NASA's Kepler Mission Finds Planet in Habitable Zone: Kepler-22b

Artist's rendering of Kepler-22b

The planet-finding Kepler space mission has discovered a planet 2.4 times the diameter of Earth in the liquid water habitable zone (the region around a star where temperatures are neither too high or too low for liquid water to exist) of a star 600 light years away. This is the first confirmed planet in the habitable zone of a star to be found by Kepler, but many more may be on the way. 

The planet's confirmation was announced Monday by NASA along with other discoveries by its Kepler telescope, which was launched on a planet-hunting mission in 2009.

"This is a phenomenal discovery in the course of human history," Geoff Marcy of University of California, Berkeley, one of the pioneers of planet-hunting outside our solar system, said in an email. "This discovery shows that we Homo sapiens are straining our reach into the universe to find planets that remind us of home. We are almost there."

“Kepler 22b is exciting for two reasons; one, because it is right smack in the middle of the habitable zone,” says Natalie Batalha, Kepler’s deputy science team leader from NASA’s Ames Research Center “The second really exciting reason is that it is orbiting a star very similar to our own Sun, it’s a solar twin.”

Although the planet lies 15 percent closer to its star than Earth does to the Sun, Kepler 22b’s star is a little dimmer and cooler than the Sun, so the planet can get away with being a bit closer. However, exactly what this planet is like is a bit of a mystery: being in the habitable zone isn’t enough to state that a planet is habitable – it requires an atmosphere for starters. Worlds of this size are however a bit of a mystery at the moment.

"If this planet has a surface, it would have a very nice temperature of some 70° Fahrenheit [21°C]," says William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center here, who is the principal investigator of NASA's Kepler space telescope. "[It's] another milestone on the journey of discovering Earth's twin," adds Ames director Simon "Pete" Worden.

Unfortunately, the true nature of the planet, named Kepler-22b, remains unknown. It is 2.4 times the size of Earth, but its mass, and hence its composition, has not yet been determined. "There's a good chance it could be rocky," Borucki says, although he adds that the planet would probably contain huge amounts of compressed ice, too. It might even have a global ocean. "We have no planets like this in our own solar system."

The planet is 600 light years away. Each light year is 5.9 trillion miles. It would take a space shuttle about 22 million years to get there.

Watch the press conference announcing the discovery of Kepler 22b (vid is over an hour long)

A shorter news coverage of the findings:

First Lab-Grown Blood Transfusion a Success

Researchers at Pierre and Marie Curie University have successfully completed the first-ever artificial blood transfusion after extracting stem cells from a patient's bone marrow, which were then used to grow the red blood cells under laboratory settings.

"After five days, 94 to 100 percent of the blood cells remained circulating in the body. After 26 days, 41 to 63 percent remained, which is a normal survival rate for naturally produced blood cells." The cells carried oxygen throughout the patient's body, just as normal red blood cells would.

"The results show promise that an unlimited blood reserve is within reach," says Luc Douay, of Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris. The transfusion's success is an important step towards mass produced artificial blood. Only a small amount of blood was transfused in the experiment. A complete real-life transfusion would require 200 times the amount of blood used by Douay.

[Source: New Scientist]

Inflatable, Water-Proof Solar Light - LuminAID

A couple of grad students from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture founded Luminaid Labs and currently has a crowdsourcing fundraiser ongoing at IndieGoGo - 100% of funds will go to producing and distributing the LuminAID lights.

Some features:
Water-proof, inflatable, and packs flat

Coating:
Flexible, semi-transparent waterproof material (Photovoltaic film is laminated to polyethelenevinyl acetate plastic) with a printed dot matrix to diffuse light.

Charge time: 4-6 hours in sunlight
Low setting: 4 hours of lighting @ 35 lumens
High Setting: 6 hours @ 20 lumens
Batery is rechargeable up to 800 times.

Visit their IndieGoGo Page
LuminAID Labs

Cherry Juice Improves Duration & Quality of Sleep

Note: I think an important component of preparedness / survivalism that gets overlooked a lot is health, so I decided this would be a good article to post here. 
 
Drinking cherry juice significantly improves both the quality and duration of sleep, according to new findings from Northumbria University.

Researchers from the School of Life Sciences have found that Montmorency cherry juice significantly increases the levels of melatonin in the body, the hormone which regulates sleep, and could benefit those who have difficulty sleeping due to insomnia, shift work or jet lag. 

Their findings, which are published this week in the online edition of the European Journal of Nutrition, reveal that people who have consumed cherry juice not only sleep for longer, but they also have improved quality of sleep, or ‘sleep efficiency’.

In the study, led by Dr Glyn Howatson, 20 healthy volunteers drank a 30ml serving of either tart cherry juice or a placebo juice twice a day for seven days.

Urine samples were collected from all participants before and during the investigation to determine levels of melatonin, a naturally occurring compound that heavily influences the human sleep-wake cycle.

During the study the participants wore an actigraphy watch sensor which monitored their sleep and wake cycles and kept a daily diary on their sleeping patterns.

The researchers found that when participants drank cherry juice for a week there was a significant increase in their urinary melatonin (15-16%) than the control condition and placebo drink samples.

The actigraphy measurements of participants who consumed the cherry juice saw an increase of around 15 minutes to the time spent in bed, 25 minutes in their total sleep time and a 5-6% increase in their ‘sleep efficiency’, a global measure of sleep quality.

Cherry juice drinkers reported less daytime napping time compared to their normal sleeping habits before the study and the napping times of the placebo group.

According to Dr Howatson, this is the first study to show direct evidence that supplementing your diet with a tart Montmorency cherry juice concentrate leads to an increase in circulating melatonin and provides improvements in sleep amongst healthy adults.

Dr Howatson, an exercise physiologist, said: “We were initially interested in the application of tart cherries in recovery from strenuous exercise. Sleep forms a critical component in that recovery process, which is often forgotten. These results show that tart cherry juice can be used to facilitate sleep in healthy adults and, excitingly, has the potential to be applied as a natural intervention, not only to athletes, but to other populations with insomnia and general disturbed sleep from shift work or jet lag.”

The study’s co-authors are fellow Northumbria University academics Dr Jason Ellis, director of the Centre for Sleep Research, School of Life Sciences PhD students Jamie Tallent and Phillip Bell; Benita Middleton of the Centre for Chronobiology at University of Surrey; and Malachy McHugh of the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma in Lenox Hill Hospital, New York.

Dr Ellis said: “Although melatonin is available over the counter in other countries, it is not freely available in the UK. What makes these findings exciting is that the melatonin contained in tart cherry juice is sufficient to elicit a healthy sleep response.

“What’s more, these results provide us with more evidence surrounding the relationship between how we sleep and what we consume.”

 

[Source: North Umbria University]

 

Quantum Levitation - Quantum Trapping in action

I know what you're thinking. Hoverboards like Marty McFly had is just around the corner, right? Maybe even a game of Quidditch. Not quite. Superconductors only have the field vanishing qualities during extremely cold temps. You would need room-temp conductors for that, which hasn't been discovered yet. Plus there's other components that factor in. But let's just keep the geek dream alive eh?

For a more detailed explanation, read the physics behind it.

Navy's UFO-like X-47B Makes First Flight in Cruise Mode

The Navy’s ultimate stealth fighter drone has achieved a new milestone — it flew in cruise configuration for the first time, stowing its landing gear for a streamlined flight. 


The jet-powered, autonomous X-47B is designed for aerodynamic flight — it doesn’t even have a tail — partly to improve its stealth capabilities. But until now, its flight tests hadn’t retracted the landing gear, making it difficult to test its aerodynamic attributes. Further tests will help engineers prove the aircraft’s performance under a wide range of altitude, speed and fuel conditions.
Northrop Grumman is developing the X-4B on behalf of the U.S. Navy, which plans to use them on aircraft carriers. The drone is designed as a robotic strike aircraft, capable of taking on a multitude of missions at much higher speeds than its prop-powered kin, the Predator and Reaper.
It will be the first unmanned aircraft to take off and land on an aircraft carrier deck. As such, the Navy is also studying drone intelligence, so each X-47B will not need to pester the tower when the pattern is full.

[Via PopSci]

Wireless Biometric E-Passports And E-ID Cards Roll Out In 2014 For EU

Digital security specialists, major European electronics makers, and experts in biometrics worked together to make passport control at airports faster. The technology also could have broader applications on the way our identity documents are design and on the way we access public services.






The BioP@ss project, funded through the EUREKA micro-electronics cluster MEDEA+, has developed advanced chip cards and embedded software for next-generation biometrics-enhanced passports and identity cards as well as access to pan-European public services. Contactless card scanning and very high speed data interfacing will reduce queues at airports and frontier posts while boosting European security.

The technology will improve passengers safety while reducing government administration costs and simplifying access to public pan-European electronic services for citizens. The elements are already being incorporated in systems to meet air travel security standards from 2014.


Some 380 million identity cards are in circulation in the EU’s 500 million population. However, security levels must be raised for electronic e-ID cards and passports while also simplifying access to electronic public services for citizens across Europe. The challenge facing the digital security industry was to meet new standards without changing the infrastructure already in use in airports. It was also necessary to speed card reading to cut waiting times and enable access to much more data.

Extended security required

E-passports and e-ID cards incorporate a microprocessor chip storing crucial private information such as biometrics as well as name, date and country of birth. The EU required extended security to ensure that the chip could not be read without physical access to the ID document and that data exchanged between contactless chip and reading device is encrypted.

New technologies and standards developed during the project, implement asymmetric cryptography reliant on a shared key between reading device and chip during authentication. The result is enhanced data confidentiality which prevents skimming or eavesdropping.

Security specialist Gemalto set out to meet the new requirements through a project bringing together 11 partners in five countries covering all elements of the smart-card platform. “Gemalto invests heavily in research to retain its leadership position and we like co-operative programmes such as EUREKA for this type of complex innovative project,” explains Patrice Plessis of Gemalto.

While the initial focus was on e-passports and e-ID cards, applications were also envisaged for health-service access, electronic voting and driving licences. “We built on the results of the previous MEDEA+ Onom@Topic project,” says Plessis. The project won two years ago the prestigious EUREKA Innovation Award, rewarding every year a research project leading to outstanding commercial results.

Match-on-card environment

Facial image verification is the main use of biometrics features with e-passports and e-ID cards. The goal of BioP@ss was to develop an innovative match-on-card biometrics environment, suitable for on-card processing, and to develop an environment enabling users to interact from a biometrics e-ID personal device with a set of multiple near-field communication (NFC) enabled terminals. Concretely, airplane passengers will simply have to pass through a gate with their passport in their pocket to be immediately identified. This could replace the long waiting line at airports’ passport controls.

All this required new chip technologies which have provided several innovations such as very high bit rate contactless interfaces, able to transmit thousands of data parameters within a few seconds, advanced biometrics and NFC connectivity that will enable the delivery of innovative services to citizens by simply using a personal e-ID.

Advances in BioP@ss included further development of security chips and encryption technologies, and security software for personal computers. Data transfer rates between cards and readers have been increased more than tenfold – from 800 kb/s to 10 Mb/s. Moreover, a new chip-card operating system makes it possible to use future e-ID documents on the Internet without any additional software components on the PC.

“We also worked on proof of security for supplemental access control for e-passports, contributing a new standard called PACE -Password Authenticated Connection Establishment-, which was adopted in mid 2011,” says Plessis. In addition, the EUREKA project contributed to a new ISO standard for contactless data transfer, currently under consideration, and to the CEN IAS standard for the European Citizen Card.

Increasing security and mobility

BioP@ss made advances in the development of a software making operations on ID related data more transparent, thus creating the necessary protocols for what are already called third-generation passport, e-ID cards and resident permits. Those are very important for the new travel regulations initiated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, or ICAO, entering into practice from the end of 2014.

The technologies developed are being incorporated into card platforms by the BioP@ss partners. Packages including the technology are already on the market, while card specialists Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient are working on complete contactless means of Internet authentification. Benefits include increased mobility in Europe with faster and more flexible access to e-government and better protection of personal data. “Moreover, it will be possible to reuse the building blocks developed in middleware/software, biometrics and protocols in other projects and platforms to improve European security and competitiveness,” points out Plessis.

[Via Eureka Network]

Swedish Daycare to Test GPS for Tracking Kids

A daycare centre in the southern Swedish city of Malmoe said Wednesday it planned to test GPS devices for tracking children when they are out on excursions.

"We will test this system on 10 children for a week in October. We will have 10 GPS transmitters attached to their reflective vests when we're outside the nursery school," explained Karin Werholt, who runs the Kronprinsen (Crown Prince) centre that cares for 36 children between the ages of one and six.

"We will test if the transmitters are robust, if they work well and if they affect the children's playing in any way," she told AFP, adding that the centre did not have any problem keeping track of kids and it remained unclear whether it would purchase the system if the test went well.

According to the Malmoe company Purple Scout that provides the system, the GPS transmitters all report the positions of the children to one mobile phone, which sounds an alert if a transmitter moves beyond a certain distance from the phone.

"This is in no way meant to make it easy for administrators to reduce the number of nursery school teachers," project leader Henrik Hoff told AFP, rejecting some initial criticism of the project.
"It is meant to complement their work, but it cannot stop a child from running off. It only makes it possible to discover they're gone at an earlier stage and find them quicker," he explained.

Purple Scout is planning an official launch of the system on October 18 and aims to have its first orders by the end of the year, according to Hoff.

"The daycares we have talked to are very positive to the idea," he said.

[Via PhysOrg]

Star Trek Type Tricorder in Development

A Star Trek Tricorder

In the fictional Star Trek universe, a tricorder is a multifunction handheld device used for sensor scanning, data analysis, and recording data.

Three primary variants of the tricorder are issued in Star Trek's Starfleet. The standard tricorder is a general-purpose device used primarily to scout unfamiliar areas, make detailed examination of living things, and record and review technical data.

The medical tricorder is used by doctors to help diagnose diseases and collect bodily information about a patient; the key difference between this and a standard tricorder is a detachable hand-held high-resolution scanner stored in a compartment of the tricorder when not in use. The engineering tricorder is fine-tuned for starship engineering purposes. There are also many other lesser-used varieties of special use tricorders. The word "tricorder" is a portmanteau of "tri-" and "recorder", referring to the device's three default scanning functions: GEO (geological), MET (meteorological), and BIO (biological).

DARPA's (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Virtual Tricorder program will develop technologies for analyzing and assimilating massive datasets collected on individual test subjects to visualize, understand, and assess health status by modeling and simulating biological systems.

The resulting application will enable medical practitioners to visualize and understand complex relationships across patient data in electronic medical record systems. Not only will this technique allow physicians to visualize patients' health status more accurately, but it will also provide tools to predict the systemic impact (positive and negative) of pharmaceutical and other therapeutic interventions on the patient. Achieving this will require modeling the complex, multi-feature, multi-scale interactions in biological systems from the holistic perspective of systems biology rather than the traditional reductionist perspective.

Virtual Tricorder will combine multiple physical/biological models to create the capability to realistically simulate numerous simultaneous physical/biological phenomena. Virtual Tricorder technology will have potential applicability in both time-critical medical settings such as a military intensive care unit (ICU) and also long-term recovery settings where patients are being treated for multiple comorbid conditions with multiple therapeutic approaches.

FY 2012 Plans include:
- Conceptualize modeling and simulation techniques for biological systems.
- Develop techniques for registration and fusion of multi-modal medical imagery (PET/MRI/CAT/sonogram).
- Develop techniques for modeling physiological impact of medications and other therapeutic interventions.
- Develop approaches for integrating physical and chemical measurements that range from the microscopic (pathology data) to
the macroscopic (radiology data).
- Initiate development of visualization techniques that scale from the tissue to the organ to the whole-body.

Robots for Tagging, Tracking, & Locating already in the works.

Military research has been the source of a number of modern technologies, most notably the Internet.
But now, the Army just issued contracts to develop two technologies that don’t seem as fun as, say, poking someone on Facebook.

The contracts, which Wired reports are for work on surveillance projects, could make drones more adept at targeting specific individuals.

One is to develop drones with strong facial recognition that prevents the drone from losing a face in a crowd. Others are for machines that can integrate intelligence data with information from an informant to determine your intent.

Part of a broader effort called TTL (for “Tagging, Tracking and Locating”), these new projects will support the Pentagon as it attempts to monitor enemies and insurgents in places like Afghanistan, where the strategy has switched from rebuilding societies to targeting specific individual bad actors.
Current technologies include using tiny transmitters that can use cellular, satellite or radio frequencies to report their whereabouts and lingering scents that mark targets with a vapor that can be tracked for hours. But they are inadequate because targets may discover their transmitters and remove them, and scents eventually dissipate.

A drone that recognizes you

Progeny Systems Corporation, which won one of the contracts, is developing a drone that can use photos to create a three-dimensional model of the target’s face. As Wired says,

It’s not an easy trick to pull off — even with the proper lighting, and even with a willing subject. Building a model of someone on the run is harder. Constructing a model using the bobbing, weaving, flying, relatively low-resolution cameras on small unmanned aerial vehicles is tougher still.

The new technology, called the “Long Range, Non-cooperative, Biometric Tagging, Tracking and Location” system, could be revolutionary because it can overcome what is a current problem in tagging, tracking and locating work: targets are usually only visible occasionally in crowds or in sheltered positions.
Progeny’s new project can take a poor-quality (50 pixel) photo of someone with any expression, in any pose and under any lighting and build a 3-D model of his/her face. After the face is initially entered into Progeny’s system, it takes only another 15- or 20-pixel image to recognize him.

The technology is robust enough that it can tell identical twins apart, as evidenced by tests that researchers from Notre Dame and Michigan State Universities ran using images of faces at a “Twins Days” festival.
Though the software works better the closer the drone is, the facial information can be added to “soft biometric” information such as skin color, height, build, age and gender to track a person of interest from a distance too far to use facial recognition.

Drones that read your mind

Another technology, being developed by Charles River Analytics, analyzes human behavior to determine if someone has malicious intent. The technology, called Adversary Behavior Acquisition, Collection, Understanding, and Summarization (ABACUS), compiles behavioral data to determine if a subject has built up anger against the U.S. and might pose a threat.
Similarly, Modus Operandi, Inc. is developing a system that will use “probabilistic algorithms th[at] determine the likelihood of adversarial intent.” Its name is “Clear Heart,” which surely trades on the idea of transparency and does not imply what is to be found in these targets’ hearts.

[Source: Smart Planet]

Invisibility Cloak - Researchers Make Object Disappear (Video)

Scientists have created a working cloaking device that not only takes advantage of one of nature’s most bizarre phenomenon, but also boasts unique features; it has an ‘on and off’ switch and is best used underwater. (Video at the end of this post)

The researchers, from the University of Texas at Dallas, have demonstrated the device’s ability to make objects disappear in a fascinating video shown at the bottom of the page.

This novel design, presented on Tuesday 4 September, in IOP Publishing’s journal Nanotechnology, makes use of sheets of carbon nanotubes (CNT) – one-molecule-thick sheets of carbon wrapped up into cylindrical tubes.

CNTs have such unique properties, such as having the density of air but the strength of steel, that they have been extensively studied and put forward for numerous applications; however it is their exceptional ability to conduct heat and transfer it to surrounding areas that makes them an ideal material to exploit the so-called “mirage effect”.

The mirage effect, frequently observed in deserts or on long roads in the summer, is an optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky.

The most common example of a mirage is when an observer appears to see pools of water on the ground. This occurs because the air near the ground is a lot warmer than the air higher up, causing lights rays to bend upward towards the viewer’s eye rather than bounce off the surface.

This results in an image of the sky appearing on the ground which the viewer perceives as water actually reflecting the sky; the brain sees this as a more likely occurrence.

Through electrical stimulation, the transparent sheet of highly aligned CNTs can be easily heated to high temperatures. They then have the ability to transfer that heat to its surrounding areas, causing a steep temperature gradient. Just like a mirage, this steep temperature gradient causes the light rays to bend away from the object concealed behind the device, making it appear invisible.

With this method, it is more practical to demonstrate cloaking underwater as all of the apparatus can be contained in a petri dish. It is the ease with which the CNTs can be heated that gives the device its unique ‘on and off’ feature.

Lead-author, Dr Ali Aliev, said, “Using these nanotube sheets, concealment can be realized over the entire optical range and rapidly turned on-and-off at will, using either electrical heating or a pulse of electromagnetic radiation.

“The research results also provide useful insights into the optimization of nanotube sheets as thermoacoustic projectors for loud speaker and sonar applications, where sound is produced by heating using an alternating electrical current.”

An Institute of Physics spokesperson said, “It is remarkable to see this cloaking device demonstrated in real life and on a workable scale. The array of applications that could arise from this device, besides cloaking, is a testament to the excellent work of the authors.”

[Source: Institute of Physics ]

Stanford Offers Free Online Course on Artificial Intelligence

Up for a challenge? Stanford University is offering a free online course, "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence," starting on October 10.

It will be taught by Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig and will include online lectures. Most of the course content will be video based. Students will be graded on a curve and will receive a certificate of completion with their grade.

So far over 57,000 people have signed up.
Here's the syllabus for the course.

You can enroll here.

Scientists trying to create inorganic life

 

Scientists at the University of Glasgow say they have taken their first tentative steps towards creating 'life' from inorganic chemicals potentially defining the new area of 'inorganic biology'.

Professor Lee Cronin, Gardiner Chair of Chemistry in the College of Science and Engineering, and his team have demonstrated a new way of making inorganic-chemical-cells or iCHELLs.

Prof Cronin said: "All life on earth is based on organic biology (i.e. carbon in the form of amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars, etc.) but the inorganic world is considered to be inanimate.

"What we are trying do is create self-replicating, evolving inorganic cells that would essentially be alive. You could call it inorganic biology."

The cells can be compartmentalized by creating internal membranes that control the passage of materials and energy through them, meaning several chemical processes can be isolated within the same cell -- just like biological cells.

The researchers say the cells, which can also store electricity, could potentially be used in all sorts of applications in medicine, as sensors or to confine chemical reactions.

The research is part of a project by Prof Cronin to demonstrate that inorganic chemical compounds are capable of self-replicating and evolving -- just as organic, biological carbon-based cells do.

The research into creating 'inorganic life' is in its earliest stages, but Prof Cronin believes it is entirely feasible.

Prof Cronin said: "The grand aim is to construct complex chemical cells with life-like properties that could help us understand how life emerged and also to use this approach to define a new technology based upon evolution in the material world -- a kind of inorganic living technology.

"Bacteria are essentially single-cell micro-organisms made from organic chemicals, so why can't we make micro-organisms from inorganic chemicals and allow them to evolve?

"If successful this would give us some incredible insights into evolution and show that it's not just a biological process. It would also mean that we would have proven that non carbon-based life could exist and totally redefine our ideas of design."

[Source: Science Daily]

Pre-cog software - stopping crime before it happens

Dr. George Mohler & team came up w/ pre-cog type software

The police officers arrived at the parking garage in downtown Santa Cruz and spotted two women behaving suspiciously. No crime had been committed, but peering through the windows of the parked cars was sketchy enough. The officers questioned the women: one had outstanding warrants; the other was in possession of illegal drugs.

What’s strange about this scenario is that no one had called the cops. In fact, the cops didn’t even know that the women would be there, just that the probability of a crime being committed at that location, at that time of day, was especially high. In one of the first cases of ‘predictive policing,’ law enforcement were able to calculate where the criminals would be and arrest them before the crime could be committed.

Oh yeah, totally “Minority Report,” absolutely “Numb3rs.”
Except it’s not Hollywood, it’s real. In July the Santa Cruz Police Department began experimenting with an interesting bit of software developed by scientists at Santa Clara University. The researchers behind the software are like an intellectual “Oceans Eleven” team of specialists: two mathematicians, an anthropologist and a criminologist. They’ve combined their cerebral forces to come up with a mathematical model that takes crime data from the past to forecast crimes in the future. The basic math is similar to that used by seismologists to predict aftershocks following an earthquake (also a handy bit of software in southern California).

Large earthquakes are unpredictable, but the aftershocks that follow are not and their occurrence can be predicted with mathematical models. It occurred to Dr. George Mohler, one of the Santa Clara mathematicians, that criminal activity might not be random and that, similar to aftershocks, some crimes might be predicted by other crimes that precede them. The reasoning is based on the assumption that crimes are clustered – it’s what police call ‘hotspots.’ Burglaries will occur in the same area and at the same houses because the vulnerabilities of that area will be known to the burglars. Gang violence is also clustered. A gang shooting will often trigger retaliatory shootings.

Using the aftershocks-inspired algorithms Dr. Mohler and his team came up with a model, then sought to test it. In collaboration with the LAPD they plugged in data on 2,803 residential burglaries occurring within a block of the San Fernando valley 11 miles by 11 miles throughout 2004. For a given day the software calculated the top 5 percent of city blocks most likely to be burglarized. The results convinced the LAPD that, had they been using the program, they could have prevented a quarter of burglaries across the entire test region for that day.

The current, real world test of the software involves generating a map of the city areas most likely to be burglarized, the time of day they are most likely to get hit, and deploying personnel accordingly. The software is recalibrated every day when burglaries from the previous day are added to the dataset. They don’t actually expect to catch people in the act, but to deter more crimes with more effective patrolling. The test that is underway will be evaluated at six months, but already the data is encouraging. Zach Friend, crime analyst for Santa Cruz police, confirmed to the New York Times that the program led to five arrests in July. Even more impressive, compared to July 2010 burglaries, the number of July 2011 burglaries are down 27 percent. Whether or not that trend holds remains to be seen, but so far it appears that being in the wrong place at the right time works.

Mathematical models are only as good as their predictive power, and the ability to predict requires algorithms which are based on accurate data. Given the fact that the data supplied by the Santa Cruz Police Department wasn’t collected with mathematical algorithms in mind, I asked Dr. Mohler if there were another kind of data that he wished he was getting that simply isn’t available. His answer suggests there is, but it doesn’t come from the police. “Part of this falls on the public. Crimes…need to be reported if predictive policing is going to be as effective as possible. Once reported, it would be good to have high spatial accuracy and realistic estimates of time windows in which crime happened.”

The Santa Clara software isn’t the first of its kind. Other police departments have been experimenting with their own predictive software. But according to Dr. Mohler, comparisons show that their software outpredicts the others. And they plan to develop software that predicts crimes other than burglaries. Because gang violence begets more gang violence it is amenable to the same type of chain reaction-dependent analysis. Dr. Mohler and his colleagues have already begun working on a gang violence model using the activities of three gang rivalries in Los Angeles. Evidently retaliations commonly occur within days of and at nearly the same location as the initial attack. Dr. Mohler hopes software might be developed for still other types of crimes in the future.

One impetus for adopting predictive policing is the downturn in the US economy. As police departments are pressured to downsize it becomes that much more important to patrol intelligently and efficiently. With only 26 officers for every 10,000 residents Los Angeles is particularly short-handed (Chicago has 46). “We’re facing a situation where we have 30 percent more calls for service but 20 percent less staff than in the year 2000, and that is going to continue to be our reality,” Mr. Friend told the New York Times. “So we have to deploy our resources in a more effective way, and we thought this model would help.”

Given that the crime-fighting software is the real world version “Numb3rs,” the television show in which a genius helps police solve crimes through math, one might expect Dr. Mohler was an avid viewer. Turns out he’s only seen the show twice, but what he saw was pretty accurate. “The pilot episode concern[ed] geographic profiling and matched reasonably well with what is done in practice. I’m sure this doesn’t hold throughout the course of the series, but getting people excited about math isn’t a bad thing in my opinion.” If the six month evaluation of the software shows it to be effective in decreasing crime its use will undoubtedly spread to other cities in the US and the rest of the world. If life imitates art and our streets are made safer, I imagine math might get more exciting for a lot of people.

[Source: Singularity Hub ]
More on crime modeling and prediction

DNA sequencing - faster, cheaper, and with music.

A personal genome machine with an iPod/iPhone dock - Not sure how all that comes into play with this device but it's out there...somewhere. 

 Cost is roughly around $50,000

Read a little about the man behind the company.

Supercomputer That Sees Like Humans Could Drive Robotic Vehicles

A new supercomputer that "sees" the world very much like humans do could allow cars to drive themselves someday, researchers say.

The supercomputer, dubbed NeuFlow, is based on the mammalian visual system and mimics its neural network to quickly interpret the surrounding environment.

NeuFlow is embedded on a single chip, making the system much smaller and yet more powerful and efficient than a full-scale computer.

"The complete system is going to be no bigger than a wallet, so it could easily be embedded in cars and other places," said Eugenio Culurciello, an associate professor of electrical engineering Yale University who has helped develop NeuFlow.

In order to be able to recognize various objects encountered on the road – such as other cars, people, stoplights, sidewalks, not to mention the road itself – NeuFlow processes tens of megapixel images in real time.

The system is also extremely efficient. It simultaneously runs more than 100 billion operations per second using only a few watts, or less than the power that a cell phone uses, to accomplish what a bench-top computer with multiple graphic processors needs more than 300 watts to accomplish.

"One of our first prototypes of this system is already capable of outperforming graphic processors on vision tasks," Culurciello said.

Beyond autonomous car navigation, the system could be used to improve robot navigation into dangerous or difficult-to-reach locations, to provide 360-degree synthetic vision for soldiers in combat situations, or in assisted living situations where it could be used to monitor motion and call for help should an elderly person fall, for example.

Culurciello presented the results Sept. 15 at the High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) workshop in Boston, Mass.

[Via Tech News Daily]

SkyLifter, a Flying Inflatable Saucer, Could Carry Entire Buildings

A new airship that is part flying saucer and part blimp could soon carry entire buildings and offer airgoers a fresh way to travel and explore.

Called the SkyLifter and currently in development by an Australian company  of the same name, the concept airship relies on a lighter-than-air chamber for its buoyancy, just like a blimp or a balloon. But rather than a standard spherical, cigar, or "bomb" profile for its air-filled envelope, or aerostat, the SkyLifter has a flat, disk shape.

This innovative, flying saucer-esque configuration does not catch the wind like a sail as much as some other airship designs, and in effect gives the craft greater directional control even in gusty conditions, its designers said.

As a bonus, its discus shape means the SkyLifter does not have a "front" or "back" and can therefore cruise to a destination or maneuver in tight quarters regardless of its orientation.

The flying saucer-shaped aerostat also doubles as a stabilizing parachute when the SkyLifter is vertically setting down cargo. This payload is suspended well below the hovering aerostat for balance, somewhat like a light weight on the end of a balloon string.

So-called Voith Schneider propellers placed around the aerostat and the flight deck pod above the payload module provide both thrust and steering. Solar panels placed across the top of the aerostat and biodiesel engines power the aircraft.

As drawn up by its engineers, the SkyLifter should have an airspeed of about 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour, giving it a range of about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) in a day, an expected operational period. The dirigible could be set up for low, ground-swooping or for higher atmospheric flight.

The aerostat itself spans some 492 feet (150 meter) in diameter, or about twice the length of a double-decker, wide-body Airbus A380 airplane. Given this setup, SkyLifter's designers said it can carry more than seven times the payload of today's heavy cargo helicopters.

That rounds out to a payload of 165 tons (150 tonnes), enough to transport good-sized, prefabricated buildings, for example, into a rural area. In this way, the SkyLifter could serve as an airship for disaster relief, floating in tons of supplies, or a mobile hospital capable of airlifting out 1,200 people in a single run.

Regular, non-emergency construction purposes, of course, could also be well-met by such a craft, and recreational possibilities abound. (The company has already hinted at a luxury "SkyPalace" module that could stand in for oceanliners.)

For investor reasons, Skylifter is mum when it comes to costs, but the company plans to offer leasing and licensing for its vehicles similar to standard helicopter business agreements.

SkyLifter continues ramping up toward a full-scale production model. A miniature remote-controlled prototype dubbed Betty with 10 foot- (three meter-) diameter aerostat has carried a payload of a about one pound (500 grams) in the lab. A tethered outdoor version called Vikki with a saucer span of 60 feet (18 meter) is being put through its paces.

Next up is a 75 foot (23 meter) aerostat-craft – Nikki – that would leave its moorings for test flights, and in several years, a complete airship nicknamed Lucy might just usher in the era of the SkyLifter.

For more info check out: Sky Lifter

[Via Tech News Daily]

Stem cell posible cure for HIV?

Three years after receiving a stem cell transplant, one man no longer has HIV. However, scientists caution that this procedure can only be replicated in certain circumstances and merits further study. 

In a new study, German researchers have confirmed that an American man living in Berlin was successfully cured of his HIV infection after having received a blood stem cell transplant in 2007.

"In conclusion, our results strongly suggest that cure of HIV has been achieved in this patient," the researchers write in the abstract to their paper, which was published last week in Blood, a medical journal.

The new paper is a follow-up study by the same German team to one they had published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2009. That study found "the patient remained without viral rebound 20 months after transplantation and discontinuation of antiretroviral therapy."

"We weren't able to find HIV in his cells," said Dr. Gero Huetter, a hematologist and professor at the University of Heidelberg, and a co-author of the new paper, in an interview with Deutsche Welle. "The new cells have a natural resistance against HIV."

Three years ago, Timothy Ray Brown had been an HIV-positive leukemia patient. Prior to receiving the stem cell transplant, he underwent intense chemotherapy to completely replace his immune system.
However, the new stem cells that he received had a rare genetic mutation - found naturally in just one percent of Caucasians in northern and western Europe - that causes certain cells to lack a particular receptor, known as the CCR5 receptor, which HIV binds to. At the time Huetter specifically was looking for bone marrow stem cell donors that contained the rare CCR5 deletion.

Since his treatment, the so-called "Berlin patient" has been effectively cured of AIDS and its disease-causing virus, HIV, but also leukemia. This likely makes him the first, and so far, only person ever to have been cured of HIV, out of more than 30 million currently infected people worldwide.
Scientists have previously seen a very small number of cases where the virus does not replicate inside the host and therefore does not cause AIDS. However, these so-called "non-progressives," represent an extremely small percentage of known HIV patients around the world.

An "intriguing" step, AIDS researchers say.
 
In the wake of the new German paper, AIDS and HIV researchers around the world are starting to take stock of this important finding.
"It's intriguing that this patient does not have a rebound of the HIV replication," said Jens Lundgren, an AIDS researcher and professor at the University of Copenhagen, in an interview with Deutsche Welle. "They have certainly proven the case that there is no apparent residual infection in this person, and the HIV had multiple opportunities to replicate."
Another German AIDS researcher, Dr. Jan Van Lunzen, of the University Hospital Eppendorf in Hamburg, agreed with this assessment.
"It seems that so far, this patient is one that we could call cured from HIV," he said in an interview with Deutsche Welle. "This is the only known case, so far."
But Lundgren cautioned that researchers cannot claim that they have cured AIDS or HIV as this was only one, very particular case.

"We cannot really make statements on cure rates based on a single patient," the researcher, who was not part of the study, added. "This has to be looked at much more comprehensively, and this raises the issue of who wants to undergo a stem cell transplantation? This is not a procedure that you want to do on a whim, if you're otherwise healthy."

Huetter and his colleagues, however, say that the CCR5 technique has a good chance of becoming a new method for treating, or perhaps even curing HIV in the future.
"Probably in five, 10 or 20 years there will be techniques and procedures which can knock down CCR5 in a more complete way and will substitute this current medication of antiretroviral therapy," he said.

[Source: Dw-world]

A more secure smart power grid

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is on the front lines of securing the emerging smart power grid against potential security threats.

Located in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the laboratory recently won about $7 million in Department of Energy solicitations to develop safeguarding systems against outages caused by nature or manmade threats such as computer hacking.

The smart grid -- a system in which home and municipal utility meters are run through a central hub and monitored and operated over the Internet -- has been a cause of some concern for security experts because of the large scale damage that could arise if it was corrupted.

"A stable electric grid is of huge importance now and will become even more important in the future as we move toward electrification of our transportation system," said Tom King of ORNL's Energy Efficiency and Electricity Technology program.

To that end, ORNL will put its money towards developing several security technologies, including a system for automated software vulnerability detection. Carnegie Mellon University and EnerNext Corp. are partners on that project.

ORNL will also pursue an advanced radio technology called the Next-Generation Secure, Scalable Communications Network. The radio is inherently secure, and will replace the current wireless technology used in smart grids. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Virginia Tech, and Kenexis and Opus Consulting will partner on that research.

[Source: Tech News Daily]

Researchers find mathematical patterns to forecast eathquakes

Researchers from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO) and the Universidad de Sevilla (US) have found patterns of behavior that occur before an earthquake on the Iberian peninsula. The team used clustering techniques to forecast medium-large seismic movements when certain circumstances coincide.

"Using mathematical techniques, we have found patterns when medium-large earthquakes happen, that is, earthquakes greater than 4.4 on the Richter scale," said Francisco Martínez Álvarez, co-author of the study and a senior lecturer at the UPO.

The research, which will be published this month by the journal Expert Systems with Applications, is based on the data compiled by the Instituto Geográfico Nacional on 4,017 earthquakes between 3 and 7 on the Richter scale that occurred on the Iberian Peninsula and in the surrounding waters between 1978 and 2007.

The scientists applied clustering techniques to the data, which allowed them to find similarities between them and discover patterns that will help to forecast earthquakes.

The team concentrated on the two seismogenic regions with the most data (The Alboran Sea and the Western Azores-Gibraltar fault region) analysing three attributes: the magnitude of the seismic movement, the time elapsed since the last earthquake and the change in a parameter called the b-value from one earthquake and the other. The b-value reflects the tectonics of the region under analysis.

A high b-value means earthquakes are predominantly small in size and, therefore, the land has a low level of resistance. In contrast, a low value indicates that there are a relatively similar number of large and small seismic movements, which implies the land is more resistant.

Successful Forecast Probability Greater than 80%

"We have discovered the strong relationship between earthquakes and the parameter b-value, recording accuracy rates of more than 80%," Antonio Morales Esteban, another of the co-authors of the study and a senior lecturer at the US highlighted. "After the calculations had been performed, providing the circumstances and sequences we have determined to be forerunners occur, we obtain a significant success probability."

The technique summarises the forecasts in two factors: sensitivity (probability of an earthquake occurring after the patterns detected occur) and specificity (probability of an earthquake not occurring when no patterns have occurred).

The results reflect a sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 82.56% for the Alboran Sea region and 79.31% and 90.38% respectively for the seismogenic region of the Western Azores-Gibraltar Fault.

That is, there is a high probability of an earthquake in these regions immediately after the patterns discovered occur (high sensitivity) and, moreover, on most of such occasions, they only occur after the patterns discovered (high specificity).

At present the team is analyzing the same data using their own algorithms based on "association rules," other mathematical techniques used to discover common events or those which fulfill specific conditions within a set of events.

"The results are promising, although I doubt we will ever be able to say that we are capable of forecasting an earthquake 100% accurately," Martínez Álvarez conceded.

[Source: Science Daily]