Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor DEVELOPER TOOLS

Internet architect Dr. Leonard Kleinrock receives UCLA Medal

In 1969, Kleinrock sent the first message over the Arpanet - the precursor to today's internet

Leonard Kleinrock, distinguished professor of computer science and one of the world's foremost internet pioneers, was awarded the UCLA Medal, the campus's highest honor, for his remarkable contributions in providing the intellectual foundation for the modern technical age.

The UCLA Medal is given to those with exceptionally distinguished academic and professional achievement and whose bodies of work or contributions to society illustrate the highest ideals of UCLA. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, UCLA alumna and former astronaut Anna L. Fisher and basketball coaching legend John Wooden have been among the recipients.

Kleinrock's enduring curiosity of applying scientific principles to design and build structures was first spurred as a young boy when he built a crystal radio from a description in a Superman comic. His fascination with electronics led him to attend The City College of New York and earn a degree in electrical engineering entirely at night. He went on to earn masters and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from MIT. CAPTION Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Leonard Kleinrock; wife, Stella Kleinrock; and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block CREDIT Reed Hutchinson/UCLA{module INSIDE STORY}

In 1962, as a graduate student, Kleinrock developed the mathematical theory of packet-switching, the technology that underpins the internet. A year later, he joined the faculty at UCLA where his efforts have benefited the public well beyond the demands of academic tradition.

At UCLA, Kleinrock's mathematical theory was put into practice on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's fledgling Arpanet network, the precursor to today's internet.

As a result of his theoretical understanding of computer networks, Kleinrock was appointed principal investigator of the UCLA Arpanet project and received the first Interface Message Processor, a router the size of a large refrigerator, at his lab at 3420 Boelter Hall, where it remains today. His SDS Sigma 7 Host computer became the first node on the Arpanet in September 1969, and he directed the transmission of the first internet message from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute on Oct. 29, 1969.

"Len is a treasured and enthusiastic member of UCLA's faculty. His extraordinary work that helped lay the foundation for today's internet is a tremendous point of pride for our campus," said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block at a Feb 21 ceremony during which he was presented the award. "The entire UCLA community has been made better by Len's intellectual rigor and leadership."

Kleinrock has received eight honorary degrees, published more than 250 papers, and authored six books on packet-switching networks, broadband networks, performance evaluation, wireless network technology and peer-to-peer networks that have helped advance the fields of engineering and computer science.

"Thanks to Len, UCLA became the birthplace of the internet," said Jayathi Murthy, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. "His brilliant research, service and teaching have truly benefited our faculty, students, alumni, and the entire engineering community."

On the 50th anniversary of the internet, Kleinrock was presented the key to the City of Los Angeles from Mayor Eric Garcetti, the fourth recipient of such an honor during the Garcetti administration.

Among Kleinrock's additional accolades are the 2007 National Medal of Science, the highest honor for achievement in science bestowed by the president of the United States, the L.M. Ericsson Prize, the Marconi Prize, the Okawa Prize, the NAE Charles Stark Draper Prize and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors, and an inaugural member of the Internet Hall of Fame.

High-pressure scientists in Bayreuth discover promising material for information technology

Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor DEVELOPER TOOLS

Researchers at the University of Bayreuth, a public research university situated in Germany, have discovered an unusual material: When cooled down to two degrees Celsius, its crystal structure and electronic properties change abruptly and significantly. In this new state, the distances between iron atoms can be tailored with the help of light beams. This opens up intriguing possibilities for application in the field of information technology. The scientists have presented their discovery in the journal "Angewandte Chemie - International Edition". The new findings are the result of close cooperation with partnering facilities in Augsburg, Dresden, Hamburg, and Moscow.

The material is an unusual form of iron oxide with the formula Fe₅O₆. The researchers produced it at a pressure of 15 gigapascals in a high-pressure laboratory of the Bavarian Research Institute of Experimental Geochemistry & Geophysics (BGI) based at the University of Bayreuth. If the temperature drops to two degrees Celsius, as can be found in a household refrigerator set rather cold, a sudden structural change occurs: Iron ions, which are strung together in long chains at higher temperatures, rearrange themselves into pairs instead. Two iron ions form a bond between each other, which consists of a single shared electron only. {module INSIDE STORY} Schematic representation of the iron oxide Fe₅O₆ after the transition to the new crystal structure at minus two degrees. Two iron ions each share one electron, thus forming a pair. With light beams (red) these ions can be processed in such a way that this bond is loosened and the atomic distance between them increases. Image: Sergey V. Ovsyannikov.

Applying light rays selectively from an external source can intervene in the formation of this new crystal structure. If they have a suitable wavelength, they are able to break the bond between two particular iron ions: the ion pair splits up. As a result, the individual iron ions begin to move around somewhat, meaning their distance from each other and their physical state change. "This targeted influencing of atomic spacing at refrigerator temperatures, which are easy to achieve industrially, has great potential for application in the IT sector. It can be used, for example, in quantum supercomputers, for storage elements measuring only a few nanometers, or for equally tiny switches," explains Dr. Sergey Ovsyannikov from BGI, first author of the publication.

The synthesis and investigation of iron oxide Fe₅O₆ are of fundamental importance in clarifying the relationships between the crystal structure of iron oxides and their physical properties. This is a further finding of the study now published. Interestingly, the distance between the iron ions, which are strung together in chains at normal ambient temperatures, seems to determine at exactly which lower temperature the aforementioned sudden structural change occurs, and the resulting new properties arise. “These findings provide a valuable basis for developing new materials for information technology”, resumes Prof. Dr. Leonid Dubrovinsky from BGI, who coordinated the research work.

By combining genetics with genealogy, Quebec universities identify the dead in unmarked graves

Tyler O'Neal, Staff Editor DEVELOPER TOOLS

In Quebec, gravestones did not come into common use until the second half of the 19th century, so historical cemeteries contain many unmarked graves. Inspired by colleagues at Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University, a team of researchers in genetics, archaeology and demography from three Quebec universities (Université de Montréal, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières) conducted a study in which they combined genealogical information from BALSAC (a Quebec database that is the only one of its kind in the world) with genetic information from more than 960 modern Quebecers in order to access the genetic profile of Quebec's historical population. The results, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, suggest the capabilities that this method may offer in the near future.

The BALSAC database contains the genealogical relationships linking five million individuals, the vast majority of whom married in Quebec, over the past four centuries. Work on developing this database began in 1972 at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi under the direction of historian Gérard Bouchard.

The first author of this study is Tommy Harding, a postdoctoral researcher at Université de Montréal who specializes in DNA sequencing. BALSAC, he said, "is a fabulous database for researchers, because both the quantity and the quality of the data that it contains are truly exceptional. The parish records meticulously kept by Catholic priests have been very well preserved so that today, thanks to advances in technology, it is possible to use this data to identify the bones from unmarked graves." {module INSIDE STORY}

Using the Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA

This study was directed by Damian Labuda, an expert in genetic structure and diversity who is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Université de Montréal and its affiliated Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Centre. "Genetics," he said, "has of course been used many times to identify the remains of historical figures, such as the members of the Romanov Russian imperial family who were killed by the Bolsheviks and buried in a common grave, or the English king Richard III, who died in 1483 and whose remains were discovered in 2012.

"What is different about our research team's genetic method," Dr. Labuda added, "is that we use the information contained in two genetic markers that are transmitted to children by only one parent: the Y chromosome, which is passed from fathers to their sons, and mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mothers both to their daughters and to their sons. These two genetic molecules are inherited with few modifications (that is, mutations), so that individuals today have the same, or almost the same, DNA sequence as their ancestors who lived more than 10 generations earlier."

Making old bones tell their tales

Added Harding: "To empirically test our method's identification potential, we selected six unidentified male skeletons that had been exhumed over the years at four historical cemeteries in Quebec. Two of these cemeteries were in Montreal (Notre Dame cemetery, active from 1691 to 1791, and Saint Antoine cemetery, active from 1799 to 1855). The two others were those of the former municipality of Pointe-aux-Trembles (active from 1709 to 1843) and the city of Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce (active from 1748 to 1878). We sent these bones to the Genomics Core Facility, a laboratory at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona that specializes in analyzing historical DNA. This laboratory extracted DNA from these remains and analyzed them to reveal their mitochondrial and Y chromosome genetic markers."

The Quebec researchers then compared the genetic markers from these historical remains with the same genetic markers from over 960 modern Quebecers who had volunteered to be genotyped in an earlier research project and whose genealogy had been established using population data from the BALSAC database. Through this process, the researchers were able to deduce the genetic profiles of approximately 1.7 million individuals from historical Quebec.

"However," Dr. Harding acknowledged, "only 12 percent of the men married before 1850 who are included in the BALSAC database shared a mitochondrial profile and a Y chromosome with the 960 Quebecers from the modern sample. Because of this limited genetic coverage, none of the men among these 12 percent had the same genetic profile as any of the unidentified remains."

Some remains still cannot be identified

Harding continued: "Presumably, the individuals whose remains we analyzed were not related maternally or paternally to any of the individuals in the modern sample. But if we could increase the number of genotyped modern individuals considerably - by hundreds of thousands - then we could identify up to 87 percent of the men married before 1850."

Harding sees two possible sources from which more genetic profiles of modern Quebecers could be obtained to compare with the BALSAC database. "Thousands of genetic profiles of Quebecers have already been gathered by certain population genetics research platforms as well as by "acts of citizen participation", meaning that many people who have their genetic profile drawn up for personal reasons agree to allow it to be used for research purposes."

Other uses of this method

He added: "In addition to being used to identify historical remains here in Quebec so that they can be laid to rest again in marked graves, our method might be used to identify the remains of Canadian soldiers who died and were buried overseas during the two world wars."

He also believes that this method has potential applications in public health. "Studying the genetic baggage of the founders of the French-Canadian population can help us not only to calibrate other methods, such as the reconstruction of historical genomes using bioinformatic models but also to advance knowledge of the epidemiology of genetic diseases by identifying the historical sources of their genetic determinants, thus opening the door to easier screening for some of these diseases."