Effects of Gamma Ray Bursts in Earth Biosphere

We continue former work on the modeling of potential effects of Gamma Ray Bursts on Phanerozoic Earth. We focus on global biospheric effects of ozone depletion and show a first modeling of the spectral reduction of light by NO2 formed in the stratosphere. We also illustrate the current complexities involved in the prediction of how terrestrial ecosystems would respond to this kind of burst. We conclude that more biological field and laboratory data are needed to reach even moderate accuracy in this modelingComment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Scalable Layer-2/Layer-3 Multistage Switching Architectures for Software Routers

Software routers are becoming an important alternative to proprietary and expensive network devices, because they exploit the economy of scale of the PC market and open-source software. When considering maximum performance in terms of throughput, PC-based routers suffer from limitations stemming from the single PC architecture, e.g., limited bus bandwidth, and high memory access latency. To overcome these limitations, in this paper we present a multistage architecture that combines a layer-2 load-balancer front-end and a layer-3 routing back-end, interconnected by standard Ethernet switches. Both the front-end and the back-end are implemented using standard PCs and open- source software. After describing the architecture, evaluation is performed on a lab test-bed, to show its scalability. While the proposed solution allows to increase performance of PC- based routers, it also allows to distribute packet manipulation functionalities, and to automatically recover from component failures

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification in the field: Reality beyond the potentiality

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