Shh! Proven security for your secrets

Source: Kyoto University

Summary:

Researchers show the security of their cipher based on chaos theory. The research highlights that their Vector Stream Cipher is not only secure, but structurally simple and low on memory usage compared with existing technology, making it useful for high-density data transmission applications such as in 5G mobile networks and 4K television broadcasts.

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              How do we know if the electronic keys we use in our devices are really secure?

While it is possible to rigorously test the strength of a cipher a kind of digital data lock there are rarely any definitive proofs of unbreakability. Ciphers are highly complex, and while they may ward off certain attacks, they might be vulnerable to others.
Now, in a series of papers published in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security and IEICE Nonlinear Theory and Its Applications, researchers from Kyoto University have definitively demonstrated the strength of a cipher which is based on principles of chaos theory.
The group's Vector Stream Cipher or VSC this is the first example of a 128-bit key chaotic cipher with provable security.
             "We first developed VSC in 2004 as a simple, fast cipher, and parts of it have already been utilized in the private sector," explains Ken Umeno, leader of the study. "Many theoretical attacks in the past have failed to break it, but until now we hadn't shown definitive proof of security."
The researchers conducted a number of tests, such as a method to evaluate the lock's randomness. Many ciphers rely on number sequences that appear to be random, but are actually generated through recurring relations that are vulnerable to being reproduced.
         "Before evaluating the security of VSC with randomness tests, we found a way to make it significantly more reliable and sensitive," continues Umeno. "We then continued this refinement during the actual investigation."
The research highlights that VSC is not only secure, but structurally simple and low on memory usage compared with existing technology, making it useful for high-density data transmission applications such as in 5G mobile networks and 4K television broadcasts.
           Umeno concludes, "Chaotic ciphers have been in use for about 30 years, but before this study we had not expected to find proof of security. We hope that our work will be studied widely and applied throughout our digital world."

Adapters enable better communication between machines

Source: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Summary:

Plug and play is a technology that allows users to connect devices such as printers or USB memory sticks to a computer and directly use them without installing any software. This technology is now also available for industrial applications: Engineers developed an adapter that makes it much easier to interconnect parts of a production facility and align them with each other.

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                  Small connector, big effect: This plug-and-play adapter overcomes language barriers between machines and facilitates modifications of industrial facilities.

Credit: KIT

                   Plug and play is a technology that allows users to connect devices such as printers or USB memory sticks to a computer and directly use them without installing any software. This technology is now also available for industrial applications: Engineers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) developed an adapter that makes it much easier to interconnect parts of a production facility and align them with each other. It allows a much quicker, more flexible and safer modification or extension of such facilities.

                  "It was our objective to reduce the overhead required for commissioning components and entire production facilities," David Barton of the Institute of Production Science (wbk) of KIT says. The problem: Machines and parts that are part of an intelligent, networked production are supposed to exchange information on the current status of production, as demanded by Industry 4.0, but they often do not speak the same language or do not provide the required digital information at all. In addition, the facilities should be convertible so that individual customer demands can be met quickly and cost-effectively. The solution: Within the scope of the "Secure Plug and Work" project, the scientists developed an adapter that bridges communication gaps, for example between components and machine tools.
                    "Our adapter transmits measured values and data as well as their meaning," explains Barton. "For data exchange and storage, we implemented current standards so that production-relevant information can be stored and transmitted safely," Barton says. "A small PC is used as an interface to connect sensors and actuators that convert their signals into mechanical movements." The computer combines the sensor signals with a description file to provide the network with up-to-date information on the component. This description enables the machine control to individually adapt to the components built into the machine tool. The adapter is equipped with an additional 'dongle' that confirms the authenticity of the components. "For production companies, it is now very easy to modify or extend a machine tool by connecting various components via a universal interface without running the risk that unauthorized persons can tamper with the production," Barton explains.
                   In the "Secure Plug and Work" project, the wbk cooperated closely with the IOSB and ISI Fraunhofer Institutes and partners from the industry: MAG, Steinmeyer, Kessler, Romai, Schunk, MOC, cbb, and Wibu. The researchers had the opportunity to test the adapter in various real-world use cases. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research funded the project with approx. EUR 2.5 million.
From September 18 to 23, the wbk will present its plug-and-work approach at the EMO (international machine tool exposition) in Hanover (Germany).

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In the fast lane: Conductive electrodes are key to fast-charging batteries

Researchers use mxene to push charging rate limits in energy storage

Source: Drexel University

Summary:

Can you imagine fully charging your cell phone in just a few seconds? Researchers can, and they took a big step toward making it a reality with their recent work unveiling of a new battery electrode design.

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              Drexel University researchers have developed two new electrode designs, using MXene material, that will allow batteries to charge much faster. The key is a microporous design that allows ions to quickly make their way to redox active sites.

Credit: Drexel University

              Can you imagine fully charging your cell phone in just a few seconds? Researchers in Drexel University's College of Engineering can, and they took a big step toward making it a reality with their recent work unveiling of a new battery electrode design in the journal Nature Energy.

The team, led by Yury Gogotsi, PhD, Distinguished University and Bach professor in Drexel's College of Engineering, in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, created the new electrode designs from a highly conductive, two-dimensional material called MXene. Their design could make energy storage devices like batteries, viewed as the plodding tanker truck of energy storage technology, just as fast as the speedy supercapacitors that are used to provide energy in a pinch -- often as a battery back-up or to provide quick bursts of energy for things like camera flashes.
               "This paper refutes the widely accepted dogma that chemical charge storage, used in batteries and pseudocapacitors, is always much slower than physical storage used in electrical double-layer capacitors, also known as supercapacitors," Gogotsi said. "We demonstrate charging of thin MXene electrodes in tens of milliseconds. This is enabled by very high electronic conductivity of MXene. This paves the way to development of ultrafast energy storage devices than can be charged and discharged within seconds, but store much more energy than conventional supercapacitors."
The key to faster charging energy storage devices is in the electrode design. Electrodes are essential components of batteries, through which energy is stored during charging and from which it is disbursed to power our devices. So the ideal design for these components would be one that allows them to be quickly charged and store more energy.
                To store more energy, the materials should have places to put it. Electrode materials in batteries offer ports for charge to be stored. In electrochemistry, these ports, called "redox active sites" are the places that hold an electrical charge when each ion is delivered. So if the electrode material has more ports, it can store more energy which equates to a battery with more "juice."
Collaborators Patrice Simon, PhD, and Zifeng Lin, from Université Paul Sabatier in France, produced a hydrogel electrode design with more redox active sites, which allows it to store as much charge for its volume as a battery. This measure of capacity, termed "volumetric performance," is an important metric for judging the utility of any energy storage device.
                To make those plentiful hydrogel electrode ports even more attractive to ion traffic, the Drexel-led team, including researchers Maria Lukatskaya, PhD, Sankalp Kota, a graduate student in Drexel's MAX/MXene Research Group led by Michel Barsoum, PhD, distinguished professor in the College of Engineering; and Mengquiang Zhao, PhD, designed electrode architectures with open macroporosity many small openings to make each redox active sites in the MXene material readily accessible to ions.
"In traditional batteries and supercapacitors, ions have a tortuous path toward charge storage ports, which not only slows down everything, but it also creates a situation where very few ions actually reach their destination at fast charging rates," said Lukatskaya, the first author on the paper, who conducted the research as part of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute. "The ideal electrode architecture would be something like ions moving to the ports via multi-lane, high-speed 'highways,' instead of taking single-lane roads. Our macroporous electrode design achieves this goal, which allows for rapid charging on the order of a few seconds or less."
                The overarching benefit of using MXene as the material for the electrode design is its conductivity. Materials that allow for rapid flow of an electrical current, like aluminum and copper, are often used in electric cables. MXenes are conductive, just like metals, so not only do ions have a wide-open path to a number of storage ports, but they can also move very quickly to meet electrons there. Mikhael Levi, PhD, and Netanel Shpigel, research collaborators from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, helped the Drexel group maximize the number of the ports accessible to ions in MXene electrodes.
                Use in battery electrodes is just the latest in a series of developments with the MXene material that was discovered by researchers in Drexel's Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 2011. Since then, researchers have been testing them in a variety of applications from energy storage to electromagnetic radiation shielding, and water filtering. This latest development is significant in particular because it addresses one of the primary problems hindering the expansion of the electric vehicle market and that has been lurking on the horizon for mobile devices.
                  "If we start using low-dimensional and electronically conducting materials as battery electrodes, we can make batteries working much, much faster than today," Gogotsi said. "Eventually, appreciation of this fact will lead us to car, laptop and cell-phone batteries capable of charging at much higher rates seconds or minutes rather than hours."

Smallest-ever star discovered by astronomers

Source: University of Cambridge

Summary:

The smallest star yet measured has been discovered by a team of astronomers. With a size just a sliver larger than that of Saturn, the gravitational pull at its stellar surface is about 300 times stronger than what humans feel on Earth.

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            Smallest star ever discovered. Very small and dim stars are the best possible candidates for detecting Earth-sized planets which can have liquid water on their surfaces.

Credit: Amanda Smith

            The smallest star yet measured has been discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge. With a size just a sliver larger than that of Saturn, the gravitational pull at its stellar surface is about 300 times stronger than what humans feel on Earth.

The star is likely as small as stars can possibly become, as it has just enough mass to enable the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. If it were any smaller, the pressure at the centre of the star would no longer be sufficient to enable this process to take place. Hydrogen fusion is also what powers the Sun, and scientists are attempting to replicate it as a powerful energy source here on Earth.
             These very small and dim stars are also the best possible candidates for detecting Earth-sized planets which can have liquid water on their surfaces, such as TRAPPIST-1, an ultracool dwarf surrounded by seven temperate Earth-sized worlds.
The newly-measured star, called EBLM J0555-57Ab, is located about six hundred light years away. It is part of a binary system, and was identified as it passed in front of its much larger companion, a method which is usually used to detect planets, not stars. Details will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
             “Our discovery reveals how small stars can be,” said Alexander Boetticher, the lead author of the study, and a Master’s student at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and Institute of Astronomy. “Had this star formed with only a slightly lower mass, the fusion reaction of hydrogen in its core could not be sustained, and the star would instead have transformed into a brown dwarf.”
EBLM J0555-57Ab was identified by WASP, a planet-finding experiment run by the Universities of Keele, Warwick, Leicester and St Andrews. EBLM J0555-57Ab was detected when it passed in front of, or transited, its larger parent star, forming what is called an eclipsing stellar binary system. The parent star became dimmer in a periodic fashion, the signature of an orbiting object. Thanks to this special configuration, researchers can accurately measure the mass and size of any orbiting companions, in this case a small star. The mass of EBLM J0555-57Ab was established via the Doppler, wobble method, using data from the CORALIE spectrograph.
               “This star is smaller, and likely colder than many of the gas giant exoplanets that have so far been identified,” said von Boetticher. “While a fascinating feature of stellar physics, it is often harder to measure the size of such dim low-mass stars than for many of the larger planets. Thankfully, we can find these small stars with planet-hunting equipment, when they orbit a larger host star in a binary system. It might sound incredible, but finding a star can at times be harder than finding a planet.”
This newly-measured star has a mass comparable to the current estimate for TRAPPIST-1, but has a radius that is nearly 30% smaller. “The smallest stars provide optimal conditions for the discovery of Earth-like planets, and for the remote exploration of their atmospheres,” said co-author Amaury Triaud, senior researcher at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “However, before we can study planets, we absolutely need to understand their star; this is fundamental.”
                 Although they are the most numerous stars in the Universe, stars with sizes and masses less than 20% that of the Sun are poorly understood, since they are difficult to detect due to their small size and low brightness. The EBLM project, which identified the star in this study, aims to plug that lapse in knowledge. “Thanks to the EBLM project, we will achieve a far greater understanding of the planets orbiting the most common stars that exist, planets like those orbiting TRAPPIST-1,” said co-author Professor Didier Queloz of Cambridge’ Cavendish Laboratory.

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Spots Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Summary:

Images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot reveal a tangle of dark, veinous clouds weaving their way through a massive crimson oval. The JunoCam imager aboard NASA's Juno mission snapped pics of the most iconic feature of the solar system's largest planetary inhabitant during its July 10 flyby.

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            This enhanced-color image of Jupiter's Great Red Spot was created by citizen scientist Jason Major using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno spacecraft. The image was taken on July 10, 2017 at 07:10 p.m. PDT (10:10 p.m. EDT), as the Juno spacecraft performed its 7th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 8,648 miles (13,917 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Jason Major

           Images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot reveal a tangle of dark, veinous clouds weaving their way through a massive crimson oval. The JunoCam imager aboard NASA's Juno mission snapped pics of the most iconic feature of the solar system's largest planetary inhabitant during its Monday (July 10) flyby. The images of the Great Red Spot were downlinked from the spacecraft's memory on Tuesday and placed on the mission's JunoCam website Wednesday morning.

            "For hundreds of years scientists have been observing, wondering and theorizing about Jupiter's Great Red Spot," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Now we have the best pictures ever of this iconic storm. It will take us some time to analyze all the data from not only JunoCam, but Juno's eight science instruments, to shed some new light on the past, present and future of the Great Red Spot."
            As planned by the Juno team, citizen scientists took the raw images of the flyby from the JunoCam site and processed them, providing a higher level of detail than available in their raw form. The citizen-scientist images, as well as the raw images they used for image processing, can be found at: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing
             "I have been following the Juno mission since it launched," said Jason Major, a JunoCam citizen scientist and a graphic designer from Warwick, Rhode Island. "It is always exciting to see these new raw images of Jupiter as they arrive. But it is even more thrilling to take the raw images and turn them into something that people can appreciate. That is what I live for."
Measuring in at 10,159 miles (16,350 kilometers) in width (as of April 3, 2017) Jupiter's Great Red Spot is 1.3 times as wide as Earth. The storm has been monitored since 1830 and has possibly existed for more than 350 years. In modern times, the Great Red Spot has appeared to be shrinking.
              All of Juno's science instruments and the spacecraft's JunoCam were operating during the flyby, collecting data that are now being returned to Earth. Juno's next close flyby of Jupiter will occur on Sept. 1.
Juno reached perijove (the point at which an orbit comes closest to Jupiter's center) on July 10 at 6:55 p.m. PDT (9:55 p.m. EDT). At the time of perijove, Juno was about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops. Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later, Juno had covered another 24,713 miles (39,771 kilometers), and was passing directly above the coiling, crimson cloud tops of the Great Red Spot. The spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the clouds of this iconic feature.
              Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops -- as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
              Early science results from NASA's Juno mission portray the largest planet in our solar system as a turbulent world, with an intriguingly complex interior structure, energetic polar aurora, and huge polar cyclones.
"These highly-anticipated images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot are the 'perfect storm' of art and science. With data from Voyager, Galileo, New Horizons, Hubble and now Juno, we have a better understanding of the composition and evolution of this iconic feature," said Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science.

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The last survivors on Earth may well be the tardigrade

Source: University of Oxford

Summary:

The world's most indestructible species, the tardigrade, an eight-legged micro-animal, also known as the water bear, will survive until the sun dies, according to a new study.

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     Planet Earth. The tardigrade, also known as the water bear, is the toughest, most resilient, form of life on Earth.

Credit: © timothyh / Fotolia

               The world's most indestructible species, the tardigrade, an eight-legged micro-animal, also known as the water bear, will survive until the Sun dies, according to a new Oxford University collaboration.

The new study published in Scientific Reports, has shown that the tiny creatures, will survive the risk of extinction from all astrophysical catastrophes, and be around for at least 10 billion years far longer than the human race.
            Although much attention has been given to the cataclysmic impact that an astrophysical event would have on human life, very little has been published around what it would take to kill the tardigrade, and wipe out life on this planet.
The research implies that life on Earth in general, will extend as long as the Sun keeps shining. It also reveals that once life emerges, it is surprisingly resilient and difficult to destroy, opening the possibility of life on other planets.
               Tardigrades are the toughest, most resilient form of life on earth, able to survive for up to 30 years without food or water, and endure temperature extremes of up to 150 degrees Celsius, the deep sea and even the frozen vacuum of space. The water-dwelling micro animal can live for up to 60 years, and grow to a maximum size of 0.5mm, best seen under a microscope. Researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Harvard, have found that these life forms will likely survive all astrophysical calamities, such as an asteroid, since they will never be strong enough to boil off the world's oceans.
Three potential events were considered as part of their research, including; large asteroid impact, and exploding stars in the form of supernovae or gamma ray bursts.
                                                                                                                                                                       Asteroids
             There are only a dozen known asteroids and dwarf planets with enough mass to boil the oceans (2x10^18 kg), these include (Vesta 2x10^20 kg) and Pluto (10^22 kg), however none of these objects will intersect Earth's orbit and pose a threat to tardigrades.
                                                                                                                                                            Supernova
            In order to boil the oceans an exploding star would need to be 0.14 light-years away. The closest star to the Sun is four light years away and the probability of a massive star exploding close enough to Earth to kill all forms of life on it, within the Sun's lifetime, is negligible.
                                                                                                                                                                   Gamma-Ray bursts
          Gamma-ray bursts are brighter and rarer than supernovae. Much like supernovas, gamma-ray bursts are too far away from earth to be considered a viable threat. To be able to boil the world's oceans the burst would need to be no more than 40 light-years away, and the likelihood of a burst occurring so close is again, minor.
           Dr Rafael Alves Batista, Co-author and Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Physics at Oxford University, said: 'Without our technology protecting us, humans are a very sensitive species. Subtle changes in our environment impact us dramatically. There are many more resilient species' on earth. Life on this planet can continue long after humans are gone.
'Tardigrades are as close to indestructible as it gets on Earth, but it is possible that there are other resilient species examples elsewhere in the universe. In this context there is a real case for looking for life on Mars and in other areas of the solar system in general. If Tardigrades are earth's most resilient species, who knows what else is out there.'
             Dr David Sloan, Co-author and Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Physics at Oxford University, said: 'A lot of previous work has focused on 'doomsday' scenarios on Earth astrophysical events like supernovae that could wipe out the human race. Our study instead considered the hardiest species the tardigrade. As we are now entering a stage of astronomy where we have seen exoplanets and are hoping to soon perform spectroscopy, looking for signatures of life, we should try to see just how fragile this hardiest life is. To our surprise we found that although nearby supernovae or large asteroid impacts would be catastrophic for people, tardigrades could be unaffected. Therefore it seems that life, once it gets going, is hard to wipe out entirely. Huge numbers of species, or even entire genera may become extinct, but life as a whole will go on.'
            In highlighting the resilience of life in general, the research broadens the scope of life beyond Earth, within and outside of this solar system. Professor Abraham Loeb, co-author and chair of the Astronomy department at Harvard University, said: 'It is difficult to eliminate all forms of life from a habitable planet. The history of Mars indicates that it once had an atmosphere that could have supported life, albeit under extreme conditions. Organisms with similar tolerances to radiation and temperature as tardigrades could survive long-term below the surface in these conditions. The subsurface oceans that are believed to exist on Europa and Enceladus, would have conditions similar to the deep oceans of Earth where tardigrades are found, volcanic vents providing heat in an environment devoid of light. The discovery of extremophiles in such locations would be a significant step forward in bracketing the range of conditions for life to exist on planets around other stars.'

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Prelude to global extinction: Human impact on Earth's animals

Biologists say disappearance of species tells only part of the story of human impact on Earth's animals

Date:

July 10, 2017

Source:

Stanford University

Summary:

In the first such global evaluation, biologists found more than 30 percent of all vertebrates have declining populations. They call for curbs on the basic drivers of these losses.

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Tropical forest logging has contributed to population declines in many animals, including the Bornean gibbon, known for its whooping call.

Credit: Gerardo Ceballos

No bells tolled when the last Catarina pupfish on Earth died. Newspapers didn't carry the story when the Christmas Island pipistrelle vanished forever.

Two vertebrate species go extinct every year on average, but few people notice, perhaps because the rate seems relatively slow -- not a clear and present threat to the natural systems we depend on. This view overlooks trends of extreme decline in animal populations, which tell a more dire story with cascading consequences, according to a new study that provides the first global evaluation of these population trends.
"This is the case of a biological annihilation occurring globally, even if the species these populations belong to are still present somewhere on Earth," said co-author Rodolfo Dirzo, a professor of biology.
Mapping loss
A 2015 study co-authored by Paul Ehrlich, professor emeritus of biology, and colleagues showed that Earth has entered an era of mass extinction unparalleled since the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago. The specter of extinction hangs over about 41 percent of all amphibian species and 26 percent of all mammals, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains a list of threatened and extinct species. This global disaster scene has the fingerprints of habitat loss, overexploitation, invasive organisms, pollution, toxification and climate change.
The new analysis, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks beyond species extinctions to provide a clear picture of dwindling populations and ranges. The researchers mapped the ranges of 27,600 species of birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles -- a sample representing nearly half of known terrestrial vertebrate species -- and analyzed population losses in a sample of 177 well-studied mammal species between 1990 and 2015.
Using range reduction as a proxy for population loss, the study finds more than 30 percent of vertebrate species are declining in population size and range. Of the 177 mammals for which the researchers had detailed data, all have lost 30 percent or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40 percent have lost more than 80 percent of their ranges. Tropical regions have had the greatest number of decreasing species while temperate regions have seen similar or higher proportions of decreasing species. Particularly hard hit have been the mammals of south and southeast Asia, where all the large-bodied species of mammals analyzed have lost more than 80 percent of their geographic ranges.
The study's maps suggest that as much as 50 percent of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth have disappeared, as have billions of animal populations. This amounts to "a massive erosion of the greatest biological diversity in the history of Earth," the authors write.
"The massive loss of populations and species reflects our lack of empathy to all the wild species that have been our companions since our origins," said the new study's lead author, Gerardo Ceballos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "It is a prelude to the disappearance of many more species and the decline of natural systems that make civilization possible."
Cascading effects
Why does the loss of populations and biological diversity matter? Aside from being what the scientists call a prelude to species extinction, the losses rob us of crucial ecosystem services such as honeybees' crop pollination, pest control and wetlands' water purification. We also lose intricate ecological networks involving animals, plants and microorganisms leading to less resilient ecosystems and pools of genetic information that may prove vital to species' survival in a rapidly changing global environment.
"Sadly, our descendants will also have to do without the aesthetic pleasures and sources of imagination provided by our only known living counterparts in the universe," said Ehrlich.
In the meantime, the overall scope of population losses makes clear the world cannot wait to address biodiversity damage, according to the authors. They call for curbs on the basic drivers of extinction human overpopulation and overconsumption  and challenge society to move away from "the fiction that perpetual growth can occur on a finite planet."
Dirzo is also the Bing Professor in Environmental Science. Dirzo and Ehrlich are senior fellows at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.