The Digital Insider | Month: February 2024

The Best Queen’s Blood Deck In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is finally out, and it’s a treat, especially for fans of the original game – you can read Game Informer’s review here to find out what we loved and didn’t love across our 80 hours with the game. However, regardless of whether you’re a long-time fan or not, one thing new to everyone playing Rebirth is Queen’s Blood.

Introduced early in Rebirth, Queen’s Blood is an in-universe card game that seemingly everyone around Gaia’s various continents plays, from Junon to Nibelheim and elsewhere. And after spending dozens of hours playing it, I can understand why – it rules. It’s easily my favorite game-within-a-game ever, and one I hope spins out into its own thing in some form, be it a digital card game, a physical one, or something else.

It can be a difficult game, though, but it’s one worth learning. It’s both satisfying in its own right but also unfolds across a mysterious side story that plays out through the game’s entire runtime. If you’re struggling to keep up with Gaia’s various opponents, though, we have you covered with the best Queen’s Blood deck, tips and tricks, and more.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Queen’s Blood Tips And Tricks

The Best Queen’s Blood Deck In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Don’t skip the tutorial: Perhaps you think this goes without saying, but someone – and we won’t name who (Kyle Hilliard) – skipped the tutorial and later regretted it. It’s quick, easy, and will open up the door to Rebirth’s best piece of side content.

Placement is key in the beginning: In the early hours of Rebirth, winning Queen’s Blood is decided by placement and how much of the board you control. However, because you, the player, always go first, your opponent has an advantage: they can see where you place pawns (the green-lit markers that appear on the board depending on where you place cards) and can appropriately counter with a card that turns your pawn into theirs. For that reason, focus less on moving left to right across the board and more on countering your opponent’s moves by taking over their pawn placements.

Check every general store for booster packs: As you venture to the Grasslands, Junon, Nibelheim, and elsewhere, you’ll come across general stores where you can buy potions, accessories, and more. At the bottom of the store’s inventory, there are often one or two new booster packs to purchase – do so. Even if you don’t use the cards in the pack, each pack costs 500 gil, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Better to spend 500 gil on a potential card experiment than miss out on what could be your new favorite card.

Use local maps to find players: There are 30 matches of Queen’s Blood to complete in the game, and they’re typically doled out to you in groups of two to three matches and a boss. After completing a group of Queen’s Blood matches, you’ll receive another set of challengers to track down. However, and especially as you progress through the game further, you might find yourself struggling to locate these players on the game’s various maps (I did). It wasn’t until my final hours with Queen’s Blood that I realized you really need to utilize the local maps on the map screen to find them. This reveals players in locations like inns and other buildings where they might not appear on region maps.

Your opponent’s first few moves will tell all: Is your opponent advancing quickly from the right side of the play area to the left? They’re probably trying to lock you out of play space, and this could indicate their deck is built around getting as many cards as possible in play to stack up their numbers quickly. Are they focusing on building up a strong queue of cards on their side of the play area? They might have a deck built around replacement where they replace weaker cards with more powerful ones by placing them on top (and usually, with a special card that gains power after cards are destroyed through this replacement method). Over time, you’ll pick up on these cues that players give off in their opening turns, so keep an eye out for patterns.

You can quickly restart a match, and it’s better than losing: When you lose a match in Queen’s Blood, you have to sit through the score tally animation and a screen that tells you that you’ve lost the match – it’s humiliating and, across the game’s various matches, adds up to time wasted. However, if you can already tell you’ve lost the match, you can quickly restart the battle by pressing start and hitting the retry battle button.

Build multiple decks: You get six deck slots in the game, which means you can build six wildly different decks. We recommend doing so, especially in the earlier hours, as you run across many different types of opponents. You could have a replacement deck, a deck around destroying cards, a deck for weakening enemy cards, and one around taking over an entire board, for example. It’s worth doing and gives you an opportunity to experiment with new cards without messing up your favorite deck.

Just because a card is new doesn’t mean it’s great: I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence on my end or something else, but more often than not, the cards I received upon beating opponents weren’t the greatest. A few hit – and they really hit, gaining a permanent spot in my favorite deck below – but most of them went unused after my initial testing. Maybe it will be different for you. What I’m trying to say is that just because you receive a new card after defeating an enemy doesn’t mean it’s a sure-fire win you should include in your favorite deck. Experiment and see what works and what doesn’t work for you.

The Best Queen’s Blood Deck In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Queen's Blood Best Deck Tips and Tricks

After ranking up a few times in Queen’s Blood, which requires defeating a specified amount of opponents and various named “boss” characters, you’ll gain what is, in my opinion, the single best card: Migardsormr. Boasting a base strength of 6, a wide array of mat placement, and a special ability that increases its strength by +1 for every card destroyed after it is played (both enemy and ally cards destroyed, mind you), it’s a card I continuously win on the back of.

Now, you’re, of course, free to build your deck however you want, but my personal deck, the one I consistently win with, is below (ignore the card on the right as it’s just the reward card):

As you can see, the most important card is Migardsormr. From there, you can build it out how you’d like, but when using Migardsormr, it’s important to cater to its special ability. You should be using cards that destroy enemy cards and cards you can place on top of your own, thereby destroying the (ideally) weaker card beneath it.

When using this deck, it’s extra important to get Migardsormr placed as soon as possible. My typical start begins with a Security Clone placed in the middle row to the far left. This turns the two far-left spots above and below it into slots ready for cards that require two placement pawns. I often then place an Archdragon directly to the right of the Security Clone to turn those two-pawn spots into three-pawn spots, which allows me to throw down Migardsormr the next turn.

There are other options to turn around a three-pawn spot quickly, and you’ll want to keep those options open in case your opponent immediately pushes from right to left, but for the most part, this three-turn setup gets Migardsormr out onto the playing field fast. From there, it’s all about playing cards that destroy enemy cards and replacing your own cards with stronger ones, like placing a Grandhorn (with a strength of 3) on top of the Security Clone. That move alone adds 2 to your total count (replacing Security Clone with Grandhorn) and an additional 1 to Migardsormr’s strength since you destroyed the Security Clone.

Regardless of how you build your deck, we highly recommend using Migardsormr to create a deck themed around destroying enemy and ally cards to boost the strength of this serpentine fiend. Do that, and you’ll pick up some powerful wins, like a few of my best wins below:

For more about the game, read Game Informer’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth review, and then head to Game Informer’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth hub for exclusive behind-the-scenes features, video interviews, and more.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s New Game Plus, Explained

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a great game – you can read Game Informer’s review here to find out why we liked it so much. However, it’s massive. Taking place over multiple continents on the Planet (or Gaia as it was retroacively called) with various party members, a bunch of open-world areas, and lots of side activities and minigames to partake in, you’re going to be playing this game for at least 50 to 60 hours before you roll credits (I reached the ending at 80 hours).

When you’ve seen the story through, you might not be ready to hang up the ole’ Buster Sword. Fortunately, Rebirth has New Game Plus. Well, kinda – it’s complicated.

Here’s How New Game Plus Works In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s New Game Plus, Explained

After you beat the game, you’ll be prompted to make a save file (heads up, you can only make 10). This will be your completed run save file and it will be marked forever with a teal tag that says Chapter Selection when viewing the file. We won’t show it here because it would spoil some details about the final chapter.

This will be your New Game Plus file, as it were, moving forward. At this point, you won’t be able to explore or do anything with this file. It will keep you on the main start screen of the game that shows your party and various menu options like Item Transmuter, Materia & Equipment, Combat Settings, and so on. To actually partake in New Game Plus-like activities, you need to go down to Settings, then Chapter Selection.

You’ll receive the following prompt the first time you do it:

Replaying a portion of the game via Chapter Selection will return you to the start of the chosen chapter. Your current characters’ levels, weapons, materia, and relationship status will carry over.

You can also choose how to carry over your quest data. Note that any odd jobs you have yet to complete will automatically reset.

When you select a chapter, you will be given the option to play it on Hard difficulty. Be warned that you cannot change this setting once you begin the chapter.

Final Fantasy VII 7 Rebirth Game Informer Review

This is essentially how New Game Plus works in Rebirth – from this point onward, whatever chapter you select will carry over all of your data from your completed run save. Notably, this chapter selection method is the only way to play the game on Hard difficulty (and if you’re after the Platinum trophy, you’ll need to complete every chapter on Hard amongst other things).

I’ve been playing Rebirth via this New Game Plus chapter selection and it works great. I’m crossing the 95 hour mark soon and still finding things to do.

Pro tip: If you’re looking to complete all of the open world activities, Chapter 13 is the best chapter to do that.
Heads up: There are “certain manuscripts” that can only be obtained on Hard difficulty so if you’re trying to obtain every single thing in the game, there’s a Hard mode chapter playthrough in your future.

And that’s Rebirth’s New Game Plus functionality explained.

For more, read Game Informer’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth review, and then check out Game Informer’s Final Fantasy VII Rebirth coverage hub for exclusive behind-the-scenes features, video interviews, and more.

Let us know if you have any other questions about it or the game in the comments below!

Automated method helps researchers quantify uncertainty in their predictions

Pollsters trying to predict presidential election results and physicists searching for distant exoplanets have at least one thing in common: They often use a tried-and-true scientific technique called Bayesian inference.

Bayesian inference allows these scientists to effectively estimate some unknown parameter — like the winner of an election — from data such as poll results. But Bayesian inference can be slow, sometimes consuming weeks or even months of computation time or requiring a researcher to spend hours deriving tedious equations by hand.

Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have introduced an optimization technique that speeds things up without requiring a scientist to do a lot of additional work. Their method can achieve more accurate results faster than another popular approach for accelerating Bayesian inference.

Using this new automated technique, a scientist could simply input their model and then the optimization method does all the calculations under the hood to provide an approximation of some unknown parameter. The method also offers reliable uncertainty estimates that can help a researcher understand when to trust its predictions.

This versatile technique could be applied to a wide array of scientific quandaries that incorporate Bayesian inference. For instance, it could be used by economists studying the impact of microcredit loans in developing nations or sports analysts using a model to rank top tennis players.

“When you actually dig into what people are doing in the social sciences, physics, chemistry, or biology, they are often using a lot of the same tools under the hood. There are so many Bayesian analyses out there. If we can build a really great tool that makes these researchers lives easier, then we can really make a difference to a lot of people in many different research areas,” says senior author Tamara Broderick, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Broderick is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Ryan Giordano, an assistant professor of statistics at the University of California at Berkeley; and Martin Ingram, a data scientist at the AI company KONUX. The paper was recently published in the Journal of Machine Learning Research.

Faster results

When researchers seek a faster form of Bayesian inference, they often turn to a technique called automatic differentiation variational inference (ADVI), which is often both fast to run and easy to use.

But Broderick and her collaborators have found a number of practical issues with ADVI. It has to solve an optimization problem and can do so only approximately. So, ADVI can still require a lot of computation time and user effort to determine whether the approximate solution is good enough. And once it arrives at a solution, it tends to provide poor uncertainty estimates.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, the team took many ideas from ADVI but turned them around to create a technique called deterministic ADVI (DADVI) that doesn’t have these downsides.

With DADVI, it is very clear when the optimization is finished, so a user won’t need to spend extra computation time to ensure that the best solution has been found. DADVI also permits the incorporation of more powerful optimization methods that give it an additional speed and performance boost.

Once it reaches a result, DADVI is set up to allow the use of uncertainty corrections. These corrections make its uncertainty estimates much more accurate than those of ADVI.

DADVI also enables the user to clearly see how much error they have incurred in the approximation to the optimization problem. This prevents a user from needlessly running the optimization again and again with more and more resources to try and reduce the error.

“We wanted to see if we could live up to the promise of black-box inference in the sense of, once the user makes their model, they can just run Bayesian inference and don’t have to derive everything by hand, they don’t need to figure out when to stop their algorithm, and they have a sense of how accurate their approximate solution is,” Broderick says.

Defying conventional wisdom

DADVI can be more effective than ADVI because it uses an efficient approximation method, called sample average approximation, which estimates an unknown quantity by taking a series of exact steps.

Because the steps along the way are exact, it is clear when the objective has been reached. Plus, getting to that objective typically requires fewer steps.

Often, researchers expect sample average approximation to be more computationally intensive than a more popular method, known as stochastic gradient, which is used by ADVI. But Broderick and her collaborators showed that, in many applications, this is not the case.

“A lot of problems really do have special structure, and you can be so much more efficient and get better performance by taking advantage of that special structure. That is something we have really seen in this paper,” she adds.

They tested DADVI on a number of real-world models and datasets, including a model used by economists to evaluate the effectiveness of microcredit loans and one used in ecology to determine whether a species is present at a particular site.

Across the board, they found that DADVI can estimate unknown parameters faster and more reliably than other methods, and achieves as good or better accuracy than ADVI. Because it is easier to use than other techniques, DADVI could offer a boost to scientists in a wide variety of fields.

In the future, the researchers want to dig deeper into correction methods for uncertainty estimates so they can better understand why these corrections can produce such accurate uncertainties, and when they could fall short.

“In applied statistics, we often have to use approximate algorithms for problems that are too complex or high-dimensional to allow exact solutions to be computed in reasonable time. This new paper offers an interesting set of theory and empirical results that point to an improvement in a popular existing approximate algorithm for Bayesian inference,” says Andrew Gelman ’85, ’86, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, who was not involved with the study. “As one of the team involved in the creation of that earlier work, I’m happy to see our algorithm superseded by something more stable.”

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

Electrons become fractions of themselves in graphene, study finds

$Electrons become fractions of themselves in graphene, study finds$

The electron is the basic unit of electricity, as it carries a single negative charge. This is what we’re taught in high school physics, and it is overwhelmingly the case in most materials in nature.

But in very special states of matter, electrons can splinter into fractions of their whole. This phenomenon, known as “fractional charge,” is exceedingly rare, and if it can be corralled and controlled, the exotic electronic state could help to build resilient, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

To date, this effect, known to physicists as the “fractional quantum Hall effect,” has been observed a handful of times, and mostly under very high, carefully maintained magnetic fields. Only recently have scientists seen the effect in a material that did not require such powerful magnetic manipulation.

Now, MIT physicists have observed the elusive fractional charge effect, this time in a simpler material: five layers of graphene — an atom-thin layer of carbon that stems from graphite and common pencil lead. They report their results today in Nature.

They found that when five sheets of graphene are stacked like steps on a staircase, the resulting structure inherently provides just the right conditions for electrons to pass through as fractions of their total charge, with no need for any external magnetic field.

The results are the first evidence of the “fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect” (the term “anomalous” refers to the absence of a magnetic field) in crystalline graphene, a material that physicists did not expect to exhibit this effect.

“This five-layer graphene is a material system where many good surprises happen,” says study author Long Ju, assistant professor of physics at MIT. “Fractional charge is just so exotic, and now we can realize this effect with a much simpler system and without a magnetic field. That in itself is important for fundamental physics. And it could enable the possibility for a type of quantum computing that is more robust against perturbation.”

Ju’s MIT co-authors are lead author Zhengguang Lu, Tonghang Han, Yuxuan Yao, Aidan Reddy, Jixiang Yang, Junseok Seo, and Liang Fu, along with Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.

A bizarre state

The fractional quantum Hall effect is an example of the weird phenomena that can arise when particles shift from behaving as individual units to acting together as a whole. This collective “correlated” behavior emerges in special states, for instance when electrons are slowed from their normally frenetic pace to a crawl that enables the particles to sense each other and interact. These interactions can produce rare electronic states, such as the seemingly unorthodox splitting of an electron’s charge.

In 1982, scientists discovered the fractional quantum Hall effect in heterostructures of gallium arsenide, where a gas of electrons confined in a two-dimensional plane is placed under high magnetic fields. The discovery later won the group a Nobel Prize in Physics.

“[The discovery] was a very big deal, because these unit charges interacting in a way to give something like fractional charge was very, very bizarre,” Ju says. “At the time, there were no theory predictions, and the experiments surprised everyone.”

Those researchers achieved their groundbreaking results using magnetic fields to slow down the material’s electrons enough for them to interact. The fields they worked with were about 10 times stronger than what typically powers an MRI machine.

In August 2023, scientists at the University of Washington reported the first evidence of fractional charge without a magnetic field. They observed this “anomalous” version of the effect, in a twisted semiconductor called molybdenum ditelluride. The group prepared the material in a specific configuration, which theorists predicted would give the material an inherent magnetic field, enough to encourage electrons to fractionalize without any external magnetic control.

The “no magnets” result opened a promising route to topological quantum computing — a more secure form of quantum computing, in which the added ingredient of topology (a property that remains unchanged in the face of weak deformation or disturbance) gives a qubit added protection when carrying out a computation. This computation scheme is based on a combination of fractional quantum Hall effect and a superconductor. It used to be almost impossible to realize: One needs a strong magnetic field to get fractional charge, while the same magnetic field will usually kill the superconductor. In this case the fractional charges would serve as a qubit (the basic unit of a quantum computer).

Making steps

That same month, Ju and his team happened to also observe signs of anomalous fractional charge in graphene — a material for which there had been no predictions for exhibiting such an effect.

Ju’s group has been exploring electronic behavior in graphene, which by itself has exhibited exceptional properties. Most recently, Ju’s group has looked into pentalayer graphene — a structure of five graphene sheets, each stacked slightly off from the other, like steps on a staircase. Such pentalayer graphene structure is embedded in graphite and can be obtained by exfoliation using Scotch tape. When placed in a refrigerator at ultracold temperatures, the structure’s electrons slow to a crawl and interact in ways they normally wouldn’t when whizzing around at higher temperatures.

In their new work, the researchers did some calculations and found that electrons might interact with each other even more strongly if the pentalayer structure were aligned with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) — a material that has a similar atomic structure to that of graphene, but with slightly different dimensions. In combination, the two materials should produce a moiré superlattice — an intricate, scaffold-like atomic structure that could slow electrons down in ways that mimic a magnetic field.

“We did these calculations, then thought, let’s go for it,” says Ju, who happened to install a new dilution refrigerator in his MIT lab last summer, which the team planned to use to cool materials down to ultralow temperatures, to study exotic electronic behavior.

The researchers fabricated two samples of the hybrid graphene structure by first exfoliating graphene layers from a block of graphite, then using optical tools to identify five-layered flakes in the steplike configuration. They then stamped the graphene flake onto an hBN flake and placed a second hBN flake over the graphene structure. Finally, they attached electrodes to the structure and placed it in the refrigerator, set to near absolute zero.

As they applied a current to the material and measured the voltage output, they started to see signatures of fractional charge, where the voltage equals the current multiplied by a fractional number and some fundamental physics constants.

“The day we saw it, we didn’t recognize it at first,” says first author Lu. “Then we started to shout as we realized, this was really big. It was a completely surprising moment.”

“This was probably the first serious samples we put in the new fridge,” adds co-first author Han. “Once we calmed down, we looked in detail to make sure that what we were seeing was real.”

With further analysis, the team confirmed that the graphene structure indeed exhibited the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect. It is the first time the effect has been seen in graphene.

“Graphene can also be a superconductor,” Ju says. “So, you could have two totally different effects in the same material, right next to each other. If you use graphene to talk to graphene, it avoids a lot of unwanted effects when bridging graphene with other materials.”

For now, the group is continuing to explore multilayer graphene for other rare electronic states.

“We are diving in to explore many fundamental physics ideas and applications,” he says. “We know there will be more to come.”

This research is supported in part by the Sloan Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Kiloview Takes AVoIP to New Heights – Videoguys

Discover how Kiloview’s cutting-edge AVoIP solutions showcased at ISE 2024, including NDI 6 integration and Dante Audio support, are revolutionizing content creation in the A/V industry. Explore the P3 5G bonding HEVC video encoder with its new backpack for field live broadcasting.

In the bustling landscape of the Integrated Systems Europe 2024 (ISE 2024) exhibition, Kiloview emerges as a frontrunner, poised to introduce a suite of advanced AVoIP solutions redefining content creation within the A/V industry. Here’s a deep dive into how Kiloview’s latest offerings are set to transform workflows and elevate experiences for professionals and enthusiasts alike.

Elevating Quality with NDI 6 Integration

At the heart of Kiloview’s showcase lies the integration of NDI 6 technology, a game-changing advancement promising unparalleled image quality and seamless remote connectivity. With NDI Bridge’s enhanced streaming capabilities and support for High Dynamic Range (HDR), viewers can expect nothing short of a captivating and immersive visual experience. This integration not only enhances content quality but also streamlines workflows, providing centralized control and unprecedented flexibility in content creation.

Seamless Integration with Dante Audio

Kiloview takes compatibility to new heights by introducing support for Dante Audio, a widely acclaimed audio networking technology. With this integration, Kiloview products seamlessly integrate with Dante-enabled devices, ensuring high-fidelity audio distribution over IP networks. Whether in education, conferencing, or medical environments, where pristine audio is paramount, Kiloview’s solutions deliver professional-grade quality without compromise, fostering efficient content production and streaming workflows.

Pioneering Field Broadcasting with the P3 5G Bonding HEVC Video Encoder

Enter the P3 5G bonding HEVC video encoder – Kiloview’s answer to the evolving demands of field broadcasting. Boasting up to 4CH 5G connections, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet integration, the P3 encoder is a powerhouse designed for professionals on the move. Featuring dual 3G-SDI and HDMI inputs, 4Kp30 support, and versatile protocol coverage, including NDI|HX, SRT, RTMP, RTSP, and HLS, the P3 sets a new standard for versatility and performance. Coupled with its innovative backpack design, the P3 offers a portable and reliable solution for live video broadcasting from any location, making it ideal for live events, sports coverage, news reporting, and more.

Tailored Solutions for Industry Needs

At ISE 2024, Kiloview isn’t just showcasing technology; they’re presenting tailored solutions crafted to meet the diverse needs of industry professionals. From field live broadcasting to remote video transmission, Multiview, NDI complete solutions, and multi-channel rack-mounted setups, Kiloview’s offerings cater to a spectrum of use cases within the A/V industry. With customizable workflows and versatile choices, customers can design solutions that align precisely with their requirements, driving innovation and efficiency in the ever-evolving landscape of audio-visual technology.

In Conclusion, Kiloview’s presence at ISE 2024 signifies more than just a showcase of technology; it’s a testament to their commitment to innovation and excellence in the A/V industry. By delivering cutting-edge solutions that empower professionals to create, connect, and captivate audiences, Kiloview is shaping the future of content creation one innovation at a time.

Read the full article from Kiloview for InBroadcast HERE

NETGEAR M4350 and Panasonic KAIROS Team Up – Videoguys

In a groundbreaking move for the live video production industry, NETGEAR has unveiled a strategic interoperability partnership with Panasonic Connect, centered around the revolutionary KAIROS IT/IP Platform. While NETGEAR is renowned for its consumer networking solutions, it’s also a key player in the realm of business networking products. On the other hand, Panasonic Connect, a vital arm of the Panasonic Group, is pivotal in advancing the Group’s B2B solutions.

At the heart of this collaboration lies KAIROS, an innovative IT/IP Platform tailored for live productions. Leveraging Internet Protocol (IP) technology, KAIROS enables seamless transmission of audio and video signals over network cables, offering unparalleled control for broadcast, large screen displays, and livestreams.

One of KAIROS’ standout features is its compatibility with ST 2110, a suite of standards developed by SMPTE, facilitating professional media transmission over IP networks. This compatibility enhances flexibility in input/output connectivity, ensuring streamlined workflows for video professionals.

NETGEAR’s M4350 series of managed switches, equipped with the proprietary NETGEAR AV OS, play a crucial role in powering the KAIROS ecosystem. Featuring a user-friendly interface and preconfigured profiles for major audio, video, and lighting protocols, these switches offer plug-and-play simplicity. Additionally, with features like redundant power supplies, Power over Ethernet (PoE), and ultra-quiet fans, they guarantee reliability and performance.

Tod Musgrave, senior broadcast BDM at NETGEAR, emphasized the ease of configuration provided by NETGEAR’s solution, easing the transition for Broadcast Pro AV engineers into IP workflows. This sentiment was echoed by Kageyuki Fujimoto, lead manager of KAIROS Alliance Partners, highlighting the user-friendly design of the M4350 series as a catalyst for expanding SMPTE ST 2110 adoption in the video production market.

In conclusion, as the industry increasingly embraces network cable-based AV-over-IP systems, partnerships like the one between NETGEAR and Panasonic Connect are instrumental in driving innovation and easing the transition for professionals. With KAIROS at the forefront, backed by NETGEAR’s robust infrastructure and intuitive configuration tools, the future of live video production looks promising, paving the way for seamless integration of cutting-edge technology into traditional workflows.

Read the full article by Pete Tomkies for Videomaker HERE

Teradek Live Prism Flex Powers the Pulse Music Festival – Videoguys

In the pulsating heart of the Las Vegas Festival Grounds, where the excitement of live music thrives, BC Live Productions faced a unique challenge: delivering flawless streaming feeds from three different stages to a multitude of destinations amidst the sprawling venue’s connectivity constraints. With an audience capacity of up to 80,000 attendees and the intricacies of transmitting high-quality content across varied locations, BC Live sought an innovative solution to conquer this formidable task.

Challenges Faced: The task at hand was daunting. BC Live needed to transmit Program feeds from three stages to diverse locations, including local production offices, artist trailers, LED towers around the festival grounds, and off-site monitoring stations. With the vastness of the venue and the unpredictability of internet connectivity, sustaining consistent, high-quality streaming over multiple days was a significant hurdle to overcome.

Innovative Solutions: To tackle these challenges head-on, BC Live leveraged Teradek’s cutting-edge technology, employing Prism Flex encoders at each stage’s control room and harnessing Teradek’s Core platform for seamless orchestration. By consolidating all Prism Flex devices on a single VLAN and managing transmission destinations through Core’s on-premise Hyperion server, BC Live optimized bandwidth usage and ensured localized management, even with minimal internet bandwidth requirements.

Streamlined Monitoring and Custom Solutions: BC Live customized monitoring solutions for different stakeholders, utilizing Core Workspaces with stringent security measures to grant access via email and SMS. The deployment of user-friendly AppleTV4K decoders equipped with the Core TV App facilitated easy selection of stages for monitoring at production stations across the venue. Additionally, a custom multiview of all stages and local weather stats was seamlessly integrated into the Core Workspace, enhancing operational efficiency.

Tailored Solutions for Specific Needs: Private spaces such as artist areas received tailored solutions, with SRT transmissions and multi-channel decoders enabling technicians to switch between stages effortlessly. LED towers strategically positioned across the festival grounds seamlessly integrated Prism Flex Decoders, allowing for dynamic display cycles of ads, on-stage feeds, and important messages.

Results and Testimonials: BC Live Productions’ technical prowess, coupled with Teradek’s Prism and Core solutions, culminated in a flawless transmission of Program signals across diverse stages. Hunter Britanisky, Technical Producer at BC Live, praised the efficiency and reliability of Teradek’s solutions, emphasizing their ability to meet the festival’s technical demands with minimal bandwidth usage and remote management through Core.

Conclusion: In a testament to innovation and technical excellence, BC Live Productions successfully overcame the challenges of streaming feeds across multiple stages at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds. Teradek’s Prism and Core solutions not only ensured seamless transmission but also instilled confidence among stakeholders, allowing them to focus on delivering an unforgettable live music experience.

Read the full article from Teradek HERE

Researchers harness 2D magnetic materials for energy-efficient computing

Experimental computer memories and processors built from magnetic materials use far less energy than traditional silicon-based devices. Two-dimensional magnetic materials, composed of layers that are only a few atoms thick, have incredible properties that could allow magnetic-based devices to achieve unprecedented speed, efficiency, and scalability.

While many hurdles must be overcome until these so-called van der Waals magnetic materials can be integrated into functioning computers, MIT researchers took an important step in this direction by demonstrating precise control of a van der Waals magnet at room temperature.

This is key, since magnets composed of atomically thin van der Waals materials can typically only be controlled at extremely cold temperatures, making them difficult to deploy outside a laboratory.

Researchers harness 2D magnetic materials for energy-efficient computing

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The researchers used pulses of electrical current to switch the direction of the device’s magnetization at room temperature. Magnetic switching can be used in computation, the same way a transistor switches between open and closed to represent 0s and 1s in binary code, or in computer memory, where switching enables data storage.

The team fired bursts of electrons at a magnet made of a new material that can sustain its magnetism at higher temperatures. The experiment leveraged a fundamental property of electrons known as spin, which makes the electrons behave like tiny magnets. By manipulating the spin of electrons that strike the device, the researchers can switch its magnetization.

“The heterostructure device we have developed requires an order of magnitude lower electrical current to switch the van der Waals magnet, compared to that required for bulk magnetic devices,” says Deblina Sarkar, the AT&T Career Development Assistant Professor in the MIT Media Lab and Center for Neurobiological Engineering, head of the Nano-Cybernetic Biotrek Lab, and the senior author of a paper on this technique. “Our device is also more energy efficient than other van der Waals magnets that are unable to switch at room temperature.”

In the future, such a magnet could be used to build faster computers that consume less electricity. It could also enable magnetic computer memories that are nonvolatile, which means they don’t leak information when powered off, or processors that make complex AI algorithms more energy-efficient.

“There is a lot of inertia around trying to improve materials that worked well in the past. But we have shown that if you make radical changes, starting by rethinking the materials you are using, you can potentially get much better solutions,” says Shivam Kajale, a graduate student in Sarkar’s lab and co-lead author of the paper.

Kajale and Sarkar are joined on the paper by co-lead author Thanh Nguyen, a graduate student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE); Corson Chao, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DSME); David Bono, a DSME research scientist; Artittaya Boonkird, an NSE graduate student; and Mingda Li, associate professor of nuclear science and engineering. The research appears this week in Nature Communications.

An atomically thin advantage

Methods to fabricate tiny computer chips in a clean room from bulk materials like silicon can hamper devices. For instance, the layers of material may be barely 1 nanometer thick, so minuscule rough spots on the surface can be severe enough to degrade performance.

By contrast, van der Waals magnetic materials are intrinsically layered and structured in such a way that the surface remains perfectly smooth, even as researchers peel off layers to make thinner devices. In addition, atoms in one layer won’t leak into other layers, enabling the materials to retain their unique properties when stacked in devices.

“In terms of scaling and making these magnetic devices competitive for commercial applications, van der Waals materials are the way to go,” Kajale says.

But there’s a catch. This new class of magnetic materials have typically only been operated at temperatures below 60 kelvins (-351 degrees Fahrenheit). To build a magnetic computer processor or memory, researchers need to use electrical current to operate the magnet at room temperature.

To achieve this, the team focused on an emerging material called iron gallium telluride. This atomically thin material has all the properties needed for effective room temperature magnetism and doesn’t contain rare earth elements, which are undesirable because extracting them is especially destructive to the environment.

Nguyen carefully grew bulk crystals of this 2D material using a special technique. Then, Kajale fabricated a two-layer magnetic device using nanoscale flakes of iron gallium telluride underneath a six-nanometer layer of platinum.

Tiny device in hand, they used an intrinsic property of electrons known as spin to switch its magnetization at room temperature.

Electron ping-pong

While electrons don’t technically “spin” like a top, they do possess the same kind of angular momentum. That spin has a direction, either up or down. The researchers can leverage a property known as spin-orbit coupling to control the spins of electrons they fire at the magnet.

The same way momentum is transferred when one ball hits another, electrons will transfer their “spin momentum” to the 2D magnetic material when they strike it. Depending on the direction of their spins, that momentum transfer can reverse the magnetization.

In a sense, this transfer rotates the magnetization from up to down (or vice-versa), so it is called a “torque,” as in spin-orbit torque switching. Applying a negative electric pulse causes the magnetization to go downward, while a positive pulse causes it to go upward.

The researchers can do this switching at room temperature for two reasons: the special properties of iron gallium telluride and the fact that their technique uses small amounts of electrical current. Pumping too much current into the device would cause it to overheat and demagnetize.

The team faced many challenges over the two years it took to achieve this milestone, Kajale says. Finding the right magnetic material was only half the battle. Since iron gallium telluride oxidizes quickly, fabrication must be done inside a glovebox filled with nitrogen.

“The device is only exposed to air for 10 or 15 seconds, but even after that I have to do a step where I polish it to remove any oxide,” he says.

Now that they have demonstrated room-temperature switching and greater energy efficiency, the researchers plan to keep pushing the performance of magnetic van der Waals materials.

“Our next milestone is to achieve switching without the need for any external magnetic fields. Our aim is to enhance our technology and scale up to bring the versatility of van der Waals magnet to commercial applications,” Sarkar says.

This work was carried out, in part, using the facilities at MIT.Nano and the Harvard University Center for Nanoscale Systems.

MLK Celebration Gala pays tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and his writings on “the goal of true education”

After a week of festivities around campus, members of the MIT community gathered Saturday evening in the Boston Marriott Kendall Square ballroom to celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Marking 50 years of this annual celebration at MIT, the gala event’s program was loosely organized around a line in King’s essay, “The Purpose of Education,” which he penned as an undergraduate at Morehouse College:

“We must remember that intelligence is not enough,” King wrote. “Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”

Senior Myles Noel was the master of ceremonies for the evening and welcomed one and all. Minister DiOnetta Jones Crayton, former director of the Office of Minority Education and associate dean of minority education, delivered the invocation, exhorting the audience to embrace “the fiery urgency of now.” Next, MIT President Sally Kornbluth shared her remarks.

She acknowledged that at many institutions, diversity and inclusion efforts are eroding. Kornbluth reiterated her commitment to these efforts, saying, “I want to be clear about how important I believe it is to keep such efforts strong — and to make them the best they can be. The truth is, by any measure, MIT has never been more diverse, and it has never been more excellent. And we intend to keep it that way.”

Kornbluth also recognized the late Paul Parravano, co-director of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations, who was a staff member at MIT for 33 years as well as the longest-serving member on the MLK Celebration Committee. Parravano’s “long and distinguished devotion to the values and goals of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspires us all,” Kornbluth said, presenting his family with the 50th Anniversary Lifetime Achievement Award.

Next, students and staff shared personal reflections. Zina Queen, office manager in the Department of Political Science, noted that her family has been a part of the MIT community for generations. Her grandmother, Rita, her mother, Wanda, and her daughter have all worked or are currently working at the Institute. Queen pointed out that her family epitomizes another of King’s oft-repeated quotes, “Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth.”

Senior Tamea Cobb noted that MIT graduates have a particular power in the world that they must use strategically and with intention. “Education and service go hand and hand,” she said, adding that she intends “every one of my technical abilities will be used to pursue a career that is fulfilling, expansive, impactful, and good.”

Graduate student Austin K. Cole ’24 addressed the Israel-Hamas conflict and the MIT administration. As he spoke, some attendees left their seats to stand with Cole at the podium. Cole closed his remarks with a plea to resist state and structural violence, and instead focus on relationship and mutuality.

After dinner, incoming vice president for equity and inclusion Karl Reid ’84, SM ’85 honored Adjunct Professor Emeritus Clarence Williams for his distinguished service to the Institute. Williams was an assistant to three MIT presidents, served as director of the Office of Minority Education, taught in the Department of Urban Planning, initiated the MIT Black History Project, and mentored hundreds of students. Reid was one of those students, and he shared a few of his mentor’s oft repeated phrases:

“Do the work and let the talking take care of itself.”

“Bad ideas kill themselves; great ideas flourish.”

In closing, Reid exhorted the audience to create more leaders who, like Williams, embody excellence and mutual respect for others.

The keynote address was given by civil rights activist Janet Moses, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s; a physician who worked for a time as a pediatrician at MIT Health; a longtime resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a co-founder, with her husband, Robert Moses, of the Algebra Project, a pioneering program grounded in the belief “that in the 21st century every child has a civil right to secure math literacy — the ability to read, write, and reason with the symbol systems of mathematics.”

A striking image of a huge new building planned for New York City appeared on the screen behind Moses during her address. It was a rendering of a new jail being built at an estimated cost of $3 billion. Against this background, she described the trajectory of the “carceral state,” which began in 1771 with the Mansfield Judgement in England. At the time, “not even South Africa had a set of race laws as detailed as those in the U.S.,” Moses observed.

Today, the carceral state uses all levels of government to maintain a racial caste system that is deeply entrenched, Moses argued, drawing a connection between the purported need for a new prison complex and a statistic that Black people in New York state are three times more likely than whites to be convicted for a crime.

She referenced a McKinsey study that it will take Black people over three centuries to achieve a quality of life on parity with whites. Despite the enormity of this challenge, Moses encouraged the audience to “rock the boat and churn the waters of the status quo.” She also pointed out that “there is joy in the struggle.”

Symbols of joy were also on display at the Gala in the forms of original visual art and poetry, and a quilt whose squares were contributed by MIT staff, students, and alumni, hailing from across the Institute.

Quilts are a physical manifestation of the legacy of the enslaved in America and their descendants — the ability to take scraps and leftovers to create something both practical and beautiful. The 50th anniversary quilt also incorporated a line from King’s highly influential “I Have a Dream Speech”:

“One day, all God’s children will have the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

Nourishing the mind, hand, and stomach

As early as middle school, Branden Spitzer loved to watch cooking shows and experiment with recipes in his family’s kitchen. It was a clear harbinger of his interest in materials science, he says now. Once he discovered that he could delight others with a perfectly executed pie, he began to see the many ways that his passion for baking might branch into other areas requiring technical acuity.

“We have this deep connection to food, the things that we wear, the products around us that we experience or work with every day,” says the MIT senior. “I hope we can make those things even better using science and engineering.”

Spitzer is a materials science and engineering major and has rounded out his education by cross registering for food science classes at Harvard University. He has pursued a variety of research opportunities related to food and sustainability, from extending the shelf-life of produce to developing lab-grown meat.

Spitzer also sees food as a means of social nourishment. He enjoys exploring restaurants and having dinners with friends, and takes special pleasure in planning and putting together meals. “I love making pies and cooking because you can share something with people that they think is really tasty,” he says. “And by eating the food they can understand all the thought and everything that went into it. I want the work or research I go on to do to have that same sort of tangible impact.”

Sampling a huge menu

Upon beginning his first year at MIT, Spitzer was overwhelmed by the seemingly endless amount of activities the Institute had to offer. He says the busy student culture was one of the things that attracted him to MIT, yet once he was face-to-face with it all, he didn’t know where to begin. He recalls one of his first-year advisors instructing him to “ride the wave,” and he took this to heart. Open to trying anything, Spitzer set forth on several academic and extracurricular journeys that would lead him in completely different directions through his four years.

He pursued research projects centered on food and sustainability. In one of his first research positions, Spitzer worked for Mori, a Cambridge-based startup that makes a silk-based coating that slows the spoiling of fruits and vegetables. His longest-running research project, in Professor Markus Buehler’s Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics, involves working with mycelium, the root systems of mushrooms, to improve and alter the growth of the material for use in 3D printing. He spent a summer interning for a company in South Africa that is working on a lab-grown meat product, and currently he is interning for Faerm, a plant-based cheese company in Copenhagen, Denmark. He hopes to continue this in this direction after graduation, either at a startup or in graduate school studying materials science or biological engineering.

Spitzer also strives to make a positive impact on his local community at MIT through his work. He participated in activities ranging from physical education to the arts, and everything in between. He joined the student organization MCG, the MIT Consulting Group, solving real-world business problems for clients. Spitzer is also a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, where he served as vice president for three semesters and introduced an initiative to prioritize inclusivity and mental health awareness. And, he joined MIT’s lighting design group, which he says exposed him to new entirely new communities of artists and engineers.

Spitzer has been fond of traveling since he was a child. He recalls taking trips with his family often, visiting historical and global landmarks. In the past four years he has embarked on multiple study abroad and work experiences through MISTI and is enthusiastic about the unexpected places his internships have taken him. He has spent time in the U.K., Brazil, and South Africa, and will be studying in Denmark this semester.

In Brazil, Spitzer helped to develop and teach a materials science program and class. He says it was exciting to share the subjects of polymers, recycling, and sustainability with students in a different part of the world. In South Africa, Spitzer interned for the Mzansi Meat Co. (now Newform Foods), which he came across by surprise after searching for companies that were making cultured meat products.

Pirates at MIT

Spurred by MIT’s physical education requirements, Spitzer has found a passion for several sports activities. Sailing, for example, has become one of his favorite hobbies. “It’s super cool that we have a chance to do these crazy things,” he says when referring to his time spent taking out sailboats to practice for his sailing class on the Charles River.

Sailing is one of four physical education classes needed to obtain the MIT Pirate Certificate, an incentive that encourages participation in MIT’s P.E. offerings. Spitzer pursued this achievement, enrolling in archery, rifle, and fencing classes over several semesters. The diverse course selection allowed for unexpected discoveries. “I was surprised and blown away by how much the rifle practice was an exercise in thought, focus, and meditation,” he says. “It was very different than I expected, in a very pleasant way.”

Ice skating is another discovery Spitzer made through his four required gym classes. He has taken many more classes by now though since they are “super fun.” Beginning as a nervous newcomer with no experience, Spitzer now takes an intermediate skating class where he develops his skills in turns and speed skating.

Spitzer also enjoys recreational cycling and indoor rock climbing in his spare time, as well as yoga and dancing. He has taken multiple dance classes in his time at MIT and has been a member of the organization MIT DanceTroupe for four years.

Whether in the kitchen, lab, or gym, Spitzer has found a robust community in all corners of the MIT campus and beyond. Rather than choosing one area of focus, Spitzer states the most integral aspect of his student experience at MIT was getting a taste for everything: “You just try things out here. You learn the things you love or the things you hate, and get to do something really cool along the way.”