Abstract: Disclosed is a miniaturized plasma propulsion device with minimized surface area of the thruster walls exposed to the plasma and, as a result, reduced plasma-surface interactions including a set of segmented electrodes to facilitate the following improvements compared to relevant existing technologies: 1) control of the plasma flow including focusing of the plasma plume 2) increase of the thrust 2) reduction of inefficiencies associated with the electron cross field current, and 3) mitigation of low frequency oscillations. The electrodes affect all these actions when a DC or modulated voltage is applied to one or all of them with the same or different amplitudes, with the same or different frequencies or phases which are all optimized to realize the best performance through changes in the acceleration and/or ionization regions. In addition, the applied voltage to the main electrodes may also be modulated.

Abstract: Systems and methods are described, and one method includes illuminating a target-of-interest (TI) with an RF energy configured to effect, over a time duration extending from a first time to a second time, an increase in a temperature of the TI. At a first detection time within the time duration, a first temperature NQR signal spectrum of the TI is detected, and a corresponding first temperature NQR spectrum data set is generates. At a second detection time, subsequent to the first detection time, a second temperature NQR signal spectrum of the TI is detected and corresponding second temperature NQR spectrum data set is output. Based at least in part on the first temperature NQR spectral dataset and the second temperature NQR spectral dataset, the TI is classified between including the SI and not including the SI.

Abstract: According to various embodiments, a system for using magnetic reconnection to accelerate plasma is disclosed. The system includes a pair of electrodes including two concentric rings separated by an electrode gap and held at different electrostatic potential by applying a voltage to generate an inter-electrode electric field. The system further includes a plurality of magnetic coils configured to produce magnetic field lines that connect the pair of electrodes. The system additionally includes a gas injector configured to inject gas into the electrode gap, the injected gas being partially ionized by the inter-electrode electric field to generate a poloidal current that flows along open magnetic field lines across the electrode gap.

Abstract: Methods, kits, cartridges, and compounds related to generating chlorine dioxide by exposing ClO2? to at least one of an iron porphyrin catalyst or an iron porphyrazine catalyst are described.

Abstract: Disclosed herein is a stellarator comprising two sets of coils, namely a set of encircling coils which encircle the plasma axis, and a set of shaping coils which do not encircle any other coil or the plasma. In some embodiments, the encircling coils include a structural element to maintain their shape under magnetic forces. In some embodiments, the shaping coils are mounted onto one or more structural elements which, together with the shaping coils, constitute a field shaping unit. Also disclosed is a controller which may modify the electrical current flowing in one or more subsets of the coils in order to achieve target plasma parameters. Also disclosed is a method of designing a set of shaping coils by discretizing a surface dipole or current potential distribution.

Abstract: Various embodiments comprise systems, methods, architectures, mechanisms or apparatus for providing programmable or pre-programmed in-memory computing operations.

Abstract: According to aspects of embodiments described herein, an optical computing device (100) comprises a plurality of input waveguides (101), a photonic meta-surface (103) in contact with the plurality of input waveguides, and a plurality of output waveguides (105) in contact with the transformational meta-surface. The optical computing device may be configured to perform a mathematical operation may be a matrix multiplication. A computer-implemented method (300) of designing an optical computing device includes a plurality of input waveguides, a photonic meta-surface, and a plurality of output waveguides, the method includes exciting each input waveguide one-by-one (303) and measuring the energy at the input region and the output region (305) to determine a contribution of the current input waveguide. The sum of contributions (307) of all input waveguides are compared to a target transformation (315) to determine a loss value used to update a set of design parameters (317).

Abstract: Disclosed is a method for experimentally optimizing information quality and engagement in crowd sourced evaluation systems. It allows estimating efficiencies of different strategies to provide the greatest opportunity for social learning. It can be used for continuous tuning of social feedback. Also disclosed is a system that allows experimentation with crowd sourced evaluations of virtual services. The experimental system supports large scale online recruitment of participants into web-browser 3D virtual world. The virtual world can be designed to approximate several types of real-world, distributed information systems. Social influences can be experimentally introduced into the feedback system in order to empirically optimize its utility.

Abstract: Synthetic methods are described herein operable to efficiently produce a wide variety of molecular species through conjugate additions via decarboxylative mechanisms. For example, methods of functionalization of peptide residues are described, including selective functionalization of peptide C-terminal residues. In one aspect, a method of peptide functionalization comprises providing a reaction mixture including a Michael acceptor and a peptide and coupling the Michael acceptor with the peptide via a mechanism including decarboxylation of a peptide reside.

Abstract: According to various embodiments, a method for detecting security vulnerabilities in at least one of cyber-physical systems (CPSs) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices is disclosed. The method includes constructing an attack directed acyclic graph (DAG) from a plurality of regular expressions, where each regular expression corresponds to control-data flow for a known CPS/IoT attack. The method further includes performing a linear search on the attack DAG to determine unexploited CPS/IoT attack vectors, where a path in the attack DAG that does not represent a known CPS/IoT attack vector represents an unexploited CPS/IoT attack vector. The method also includes applying a trained machine learning module to the attack DAG to predict new CPS/IoT vulnerability exploits. The method further includes constructing a defense DAG configured to protect against the known CPS/IoT attacks, the unexploited CPS/IoT attacks, and the new CPS/IoT vulnerability exploits.

Abstract: Disclosed is a spectroscopic device, system, and method for measuring the concentration of one or more molecular species of interest in a gas, liquid or solid sample, where the device may be portable, may be commercially manufactured, and/or may be adapted to existing systems and/or integrated with new systems to provide optical gas sensing for such systems. The disclosed devices, systems, and methods can be particularly useful in monitoring the purity of, e.g., a certain gas species, including determining whether a gas mixture contains certain gas species above a set concentration limit.

Abstract: According to various embodiments, a direct magnetic gradiometer having intrinsic subtraction of rotation signals from two oppositely polarized atomic ensembles within a single multi-pass cell is disclosed. The gradiometer includes three convex spherical mirrors aligned in a V-shape geometry. The three convex spherical mirrors include a front mirror and two back mirrors. The gradiometer further includes a probe laser beam. The laser beam is configured to be initially focused at a near-zero angle into a hole at a center of the front mirror such that the laser beam expands at the back mirrors and nearly overlaps with itself while undergoing multiple reflections between the front and back mirrors. The laser beam is further configured to be refocused to the front mirror at different spots in a number equal to half of total beam passes before exiting.

Abstract: Systems and methods herein provide for error correction via Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) coding. In one embodiment, a system includes a data buffer operable to receive a block of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) encoded data. The system also includes a processor operable to reduce a belief propagation algorithm used to encode the LDPC encoded data into a quadratic polynomial, to embed the quadratic polynomial onto a plurality of quantum bits (qubits), and to decode the block of LDPC encoded data via the qubits.

Abstract: This disclosure describes systems and methods for crosstalk-free source encoding for ultrasound tomography. This disclosed systems and methods feature real data acquisition acceleration and/or numerical simulation acceleration (or image processing acceleration).

Abstract: Disclosed is a spectroscopic device, system, and method for measuring the concentration of one or more molecular species of interest in a gas, liquid or solid sample, where the device may be portable, may be commercially manufactured, and/or may be adapted to existing systems and/or integrated with new systems to provide optical gas sensing for such systems. The disclosed devices, systems, and methods can be particularly useful in monitoring the purity of, e.g., a certain gas species, including determining whether a gas mixture contains certain gas species above a set concentration limit.

Abstract: Methods, kits, cartridges, and compounds related to generating chlorine dioxide by exposing ClO2? to at least one of an iron porphyrin catalyst or an iron porphyrazine catalyst are described.

Abstract: A method is disclosed for coating and patterning hydrogels in order to modify surface properties. The method exploits the water content of the hydrogel and the hydrophobicity of the reaction solvent to create a thin oxide adhesion layer on the hydrogel surface. This oxide adhesion layer enables rapid transformation of the hydrophilic, cell non-adhesive hydrogel into either a highly hydrophobic or a cell-adhesive hydrogel by reaction with an alkylphosphonic acid or an ?,?-diphosphonoalkane, respectively. Also disclosed are coated, patterned hydrogels and constructs comprising the coated, patterned hydrogels.

Abstract: According to various embodiments, a power conversion circuit is disclosed. The power conversion circuit includes at least one DC bus. The power conversion circuit further includes a plurality of DC-AC conversion units coupled to the DC bus and configured to convert a DC voltage into an AC voltage. The power conversion circuit also includes a multi-winding transformer comprising a magnetic core and a plurality of windings, where each DC-AC conversion unit is coupled to a corresponding winding of the multi-winding transformer.

Abstract: The present disclosure relates, in general, to a method for generating chimeric DNA derived from RNase L cleavage products in a sample, and detection of such RNase L cleavage products for diagnosis and treatment of inflammation and infection in a subject.

Abstract: A system and method for controlling metabolic enzymes or pathways in cells to produce a chemical above the levels of a wild-type strain is disclosed. The system utilizes cells, including yeasts, bacteria, and molds, having at least two genes capable of being controlled bi-directionally with light, where one gene is turned from off to on when exposed to light and another gene is turned from on to off when exposed to light, the two genes reversing when the light is turned off. Cells may utilize any number of sequences that benefit chemical production, including sequences that: encode for constitutive transcription of light-activated transcription factor fusions; encode for a metabolic enzyme; encode for a repressor; induce expression of metabolic enzymes; and an endogenous or exogenous activator expressed by a constitutive promoter, inducible promoter, or gene circuit.