Laboratory a Mile Underground in South Dakota

Lawrence Livermore members of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) team and the dual-phase xenon detector, under construction to study the expected response to low-energy nuclear interactions in LZ. The LLNL detector aims to probe nuclear response down to the ultimate limit of

sensitivity — a single electron generated in the liquid xenon phase.

Deep underground in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the search for the dark matter of the universe will soon begin.

A new project by the U.S. Department of Energy called the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment is planned to go online in 2020, a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility.

The DOE issued a “critical decision” approval on Feb. 8, advancing the project from the drawing board toward construction – just in time to keep pace with other “next-gen” dark matter search facilities underway in Europe and China.

The LZ project will involve 220 scientists who come from 38 institutions worldwide. The lead U.S. laboratory for the project, however, is California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

“We will try to go as fast as we can to have everything completed by April 2020,” said Murdock Gilchriese, the project director of LZ, and a physicist at Lawrence Livermore. “We got a very strong endorsement to go fast and to be first.”

A breakthrough could potentially unlock some secrets of the universe.

In the first half of the 20th century, physicists understood that actions far-off in space make no sense when held up to Newton’s Law of Gravity and other fundamental concepts of action and reaction as understood by humankind.

Spiral galaxies, and galaxy clusters, move too fast to be operating by themselves. As early as the 1930s, scientists postulated that an invisible force had to be acting upon them to cause them to move in misunderstood ways. The placeholder description for the missing mass became “dark matter.”

Although still not understood in the 21st century, perhaps the most popular current theory is that dark matter is in fact weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.

The WIMP, if they are the unseen force, have proven incredibly hard to detect. So to avoid background interference from cosmic rays or even human interference, the new LZ experiment is being constructed a mile underneath the Earth.

It will use 10 metric tons of purified liquid xenon in a sealed chamber. The theory is that a dark matter particle will collide with a xenon atom, producing a brief flash of light, followed by a second flash when the electrons drift to the top of the liquid in the chamber. Light amplifying tubes are expected to pick up the signs of the collision.

The LZ is estimated to be 50 times more sensitive than its predecessor, known as the Large Underground Xenon experiment, or LUX. The new LZ has four times the number of light-amplifying tubes to pick up the flashes than the dismantled LUX.

The ultra-sensitivity has required some countermeasures for possible interference: a specially-constructed dust-filtering cleanroom is prepared for assembling the LZ, and a tailored radon-reduction building is also in the works.

Assembly and installation is slated to begin next year, and take two years.

Massive underground constructions used to detect the slightest clues to the composition of the universe have produced results. Just a year ago, it was the complex Laser Interferometer Gravitation-Wave Observatory (LIGO) sites at Louisiana and Washington state which produce the first detections of gravitational waves – ripples in space-time – which essentially proved much of Albert Einstein’s cosmology. The “sound” of black holes colliding detected by the hypersensitive instruments had been in transit toward the Earth for a billion years – and was just a thousandth of a proton in diameter.

Mikron Automation announces U.S. Headquarter Expansion

Mikron Automation and Denver-based Confluent Development have announced the expansion of Mikron Automation's US headquarters in Arapahoe County's Dove Valley Business Park.

The industrial facility will expand to include 19,000ft² of space to help support the company's rapid growth, increasing the facility's total size to 82,000ft².

A division of the Swiss-based Mikron Group, Mikron Automation is one of the world's leading manufacturers of customized, highly productive automation solutions for the assembly and testing of pharmaceutical, medical, automotive, consumer, electrical, and construction products.

Its US headquarters in Dove Valley Business Park caters to more than 100 skilled employees and serves as an assembly and testing facility. It is one of the two US locations for the Mikron Group.

As developer on the expansion, Confluent Development previously delivered Mikron Automation's US headquarters in 2015 as the company relocated from its former Aurora facility. The relocation increased Mikron's production capability by 30%, with a facility fostering efficient workflow and flexible configurations contributing to the company's rapid operational growth. The relocation also included plans for future growth, with Confluent Development initiating the expansion project in September 2016 and a planned completion by April 2017.

General Manager for Mikron Corporation Denver Mike Gunner said: "With our relocation in 2015 supporting improved operational processes, we've been thrilled to see that our current demand has far exceeded projections, triggering the need for immediate growth.

"We're very pleased to soon have an expanded headquarters, to further enhance our speed-to-market goals and the customer experience."

In addition, Mikron's focus on talent recruitment and retention has also supported growth, receiving recognition for its success. Last year, the Denver location launched an apprenticeship program in coordination with the governor's office, the Department of Labor, local colleges, and school districts.

With Mikron Corporation Denver as a corporate leader of Colorado's Workforce Development efforts, Governor Hickenlooper signed House Bill 16-1288, Industry Infrastructure Grant Program, in the company's new Denver facility in May 2016.

Chief development officer (CDO) of Confluent Development Celeste Tanner said: "Mikron is truly a forward-thinking company, with keen insight into how to continue strengthening relationships with current and future customers across North and Central America.

"It's rewarding to see the ways in which the physical facility can contribute to a company's dramatic success, and we're honored to help play a role in the growth."

Dove Valley Business Park Associates helped to complete the original land sale, Open Studio Architecture is serving as the architect and Alcorn Construction is the project's general contractor. Jim McGrath and Tom Pappas of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented Mikron in the transaction.

imec Collaborates with City of Antwerp and Flanders in Smart City Living Lab

How can the Internet of Things change the future of the average citizen? To answer this question, imec joins forces with the City of Antwerp and the Flanders region to turn Antwerp into a Living Lab in which businesses, researchers, local residents and the city itself will experiment with smart technologies that aim to make urban life more pleasant, enjoyable and sustainable.

“Making life in cities more pleasant and sustainable, using everything that our technology has to offer, that is what Smart Cities is all about,” says Philippe Muyters, Flemish Minister for the Economy. “And imec, as a world-class research center, is the right partner to make this happen. With imec’s expertise, we can build a smart city with an open, secure and scalable infrastructure. A smart city where everyone has the opportunity to develop ideas and work together to create the future of Antwerp and the Flanders region.” Through imec, Flanders will invest €4 million annually in the City of Things project, in addition to the required project resources.

City of Things is a collaborative project between the City of Antwerp, Flanders and imec. The nerve center for this initiative is located at Startup Village, the location from which imec also runs its Antwerp startup and incubation operations. During the period from 2017 to 2019, the City of Antwerp intends to invest €650,000 in the project. According to City Councilor for the Economy Caroline Bastiaens: “The city is targeting four strategic priorities: mobility, security, sustainability and digital interaction with citizens.”

The City of Things project will roll out a fine-grained network of smart sensors and wireless gateways located around Antwerp’s buildings, streets, squares and other city objects. This network will connect the citizens with a whole range of innovative applications. The ensuing digital innovation is expected to enforce the city’s economic clout. And with the insights gained from the project, Antwerp and its businesses will learn how to collect the data they need to take well-informed decisions and develop innovative smart applications. Shortly, the seaport of Antwerp will also join the initiative, becoming an incubator for similar smart ideas.

“For the cities of tomorrow it’s all about the survival of the smartest,” says Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever. “Monitoring is the key to knowledge – so that’s exactly what we are going to do. Thanks to this unique collaboration, Antwerp is heading for a new golden age. In the coming years, the city will build a strong position in smart city technology, nationally and internationally. It is also the first step in putting Flanders firmly on the world map as a knowledge region: Smart Flanders, we call it.”

Imec has major ambitions. The Antwerp Living Lab is designed to grow into the largest living lab in Europe for Internet of Things applications. “Together with the City of Antwerp and Flanders, we have the ambition to become a leading player in the connected world,” says Luc Van den hove, CEO of imec. “The City of Things project allows us to join the city residents, developers, entrepreneurs, the government, and research centers and universities around one common goal: developing innovative solutions for better cities. Antwerp will become a living technology lab in which everyone can make a contribution to a sustainable, forward-looking society.”

The Antwerp Living Lab already has a number of projects up and running. These include vans operated by Bpost, the Belgian postal service, which have sensors to measure the air quality throughout the city, sensors whose data can be used to improve the city’s air quality. Another project involved the company Restore, measuring energy consumption in real-time and smoothing out usage spikes with the aim to ensure more efficient, cheaper energy production. With network operator Orange, we study how the project’s goals can be achieved using NarrowBand-IoT. This new technology enables communication of small data volumes over extended periods at hard-to-reach places, at the same time ensuring that the batteries of the connected devices can keep going for up to 10 years. The preparatory work on a host of other projects, e.g. concerning mobility, is underway.

A smart city will make life, living and working more enjoyable for local residents, visitors and businesses alike. Privacy and security are, of course, of great importance.

Caroline Bastiaens, City Councilor for the Economy: “Antwerp is an ideal city to establish this Living Lab. The city is big enough to test applications properly, yet sufficiently small to keep the cost and time required for development under control. Antwerp also has an interesting mix of offices, industry and retail, meaning that various applications can be developed to cover all needs.”

In recent years, Antwerp has developed a blooming ecosystem of start-up businesses and growth companies involved in digital innovation. Currently, the city has more than 350 start-ups and ten growth companies that have newly raised more than half a million euro capital, as well as nine incubators and accelerators, the Startup Village, exciting corporation such as Nokia, and an extensive international network. “And last but not least,” concludes Mayor Bart De Wever, “our city council is very open to innovation.”

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