Category: Science & Technology

Indian American scientist Gurtej Sandhu, of Boise, Idaho, has racked up 1,299 U.S. patents by the latest count. The seventh-most of anyone. In the world. In all time.

Sandhu, who was born in London to parents from India, studied electrical engineering in India before coming to the United States to pursue a doctorate in physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sandhu was interested in integrated circuits — electronic circuits formed on a small piece of semiconducting material. As his graduate study neared its end in 1989, his technical skills were in demand. He weighed two job offers. One came from Texas Instruments, then the top American computer-memory maker. The other came from Micron Technology, an 11-year-old upstart in Boise struggling against government-subsidized memory-chip makers in Japan and other countries, the Idaho Statesman reported.

“Micron, which was No. 18 on the list of (memory) companies, their vision was to be No. 1 in the world,” he said in the report.

Though weary Micron would fail in its quest, a professor encouraged him, saying Sandhu would be put in a box at Texas Instruments because you lack experience, but at Micron he would have freedom to solve all kinds of engineering problems, the report said.

So, he joined Micron. In Boise, he worked to sustain something called Moore’s Law. In 1965, Intel cofounder Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors on a unit of area in an integrated circuit was doubling every year. Sandhu found ways to cram more memory cells onto chips and make them more efficient. He racked up patent after patent, the publication said.

Micron would own those patents, but Sandhu would receive credit for them and share $1,000 bonuses (now $2,000) for each one, according to the report.

Moore’s Law was a trend, not a law of physics. As memory cells on chips kept shrinking, engineers reached the point where they could no longer fit more zeroes and ones onto flat chips, it said.

The Indian American engineer began to focus on stacking layers of two-dimensional memory chips atop one another. Stacking, still a work in progress, demands new processes to make it effective and affordable, it said.

As Micron has fostered closer ties with Boise State University, Sandhu has played a key role. For 15 years, he has mentored engineering majors and faculty alike, it added.

When Sandhu arrived in Idaho, Micron made most of its chips in fabrication plants, or fabs, on its Boise campus. As the 1990s passed into the 2000s, time began to pass those fabs by. Micron closed the last of them in 2009. A company that employed 12,000 people in Boise a decade earlier had fewer than 5,000 left, according to the report.

Under successive CEOs, the Boise campus has shifted from a manufacturing center to a research hub. Once a big employer of mostly manufacturing workers, Micron in Boise today is a smaller employer of highly paid engineers and scientists, roughly half of whom Sandhu said come from abroad, it noted.

The Boise campus still has fabs, but they’re for research and development; only a few of their cutting-edge chips are sold to customers.

Sandhu said being an immigrant in Boise comes with challenges. American-born citizens sometimes think he’s Arab. He once asked a group of students to guess where he was from; one said Japan. The U.S. is more insular than other nations, he said in the report.

After 9/11, a woman in Boise saw him driving his black SUV, wearing his turban, a symbol of his faith. She called the police. Nothing came of the call, Sandhu said. In some countries, he said, such a report may have led to intimidation or extortion, it said.

“The reality is there is no place in the world, no society, where a minority does not feel uncomfortable,” he told the publication. “But I’ll tell you: Today, the best place for any minority to live in any society is the United States. … In terms of basic fairness, still, there’s nothing matching this country.”

Two-thirds of the 20 makers of dynamic random-access memory in 1995 are now out of the business, and just three — Micron and its bigger Korean rivals Samsung and SK Hynix — account for 95 percent of the global DRAM market, the report said.

Sandhu sees that as cause for celebration. He notes that Micron’s past competitors were usually government-subsidized, while Micron was not, the publication said.

With the rise of artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles, large-scale data processing and the Internet of Things, the world’s memory needs will only grow, the report said.

For Sandhu, that means more patents, it added.  “A few years ago I passed Edison, right? So people started making noise,” he told the publication. “That’s my reward. Sitting in Boise, Idaho, and working for Micron, and everybody in the world is using your patent, using things you came up with.”

The science behind the new technique involves the molecule Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD), which is believed to be capable of generating energy in the human body.

Creaking knees, wrinkles, and a step closer to death every day – age is no friend of the human body. Even if not reversed, an extraordinary new anti-ageing technique promises to slow down the process – it can see humans live to 150-years-old and allow them to regrow their organs by 2020.

Harvard Professor David Sinclair and researchers from the University of New South Wales developed a new process to slow down ageing. The technique, which involves reprogramming cells, can not only allow people to regenerate their organs but also allow paralysis sufferers to move again, with human trials due within two years.

It was found in the same research that the lifespan of mice could be increased by ten percent by giving them a vitamin B derivative pill. In what is both good news and groundbreaking, it also observed that the pill led to a reduction in age-related hair loss.

The science behind the new technique involves the molecule Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD), which is believed to be capable of generating energy in the human body. The chemical is already used as a supplement for treating Parkinson’s disease and fighting jet lag.

Professor Sinclair, who is using his own molecule to reduce the ageing process, said that his biological age has reduced by 24 years after taking the pill. His father, 79, has taken to adventure sports such as white water rafting and backpacking after he started using the molecule a year-and-a-half back. In case you are not convinced of this age-defying miracle yet, his sister-in-law gained her fertility back after taking the treatment, despite having started to transition into menopause in her 40s, according to Professor Sinclair.

Regarding the availability of the pill to the general public and its cost, it is expected to be available to the public within five years and cost the same each day as a cup of coffee.

However, Dr. Sinclair warned people not to try to reverse the aging process before the research paper has been published or peer-reviewed.

Stephen Hawking left a legacy that transcended academia – it’s found in motion pictures, best-selling books, and beyond. His passion for science and unlocking the universe’s secrets inspired millions across the globe to be more curious about the universe.

In a 2010 interview with American journalist Diane Sawyer on ABC World News, Sawyer asked Hawking what advice he’d give to his children. One of the pieces of advice: “Work gives you meaning and purpose, and life is empty without it.”

Could his philosophy of work apply to all of us? Is life really empty without a job that not only puts bread on the table, but that also becomes self-actualising personal fulfilment?

“If you love what you do, then small problems that come up aren’t going to bug you and make you want to quit. It’s good for the individual and the organisation,” says Sally Maitlis, professor of organisational behaviour and leadership at the University of Oxford. “But when you love it to the point that it’s absolutely central to how you understand yourself and what your contribution to the world is, it can be damaging.”

Maitlis explored this notion last year with Kira Schabram, a University of Washington management professor, with a study of 50 animal shelter workers in North America: many were attracted to the occupation because of a childhood love of animals, or a belief that they had the right skills to make a difference.

As a result, workers poured in extra hours, volunteered for difficult shifts, constantly shared ideas. But many eventually burnt out or became frustrated. They encountered frequent euthanasia of animals, or had to deal with the realities of meager resources and poor management that plagued many of the shelters. Some eventually quit.

Picking a career that gives you an inner compass of purpose absolutely has positive effects on your life Still, Maitlis and other experts all agree that picking a career that gives you an inner compass of purpose absolutely has positive effects on your life. Research has long backed this.

Stephen Hawking’s career spanned beyond academia, into motion pictures and beyond. Last month, the American Psychological Association published an article that synthesised findings on this topic that stretch back as far as 1993. Research from Harvard professor Teresa Amabile found that “no matter the size of a goal – whether curing cancer or helping a colleague – having a sense of meaning and feeling a sense of progress can contribute to happiness in the workplace.”

But finding work with purpose can be hard for many.

Anat Lechner, a management professor at New York University, says it’s simply a matter of being aware of what you love to do. It’s when you’re so enthralled with what you’re doing, it’s hard to separate the hobby from the actual job. “You can’t separate Elon Musk from everything that he’s building,” she says.

And while many people can actually identify these passions – the things that they naturally gravitate toward and might do for fun off the clock – they often don’t act on them, in terms of creating a career.

“They would rather go work at the JP Morgans because they think it’s a safe bet,” Lechner says. “They put a stop to things that otherwise could prosper and grow and value-add, and the world could pay back in a good way.”

Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of organisational behaviour at Yale University, suggests overcoming this by “job crafting”: teasing out the bits you like about your current job, and then spin off into something that’s more rewarding as a whole.

This can apply to those types of workers Schabram and Maitlis studied: the ones who landed their dream job, but it wasn’t what they expected. “Is there some way to stay involved in music, or whatever it might be, that allows you to connect with the elements [of the job] that are most meaningful?” Wrzesniewski asks. “Instead of being backed into a role definition?”

Some of the workers in Schabram and Maitlis’s study did this by pivoting away from shelters and turning to other jobs that were still animal-centric, like grooming and training. Wrzesniewski also points to a self-sabotaging world view that prohibits people from finding the things they like.

Some think “you sort of have to discover it – almost like it’s an objective identity that lives in the world, and you have to turn over enough rocks to find it,” Wrzesniewski says. “It can create a ton of anxiety.” Instead, the process can be more trial-and-error experimenting.

Homing in on what you love can give you the raw energy that blends career and identity; that allows your work to give you greater meaning and purpose beyond chasing promotions or paying bills. “When you’re so immersed in what it is you do, you become one,” Lechner says. “I think Hawking had that.”

(Courtesy: Bryan Lufkin at BBC)

Asteroids are known to be treasure troves of precious minerals. A Nasa mission is under way to test the feasibility on a nearby asteroid, and a niche group of companies is ramping up to claim a piece of the pie.

Nasa’s Osiris-Rex, launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in 2016, has travelled over 1.3 billion km since, orbiting the sun for a year and hurtling past Earth to change course toward near-Earth asteroid Bennu

In August, Osiris-Rex will capture its first images of Bennu and begin its 2 million-km approach, arriving in December. It will spend more than a year orbiting the asteroid to photograph and survey it.

In July 2020, Osiris-Rex will descend to Bennu’s surface and retrieve up to three samples. After nearly four years in space, Osiris-Rex will spend mere seconds extracting material from the surface of the asteroid.

Bennu comes very close to Earth every six years and scientists estimate asteroids of its type are made of about 10% iron and nickel

Shape & chemistry
During its time at Bennu, the spacecraft will analyse the asteroid’s shape and chemistry, sample its surface materials and collect data on its orbit so scientists can determine the likelihood of it crashing into Earth in the future

Osiris-Rex will begin its return journey back to Earth in March 2021. When it nears Earth in September 2023, it will eject the sample capsule, which will parachute to the surface.

Industry barons see a future in finding and harnessing water on asteroids for rocket fuel, which will allow astronauts and spacecrafts to stay in orbit for longer periods. Investors, including Richard Branson, China’s Tencent Holdings and the nation of Luxembourg, see a longerterm solution to replenishing materials such as iron and nickel as Earth’s natural resources are depleted.

Millions of asteroids roam our solar system. The estimated potential value of some of these asteroids — assuming you could completely mine them, and assuming current market valuations — is so substantial as to be barely comprehensible. The most valuable known asteroid is estimated to be worth $15 quintillion, according to Asterank, a database owned by Planetary Resources, a company that aims to mine asteroids. That represents the world’s total gross domestic product (about $80 trillion) 192,283 times over.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about these asteroids, so their estimated values should be taken with a grain of salt.

NASA has named professor of astronomy and physics Priyamvada Natarajan to its team of U.S. scientists lending expertise on gravitational waves and astrophysics for the upcoming LISA mission.

LISA — which stands for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna — is a space-based, gravitational wave observatory that will be composed of three spacecraft separated by millions of miles. The mission, scheduled for the early 2030s, is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the LISA consortium. Natarajan is a member of the NASA LISA Study Team.

“The detection of gravitational waves in 2015 by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) collaboration is one of the major scientific breakthroughs of this century,” Natarajan said. “The tremors they identified in space-time, produced by the collision of two stellar-mass black holes, was extremely challenging to detect. The more massive cousins of these black holes are supermassive black holes that reside in the centers of most, if not all, galaxies.”

Supermassive black holes also are likely to have been built up via mergers, Natarajan explained. “The cosmic earthquakes produced during these collisions cannot be detected from the Earth and require a LIGO-like interferometer in space as these events will be detectable at much lower frequencies,” she said. “The LISA mission plans to detect these gravitational waves from space-based detectors. The mission will test our fundamental understanding of how supermassive black holes form and grow.”

Natarajan’s research focuses on understanding the formation of the first black holes and the accumulation of mass in the most massive black holes in the universe.

“We currently believe that black holes grow both via direct consumption of gas and stars in their vicinity, as well as via mergers with other black holes,” Natarajan said. “The detection of gravitational waves from colliding supermassive black holes by LISA would validate and calibrate the relative importance of mergers versus accretion.”

Natarajan’s research into black holes also figures prominently in the Jan. 10 episode of the PBS science documentary series, “NOVA.” The episode, “Black Hole Apocalypse,” features portions of an interview with Natarajan and is set for 9 p.m.

“My research group at Yale is extremely active and we are working at the leading edge of these questions combining theoretical models, numerical simulations, and the most up-to-date multi-wavelength observations,” Natarajan said.

Physicist Dr. Abhay Deshpande has been appointed to lead the Center for Frontiers in Nuclear Science (CFNS), a new research center formed to lead the efforts to resolve one of the deep mysteries of the Universe. For the last 5 decades, physicists have known that protons and neutrons, the building blocks of the entire visible universe, are formed out of quarks and gluons. The interactions amongst quarks and gluons are governed by a theory called Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). However, exactly how the interactions happen inside protons and neutrons to make them what they are: how their properties emerge from the collective interactions of quarks and gluons, is still a mystery, and one of the most challenging problems in physics today. A new collider accelerator facility called the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) is needed to address some of these questions.

Two world class research organizations, Stony Brook University, a top public university in the US, and one of the premier nuclear physics labs of the US Department of Energy, The Brookhaven National Laboratory, have come together under the leadership of Dr. Deshpande, to form this Center. A generous grant from the Simons Foundation and a complementary one from the University/NY State together, have made this Center possible.

Most difficult problems in Physics have in the past been solved by the collective wisdom and effort of a great many scientists working together, on research problems. With his new role, Dr. Deshpande hopes exactly this to happen. The Center will be the hub for scientists around the world interested in helping the realization of the EI Collider, and eventually solving the mystery of matter.

Dr. Deshpande, who dedicated his entire life to understand aspects of nature that were most intriguing to him. The problem of the proton and neutron structure emerging from quarks and gluons has been on his mind for the last 25 years. During these years, he has performed experiments at CERN (the European Nuclear & Particle Physics Laboratory) in Geneva, Switzerland, at the German national laboratory called DESY, in Hamburg, Germany, and in the past few years he has been experimenting at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY and at the Thomas Jefferson Laboratory in Newport News, Virginia. What he learnt in all these experiments has resulted in the proposal for the Electron Ion Collider which he hopes to help realize in the next decade.

Abhay grew up in Vile Parle, Mumbai. He is a graduate of Parle Tilak Vidyalaya, and the Mumbai University. He did his M.Sc. from IIT Kanpur and Ph.D. from Yale University in New Haven, CT.  This doctoral thesis was focused on understanding some of the rarest decays in (the Universe) of a particle called Kaon, which carries some very strange quarks.

News from space always arrives late — and in a discovery announced Monday, that meant 130 million years late. It was that long ago that two neutron stars in Galaxy NGC 4993, in the Hydra constellation, spiraled in toward one another and collided in a titanic eruption, sending out waves of energy that literally shook our world. The shaking happened on Aug. 17 at 8:41 a.m. E.T., as gravitational waves released by the event — ripples in spacetime that Albert Einstein first predicted in 1915 but weren’t confirmed until a full century later — at last reached and passed through the Earth.

While the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015was a landmark for science in that it proved the very existence of the ripples, the one just announced is actually much richer, providing all manner of insights into all manner of phenomena, including the speed at which the universe is expanding, the nature of potentially deadly radiation known as gamma ray bursts, and even the source of at least half of the gold and platinum in the universe.

Think of a neutron star as a black hole’s little brother — one that is created by a relatively small star, with less than three times the mass of our sun. When a larger star collapses into a black hole, it leaves behind what is effectively a void in space, an infinitely dense point made of… well, no one knows, because that would require an understanding of how general relativity and quantum physics operate together. And we’re not there yet.

Neutron stars, which don’t have quite as much mass, instead collapse down only until the point that their protons and electrons effectively combine to form neutrons. That still produces something sublimely weird — a body that’s little more than 12 miles (20 km) across but so dense that a single teaspoon of it would weigh a billion tons. When black holes collide, the absence of traditional matter means that gravitational waves are all they produce. Neutron stars, by contrast, produce what Caltech physicist David Reitze called “a maelstron of hot debris” in a NASA statement. That, in turn, generates, gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet radiation and visible light — along with the gravitational waves — and that gives scientists much more to study.

Astronomers have long been curious about sudden, intense blasts of radiation from deep space known as gamma ray bursts. Actually, they haven’t just been curious about them, they’ve also been afraid of them, because a powerful enough burst emanating at just the right — or wrong — angle could wipe out life on any planet that happened to be in the way. The source of gamma ray bursts was long thought to be colliding neutron stars, but it took the recent event to confirm that theory. In fact, it was NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope that first spotted the event, 1.7 seconds before twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories (LIGO) in Hanford, Wash. and Livingston, La., detected the spacetime ripples. The gamma burst was a weak one and it flew wide of Earth — which means we both dodged a bullet and picked up some cool science in the process.

Astronomers have long known that the universe is flying off in all directions at once; what’s been less clear is how fast. In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble sought to determine the speed of the expansion — a figure that would eponymously become known as the Hubble Constant. Initial estimates at the time put the speed at 310 miles (500 km) per second per megaparsec (or 3.3 million miles) — which is just another way of saying incredibly fast. Subsequent calculations have cut the speed to an average of about 43 miles (70) km per second per megaparsec— which is still an awfully quick clip. That was just an estimate, however, with a range of 3 miles (5 km) per second either way. But a gravitational signal from a known galaxy at a known distance made it possible to conduct much more precise calculations of the constant. The result: the actual speed came out precisely in the center of the range of estimates — at the 43-mile per second mark.

We’ve long known that the preponderance of elements in the universe are cooked up in the interior of stars, but the source of the heaviest ones — those heavier than iron — have long been a mystery. Observations from the recent event, however, yielded extensive signatures of heavy metals, including gold and platinum. Indeed, there was so much of the stuff that researchers now conclude that neutron stars are responsible for at least half of the heavy elements in existence. Without the occasional neutron star crack-up in other words, gold would be half as plentiful — and twice as expensive.

(Source: TIME magazine)

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Source Newsroom: University of Notre Dame

Newswise — Americans may be consuming fast food wrapped in paper treated with perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) — the same chemicals used in stain-resistant products, firefighting materials and nonstick cookware, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Researchers tested more than 400 samples of packaging materials, including hamburger and sandwich wrappers, pastry bags, beverage cups and French fry containers, and found evidence of fluorinated compounds called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). Of the materials tested, these chemicals were found in 56 percent of dessert and bread wrappers, 38 percent of sandwich and burger wrappers and 20 percent of paperboard.

Previous studies have shown that these PFASs can migrate, contaminating the food and, when consumed, accumulating in the body.

“This is a really persistent chemical,” said Graham Peaslee, a professor of experimental nuclear physics in the College of Science at the University of Notre Dame, who tested the samples. “It gets in the bloodstream, it stays there and accumulates. There are diseases that correlate to it, so we really don’t want this class of chemicals out there.”

Peaslee used a novel specialized method called particle-induced gamma-ray emission (PIGE) spectroscopy, which he developed to analyze the total fluorine content of each piece of packaging. PIGE is an efficient and cost-effective way to measure the presence of chemicals like fluorine in solid samples.

Previous studies have linked PFASs to kidney and testicular cancers, thyroid disease, low birth weight and immunotoxicity in children, among other health issues. The chemicals have an especially long half-life and take many years before just 50 percent of the intake leaves the human body.

“These chemicals don’t biodegrade. They don’t naturally degrade. They persist in the environment for a very long time,” Peaslee said.

The results are concerning when considering the role of fast food in the American diet. The National Center for Health Statistics reported one-third of U.S. children consume fast food daily.

Samples were collected from a total of 27 fast food restaurant chains including McDonald’s, Burger King, Chipotle, Starbucks, Jimmy Johns, Panera and Chick-Fil-A, in and around Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The study did not include takeout containers, such as Chinese food boxes or pizza boxes.

Upon the results of the study, researchers reached out to each of the fast food chains that had been sampled to see if they were aware the packaging being used contained fluorinated chemicals. Only two responded, each stating they believed their packaging was free of PFASs — one went so far as to state they had received verification from their supplier. But the study showed both respondents had tested positive for a substantial amount of fluorinated chemicals, leading researchers to believe that some chains may be unaware of what’s in their packaging.

“This is a wake-up call for those companies and the consumers,” Peaslee said.

Those involved in the study are hopeful the results will encourage fast food restaurants to choose nontoxic alternatives such as plastic coatings, aluminum foil or wax paper.

Peaslee conducted his research as a professor at Hope College. Since joining the University of Notre Dame, he is leading installation of a facility in the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the University to perform PIGE tests routinely on consumer products and environmental samples in the future.

Co-authors include researchers and scientists from the Silent Spring Institute, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, the Green Science Policy Institute, the Environmental Working Group, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, as well as the University of California at Berkeley and Hope College.

Newswise — Galaxies in the universe trace patterns on very large scales; there are large empty regions (called “voids”) and dense regions where the galaxies exist. This distribution is called the cosmic web. The most massive concentrations of galaxies are clusters. The formation of the cosmic web is governed by the action of gravity on the invisible mysterious “dark matter” that exists throughout the universe. The normal baryonic material one can see falls into the dark matter halos and forms galaxies. The action of gravity over about 14-billion-year history of the universe makes the halos cluster together. The location of galaxies or clusters in this enormous cosmic web tests our understanding of the way structure forms in the universe.

Increasingly, deeper and more extensive observations with telescopes like Subaru Telescope provide a clearer picture of the way galaxies evolve within the cosmic web. Of course, one cannot see the dark matter directly. However, one can use the galaxies that are seen to trace the dark matter. It is also possible to use the way the gravity of clusters of galaxies distort more distant background galaxies, weak gravitational lensing, as another tracer.

The Hiroshima group combined these two tracers: galaxies and their weak lensing signal to map the changing role of massive star-forming galaxies as the universe evolves. Weak lensing is a phenomenon that provides a powerful technique for mapping the changing contribution of star-forming galaxies as tracers of the cosmic web. The cluster of galaxies and surrounding dark matter halo act as a gravitational lens. The lens bends the light passing through from more distant galaxies and distorts the images of them. The distortions of the appearance of the background galaxies provide a two-dimensional image of the foreground dark matter distribution that acts as a huge lens. The excellent imaging of the Subaru Telescope covering large regions of the sky provides exactly the data needed to construct maps of this weak lensing.

Dr. Yousuke Utsumi, a member of Hyper Suprime-Cam building team and a project assistant professor at Hiroshima University, conducted a 1-hour observation of a 4-deg2 patch of sky in the direction of the constellation Cancer. Figure 1 shows a close-up view of a cluster of galaxies with the weak lensing map tracing the matter distribution. The highest peaks in the maps correspond the foreground massive clusters of galaxies that lie 5 billion light-years away.

To map the three-dimensional distribution of the foreground galaxies, spectrographs on large telescopes like the 6.5-meter MMT disperse the light with a grating. The expansion of the universe shifts the light to the red and by measuring this shift one measures the distances to the galaxies. Using spectroscopy places the galaxies in the cosmic web. The observations locate star-forming galaxies and those that are no longer forming stars.

Collaborators led by Dr. Margaret Geller (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) conducted spectroscopic measurements for galaxies. The Hectospec instrument on the MMT enables measurements of redshifts for 250 galaxies at a time. The survey contains measurements for 12,000 galaxies.

The MMT redshift survey provides the map for the way all types of galaxies might contribute to the weak lensing map. Because the MMT survey provides distances to the galaxies, slices of the map at different distances corresponding to different epochs in the history of the universe can also be made and compared with the lensing map.

The MMT survey provides a predicted map of the cosmic web based on the positions of galaxies in three-dimensional space. Research team compared this map with the weak lensing map to discover the similarities. Figure 2 shows that both the highest peak and the largest empty regions are similar in the two maps. In other words, the matter distribution traced by the foreground galaxies and the distribution traced by the Subaru weak lensing map are similar. There are two complementary views of the cosmic web in this patch of the universe.

If they slice up the three-dimensional map in different redshift or time slices, they can examine the way the correspondence between these maps and the weak lensing map changes for different slices (Figure 3). Remarkably, the distribution of star-forming galaxies around a cluster of galaxies in the more distant universe (5 billion years ago) corresponds much more closely with the weak lensing map than a slice of the more nearby universe (3 billion years ago). In other words, the contribution of star-forming galaxies to the cosmic web is more prominent in the distant universe. These maps are the first demonstration of this effect in the weak lensing signal.

The research team provides a new window on galaxy evolution by comparing the three-dimensional galaxy distribution mapped with a redshift survey including star-forming galaxies to a weak lensing map based on Subaru imaging.

“It turns out that the contribution of star-forming galaxies as tracers of the mass distribution in the distant universe is not negligible,” said Dr. Utsumi. “The HSC weak lensing map should contain signals from more distant galaxies in the 8 billion-year-old universe. Deeper redshift surveys combined with similar weak lensing maps should reveal an even greater contribution of star-forming galaxies as tracers of the matter distribution in this higher redshift range. Using the next generation spectrograph for the Subaru Telescope, Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS), we hope to extend our maps to the interesting era.”

Dermavant Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing innovative therapies for dermatologic conditions, today announced the appointment of Vince Ippolito as President and Chief Operating Officer.

“I am extremely pleased to welcome Vince Ippolito to the Dermavant team,” said Dr. Jacqualyn A. Fouse, Executive Chair of Dermavant. “Vince brings a tremendous wealth of experience in dermatology. His track record speaks for itself and he has generated significant value for shareholders over the course of his highly successful career.”

“We now have four novel investigational drugs in our pipeline being developed by a highly experienced and dedicated clinical team,” continued Dr. Fouse. “Each compound has the potential to deliver significant value to patients with unmet medical needs in dermatology. It is a perfect time for Vince to join our team and help us take these programs forward.”

Mr. Ippolito has over thirty years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including twenty years in dermatology. He most recently served as the Chief Commercial Officer and Executive Vice President of Anacor Pharmaceuticals, a dermatology-focused biopharmaceutical company. At Anacor, Mr. Ippolito was responsible for building marketing and sales functions, as well as developing the company’s product portfolio. Prior to Anacor, he was Executive Vice President at Medicis Pharmaceutical, an industry-leading dermatology company.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Ippolito has launched more than twenty brands in dermatology and he has played a leading role in two of the largest dermatology acquisitions of the past five years with combined valuations of $7.8 billion. Mr. Ippolito holds a B.A. in Business Administration, Management, and Operations from the University of Wisconsin with a minor in East Asian Studies from Sophia University in Japan.

“I am thrilled to be joining the Dermavant team and have been very impressed with their focus on bringing much-needed innovation to medical dermatology,” said Mr. Ippolito. “I am excited about the potential in Dermavant’s current pipeline and I look forward to advancing the current compounds in development while also building the pipeline further.”

Dermavant Sciences is dedicated to developing and, upon regulatory approval, commercializing innovative therapies in medical dermatology. Dermavant has four clinical-stage drugs in development: RVT-501, RVT-502, RVT-503, and RVT-201.

RVT-501 is a highly potent and selective topical phosphodiesterase-4 inhibitor currently in development for patients with mild-to-moderate atopic dermatitis. RVT-502, also known as cerdulatinib, is a dual spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) and janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor being developed as a topical therapy for a variety of serious dermatologic conditions. RVT-503 is an undisclosed preclinical asset being studied for the treatment of acne. RVT-201 is a caspase-1 inhibitor that acts to inhibit the production of inflammatory cytokines and is being developed for inflammatory skin diseases. For more information, please visit dermavant.com.

In a bid to improve Search experience for the Indian users, Google on Friday announced the launch of a revamped Feed in the Google app for Android and iOS devices.

The revamped Feed — now available globally after the initial success in the US — will use machine learning algorithms and scan your browsing history, compile relevant content and deliver personalised experience to you.

“The update would be rolled out over the weekend in the Google app for Android and iOS. It will be initially available in English and Hindi in India,” Shashi Thakur, Vice President (Engineering), Search, Google, told reporters at Google India office here via video conferencing from Mountain View, California.

The update would help users better tune the flow of news and information from the web to smartphone, enabling users to dig deeper on topics you’re passionate about.

The Feed can be accessed by updating and launching the Google app on your phone. It will display cards containing the latest highlights, top news, engaging videos, new music and stories about a user’s hobbies.

With the update, the users would see a new “Follow” button which he can tap to get regular updates from movies, sports teams, favorite bands or music artists, famous people, and more.

Google has also given the power into users’ hands. A user can also unfollow a topic or interest by tapping the given card in feed.

The new Feed will not only be based on a user’s interaction with Google but also factor trending topics in their chosen areas from around the world.

If a user is a photography enthusiast but is casually interested in fitness, the feed will reflect stories accordingly. Moreover, the Feed will continue to evolve based on users’ engagement with it.

“The Feed will also include information from diverse perspectives and multiple viewpoints. If you search for a movie, Feed will tell you about show timings at nearest theater, reviews and ratings of that particular movie,” Thakur said

“We’ve built what we believe is the first functioning cellphone that consumes almost zero power,” said study co-author Shyam Gollakota, associate professor at the University of Washington.  “To achieve the really, really low power consumption that you need to run a phone by harvesting energy from the environment, we had to fundamentally rethink how these devices are designed,” Gollakota added.

It is a great leap forward to life beyond chargers, cords and dying phones, researchers at the University of Washington, including an Indian American professor, have invented a cellphone that works without batteries. Instead, the phone harvests the few microwatts of power it requires from either ambient radio signals or light.

According to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, the team made Skype calls to demonstrate that the battery-free phone prototype – made from commercial, off-the-shelf components – can receive and transmit speech and communicate using a base station.

The researchers explained that the battery-free cellphone takes advantage of the tiny vibrations in a phone’s microphone or speaker that occur as people talk during a conversation. An antenna connected to those components converts the vibrations into changes in standard analog radio signals emitted by a cellular base station.

This process essentially encodes speech patterns in reflected radio signals in a way that uses almost no power. To transmit speech, the phone uses vibrations from the device’s microphone to encode speech patterns in the reflected signals.

To receive speech, it converts encoded radio signals into sound vibrations that the phone’s speakers pick up. The team designed a custom base station to transmit and receive the radio signals.

In the prototype device, the user presses a button to switch between the “transmitting” and “listening” modes. Using off-the-shelf components on a printed circuit board, the team demonstrated that the prototype can perform basic phone functions, including transmitting speech and data and receiving user input via buttons.

Using Skype, researchers were able to receive incoming calls, dial out and place callers on hold, the study said.  “The cellphone is the device we depend on most today. So, if there were one device you’d want to be able to use without batteries, it is the cellphone,” said Joshua Smith, professor at the University of Washington. “The proof of concept we’ve developed is exciting today, and we think it could impact everyday devices in the future,” Smith added.

Indian American Owned Company wins top team award for Developing Zero Pressure Tire for US Special Operations Forces Command (USSOCOM) Akron, Ohio, Akron based American Engineering Group received U.S. Special Operations Forces Small Business Team Award at the SOF Industry Conference in Tampa Florida on May 18th, 2017. USSOCOM Team Achievement awards are presented annually to recognize engineering product development team for top performance in the field of innovation & technology. The Team award is selected based on achievements and contributions to the overall goal of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

This award was presented at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference (SOFIC). SOFIC is the premier venue for the Special Operations Forces (SOF) community to interact with industry and to collaborate on the challenges, initiatives and way-ahead in delivering the most cutting-edge capabilities into the hands of SOF operators. This year more than ten thousand attendees were at 2017 SOFIC and 400 companies and organizations displayed their products and services in a sold-out exhibit hall at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, FL.

The conference theme was, “Win-Transform-People” reflects the USSOCOM Commander’s vision to win the current fight, transform current capabilities and equipment for future threats. This is the second year USSOCOM has had a Small Business Team Award to recognize a team for developing new product technology for the warfighter.  This year USSOCOM elected Akron, Ohio based American Engineering Group(AEG) for their SBIR Phase II project titled, ”Improved Tire Technology” developing a unique Pressure Zero Tire (PZT) for US special forces. The award was presented in the closing ceremony at the at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, FL by USSOCOM Acquisition Executive James Geurts.

“It’s an honor to receive this award on behalf of American Engineering Group(AEG) along with team of SOF technologists for the Light Tactical Vehicle Team,” said Abraham Pannikottu, Founder and Operations Manager of AEG. “AEG works tirelessly every day to provide our SOF warriors with the very best and most effective technology to do their job.”

Getting a flat tire is never convenient. In a war zone, it can be deadly. While special operations Tactical Vehicle have been loaded with extra armor to protect troops in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, the tires remain vulnerable to attacks by improvised explosive devices (IED). The unique carbon fiber multiple hoop tire design by American Engineering Group may be the key to a new Zero Pressure Tire that could keep military vehicles running after an attack.

American Engineering Group (AEG) received a Phase II project grant in 2014 from the Special Operations Forces to develop a runflat tire that would continue running even after being impacted by roadside bombs or gunfire. The main objective of the project,  “Improved Tire Technology for Special Operations Vehicles” was to develop a true off-road ballistic tire that could provide high off-road mobility and also provide improved tire survivability against terrain and ballistic threats. Though military vehicle tires are now equipped with run-flat inserts, SOF wants to upgrade to a tire that’s better at carrying heavier loads, has reduced weight, and can quickly move soldiers out of harm’s way.

When engineers at American Engineering Group began working on tire designs, they settled on a flexible multiple carbon fiber hoop structure which functions like air inside a tire. Along with carbon fiber multiple hoops for strength, the design allows shrapnel and high-caliber bullets to pass through the tire. From Phase I Testing in 2011 to completion of Phase II in 2017, the tires continued to run well – keeping the same functional road performance – even after receiving several rounds of gun shots.

Zero pressure tires have been around for a long time, with major drawbacks such as bumpy rides and overheating. The American Engineering Group (AEG) prototype dissipates heat and has the tire flexibility and strength to support the heavy military pick-up weight while providing a relatively smooth ride.

Though military vehicles outfitted with “run-flat” tires are supposed to travel at least 30 mph for 30 miles (the minimum SOF requirement), field performance of current run-flat tires hit by roadside bombs were reported to be much lower than this minimum requirement. The new AEG Zero Pressure Tire will withstand a minimum of 50 mph speeds more than 60 miles once it’s punctured based on results from Phase II.

“This level of load carrying capability and survivability surprised even me” says Dr. Jon Gerhardt, Technical Director of AEG. Defense vehicle weight requirements are increased so much that the current tires cannot support the load. SOF wants to create a tire that extends the mobility of the vehicle as well as the survivability and maintainability. AEG personnel fired a very large-caliber round with a high-velocity rifle into the tire several times. The damaged tires performed well and could perform at 50 mph speeds for 60 miles or more. The durability characteristics of this design was studied further in this Phase II on four different tire sizes for ATV Polaris, Toyota Hilux, and Toyota Land Cruiser & GMV 1.1. special operations vehicles.

American Engineering Group works on different combinations of metallic & polymeric materials to make the multiple composite carbon fiber hoops that are bonded to the carcass of the tire. Finding the right combination of hoop dimensions and materials is the challenge. A softer material provides good durability and flexibility but wears out sooner. A harder material lasts longer but also generates more heat.

“We were also able to utilize our suppliers’ experiences and knowledge to develop and manufacture this unique carbon-fiber–metal composite reinforced tire and we’re hoping to utilize this Pressure Zero Tire technology on various DoD tactical light vehicles,” said Dr Thomas Abraham, President of AEG

Zero pressure tires were tested successfully on the proving ground at Transportation Research Center (TRC Columbus, Ohio) an independent test facility owned by Ohio State University. This road test demonstrated that carbon fiber–metal spring hoops reinforced tread can provide a pressure zero tire performance as per USSOCOM requirements. This is based on vehicle tire tests completed at TRC on Toyota Hilux(figure 1)  & GMV 1.1 vehicles(figure 2) .  The Pressure Zero tire demonstrated good performance on the post ballistic zero pressure and tire durability tests.

This AEG innovative run-flat tire tested on vehicles provided the capability to move for at least 60 miles with a complete loss of air pressure in two tires on opposing corners. The 60 miles consisted of 30 miles (flat, hard, smooth gravel) at 30 mph, 9 miles (primary/paved road) at 30 mph, 9 miles (secondary roads) at 21 mph and 12 miles (cross-country) at 12 mph

The run-flat tire also survived the specified 30-mile test, after ballistic events of five (5) small arms shots to the sidewall and 2 small arms shots directly through the tread in accordance with the FINABEL 20.A.5 standard to cover both threshold and objective requirement.

The run-flat tire also survived the 30-mile test specified above after a 1-inch long gash on the sidewall. The final test was a 12,000-mile reliability, availability, maintainability, and durability test also performed on vehicles at TRC (Columbus, Ohio) an independent test facility managed by Ohio State University. Since the tire is still under development, there’s no price tag. AEG is expected to develop a tire that costs the same or less than current military tires. “AEG’s motivation and driving force for this project is that AEG gets the privilege to be of help to save lives our soldiers” Pannikottu added.

Cyber security experts rushed to restore systems on Saturday after an unprecedented global wave of cyberattacks that struck targets ranging from Russia’s banks to British hospitals+ and a French carmaker’s factories+ . The hunt was on for the culprits behind the assault, which was being described as the biggest cyber ransom attack ever.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at the Helsinki-based cyber security company F-Secure, told AFP that the attack was “the biggest ransomware outbreak in history”, saying that 130,000 systems in more than 100 countries had been affected.

He said that Russia and India were hit particularly hard, in large part because the older Windows XP operating software is still widely used in the countries. State agencies and major companies around the world were left reeling by the attacks which blocked access to files and demanded ransom money, forcing them to shut down their computer systems.

“The recent attack is at an unprecedented level and will require a complex international investigation to identify the culprits,” said Europol, Europe’s policing agency.

The attacks, which experts said affected dozens of countries, used a technique known as ransomware that locks users’ files unless they pay the attackers a designated sum in the virtual Bitcoin currency.

The attacks apparently exploited a flaw exposed in documents leaked from the US National Security Agency+ (NSA). The attacks hit a whole range of organisations and businesses worldwide.

French carmaker Renault was forced to stop production at sites in France and Slovenia, saying the measure was aimed at stopping the virus from spreading. In the United States, package delivery group FedEx acknowledged it had been hit by malware and said it was “implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible.”

Russia’s interior ministry said that some of its computers had been hit by a “virus attack” and that efforts were underway to destroy it. The country’s central bank said the banking system was hit, and the railway system also reported attempted breaches.

Germany’s Deutsche Bahn computers were also impacted, with the rail operator reporting that station display panels were affected. In a statement, computer security group Kaspersky Labs said it was “trying to determine whether it is possible to decrypt data locked in the attack — with the aim of developing a decryption tool as soon as possible.”

last week, a cyber security researcher told AFP he had accidentally discovered a “kill switch” that could prevent the spread of the ransomware. The researcher, tweeting as @MalwareTechBlog, said that the discovery was accidental, but that registering a domain name used by the malware stops it from spreading. Computers already affected will not be helped by the solution.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre and its National Crime Agency were looking into the UK incidents, which disrupted care at National Health Service facilities, forcing ambulances to divert and hospitals to postpone operations. Pictures on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment of $300 (230 pounds, 275 euros) in Bitcoin, saying: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted!”

It demands payment in three days or the price is doubled, and if none is received in seven days the files will be deleted, according to the screen message. ” Ransomware+ becomes particularly nasty when it infects institutions like hospitals, where it can put people’s lives in danger,” said Kroustek, the Avast analyst.

A hacking group called Shadow Brokers released the malware in April claiming to have discovered the flaw from the NSA, Kaspersky said. Although Microsoft released a security patch for the flaw earlier this year, many systems have yet to be updated, researchers said.

Prof. Krishna Rajan, an Indian-American professor, who heads materials science research at the University at Buffalo, just received a multimillion dollar grant from the Toyota Research Institute for his department. The $2.4 million for materials science research grant announced March 31, aims to make next generation vehicles carbon-neutral.

Krishna Rajan, the Erich Bloch Endowed Chair of the Department of Materials Design and Innovation (MDI) at UB, is the grant’s principal investigator.

The award — part of a $35 million investment involving several universities and a materials research company — funds projects that use artificial intelligence to help accelerate the design and discovery of new materials. The materials will help create technology for batteries and fuel cell catalysts designed to power future zero-emission and carbon-neutral vehicles.

“At the University at Buffalo, we are committed to finding innovative and cost-effective solutions that transform how society addresses climate change, national security and other pressing issues,” said Rajan, who received his doctorate in materials science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978,  minoring in science and technology policy.

An internationally renowned materials scientist, Rajan has authored or co-authored hundreds of publications and is the founding editor-in-chief of the Materials Discovery journal, and serves on numerous national and international panels, including the National Academy of Sciences’ Material Science and Engineering Panel at the Army Research Laboratory.

He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award. that recognizes researchers who have had a significant impact in their discipline – in this case, materials informatics – and are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements.

USA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:USAT), a payment technology provider of cashless and mobile transactions in self-serve retail, has announced that Priyanka Singh has been appointed as the company’s new Chief Financial Officer, effective March 31, 2017. She replaces interim CFO, Leland P. Maxwell, who will continue with USAT in a senior finance role.

Singh brings over 15 years of finance and accounting experience to the position, including five years in the payments industry. She joins the company from Global Payments Inc., a leading worldwide provider of payment technology solutions. Following the acquisition by Global Payments of Heartland Payment Systems in 2016, Singh was Vice President, Product Strategy and Innovation and Division CFO for Heartland Commerce, which focuses on point of sale solutions. Prior to the acquisition, she spent five years at Heartland Payment Systems, most recently as the Divisional CFO of the Heartland Commerce units and prior thereto as Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis. Previous to that, she spent several years with General Electric in various leadership roles at both GE Capital and GE Healthcare, focusing on financial planning and analysis, accounting, controllership, internal auditing and SOX compliance. Ms. Singh is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the AICPA, according to a press release.

“I am delighted to welcome Priyanka Singh as USA Technologies’ new CFO,” said Stephen P. Herbert, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, USA Technologies, in a statement. “She has an impressive background in payments, which complements our business as well as our long-term objectives. Priyanka brings with her a wealth of experience that I am sure will serve us well, as our operations continue to grow. I would also like to thank Leland Maxwell for his dedicated service as our interim CFO and am delighted that he will continue with USAT as Senior Vice President of Finance.”

Raju Venugopalan, a senior physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, has been awarded a Humboldt Research Award for his remarkable achievements in theoretical nuclear physics. This prestigious international award—issued by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany—comes with a prize of €60,000 (nearly $70,000 U.S.) and the opportunity to collaborate with German researchers at Heidelberg University and elsewhere. Venugopalan joins 13 other Brookhaven National Laboratory researchers who have received this award since 1974.

“This is a great honor and I’m delighted to be in the company of other Humboldt winners over the past years,” Venugopalan said. “This award gives me a wonderful opportunity to build on and establish new collaborations with my colleagues in Germany, where I’ve been on sabbatical at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Heidelberg University for the past year. I look forward to widening and deepening these connections.”

Venugopalan’s work is focused on developing theories to explain and predict the behavior of extreme forms of nuclear matter—including the several-trillion-degree soup of quarks and gluons, known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP), generated in energetic particle collisions at colliders like Brookhaven Lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). He’s also explored the behavior of matter at the opposite temperature extreme, namely in ultra-cold atomic gases.

“Quark-gluon plasma has remarkable properties—like extraordinarily low friction, strong interactions among its constituent particles, and patterns of flow—that are different from what we observe in ordinary matter,” he explained. “And there are intriguing connections we see across different systems—from the hottest matter ever created in a laboratory to the coldest atomic gases. The microscopic interactions and particles that make up these systems are completely different, but the collective properties can be described by the same equations.”

This award gives me a wonderful opportunity to build on and establish new collaborations with my colleagues in Germany, said Brookhaven Lab physicist Raju Venugopalan.

For example, both systems undergo a similar sort of evolution as they expand from a vastly chaotic state toward equilibrium. “Expanding cold atoms behave the same way as QGP,” Venugopalan said, noting that the particles of each system momentarily get “stuck” in an eddy-like state along the way. “It’s as if you pushed all the particles in a room into one corner, then let them expand, but along the way, they get caught up in a swirling twister for a while before spreading to fill the room evenly,” he said. “How and why that is so is one of the big mysteries.”

The similarities suggest that studies of one system may help scientists better understand the other. “Can we reengineer tabletop experiments on cold atomic gases in ways that will offer insight into the much more complicated equations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory that describes the behavior and interactions of subatomic quarks and gluons?”

Venugopalan will attend a workshop at Bad Honnef in Germany this December that will bring researchers worldwide together to discuss these ideas. He has also been exploring such topics as an external member of an interdisciplinary collaboration on Isolated Quantum Systems (ISOQUANT) at the University of Heidelberg. The Humboldt award will enable him to continue this work both in Germany and in the U.S. “The award gives me more flexibility to work with other people,” Venugopalan said.

How do you handle nuclear waste that will be radioactive for millions of years, keeping it from harming people and the environment? It isn’t easy, but Rutgers researcher Ashutosh Goel has discovered ways to immobilize such waste – the offshoot of decades of nuclear weapons production – in glass and ceramics.

Goel, an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is the primary inventor of a new method to immobilize radioactive iodine in ceramics at room temperature. He’s also the principal investigator (PI) or co-PI for six glass-related research projects totaling $6.34 million in federal and private funding, with $3.335 million going to Rutgers.

“Glass is a perfect material for immobilizing the radioactive wastes with excellent chemical durability,” said Goel, who works in the School of Engineering. Developing ways to immobilize iodine-129, which is especially troublesome, is crucial for its safe storage and disposal in underground geological formations.

The half-life of iodine-129 is 15.7 million years, and it can disperse rapidly in air and water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If it’s released into the environment, iodine will linger for millions of years. Iodine targets the thyroid gland and can increase the chances of getting cancer.

Among Goel’s major funders is the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees one of the world’s largest nuclear cleanups following 45 years of producing nuclear weapons. The national weapons complex once had 16 major facilities that covered vast swaths of Idaho, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington state, according to the DOE.

The agency says the Hanford site in southeastern Washington, which manufactured more than 20 million pieces of uranium metal fuel for nine nuclear reactors near the Columbia River, is its biggest cleanup challenge.

Hanford plants processed 110,000 tons of fuel from the reactors. Some 56 million gallons of radioactive waste – enough to fill more than 1 million bathtubs – went to 177 large underground tanks. As many as 67 tanks – more than one third – are thought to have leaked, the DOE says. The liquids have been pumped out of the 67 tanks, leaving mostly dried solids.

The Hanford cleanup mission commenced in 1989, and construction of a waste treatment plant for the liquid radioactive waste in tanks was launched a decade later and is more than three-fifths finished.

“What we’re talking about here is highly complex, multicomponent radioactive waste which contains almost everything in the periodic table,” Goel said. “What we’re focusing on is underground and has to be immobilized.”

Goel, a native of Punjab state in northern India, earned a doctorate in glasses and glass-ceramics from the University of Aveiro in Portugal in 2009 and was a postdoctoral researcher there. He worked as a “glass scientist” at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in 2011 and 2012, and then as a senior scientist at Sterlite Technologies Ltd. in India before joining the Rutgers faculty in January 2014.

The six projects he’s leading or co-leading are funded by the DOE Office of River Protection, National Science Foundation and Corning Inc., with collaborators from Washington State University, University of North Texas and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

One of his inventions involves mass producing chemically durable apatite minerals, or glasses, to immobilize iodine without using high temperatures. A second innovation deploys synthesizing apatite minerals from silver iodide particles. He’s also studying how to immobilize sodium and alumina in high-level radioactive waste in borosilicate glasses that resist crystallization.

At the Hanford site, creating glass with radioactive waste is expected to start in around 2022 or 2023, Goel said, and “the implications of our research will be much more visible by that time.”

The research may eventually help lead to ways to safely dispose of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel that is stored now at commercial nuclear power plants.
“It depends on its composition, how complex it is and what it contains,” Goel said. “If we know the chemical composition of the nuclear waste coming out from those plants, we can definitely work on it.

The National Institutes of Health recently announced 2016 Director’s New Innovator Award Program recipients with at least seven Indian Americans among those honored.

Among the 48 Innovators recognized by The National Institutes of Health, the Indian Americans on the list included, Parijat Bhatnagar, Anshul Kundaje, Dr. Meena S. Madhur, Nikhil U. Nair, Rushika M. Perera, Rahul Satija and Dr. Arun P. Wiita.

The Director’s New Innovator Award Program was part of the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program that seeks to identify scientists with ideas that have the potential for high impact, but may be at a stage too early to fare well in the traditional peer review process. These awards encourage creative, outside-the-box thinkers to pursue exciting and innovative ideas in biomedical research.

The Innovator Award was established in 2007 and supports unusually innovative research from early-career investigators who are within 10 years of their final degree or clinical residency and have not yet received a research project grant or equivalent NIH grant. The award complements ongoing efforts by NIH and its institutes and centers to fund new investigators through R01 grants and other mechanisms.

“The program continues to support high-caliber investigators whose ideas stretch the boundaries of our scientific knowledge,” said NIH director Dr. Francis S. Collins.

“We welcome the newest cohort of outstanding scientists to the program and look forward to their valuable contributions.”

NEW YORK — A team of Indian American engineers has devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body using smartphone fingerprint sensors and laptop touchpads — rather than over the air where they’re vulnerable to hacking.

The two University of Washington doctoral students have found a way to send secure passwords through the human body. The “on-body transmissions” use what they call “benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint sensors and touchpads on consumer devices”, according to a press release.

The students used smartphone fingerprint sensors and laptop keyboards. “Let’s say I want to open a door using an electronic smart lock,” said co-lead author Merhdad Hessar in the release. Hessar is a UW electrical engineering doctoral student. “I can touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on my phone and transmit my secret credentials through my body to open the door, without leaking that personal information over the air.”

The pair is a part of the UW’s Networks and Mobile Systems Lab. They found 30 megahertz transmissions can travel through the human body, but not in the air, the release said.

Sending a password or secret code over airborne radio waves like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth means anyone can eavesdrop, making those transmissions vulnerable to hackers who can attempt to break the encrypted code.

Now, computer scientists and electrical engineers from the Seattle-based University of Washington have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body — using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint sensors and touchpads on consumer devices.

“Fingerprint sensors have so far been used as an input device. What is cool is that we’ve shown for the first time that fingerprint sensors can be re-purposed to send out information that is confined to the body,” said senior author Shyam Gollakota, assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

These “on-body” transmissions offer a more secure way to transmit authenticating information between devices that touch parts of your body — such as a smart door lock or wearable medical device — and a phone or device that confirms your identity by asking you to type in a password.

“Let’s say I want to open a door using an electronic smart lock,” said co-lead author Merhdad Hessar, an electrical engineering doctoral student. “I can touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on my phone and transmit my secret credentials through my body to open the door, without leaking that personal information over the air.”

The research team tested the technique on the iPhone and other fingerprint sensors, as well as Lenovo laptop trackpads and the Adafruit capacitive touchpad. In tests with 10 different subjects, they were able to generate usable on-body transmissions on people of different heights, weights and body types.

The system also worked when subjects were in motion — including while they walked and moved their arms. “We showed that it works in different postures like standing, sitting and sleeping,” said co-lead author Vikram Iyer, an electrical engineering doctoral student. “We can also get a strong signal throughout your body. The receivers can be anywhere — on your leg, chest, hands — and still work.”

The technology could also be useful for secure key transmissions to medical devices such as glucose monitors or insulin pumps, which seek to confirm someone’s i
dentity before sending or sharing data.

The new technique was described in a paper presented at the 2016 Association for Computing Machinery’s International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2016) in Germany this month.

New research seems to prove the theory that brainy people spend more time lazing around than their active counterparts. Findings from a US-based study seem to support the idea that people with a high IQ get bored less easily, leading them to spend more time engaged in thought.
And active people may be more physical as they need to stimulate their minds with external activities, either to escape their thoughts or because they get bored quickly.

Researchers from the Florida Gulf Coast University gave a classic test – dating back three decades – to a group of students. The ‘need for cognition’ questionnaire asked participants to rate how strongly they agree with statements such as “I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems”, and “I only think as hard as I have to”.

The researchers, led by Todd McElroy, then selected 30 ‘thinkers’ and 30 ‘non-thinkers’ from the pool of candidates.

Over the next seven days both groups wore a device on their wrist which tracked their movements and activity levels, providing a constant stream of data on how physically active they were.

Results showed the thinking group were far less active during the week than the non-thinkers.

The findings of the study, published in the Journal of HealthPsychology, were described as “highly significant” and “robust” in statistical terms.
But the weekends showed no difference between the two groups, something which has not been able to be explained.

Researchers suggested the findings could lend weight to the idea that non-thinkers get bored more easily, so need to fill their time with physical activity.

He suggested that the less active people, no matter how clever they are, should aim to raise their overall activity levels to improve their health The British Psychological Society quoted the study, saying: “Ultimately, an important factor that may help more thoughtful individuals combat their lower average activity levels is awareness.

“Awareness of their tendency to be less active, coupled with an awareness of the cost associated with inactivity, more thoughtful people may then choose to become more active throughout the day.” Despite highlighting an unusual trend, generalising the findings should be done with caution due to the small sample of participants, it added.

Suresh Bazaj is an entrepreneur who has been working in the Telecom industry since 1973. As a volunteer before joining the board, he was instrumental in TURN receiving a $340,000 Cy Pres award to support our telecom advocacy. This Silicon Valley tech from California, has had a yearning to help blind children in India.

In India, roughly 1.5 million children under the age of 20 are completely blind, Bazaj explained. And with TTS software not able to help kids learn in certain dialects and languages, they were not able to keep up their education on par with sighted children.

Now, through an app for Android devices created by Hear2Read and a team of students at Carnegie Mellon University, along with CMU professor Alan Black, Indian children will have the capability of TTS software for the major languages spoken in India. The app will expand to Windows devices in the future.

“Making it available as free, open-source software thus was a key goal,” said Black, a professor in the School of Computer Science’s Language Technologies Institute at CMU, in a statement. “People should be able to download this and it should just work. We put a lot of effort into making this accessible and easy to use.”

“I observed over the years the children (at schools for the blind) still weren’t getting proper education,” Bazaj noted. “They were being relegated to low-paying jobs, destined to a life of poverty.” Bazaj, who has had retinal detachments in both eyes that were successfully repaired, wanted to change that.

After graduating from IIT Kanpur and the University of Michigan, Bazaj spent the better part of four decades working in the computer software industry, both for major companies as well as startups. He had an underlying itch that he needed to scratch, however.

“For a long time I was sending money to help support my parents who had been supporting a school for the blind in Varanasi,” Bazaj told the media. He retired from the corporate life in 2012 and shifted his focus to giving back. In 2013, Bazaj founded Hear2Read, which helps blind children through Touch To Speak software.

“When I started digging into it, I realized the blind (in the U.S.) go to the same school as everyone else,” Bazaj explained, adding he noticed blind people in the U.S. have high-paying jobs, which wasn’t the case in his native country. “And the reason they are able to keep up with other people and read all the material is because they are using the TTS software for English.

“I wanted to change the outcome I saw from the schools for the blind in India,” he said and added that, with his background in the tech industry, he wanted to build a “game-changer” to help the blind in India.

The Hear2Read project inspired Black and his students to develop a system for doing so repeatedly, efficiently and for producing user-friendly software, according to a Hear2Read statement.

By the end of the year, the app will service Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Tamil, Bengali and Telugu. In 2017, it will expand to Assamese, Malayalam, Oriya and Urdu. The 12 languages account for 93 percent of the people, added Bazaj, though he said he’s unsure if the software will add the remaining 10 Indian languages.

“Each language is different, and historically TTS systems have been done one at a time,” Bazaj said in the statement. “We looked at commonalities of Indian languages and developed tools to apply the same technology to multiple languages.”

The system developed by Black’s research team enables creation of a baseline TTS system after recording two to three hours of clear, consistent speech from a native speaker, it added.

Not only will the app, named Hear2Read, be able to help blind children, it will also be used to assist the millions of visually impaired children, as well as elderly people who have become visually impaired in their advanced age, Bazaj noted.

Additionally, the future of Hear2Read’s app will aim to offer machine-generated voices to instantly turn e-books into audio versions of the book and will help children learn the native languages of their parents, and overall could serve as a language-learning software, he said.

The app, which runs in real time and without Internet access, is available on lower-income android devices in India as part of the Indian government’s ‘assisted for disabled persons’ program, which helps low-income people with disabilities.

Bazaj, with some support from friends, funds an MS student at Carnegie Mellon University, to the tune of $35,000 annually. It is the largest expense of the company, Bazaj noted. Hear2Read, a strictly volunteer-run venture, has dozens of supporters to evolve the TTS software but continues to seek additional donors. And while Bazaj said this app won’t make all blind children turn into company heads in the future, he believes it will at least give them a fair playing field. “I’m not going to say all the children will all become stars, but they will have the same opportunity as sighted children,” he said. “With this software, everyone will have the chance to excel.”

It appears that Boyz II Men, plus the entire golden age of baby-making music, is wasted on millennials. More young adults born in the 1980s and 1990s are choosing not to have sex, according to the results of a new study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.11

In fact, they’re twice as likely to be virgins, compared to GenXers—people born in the 1960s and ’70s—when they were the same age.

“A few years ago, I would have been very surprised at this result,” says study author Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of the book Generation Me. It certainly seems surprising, given Twenge’s recent data that same-sex hookup rates have doubled in the U.S. and young Americans are more sexually free and less traditional. But other recent research, and some from the CDC, all points in this direction: that young adults these days have fewer sexual partners and are starting to have sex later.

Twenge and her team wondered if people who weren’t having any sex at all were contributing to this sexless trend. So they analyzed data from a nationally representative group of 26,707 adults, focusing on GenX’ers, Millennials and the generation after them, which some people call iGen. Fifteen percent of young adults ages 20-24 who were born in the 1990s said they had no sex partners since age 18, while just 6% of GenX’ers admitted the same when recalling the romps of their early twenties.

How, for all the handwringing over today’s hookup culture, can this be true? And why are more young adults pushing off sex? They’re impossible questions to answer without conducting a randomized controlled trial (which you just can’t do in this area) so researchers can only speculate. But Twenge has some compelling ideas. “There’s been a general pattern over the last few generations for people to become adults or cross adult milestones later: things like getting married, having a child, settling into a stable career, buying a house,” she says. An extended adolescence used to mean that people were starting to have sex but putting off marriage and kids. “Now, it seems Millennials and iGen are putting off everything—including sex,” she said.

Another intriguing explanation is that Millennials and the generation after them have grown up with a strong emphasis on safety. “That may potentially impact their sexual behavior, if they’ve gotten the message that you can get sick or even die from sex,” Twenge said. The safer-is-better state of mind is reflected elsewhere as well: underage drinking is at an all-time low, and protests on college campuses often call for safe spaces and safer sex.

It could be, too, that young adults are increasingly living on their phones. “If you’re on your phone communicating with people more often, and not seeing your peers in person as much, that could lead to less sex,” Twenge says. And while phones may be helping some people get laid, dating apps like Tinder likely leave out a whole segment of the population—perhaps the one not having sex. “Maybe if someone who isn’t physically attractive meets someone in a bar, they can charm the other person with their engaging personality and humor,” Twenge explains. “On Tinder, it’s a picture.”

More young adults are likely choosing to forgo sex for a range of reasons. But the trend is clear: kids just aren’t growing up as fast as they used to.

Several Indian Americans have been featured in the first ever list Makers and Shakers of Education Technology Index created in association with the World Innovation Summit for Education, EdTechXGlobal, the organizers of education technology-focused conferences EdTechXEurope and EdTechXAsia. Among those on the list are: Reshma Saujani, Anant Agarwal, Nivi Sharma, Satya Nitta, Vamsi Krishna, Sugata Mitra and Sashwati Banerjee.

The international index celebrates 50 of the most innovative EdTech thought leaders, organized by four geographical regions — Europe, Americas, MENA and Asia, is described as the first comprehensive global listing of ground-breaking innovators in the EdTech field.

The organization announced in a statement last month, stated that the index honors these luminaries who, through digital and physical technologies, have introduced innovative new ways of learning to the market through play, construction or interactive design.

The “Makers” were defined as rising stars of education technology, innovating and pushing boundaries for future success. “Shakers” are considered established leaders in their region, inspiring worldwide EdTech change.

“The Makers & Shakers of Education Technology is a global index that elevates education innovators and thought leaders as 21st Century social rock stars. The index rewards talent, creativity, impact and influence in education,” said EdTechXGlobal co-founder Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet in a statement.

Agarwal is the CEO of edX, an online learning destination founded by Harvard and MIT. He taught the first edX course on circuits and electronics from MIT, which drew 155,000 students from 162 countries, according to his Makers and Shakers bio.

Additionally, Agarwal has served as the director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

Outside of academia, the IIT Madras and Stanford graduate has co-founded several companies including Tilera Corporation and Virtual Machine Works.

Nivi Sharma is the president of BRCK Education and a co-founder of eLimu. She is a thought leader in education technology for emerging markets, her bio page said.

As a social entrepreneur, volunteer and technophile, Sharma has dedicated her career to education and is passionate about digital access and community initiatives that foster learning through fun, it added. A graduate of Ithaca College, Sharma is also a 2014 East Africa Acumen fellow.

Krishna is the co-founder of Vedantu, an ed-tech startup that offers personalized live online tutoring, along with Saurabh Saxena, Pulkit Jain and Anand Prakash. The group previously founded Lakshya in 2006, a test prep company in Punjab, which eventually was acquired by MTEducare.

The second venture of the group, Vedantu, was established with the vision of creating a world of learning that is personalized and democratized, according to Krishna’s bio page.

A graduate of IIT Bombay, Krishna has been a teacher for more than six years. At Vedantu, he primarily looks after strategy and product roadmap and oversees critical functions like branding and marketing, and has helped raise $5 million in funding within six months of its launch.

Saujani is the founder and chief executive of Girls Who Code and the former deputy public advocate of New York City. As executive director of the Fund for Public Advocacy, Saujani brought together public and private sectors to encourage entrepreneurship and civic engagement across New York City, her bio page said.

Today, she has galvanized industry leaders to close the gender gap in STEM education and empower girls to pursue careers in technology and engineering, it added.

She ran for Congress in 2010, in which she campaigned for smarter policies to create jobs and spark innovation. Saujani is an advocate for a new model of female leadership focused on risk taking, competition and mentorship, the profile said.

Mitra is a professor of educational technology at the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University in the U.K. Mitra’s work at NIIT created the first curricula and pedagogy for that organization, followed by years of research on learning styles, learning devices, several of them now patented, multimedia and new methods of learning, according to his bio page.

Since 1999, he has demonstrated that groups of children, irrespective of who or where they are, can learn to use computers and the Internet on their own using public computers in open spaces such as roads and playgrounds. His work inspired the Oscar winning movie of 2009 “Slumdog Millionaire,” it added. He is the recipient of various awards in India, the United States, the U.K. and many other countries throughout the world.

Banerjee leads Sesame Workshop’s educational mission in India to create innovative and engaging content that maximizes the educational power of all media to help children reach their highest potential, her bio page said.

As founding managing director of Sesame Workshop India, Banerjee spearheads Galli Galli Sim Sim, a multiplatform initiative that combines the power of media with educational outreach to prepare children for school and life, it added. With rising demand, Banerjee launched Sesame Street Preschools in India.

Additionally, Banerjee serves on the board of Point of View, an organization promoting the points of view of women using media, arts and cultures and New Delhi-based feminist human rights organization CREA.

Nitta has deep experience in inventing, building world class teams and developing groundbreaking technologies in both the hardware and software areas of computing with hundreds of millions of dollars of impact to IBM, his bio page said.

He is currently the worldwide leader and program director of the Cognitive Sciences and Education Technology research department at IBM Research which he envisioned, created and built from the ground up.

Nitta’s global team invents and develops technologies at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and cognitive computing and employs multiple techniques in fields ranging from machine learning, natural language processing, virtual and augmented reality, to experimental and computational neuroscience, it added. A graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Nitta has earned a number of IEEE engineering awards.

Sree Sreenivasan has been appointed as the Chief Digital Officer for the City of New York, where he will work to promote access to City government through technology and support the city’s tech ecosystem.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sree Sreenivasan as the City’s new Chief Digital Officer on August 1st. Sreenivasan has served as the first Chief Digital Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first Chief Digital Officer of Columbia University, and has also been a mayoral appointee on the Commission on Public Information and Communication (COPIC) since October 2015, where he assisted the public in obtaining access to City information, and helped develop strategies for the use of new communications technologies to improve access to, and distribution of, City data. As Chief Digital Officer, Sreenivasan will work to increase access to City-led technology initiatives, focus on outreach to the tech community, and direct citywide digital policy. He will begin his new role this fall.

“To move our city’s digital ecosystem into the 21st century, we need to ensure our city’s resources are at the fingertips of every New Yorker. With Sree Sreenivasan’s wealth of experience, I am confident that he will work to promote transparency, access, and progressive values with our digital tools, helping spread access across the five boroughs,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“It’s a real honor for me to serve as the CDO of the world’s greatest city,” said Chief Digital Officer Sree Sreenivasan. “There are so many opportunities to extend the Mayor’s Digital Playbook, collaborate closely across various sectors and help bring more startups here. I will draw on what I’ve learned working in four critical NYC industries: education, media, arts and culture, and nonprofits, and look forward to building on the great work of my predecessor Jessica Singleton and her predecessor, Rachel Haot.”

In his new role, Sreenivasan will direct the Office of Digital Strategy (NYC Digital) to launch digital products that encourage civic engagement, increase government transparency, and support New York City’s thriving tech ecosystem. The Chief Digital Officer reports to the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, Alicia Glen.

Prior to his work at City Hall, Sreenivasan served for three years as the first Chief Digital Officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he led a 70-person team to increase the museum’s digital presence. In October 2015, he was appointed by Mayor de Blasio to the Commission on Public Information and Communication (COPIC), where he worked to increase access to, and education about, City information online. Before his work at the Met, he spent 20 years as a member of faculty of the Columbia Journalism School and a year as Columbia University’s first Chief Digital Officer. He was a founding member and contributing editor at neighborhood news site DNAinfo, and throughout his career, he has written for various publications, including the New York Times, and was a popular technology reporter on WABC-TV, WNBC-TV and WCBS-TV.

An immigrant from India, Sreenivasan was born in Japan and lived in Bhutan, the former Soviet Union, New York City, Myanmar, India and Fiji before receiving a Bachelor’s degree in History from St. Stephen’s College in Delhi and receiving a Master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University in 1993. He is a proud graduate of P.S. 6 in Manhattan and also attended St. Joseph’s of Yorkville. He and his wife, Roopa Unnikrishnan, a Rhodes Scholar and innovation consultant, live in Manhattan and are parents of twins who study in a NYC public school.

Sreenivasan replaces Jessica Singleton, who stepped down last month, according to govtech.com, to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School. Days after he had to resign from his $328,900-a-year job at Met, Sreenivasan described in an interview to Quartz magazine how he pulled off turning “a public firing into a masterpiece of personal branding” —and how his methods might work. “He demonstrated a deft, natural mastery of his medium, social media, and gave his network the ammo they would need to help him out of his predicament,” the magazine wrote.

The City of New York is dedicated to improving engagement with residents and businesses by developing tools that will enhance government transparency, improve delivery of City services, and promote civic engagement. The Office of Digital Strategy (NYC Digital) works closely with the Mayor’s Office of Operations, Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, NYC Economic Development Corporation, NYC Law Department, Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, NYC & Co, Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation, Department of Small Business Services, and the Mayor’s Communication’s Office to help develop forward-thinking policies and usage for digital tools to better serve the public and support the growth of New York City’s tech ecosystem.

A team of international researchers, including an Indian-origin graduate student, is developing software that could let you control your smartphone through eye movements to play games, open apps and do other stuff.

The team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Georgia and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Informatics has so far been able to train software to identify where a person is looking with an accuracy of about a centimetre on a mobile phone and 1.7 centimetres on a tablet, MIT Technology Review reported.

According to study co-author Aditya Khosla from MIT, the system’s accuracy will improve with more data. To achieve this, the researchers created an app called GazeCapture that gathered data about how people look at their phones in different environments outside the confines of a lab.

Users’ gaze was recorded with the phone’s front camera as they were shown pulsating dots on a smartphone screen. To make sure they were paying attention, they were then shown a dot with an “L” or “R” inside it, and they had to tap the left or right side of the screen in response.

GazeCapture information was then used to train software called iTracker, which can also run on an iPhone. The handset’s camera captures your face, and the software considers factors like the position and direction of your head and eyes to figure out where your gaze is focused on the screen.

About 1,500 people have used the GazeCapture app so far, Khosla said, adding if the researchers can get data from 10,000 people they’ll be able to reduce iTracker’s error rate to half a centimetre, which should be good enough for a range of eye-tracking applications.

The study results were recently presented at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Seattle, Washington.

Other potential usage of the software could be in medical diagnoses, particularly to diagnose condition,s including schizophrenia and concussions, Khosla said.

Dr. Tina Shah and Anjali Tripathi, two Indian Americans were among the 30 finalists named White House Fellows, according to President Barack Obama’s Commission on White House Fellowships that had announced the national finalists for the 2016-2017 White House Fellowship on June 9.

The 30 finalists, who represent an accomplished and diverse cross-section of professionals fron the private sector, academia, medicine and the armed services, were evaluated June 9 through June 12 in Washington, D.C., the White House said in a statement.

Each of the finalists hails from various parts of the country and demonstrated “remarkable professional achievement early in their careers, a commitment to public service and the leadership skills needed to succeed at the highest levels of the federal government,” the White House added.

Shah, of Chicago, Ill., is a pulmonary and critical care physician at the University of Chicago. She is a graduate of Penn State University, Thomas Jefferson University and the Harvard School of Public Health.

According to her LinkedIn bio, Shah is a global thought leader at the Center for Health Care Innovation, a non-profit life sciences research organization. She is also the immediate past national chair of the American Medical Association Resident and Fellow Section, where she represented more than 40,000 physicians. She is using her leadership to address resident wellness while in training and resident satisfaction alongside patient advocacy efforts at the national level.

Additionally, she serves as a member of the board of trustees and a vice speaker at the Chicago Medical Society, a member of the editorial board of Clinical Leader and a member of the PRAXIS advisory board of the COPD Foundation.

Tripathi, of Woodland Hills, Calif., is an astrophysics doctoral candidate at Harvard University. Prior to pursuing her doctorate, she earned her undergraduate degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, she served as a member of the Solar Electric Vehicle Team and the Society of Physics Students.

Additionally, Tripathi participated in the television game show “Jeopardy” during its “Kids Week” in 1999 and again in 2008 for its “Kids Week Reunion” events. In the reunion week, Tripathi won her contest, earning a $25,000 first-place prize.

The White House Fellowship finalists were chosen after advancing through a competitive selection process which included a comprehensive written application and regional interviews with civic leaders.

The winners, who will be chosen at an unspecified later date, will spend a year in the nation’s capital working full time for cabinet secretaries, senior White House staff and other top ranking government officials.

Dr. Rakesh K. Jain of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital has been honored by  President Obama with the National Medal of Science and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on May 19 at the White House. The medals are the highest honors bestowed by the government on scientists, engineers, and inventors and list of awardees was announced in December.

The award recognized his pioneering research at the interface of engineering and oncology, including tumor microenvironment, drug delivery and imaging, and for groundbreaking discoveries of principles leading to the development and novel use of drugs for treatment of cancer and non-cancerous diseases.

“These scientific laureates exemplify the American spirit and ingenuity that have enriched our society and the global community in profound and lasting ways,” President Obama is quoted saying in a release from the White Hous. “Their ambition and accomplishments are an inspiration to the next generation pursuing careers in the essential fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.”

Jain, recipient of numerous awards, is the Andrew Werk Cook Professor of Tumor Biology (Radiation Oncology), and Director, Edwin L. Steele Laboratory for Tumor Biology, at Mass General. Jain received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1983 and is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. A graduate of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and Ph.Ds in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware.

The National Medal of Science was created by statute in 1959 and is administered for the White House by the National Science Foundation. The President receives nominations from a committee of Presidential appointees based on their extraordinary knowledge in and contributions to chemistry, engineering, computing, mathematics, and the biological, behavioral/social, and physical sciences.

New York: The U.S. Department of Defense is expanding its work with tech startups, bringing tech executives to work at its Silicon Valley lab and planning a new office in Boston to tap into research happening in that area.

The expansion follows the early success of the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) office, an 8-month old Silicon Valley incubator that is a key part of Secretary of Defense Ash Carter’s push to rebuild ties between the military and tech industry according to a news report in pcworld.com.

DIUx will be led by Raj Shah, a former F-16 combat pilot, director of security at Palo Alto Networks and now a tech entrepreneur. Other members of the team include Isaac Taylor, who ran Google X and has worked on Google’s Glass and VR efforts, and Douglas Beck, Apple’s vice president for Americas and Northeast Asia.

Shah provided an example of the kind of tech block that the DIUx hopes to solve.
As an F-16 pilot, he flew combat missions in Iraq but his aircraft didn’t have a GPS system that provided a moving map. That is particularly important when flying near borders, because U.S. aircraft did not want to inadvertently stray into Iranian airspace.

The solution for some pilots was to strap an iPad to their knees, because commercial GPS apps could do something it would take the DOD millions of dollars and months to accomplish, he said.

Carter opened DIUx, in Mountain View, California, to gain early access to new technology, and in the hope that Silicon Valley’s unique way of thinking would rub off on the Pentagon.

Washington, DC: Former ISRO Chairman Prof UR Rao became the first Indian to be given the ‘Hall of Fame’ award by the International Astronautical Federation ( IAF ).  An Isro press note issued said that the award has been given for his “outstanding contribution to the progress of astronautics within the framework of the IAF activities.”

“The IAF award is intended to reward personalities for their contributions to the progress of astronautics and the Federation,” the release added. Speaking to TOI Prof UR Rao said: “I don’t know who nominated me.” Rao, who refrained from speaking more about the award, spoke of what new things needs to be implemented to take the Indian space programme to the next level. The IAF, in a letter to Rao, has said: “It is a true honour for IAF to attribute this award to Prof Rao, who have been for many years an active participant to the success of space in general and of the Federation in particular’.

The IAF Hall of Fame consists of a permanent gallery of these personalities, including a citation, biographical information, and a picture, in a special part of the IAF web presence.  This year’s 67th International Astronautical Congress will be held in Guadalajara, Mexico in September, where Rao will receive the award.

The White House was transformed into a hands-on showcase of student innovation: robots, prototypes, tools to help us fight climate change and cancer – all researched, built, and designed by more than 100 young scientists during the annual White House Science Fair on April 13^th this year. Several of those who had showcased their talents were of Indian origin, who, according to President Obama are going to change the future of America.

40 of the more than 100 budding scientists showed their inventions on the White House lawns and several Indian-American students were interviewed on live webcast, among them 12-year old Hari Bhimaraju of Kennedy Middle School, Cupertino, California. She used a Raspberry Pi and Arduino to design the hardware and software for “The Elementor”, a portable, low-cost teaching tool which is being tested by two schools for the blind. Asked what she would like to be when she grew up, Hari said, “I want to do something that will help people. Maybe like a biomedical engineer or something.”

During his speech to the nearly 130 young scientists and their mentors at the White House, President Obama first called out Maya Varma, a senior from San Jose, California, praising her for designing a tool much cheaper than the expensive detectors, for diagnosing chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases like asthma; he also showcased Anurudh Ganesan, 16, of Clarksburg, Maryland for creating VAXXWAGON, which can effectively transport vaccines in the last leg of distribution without the use of ice and electricity, saving potentially thousands of lives throughout the world, he noted.

Obama started the White House Science Fair in 2010 and this 6th annual fair, like other years, was witness to the rise of a younger generation of promising Indian-American scientists, whose projects ranged from making clean, potable water, carrying essential vaccinations for children safely to remote areas, and reducing Styrofoam waste into non-toxic eco-glue in just 30 minutes instead of hundreds of years!

When 12-year old Sindhu Bala from St. Louis, Missouri, offered President Obama a sample of the eco-glue developed by her team for which a patent is pending, he quipped, “I’ll be honest with you, the president rarely has to glue something, but I’ll be looking for it in stores,” after leaving the White House.

Eighteen-year old Sanjana Rane of Prospect, Kentucky, described in detail to the President when he stopped at her table, how starting from observing high levels of pollution in her city, she discovered how a particular protein could be used to detect and treat renal fibrosis, a disease she said which was connected to pollution. The President asked probing questions and then indicated he would have his staff connect Rane to research labs. “I’m open to that,” a confident Rane said. “I really love science since I was a kid,” said Rane who was brought up by a Dad who is into computer science and a Mom who is a researcher.

Yashaswini Makaram, 17, of Northborough, MA, created a new cell phone security tool that records the distinctive arm and hand motions people use to lift a cell phone from a table to uniquely identify the cell phone’s owner. Hari Bhimaraju, a 12-year old Kennedy Middle School student from Cupertino, California, used a Raspberry Pi and Arduino to design the hardware and software for “The Elementor”, a portable, low-cost teaching tool to help visually impaired students learn the periodic table of elements.

Neil Davey, 20, of Gaithersburg, Maryland, took on the study of cancer for his International BioGENEius Challenge project. Neil’s goal was to detect cancer early, when there are often more treatment options and better outcomes for cancer patients. Nevada students Krishna Patel, 12, and Isha Shah, 13, and Sidney Lin, 13, overcame the obstacle of losing their original teacher and mentor to compete at the Future City National competition. These Hyde Park Middle School students created a sustainable, waste-free, municipal city, winning Team Kilau Most Sustainable Buildings and City of the Future that Best Incorporates Cultural and Historical Resources.

W.P. Davidson High School, represented by Rupa Palanki, 17, Jacob Bosarge, 17, Nolan Lenard, 16, has become one of the best of the BEST in Alabama, winning 1st Place Overall BEST Award in the Jubilee BEST Robotics Competition and 2nd Place Overall BEST Award in the South’s BEST Regional Championship—making W.P. Davidson’s team the highest-ranking team in Alabama. 18-year-old Sanjana Rane, from Prospect, Kentucky, has helped discover how a particular protein could be used to detect and treat renal fibrosis. Her discovery helps to prevent renal fibrosis from developing into end-stage renal disease, an incurable total failure of the kidneys.

Every summer Deepika Kurup, 18, and her family travel from their home in Nashua, New Hampshire, to India. Always privileged in the U.S. to have unlimited access to potable water, she saw Indian children drink water that she felt was too dirty to touch. Her innovation made her a finalist in the 2015 Google Science Fair and a winner of the National Geographic Explorer Award. Deepika hopes to use her creation to provide cleaner drinking water to families in India and around the world.

When Anurudh Ganesan, now 16, was an infant, his grandparents walked him 10 miles to a remote clinic in India in order to receive a vaccination. He learned that, according to UNICEF, 1.5 million children die every year as a result of not getting the safe and effective vaccines that they so desperately need. His creation, VAXXWAGON, can effectively transport vaccines in the last leg of distribution without the use of ice and electricity, saving potentially thousands of lives throughout the world. Anurudh’s project earned him the 2015 Google Science Fair LEGO Education Builder Award.

Bansi Parekh, 17, and four team-mates Siobhan Garry, 17, Mona Fariborzi, 17, Lauren Mori, 17, , and McKenna Stamp, 18, Bansi Parekh, 17, and four team-mates Siobhan Garry, 17, Mona Fariborzi, 17, Lauren Mori, 17, , and McKenna Stamp, 18, created a more positive and welcoming environment, a group of teen programmers created Spectrum, an Android app that aims to provide a social-media network for the LGBTQIA+ community, especially younger users looking for a safe support system.

Winners of the 2015 Conrad Spirit of Innovation Challenge, Varun Vallabhaneni, 17, Savannah Cofer, 18, Valerie Chen, 18, Matthew Sun, 17, composed of an inorganic, endothermic fiber that absorbs heat from its environment and keeps the firefighter safe even at dangerously high temperatures, FireArmor keeps the firefighter safe even above 1000 degrees Celsius and provides up to five minutes of protection in flash fire conditions, in contrast to current firefighter turnout gear which rapidly degrades above 300 degrees Celsius and provides less than six seconds of protection in flash fire conditions.

Maya Varma, a 17-year-old from San Jose, California, used her knowledge of 3D printing, electrical engineering, and computer science, along with data of lung capacity and flow rate, to build the device, which can currently diagnose chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and restrictive lung disease with remarkable accuracy.

Sona Dadhania, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, received the 2016 Science Ambassador Scholarship, given by Cards Against Humanity, after being selected the top winner by a panel of judges from among 1,000 applicants, on April 11th. Dadhania, whose name was announced by CAH, will get full tuition coverage for up to four years to study materials science and engineering.

“I was so shocked and unprepared to hear that I won,” 18 year-old Dadhania who is from Cherry Hills, New Jersey, said. Dadhania is also a member of Penn Raas, a South Asian cultural dance team. The scholarship was created by CAH after the success of their “Science Pack,” an $10 expansion pack available for purchase on CardsAgainstHumanity.com. All proceeds fund the scholarship trust which has raised over $850,000 so far.

“We created this scholarship to raise visibility of women in science,” said Jenn Bane, the CAH’s community director. “Several of us at Cards Against Humanity have backgrounds in science and technology, and underrepresentation of women in STEM fields is a glaring problem we’ve seen ourselves. That’s why we decided to both fund a woman’s undergraduate education and carve out a public space for women in science to discuss what they’re passionate about.”

Bane said that the CAH, which accepts video applications for the scholarship to give women a platform and an audience, was pretty impressed with her presentation. “Her video on nanotechnology immediately stood out to the board of judges as one of the best,” she said. An advisory board of over 60 women, who hold higher degrees and work professionally in science, selected Dadhania as the winner.

“Sona was a great candidate from the very first round of judging,” said board member Dr. Veronica Berns. “Her video explained difficult concepts in nanotechnology in a creative, visual way that made them simple to understand without feeling condescending. That’s a very hard thing to do, and Sona made it look easy. I can tell she is a very talented young scientist and I’m so happy that we will get to throw a spotlight on the work she is doing in the coming years,” Berns said.

As the winner, Dadhania will continue to create videos about STEM, which will be hosted on Cards Against Humanity’s YouTube Channel. “I can’t wait to share my love for science with others. I’m fortunate enough to know many people who have inspired me with their passion for science, and I hope that as Science Ambassador, I can inspire a passion and love for science in someone else,” said Dadhania, who plans to one day work for a chemical, manufacturing, or aerospace company.