As part of our ongoing commitment to security, the Unix & Windows Infrastructure groups will be conducting quarterly system patching on Thursday, August 16th and Friday, August 17th.  While many of the systems will be patched without any service disruption, there are some systems which require the downtime of key services.  The schedule below outlines which key services will be offline and for how long.

Thursday, 8/16/2018 between 8pm and midnight:

• Uservol and Peoplevol servers - H & P drives
• While there is no action required for end users, people may want to reboot their machine Friday morning to ensure all the drive mappings reconnect properly.

Friday, 8/17/2018 between 5pm and 8pm (most systems will only be down for a short period during this time): 

• The web hosting environments (virthost) will be partially unavailable (pages will be available but any database calls will not work)
• Access to Cyrus and UMBC Webmail (accounts not migrated to UMBC Gmail)
• All mail will be queued up and delivered after the server is patched
• All HFS (user) servers will be offline
• Certain software licenses will be unavailable (autodesk, cadence, idl, schrodinger, xilinx, mathematica)

Please let us know if you have any concerns or questions.

Thanks!

Tim Champ

Manager of Unix Infrastructure

UMBC DoIT

This story was written by Megan Hanks and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

A team of researchers from UMBC’s Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) and department of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering is working to develop a new, low-cost anti-malarial drug to help tackle a disease that causes over 200 million infections and 400,000 deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Peng Xu, assistant professor; Xudong Ge, research associate professor; and Govind Rao, professor, received $422,623 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the research. Xu and Ge are the co-PIs on the grant, and Rao is the project director.

Therapies that contain artemisinin have shown to be an effective first-line treatment for malaria. Artemisinin is derived from extracts of the wormwood plant. This makes it relatively affordable to produce, but also means the medication supply depends on having an abundant and steady source of the plant.

This story was written by Sarah Hansen and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Eta Carinae is the most massive and luminous star system within 10,000 light years of Earth. New UMBC research published in Nature Astronomy concludes for the first time that the system is emitting cosmic rays, some of which may reach Earth.

Producing cosmic rays, which also happens following a supernova, requires that particles be accelerated nearly to the speed of light. “We found that the accelerated particles are really energetic, which is much more than we expected from this star,” says Kenji Hamaguchi, the lead author on the study. Hamaguchi is a researcher at UMBC’s Center for Space Sciences and Technology, a partnership with NASA. The fourth author is Neetika Sharma, Ph.D. ’16, physics, who worked on the project as a postdoctoral fellow.

The new research takes advantage of NASA’s powerful NuSTAR satellite, which can detect and locate high-energy x-rays with remarkable accuracy. Different instruments have been tracking relatively low-energy x-rays from Eta Carinae for decades, and another instrument suggested Eta Carinae might be the source of the high-energy x-rays and even higher-energy gamma rays. However, those instruments haven’t been powerful enough to conclusively determine the source of the rays that they detect.

“That’s why we proposed the observations with NuSTAR,” says Hamaguchi. “NuSTAR can image x-rays in the high-energy range for the first time. So we can pinpoint the location of high-energy emissions.”

Eta Carinae is a binary star system, meaning two stars are orbiting each other. As they orbit, the stars come within 140 million miles of each other every five and half years. This is about the distance from Mars to the Sun, and very, very close for two stars.

Stars are constantly throwing off particles, creating what is known as the “stellar wind.” Based on their findings, the researchers explain that Eta Carinae generates high-energy x-rays and gamma rays when the two stars’ stellar winds collide. The rays’ intensity depends on the relative position of the two stars. Those cosmic rays then travel through the universe, and some of them may end up near Earth—but until now scientists haven’t been able to clearly identify their source.

Beyond confirming Eta Carinae as a source of cosmic rays, this new research also shows for the first time that a binary system like Eta Carinae is capable of accelerating particles to extreme speeds. Previously, that kind of acceleration had only been proven in the debris resulting from supernovae. This helps expand knowledge of how particles can accelerate in space, which is relevant for studies of the birth of the universe and a variety of other extreme situations in the cosmos.

Hamaguchi is already looking forward to the next new instrument beyond NuSTAR, as he works to increase understanding of how stellar winds interact, accelerate particles, and generate cosmic rays. He is drawn to analyzing complex data about the universe “because we can find something nobody knows,” he says. “Every time you get something new.”

Image: The supermassive star Eta Carinae is at the center of two huge and expanding clouds of dust and other material, the result of an eruption about 150 years ago. Nathan Smith/NASA.

This story was written by Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

“We are changing Earth’s climate faster than at any time since the fall of the dinosaurs,” says Ellis. For scientists, he notes, “What’s controversial…is when did this begin? […] When did humans literally become the global shaper of the earth?”

In 2009, the International Commission on Stratigraphy, through its Subcommission of Quaternary Stratigraphy, created the Anthropocene Working Group (AGW) that is officially charged to examine whether the Anthropocene should be added as a formal time interval in the geologic time scale (following the Holocene, the current geological epoch after the last ice age) and, if so, what should mark its beginning. Shortly after its formation, Ellis was asked to join the Anthropocene Working Group as an expert on human transformation of the biosphere.

This story was written by Tom Moore and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Baltimore’s McKeldin Fountain, an icon of Brutalist architecture, may have been demolished in 2016, but Lisa Moren, professor of visual arts, wants to ensure visitors can still experience its presence and history. On Saturday, May 19, from 1 to 4 p.m. at the former site of the fountain at the intersection of Pratt and Light Streets, she will officially launch her augmented reality app NONUMENT 01::McKeldin Fountain, a project created in partnership with James Mayhew, MFA ’10, IMDA, and Slovenian artists Martin Bricelj Baraga and Neja Tomšič. The launch event is free and open to the public.

The app, which is available for both iOS and Android devices, projects a full-scale 3D image of McKeldin Fountain onto tablet or smartphone screens, creating the illusion that the fountain is present in the surrounding environment. The fountain’s history is told through various interactive “memory artifacts,” such as koi fish and protest signs, which when clicked will show interviews with Baltimore residents sharing their memories of events at McKeldin Square. The app can be downloaded for free and used anywhere in the world, but its effects are best realized when used on McKeldin Square where the fountain once stood.

“McKeldin Fountain was a place where ordinary citizens could express themselves creatively, relax, or stand up for their values,” says Moren. “The story of its destruction, which included little public input, points to the diminishment of public spaces worldwide. In terms of public art, quality of life, and free speech, we feel a loss for the residents of Baltimore.”

Audio engineering for the app was provided by Timothy Nohe, professor of visual arts, and Lexie Mountain, MFA ’14, IMDA, with additional contributions of 3D models by Ben Shaffer ’16, visual arts, and the Imaging Research Center’s Ryan Zuber ’04, visual arts.

Following the event at McKeldin Square on May 19, participants are invited to move to Maryland Art Place on Saratoga Street for an exhibit featuring video installations of content used in the app and mixed reality media.

See here for a March 2017 UMBC News story on the development of NONUMENT 01.

For more information about NONUMENT 01, visit its website here.

Images courtesy of Lisa Moren.