PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Scientists examine energy trends of communications equipment

Increasingly important problem for networks examined at Frontiers in Optics Meeting

2010-10-22
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 – A team of scientists at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs have examined the energy consumption trends of communications equipment in use today and determined that gains in energy efficiency are not keeping pace with traffic growth. One consequence is that energy is going to become an increasingly important problem for communication networks.

In one unabated, business-as-usual scenario, the scientists estimate that power consumed per user could increase by seven-fold over the next 10 years. Based on these findings, Bell Labs has developed several technology evolution scenarios for the coming decade, which they will present at Frontiers in Optics (FiO) 2010/Laser Science XXVI -- the 94th annual meeting of the Optical Society (OSA), which is being held together with the annual meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Laser Science at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center in Rochester, N.Y., from Oct. 24-28.

"Traffic growth predictions are a key part of this and we took a novel approach in which we extrapolated the North American backbone network traffic growth rate forward, rather than the traffic itself," explains Dan Kilper, member of the technical staff at Bell Labs and chair of the GreenTouch Technical Committee. "In this way we accounted for the gradual slowing of traffic growth, which is expected as the number of users saturates. Even taking this into account, the growth rate is expected to drop from the current 40 to 60 percent today down to somewhere in the range of 25 to 50 percent in 2020."

This number is important because the scientists' study of network equipment indicates that recent efficiency improvement rates of 20 percent per year are falling to roughly 10 percent. "Our findings also showed that optical transmission gear consumes more than a factor of 10 less than other network technologies such as cellular base stations and packet routers," says Kilper.

These findings, along with recent research from other groups worldwide, were the impetus for establishing the GreenTouch Consortium , which is comprised of industrial, academic and non-governmental research experts who are dedicated to fundamentally transforming communications and data networks, including the Internet, and significantly reducing the carbon footprint of information and communications technology devices, platforms and networks.

The talk, "Optical Transmission Energy Consumption in the Internet" is at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2010.

INFORMATION: About the Meeting

Frontiers in Optics 2010 is OSA's 94th Annual Meeting and is being held together with Laser Science XXVI, the annual meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Laser Science (DLS). The two meetings unite the OSA and APS communities for five days of quality, cutting-edge presentations, fascinating invited speakers and a variety of special events spanning a broad range of topics in physics, biology and chemistry. FiO 2010 will also offer a number of Short Courses designed to increase participants' knowledge of a specific subject while offering the experience of insightful teachers. An exhibit floor featuring leading optics companies will further enhance the meeting.

Useful Links:

Meeting home page http://www.frontiersinoptics.com/

Conference program http://www.frontiersinoptics.com/ConferenceProgram/default.aspx

Searchable abstracts http://www.abstractsonline.com/viewer/?mkey=%7BD58D07D1%2D61B6%2D42D6%2D8819%2DFCF66F28A08B%7D

EDITOR'S NOTE: A Press Room for credentialed press and analysts will be located in Aqueduct AB of the Rochester Riverside Convention Center, Sunday through Thursday. Those interested in obtaining a press badge for FiO should contact OSA's Lyndsay Basista at +1 202.416.1930 or lbasista@osa.org.

About OSA

Uniting more than 106,000 professionals from 134 countries, the Optical Society (OSA) brings together the global optics community through its programs and initiatives. Since 1916 OSA has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing educational resources to the scientists, engineers and business leaders who work in the field by promoting the science of light and the advanced technologies made possible by optics and photonics. OSA publications, events, technical groups and programs foster optics knowledge and scientific collaboration among all those with an interest in optics and photonics. For more information, visit www.osa.org.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Entire issue of scientific journal devoted to center headed by Scripps Research Scientists

2010-10-22
LA JOLLA, CA, October 21, 2010 — A multi-institutional consortium led by The Scripps Research Institute scientists, the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG), is the sole focus of a special issue of the journal Acta Crystallographica Section F. This is the first time in the history of the monthly journal, which publishes peer-reviewed crystallography and structural biology articles, that an entire issue is devoted to the works of a single scientific center. The issue contains 35 articles grouped into sections that highlight different aspects of the JCSG high-throughput ...

Population report: More Jews live in the US than in Israel

2010-10-22
CORAL GABLES, FL (October 21, 2010)--Researchers from the University of Miami (UM) and the University of Connecticut (UConn) have published a 2010 report on the American Jewish population, as part of a new North American Jewish Data Bank Report series. The new report called Jewish Population in the United States-2010 shows a greater number of Jews in the U.S. than in Israel. While the article puts the total number of Jews in the U.S. at around 6.5 million, the authors recognize there may be some double counting in the methodology and believe the number to be fewer than ...

Evidence is weak for tropical rainforest 65 million years ago in Africa's low-latitudes

Evidence is weak for tropical rainforest 65 million years ago in Africas low-latitudes
2010-10-22
The landscape of Central Africa 65 million years ago was a low-elevation tropical belt, but the jury is still out on whether the region's mammals browsed and hunted beneath the canopy of a lush rainforest. The scientific evidence for a tropical rainforest at that time is weak and far from convincing, says paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Fossil pollen from Central and West Africa provide no definitive evidence for communities of rainforest trees at the beginning of the Cenozoic, says Jacobs, an expert in the paleobotany of Africa ...

Modeling study identifies characteristics of high elk-use areas in western Oregon, Washington

Modeling study identifies characteristics of high elk-use areas in western Oregon, Washington
2010-10-22
The availability of highly nutritious forage is one of four factors linked to the presence of elk populations in western Oregon and Washington, according to a modeling study recently completed by scientists from the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station. Findings from the two-year study will be used to update land management planning for the ecologically and economically important ungulate in the region. "Habitat models like the one we developed are critical to managing elk populations, particularly since current management practices are based ...

Isotope near 'doubly magic' tin-100 flouts conventional wisdom

2010-10-22
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 21, 2010 -- Tin may seem like the most unassuming of elements, but experiments performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are yielding surprising properties in extremely short-lived isotopes near tin-100's "doubly magic" nucleus. Experiments performed with the exotic nucleus tin-101, which has a single neutron orbiting tin-100's closed shell of 50 protons and 50 neutrons, indicate an unexpected reversal in the ordering of lowest states in the nucleus. The finding appears to violate a standard scenario offered by the nuclear ...

Cholesterol-lowering drug shrinks enlarged prostates in hamster model

2010-10-22
Boston, Mass. - A cholesterol-lowering drug reduced the enlarged prostates of hamsters to the same extent as a drug commonly used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), report researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and their colleagues in the October issue of the Journal of Urology. Together, the drugs worked even better. "We don't know the mechanism, but the results suggest to us that lowering cholesterol has the potential to reduce BPH in men," says senior author Keith Solomon, PhD, a biochemist, and member of the departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Urology ...

Electron billiards in nanoscale circuits

2010-10-22
At the heart of the method is a so-called quantum point contact (QPC). This is a narrow conductive channel in a semiconductor circuit. The scientists created a 70-nanometer narrow channel, about as wide as the wavelength of electrons in the semiconductor. The key is that only one electron at a time will fit through the channel, making possible extremely high-precision measurements of the electric current. As described in the current publication, this method was applied to photogenerated electrons for the first time ever. In the experimental set-up it is not the sun, but ...

Putting a bull's-eye on the flu: Paper details influenza's structure for future drug targeting

Putting a bulls-eye on the flu: Paper details influenzas structure for future drug targeting
2010-10-22
Beating the flu has always been tough, but it has gotten even more difficult in recent years. Two of the four antiviral drugs used to treat a nasty case of the influenza A virus no longer work. Fortunately, scientists at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Institute of Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University and researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah are close to understanding why these drugs have become less effective — and how new drugs might take their place. Their findings appear this week in the journal Science. "Resistance to drugs ...

Everglades show improvement in water quality

2010-10-22
Madison, WI, October 21, 2010 – Researchers at the University of Florida Research and Education Centers and scientists at the South Florida Water Management District have published a report regarding the trends in water quality feeding into Everglades National Park. The report can be found in the September-October 2010 Journal of Environmental Quality, published by the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America. The goal of the study was to provide insight regarding the variations in the quality of water ...

Preschool promises: Starting early on a new educational agenda for the United States

2010-10-22
Two children, both age 3, enroll in publicly funded preschool. But they may have vastly different experiences: One child may attend preschool for 8 hours a day and be taught by a teacher with a bachelor's degree while the other child may be in preschool for only a few hours a day, under the supervision of a teacher with a 2-year degree. Why is there so much variability and are these programs meeting their potential for adequately preparing youngsters for school? In a new report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Global analysis reveals how biochar supercharges composting and cuts greenhouse gases

Blocking a cellular switch could prevent lung-scarring disease

Planet formation depends on when it happens: UNLV model shows why

Deep sleep supports memory via brain fluid and neural rhythms

Biochar and iron additives show promise for reviving degraded peatlands and locking away carbon

Cancer cells reactivate embryo-like gene editors to fuel growth

AI analysis of world’s largest heart attack datasets opens way to new treatment strategies

Decoding dangers of Arctic sea ice with seismic, radar method

Counting bites with AI might one day help prevent childhood obesity

Utah chemists discover enzyme that could help build next-generation GLP-1 drugs

Surprising bacteria discovery links Hawaiʻi’s groundwater to the ocean

New grants for schools offer CPR training and resources to make campuses safer

30 NFL players urge fans to join Nation of Lifesavers, learn lifesaving CPR

Study finds humans outweigh climate in depleting Arizona's water supply

Old-school material could power quantum computing, cut data center energy use

Vanderbilt scientist tackles key roadblock for AI in drug discovery

Overheating bat boxes place bats in mortal danger during heatwaves

Study shows medical-legal partnerships aid recovery for patients with violent injuries

Learning the language of lasso peptides to improve peptide engineering

Social conflict among strongest predictors of teen mental health concerns

New framework can improve the planning stage of surgical quality improvement projects

Research shows anger, not fear, shifts political beliefs

Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research awarded to pediatric rheumatologist at Boston Children’s Hospital

UNF chemistry professor awarded NSF Grant to advance laser-based measurement technology

Research shows how Dust Bowl-type drought causes unprecedented productivity loss

Non-hibernating pikas' protein restriction tweaks their gut microbiome to help them survive the winter, when winter-active herbivores often struggle to find dietary protein

Not for hearing but for symbiosis

Disconnected cerebral hemisphere in epilepsy patients shows sleep-like state during wakefulness

Incentivizing risk to inspire investments in clean innovation for aviation

Stinkbug leg organ contains symbiotic fungi to shield eggs from parasitic wasps

[Press-News.org] Scientists examine energy trends of communications equipment
Increasingly important problem for networks examined at Frontiers in Optics Meeting