Next by LASA Ezine

N E X T December 2013

Samsung Caught Red-Handed p. 8

CPUs Taking Control of Education p. 13

A Computer That Could Cure Cancer p. 21

The Next Space Race p. 31

THE FUTURE OF AUTOMIBILI LAMBORGHINI

lamborghini.com

table of contents contributors four letter from the editors five the history of computers six samsung caught red-handed eight cpus taking control of education thirteen

no more gas. save some cash eighteen the best personal compuer ever twenty-three

a $68 billion train wreck twenty-six the best and rest of space history twenty-nine the next space race thirty-one

contributors Oscar Newman An avid fan of technology, Oscar has been around computers since an early age, and has been the designated technology supervisor in most classes since elementary school. Introduced to programming in 5th grade, he quickly became hooked, and began creating iPhone apps and websites. Oscarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hobbies include photography, film, and music.

Satvik Kolluri Satvik enjoys engineering and science, and he enjoys making things. In extracurricular clubs like Science Olympiad, Robotics, Tennis, and having Technical Theatre as his only elective he hopes to be an astrophysicist when he grows up. Interested in all things space and an avid follower of new technological advancements, he enjoys the variety of experiences that are offered at LASA High School.

David Ortuno David was a kid that had no technology when young but as he grew older he started to get serious about education and his plans to go to college and realized that the tools that technology would help him acheive his plans. Today he uses his lunch time playing soccer with his friends, enjoys playing videogames and has a computer and phone that he uses to research information for school, communicate and socialize with friends.

Abe Huerta Abe is a lacrosse player and plays both the stand-up and electric bass. In his spare time he makes Christian t-shirts and goes to work with his dad to bring income into Austin Restoration Ministries, a Christian program. All this relates to technology because the future of technology will change the way he views his religious beliefs.

letter from the editors

photo by Jack Davern

Welcome to the next generation of technology. With NEXT you can explore the coolest new technologies that come from a booming technology industry. We provide you with a magazine that will give insight on all the new technologies. From space capsules to computers that could cure cancer, the variety of products we provide you information on is only bound by one thing, a subject of technology.

our readers. Finding products that are innovative as well as applicable in life was one of our hardest tasks. Once we had the ideas, getting access to new exclusive content was hard because companies were scared about ideas being copied or plagiarized. The inspiration for this magazine comes from the knowledge that some of these items that we are writing about could affect future generations.

We strived to make science interesting to you by presenting it in an applicable and interesting way. With new companies making technologies that seem generations ahead of their counterparts.

We have worked hard in the one semester we had to make this magazine. We hope you enjoy the magazine and appreciate the audience.

The biggest challenge for NEXT was to make the content in our magazine relevant and attractive to

Thanks for reading,

Oscar, Satvik, David, and Abe

The History of the Computer By: David Ortuno

1900s

The Beginning Not long ago humans didn’t have computers and it all started when the first time the word Computer was used to describe a person who can compute numbers. In so many ways the computer has evolved and their only getting better starting from the first mechanical computer in 1882 that could do simple calculation to the first home computer to portabe computers and tablets. Computers started as a machine used to do calculation and now it has turned into a machine for personal uses like gaming and looking at videos.No one really knows who evented the computer, and that is because theres the computer wasen’t invented by one person. There’s only people that contribute to the making of the computer.

Before 1900s 1613:The word “computer” was used for the first time,but it didn’t have the same meaning that what it means today.It is used to describe a person that can calculate and compute numbers !822:Charles Babbage attempted to build a engine that could compute several numbers at a time and make hard copies of the results.He named it the Difference Engine but was never completed due to low funding, it was the considered to be the first automatic computing engine 1837:Charles then suggested the Analytical Engine, the first general-purpose mechanical computer.The engine had a integrated memory, basic flow control, and a Arithmetic Logic Unit but never finished before he died. Started by Charles Baggage’s in 1837 and finished by his son in 1901 the Analytical Engine was the first generalpurpose machinal computer. Photo By: Martin F. Johansen

Photo By: archive.computerhistory.org

The Universal Automatic Computer, the first business purpose computer. It used by CBS news reporter Charles Collingwood. 1936: A German named Konrad Zuse created the the Z1 in his parent’s living room and created the first algorithmic programming language named “plankalkul”. He was one of the first people to create a commercial computer. 1937: Physics and mathematics professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry of Iowa State University started to build the Atanasoff-Berry Computer and finished it in 1942.It was the first electronic digital computer. 1943: J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly invented the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator at the University Of Pennsylvania but was not completed until 1946.The ENIAC had 18 thousand vacuum tubes, was 1.8 thousand square feet and weighed close to 50 tons. 1951: Mauchly and Presper left the University Of Pennsylvania and were funded by the Census Bureau to build the Universal Automatic Computer. The UNIVAC was the first commercial computer for government and business purposes.The computer required multiple people to operate and contained thousands of vacuum tubes. 1954: John Backus invented FORTRAN, the first successful high level programming language which is still used today for programming mathematical and scientific applications.

1955: MIT introduced the Whirlwind machine on march 8, a computer that was revolutionary. The first digital computer with real-time graphic and magnetic core RAM. 1958: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invented the integrated circuit which is know as the computer chip, they wanted to make more of less.They were separate inventors and both invented close to identical computer chips, without even knowing about each other.

2000s

2001: Apple introduced the Mac OS X operating system, it provided pre-emptive multitasking and protected memory architecture.Later Microsoft would unveil Windows XP, which had a significantly remade GUI 2006:Apple introduces their MacBook Pro, their first Intel-based and dual-core mobile computer, later they unveiled an iMac which was Inel-based.

1970: Intel introduced first Dynamic Random Access Memory chip to the public and was the best selling memory chip in the world by 1972.

2007:The iPhone is released by Apple and made it possible for smartphones to do computer functions.

1971: IBM introduced memory disk and now is known as the floppy disk, a group of engineers lead by Alan Shugart. The disk is a 8-inch flexible plastic disk with magnetic iron oxide.It provided a new way to transport data from computer to computer.

2009: Microsoft launches Windows 7, it provides the function to pin applications on the taskbar, makes advances in handwriting and touch recognition.It was predicted that a german would design and build a computer that could be use as a laptop as well as a tablet, and would able to roll up like a yoga mat.

1975:IBM 5100 was introduced to the public on september, the first portable computer which weighed 55 pounds and had a 5-inch CRT display. 1976:Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple in april and introduced the Apple 1, the first computer with a single-circuit board. 1979: Micropro International released WordStar, the first successful word processing software program made for microcomputers and was really selling in the early eighties. 1983: Apple Lisa Computer, the first home computer with a graphical user interface, it is what we use today and provides us with windows,scroll bars, icons, pull-down menus and the mouse. 1985:Microsoft came up with their own next-generation operating system that would provide a GUI, they called it Microsoft Windows. In march 15 the first dot-com domain name was registered and years before the World Wide Web would beging Internet history.

Photo By: Microsoft

First Microsoft Windowsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; logo when the operating system was introduced to the public in 1985, it was the newest thing around next to Applesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; operating sysytem.

2010:Apple releases the Ipad, the first tablet but not the last.It changed the perspective of people and how they looked at media. By 2013 it is predicted that voice control keyboards and mouses are going to take over the regular systems we have been using. Its is being practiced by many people that in about two years their are going to be computers that look like a pen that projects a holographic screen and a keyboard and will be able to project then on any surface. Both Scientists and Designers are predicting that by 2020 all the computers will have a type of DNA reader. It is being predicted by computerist in their article 10 Years In The Future that computers are going to be switched off and no one knows for how long but they do know that when they turn on they will have no issues and will work perfectly. It is being predicted by 2040 that for sure that desktops computers will be holographic including the keyboard, mouse and screen.Also that their is going to be a computer that will be able to fold up into the size of a sticky note.

Samsung Caught Red-handed By: David Ortuno

photo by: Samsung Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, they can be reached at 1 (800) 726-7864 costumer service, founded in1938, Daegu, South Korea, and founded by Lee Byung-chul.

person posted that his girlfriend’s HTC One X phone constantly crashed and that the Samsung Galaxy Note was better than HTC Sensation XL handset. Another person posted that the Galaxy S3 outperforms the HTC One X in graphics and battery life. This kind of posts caused Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission to launched an investigation into allegations in April to find out if Samsung was using hiring writer, designated workers or paying kids to post negative comments about HTC devices while at the same time recommending Samsung cell phones. The allegations were true; Samsung was caught and fined almost $340,000 on Oct. 24, 2013 by Taiwan’s FTC writing fake reviews online, costing HTC money .

HTC Corporation, formerly High-Tech Computer Corporation, is a Taiwanese manufacturer of smartphones and tablets headquartered in New Taipei City, Taiwan, they can be reached at 1 (866) 449-8358 costumer servise, founded May 15, 1997, founded by H. T. Cho, Cher Wang, and the currents CEO is Peter Chou. photo by: HTC

Many people don’t understand why Samsung would do that, Best Buy Worker Esmeralda Torres said, “I don’t understand why they would have to do that if they feel so confident about their devices why do they have to talk down about other carriers.”

HTC already reported their first quarterly loss this early October since they went public in 2002 and might report another loss the upcoming month. But their devices still are going toeto-toe with Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy S smartphones. The HTC One has already gotten good reviews despite the fake ones. Some people think Samsung wrote the fake post for publicity and other think because they are worried about having competitions and trying to make sure that it doesn’t happen by trashing HTC and convincing people that HTC’s devices are not good. Other like Torres think that they did it because their devices are not working properly like she said, “there’s a lot of different things I know a lot of the new s4s are having a lot of issues because you reset i had a customer that came in and his phone was rebooting every five minutes just shut off and turn back on. s3, we haven’t had a lot of issues with those but I know it freezes a lot, it tends to freeze. The note 2 size, some people like the size of it some people don’t, it’s just a really big phone there’s some of the features that it’s supposed to do but don’t work how they’re supposed to work.”

photo by: HTC The HTC One X has a 4.7 inch HD display, LITE 4G data, advanced 8-megapixel camera, solid polycarbonate body, fast dual-core S4 processor, free cloud storage, Android 4.0, 8.5 hour max battery life, and a front camera for video chat. Released on February 26, 2012 to the public.

photo by: HTC The HTC Desire HD is a smartphone with a 4.3 inch HD desplay, a 217 ppi, 8 migapixle camera, 1.5GB built-inmemory, 9.16 hour max battery life, and was released to the public on oct 20, 2010.

Today in the smartphone industry there are many companies fighting for whose product is the best and for the best price. A little competition between HTC and Samsung is understandable but Samsung going to the trough the trouble of hiring workers and paying kids to post bad things about HTC that may or may not be true is a new low for Samsung and is going to take a while for Samsung to earn back the trust of the people. People might think that Samsung did that because they truly feel threaten by HTC and by how fast their evolving and coming up with new smartphones faster than them and features that rival theirs. They fear that HTC could possibly become a better phone company than them and eventually cause them to lose customers and money to HTC. Many people would agree with Torres if they got asked if what Samsung did change their perspective or the way they look at them. They would say the exact same thing that Torres said “it has, it has changed a lot because it’s just in my perspective you don’t want to deal with someone who would fallen to such a low moral, just having to write all that stuff, something that’s not even true, it’s like they should try to make themselves look better by expanding on what their phones can do instead of having to talking down.” HTC has accomplish so much in a short time since they went public in 2002 and have many smartphones that are used today including their newest smartphone the HTC One with speakers in the front with an aluminum design and a home screen with all your favorite content in one preventing people from having to search for their applications, changing the smartphone experience forever.

photo by: Samsung The Samsung S3 has a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, Andriod 4.0 operating system, 4.8” touch screen, 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera. The Samsung S4 has a 1.9GHz quad-core processor, Andriod $.2.2 jeally bean operating system, 5” touchscreen, 13 megapixel rear camera , a 2 megapixel front camera and a 16GB intenal memory.

the iphone 5s has thouch ID using the user’s fingerprint for better protection, has iOS 7, new iSight camera with a 15 percent larfer sensor, it comes with Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic, and a 5W USB Power Adapter.

photo by: Apple The HTC One his HTCs newest phone right now with a ultrapixle camera, advanced low-light performance, a metal body, beats audio, a 1080p display, and automatically uptating home scren.

photo by: HTC

HTC has many good features as Torres said “HTC like any other phone it’s going to be a good phone android phone, it has a better image quality when it comes to the phone, and the camera on it is also a better camera with more megapixels on it.” Samsung has apologized on their website page that they are going to become committed to honest communications and will encourage all their employees worldwide to remain honest and not to do anything like what happened to happened ever again. But people don’t know what to believe now.

photo by: HTC The HTC Windows 8X is the first HTC phone with windows 8, it has a unibody design with a colorful curved back and shaped glass front, includes a high-quality camera, wide-angle front camera, beats audio with high-power amp, dual -core S4 processor, and intergrated witn XBox

Despite how they got caught the reviews about HTC and their products had little to no effects as Torres mentioned I have had customers that have come in here and ask lots of questions about and they mention the reviews and what Samsung was writing about them but it hasn’t really affected the sales for HTC.”

photo by: HTC The HTC One Family includes the original HTC one and a smaller version called the HTC one mini one. THe HTC One mini has a compact 4.3” desplay screen and a slimmer fit, and dual front stereo speakers.

Now people are being more careful on what to believe and what not to believe and what is true and what is fake. Who knows if Samsung will try this again or if something like this happens again?

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CPUs Take Control of Education

Photo Courtesy Of: Connect Your Community

student studies in a classroom. He lives in an undoubtedly poor neighborhood. His hand is cramping from having to copy down all these notes from the chalkboard. He looks around the classroom and views piles of textbooks around the classroom. A different student, in a different community, is climbing up the stairs to reach his first period class. When he realizes he forgot his laptop. He gets to his classroom and logs in to the computer and looks for his assignment today. He comes upon a concepts he doesn’t understand, and looks the concept up on his online textbook.Most people think technology helps educate the students better. But according to Jacob Stephens, a computer science

teacher at The Liberal Arts And Science Academy, said, ”Computer scientist create devices to increase the education achievement level but the device actually decreases it.” What all this comes down to is your motivation level. “A self motivated student would definitely benefit more from the future technology.” said Rainer

self motivated student who tries and then quits later on. According to PBS Learning Media, Ninety-one percent of teachers surveyed reported having access to computers in their classrooms, but only one-infive (22 percent) said they have the right level of technology. When those 22 percent of teachers say they don’t have the right level of technology, I come to think that they don’t understand what a computer, ipad, smartphone or even an invasion station is really made for. “Technology is just a tool. Its main purpose is to extend learning,” said Stephen. In general, students and teachers want to benefit from technology, but it makes it difficult to benefit from something you don’t really understand. “My biggest concern is, this

‘‘Computer scientists create devices to increase the education achievement level but the device actually decreases it.” Mueller, computer science teacher at The Liberal Arts and Science Academy (LASA). A self motivated student will try to learn a concept he hasn’t learned and try to learn it from the computer. Compared to a not

By: Whitnie Soelberg

PhoPhoto Courtesy Of: Jesse Zhang

generation of students are awesome at watching videos but very few students can create something ,” said Stephens. “Many students don’t really understand how things actually work behind the scenes.” An abounding amount of students see videos and emails and all sorts of things. However Stephens has a point in saying that student just don’t know what really happens when you press send or play or even a simple letter key. “I’m not advocating that everyone needs to be a computer scientist but a computer can empower you to do some awesome stuff,” said Stephens. “We learn better with technology because there is different ways to learn,” said Advaith Anand. On the other hand technology

in education can be a good tool. Technology can be a good tool by being able to learn at your own paste. “Not everyone can learn from reading the textbook,” said Anand. A student like the beginning could not research on a topic he did not understand because he only had a textbook to work with. “I remember when I was in the sixth grade, if I didn’t understand it from the textbook, I was screwed,” said Anand. According to ECAR Research Study 66.4 percent of high school students have a laptop. The other 33.6 percent are basically incapable of reaching their full learning capacity. I came to realize that if a student thinks all these resources are great, the resources of the future can’t be imagined. “I think we are at the beginning

of the future in technology,” said Mueller. “How teachers uses the technology to accomplish things has a lot to do with it.” said Stephens. I am a student in LASA ,and I go to classes that use a lot of technology and classes that don’t. However I learn the same amount of concepts in both classes. The surprising thing is that I don’t really understand the difference between what I do on the computer and what I do without the computer. “I personally have a lot of down time in my classes so I can utilize that time more efficiently if i have a laptop,” said Keivaun Waugh, a LASA student. If a student has a laptop you can go everywhere and have your work by just having a laptop or using google docs for your work.

Photo Courtesy Of: Tukimin

“I think google docs are great for group projects, and an awesome way to communicate,” said Advaith. “Also you don’t have to be in the same place.” Google docs are a good source because a student can do a lot of research and still work on their project. Plus, a student can even work together with another student even a professor. “I personally prefer a traditional classroom setting,” said Waugh. “I get a lot more out of those because I have someone to talk to compared to watching a video online or reading an article. The classroom setting also gets you personalized attention when you want it.” In this case Waugh prefers to learn from a teacher because the setting gives you more information. Therefore, a student can understand the subject not abstractly but also physically.

“I think learning from the computer is the future of our learning,” said Mueller. What the reader should by now come to realize is that whether we may want to or not, we have no choice but to accept society as it changes and learn by using the technology that is developing. “Now, online learning is cheaper and the price will only decrease and decrease as we progress to the future,” said Mueller. If the reader looks back to the example used in the beginning there was a poor child who uses a textbook compared to the more wealthy one who has his textbook online. Concluding that the price will only drop and drop those poorer students will eventually be in the shoes of the students who do have the online textbook. After looking at the view of technology from both sides of the

story I realized the true meaning of technology. For some teachers technology is just a tool, but some teachers cannot make the course productive without it. With technology or not, a student can learn only if he has the motivation level that says, “I can do anything that comes my way.” As the future comes, students will just have to adjust to learning from the computer. “Learning from the computer is definitely where education is headed,” said Mueller.

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No More Gas. Save Some Cash. Chevy Volt

wo competitors that are running in the electric car market are the speedy 2013 Tesla Model S and the 2014 Chevy volt. The Tesla may be very expensive as where the Chevy Volt comes about 97,000 less. In the comparison below an electric car buyer will find that the income you make will be the grand difference in which car an electric buyer would choose.

Key Features: Gas Electric Motor

380 Miles Between Stops

Bose Sound System

17” Sporty Wheels

7” Diagonal Touch Screen

On Average $1.65 Per Day To Charge

Photo By: Abe Huerta

he Chevy volt, the competitor, comes in at $27,000 or $750 for three years. The Volt Comes with 17” standard sporty wheels and seven-speaker Bose audio system with a subwoofer and 30 percent smaller, 40 percent lighter and uses 50 percent less energy than the regular leading Bose system. Plus it seats four people and has two touch screens that are 7 inches diagonally. The Volt can travel 900 miles between fill ups. With a full capacity of an 85kwh the Volt can travel 38 miles per battery, and 342 with a full tank of gas that runs 37 miles a gallon. It can also travel more than 100 mph. With all this the Volt can also travel up to 900 between full tank of gas and full battery charge. So, how this works, a driver keeps recharging but when your charge runs out you use the gas. And until your gas runs out you go to the gas station. On average, you spend $1.65 on electricity for the battery to reach its full capacity. A Volt driver spends $50 of gas monthly.

Tesla Model S Key Features: 416 Horsepower

17” Touchscreen Dashboard

Charges In Ten Minutes

Seats Up To Five People

Panoramic glass roof

Certified 265 Miles Per Battery

Photo By: Abe Huerta

he Tesla Model S, a leading electric car, can gain great reviews weekly. A feature that attracts a buyer as soon as you open the door a 17” touch screen dashboard. Web, navigation, media,energy camera, phone and controls are all included in the amazing screen. The Model S can travel 300 miles when the 85kWh can be at its full capacity ,and with an outstanding 416 horsepower. Although, that its estimated range its certified range 265 miles. 130 miles an hour is The Tesla’s top speed. It also has a Panoramic glass roof. The glass blocks 98% of light and 81% of heat. Therefore, it allows your battery level last longer. The Model S charges in a simple 10 minutes with a 240V outlet. Not only that but in those simple five minutes it charges to full capacity which means you can travel up to 300 miles. This awesome transportation vehicle, with all these cool features, $124,000 or 1,700 a month. This vehicle seats up to five people.

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With Dual-Position Kickstand, Improved Camera, And 1080p Full HD widescreen display

One of the 512 highly specialized ASIC chips powering Anton, all of which are arranged in an eight by eight by eight grid for high speed data trafsfers.

Photo Courtesy of D. E. Shaw Research

The Best Personal Computer Ever Oscar Newman

512

custom designed chips, a computational capacity of over 100 times that of conventional supercomputers, the ability to simulate the complex interactions of tens of thousands of atoms in a fraction of the time it would take it’s predecessors, all converging in one computer, Anton, a supercomputer with just one goal, to understand the intricacies of protein folding, and possibly even cure cancer. “What [D. E. Shaw Research] has done is they’ve said, ‘You know what, its great to have general purpose machines, but because they’re general purpose, they’re also not specialized, so we’re going to go all the way back the other direction and build a computer that can only do one thing,’” Eric Jones, the CEO of Enthought, a scientific computing and analysis company in Austin, Texas, said. Named after the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Anton is a supercomputer designed by

D. E. Shaw Research, a company under the scientific guidance of Dr. David E. Shaw, the founder of the computational hedge fund, D. E. Shaw & Co. Anton was designed by a huge team of engineers, scientists, and programmers over many years, and through millions of dollars of research

and experimentation, all for the purpose of modeling protein folding. It has the potential to revolutionize drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry, negating much of the need for human trials. More importantly, Anton could help scientists discover the cure to diseases such

[David Shaw] wanted something that was truly groundbreaking, somethign that couldn’t have been done without his efforts. —Eric Jones 21

David Shaw, the founder of D. E. Shaw and D. E. Shaw Research and driving force behind Anton. Photo Courtesy of D.E. Shaw Research

as cancer or diabetes. Backed by his successful business and background in computer science, Shaw was in a unique position to create Anton. He had both access to the resources and the knowledge required to create something on such a massive scale, as well as the willingness and curiosity to actually build the computer. “D. E. Shaw Research is really kind of a playground for him to attack problems that he thinks are important for the world, and that’s where he can take 20 year views on things,” Jones said. “They’re really on a research path and have this huge amount of latitude to really do it over a long period.” D. E. Shaw Research is also in a unique position currently

for other reasons. They have the ability to focus solely on research and furthering knowledge, rather than have everything motivated

D. E. Shaw Research is really kind of a playground for him to attack problems that he thinks are important for the world. –Eric Jones by profit. Pat Miller, a former software engineer at D. E. Shaw Research, said this ability to work on large projects over long periods of time also allows for them to

work on extraordinarily complex and innovative projects and research. “David Shaw was after getting something groundbreaking and new,” Miller said. “He didn’t want to do science just because, and move it just incrementally forward. He wanted something that was truly groundbreaking, something that couldn’t have been done, or wouldn’t have been done without his efforts.” Anton isn’t just faster than conventional computers; it’s based on a completely different concept. Conventional computers are designed to be general purpose, adaptable to any situation, but Anton only needs to do one thing, it just needs to do it as efficiently as possible. “Special-purpose computers were more common in the 1970s and 1980s, but nowadays nearly all ‘supercomputers’ are built from the same general-purpose chips that go into desktop computers,” Christopher Fenton, an electrical engineer at D. E. Shaw Research, said. “When designing a computer, you are always making a trade-off between flexibility (the ability to solve any problem) and speed (the ability to solve a given problem quickly). We traded off a lot of flexibility to gain a lot of speed.” Most computers are built to handle simple operations, like adding, multiplying, saving and loading files. This allows someone to create a program to do nearly anything they want. While this provides a lot of flexibility, it also has some drawbacks. “Most of [the computer] sits idle for a long time,” Miller said. “You have bits hanging out in RAM that mostly aren’t being touched, and you have large parts of the CPU that aren’t being involved.” There is rarely a simple solution to this problem though; this inefficiency directly results from flexibility, so to increase

efficiency, flexibility must be decreased. Jones describes four tiers of specialization, software, Graphical Processing Units (GPUs), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), and Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). First, the most general purpose tier, doing everything in software on normal general purpose processors. This works, but lacks much of the efficiency needed for many scientific applications, and even for running modern video games. GPUs make up the second tier. They have been specialized to quickly do mathematical operations related to graphics, like rotating objects made of millions of points. Despite this, GPUs can still be used for general purpose computing, and have a multitude of other applications, some not even related to graphics. After GPUs come FPGAs, which are custom created chips, but still aren’t completely specialized. The final tier is ASICs, the chips that power Anton, which are completely custom chips designed for a single purpose. ASICs offer a massive boost in speed, but cannot do anything other than what they were explicitly created to do. “If you go from writing general software on an x86 [the predominant type of processor architecture in computing], it’s very configurable, you can hire programmers to do that,” Jones said. “With GPUs, now you have to have special hardware, it’s more expensive, and you have to hire a little bit different person, it’s a little more expensive than doing the other, maybe two or three x. You go to an FPGA, now you’re probably going to have another jump of two or three x, but when you go from FPGA to building your own silicon, holy cow, that’s like, I don’t know, 100x, I mean it’s way, way, expensive.”

Not only does Anton use custom designed ASICS, but it uses 512 of them, precisely arranged to communicate as quickly as possible with each other. The chips rest in an 8x8x8 grid such that each chip connects directly to it’s six neighboring chips, rather than having a single chain of connections like a conventional computer. “Each link between chips can send something like 50 Gigabitsper-second (compared to, say, 5 megabits-per-second for a typical home cable modem connection),” Fenton said. Before they can even be arranged in a grid and connected to the thousands of cables in the room-sized computer, the ASICs

Each link between chips can send something like 50 Gigabits-per-second compared to, say, five megabits-per-second for a typical home cable modem connection. –Christopher Fenton

have to be designed and built individually. “You might start with an algorithm that you want to make go very quickly,” Fenton said. “You can break that down into how long each part of your problem takes to solve, and which operations get repeated over and over (and are unlikely to change in the future), and decide which parts might be good to make specialized hardware circuits for. You spend a few years turning those ideas into a fully fleshed out design for a chip. You eventually send your design off to a factory where it gets turned into actual silicon chips.” Alongside the highly specialized

A rendering of a BPTI protein surrounded by watercreated by Anton. Each atmon is represented by a sphere and water is shown by the brown lines. Photo Courtesy of D.E. Shaw Research

ASICs, there are still massive amounts of software needed to run the computer. Despite the fact that they handle many of the molecular simulations, many other important functions of the computer revolve around the software. “If you look at the code, somewhere in that big application that you’ve written, there’s a scientific kernel that’s actually running your protein folding or your electromagnetic waves or whatever it is,” Jones said. “It turns out that in scientific code the algorithm is actually a small kernel, and everything around it, loading data, you model in, being able to measure the simulation as it’s running, capturing that data coming out of it so that you can analyze it later on, being able to visualize it, being able to write it out to reports that people can understand, that’s probably 90 percent to 95 percent of an algorithm of a computer program. They don’t get around that, they just made that kernel that they have very very fast. They still have to do all that other stuff.” While any simulation requires both hardware and software, Fenton said, what makes Anton different is the level to which

the hardware and software are designed together. “Only wanting to solve a single problem (molecular dynamics simulations) lets us ‘cheat,’ by building some of the algorithms in our simulation directly into hardware,” Fenton said. “The software is the glue that ties all of the different bits of specialized hardware together.” What Anton contributes to science is the ability to see what truly happens at the molecular level, rather than just making an inference. Countless interactions happen within the span of a millisecond, and until now, no one really understood the intricacies of them. “One person was working on what are called sodium channels, which are sodium pumps that maintain the amount of salt inside your cells and outside your cells, so your cells can work properly in their surrounding water, and there’s been a lot of speculation as to what the actual mechanism by which this pump was turned on, and turned off, and we were able to do a simulation to show exactly where a hydrogen would act as an on-off switch,” Miller said. Anton has also lead to unexpected discoveries at a microscopic scale. It creates the ability to take a protein or molecule from a human body, and evolve it, and see what happens when you do different things to it. “One of the proteins [we looked at] was a BDP, a bovine pancreatic enzyme.” Miller said. “It was known that it had these things called crystalline water, which are little water molecules that are trapped inside the protein, and it was known that these waters could move in and out, that a water could migrate its way from the inside to the outside and from

the outside to the inside, but when we simulated it, we actually saw that instead of just migrating in and out, every once in a while, the protein would just open up wide, and they would flow through, and no one had really anticipated that” While the ASICs are fast, they are costly as well, and Anton is over five years old now. Few, if any, projects similar to Anton exist currently, but other methods of computation are slowly catching up to the speeds at

“You have to understand that the boundary conditions of a problem change the fidelity of what comes in, and the traditional way to do something like Anton, to do a molecular dynamics simulation, is to do something like either replicate it and assume that this one protein is floating out in space surrounded by an infinite number of replicas of itself in every dimension, or to just surround it with lots of water, and that’s not really how the systems in our body work,” Miller said. “They’re really glued into larger systems that do something, so I think being able to do something big enough to find that kind of result, to build systems that are more faithful to what we would see in nature, is what’s going to come next.” The advantage Anton gives to scientists to do things like curing cancer is the ability to have a concrete idea of what is happening at the molecular level. It will allow for people to see protein interactions with a level of clarity never previously possible, and for scientists to understand why exactly a protein doesn’t function, or what is blocking a drug from working, or causing its side effects. Anton paves the way for a completely new type of medical innovation, one which is safer, quicker, and more useful. “The way [proteins] interact with other drugs and what drugs can dock in them is very dependent on understanding how this folding can occur, and if we can, then we can start understanding not only other proteins, but other molecules as well and how they interact.” Jones said. “You can start simulating instead of having to inject the drug in to see how it works on somebody... That virtual simulation is really the holy grail of drug discovery”

Being able to do something big enough to find that kind of result, to build systems that are more faithful to what we should see in nature, is what’s going to come next. —Pat Miller

which Anton can work. “With the gaming industry being so large, the ability of GPUs is scaling very quickly, so the tools built by Nvidia, and ATI or AMD, they now allow you to program their GPUs to run mathematical simulations, and I think those guys are getting much closer to what Anton can do.” Jones said. “Anton was the only way to do it in the past, but now these machines can probably do what Anton could to five years ago or something like that, and so we may see that you don’t have to build your own ASICs, you can actually use hardware spun up by Nvidia.” Another way forward is to build a “new,” bigger Anton, Miller said. Even a computer as powerful as Anton still cannot completely accurately simulate molecular dynamics, and the next step is to build a computer which can truly simulate a complete, realistic environment, one that can take everything into account.

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A $68 Billion Dollar Train Wreck? by Oscar Newman

THE HYPERLOOP Max Speed: 760 mph

Cost:

$7.5 billion

Travel Time â&#x20AC;&#x201C; San Francisco to LA: 35 minutes

image courtesy of Patrick Grimmel

Earthquake Readiness:

Route: Direct route following I-5, turns planned carefully to cause little discomfort at high speeds

Attachment to Ground:

Each pylon would have a few motion dampers to dramatically mitigate earthquake risk. Enterainment:

Power:

Transport Capacity:

Personal entertainment system for each seat

Solar panels on the Hyperloop tube provide power, making the the Hyperloop self-sustaining

840 People per Hour

100ft tall pylons

An average flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco costs upwards of $70, according to Kayak, and lasts over an hour, not counting the time it takes to go through the airport. Plans released by the California High Speed Rail Authority show that taking the proposed California High Speed Rail System would result in almost 3 hours travel time when covering the same distance. On Aug. 12, Elon Musk, the creator of SpaceX and co-creator of Tesla Motors and PayPal, released “Hyperloop Alpha,” the initial design for a new method of supersonic transportation. The Hyperloop has the potential to completely revolutionize public transportation, at a fraction of the cost of conventional transportation methods.

THE CALIFORNIA HIGH SPEED RAIL Travel Time –

Cost:

San Francisco to LA: 2 hours, 40 minutes

$68 billion

Max Speed: 220 mph

image courtesy of the California High Speed Rail Authority

Attachment to Ground:

Train tracks. The train has to go directly on the ground, causing many disruptions to land.

Route:

Very Indirect route, goes through other towns out of the way

Earthquake Readiness:

Frequent expansion joints are needed to lessen the risk, and the train is still vulnerable to earthquakes.

Estimated Completion Date:

Power:

Method of Movement:

2029

Electric

Certain sections of the track will be reused from older trains, and will not be able to support high speeds

The best and rest of by Satvik Kolluri

Space History

From Konstantin Tsiokovsky designing the first solid-propellant rockets in 1898 to SpaceX making the first reusable rockets, the rocket has evolved enormously in a little over a century. Starting with individual scientists to massive government operated companies to privately owned space tourism companies, the meaning of space exploration has changed. The following timeline has the evolution of space exploration, ranging from rockets that couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have flied for more than two minutes to marvels that have soared beyond our solar system.

Neil Armstong climbs down the ladder of Apollo 11 and becomes the first man to walk on the moon.

1942

1898: Russian professor and pioneer of astronautic theory, Konstantin Tsiokovsky, proposes the idea of using rockets for space exploration. He proposes rockets based on liquid propellants for a greater range.

1898

1926

1942: German scientists, led by Wernher Von Braun, make the V-2 rocket (Vengeance Weapon 2). The V-2 rocket becomes the first man made artifact that could reach outer space.

March 16, 1926: Robert Goddard, the Father of Modern Rocketry, successfully launches launches the first liquid fueled rocket. The V-2 ballistic missile design.

October 1958: The United States creates a space agency and names it the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA fuels the U.S. in the space race against the Soviet Union. April 1961: Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin, carried by his Vostok spacecraft, becomes the first human to journey into outer space. His spacecraft completed one full orbit around the Earth.

May 30, 1971: Mariner 9 launches into space and reaches Mars on November 14, 1971. Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, and during its mission it maps nearly all of the Martian surface.

September 3, 1976: Viking 2, an American probe, lands on the Plain of Utopia in Mars, where it discovers water frost. The discovery of a form of water on Mars sparks questions about living things on Mars. 1979

1998: NASA and other government owned space agencies launch a series of spacecraft, such as Deep Space 1, to test out advanced spacecraft engineering designs, from ion engines to mirror-enhance solar panels.

1972 1976

1957

1959

1962

April 1981: NASA launches its first Space Shuttle, Columbia. Designed to be reusable, Space Shuttles have increased accessibility to orbit. The last Space Shuttle, Atlantis, launched on July 2011.

1958

July 1962: Two Mariner probes travel to Venus, January 1959: Russia launches making history as the first a rocket. Luna 1, which flies by interplanetary probes. the moon. July 20, 1969: After preparations October 1, 1957: The to land on the Soviet Union launches moon for over seven years, Sputnik 1, the first Apollo 11 lands on artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This event the moon, making sparks the Space Race Neil Armstrong between the U.S. and the first astronaut to set foot on the the Soviet Union. moon. December, 1972: Scientists designate Cignus X-1 as the first black-hole candidate. Black holes explain some unknown parts of physics. They also are widely known to be the binding forces in our universe and explain the creation of galaxies and the universe.

June 18, 2009: NASA launches the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. After crashing the spacecraft into the moon and collecting samples, NASA scientist announced the discovery of “significant amounts” of ice in a crater near the moon’s South Pole.

1971

1961

January 15, 2006: NASA spacecraft Stardust returns to Earth with the first ever samples of dust from a comet. April 4, 2006: Construction of Spaceport America, located in New Mexico, starts. The Spaceport is described as “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport”. Tenants of the Spaceport include many privately own space companies including Virgin Galactic and SpaceX.

1977 1969

2012 2010 2009 2006

1998

1990

1981

2013

September 1, 1979: Pioneer 11 reaches Saturn, and provides scientists with the first close up photography of Saturn. August-September, 1977: Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 leave the Earth to study Jupiter and Saturn. The unmanned space mission exceeded expectations when Voyager 1 exited the solar system on August 25, 2012 and became humankind’s most distant object. Voyager 2 should exit the solar system sometime in 2016.

April 24, 1990: The Space Shuttle Discovery launches into space and deploys the Hubble Telescope, eventually leading to thousands of deep space photographs that help scientist map out the universe.

March 6, 2009: NASA spacecraft Kepler launches into space on a mission to discover extrasolar planets. As of July 2013 Kepler found 134 confirmed exoplanets in 76 solar systems.

December 8, 2010: Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX, a privately owned company, launches a spacecraft into orbit and then brings it back to the Earth safely. SpaceX becomes the first non-government organization to accomplish this. October 10, 2010: A privately owned space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, announced the first successful manned flight of the VSS Enterprise, a vehicle designed to take private citizens on suborbital space flights.

July 4, 2012: Scientists find the Higgs Boson, or the “God Particle”, after testing in the Large Hadron Collider. Initially proposed in 1964 the Higgs Boson helps scientists understand physics to a deeper extent and explains the creation of the universe. 2013: SpaceX tests out multiple innovative spacecraft. One example, the Grasshopper, supports the development of technologies required for a reusable rocket. The Falcon Heavy, another spacecraft, carries heavy loads of equipment and resources into space.

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The Next Space Race Satvik Kolluri

Jay Johnson strolls around, he has trouble imagining the In the varying markets of space $209 million megastructure that is supposed to be built exploration and space tourism, one company, Virgin Galactic on this barren piece of land. Fast forward five years, he plans far into the future. In the watches North America’s first commercial spaceport, SpacePort present day, the motivation to go America sitting somewhere in the middle of New Mexico. to space for a customer mainly Jay Johnson, Coastline Travel Advisor’s President and the man who has sold more space space trips than any other person on this planet, has waited for the construction of the SpacePort to finish since 2006. In 2006, Virgin Galactic chartered a deal with New Mexico to build a new Spaceport in Sierra County. “ Think of it this way, it is the only SpacePort in North America and because they [Virgin Galactic] virtually control the SpacePort, they will dictate the terms of other suppliers coming in like future competitors and what not,” Johnson said. In the new industry of commercial space travel, the Spaceport serves as a big stepping stone. New companies have headquartered there, and it serves as precedent for future Spaceports around the world. With Virgin Galactic’s success, more and more investors will like the idea of commercial space travel. These investments in space travel lead to a market where companies will compete to offer the best prices. An industry similar to the airline industry establishes itself, and customers benefit to the accessibility of space tourism and space travel. From the creation of “the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport” the creation of an industry and the birth of a market results. With the construction of Spaceport America complete, and private companies growing, partnerships have risen. These partnerships show themselves when looking at the relationship between government owned

companies and privately owned space companies. “We have set milestones for them [private space companies] to meet, and we have given them financial incentives to meet them and they have met them, and now they are opening up the marketplace,” said David Speaks, the Senior Public Affairs Officer in NASA, “It is a hand in hand partnership, they provide a service to us and we provide them with technology development to understand how

consist of bragging rights and the experience. Many new space tourism companies strive for just that, an experience to remember. On the other hand, Virgin Galactic has been trying to create a new way of transportation. When asked about Virgin Galactic’s future goals Johnson said, “Their [Virgin Galactic’s} focus, quite honestly, is to move people on this planet from point A to point B in a very quick time frame. Efficient too and safe.” Although using space travel to move long distances within this planet consists of part of Virgin Galactic’s ultimate goal, the private space company still plans to offer space tourism as an option to clients. In the world of private space companies, funding plays a major role in success. Many companies have a certain number of attempts to give confidence to investors before the company has to shut down, or adapt to a shrinking budget. This happened the case in SpaceX, the first privately owned company to launch a rocket into orbit and safely return it to Earth. Owner, Elon Musk, knew that his $100 million investment would only last him three attempts to reach orbit. Success in 2010 for SpaceX brought credibility and confidence to the company, allowing for the company to grow. In this new age of private commercial space companies that focus on gaining a profit, government owned space agencies like NASA continue to play a key role in space exploration.

“[Virgin Galactic’s] focus, quite honestly, is to move people on this planet from point A to point B in a very quick time frame. Efficient too and safe.” - Jay Johnson to get safely from and to space.” Today companies, both government and privately owned, in space exploration have a friendly competition. Though private companies try prevail in their sector of the market, competition hardly exists. At the same time, NASA hires private companies to give them access to orbit. In the market of space exploration it seems like every company does their own thing. Although partnerships between companies best benefit for space exploration, a monopoly in one industry does not benefit customers. Customers like competition between companies because as competition increases companies have to compete and offer incentives to gain clients.

“So these [private companies] are companies that are trying to develop a commercial marketplace to lower orbit where they would be our contractors we would hire, and who we are hiring to take cargo to the space station and to service satellites in lower orbit, while we, NASA, take on the bigger harder challenges such as deep space travel,” Speaks said. NASA has already lined up a series of mission that they want to finish in the next decade. Some big missions include the James-Webb space telescope which acts as the successor for the Hubble

space telescope, and aviation and aeronautical studies that plan on making airplanes and aircraft more efficient. Currently NASA’s goal boils down to send a man to Mars. They plan to do achieve this dangerous, expensive, and near impossible goal throught the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM).“The asteroid redirect mission is a technology demonstration mission and also a human exploration mission that will train our astronauts to a long duration mission to Mars,” Speaks said, “Before we can send humans to Mars, we have to do some training on shorter missions to

The James- Webb Telescope which is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope

make sure our life support systems work, to make sure our space capsules work, and to make sure we have the heavy lift rocket we need to get humans to Mars safely and back. So the asteroid redirect mission’s challenge is to go to a nearby asteroid and actually nudge it’s path and possibly redirect it so that it comes back so we could park it near Earth’s moon so that could be a training ground for future Photo Courtesy of NASA explorers.”

The Asteroid Redirect Mission redirecting an asteroid to the Moon to be used as testing grounds. Photo courtesy of NASA

SpacePort America located in New Mexico serving as headquarters to many new companies.

The dangers of sending astronauts into deep space has prevented any human from landing on Mars up to this day. In NASA, construction currently takes to increase safety and efficiency when transporting astronauts safely to and from Mars. “We are currently building a space launch system, a heavy lift rocket, and the Orion space

capsule, which will be the

Photo courtesy of New Mexico Space Port Authority

withstand the harsh environments of deep space travel, and the radiation that astronauts will be exposed to as they go into deep space for long durations beyond lower orbit.” As public interest in space exploration once again rises, new innovations offer exciting possibilities. Jay Johnson might have to wait a while, but in a couple of years, he may become one leader in a booming new industry.

government rocket and capsule, the very heavy and strong capsule that will be used for going to an asteroid and then going onto Mars,” Speaks said, “These are assets that have been designed to

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