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Today's robotic laboratories for drones are housed in a large room. At times, they are the size of a warehouse. These spaces are typically equipped with permanent devices to localize the drones, e.g., Vicon Infrared cameras. Significant time is invested to fine-tune the localization apparatus to compute and control the position of the drones. One may use these laboratories to develop a 3D multimedia system with miniature sized drones configured with light sources. As an alternative, this brave new idea paper envisions shrinking these room-sized laboratories to the size of a cube or cuboid that sits on a desk and costs less than 10K dollars. The resulting Dronevision (DV) will be the size of a 1990s Television. In addition to light sources, its Flying Light Specks (FLSs) will be network-enabled drones with storage and processing capability to implement decentralized algorithms. The DV will include a localization technique to expedite development of 3D displays. It will act as a haptic interface for a user to interact with and manipulate the 3D virtual illuminations. It will empower an experimenter to design, implement, test, debug, and maintain software and hardware that realize novel algorithms in the comfort of their office without having to reserve a laboratory. In addition to enhancing productivity, it will improve safety of the experimenter by minimizing the likelihood of accidents. This paper introduces the concept of a DV, the research agenda one may pursue using this device, and our plans to realize one. 

Abstract The resistance to oxidizing environments exhibited by some M n+1 AX n (MAX) phases stems from the formation of stable and protective oxide layers at high operating temperatures. The MAX phases are hexagonally arranged layered nitrides or carbides with general formula M n +1 AX n , n  = 1, 2, 3, where M is early transition elements, A is A block elements, and X is C/N. Previous attempts to model and assess oxide phase stability in these systems has been limited in scope due to higher computational costs. To address the issue, we developed a machine-learning driven high-throughput framework for the fast assessment of phase stability and oxygen reactivity of 211 chemistry MAX phase M 2 AX. The proposed scheme combines a sure independence screening sparsifying operator-based machine-learning model in combination with grand-canonical linear programming to assess temperature-dependent Gibbs free energies, reaction products, and elemental chemical activity during the oxidation of MAX phases. The thermodynamic stability, and chemical activity of constituent elements of Ti 2 AlC with respect to oxygen were fully assessed to understand the high-temperature oxidation behavior. The predictions are in good agreement with oxidation experiments performed on Ti 2 AlC. We were also able to explain the metastability of Ti 2 SiC, which could not be synthesized experimentally due to higher stability of competing phases. For generality of the proposed approach, we discuss the oxidation mechanism of Cr 2 AlC. The insights of oxidation behavior will enable more efficient design and accelerated discovery of MAX phases with maintained performance in oxidizing environments at high temperatures. 

Abstract We present the results of an analysis of Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) observations of the full 2500 deg 2 South Pole Telescope (SPT)-Sunyaev–Zel’dovich cluster sample. We describe a process for identifying active galactic nuclei (AGN) in brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) based on WISE mid-IR color and redshift. Applying this technique to the BCGs of the SPT-SZ sample, we calculate the AGN-hosting BCG fraction, which is defined as the fraction of BCGs hosting bright central AGNs over all possible BCGs. Assuming an evolving single-burst stellar population model, we find statistically significant evidence (>99.9%) for a mid-IR excess at high redshift compared to low redshift, suggesting that the fraction of AGN-hosting BCGs increases with redshift over the range of 0 < z < 1.3. The best-fit redshift trend of the AGN-hosting BCG fraction has the form (1 + z ) 4.1±1.0 . These results are consistent with previous studies in galaxy clusters as well as as in field galaxies. One way to explain this result is that member galaxies at high redshift tend to have more cold gas. While BCGs in nearby galaxy clusters grow mostly by dry mergers with cluster members, leading to no increase in AGN activity, BCGs at high redshift could primarily merge with gas-rich satellites, providing fuel for feeding AGNs. If this observed increase in AGN activity is linked to gas-rich mergers rather than ICM cooling, we would expect to see an increase in scatter in the P cav versus L cool relation at z > 1. Last, this work confirms that the runaway cooling phase, as predicted by the classical cooling-flow model, in the Phoenix cluster is extremely rare and most BCGs have low (relative to Eddington) black hole accretion rates.