when a heart attack occurs, time is muscle,” said Robert
Gourdie, director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC Center for
Heart and Reparative Medicine Research.

Without oxygen supplied by blood flow, heart cells die — fast. But while a heart
attack may only reduce blood and oxygen to an isolated section of heart cells —
causing what’s called hypoxic ischemic injury — those dying cells send signals to
their neighbors.
“The problem is that the area of dying tissue is not quarantined. Damaged heart
cells start to send out signals to otherwise healthy cells, and the injury becomes
much bigger,” said Gourdie, who is also the Commonwealth Research
Commercialization Fund Eminent Scholar in Heart Regenerative Medicine
Research and a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and
Mechanics in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering.

Scientists sometimes call this spread of injury signals to nearby healthy tissues a
“bystander effect.”

But what if there were a way to keep the injury localized to the group of cells that
are directly affected by the hypoxic ischemic injury, while allowing the nearby
heart muscle cells to remain intact?

A study published Aug. 19 in the Journal of the American Heart

Association reveals that a new molecule developed by a team of researchers led by
Gourdie could help preserve heart tissue during — and even after — a heart
attack.

Nearly a decade ago Gourdie, in collaboration with a postdoctoral fellow in his

lab, GautamGhatnekar, stumbled across a promising discovery. Gourdie’s team
discovered a compound that targets the activity of channels in cell membranes
responsible for controlling key aspects of the bystander effect.

But the compound, called alphaCT1, also had other unexpected and beneficial
effects, particularly in relation to skin wound healing.

“We found that it helped reduce inflammation, helped heal chronic wounds such
as diabetic foot ulcers,” said Gourdie.

Recognizing the compound’s potential, Ghatnekar and Gourdie founded a

company, FirstString Research Inc., to commercialize alphaCT1, which is now in
phase III clinical trials for treating wounds.

Meanwhile, Gourdie has been trying to understand how the drug works on a
molecular level, which led to the study just published in the Journal of the
American Heart Association.

“This paper asks the question: how does this peptide drug actually work?” said
Gourdie.

The group designed molecules with slight chemical differences from the parent
molecule, which led to an unexpected discovery. One of the alphaCT1 variants —
called alphaCT11 — showed more potency than the parent molecule.
“AlphaCT11 seems to be even more effective than the original peptide in
protecting hearts from ischemic injury similar to those occurring during a heart
attack,” said Gourdie.

The study reveals that alphaCT11 gives a robust injury-reducing effect, even when
given 20 minutes after the loss of blood flow that causes ischemic injury. When
put to the same test, the parent peptide did not appear to provide a heart-
protective effect when administered after ischemic injury.

“AlphaCT11 could provide the basis for a new way to treat heart attacks and
prevent the spread of damage that occurs immediately after a heart attack,” said
Gourdie.

The researchers perfused isolated laboratory mouse hearts, keeping the organ
alive and beating for a number of hours. Ongoing studies, through collaboration
with Virginia Commonwealth University’s Antonio Abbate and Stefano Toldo,
will examine how alphaCT11 performs in live mice.

Gourdie is also developing new methods for delivering alphaCT11 using

naturally-derived tiny lipid droplets called exosomes. These newer experiments
On the money

Cloud service providers use networks of fiber optic cables running underground,
connecting data centers in different cities. To route traffic, the providers rely on
“traffic engineering” (TE) software that optimally allocates data bandwidth — the
amount of data that can be transferred at one time — through all network paths.

The goal is to ensure maximum availability to users around the world. But that’s
challenging when some links can fail unexpectedly, due to drops in optical signal
quality resulting from outages or lines cut during construction, among other
factors. To stay robust to failure, providers keep many links at very low
utilization, lying in wait to absorb full data loads from downed links.

Thus, it’s a tricky tradeoff between network availability and utilization, which
would enable higher data throughputs. And that’s where traditional TE methods
fail, the researchers say. They find optimal paths based on various factors, but
never quantify the reliability of links. “They don’t say, ‘This link has a higher
probability of being up and running, so that means you should be sending more
traffic here,” Bogle says. “Most links in a network are operating at low utilization
and aren’t sending as much traffic as they could be sending.”

The researchers instead designed a TE model that adapts core mathematics from
“conditional value at risk,” a risk-assessment measure that quantifies the average
loss of money. With investing in stocks, if you have a one-day 99 percent
conditional value at risk of $50, your expected loss of the worst-case 1 percent
scenario on that day is $50. But 99 percent of the time, you’ll do much better.
That measure is used for investing in the stock market — which is notoriously
difficult to predict.

“But the math is actually a better fit for our cloud infrastructure setting,” Ghobadi
says. “Mostly, link failures are due to the age of equipment, so the probabilities of
failure don’t change much over time. That means our probabilities are more
reliable, compared to the stock market.”

Risk-aware model

In networks, data bandwidth shares are analogous to invested “money,” and the
network equipment with different probabilities of failure are the “stocks” and
their uncertainty of changing values. Using the underlying formulas, the
researchers designed a “risk-aware” model that, like its financial counterpart,
guarantees data will reach its destination 99.9 percent of the time, but keeps
traffic loss at a minimum during 0.1 percent worst-case failure scenarios. That
allows cloud providers to tune the availability-utilization tradeoff.

The researchers statistically mapped three years’ worth of network signal

strength from Microsoft’s networks that connects its data centers to a probability
distribution of link failures. The input is the network topology in a graph, with
source-destination flows of data connected through lines (links) and nodes
(cities), with each link assigned a bandwidth.

Failure probabilities were obtained by checking the signal quality of every link
every 15 minutes. If the signal quality ever dipped below a receiving threshold,
they considered that a link failure. Anything above meant the link was up and
running. From that, the model generated an average time that each link was up or
down, and calculated a failure probability — or “risk” — for each link at each 15-
minute time window. From those data, it was able to predict when risky links
would fail at any given window of time.

The researchers tested the model against other TE software on simulated traffic
sent through networks from Google, IBM, ATT, and others that spread across the
world. The researchers created various failure scenarios based on their
probability of occurrence. Then, they sent simulated and real-world data
demands through the network and cued their models to start allocating
bandwidth.

The researchers’ model kept reliable links working to near full capacity, while
steering data clear of riskier links. Over traditional approaches, their model ran
three times as much data through the network, while still ensuring all data got to
its destination. The code is freely available on GitHub.

Bioprinting Complex Living Tissue in Just a

Few Seconds
TOPICS:EPFLStemCellsUniversity Medical Center Utrecht
By ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FÉDÉRALE DE LAUSANNE AUGUST 23, 2019

Researchers from EPFL and the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands
have developed an extremely fast optical method for sculpting complex shapes in stem-
cell-laden hydrogels and then vascularizing the resulting tissue. Their groundbreaking
technique stands to change the field of tissue engineering.

Tissue engineers create artificial organs and tissues that can be used to develop
and test new drugs, repair damaged tissue and even replace entire organs in the
human body. However, current fabrication methods limit their ability to produce
free-form shapes and achieve high cell viability.

Researchers at the Laboratory of Applied Photonics Devices (LAPD), in EPFL’s

School of Engineering, working with colleagues from Utrecht University, have
come up with an optical technique that takes just a few seconds to sculpt complex
tissue shapes in a biocompatible hydrogel containing stem cells. The resulting
tissue can then be vascularized by adding endothelial cells.

The team describes this high-resolution printing method in an article appearing

in Advanced Materials. The technique will change the way cellular engineering
specialists work, allowing them to create a new breed of personalized, functional
bioprinted organs.

Researchers from EPFL and the University Medical Center Utrecht in the
Netherlands have developed an extremely fast optical method for sculpting
complex shapes in stem-cell-laden hydrogels and then vascularizing the resulting
tissue. Their groundbreaking technique stands to change the field of tissue
engineering.

Credit: EPFL

Printing a femur or a meniscus

The technique is called volumetric bioprinting. To create tissue, the researchers

project a laser down a spinning tube filled with a stem-cell-laden hydrogel. They
shape the tissue by focusing the energy from the light at specific locations, which
then solidify. After just a few seconds, a complex 3D shape appears, suspended in
the gel. The stem cells in the hydrogel are largely unaffected by this process. The
researchers then introduce endothelial cells to vascularize the tissue.

The researchers have shown that it’s possible to create a tissue construct
measuring several centimeters, which is a clinically useful size. Examples of their
work include a valve similar to a heart valve, a meniscus and a complex-shaped
part of the femur. They were also able to build interlocking structures.

“Unlike conventional bioprinting – a slow, layer-by-layer process – our technique

is fast and offers greater design freedom without jeopardizing the cells’ viability,”
says Damien Loterie, an LAPD researcher and one of the study’s co-authors.
Replicating the human body

The researchers’ work is a real game-changer. “The characteristics of human

tissue depend to a large extent on a highly sophisticated extracellular structure,
and the ability to replicate this complexity could lead to a number of real clinical
applications,” says Paul Delrot, another coauthor. Using this technique, labs
could mass-produce artificial tissues or organs at unprecedented speed. This sort
of replicability is essential when it comes to testing new drugs in vitro, and it
could help obviate the need for animal testing – a clear ethical advantage as well
as a way of reducing costs.

“This is just the beginning. We believe that our method is inherently scalable
towards mass fabrication and could be used to produce a wide range of cellular
tissue models, not to mention medical devices and personalized implants,” says
Christophe Moser, the head of the LAPD.

The researchers plan to market their groundbreaking technique through a spin-

off.

News Briefs: Aug. 19, 2019

DOJ chief supports Lorenzana’s wiretapping proposal

MANILA, Philippines — Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said he would defer

to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who proposed to extend the allowed time
to wiretap perceived security threats from 30 to 90 days, with a one-time 30-day
extension.

Malacañang supports Lorenzana’s call to amend the Human Security Act of 2007
(Republic Act No. 9372) in order to expand official wiretapping acts against
suspected terrorists.

“Terrorism is a serious threat to national security and public safety, so if our

security experts recommend that a longer period for permissible wiretapping is
necessary, I will support it,” Guevarra said on Sunday.

He, however, disagreed with Interior Secretary Eduardo Año’s suggestion to

create a special court to try suspected terrorists.
“I believe that our regular trial courts, some of which have been designated to
especially handle heinous crimes, are capable of trying terrorism cases wherever
they may be filed,” Guevarra said.

Año, a former military chief, also supported Lorenzana’s proposal to extend the
allowable period for wiretapping, saying that going after terrorist suspects takes a
long time. —Dona Z. Pazzibugan

Navy’s most modern ship arriving on Tuesday

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Navy’s newest and most powerful sea
asset, the Pohang-class corvette BRP Conrado Yap, is scheduled to arrive on
Tuesday in Manila.

BRP Davao del Sur, which participated in the Russian Navy anniversary in
Vladivostok, Russia, fetched the ship from the Jinhae naval base in Changwon
City, South Korea.

Roxas said that both ships left for Manila on Aug. 12. BRP Conrado Yap has been
placed under the command of Capt. Marco Buena and is manned by over 100
crewmen who underwent 13 weeks of operational training in South Korea.

The ship, which was donated by the South Korean government to the Philippine
Navy, was named after Army Capt. Conrado Yap, the most decorated Filipino
serviceman of the Korean War.

BRP Conrado Yap is armed with two Oto Melara 76mm main guns, 30mm
automatic cannons and antisubmarine torpedoes, and is equipped with sonars
and radars. —Jeannette I. Andrade

Higher taxes on e-cigarettes, heated tobacco opposed

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine E-Cigarette Industry Association (Pecia)

and Vapers PH slammed a hastily passed House bill significantly raising taxes on
e-vapor products and making them virtually the same as regular cigarettes.

“Smokers will simply continue to use cigarettes. There is no incentive for them
from government to switch to a better alternative,” they said.

The House approved on second reading on Aug. 14 a substituted version of House

Bill No. 1026, which was originally an alcohol tax measure but suddenly included
a tax on e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products.
“Heavy taxes on reduced-risk products will only result to smokers sticking it out
with conventional cigarettes instead of switching to less harmful nicotine
products,” said Mark Czerwin Erana, president of Vapers PH.

This defeats the government’s goal to reduce the number of smokers, Erana
added.

Proposed department for OFWs backed

MANILA, Philippines — A group of manning agencies has thrown its support

behind a proposed measure seeking to establish the Department of Overseas
Filipino Workers to safeguard the rights of some 2 million Filipinos working
abroad.

The Alliance of Bonafide Recruiters for OFW Advancement (Abroad), which

represents more than 500 placement companies, said debates on the creation of
the new agency for OFWs would give recruitment centers, migrant groups and
other concerned groups an opportunity to “sit down and find ways to better
protect the interest of OFWs.”

“Recruitment agencies have assumed the role as shock troops or the first line of
defense in protecting OFW rights and welfare,” Abroad coconvener Mary Cecile
Francisco said in a statement.