Small Business Saturday – Celebrating the backbone of our economy

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The Great Recession – which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009 – began with an 8 trillion dollar burst of the housing bubble and an unprecedented wealth lost to millions of Americans. The resulting loss of wealth led to sharp cutbacks in consumer spending, the loss of consumption combined with the financial market chaos by the housing industry, lead to a complete collapse of business investments which in return lead to dramatic job cuts in all sectors. Businesses of all sizes and industries suffered greatly from the great recession, but the biggest losers were the small businesses of the local communities.

By the summer of 2009, the economy stopped contracting and started what has to be the slowest recovery in modern American history, however, the businesses continued to suffer. The big box retailers survived the recession with minor setbacks due to their deep pockets and the cultural shift of spending in bad financial times. However small businesses took the biggest hit with over 200,000 storefronts going out of business.

The impact of the recession on small businesses became apparent, the backbone of the economy was bleeding badly. Initiatives led by the federal and state governments as well as major banks and venture capitalist became more vibrant in an effort to revive the small businesses of America. In 2009, with a push from American Express, Small Business Saturday was born. Similar to Black Friday but strictly for small businesses, Small Business Saturday follows Thanksgiving and kicks off the holiday shopping. Just one year after the launch of the program, local officials across the nations started to take notice and promote the movement. In 2011, with the backing of elite politicians including President Obama, the Senate voted to pass a resolution in support of Small Business Saturday. The day celebrates small businesses and their impact on the local communities, it also urges consumers to shop locally to empower these businesses. In 2016, small businesses reported 15.4 billion dollars in sales on Small Business Saturday. Small Business Day went from a cause to a day of celebrations. This year, 2017, Small Business Saturday will take place on the 25th of November.

The role small businesses play in the American economy is fundamental and undeniably important to the survival of our competitive markets. Small businesses are responsible for 64 percent of all new jobs generated since 1995 and have the ability to fast drive a recovery from any recession. Small Businesses revives competition, increases local hiring and embraces diversity and they must be celebrated and supported for doing so.

Sabre88 takes pride in the 843,989 small businesses in our home state of New Jersey and aspires to inspire entrepreneurs to elevate our state and nation. Sabre88 wishes all small businesses a busy Saturday and prosperous year.

 

Author: Faris Souman, Sabre88 LLC

Editor’s note: Original Sources

Based on data from the Office of Advocacy’s Small Business Profiles – https://www.sba.gov/advocacy/2017-small-business-profiles-states-and-territories

Small Business Saturday is on Nov 25. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2017, from https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/shop-small/

Small Business Saturday | The U.S. Small Business Administration. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2017, from https://www.sba.gov/about-sba/sba-initiatives/small-business-saturday

Wireless Communications for Computer Motherboards

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Every year, computer performance has increased exponentially due to a huge surge in new technological methods in order to enhance computers processing power. One of these methods consists of compacting transistors into a tighter space in Silicon microchips, which helps speed up communication across the motherboard. However, by compacting transistors into a smaller area has also resulted in “packing the wiring between the microprocessors tighter together”. This has caused a phenomenon is known as “signal leakage” to occur, which is causing some slowdown or ‘interconnect bottlenecking’ communication between the different parts of the computer chip. As technology continues to grow exponentially, transistors and wiring will continue to be compacted into an even smaller space; causing interconnect bottlenecking to be more of a predicament in the upcoming years of “high-speed computing systems”.

Difficulties:

As of recent years, scientists have discovered that one of the easiest ways to transmit data is using light at different frequencies. This form of transmitting information can also be applied to silicon microchips, however, according to Pablo Jarillo-Herrero this is a very difficult task to accomplish due to the fact that Silicon does not emit light; in order to use this method scientists must use materials which are able to emit light.

In addition to Silicon’s poor light-emitting properties, it also one of the most selective semiconductors there is since not many semiconductors are compatible with Silicon. While many materials such as Gallium can enhance optoelectronics and optical communications on computer chips; they, however, “cannot be grown on Silicon very easily because they are incompatible”.

Another difficulty that is presenting itself is that the majority of the materials that emit light, emit it in the visible spectrum. As previously stated Silicon does not emit light very well, the reason for this is because Silicon absorbs light in the visible spectrum. Therefore, placing a material which emits light on a Silicon microchip would result in no light to emit.

Solution/Benefits:

In a recent paper written by Ya-Qing Bie, who has joined up Jarillo-Herrero states that they have been able to create a device which both emits and detects light that “can be integrated into Silicon CMOS chips”. This device was created from a new semi-conductor called Molybdenum, is an “ultrathin” almost 2-D material which unlike other semiconductors this material is compatible with silicon, and “it can be stacked on top of silicon wafers” according to Jarillo-Herrero.

In addition to the compatibility, this material emits light, but unlike other semiconductors this material emits light in the infrared spectrum, which can’t be absorbed by Silicon. This will then result in higher communication speed, and reduce slowdown since all information is being transmitted using different light frequencies.

 

Author: Angel Veloz, Sabre88 LLC

Editor’s note: Original Sources

http://news.mit.edu/2017/ultrathin-films-semiconductor-optical-communication-silicon-chips-1023

 

A day for the heroes

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Years ago today our enemies laid down their arms in accordance with an armistice which renders them impotent to renew hostilities, and gave to the world an assured opportunity to reconstruct its shattered order, the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men. To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations. A message from President Woodrow Wilson in which he expressed the willpower of a nation on the first anniversary of the peace signing and the surrender of the Central Powers of Europe that ended World War I.

The speech of president Wilson marked the first organized form of celebrating the nation’s war heroes in modern times. A tradition that grew deeper and larger with every passing year and every recorded victory by our armed forces. On the 13th of May, 1938, the Congress passed the (52 Stat. 351; 5U.S. Code, 87a) Act that dedicated the 11th of every November as a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as the Armistice Day. In 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower officially changed the name of the holiday from Armistice Day to Veterans Day. Great Britain, France, Australia and Canada also commemorate the veterans of World War I and World War II on or near November 11th, it is also common to notice two minutes of silence in Great Britain and the Commonwealth nations at 11 am.

The military men and women who serve and protect the U.S. come from every walk of life; they are parents, children, grandparents, friends, neighbors, and Sabre88 employees. At sabre88 we hold the values of freedom and service dearest to our hearts and embed patriotic pride throughout our corporate structure. We not only strive to provide our government agencies and armed forces with state of the art services, we also take pride in doing so. Determined to serve the common purpose of this nation and committed to value those who embody the spirit of service and sacrifice, Sabre88 is proud to be led by veterans at the highest levels of our corporate ladder. In the spotlight of this year’s Sabre88 Veterans Day celebrations, would like to honor a person who is our very own Business Development Manager,James Hansel. A veteran of the Navy who embodies the most American of ideas liberty, freedom and unity. We take pride in veterans like Ron Oliver, Brian Schweikert, Sherrod Curry,Robert Lightfoot and Bruce Conte who risked their lives to protect our ideals and spent their youth anchoring our enemies and now elevating our company’s performance every day. We thank our Sabre88 veterans and all the men and women that served in our armed forces. America is better off because of your service.

Author: Faris Souman, Sabre88 LLC

Editor’s note:Original Sources

Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs. (2007, January 26). Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs. Retrieved November 01, 2017, from https://www.va.gov/opa/vetsday/

History.com Staff. Veterans Day Facts.History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/holidays/veterans-day-facts.

Infinite Storage Using Magnetic Particles

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The computer age marked one of the most important technological revolutions that the world has ever seen. Starting in the late 40’s when the first computer was invented, the computer industry has had a massive surge in demand for new hardware and software were created to make computers more and more accessible to everyday people. As of 2017, computers have become the norm in everyone’s day to day life; compared to back when they were first created where computers took up literarily walls of space to have a couple bytes of storage to now holding millions of bytes in something that is smaller than a fingernail.

This rapid advancement can be attributed to, not only new ways that materials such as silicon can be created but also the concept of Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law in layman’s terms states that roughly every year the processing power/storage of computers doubles. This, however, may soon come to an end due to a possible new discovery that may enhance computer storage far beyond the current known process. This discovery instead of reading data a bit at a time as the current system does will take advantage of the orientation of magnetized particles in order to store data.

As of 2016, an MIT research team under the direction of associate professor Geoffrey Beach, have found the existence of these particles called Skyrmions. When they were first discovered, the team found that the location of the particles was completely random. However, as of recently Beach and his team have found a way to create Skyrmions, place them in any location, and control their orientation using an electric field.

Advantages:

Due to the fact that Skyrmions are particles, their size will only range from just a couple of atoms in length. This provides the advantage of having several thousand or eventually perhaps even millions of Skyrmions on a metallic sheet, each one being able to store massive amounts of data. Compared to the conventional magnetic storage that currently exists where data is stored in individual magnetic poles, using the new system the same amount of data could be stored in a very small area. This will make it much more efficient, than the conventional hard drive, or even the use of Random Access Memory.

Disadvantages:

While this system has recently overcome the huge hurdle of being able to create Skyrmions, placing them in the desired location, and controlling their orientation by using an electric field; there are still some problems which have slowed down the commercialization of this technology.

While the system has been tested and can store data very effectively, it still has problems with reading out the data once it’s already stored. While not impossible, the current method the team is using is not commercial friendly and too expensive. The team currently is using X-Ray Spectroscopy to read the data once it is stored, however, this is very expensive costing $40 thousand to $50 thousand.

Further Research

Even these limitations are prominent the team is currently finding new more efficient methods of extracting data without using X-Ray spectroscopy. The team theorizes that by adding an additional layer to the other metallic layers and making specific textures on this added layer they might be able to detect the presence of a Skyrmion if it’s present or not.

Source: http://news.mit.edu/2017/fast-moving-magnetic-particles-new-form-data-storage-1002