Global video game sales hit $180 billion last year — which means this market is now worth more than the North American sports industry ($75 billion) and global film industry ($100 billion) combined. Given ongoing pandemic uncertainty, the spending uptick makes sense; lacking other options, gaming technology offered a much-needed escape from reality. But is fun the only function of video games? Or do these digital systems offer a new way to approach real-world problems? Blurring the Lines Games have come a long way since the days of Pong, Frogger and Pitfall. Gone are 4- and 16-color displays, clunky pixels and obstinate controls. Now, games offer fully realized worlds that allow players to discover new experiences, meet new people and learn new skills. Graphics in high-end games have evolved to meet — or exceed — real-world fidelity, while emerging technologies such as augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) offer even more immersive adventures. Gamer demographics have also evolved. Gamers run the gamut — young, old, male, female, life-long player to relative noob — there's no bar to entry. Much of this shift stems from the proliferation of different types of games. While first-person shooter (FPS) titles remain popular, there's also a massive market for real-time strategy games, role-playing games (RPGs) building and puzzle games, and massively-multiplayer online (MMO) games. The upshot? No matter your preference and play style, there's probably a game that fits your interests. But there's also a push to move games outside the realm of digital distractions and leverage them to tackle real-world problems. And so far, games are proving to be just as versatile outside their virtual environments. Solving for Strategy The classic 1980's movie War Games offered a terrifying glimpse of what might happen if hackers infiltrated a computer system designed to play "real" strategy games — spoiler alert: World War III was narrowly averted by hero Matthew Broderick. However, outside of Hollywood hype, there's a substantive case to be made for the use of video games in developing advanced military strategy. Consider Gamebreaker, an initiative of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Gamebreaker program is designed to discover unfair ways for opponents to play in virtual war games simulator called "Command: Modern Operations." Northrop Grumman was awarded the Gamebreaker contract in May 2020. NG teams have now added more than 200 quadrillion options designed to find causal models within the game that can be exploited to gain operational advantages. This effectively mimics the dynamics of the conflict. Our adversaries are not looking to play by the rules — they're looking for any way to win. AI-driven models can help to uncover these unexpected advantages in secure computer models, in turn equipping commanders in the field with better intelligence before they engage enemies in battle. Correcting for Crashes Holographic heads-up displays (HUDs) are familiar sights in FPS and racing games. They offer critical information to players, such as how many rounds of ammunition they have left, their current level of health or how fast they're traveling. Well-designed HUDs in games are both customizable and unobtrusive, offering exactly the data you need — and nothing you don't. As SciTechDaily notes, these HUDs are now making their way into the real world thanks to light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technologies. Using LiDAR, a research team from the University of Cambridge has created a 3D HUD that delivers ultra high-definition holographic projections of road objects, effectively creating an augmented reality for drivers. What's more, the nature of LiDAR solutions makes it possible for them to "see" through objects, potentially offering a way for drivers to see vehicles or pedestrians coming at blind corners or spot road signs that are hidden by landmarks or buildings. Aiming for Accuracy FPS gamers love weaponry. Every FPS game has its own unique take on weapons such as guns, rocket launchers and grenades, with these weapons getting more powerful — and often more outlandish — the farther players progress. One of the most popular weapon types that often makes an appearance in near-future sci-fi games is the augmented grenade launcher. Along with the ability to shoot multiple grenade types depending on the scenario, gamers can also detonate these grenades on command to achieve a specific effect. New technology from the United States Army now offers this ability. Known as the Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE)-XM25, this grenade launcher provides "a leap-ahead overmatch capability that will dramatically increase lethality and range with a family of 25mm programmable airburst munitions." In practice, this makes it possible for soldiers to deliver pinpoint grenade strikes in any combat environment. Mining for Math Games are also making inroads into education. Partly driven by pandemic necessity, games offer a way to engage students with concepts they may find challenging — such as math or science — in a way that's more familiar and fun. One of the most common approaches to this educational effort uses the massively popular game Minecraft, which sees players building virtually anything they want in a simple, block-based environment. Now, schools are using the game's "Education Mode" to help students construct complex shapes and solve complicated math problems. This mode features no fighting and no monsters. Instead, it conforms to natural laws and makes it possible for kids to explore the reaction between chemicals, better understand physical processes and engage with math in a way that simply isn't possible with pen and paper. Folding for the Future What if you could help save the world with a video game? That's the idea behind Foldit, a crowdsourcing game that challenges players to find new ways of folding proteins. Given the complexity of protein structures and the almost innumerable potential permutations, scientists have struggled to unlock many of their secrets. Foldit tasks players with finding the most efficient way of folding proteins, which could in turn help researchers predict their shape and provide clues about how they operate in the human body. Equipped with improved protein knowledge, experts may be better equipped to treat or prevent critical illnesses — all thanks to puzzle-solving gamers. Games are fun. But they're also functional; video gaming technology now has practical applications in everything from military strategy to heads-up displays and medical research. Bottom line? If you find something you like, start playing — you could help change the world. Are you interested in all things related to VR and AR? We are, too. Check out Northrop Grumman career opportunities to see how you can participate in this fascinating time of discovery.

Leveling Up: Can Gaming Technology Solve Real-World Problems?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as "the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence."
But just how intelligent is AI, and how can that be measured? One tool that seems perfect for the task is the Turing test, also known as the "imitation game," proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing. His 1950 paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," laid out a framework for deciding if machines could pass a test of being indistinguishable from a human.
However, this might not be the best measure of intelligence in AI today. As Peter VanMaasdam, Lead AI Architect, Advanced Intelligent Systems Business Unit with Northrop Grumman, explains, the test itself focuses on only one aspect of human behavior: language.
"There are many more tasks humans do to display intelligence," he explains. "Not to mention that many non-humans (e.g., dogs, parrots and so on) don't really have language, and yet, we view them as intelligent."
What Is the Turing Test?
In essence, the Turing test measures the ability of a computer to pass itself off as a human being.
VanMaasdam describes the process as such: "The Turing test, in its classical form, refers to a thought experiment by Alan Turing in the very early days of AI development in the 1950s. He called it the 'imitation game,' whereby two people go into separate rooms and write each other questions, which the other person then answers."
An observer or judge, who is blinded to whom the responses are coming from, assesses if a machine replies in the same way as a person. In other words, is the computer behaving like Turing predicted and appearing like a person when holding a conversation?
According to VanMaasdam, the Turing test could be applied to AI. "He [Turing] claimed that if a machine replaced one of those people, that machine (an AI in our case) would be intelligent if the other person couldn't tell the difference between the AI responses and a human's responses."
Currently, with the rise of smartphones, chatbots and other tools, you'd be forgiven if you thought AI has already passed the Turing test. In 2018, Google's Duplex successfully phoned in and booked a hair appointment. The new kid on the scene, ChatGPT, is certainly ruffling feathers in the coding and writing communities with its seemingly erudite responses to the most general of prompts. There's even a tool that will write scripts for your online business meetings.
If these tools can fool your colleagues, has the imitation game been won already?
Does AI Measure Up to Human Intelligence?
Not so fast! Before declaring that AI is already on a level with human intelligence, let's consider what exactly AI is and what it isn't. As VanMaasdam points out, the Turing test is only directly applicable to measuring one facet of an AI's intelligence: namely, its language skills and ability to convincingly hold a conversation.
The Department of Defense definition is useful, as it directly ties AI solutions to defined tasks and missions. According to VanMaasdam, this is more focused than the concept of "artificial general intelligence," which is how the public often thinks of AI.
"[The Turing test] missed the concept of generalization by only focusing on the single task of language," he explains. "Most people assume that any AI can act in a general fashion; for example, an Aided Target Recognition (AiTR) system trained for object detection will somehow gain consciousness and understand language."
However, this isn't what AI is right now, and human intelligence relies on more than just a narrow band of expertise. Current AI tools are more task-focused, looking only at information in one subject area. This isn't a bad thing, though. Tying AI to only one specific task means it can function really well, often better than a person could. And by expanding on what is measured during the imitation game, the definition of intelligence could be further expanded.
"One could broaden the test to other AI tasks. For example, with an AiTR, we could call that AI intelligent if it performed as well as or better than a human at a given task of object detection and recognition," suggests VanMaasdam. "In fact, these kinds of tests have often been performed in that field, and we see that the AiTR usually performs equally well or slightly better than a human but has the advantage of not getting tired or distracted."
Even so, that's not quite on par with human intelligence.
Measuring Intelligence in AI
In the end, maybe the test only measures how well AI deceives us. Is AI not actually intelligent but merely extremely clever at impersonation, as suggested by The Washington Post?
Or maybe, as VanMaasdam explains, we're just not measuring the correct parameters to assess AI intelligence. "Once we've tied AI to a specific task, let's say AiTR, the best way to measure its intelligence is by using standard performance metrics within that domain. In that case, probability of detection, false alarm rate and other metrics have been used by the community for decades."
In other words, to correctly measure the intelligence of AI, we not only need to recognize that human intelligence is more than correct responses, but we also must apply the correct parameters to show performance. To support the latter point, VanMaasdam says we've already proved that modern AI techniques — deep neural networks, in particular — are out-performing previous methods in a rigorous engineering fashion.
For the former point, though, we need to recognize that awareness, sentience and an understanding of what it means to be human are required before AI achieves human intelligence. For this, it would need to become artificial general intelligence with a much broader scope, awareness and learning capabilities. The AI would need to be able to detect and respond to changing situations in the world around it, much as people do, collecting physical interaction and sensory data that fine-tunes a response. AI needs to read its world.
"Another way of measuring intelligence is the ability of the AI to cope with conditions outside the realm of the data used to train it," says VanMaasdam. With the AiTR example, if it was trained on imagery during the day and with grass backgrounds, measuring how well it performs on images from the night on a parking lot background could show intelligence. "A well-trained AI will show little performance difference or at least gracefully degrade when faced with these new datasets."
Awareness and ability for self-improvement also count. "AI would become even more intelligent at the AiTR task if it could measure itself when operating," continues VanMaasdam. "And if it sees that it isn't correctly categorizing objects (either through human correction or, ideally, by itself), it would continue to learn as it sees new data and new objects."
Intelligence is more similar to Skynet becoming self-aware than being able to trick a remote observer with eloquent conversation. Right now, though, AI is only as intelligent as the datasets used in training and on the algorithms used to build it.
"We are nowhere near an understanding of human intelligence in a mathematical fashion that would allow us to engineer a true artificial general intelligence," says VanMaasdam.
In short, you can sleep soundly knowing that robots aren't in charge yet — and probably won't be for at least the rest of this century.
Are you interested in all things related to technology? We are, too. Check out Northrop Grumman career opportunities to see how you can participate in this fascinating time of discovery.

Using the Turing Test to Assess AI for Human Intelligence

Many large-scale public events are all about dealing with crowds of people, and that brings with it the logistics of event security. The larger the crowds, often the larger the security headaches. Fortunately, event planners can now call upon a powerful new security technology for dealing with crowds: facial recognition security.
What's in a Face?
Human beings are pretty good at recognizing faces. We can immediately recognize people we haven't seen for decades, and our ability to perceive the individuality of faces is a powerful metaphor for the individuality of people. But as with other pattern-recognition tasks, devising algorithms that allow computers to match this human capability has been challenging.
According to research from Utah State University, efforts to apply computer technology to human facial recognition began as early as the 1960s, when the RAND tablet was devised for users to manually record the relative coordinate positions of facial features. Faces, like fingerprints, are all slightly different. With sufficient measurement data and number-crunching capability, these differences can be teased out numerically.
Facial images can then be recognized as similar, including images with measured similarity so great that they can only be a match, like two images of the same face. By the early 1990s, researchers had also devised ways to recognize the presence of a face in an image — a key development. In 2001, facial recognition security was deployed for crime control at a public event: the 2001 Super Bowl.
Marketing and Moods
Softjourn reports that typical use cases for facial recognition technology in event management range from backstage access control for staff and other authorized users to general identification checks, finding missing persons, gathering data on attendance and other use cases for future event optimization. These use cases, like the ones for many other security technologies, run the gamut in terms of public perception.
On the one hand, authorized access control for staff areas does not impinge on the general public attending the event, since they have no expectation of access to those areas. At the same time, the public is highly understanding of missing-person situations and welcomes any intervention that reunites people with their parties. On the other hand, obtaining general identification information (which would be needed for the missing-person scenario, for example) is necessarily more intrusive to the public.
While collecting data for use in improving future events seems benign from the event planner's perspective, this type of data collection may not sit well with attendees. The Utah State University study examined user perceptions of a range of scenarios involving facial recognition data. Their results showed discomfort regarding the use of facial recognition technology for marketing messages. In particular, in a scenario where they did not explain how the facial recognition data would be used, participants reported discomfort of being tracked with it in a public gathering.
As interest and awareness of facial recognition technology has grown, so has concern, with organizations such as The Public Voice calling for a moratorium on the public use of the technology. This backlash is tied to some real-world limitations of the technology. Facial recognition systems are ""trained"" on images, and the training images often reflect the mix of people you find around software labs. As the Utah study noted, for example, white male faces drew a much lower error rate than female faces of color did.
In another aspect of the technology, Converve notes that the capability of facial recognition technology to provide ""mood detection"" takes concerns about privacy to a new level: Even if it is reliable, is it appropriate? On a more immediate level, event planners must also be mindful of the E.U.'s General Data Protection Regulation, which incorporates stronger privacy protections than current U.S. legal frameworks.
Using Powerful Tools Wisely
Likewise, the Professional Convention Management Association takes note of some critical security questions that event planners should ask about facial recognition security: ""Where is your face data stored? Who else can access it? What else will it be used for? How are these companies remaining GDPR compliant? With so many questions regarding privacy, it's important for organizers to create opt-in opportunities that give guests a sense of control.""
For event planners, facial recognition can be a powerful addition to the security technology toolkit. They must be aware of the limitations, though, as well as the capabilities of this technology, while being acutely aware of the possible public reactions to new security technology. As such, it will be vital to clearly explain how and why it is being used.
 
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Event Security Technology Goes Face to Face

Mosquitoes are a menace, and the problem is only getting worse. Thanks to climate change, the planet has seen increasingly severe mosquito seasons, and things don't look like they'll get better anytime soon. Mosquitoes breed in moist environments and can carry diseases and viruses, such as malaria, Zika and dengue, which can be fatal to humans. They can also carry many diseases that can be fatal to animals. Currently, the dominant way of controlling mosquitoes is through wide application of insecticide or radiation for sterilization, but this can be harmful to other organisms. Thanks to CRISPR technology, though, there may be a solution to the mosquito problem. In a recent journal article in "Nature Communications," scientists from the University of California detailed a new technique to sterilize male mosquitoes and alter female mosquito vision to stop the spread of these diseases using gene-altering technology. What Is CRISPR? CRISPR technology is a relatively new advancement that allows scientists to edit genes. Specifically, CRISPR allows scientists to find certain parts of DNA that reside within cells and alter them. It can also be used to toggle genes on and off. Though gene-editing technology has been around for a long time, CRISPR makes the process much more accessible, as it's both inexpensive and easy to use. While CRISPR is mostly used in scientific research right now, we may not be far off from using it to cure diseases and change the genes of humans — though many consider human gene editing unethical. How Can Scientists Change Mosquito Genes? Scientists have uncovered a new technique they call the "precision-guided sterile insect technique," or pgSIT. While most CRISPR procedures affect organisms that spread diseases by passing a gene change down generations, this system is more limited. It targets male mosquito genes that are linked to fertility. As a result of changing these genes, any offspring these mosquitoes have would be infertile. "pgSIT is a new scalable genetic control system that uses a CRISPR-based approach to engineer deployable mosquitoes that can suppress populations," said Omar Akbari, one of the study's authors. "Males don't transmit diseases, so the idea is that, as you release more and more sterile males, you can suppress the population without relying on harmful chemicals and insecticides." But it's the female population that spreads diseases, so pgSIT targets them, as well. According to the study, the CRISPR technology treatment renders female mosquitoes unable to fly or hold their wings up. It also makes them slower and more lethargic in their movements. Combined, these effects lower the chances that these female mosquitoes will mate or successfully find a blood source and attach to it to spread disease. A separate study in "Current Biology" identified another use case for gene editing using CRISPR: altering mosquito vision. Blood-feeding insects often use multiple senses to seek out humans, but with CRISPR, scientists can mutate female mosquitoes' vision in a way that eliminates vision-guided target attraction. This has the potential to reduce mosquitoes' ability to blood seek even further. What Could This Mean for the Future? pgSIT and CRISPR technology could promise drastic population control for mosquitoes in a sustainable way. The system is not designed to eliminate mosquitoes completely from everywhere; instead, it was carefully crafted to be self-limiting and not to linger within the environment. That makes it safe for widespread use. "This platform technology could be used in the field and adapted to many vectors for controlling wild populations to curtail disease in a safe, confinable and reversible manner," the researchers reported. The technology could be specifically used in places that are suffering from mosquito-borne diseases and illnesses. According to the release, pgSIT mosquito eggs could be shipped to these locations (or produced locally) and distributed within that specific environment. Once they hatch, the males will mate with females and produce sterile mosquitoes, thereby decreasing the mosquito population in the area or possibly eliminating it altogether. Alternatively, if the situation is dire, the scientists noted that adult pgSIT mosquitoes could be released, which results in faster suppression of the mosquito population. The researchers also noted that it's possible for the technology to be used on other insect populations that spread disease. "The study suggests pgSIT may be an efficient technology for mosquito population control and the first example of one suited for real-world release," the researchers said in the release. "Going forward, pgSIT may provide an efficient, safe, scalable and environmentally friendly alternative next-generation technology for wild population control of mosquitoes, resulting in wide-scale prevention of human disease transmission." Check out Northrop Grumman career opportunities to see how you can participate in this fascinating time of discovery in science, technology and engineering.

CRISPR Technology Can Eliminate Disease-Spreading Mosquitoes

Analysts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a busier-than-average hurricane season in 2017, and they certainly hit the mark, according to the Los Angeles Times. These heavy-hitting storms left communities reeling in their wake and prompted important questions regarding hurricane predictions.   2018 may bring another active Atlantic hurricane season, according to New Scientist. Combined with ongoing impact from global climate change, weather prediction technology is more critical than ever — improved outcomes demand input from current tools and real-time data from tech advancements combined with expert interpretation.   What GOES Around Comes Around   Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria caused devastating, long-term damage. As noted by The Balance, Harvey caused around $180 billion worth of damage, Irma cost the economy at least $100 billion and the storm in Puerto Rico left $85 billion of insurance claims in its wake. Can hurricane prediction tools prevent this from happening again?     NOAA's National Hurricane Center — Provides tropical storm and hurricane forecasts and warnings to help mitigate the impact of large storms. Recent technological advances have also helped the cause, like the GOES-16 satellite. CNBC said GOES-16 makes it possible to see hurricanes and other storms in their formative stages, which helps weather forecasters stay up-to-date. "From its constant perch over the Western Hemisphere, GOES-16 is already helping meteorologists issue more accurate and earlier warnings for severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, flooding and hurricanes because of its greater resolution and faster refresh than previous GOES satellites," said The Washington Post.  Super Computing — As noted by CNBC, the National Weather Service has invested substantially in supercomputing to gain three-fold processing power, in turn reducing storm tracking and location error rates. According to Phys.org, NOAA tracked hurricane Harvey to within 100 nautical miles (185,200 m) — an impressive feat considering the scope of the hurricane.  Eyes in the Sky — With the capability to fly over severe weather and achieve high altitudes for up to 30 hours straight, intelligence gathered by Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk UAV has helped civilian authorities assess storm strength and direction and plan next steps for warnings and disaster relief. In partnership with NASA and NOAA, the Global Hawk UAV has been used to track hurricane intensification for the Eastern Pacific Origins and Characteristics of Hurricanes Program.  IoT Sensors — As noted by Recode, wind farms in Norway have already started using sensors to monitor the status of 400-foot-high (122 m) wind turbines for damage or performance degradation. Similarly, sensors could be attached to physical structures or on-site machinery to measure the impact of hurricane-force winds or rain. There's a double benefit here: Companies gain continual assessment of risk, and employees aren't put in danger checking the integrity of outside structures.    Intersecting Interests   While technology remains a critical aspect of weather prediction, The Washington Post points out that a tech-first approach only takes forecasting so far. Better outcomes mean taking a "mission-first" approach where end-user needs drive the development of new technology. For example, civil authorities want more time to warn residents they may need to evacuate, while homeowners want some kind of quantifiable data about risk to their property. Mission-driven goals can help set the stage for new technology development.   Forecasters are also still critical to weather prediction, as noted by David Novak, director of the NWS's Weather Prediction Center. "'Models and observations are the base infrastructure that allows human forecasters to do better forecasts,'" he said. This follows a similar trend in business: internet of things tools, analytics and automation are essential elements to improve ROI, but can't deliver ideal outcomes without human oversight.   The same is true of hurricane predictions — improved weather prediction technology can refine modeling and evaluation processes, but the experience and expertise of weather scientists remains critical to translate hard data into actionable outcomes. 

Hurricane Predictions: Tracking the Impact of New Tech

The concept of delivering food, packaged goods and medical supplies to consumers by drone did not begin with COVID-19. But the pandemic has added urgency to the race, as companies such as Zipline, Wing Aviation, Amazon Prime Air and UPS Flight Forward attempt to mobilize networks of drones to deliver packages safely and quickly to consumers and commercial offices. Putting the Customer First Unfortunately, these companies plan to deliver time-sensitive packages to the ground outside a home or business, leaving them vulnerable to "porch pirates," inclement weather or curious pets. Enter the smart drone mailbox: a technology-enabled container that opens, receives and stores packages in a safe, secure, climate-controlled box accessible only by a homeowner or business owner. It offers a potential solution to the more than 1.7 million packages lost or stolen in the U.S. daily, as CNBC reports. "The drone companies have been focused largely on all the innovative features of their drones, but if that innovation doesn't create a safe, secure and convenient experience for consumers, it will never be adopted," Ryan Walsh, CEO and co-founder of Chicago-based startup Valqari, a developer of smart drone mailboxes, said in an interview with Now. However, Walsh and Valqari are not alone in recognizing an opportunity to make drone delivery a safe, convenient and preferred service by consumers. "I believe that when one person has an idea, 10 others have the same idea at the same time," Dan O'Toole, CEO for Indianapolis-based DRONEDEK, another competitor in the smart drone mailbox space, told Now. Precision Made Easy Both Valqari and DRONEDEK are in the early stages of developing their mailbox concepts; Valqari is already producing units while DRONEDEK is working to complete its first functional prototype. The basic operating principles of their mailboxes are quite similar. Pending broader deployment of drone delivery networks, neither company expects smart drone mailboxes to become commonplace just yet. When a customer orders a delivery by drone, the package is loaded into a drone-compatible container, then flown to the customer location guided by GPS coordinates. Once the drone is within approximately 100 feet of the mailbox, it reverts to a vision-based landing system, then begins an authentication process with the smart drone mailbox. This process verifies that it's the right drone delivering the right package to the right mailbox. When the authentication process is complete, the drone lands on the mailbox, the mailbox opens its door, and the package is delivered. The drone then sends a notification of the delivery to both the shipper and the recipient to let them know that the smart drone mailbox has taken digital custody of the shipment and that it's now available for the recipient to pick up at their convenience. The recipient communicates with the smart drone mailbox via a phone-based app. "One of the great things about a smart drone delivery mailbox is that you don't have to leave work and stand in your front yard to receive a package," said Walsh. "Drones are designed to provide a convenience for us, not an inconvenience." And yes, he adds, smart drone mailboxes are designed to be "drone agnostic" and compatible with conventional delivery services. The same app that will allow a consumer to open the smart drone mailbox to retrieve a package will also allow a FedEx driver, a U.S. Postal Service employee or even an Amazon Prime driver to open the mailbox to deliver a package. Reinventing the Mailbox "The mailbox has not been disrupted since 1858 (when the U.S. Postal Service was launched)," said O'Toole. "Between smart cars, smart phones and smart houses, it's time for the mailbox to catch up." To that end, O'Toole plans to give each DRONEDEK a patented, climate-controlled cargo area that could be set digitally by a shipping organization. O'Toole is also thinking about how to streamline the logistics of customer returns. Future versions of DRONEDEK, he believes, could include a scale (to weigh packages), a printer (to address packages) and software to calculate shipping charges and bill the customer directly. Adapting to a "New Normal" While customer convenience is important, public concern over the spread of COVID-19 has become a more significant factor in the design and development schedule of smart drone mailboxes. "We feel that COVID-19 has accelerated drone delivery by 10 years," said O'Toole. "It's had a huge impact on people who've been resistant to adopting new technology and relying on the Internet for goods and services." In a nod to concerns about potential COVID-19 contamination of package surfaces, both Valqari and DRONEDEK are considering including an ultraviolet package sterilization feature in their mailboxes. Meeting Multi-User Demand The types of smart drone mailboxes being developed also reflect the nascent market for such units. Valqari, for example, is focusing its early efforts on multi-user community boxes. These boxes could be located on, say, a hospital campus or within a village where it could serve many customers and handle multiple inbound and outbound package deliveries. Packages for different customers would be automatically sorted, stored and managed within separate internal compartments. "One of our biggest concerns is managing the safety needs of both our customers and the drones," explained Walsh. "We made our commercial unit tall enough, for example, for people to retrieve their packages easily from the station without being able to interfere with drone landing or take-off operations." Valqari is also developing a stand-alone residential unit and, eventually, a window-attached unit for high-rise apartments, he added. For its part, DRONEDEK plans to develop small, medium and large smart drone mailboxes for business owners, a residential box and a multi-family or urban cluster box. Valqari plans to make its boxes available through subscriptions, lease agreements or as a retail purchase. If you decide to purchase a Valqari unit outright, Walsh says you can expect "pricing in line with any other smart appliance in your house." However, both Valqari and DRONEDEK have recognized the need to monetize the "big data" available from a community-based network of electronic sensor stations to help reduce costs of smart drone mailboxes for consumers. "Every DRONEDEK has the potential to be a weather station," said O'Toole. "We think we can harvest and sell very localized weather data to the National Weather Service, for example." Keeping Life Simple For all the extra features promised by Valqari and DRONEDEK, the main goal of smart drone mailboxes is to be effectively invisible, to be a non-issue for consumers and business owners alike. "Our goal is to automate package deliveries for people so that they don't have to be home or worry about getting home faster because someone might steal their package," said Walsh. "We want to be that company that allows them to spend more time doing what they love and less time worrying about the logistics of their life."

Smart Drone Mailbox Secures the Future of "Last Inch" Deliveries

If you haven't heard of digital twin technology yet, you will soon. While there is plenty of exaggerated and hypothetical talk about a virtual reality world called the metaverse, scientists are busy building a three-dimensional simulation of Earth. In other words, they are creating our planet's digital twin.Digital Twins DefinedWhat is a digital twin? It's a virtual representation of real-world entities and processes, synchronized at a specified frequency and fidelity. In other words, it is an exact digital replica of a physical object. Engineers use digital twins as part of digital transformation in aerospace manufacturing and, more broadly, Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution. But scientists, doctors, designers and other experts are also starting to use digital twins to monitor and understand the physical world on a deeper level.How Digital Twins WorkWhen defining what is a digital twin, it's important to realize that we can create digital twins at various levels. Digital twins can range from the tiniest transistor on a computer chip to something as vast and complicated as our planet's weather pattern or a logistics company's trucking route.Digital twins take 3D simulation farther in the life cycle because they reflect changes in the real world. Say, for example, an architect designs a home. They can create a 3D model of that house and even simulate how the structure will hold up as weather and time erode the materials. But what if we want to know how the actual house is after it's built? If a severe storm blows a few shingles off the roof, or if a child accidentally sends a baseball into a window, a digital twin would include those changes.In practice, engineers equip the products they build with sensors to monitor them and update the virtual versions. In this way, they can monitor the product long after it leaves the factory floor. This helps with maintenance and informing future designs and iterations. According to IBM, digital twins are designed around a two-way flow of information.Engineers also use the virtual model to run simulations, apply artificial intelligence and analyze the data they receive. Those insights are then shared with the physical object in the real world, creating a smart system and a constant feedback loop.Use Cases for Digital TwinsDigital twins are particularly helpful for projects that involve physically large structures or mechanical complex systems. It's no surprise that the aerospace industry, which involves large and complex designs, is quickly adding digital twin technology to its toolkit. Some examples of digital twins from IBM, Popular Mechanics and Fast Company include: 	Aircraft, spacecraft, automobiles, etc. in manufacturing 	Buildings, bridges and other infrastructure in design 	Energy sources and power equipment 	A digital twin of Earth for climate researchers to run simulations to understand how to plan for approaching extreme climate events and new challenges 	Hospitals and related ambulatory services twins for doctors and hospital administrators to optimize staffing and operations 	Patient digital twins to help physicians monitor disease progression and treatment 	Avatars of people suffering from chronic pain, which can help researchers optimize and predict the impact of medications 	Astronaut digital twins, which NASA is looking to utilize to prepare for deep space missionsFuture of Digital TwinsDigital twins are possible now because several technologies have recently matured and become widely adopted, including the Internet of Things, cloud computing, extended reality and artificial intelligence. Digital twins are already making a difference, and as their underlying technologies mature, the potential impact grows, too.Are you interested in all things related to technology? We are too. Check out Northrop Grumman career opportunities to see how you can participate in this fascinating time of discovery.

Digital Twin Technology Has an Avatar for Everything

Medicine has started to think smaller — specifically in the case of nanotechnology, much, much smaller.
Nanomedicine a billion times smaller than a standard meter has already saved millions of lives. But what is nanomedicine? And how does a robot, drug or fiber only 100 times bigger than a water molecule have the power to fight human disease?
What Is Nanomedicine? When Good Things Come in Really Small Packages
To effect life-saving change, nanomedicine utilizes pharmaceuticals, tissues and robots as small as cells themselves. In just one example, a research team made a nanorobot that could cut off cancer's blood supply. The itty-bitty "robot" was essentially a capsule made of DNA folded up like origami.
On the outside of the nanorobot was a protein designed to fasten itself to cancer, whether it was breast, ovarian, lung or melanoma cancer. On the inside was a single tiny but powerful thrombin molecule that, when exposed near the cancer, could cause clotting to cut off the cancer's source of nutrients and oxygen without hurting the person with cancer. In the study published in Nature Biotechnology, the host human's blood and brain remained clot-free.
In theory, a nanorobot with an anchoring protein made from a certain cancer could swim around, latch onto that cancer everywhere it was found in the body and, no matter how small the metastasis, eliminate all current disease, radically decreasing the odds of future disease.
Size Sometimes Matters
Like human cells, nanotechnology in medicine varies in scale depending on its target and function. At 30 nanometers (nm) a human skin cell is about a million times smaller than a grain of salt at 0.5 millimeters. A red blood cell is 8 nm in diameter on average. The messenger RNA (mRNA) that made up the COVID-19 vaccines? Each cell-soluble package of instructions for identifying variants of COVID-19 is about 500 nm in diameter, and every vaccine dose contains many lipid-based molecule packages of mRNA.
Likewise, nanorobots vary in size depending on where they are designed to go and what they are designed to do and carry with them. Nanofibers follow the same principle. According to a study in Int J Nanomedicine, to prevent rejection of donor tissue and eliminate waiting lists for organs, humans could have their own cells harvested and grown on a matrix of nanofibers that act as a scaffold. When the organ or tissue in question is finished, the fibers would be cued to degenerate, leaving only the patient's new bladder, bowel, cornea or Achilles tendon behind.
In other words, using nanotechnology in medicine, not only could organs and tissues be potentially replaced wholesale, but with nanofibers, new cartilage could be induced to grow over surfaces that have worn out, decreasing the need for some types of joint replacements.
Delivering Medicine to the Source
By replacing organs and tissues, nanotechology in medicine can be a bit larger than the bacteria it's trying to kill — but it can also be smaller or just about the same size. As published in Cureus, a recent systematic review of nanotechnology applications in the control of sepsis, a deadly condition leading to multi-organ failure, determined that nanotechnology can help save human life and improve health in numerous ways.
The review determined that nanosensors can quickly and accurately detect the presence of elevated blood markers of illness and that nanoformulations — highly specific drug therapy targeted at the exact bacteria causing disease in a particular patient — could be more beneficial, faster-acting and less harmful than antibiotics designed to wipe out whatever bacteria they find.
While conducting targeted therapy to cure disease, these nanomedicines could also deliver anti-inflammatory medication to prevent our bodies from overreacting to the presence of the foreign, harmful bacteria. All the while, nanoformulations would spare the bacteria that live in our gut, helping the digestion of food, the absorption of nutrients and the maintenance of health and hygiene.
Downsizing and Scaling at the Same Time
Though the practical applications and possibilities of nanomedicine are vast, with the exception of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, implementation has been slow. Despite this slow progress on the implementation side, the ever-growing field of tiny medical technology is rapidly evolving as a whole, and it promises a bright future where the biggest health concerns can be solved with the smallest tools.
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What Is Nanomedicine? When a Little Goes a Long Way 

Virtual reality (VR) is transforming the remote work world and opening up new possibilities for employers and employees alike — employers now have a bigger pool of possible candidates, and employees receive a better work/life balance.
One of the significant advantages of a virtual work environment is that employees can now simulate a shared physical space that emulates a real-life office, despite being miles apart. This sense of community helps remote workers collaborate more effectively and feel less disconnected from their colleagues. Meanwhile, employees still reap the benefits of remote work, including flexibility, cost savings, time savings, and more.
Calling on the Metaverse
That's where the metaverse — that brave new immersive, digital world of augmented reality (AR), VR, graphical whimsy and video — might come in handy. Writing in Entrepreneur magazine, David Nelson, COO of web content provider WordAgents, suggests that the metaverse could fundamentally transform the way remote workers live, work and collaborate. It could also help them and their employers regain the sense of team connectedness that's been blunted by pandemic-induced protocols."
"The metaverse will allow its users to work, play and stay connected with friends through everything from concerts and conferences to virtual trips across the globe," he predicts.
AR for Work
So who owns this virtual work environment and how does it work?
Innovative technology companies such as Spatial have developed 3D AR software tools that allow companies to design, build and customize their own virtual work environments. Remote employees will be able to "meet" and collaborate in real-time with colleagues in this new workspace, just as if they were all sitting around a conference table. All they need is a powerful personal computer — think high-performance graphics card and lots of memory — and the relevant software.
For a truly immersive experience, each employee could also wear an AR or VR headset, which would allow them to "see," manipulate and present in real-time other graphical or video elements "stored" in the work environment. Remote workers will also be able to create and personalize an avatar to represent how they look and move in this environment to add a more personal touch to their virtual interactions with others.
More Engagement, Better Training
Clearly, VR tools can support real-time collaboration among remote workers.
David Roe reports in the online journal Reworked that remote workers are now using VR tools to collaborate on projects from different parts of the world. VR also enables remote teams to better communicate ideas to clients, using three-dimensional drawings for example.
The immersive technology of VR enhances all of the benefits of remote work by creating a digital environment free of distractions that better allows colleagues to connect.
Keeping it Real
A virtual work environment also promises to be an effective way, for remote workers and companies alike, to recreate the logistic and emotional benefits of offsite team-building exercises.
Writing in Forbes magazine, Vestigo CEO and founder Marshall Mosher notes that cultivating workplace culture, maintaining team morale and enhancing collaboration among remote teams require real, connective experiences that are just as powerful as the in-person team development opportunities that defined the pre-pandemic workplace.
He imagines, for example, a virtual ropes-course-style challenge that empowers team collaboration and communication to solve complicated physical challenges despite everyone present being physically disconnected across the world. In this way, VR will allow teams to transcend their comfort zones, spur innovation and pursue collective growth.
"VR can help you build better connections by allowing your teams to register both an experience and the emotion of that experience, creating psychological effects that are vastly more memorable and impactful," Mosher observes.
In other words, explains Nelson, immersive, team-oriented VR experiences can also increase collaboration and team cohesion.
"In my experience," he says, "individuals who are part of a cohesive team tend to focus on the entire group more than themselves. They are more motivated to work toward team goals."
Trusting the Process
Ultimately, the virtual office environment is a powerful concept, but one that is still evolving as a reality for remote workers. Technologically, it promises a quantum redefinition of what we call work — how it's done, when it's done and where it's done. VR promises to help unlock growth, collaboration and innovation for hybrid teams in this brave new world of remote work.
 
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How VR Is Boosting Team Collaboration and Cohesion in the Virtual Work Environment

Climbing is a specialized skill that uses numerous abilities and techniques. Scientists working in robotics and materials research often gain inspiration from the natural world, using biomimicry as a guide, and this is especially true when looking to mimic climbing. For instance, animals that climb trees, and other animals with cool abilities, can be frequent sources of inspiration. So, what is it about climbing that inspires the research, and what is it that these innovators look for?There's interplay between speed, safety and efficiency, according to a research study published in the Royal Society that analyzes how climbing animals climb. For us, the activity makes use of our strength and the coordination of our hands and feet to propel us up a rock face, tree or other environmental hurdle. Similarly, many animals use their paws and feet, but others rely on special adaptations or techniques that are less common.Bears (but Not Polar Bears)Bears are pretty good climbers — so good, in fact, that the usual advice is not to try climbing a tree to escape them. They have strong curved claws in each foot that can grip tree bark, and as the National Parks Service points out, they're quite agile. However, unlike other animals that climb trees, they descend back legs first. They also use human-like techniques for rock climbing: scaling up with three points of contact and pushing with powerful leg muscles.While grizzlies can also climb, it's useful to know that polar bears cannot — though trees are scarce in the Arctic might not offer much of an escape route anyway.Mountain GoatsMountain goats, especially ibex species, are incredibly nimble in their mountain habitats. They use this amazing climbing skill to seek out nutritious herbs and lick salts from rock faces.Like other even-toed ungulates, they have two horned toes on each foot that are curved and can splay out. The outer edge is quite hard and comprises a horn wall, whereas the center is softer. The ability to widen the toes and deform the soles to match terrain surfaces gives these goats an incredible grip on near-vertical terrain.Hermit CrabsAsk anyone who has ever managed a tank of hermit crabs, and they'll tell you they have a few cool abilities that help them escape. They scale vertical tank walls with apparent ease, and tank enrichment should include hermit crab climbing toys. Anything with protrusions is scalable to these animals, including tree bark, coral walls and each other. The crabs use the tips of their legs to climb, a behavior that's employed in foraging, asserting dominance and escaping from predators.Hermit crabs have inspired robotics researchers to build pipe-climbing maintenance robots that can scurry along pipework in petrochemical plants to keep an eye out for ductwork failures.GeckosGeckos have serious climbing skills in all orientations, being able to cling to vertical surfaces just by the stickiness of their feet. They've inspired numerous biomimicry projects, including robotic climbers that can scale any surface and multi-use adhesive tape for spaceflights.What helps geckos climb is the tiny hairs, or setae, on their feet that generate weak but effective van der Waals charges between molecules. These grippers cling to surfaces without leaving a trace, last a lifetime and are inspiring the development of strong, reusable adhesives by NASA for space missions.OctopusesOctopuses also have interesting climbing abilities. Though they need to be in water to use them, their strong and flexible tentacles help them climb vertical surfaces. These tentacles are equipped with numerous strong and powerful suckers that can latch onto smooth surfaces, according to the New England Aquarium. Octopuses can even escape their tanks unless precautions are taken. Fortunately, a simple layer of Astroturf can stop their suckers from clinging, and aquarists usually also use a heavy or lockable lid on their enclosures to stop them from wandering.Their climbing ability has also inspired robotics. Biomimicry researchers have developed robots with features based on the tentacle and sucker anatomy of octopuses' limbs that can grip and manipulate irregular objects, including ladder rungs and rough walls.As biologists continue to study the amazing abilities of wildlife, engineers will undoubtedly identify even more qualities from the animal kingdom worth mimicking through human technology.Are you interested in science and innovation? We are too. Check out Northrop Grumman career opportunities to see how you can participate in this fascinating time of discovery.

Biomimicry Inspiration From Five Animals That Climb Trees and More

Cyber is an increasingly risky space. With more and more companies and institutions relying heavily on online operations, the need for enhanced cybersecurity has never been greater. The more people who connect their organization's phones and laptops to home networks, the bigger the risk it is for the organization's networked systems. Such vulnerabilities allow opportunity for cyber threat actors to operate undetected inside a network for long periods of time. The recent SolarWinds cyber-attack is a prime example that most organizations are not prepared for such a large-scale cyber intrusion. Traditional cybersecurity is focused on countering cyber threats to enterprise IT networks, like hacking into email servers. Over the past few years, efforts to secure critical Operational Technology (OT) systems have become more prominent. Built on the baseline idea of cybersecurity — the ability to preserve a network's confidentiality, integrity and availability in the face of cyber risks — two additional lines of cyber defense have emerged: Cyber Resilience and Cyber Survivability. This is especially important when it comes to military defense. Enhanced Cybersecurity As challenging as cyber threats are to most people, imagine an advanced cyber-attack against a fighter pilot during a mission. Once a system is breached, the jet's cyber defenses need to withstand the attack long enough for the warfighter to complete their assignment and return home safely. As antagonists are constantly evolving their cyber-attack methods, it's imperative for defense networks to have the ability to prevent, mitigate and recover from serious cyber events all while performing the assigned tactical mission. An aircraft's platforms must be cyber survivable to be able to successfully operate in the face of adversaries. "Cyber Resilience evolved beyond the Risk Management Framework (RMF) — largely procedural and compliance activities — into an idea that we want to design key system attributes into a weapon or mission system that enable that system to continue to function in the face of unplanned disruption," said Northrop Grumman Cyber and Information Solutions Director of Business Development, Dean "Data" Clothier. "As a specialty within System Security Engineering (SSE), Cyber Resilience is all about engineering design and the kind of system attributes that you want." Clothier went on to provide example questions that one may ask regarding the system attributes needed to fight through a cyber-attack: Does a mission system continue to operate when facing a range of potential sources of disruption, ranging from extreme weather events, to critical component failure, to operator error, to sophisticated malicious cyber activity? Once this cyber systems security engineering design is complete, then it naturally flows into the technology element of the NIST Risk Management Framework cybersecurity control selection. Clothier further explained that cyber resiliency ensures that a system, or the infrastructure on which it depends, is designed to "anticipate, withstand, recover and adapt" to disruptions and continue to function effectively, especially those caused by cyber-attack. In today's cyber battlespace, it's not only vital for weapon systems to be resilient, but to be survivable as well. "Cyber Survivability came from a different community — the joint warfighter who has systems survivability requirements that a weapon system, to be an effective defense warfighting platform, has to be designed to be survivable in its planned operational environment," Clothier said. "If you're the United States European Command, you want to be able to have weapon systems that can operate in the face of Russian weapon systems. If you're United States Pacific Command, you're worried about North Korean or Chinese-specific threats." Understanding what nation state cyber threat actors are capable of doing is key to the "threat-driven design" approach needed to counter the highest tier of actor the systems have to operate against, explained Clothier. The U.S. government states the performance requirement and it's up to the system designers to figure how best to do that. Today, the cyber requirements on a U.S Department of Defense (DoD) weapon/mission system are likely to include elements from all three areas: Cybersecurity RMF, Cyber Resilience/SSE and Cyber Survivability. It is important to interpret these requirements from their individual frameworks, and then identify the complementary inter-relationships between all three. Preserving Critical Functionality to Complete the Mission A program is only cyber survivable if it understands the highest adversary threat tier that the DoD states it needs to be designed against for which to operate. This requires a threat profile that details the capabilities and threat chain of the most capable actor of the required threat tier. Once this is determined, the threat driven design of a system begins with an analysis of the overall threat chain that examines how the actor would seek to breach and disrupt that system. This threat chain is then aligned against the three pillars of Cyber Survivability: Prevent, Mitigate and Recover from cyber-attacks. "First, the 'Prevent' pillar focuses on a range of technology approaches that can keep nation state actors from breaching the system and establishing root level access inside our system," Clothier said. "Second, we have to assume that sooner or later they will breach it — that's explicitly a requirement from the DOD — so that leads to the 'Mitigate' pillar. This pillar aims to keep the system operating at its required level of performance to complete the mission." Warfighters can't disconnect from the mission and go home—the cyber survivability performance mandates that they can complete the mission even if breached. "Once the mission is over, we must have systems that rapidly restore to full functionality within a specified time — that's the 'Recover' pillar," he continued. "If you can then take the cyber threat profile, design and test against it, then you know it's a cyber survivable system." Cyber survivable systems need to be built to maintain effectiveness against a certain threat level across its entire lifecycle. "That necessitates that you not only think of the architecture and cyber solutions when you build a system, but design it in a way that it's rapidly reprogrammable and has a strong modular design to facilitate regular upgrades for the entirety of a weapon system's lifespan, which often reaches 30 years," Clothier said. Outdated weapon systems can be used for decades, but the cyber threat changes incredibly fast. The system's ability to be reprogrammable and make quick upgrades is essential to cyber survivability. Flexibility is Key Any digitally-connected device needs to be modular and quickly reprogrammable in order to make cyber updates for a secured network. For instance, smart TVs are equipped with video and audio recording capabilities that can pose a risk to people's privacy when hacked, yet they lack security software that detect virus signatures, much less so than more advanced cybersecurity technologies. The ability to upgrade a system's security software is fundamental. "Cyber exploits are driven by vulnerabilities, and these vulnerabilities are driven by new technology releases that are driven by new product release cycles," Clothier explained. The more niche the hardware, the less likely it will have reprogrammable systems. As adversaries continue to advance and evolve their cyber warfare capabilities, it's especially important for our military weapons systems to be cyber survivable against these nation state threats. Are you interested in all things related to technology? We are too. Check out Northrop Grumman career opportunities to see how you can participate in this fascinating time of discovery.  

A Cyber Future that is Not Only Secure but Survivable

A significant part of the Perseverance rover's mission is to search for signs of ancient life on Mars. Since February 2021, the rover has been exploring the remnants of an ancient river delta inside the Jezero Crater. And recently, NASA announced the rover had discovered diverse organic matter on Mars.
The Perseverance rover is an unmanned vehicle whose mission is to survey the red planet, characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration and be the first to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.
The mission scientists chose the Jezero Crater because it is the site of an ancient lake basin that they suspected had a high potential for past habitability. They also knew that the crater floor possessed clays and other minerals that can preserve organic materials.
Organic Matter on Mars
According to Space.com, organic compounds are molecules composed of carbon and often include other elements, such as hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur. These organic carbon-based molecules are considered to be the building blocks of life.
Scientists had previously detected several types of organic molecules of Martian origin that were blasted off Mars thousands or even millions of years ago and then made their way to the surface of Earth as meteorites. But the Perseverance rover has been looking for this type of organic material on Mars itself. Since early July 2022, the Perseverance rover has been collecting rock samples from the ancient river delta formation. Each of the samples was drilled out of rocks that show this part of Mars likely could have supported Earth-like organisms in the ancient past and might still preserve signs of such microbial life.
Scientists examined the rock samples using one of the Perseverance rover's instruments called the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC). SHERLOC utilizes a technique that looks at the chemical makeup of rocks by analyzing how they scatter light. The instrument directs an ultraviolet laser at its target, which then allows scientists to classify organics and minerals present in a rock based on the distinctive spectral "fingerprint" of different molecules. Salty water, for example, can result in the formation of different minerals than fresh water.
The Building Blocks of Life on the Martian Surface
Out of 10 sites within the crater that the rover explored, all 10 came back with signs of organic molecules. These organic compounds mostly appeared connected to minerals linked to water. This type of organic matter on Mars points to the possibility that the building blocks of life could have been present on the surface of the red planet for a long time.
Additionally, researchers discovered evidence of many different classes of organic molecules. This suggests that the organic molecules might have originated from several minerals and mechanisms of formation.
Organic matter can be produced by geological processes as well as biological ones, so scientists have posited a few explanations for the existence of organic matter on Mars. One possibility is that the materials could have formed when water and dust interacted or were dropped onto the planet by dust or meteors. But the study's authors wouldn't rule out the possibility that the organic matter on Mars may be biotic, which means it came about due to the existence of life on the surface of Mars.
Even if the materials are not biological in origin, though, research into them could be crucial in the search for alien life. The organic matter on Mars can tell us more about the existence of carbon sources, and this could change our understanding of the red planet and the search for life in the universe.
This part of the Perseverance rover's mission represents the first step of the Mars Sample Return campaign, a joint effort by NASA and the European Space Agency that seeks to bring scientifically selected samples back from Mars to be studied on Earth to confirm the presence of organics. Subsequent missions would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis with lab equipment far more complex than could be sent to the red planet.
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The Perseverance Rover Has Discovered Organic Matter on Mars 

For deep-sea creatures that live where there's little to no sunlight, the rules of the game are simple: Eat, don't get eaten and try to reproduce. Some of these animals — such as jellyfish — produce their own light. Other animals shelter bacteria that produce light for them, like anglerfish with their bacteria-filled lures. A variety of sea creatures release luminescent particles to distract or mark would-be predators, as National Geographic describes. All of this bioluminescence in a very dark environment has led to extraordinary adaptations, such as eyes that can detect just a few photons of light. As a study in Current Biology reports, researchers have discovered another common tool for survival in the deep sea: ultra-black pigment. The Blackest Natural Black Scientists set out on research cruises in Monterey Bay, California, and the Gulf of Mexico to collect samples from 0 to 2,000 meters (about 6,562 feet) below the surface, using a trawl net or remotely operated vehicle. For comparison, commercial scuba divers with special equipment can reach depths of 600 meters (about 1,968.5 feet) before pressure from the water above becomes lethal for humans. The marine samples were collected at night, when deep-sea fish swim higher. The team identified 16 species of fish with ultra-black skin that reflected less than 0.5% of light shined on them. The darkest species — a dreamer anglerfish — reflected just 0.051% of light. In contrast, regular black fish have 2% to 3% reflectivity, black paper has 10% reflectivity and white or silvery fish have greater than 50% reflectivity. Many transparent sea creatures reflect less than 0.4% of light. According to the authors, land animals that produce ultra-black pigment include butterflies (0.06% to 0.5% reflectivity), birds of paradise (0.05% to 0.31% reflectivity) and jumping spiders. In these species, the ultra-black pigment is used to highlight bright colors, producing visual signals that warn potential predators or attract potential mates. In contrast, most of the ultra-black fish had black skin covering most of the body, suggesting that the main purpose is camouflage. Several of the ultra-black fish, including the Pacific dragonfish, use bioluminescent lures. This suggests that the ultra-black is used to conceal the hunter from its potential prey. For one species, ultra-black was found only around the gut, which would be useful for hiding bioluminescence from recently eaten prey. Notably, these 16 ultra-black species represent seven distantly related groups of fish, which all have close relatives that are colorful or silvery. This is good evidence that ultra-black pigment evolved multiple times. Tightly Packed Melanosomes Trap Light When the skin of these fish was observed under a microscope, the explanation for the ultra-black coloration appeared to be surprisingly simple. Like mammals, fish produce a pigment called melanin, which is packed inside membranes to form melanosomes. In other animals, including ultra-black land animals, melanosomes are sphere-shaped and separated from one another by supportive keratin protein. When light hits a melanosome, it can be absorbed or reflected. In ultra-black fish, the melanosomes are larger, oval-shaped, and closely packed together. Computer modeling shows that this arrangement is ideal for absorbing light. Since the melanosomes are so tightly packed, incoming light will almost always hit a melanosome. If that melanosome doesn't absorb the light, the shape of the melanosome causes the light to be reflected sideways, so it's likely to hit another melanosome. Thus, evolution has produced a super-efficient, super-thin light trap. This simple strategy has caught engineers' attention. Ultra-black surfaces are ideal for optical equipment, such as cameras and telescopes. The ability to absorb stray light can also improve solar panels, camouflage and night ops. Human-made carbon nanotubes are more black than ultra-black fish skins, with commercially available Vantablack absorbing 99.965% of incoming light and an even blacker carbon nanotube absorbing 99.995% of incoming light, MIT News reports. However, carbon nanotubes are expensive to produce and fragile. Thus, mimicking the simple architecture of melanosomes in ultra-black fish could allow for the production of flexible, affordable and durable ultra-black substances. Popular Science reports that scientists are already experimenting with synthetic melanin particles. Natural melanin can also absorb X-rays, radiation and heavy metals, which could make it useful for many safety applications. The Challenges of the Deep Sea You might wonder why deep-sea creatures need ultra-black pigment. After all, their environment is extremely dark, and regular black fish reflect just 2% to 3% of light. Keep in mind that these fish reside in a cold environment where there's no place to hide, little food and limited oxygen. Therefore, many of these fish are slow and have little energy to spare. Furthermore, most of the ultra-black fish collected were small enough to easily hold with one hand. Altogether, this means that these fish aren't strong predators and are vulnerable as prey. The authors used computer modeling to show that fish with 2% light reflectivity could be spotted from twice as far away as fish with just 0.5% light reflectivity (the cutoff point for ultra-black pigment) and six times as far away as the blackest fish with 0.05% reflectance. These can be life-or-death differences for small, slow fish. We know less about the deep seas of our own planet than about the surface of Mars. A few fishing expeditions revealed an extraordinary adaptation that might improve telescopes and solar panels and reduce exposure to toxic substances. Just imagine what else is hiding in the deep, waiting to be discovered, and how those discoveries may impact and inspire the future of new technology development. Are you interested in all things related to technology? We are, too. Check out Northrop Grumman career opportunities to see how you can participate in this fascinating time of discovery.

Deep-Sea Creatures May Light the Way for New Technologies

Humans are unique because of our ability to use language to communicate complex ideas. Back-and-forth conversations can be helpful and enjoyable but surprisingly difficult to arrange. Until recently, even people who lived or worked in the same building could find themselves playing phone tag for days, as they each tried to guess when the other person might be available for a conversation. Email helped speed up the process, but in the early days, it required the recipient to sit down at a desk computer and connect to the internet through their phone line.
The solution was presence technology, which could tell you if someone on your contact list was available online in real time. Popularized by AOL Instant Messenger in 1997, it allowed for texting a full decade before smartphones became common, explains Smithsonian Magazine. Texting has changed remarkably little since those early days — nowadays, we just have better internet access and more websites and apps we can use for texting. It's especially useful when people only have a little to say (perhaps a single question for customer service) or when they want to choose their words carefully.
In the quarter-century since AOL Instant Messenger was introduced, however, presence technology has gotten much smarter and is being used to improve other modes of communication.
Network Awareness in the Evolving Workplace
The COVID-19 pandemic supercharged how technology is transforming the workplace. Many employees found that they can be as productive at home as in the office, but they need effective ways to communicate with their coworkers. Many also missed the informal conversations that occur in hallways or at the water cooler, which can build camaraderie and lead to new ideas and solutions.
Many of these problems can be addressed by integrating presence technology into the suite of tools used by company employees. These tools can automatically determine whether someone has recently been active online (and, therefore, potentially available) and whether they are currently on a call or in a scheduled meeting. People can also indicate whether they are out for lunch, gone for the day, on vacation or otherwise don't want to be disturbed. You can then decide to wait for that person to become available (and send a message or tell the system to notify you) or find someone who is available.
You don't need to consider whether someone is working from their office, their home, their car or any other location that has internet access. Network location awareness allows a device to move between different networks and selects the proper configuration based on information about its available network connection.
Location information can be used to automatically adjust meeting times to the appropriate time zone for each participant. Many systems also allow users to have the same experience on different devices, so messages can go to your work phone, your personal phone, your laptop and your desktop computer. All of these tools working together leads to "unified communications and collaboration," which is a popular buzz phrase and an important goal for companies with distributed workforces.
By working seamlessly in the background, these tools can help increase efficiency (so workers can finish their work more quickly) and productivity (so companies can improve their bottom line).
Better Video Chats
Presence technology has also greatly improved large-group video conferences, especially when some participants are onsite and others are remote. Here, the challenge is to make sure all participants feel like they are in the same room and able to hear and be heard by all other participants.
One major improvement comes from artificial intelligence (AI) powered cameras pointed at each participant that can automatically center the person in the video. That can be combined with technology that automatically mutes background noise, spotlights the person speaking and allows participants to easily share their computer screens. This keeps the focus on people and their ideas and makes managing the technology an afterthought.
Improved video conferencing is not just good for company meetings — it's also a great way for grandparents who are not media savvy to connect with grandchildren who may not stay still for the camera. It's also ideal for telemedicine, allowing patients to see their regular physician or a specialist even if they cannot travel to the clinic. A video visit isn't appropriate for everything, but it can be ideal for simple tasks, like checking blood pressure, reviewing medications and discussing lab results and possible next steps. According to Harvard Business Review, the appropriate use of telemedicine can actually improve patient health and reduce costs.
Improved Convenience and Security
A more advanced level of presence technology is the use of facial recognition to unlock your phone. The goal is for the device to unlock almost instantaneously for you but stay locked for anyone else. Higher-end laptop computers are now available with a similar feature, as Windows Central notes.
Presence detection can be paired with sophisticated artificial intelligence to track people and their movements. The network location awareness that allows your device to be used on different networks can also allow some platforms to monitor all wireless devices emitting signals within a space. This is a reasonably good proxy for the people in that space.
Facial recognition software can be used to identify individuals as they move in and out of different areas. This technology could be paired with video AI to flag people who are moving in unexpected ways — perhaps more quickly or more slowly than expected or in an unusual direction or someone who seems to have fallen. An assisted living facility, for instance, could use it to keep track of vulnerable residents.
When combined with building security, facial recognition software can be used to determine how many people are in a space in case of an emergency or to identify suspicious individuals, but as with any technology, humans can use it for good or for ill. For example, an oppressive government could use this same technology to track down known dissidents.
Regardless of use case, it's clear that presence technology has changed the way we connect with people online, and even today, it's evolving with us as the world becomes more globalized and more digital.
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What Is Presence Technology?

If you want to give a mathematician a brain teaser, give them a simple puzzle or problem that no one has ever solved. The more (seemingly) simple, the better. In fact, some mathematical brain teasers are so potent that mathematicians warn each other against getting hooked on them. As Quanta Magazine reports, one notorious example of unsolved problems in mathematics is known as the Collatz Conjecture. One leading expert on the conjecture, mathematician Jeffrey Lagarias, calls it "a really dangerous problem," adding that "people get obsessed with it." A Hailstorm of Numbers So, what exactly is the Collatz Conjecture? Start by picking any positive whole number, such as 7, 42 or even 3,092,721. If the number is even, divide it by 2. If the number is odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. Next, take the new number that you just got and repeat the same process: if even, divide by 2, if odd, multiply by 3 again and add 1. Rinse and repeat, and keep repeating. To save on time and figuring, there are a variety of online calculators that will do the grunt work for you. Also, to save you from going over ground already covered, Wolfram Mathworld informs us that the Conjecture has been tested for every positive whole number up past five quintillion. The actual Conjecture is not this process itself, but a guess made by the mathematician who came up with it. His conjecture was that, if you pick any positive whole number and follow the process, eventually, the resulting sequence or "orbit" of numbers will reach 1. (Once it does, the sequence will keep going, but follow the simple loop 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1 ... ) The number sequences that this process creates have been called hailstone numbers, because they tend to alternately rise and fall, as hailstones forming in a storm cloud were once believed to do. UCLA mathematician Terence Tao notes that meteorologists have changed their theory of how hailstones are formed, but mathematicians still describe Collatz sequences or orbits as hailstone numbers. Polling the Positive Integers But Tao has done a great deal more than distinguish between hailstone numbers and hailstone weather. He has also made the most progress than anyone else in solving the Collatz Conjecture — determining whether sequences really all converge on 1. Tao's work on the Conjecture was inspired by an anonymous commenter on his personal blog. They suggested that he try to prove it for "almost all" numbers, without yet attempting to prove that there were no exceptions at all. Tao took the suggestion and followed up on it, developing a statistical process not unlike the process of choosing a suitable cross-section of voters for a pre-election poll. Per Quanta, Jeffrey Lagarias, who warned of the obsessive nature of the challenge, calls it "a great advance in our knowledge of what's happening on this problem." The Collatz Conjecture and Dynamical Systems For mathematicians, solving unsolved problems in mathematics does not need to be "about" anything but itself, any more than a piece of music needs to be "about" something.  But as Quanta notes, and Tao himself points out, mathematical sequences of the sort produced by the Collatz problem have much in common with dynamical systems found in the real world that can be described by differential equations. So, while Tao's partial solution of the Collatz Conjecture is unlikely in itself to lead to new technology, whatever furthers our understanding of mathematics will probably, sooner or later, lead to greater understanding of the world around us — in much the same way that Collatz sequences themselves seem to converge on 1.

The Collatz Conjecture: Closing in on a "Dangerous" Challenge

To suffer a blistering sunburn, watch your favorite movie or scroll social media, is to surf the waves of the electromagnetic spectrum. Sure, you may know about microwaves and ultraviolet rays, but what about terahertz (THz) waves?
Tucked between radio waves and infrared frequencies, these lesser-known waves have unique powers that make them especially useful for a wide range of applications, from communications to medical imaging and space exploration.
Still largely yet to be developed for everyday use, THz waves and the technologies that harness them are already changing the world, according to Mona Jarrahi, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and Northrop Grumman Endowed Chair holder.
A Hidden Corner of the Spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum ranges from low-frequency radio waves (think: Wi-Fi and cellphones) to high-frequency gamma rays (e.g., nuclear explosions or the area around black holes). At the lower end of the spectrum, radio frequencies enable communication, while higher frequencies, like visible light and infrared, enable us to see and photograph the world around us. Even higher frequencies, such as X-rays, enable detailed medical imaging.
However, the region between radio frequency and infrared — where THz frequencies lie — is still largely underdeveloped due to the inherent difficulty in developing electronics and gadgets that can effectively operate within this range. According to Jarrahi, "The challenge lies not in physical limitations but in making these types of devices cost-effective, compact and integrated."
Those barriers are expected to crumble in the coming decades.
The Promise of THz Waves
THz waves offer several advantages that enable groundbreaking technologies. For one, they have a special ability to obtain chemical information. Many molecules and chemicals respond uniquely to THz waves, which can help determine chemical composition. The waves make up some 98% of all photons, meaning they can also help reveal valuable information about far-flung galaxies.
In addition to chemical analysis, THz waves can travel through non-transparent materials, making them ideal for eventual use in security scanners to deliver much more detailed images. They also allow for higher data rates in communication systems, which could equate to significantly faster cellular data networks someday.
THz waves are non-ionizing and non-destructive in nature. In other words, they are safe for use in sensitive areas, such as medical imaging and diagnostics. In fact, THz waves are already being used in some clinics for burn wound imaging and quality testing in other industries, such as in the automotive, aerospace and pharmaceuticals spaces.
The Challenges and Future of THz Technology
Despite the unique powers of THz waves, the technology to harness them is still in its infancy. Most THz devices today are bulky, complex and expensive, limiting their use to research laboratories, space missions and factories.
But odds are THz waves will impact our everyday lives in the years ahead. As fabrication and material processing technologies advance, building out THz technology into a compact, affordable form is becoming increasingly possible. "The scope of possible applications for THz technology is vast and exciting," Jarrahi said.
What might that look like in practice? It could result in everything from point-of-care diagnostics through breath analysis and quality control in medical implants to even having a portable tool handy at the supermarket to determine the exact freshness of fruits and vegetables.
These future devices will ultimately use THz waves in the same way that spectrometers in space do today to analyze the makeup of planets and galaxies. While that process typically requires cold temperatures, Jarrahi's research group recently discovered a way to do so at room temperature. "That excites us because it brings us much closer to practical use with a much cheaper, portable and high-performance type of device," she said.
The transition to THz technologies is likely to be gradual — like cellphones or microprocessors to start — but the impact will be vast. Think of it as one of the next massive waves in technology.


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