|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 5:27:04 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 5:27:04 GMT 4
Condi Rice Pulls A Nixon: When the President Does It, That Means It is Not IllegalHuffington Post / Cenk Uygur blogspot Posted April 30, 2009 | 11:33 PM (EST)www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/condi-rice-pulls-a-nixon_b_193379.htmlCondoleezza Rice was recently speaking at Stanford when students asked her an excellent question on waterboarding and torture. They have her answer on tape and it isn't pretty. Condi Rice absolutely pulls a Nixon. Here are the relevant quotes: "The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture." Nothing we would do? Nothing? As I ask in the video above, what would happen if the president authorized you to murder someone, would it still not be illegal? Next up, Condoleezza Rice denies any personal responsibility: "I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency, that they had policy authorization, subject to the Justice Department's clearance. That's what I did." Oh I see, she just conveyed the authorization. And how is that different than giving the authorization? By the way, lest we forget she "conveyed" the authorization for waterboarding, which has been considered torture and illegal under any and all treaties and laws of the United States. That is exactly why this is a legal hot potato that no one wants to get stuck holding at the end of the day. Here she pushes the blame on to two different entities - President Bush and the Justice Department. Now, the final coup de grace - once the president authorized it, it became legal: "The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture." That is as close as you can get to Richard Nixon's infamous comment, " When the president does it, that means it is not illegal." This is why I say these people don't understand the whole concept behind America. In our system of government, the president is not supposed to be above the law. He is not a king; his word is not the law. The president can violate the law and when he does, he is supposed to be held accountable. That is supposed to be one of the pillars of our democracy. Look at what she said: "...by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture." Does that mean the president can authorize any kind of torture under the Convention Against Torture? If someone doesn't do something about this dangerous idea it will do more damage than the torture itself. Yes, the torture damaged our reputation across the world, helped terrorists recruit fighters against us, endangered our soldiers and sullied the name of America. But if this precedent - that the president can authorize anything and make it legal "by definition" - is allowed to stand, then our whole form of government is in jeopardy. A violation of the law is, of course, a big deal, especially on something this grave and important. This is not a jaywalking ticket. There were 34 suspected or confirmed homicides of detainees, some clearly due to torture. It does not get any more serious than this. But what is even worse is if you set the precedent that violations of the law like this will not have any consequences. That is bigger than the crime itself. The precedent does more damage than the law breaking because it sets the new boundaries and rules for our government. It confirms what Rice and Nixon argue for: When the president does it, that means it is not illegal. Allowing that idea to stand unchallenged does far more damage to the republic than any one crime committed by any one person (or the prosecution thereof), even if that person is the president. UPDATE -- One small upside for those of us who think that the people who "conveyed" the authorization for torture should be held responsible is that hopefully they'll be showered by questions like these wherever they go for the rest of their lives. The infamy has begun for them.
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 5:51:02 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 5:51:02 GMT 4
Now I know there are many people who are not fans of Michael Moore. Some of his rhetoric is bitingly sarcastic. I took the liberty of editing out one comment that I found offensive. However, this is an article that has some points I agree with. Bernie Madoff, ScapegoatHuffington Post / Michael Moore blogspot Posted May 1, 2009 | 01:28 PM (EST)www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/bernie-madoff-scapegoat-b_b_194586.htmlElie Wiesel called him a "God." His investors called him a "genius." But, proving correct that old adage from the country and western song, you never really know what goes on behind closed doors. Bernie Madoff, for at least 20 years, ran a Ponzi scheme on thousands of clients, among them the people you and I would consider the best and brightest. Business leaders, celebrities, charities, even some of his own relatives and his defense attorney were taken for a ride (this has to be the first time a lawyer was hosed by the client). We're clearly in one of those historic, game changing years. Aside from Obama himself, no person will provide a more iconic face of this end-of-capitalism-as-we-know-it year than Bernard Lawrence Madoff. Which is too bad. Yes, he stole $65 billion from some already quite wealthy people. I know that's upsetting to them because rich guys like Bernie are not supposed to be stealing from their own kind. Crime, thievery, looting -- that's what happens on the other side of town. The rules of the money game on Park Avenue and Wall Street are comprised of things like charging the public 29% credit card interest, tricking people into taking out a second mortgage they can't afford, and concocting a student loan system that has graduates in hock for the next 20 years. Now that's smart business! And it's legal. That's where Bernie went wrong -- his scheming, his trickery was an outrage both because it was illegal and because he preyed on his side of the tracks.Had Mr. Madoff just followed the example of his fellow top one-percenters, there were many ways he could have legally multiplied his wealth many times over. Here's how it's done. First, threaten your workers that you'll move their jobs offshore if they don't agree to reduce their pay and benefits. Then move those jobs offshore. Then place that income on the shores of the Cayman Islands and pay no taxes. Don't put the money back into your company. Put it into your pocket and the pockets of your shareholders. There! Done! Legal!But Bernie wanted to play X-games Capitalism, run by the mantra that's at the core of all capitalistic endeavors: Enough Is Never Enough. You have the right to make as much as you can, and if people are too stupid to read the fine print of their health insurance policy or their GM "100,000-mile warranty," well, tough luck, losers. Buyers beware! It would be too easy -- and the wrong lesson learned -- to put Bernie on TIME's list all by himself. If Ponzi schemes are such a bad thing, then why have we allowed all of our top banks to deal in credit default swaps and other make-believe rackets? Why did we allow those same banks to create the scam of a sub-prime mortgage? And instead of putting the people responsible in the cell block in Lower Manhattan, where Bernie now resides, why did we give them huge sums of our hard-earned tax dollars to bail them out of their self-inflicted troubles? Bernard Madoff is nothing more than the scab on the wound. He's also a most-needed and convenient distraction. Where's the photo on this list of the ex-chairmen of AIG, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup? Where's the mug shot of Phil Gramm, the senator who wrote the bill to strip the system of its regulations, or of the President who signed that bill? And how 'bout those who ran the fake numbers at the ratings agencies, the lobbyists who succeeded in making sleazy accounting a lawful practice, or the stock market itself -- an institution that's treated like the Holy Sepulcher instead of the casino that it is (and, like all other casinos, the house eventually wins).And what of Madoff's clients themselves? What did they think was going on to guarantee them incredible returns on their investments every single year -- when no one else on planet Earth was getting anything like that? Some have admitted they did have an inkling "something was up," but no one really wanted to ask what it was that was making their money grow on trees. They were afraid they might find out it had nothing to do with gardening. Many of Madoff's victims have told investigators that, over the years, they have made much more than the original investment they gave Bernie. If I buy a stolen car from the guy down the street, the police will take that car from me regardless of whether I knew it was stolen. If I knew it was stolen, then I go to jail for receiving stolen property. Will these "victims" give back their gains that were fraudulently obtained? Will the head of Goldman Sachs reveal what he was doing at the meetings with the Fed chairman and the Treasury secretary before the bailout? Will Bank of America please tell us what they've spent $45 billion of our TARP money on?That's probably going too far. Better that we just put Bernie on this list.
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 5:58:05 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 5:58:05 GMT 4
And here it is...out of the closet and into the net...Computer Hackers R.I.P.: Making Quantum Cryptography PracticalScienceDaily May 2, 2009www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090430065454.htmQuantum cryptography, a completely secure means of communication, is much closer to being used practically as researchers from Toshiba and Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory have now developed high speed detectors capable of receiving information with much higher key rates, thereby able to receive more information faster. New research details how quantum communication can be made possible without having to use cryogenic cooling and/or complicated optical setups, making it much more likely to become commercially viable soon. One of the first practical applications to emerge from advances in the often baffling study of quantum mechanics, quantum cryptography has become the soon-to-be-reached gold standard in secure communications. Quantum mechanics describes the fundamental nature of matter at the atomic level and offers very intriguing, often counter-intuitive, explanations to help us understand the building blocks that construct the world around us. Quantum cryptography uses the quantum mechanical behaviour of photons, the fundamental particles of light, to enable highly secure transmission of data beyond that achievable by classical encryption.The photons themselves are used to distribute keys that enable access to encrypted information, such as a confidential video file that, say, a bank wishes to keep completely confidential, which can be sent along practical communication lines, made of fibre optics. Quantum indeterminacy, the quantum mechanics dictum which states that measuring an unknown quantum state will change it, means that the key information cannot be accessed by a third party without corrupting it beyond recovery and therefore making the act of hacking futile.While other detectors can offer a key rate close to that reported in this journal paper, the present advance only relies on practical components for high speed photon detection, which has previously required either cryogenic cooling or highly technical optical setups, to make quantum key distribution much more user-friendly. Using an attenuated (weakened) laser as a light source and a compact detector (semiconductor avalanche photodiodes), the researchers have introduced a decoy protocol for guarding against intruder attacks that would confuse with erroneous information all but the sophisticated, compact detector developed by the researchers. As the researchers write, "With the present advances, we believe quantum key distribution is now practical for realising high band-width information-theoretically secure communication." Governments, banks and large businesses who fear the leaking of sensitive information will, no doubt, be watching closely. Journal reference: Z L Yuan et al. Practical gigahertz quantum key distribution based on avalanche photodiodes. New Journal of Physics, 11 045019 DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/11/4/045019 Adapted from materials provided by Institute of Physics.
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 7:28:07 GMT 4
Post by Eagles Disobey on May 3, 2009 7:28:07 GMT 4
OFFICIAL UPDATE FROM EAGLES DISOBEY!The Eagles had hoped to attend the currently scheduled "Awake and Aware" Project Camelot Conference in Marina del Rey, California, June 6&7, but due to scheduling and business issues during that timeframe they have had to sadly decline to be there. (There are large issues on the horizon for the Eagles which many people will soon know about.)
EAGLES DISOBEY IS HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THAT DAN AND MARCI ARE SCHEDULED FOR AND PLAN TO ATTEND THE "A NEW WORLD" CONFERENCE AT THE VOLKSHAUS IN ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, JULY 10-12, 2009!
They are looking forward to making many new friends, and meeting many wonderful people. Bill Ryan and the Swiss Ground Crew are caring for all the arrangements, and Dan and Marci are excited to be attending this very important conference. Information and materials (video, audio, and other) never before disclosed will be presented.
www.groundcrew.ch/
EAGLES DISOBEY!
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 12:50:10 GMT 4
Post by kiek on May 3, 2009 12:50:10 GMT 4
Dear Dan, Marci and Eagles Team, Looking forward to seeing you in Zuerich!! It will be a very interesting gathering! All OUR favorite speakers will be there!! ;-))
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 19:15:53 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 19:15:53 GMT 4
Another clue in the case for dark matterThe Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope hasn't ruled out earlier findingsScience News By Ron Cowen Saturday, May 2nd, 2009www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/43413/title/Another_clue_in_the_case_for_dark_matterDENVER — Using a sensitive detector to survey the abundance of high-energy electrons and positrons in nearby reaches of space, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has found new evidence that may hint at the existence of dark matter, the exotic invisible material believed to make up 85 percent of the mass of the universe. The measurements, reported May 2 at a meeting of the American Physical Society, bolster the possibility that another orbiting observatory called PAMELA (for Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) did indeed see indirect signs of dark matter ( SN: 9/27/08, p. 8), which has eluded detection ever since astronomers first proposed the material more than 75 years ago. But it’s also possible that many of the energetic electrons and positrons Fermi recorded might instead come from a more mundane astrophysical source — dense, rapidly rotating stars called pulsars — cautions Fermi researcher Peter Michelson of Stanford University. Fermi also scouts for high-energy gamma rays and may provide observations that could soon resolve the ambiguity, he adds. “The research is preliminary,” comments Savas Dimopoulos, a particle physicist also at Stanford but not part of the Fermi team. “The case [for dark matter] is far from being proven.” It’s the comparison between the Fermi results and those of PAMELA that suggest the possible detection was real, Michelson notes. In September, researchers reported that PAMELA had found a puzzling excess of energetic positrons, compared with what a well accepted model of particle acceleration suggests the Milky Way could produce. The model suggests that when protons revved up to high energies by blast waves from exploded stars collide with other protons in interstellar space, the particles produce positrons. But the abundance of positrons seemed too high.PAMELA directly measured the abundance of positrons, but so far its team has only reported the ratio of positrons to the total number of electrons and positrons the craft recorded, notes Michelson. That means that if, for some unknown reason, the number of electrons at higher energies had declined sharply, the data reported so far from PAMELA might document a positron excess when no excess actually exists. Fermi records the abundance of positrons and electrons of much higher energies, and with greater accuracies, than PAMELA does. Fermi's new observations reveal that the abundance of electrons doesn’t decline sharply enough at higher energies to explain away the PAMELA results. PAMELA has truly found an unexplained positron excess, Michelson says. There’s two ways that dark matter could account for the positrons, he adds. One proposed type of dark matter particle, known as a WIMP (for weakly interacting massive particle), may annihilate when it collides with another WIMP. The annihilation produces a cascade of ordinary particles, including positrons and electrons.
It’s also possible that dark matter particles, while long-lived, may not last forever. Enough of these individual dark matter particles could by now have decayed into positrons to account for the excess that PAMELA detected, Michelson says.For the time being, however, astronomers aren’t forced to go over to the dark side. Michelson emphasizes. The whirling dervishes known as pulsars could explain the current observations, although such an explanation would need some tinkering, Michelson adds. Fermi’s continuing all-sky survey of energetic gamma rays, which also could be produced by pulsars or the decay of dark matter particles, will be critical to distinguishing between the dark and light scenarios. Unlike charged particles such as positrons, which are bent or deflected from their original paths by galactic magnetic fields, particles of light such as gamma rays have no such deflection and can therefore be traced directly to their source.Pulsars concentrate along the plane of the Milky Way’s disk, while particles of dark matter would have a much more uniform distribution. Therefore, determining whether or not any observed excess of gamma rays is distributed uniformly across the sky could fingerprint the source. Also, if dark matter is the source, the gamma rays would not only show a uniform distribution but would also be relatively more abundant in the energy range of 100 billion electronvolts to a few trillion electronvolts, Michelson adds. “This is a real detective story, and we already have some clues,” says Michelson. “It’s possible that within a year we may know whether or not we’ve got dark matter, or at least the kind of dark matter we thought we might have.” “We are all looking forward to seeing the analysis of the gamma-ray data,” says Dimopoulos.
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 19:30:57 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 19:30:57 GMT 4
Ancient tsunami 'hit New York'BBC News By Molly Bentley / Science reporter Published: 2009/05/03 10:48:19 GMTnews.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8028949.stm A huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval. Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region in 300BC. It may have been a large storm, but evidence is increasingly pointing to a rare Atlantic Ocean tsunami. Steven Goodbred, an Earth scientist at Vanderbilt University, said large gravel, marine fossils and other unusual deposits found in sediment cores across the area date to 2,300 years ago. The size and distribution of material would require a high velocity wave and strong currents to move it, he said, and it is unlikely that short bursts produced in a storm would suffice. "If we're wrong, it was one heck of a storm," said Dr Goodbred. Landslide or asteroid?The origin of such a tsunami is also under debate. An undersea landslide is the most likely source, but one research group has proposed that an asteroid impact provided the trigger. In 300BC, barrier beaches and marsh grass embroidered the coast, and Native Americans walked the shore. Today, a wave of the proposed size would leave Wall Street and the Long Island Expressway awash with salt water. An Atlantic tsunami was rare but not inconceivable, said Neal Driscoll, a geologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who is not associated with the research. But verifying one that is 2,000 years old is tricky. Earthquakes, underwater landslides, or a combination of the two were the most frequent Atlantic tsunami triggers, said Professor Driscoll. The 1929 Grand Banks tsunami, in Newfoundland, which killed more than two-dozen people and snapped many transatlantic cables, was set in motion by a submarine landslide set off by an earthquake. Dr Goodbred imagines that the New York wave was on the Grand Banks scale - three to four meters high and big enough to leap over the barrier islands; but that it did not reach the magnitude of the 2004 Sumatran tsunami. The evidence is buried under metres of sediment in New York and New Jersey. High-speed wave Dr Goodbred first proposed the link between the layers of unusual debris found in sediment cores and a tsunami while studying shellfish populations in Great South Bay, Long Island. He extracted many mud cores with incongruous 20cm layers of sand and gravel. Their age matched that of wood deposits buried in the Hudson riverbed and marine fossils in a New Jersey debris flow in cores gathered by other researchers. The fist-sized gravel he found in Long Island would require a high velocity of water - well over a metre per second - to land where it did, said Dr Goodbred. Among the fossils and shells sandwiched in the organic black mud of Sandy Hook Bay, New Jersey, Marine Geologist Cecilia McHugh of Queens College, City University of New York, discovered mud balls made from red clay that matched iron-rich sediments found onshore. The balls form their spherical shape only through vigorous reworking, said Dr McHugh, and they do not form in small storms. "I didn't think much about it until we dated the deposit and came up with the same date that Steve did on Long Island," she said. It prompted her to check cores extracted from the upper continental slope 200km offshore. She discovered a 2,200-year-old layer of sand and mud, on top of sedimentary layers 8,000 to 14,000 years old. Dr McHugh says such relatively young debris is not found that far out on the slope, and the date is close to that of the New York and New Jersey samples. Age of a storm The age and nature of the material make tsunami verification a challenge. The radiocarbon dates of the debris are accurate to within a century, said Dr Goodbred. But the only evidence that a dramatic event took place thousands of years ago is common coastal debris - wood, sand, shells and rock. Researchers must discern whether it was strewn by a tsunami or a hurricane, or another large storm, such as a "nor'easter", said Professor Driscoll. "Understanding the origins of these deposits can be difficult," he added. While tsunamis can occur in any ocean, they are most common in the Pacific and Indian Oceans where continental plates collide. There, large undersea earthquakes are relatively common. In the Atlantic, where the plates spread, tsunamis are rare, which means Atlantic tsunamis are not well studied, said Bruce Jaffe, of the United States Geological Survey. There is little research on tsunami debris in the variety of northeast coastal environments - riverbeds, marine bays - where the New York debris layers were found. There are few modern analogues to compare them with for identification, he said. "Grand Banks is the only unequivocal tsunami in the Atlantic on the Northeast coast because there were eye-witness accounts and the deposits matched that of other modern tsunamis," said Dr Jaffe. To rule out the possibility of a severe storm, said Professor Driscoll, tsunami groups should collect more core samples to see whether the distribution of the debris is consistent. Dr Goodbred said teams were planning to do just that. And this would confirm that the deposits are not quirks of local geology. 'Circumstantial evidence' The researchers would also repeat carbon dating on cores to verify ages, said Dr Goodbred, but he has a hunch the tsunami theory will win out. "We're building a case of circumstantial evidence that is getting harder and harder to ignore," he said. While many geologists say a submarine landslide is the likely trigger of a tsunami, a group led by Columbia University geologist Dallas Abbot thinks a space impactor may have set off the massive wave. Her team discovered material in the New Jersey and Hudson River cores dated to 2,300 ago, and believe it to be meteoritic in nature. This includes carbon spherules, shocked minerals, and nanodiamonds, which are produced under extreme pressures and temperatures. "We didn't find the typical shocked quartz, but that is usual for a water impact," said Dr Abbott. She theorised that an asteroid landed in the water off the coast of New York and New Jersey, either creating the wave directly or triggering a submarine landslide. No crater has yet been found. Many geologists and other scientists remain sceptical of the asteroid evidence so far; but proof of an asteroid impact is not necessary to build the case for a massive wave. As Dr Goodbred pointed out: "The tsunami story stands on its own without the impact."
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 19:43:21 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 19:43:21 GMT 4
Plan to monitor all internet use BBC News Published: 2009/04/27 13:50:15 GMTnews.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8020039.stm Communications firms are being asked to record all internet contacts between people as part of a modernisation in UK police surveillance tactics. The home secretary scrapped plans for a database but wants details to be held and organised for security services. The new system would track all e-mails, phone calls and internet use, including visits to social network sites. The Tories said the Home Office had "buckled under Conservative pressure" in deciding against a giant database. Announcing a consultation on a new strategy for communications data and its use in law enforcement, Jacqui Smith said there would be no single government-run database. “Communications data is an essential tool for law enforcement agencies to track murderers and paedophiles, save lives and tackle crime” Jacqui Smith Home Secretary But she also said that "doing nothing" in the face of a communications revolution was not an option. The Home Office will instead ask communications companies - from internet service providers to mobile phone networks - to extend the range of information they currently hold on their subscribers and organise it so that it can be better used by the police, MI5 and other public bodies investigating crime and terrorism. Ministers say they estimate the project will cost £2bn to set up, which includes some compensation to the communications industry for the work it may be asked to do. "Communications data is an essential tool for law enforcement agencies to track murderers, paedophiles, save lives and tackle crime," Ms Smith said. "Advances in communications mean that there are ever more sophisticated ways to communicate and we need to ensure that we keep up with the technology being used by those who seek to do us harm. "It is essential that the police and other crime fighting agencies have the tools they need to do their job, However to be clear, there are absolutely no plans for a single central store." 'Contact not content' Communication service providers (CSPs) will be asked to record internet contacts between people, but not the content, similar to the existing arrangements to log telephone contacts. REASONS TO CHANGE WHAT CAN BE KEPT - More communication via computers rather than phones
- Companies won't always keep all data all the time
- Anonymity online masks criminal identities
- More online services provided from abroad
- Data held in many locations and difficult to find Source: Home
- Office consultation
But, recognising that the internet has changed the way people talk, the CSPs will also be asked to record some third party data or information partly based overseas, such as visits to an online chatroom and social network sites like Facebook or Twitter. Security services could then seek to examine this data along with information which links it to specific devices, such as a mobile phone, home computer or other device, as part of investigations into criminal suspects. The plan expands a voluntary arrangement under which CSPs allow security services to access some data which they already hold. The security services already deploy advanced techniques to monitor telephone conversations or intercept other communications, but this is not used in criminal trials. Ms Smith said that while the new system could record a visit to a social network, it would not record personal and private information such as photos or messages posted to a page. "What we are talking about is who is at one end [of a communication] and who is at the other - and how they are communicating," she said. Existing legal safeguards under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act would continue to apply. Requests to see the data would require top level authorisation within a public body such as a police force. The Home Office is running a separate consultation on limiting the number of public authorities that can access sensitive information or carry out covert surveillance. 'Orwellian'Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "I am pleased that the Government has climbed down from the Big Brother plan for a centralised database of all our emails and phone calls. "However, any legislation that requires individual communications providers to keep data on who called whom and when will need strong safeguards on access. "It is simply not that easy to separate the bare details of a call from its content. What if a leading business person is ringing Alcoholics Anonymous, or a politician's partner is arranging to hire a porn video? "There has to be a careful balance between investigative powers and the right to privacy." Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: "The big problem is that the government has built a culture of surveillance which goes far beyond counter terrorism and serious crime. Too many parts of Government have too many powers to snoop on innocent people and that's really got to change. "It is good that the home secretary appears to have listened to Conservative warnings about big brother databases. Now that she has finally admitted that the public don't want their details held by the State in one place, perhaps she will look at other areas in which the Government is trying to do precisely that." Guy Herbert of campaign group NO2ID said: "Just a week after the home secretary announced a public consultation on some trivial trimming of local authority surveillance, we have this: a proposal for powers more intrusive than any police state in history. "Ministers are making a distinction between content and communications data into sound-bite of the year. But it is spurious. "Officials from dozens of departments and quangos could know what you read online, and who all your friends are, who you emailed, when, and where you were when you did so - all without a warrant."
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 20:01:51 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 20:01:51 GMT 4
Magnetic Twisters "Dance" Across Mercury, Study SaysNational Geographic News April 30, 2009news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090430-mercury-messenger-magnetic.htmlDuring a flyby in October 2008, the MESSENGER probe saw magnetic "twisters" dancing across Mercury, depicted above in an illustration. The process that drives these invisible twisters is ten times stronger than it is on Earth and shows that Mercury is a more complicated planet than previously thought, scientists announced in April 2009. Image courtesy NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington, reproduced courtesy Science/AAAS The ever-present supersonic gale from the sun creates never-before-seen magnetic "twisters" that "dance" across Mercury's magnetic field and occasionally touch down on its surface, new observations have revealed. These invisible formations, made of high-energy electrons, kick up material from Mercury's surface and send it flying into the tiny, rocky planet's tenuous atmosphere, according to new research. Part of a suite of new findings based on October 2008 data from the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft, the study could help explain why Mercury's thin, inconstant atmosphere is so, well, mercurial. The findings, published this week in the journal Science, could also add to scientists' understanding of the phenomenon called space weather. With a period of strong solar storms predicted to start in 2012 that could interfere with satellites and disrupt power grids on Earth, better understanding of solar wind is a pressing need, scientists say. (Related: " Magnetic-Shield Cracks Found; Big Solar Storms Expected.") Surprisingly Intense Mercury's magnetic twisters are created when solar wind—which is actually a stream of charged particles—triggers a process on the tiny planet called magnetic reconnection. This is when magnetic field lines flowing from the sun splice together with the field lines around Mercury. The connection transfers solar wind energy into the planetary magnetic field and sends charged particles shooting toward the planet along the field lines. Bundles of these connected field lines then penetrate the planet's magnetic boundary and their particles are sent whirling by the solar wind, forming the twisters. On Earth, energy from magnetic reconnection "lights up" atoms in our much thicker atmosphere, creating the shimmering auroras at our planet's poles. (Related: " Giant 'Space Tornadoes' Spark Auroras on Earth.") What surprised scientists is that reconnection on Mercury is ten times more intense than it is on Earth, said study author James Slavin of the NASA Goddard Space Flight in Greenbelt, Maryland. It's reasonable to think that magnetic reconnection would be stronger on Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. But researchers were anticipating it would only be about two or three times more intense than on Earth, Slavin said. Figuring out why the process is so much stronger than expected could shed light on how solar wind affects magnetic fields around other planets, including Earth. Despite the stronger reconnection events, Slavin said, "at Mercury, we don't have an atmosphere that's dense enough or of the right kind of gas probably to produce anything we would recognize as auroras." Still, similar invisible currents may exist along those same magnetic regions of Mercury. "It's possible there may be a little ring around both poles of Mercury, where the surface is ever so slightly warmer than the other latitudes of the planet," Slavin said. (See a photo of "hyper auroras" on Jupiter.) Solar Erosion The new observations also show that—like the twisters—the solar wind directly plays a part in shaping the mysterious planet's surface. Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn have dense atmospheres and strong magnetic shields, protections that deflect the full force of the winds from reaching their surfaces. On Venus and Mars, meanwhile, there're little or no magnetic fields but some atmospheres, so "there's a tendency for the solar wind to strip away the atmosphere over the eons," Slavin said. (Related: " Stars Can Strip Gas Giants Naked.") "In the case of a body like Mercury, where you don't have a planetary atmosphere, or you have an extremely tenuous one, you have a situation where the solar wind … actually erodes the surface somewhat. It's a very small amount," Slavin said. Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., who was involved in the research, noted that there was much more magnetic activity during the October flyby than during MESSENGER's first encounter in January 2008. (See photos from the first Mercury flyby.) "Mercury is a lot more complicated and its processes are a lot more dynamic than we knew," Solomon said.
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 20:22:27 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 20:22:27 GMT 4
Ancient Egypt Temples Found at Gateway FortressNational Geographic Sunday, May 3, 2009news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/photogalleries/ancient-egypt-temples-pictures/index.htmlAncient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II (right) offers gifts to Geb, god of earth, in a 3,000-year-old carving discovered in the largest mud-brick temple yet found on northeastern Egypt's northern Sinai Peninsula (map). Photograph courtesy SCAThe landmark is among four ancient temples discovered at a site near the Egyptian border near the Suez Canal, the country's archaeology agency announced on April 21. Found among the ruins of a fortified city, the temples would likely have been the first stop in Egypt for travelers from ancient Palestine and other points east. Designed to impress on visitors Egypt's grandeur and might, the city appears to have been the Egyptian military's headquarters during the New Kingdom (1539-1075 B.C.), a time of war and conquest (ancient Egypt time line). "This temple was very, very beautiful. [Visitors] would understand this temple is a good example of Egyptian culture," said Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, who made the discovery for Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. Its foundations revealed by recent excavations, this 60,000-square-foot (5,600-square-meter) colonnaded structure was the largest of four newfound temples structures on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, all built about 3,000 to 3,500 years ago. Photograph courtesy SCABuilt during different reigns, the temples and other ruins in the former fortified city--known as Tell El-Habua--are testament to the importance of the site. "Each king in the New Kingdom [period] built something there," archaeologist Abdel-Maqsoud said. Invaders would have had to penetrate 49-foot-thick (15-meter-thick) walls after making it past 15 six-story-tall defensive towers, Egypt's archaeology agency says. Archaeologists have found about 60 inscribed two-ton limestone blocks at Egypt's 3,000-year-old Tell El-Habua site--such as this one from the doorjamb of the temple of Thutmose II, the earliest pharaoh depicted at the site, whose discovery was announced April 21, 2009. Photograph courtesy SCA"There're not many inscriptions from North Sinai, but now we've opened the gate, and I'm sure we'll find many more," said archaeologist Abdel-Maqsoud, after 25 years of exploring the area. All the inscriptions will be transferred to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In a rare inscription found at Tell El-Habua, the ancient eastern gateway to Egypt, Pharaoh Thutmose II is given an ankh, or key of life, by Ra-Horakhty--an amalgamation of the sun god Ra and the falcon-headed Horus. Such artistic intermingling of kings and gods identifies Tell El-Habua site as a religious center, as well as a military base. Photograph courtesy SCAThe site formed part of the Horus Way--a long road of fortifications that protected Egypt's eastern front from invaders--and was a key starting point for military campaigns during Egypt's acquisitive New Kingdom period.
|
|
|
NEWS
May 3, 2009 20:41:56 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 3, 2009 20:41:56 GMT 4
Two articles published in PLoS ONE by scientist Boris Rubinsky and colleagues, one (Cellular Phone Enabled Non-Invasive Tissue Classifier) in April 2009 and one in 2008 (A New Concept for Medical Imaging Centered on Cellular Phone Technology) have both been featured in a news article in this week's Nature, which examines the increasingly important role played by mobile phones in data collection.Cellular Phone Enabled Non-Invasive Tissue ClassifierPLoS ONE Received: December 23, 2008; Accepted: February 22, 2009; Published: April 13, 2009www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005178AbstractCellular phone technology is emerging as an important tool in the effort to provide advanced medical care to the majority of the world population currently without access to such care. In this study, we show that non-invasive electrical measurements and the use of classifier software can be combined with cellular phone technology to produce inexpensive tissue characterization. This concept was demonstrated by the use of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier to distinguish through the cellular phone between heart and kidney tissue via the non-invasive multi-frequency electrical measurements acquired around the tissues. After the measurements were performed at a remote site, the raw data were transmitted through the cellular phone to a central computational site and the classifier was applied to the raw data. The results of the tissue analysis were returned to the remote data measurement site. The classifiers correctly determined the tissue type with a specificity of over 90%. When used for the detection of malignant tumors, classifiers can be designed to produce false positives in order to ensure that no tumors will be missed. This mode of operation has applications in remote non-invasive tissue diagnostics in situ in the body, in combination with medical imaging, as well as in remote diagnostics of biopsy samples in vitro. A New Concept for Medical Imaging Centered on Cellular Phone TechnologyPLoS ONE Received: February 8, 2008; Accepted: March 18, 2008; Published: April 30, 2008www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002075AbstractAccording to World Health Organization reports, some three quarters of the world population does not have access to medical imaging. In addition, in developing countries over 50% of medical equipment that is available is not being used because it is too sophisticated or in disrepair or because the health personnel are not trained to use it. The goal of this study is to introduce and demonstrate the feasibility of a new concept in medical imaging that is centered on cellular phone technology and which may provide a solution to medical imaging in underserved areas. The new system replaces the conventional stand-alone medical imaging device with a new medical imaging system made of two independent components connected through cellular phone technology. The independent units are: a) a data acquisition device (DAD) at a remote patient site that is simple, with limited controls and no image display capability and b) an advanced image reconstruction and hardware control multiserver unit at a central site. The cellular phone technology transmits unprocessed raw data from the patient site DAD and receives and displays the processed image from the central site. (This is different from conventional telemedicine where the image reconstruction and control is at the patient site and telecommunication is used to transmit processed images from the patient site). The primary goal of this study is to demonstrate that the cellular phone technology can function in the proposed mode. The feasibility of the concept is demonstrated using a new frequency division multiplexing electrical impedance tomography system, which we have developed for dynamic medical imaging, as the medical imaging modality. The system is used to image through a cellular phone a simulation of breast cancer tumors in a medical imaging diagnostic mode and to image minimally invasive tissue ablation with irreversible electroporation in a medical imaging interventional mode.
|
|
|
NEWS
May 4, 2009 0:58:41 GMT 4
Post by kiek on May 4, 2009 0:58:41 GMT 4
Nearby asteroid found orbiting sun backwards | Universum | WWW.NIBURU.NL | The discovery of a 2- to 3-kilometre-wide asteroid in an orbit that goes backwards has set astronomers scratching their heads. It comes closer to Earth than any other object in a 'retrograde' orbit, and astronomers think they should have spotted it before. The object, called 2009 HC82, was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona on the morning of 29 April. From observations of its position by five different groups, Sonia Keys of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center calculated it orbits the sun every 3.39 years on a path that ventures within 3.5 million km of the Earth's orbit. Combined with its size, that makes 2009 HC82 a potentially hazardous asteroid. What's really unusual is that the calculated orbit is inclined 155° to the plane of the Earth's orbit. That means that as it orbits the Sun, it actually travels backwards compared to the planets. It is only the 20th asteroid known in a retrograde orbit, a very rare group. None of the others comes as close to the Earth. More observations needed Comets, which originate on the outer fringes of the solar system, are much more likely to have retrograde orbits than asteroids. In part, this is because passing stars or planets can kick them out of their original orbits and onto unusual paths, bringing them into the inner solar system, where we tend to see them. Some retrograde asteroids may in fact be burnt-out comets, says Brian Marsden of the Minor Planet Center. The size and shape of the new asteroid's orbit "is very like Encke's comet except for inclination," he told New Scientist, although it shows no sign of a cometary tail. The calculated orbit is the best fit to the available observations, but small observational errors could make a big difference in that calculation. "I'd feel happier about it if we get some more observations," says Marsden. The asteroid is now far beyond Mars, but its orbit periodically brings it fairly close to Earth. "It should have been easily observable in 2000," says Marsden. "Why wasn't it seen then?" He hopes new observations will answer that question. Source: Newscientist.com
|
|
|
NEWS
May 4, 2009 1:59:20 GMT 4
Post by towhom on May 4, 2009 1:59:20 GMT 4
Nearby asteroid found orbiting sun backwards | Universum | WWW.NIBURU.NL | The discovery of a 2- to 3-kilometre-wide asteroid in an orbit that goes backwards has set astronomers scratching their heads. It comes closer to Earth than any other object in a 'retrograde' orbit, and astronomers think they should have spotted it before. The object, called 2009 HC82, was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona on the morning of 29 April. From observations of its position by five different groups, Sonia Keys of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center calculated it orbits the sun every 3.39 years on a path that ventures within 3.5 million km of the Earth's orbit. Combined with its size, that makes 2009 HC82 a potentially hazardous asteroid. What's really unusual is that the calculated orbit is inclined 155° to the plane of the Earth's orbit. That means that as it orbits the Sun, it actually travels backwards compared to the planets. It is only the 20th asteroid known in a retrograde orbit, a very rare group. None of the others comes as close to the Earth. More observations needed Comets, which originate on the outer fringes of the solar system, are much more likely to have retrograde orbits than asteroids. In part, this is because passing stars or planets can kick them out of their original orbits and onto unusual paths, bringing them into the inner solar system, where we tend to see them. Some retrograde asteroids may in fact be burnt-out comets, says Brian Marsden of the Minor Planet Center. The size and shape of the new asteroid's orbit "is very like Encke's comet except for inclination," he told New Scientist, although it shows no sign of a cometary tail. The calculated orbit is the best fit to the available observations, but small observational errors could make a big difference in that calculation. "I'd feel happier about it if we get some more observations," says Marsden. The asteroid is now far beyond Mars, but its orbit periodically brings it fairly close to Earth. "It should have been easily observable in 2000," says Marsden. "Why wasn't it seen then?" He hopes new observations will answer that question. Source: Newscientist.com Hi Christa,
This is listed on the Near Earth Object Program page, which displays the list of items currently ranked as "potentially hazardous asteroids" - 1054 in all to date.
This is the orbital diagram for 2009 HC82. It should not be used for accurate long-term trajectories (over several years or decades) or planetary encounter circumstances.
This is the JPL Horizons Web-Interface which provides limited access to their Horizons system. This system does provide accurate long-term ephemerides.
Peace and Joy Always
Sally Anne
|
|
|
NEWS
May 4, 2009 2:43:44 GMT 4
Post by papat on May 4, 2009 2:43:44 GMT 4
Moderator/admin sent a personal message :-)(-:
Peace Papa T
|
|
|
NEWS
May 4, 2009 3:09:15 GMT 4
Post by nodstar on May 4, 2009 3:09:15 GMT 4
Hiya Papa T
Message received and reply soon to follow ;D
lotsa love
Nod
|
|