Syntek Technologies (United States)

During the recovery phase of the major geomagnetic superstorm of 10-11 May 2024, for the first time, unusual vortex-like structures were observed in the thermospheric composition O/N2 ratio and thermospheric temperature by the Global-scale observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) instrument (Evans et al., 2024). The features occurred over the American and Atlantic regions, and were also partly seen in the vertical total electron (VTEC) content maps. After that first-time discovery, Correira et al. (2025) further reported the occurrence of similar vortices but of smaller magnitude and smaller spatial scale during the October 2024 superstorm and during the April 2023 storm. Correira et al. (2025) also mentioned no evidence of the occurrence of the vortices in VTEC during these storms. In this work, we use data of the GOLD mission together with maps of GNSS-derived VTEC to study the correlation between the themospheric composition and the VTEC (Astafyeva et al., 2025). For the first time, we show that the lifetime and the evolution of the vortices in these two parameters differ: while the composition alters very slowly and the vortices slowly shift westward with their structure unchanged, the VTEC vortices can change very rapidly and their zonal drift is less evident. The link between the two parameters has been known for decades, however, the exact coupling remains poorly understood. The World’s most advanced simulation tools managed to reproduce the occurrence of an O/N2 vortex in the Southern Hemisphere, but not in the Northern Hemisphere (Wang et al., 2024). That same model or no other model was capable of reproducing such vortices in the VTEC during the May 2024 superstorm.We also show that VTEC vortices can occur during other intense storms, which means that the ionospheric VTEC can serve, to some extent, as a proxy of storm-time changes in the thermospheric composition.

In the health sector, robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have greatly influenced the direction of patient care, diagnosis, and treatment outcomes, especially for elderly patients. With a view to ensuring real-time monitoring and quick medical response, the demand for sophisticated healthcare monitoring systems is rising with an aging population. Conventional medical monitoring methods often endure inefficiencies, including misclassifiability, vulnerability to noise, and processing slowdown, causing false diagnoses or lag in reacting to life-threatening disease. This model, a hybrid Visual Geometry Residual Network (VGRN), relies on VGG-16 strengths and the ability of ResNet-50 to counter such disadvantages and elevate classification accuracy in cases of illness. To enhance signal clarity and uniform feature representation, the system utilizes sophisticated data preprocessing tools like Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) for efficient feature extraction and Gaussian filtering to suppress noise. A robotic aid system is employed to offer emergency response, medication adherence monitoring, and cognitive support, allowing real-time monitoring and immediate action. Improved patient outcomes are the result of the greater predictive analytics and disease detection of an AI-driven solution. With its remarkable accuracy of 98.52% and precision rate of 98.24%, the test result confirms the efficiency of the proposed system and far exceeds traditional approaches to health monitoring. The technology, which integrates intelligent robotic care and AI diagnostics, not only enhances the effectiveness of treatment but also reduces caregiver workloads, making elder care more convenient and efficient. By using sophisticated technology, the proposed model has an important role to play in enabling proactive management of healthcare, minimizing emergency situations, and ultimately enhancing the elderly’s quality of life.

In recent years, wildfires pose a critical threat to ecosystems, human life, and infrastructure, with early detection being vital for effective mitigation. Traditional fire monitoring systems often suffer from limited coverage, and deep sleep issues, especially in remote forested regions. To overcome these limitations, this research presents a novel low-power wildfire detection framework that combines Ultra-Low-Power coprocessors with Convolutional Neural Networks (ULP-CNN) based aerial video analysis from autonomous drones. The integration of ULP processors continuously monitoring and real-time Artificial Intelligence (AI) video analysis offers a full coverage quick response solution for wildfire prevention. The proposed system begins with the deployment of Long-Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN)-enabled sensing nodes equipped with ULP processors for efficient environmental data collection and minimal power draw during sleep cycles. Further, based on detecting abnormal air quality changes, an autonomous drone is dispatched to the suspected fire location. Then, the onboard CNN model analyzes real-time images and video frames to classify fire occurrences and initiate particle filter-based tracking. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the system achieves high detection accuracy (99.60%), precision (99.89R%), recall (99.74%), and F1 score (99.83%) making it a highly effective solution for real-time detection of wildfires.

Abstract The paper presents the effects of the storm‐time prompt penetration electric fields (PPEF) and traveling atmospheric disturbances (TADs) on the total electron content (TEC), foF2 and hmF2 in the American sector (north and south) during the geomagnetic storm on 23–24 April 2023. The data show a poleward shift of the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly (EIA) crests to 18°N and 20°S in the evening of 23 April (attributed to eastward PPEF) and the EIA crests remaining almost in the same latitudes after the PPEF reversed westward. The thermospheric neutral wind velocity, foF2, hmF2, and TEC variations show that TADs from the northern and southern high latitudes propagating equatorward and crossing the equator after midnight on 23 April. The meridional keograms of ΔTEC show the TAD structures in the north/south propagated with phase velocity 470/485 m/s, wave length 4,095/4,016 km and period 2.42/2.30 hr, respectively. The interactions of the TADs also appear to modify the wind velocities in low latitudes. The eastward PPEF and equatorward TADs also favored the development of a clear/not so clear F3 layer in northern/southern regions of the equator.

Abstract This study investigates the impact of vertical ionospheric drift during daytime on the evolution of predawn equatorial plasma bubbles by conducting model simulations using “Sami3 is Another Model of the Ionosphere.” The upward drift of the ionosphere transports bubbles to higher altitudes, where their lifetime is set by the atomic oxygen photoionization rate. While the bubbles generated at predawn persist into dayside, the bubbles generated shortly after sunset diminish before sunrise. Therefore, post‐sunset bubbles do not contribute to daytime electron density irregularities. Bubbles maintain their field‐aligned characteristics throughout the daytime regardless of the vertical ionospheric drift. This property allows bubbles to exist near the magnetic equator despite poleward plasma transport by the fountain process. The shift of irregularity concentration to higher latitudes over time in satellite observations is explained by the combined effect of transport of bubbles to higher altitudes and rapid refilling of depletions near the magnetic equator.

We describe the differences in the combustion behavior within a model opposed-flow solid fuel burner produced by three different chemical reaction models: a two-step global mechanism, a six-step global mechanism, and a pressure-comprehensive skeletal model, all of which assume butadiene as the primary fuel source. Details of the implementation of these models in conjunction with an equilibrium interfacial pyrolysis model for the solid gas phase change process are provided. Of particular interest are the differences in flame structure and dynamics predicted by each reaction model in comparison to the performance benefits gained by model simplifications. We provide some observations regarding the use of these global reaction models in a purely non-premixed combustion setting. A preliminary flamelet generated manifold is presented to be explored in future work.

Abstract The energy deposition from ring current ions into the high density “cold” plasma of the ionosphere and plasmasphere is analyzed, based on a Comprehensive Inner Magnetosphere‐Ionosphere simulation of the 2015 October 7 storm. In addition, the Naval Research Laboratory Sami3 is Also a Model of the Ionosphere ionosphere/plasmasphere code is used to simulate the effect of Coulomb‐collision heating of plasmasphere and ionosphere electrons by ring current ions. We find that, during stormtime peaks in the Dst index, energy is deposited at altitudes as low as 100 km. Heating along the entirety of any given field line, both in the ionosphere and plasmasphere, contributes to increased temperatures in the ionosphere F layer and inner magnetosphere and to subsequent cold O+ outflows. However, relative to the heating of the plasmasphere, the direct heating of the ionosphere by ring current ions produces only small effects. Qualitative model‐data agreement on the N+/O+ density ratio is consistent with the hypothesis that these outflows are driven by thermal forcing.

The prevalence and persistence of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has led to significant concerns over the damage they can have on human health and the environment, particularly when they contaminate bodies of water. In this work, a plasma driven with high-voltage (20 kV) pulses of varying duration (50–400 ns) and frequency (0.5–10 kHz) is investigated for degrading perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in water. The concentration of PFOS in solution decreased with repeated passes through the reactor. Increasing the power consumption of the plasma, either by increasing the pulse width or the frequency, improved the rate of PFOS loss but decreased the energy efficiency. For instance, reducing the frequency of the pulse from 10 kHz to 500 Hz decreased the power consumption by over an order of magnitude while requiring about twice as much time to reduce 50% of the PFOS signal. Time-averaged emission spectroscopy showed that increasing the frequency decreased the average electron density of the plasma while infrared measurements indicate only a modest increase to the temperature of the reactor. In contrast, increasing the pulse width from 50 ns to 400 ns did not have a significant impact on the average electron density or the reactor temperature. Spectroscopy revealed the presence of photons with energies >5 eV which could contribute to PFOS loss. This work shows that the main factor determining PFOS loss is the contact time between the plasma reactor and the solution, which implies the most energy efficient operating parameters for PFOS degradation comes from minimizing the duration and frequency of the high-voltage pulses to reduce power consumption.

A linear theory of the generalized Rayleigh-Taylor instability (GRTI) is derived which includes ion inertia and acceleration forces, as well as E region drivers: the zonal neutral wind and plasma drift. This is in contrast to the F region drivers aside from gravity: the meridional neutral wind and the meridional/vertical plasma drifts. Both a local theory and a flux-tube integrated theory are presented with application to the onset of ionosphere irregularities associated with equatorial spread F. Inertia and acceleration forces do not affect the growth rate of the GRTI for nominal ionospheric conditions, but the E region zonal drifts can significantly increase or decrease the growth rate of the GRTI in the equatorial and mid-latitude ionosphere depending on their direction.

A pinched-beam diode (PBD) consists of a thin annular cathode which emits electrons that are accelerated toward a planar anode. Once the energy deposited by the electrons on the anode is sufficiently large, a plasma forms on the anode and the electrons are strongly pinched toward the axis of the diode. An intense ion beam with current of 100’s of kA’s is also produced. This effort builds upon previously presented material and shows new particle-in-cell simulation results of a PBD where the focus is on the quality of the ion beams produced. The simulations provide additional detail to the formation of “hot spots” in the electron beam flow that produce regions of locally high charge and current density. As ions flow through the electron space charge cloud, the hot spots attract ions producing a non-uniform ion current distribution. The length of the cavity behind the cathode tip influences both the number and amplitude of the hot spots. Results will be presented to show that longer cavity lengths increase the number of hot spots but significantly reduces the amplitude producing smoother, more uniform ion beams than when the length of the cavity is short. Additional results will be presented that show the net current and ion bending angles are also significantly smaller when the length of the cavity is long.