Mayur's Posterous http://agentm.posterous.com Most recent posts at Mayur's Posterous posterous.com Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:33:00 -0700 Fifty New Exoplanets Discovered by HARPS http://agentm.posterous.com/fifty-new-exoplanets-discovered-by-harps http://agentm.posterous.com/fifty-new-exoplanets-discovered-by-harps
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Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:25:00 -0700 AstroAlert: Type Ia supernova in M101! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine http://agentm.posterous.com/astroalert-type-ia-supernova-in-m101-bad-astr http://agentm.posterous.com/astroalert-type-ia-supernova-in-m101-bad-astr

Attention all astronomers! There is a new Type Ia supernova that has been seen in the nearby spiral galaxy M101, and it’s very young — currently only about a day old! This is very exciting news; getting as much data on this event as possible is critical.

Most likely professional astronomers are already aware of the supernova, since observations have already been taken by Swift (no X-rays have yet been seen, but it’s early yet) and Hubble observations have been scheduled. Still, I would urge amateur astronomers to take careful observations of the galaxy.

[As an aside, I'll note that this supernova won't get bright enough to see naked eye and poses no threat at all to us here on Earth. It may be visible in decent-sized telescopes, though, and as you'll see this may be a very important event in the annals of astronomy.]

So why is this a big deal?

First of all, a supernova is an exploding star — one of the most violent events in the Universe. There are different kinds of supernovae, but a Type Ia occurs, it’s thought, when a superdense white dwarf — the remnant core of a dead star — siphons material off a companion star. If enough material piles on top of the white dwarf, it can suddenly start to fuse hydrogen into helium. This starts a runaway effect, and the entire star explodes. This supernova can release so much energy it can actually outshine its host galaxy! If you want more details, I’ve written about Type Ia supernovae before: Astronomers spot ticking supernova time bomb and Dwarf merging makes for an explosive combo.

So this kind of supernova is incredibly bright, making them easy to spot over vast distances. These events are very important, because we think that each Type Ia supernova is very similar in the way it explodes, making them useful as benchmarks in gauging distances to very distant galaxies. In fact, it is the study of these explosions that has helped us nail down how fast the Universe is expanding, and also led to the discovery of dark energy. Clearly, the more we know about them, the better.

M101 is a spiral galaxy only about 25 million light years away, making it one of the closest big spirals in the sky. It’s also huge, boasting a trillions stars, ten times the mass of our Milky Way. You can read all about it in an earlier post featuring the image at the top of this article.

Given M101′s close distance, this new supernova will be relatively easy to study. And the best part is that the exploding star was caught young: most of the ones we see are far away, and too faint to be seen until they start to reach their maximum brightness after a few days. Getting data on them early is absolutely critical for understanding them, and it’s the hardest part of all this. I am not exaggerating to say this new supernova could be a linchpin in our understanding of these events.

Interestingly, Hubble took images of this galaxy in 2002, and astronomers dug up the archived images and looked at the spot of the supernova to see if anything was there back then. Nothing shows up in the blue filter, but in the red (shown here) there are two stars very close to the position of the future supernova (the circle is centered on the best measurement of the supernova’s position). From their brightness and color, both of these stars are red giants, stars like the Sun but near the ends of their lives. That would fit with the Type Ia supernova: red giants are so big that if there’s a white dwarf nearby, it could suck up their matter and start the chain of events that led to its doom. Further observations may pin this down. If one of these stars is what fed the supernova, that’s seriously cool; there are only a handful of supernova progenitor stars that have ever been seen*.

All in all, this is pretty much a big deal. The galaxy is close, pretty, a bit odd, and is hosting the nearest Type Ia supernova seen in decades which was caught when it was less than a day old. I’m excited! I know a lot of telescopes will be aimed at the northern skies over the next few days, and I’ll be very interested to find out what they see.

Image credits: Hubble M101 image: NASA, ESA, K. Kuntz (JHU), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Lab), J. Mould (NOAO), Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana), and STScI; Type Ia art: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; Hubble image: NASA/ESA/Hubble. Tip o’ the dew shield to paulwarren73.

 

* Technically, if one of the red giants was behind this event, it wasn’t the star that actually exploded — the white dwarf which actually blew up was far, far too faint to be seen here. Still, very cool.

via blogs.discovermagazine.com

 

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Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:49:00 -0700 BBC News - Boeing pilots to make space trip http://agentm.posterous.com/bbc-news-boeing-pilots-to-make-space-trip http://agentm.posterous.com/bbc-news-boeing-pilots-to-make-space-trip

Boeing ship

The CST-100 is Boeing's answer to Nasa's call for a commercial crew transport service

Boeing says two of its own employees will crew the first manned mission of its new astronaut capsule.

The US company has confirmed it will use the Atlas 5 rocket to test its CST-100 ship on three flights in 2015.

An unmanned capsule will be used on the first and second launches. On the third, Boeing test pilots will take the vessel to the space station.

The plan is dependent on a successful development programme and the availability of sufficient funding.

Boeing is one of a number of companies being encouraged by the US space agency (Nasa) to develop a commercially operated crew transport service to and from low-Earth orbit.

The idea is that Nasa and other space agencies around the world would buy seats in these vehicles to get their people to the international orbiting platform and other destinations that might one day include privately run space labs and hotels.

Last month, Nasa retired its space shuttles, partly on the grounds of cost - they were hugely expensive to maintain.

The agency believes that by handing operational responsibility to the commercial sector, the price of getting into low-Earth orbit can be reduced substantially.

It is giving Boeing financial support to help it develop the CST-100 ship.

The conical design will be capable of carrying up to seven individuals.

The choice of the Atlas 5 as the CST-100's launcher is not a major surprise. It has an excellent record - 27 flights with a 100% success rate.

It also happens to be operated by a company that is part-owned by Boeing called United Launch Alliance (ULA). However, Boeing says that relationship played no part in the decision to use Atlas; it was simply that Atlas was deemed the best rocket for the task.

"Our approach is to produce a reliable spacecraft built on existing simple systems and then integrate that with a proven launch vehicle, all focussed on putting in place a very safe system, one that will be reliable and that can be operational as soon as practical so that we can start flying US crew from US launch sites post the shuttle era," said John Elbon, vice president and programme manager of Boeing's Commercial Crew Programs.

Atlas 5

The Atlas 5 has a 100% record of launch success

The year 2015 will see the Atlas launch the capsule three times.

The first flight will put the ship in orbit. The second will take the CST-100 part-way towards space before practising an abort.

In this procedure, the capsule will push itself away from the rocket mid-flight as if there were some problem on the rocket. This will be a critical test of astronaut safety features built into the capsule in the event of an emergency.

Assuming these demonstration flights go well, the third mission will see Boeing test pilots take the CST-100 all the way to the International Space Station.

The CST-100 would then be ready for commercial service starting in 2016.

Boeing says the two pilots it plans to use on the manned mission in 2015 will emerge from a selection process that is already under way.

"We're actually interviewing now for the first one," said Mr Elbon. "I would like to get one on board so that they can be part of the design process and influence it from an operator's perspective."

The decision of Boeing to use the Atlas 5 follows hard on the heels of a recent agreement signed between Nasa and ULA to prepare the Atlas rocket for astronaut launch duties.

This work will determine which components on the Atlas already meet Nasa's stringent requirements for human spaceflight and which elements might need to be upgraded.

ULA is also developing an emergency detection system that would be placed inside the Atlas to give warning of a major malfunction. In addition, ULA needs to prepare a gantry structure that would allow astronauts to get in and out of a capsule when it is mounted on top of an Atlas at its launch pad.

"ULA will provide launch services from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station," explained George Sowers, ULA's vice president of business development.

"We will use the Atlas 412 configuration, which means it has a single solid rocket booster [attached to its liquid-fuelled core stage] and a dual engine Centaur upper stage.

"We believe the Atlas 5 provides the earliest possible initial launch capability for commercial crew and we'll be ready to support Boeing with both un-crewed and crewed test flights in 2015."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

 

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Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:17:00 -0700 NASA's Juno Spacecraft Launches on Journey to Jupiter http://agentm.posterous.com/nasas-juno-spacecraft-launches-on-journey-to http://agentm.posterous.com/nasas-juno-spacecraft-launches-on-journey-to
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Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:34:00 -0700 WASP Flying Wi-Fi Cellphone Hacking Drone http://agentm.posterous.com/wasp-flying-wi-fi-cellphone-hacking-drone-gee http://agentm.posterous.com/wasp-flying-wi-fi-cellphone-hacking-drone-gee

 

There are some people for whom being told that something is impossible is all the motivation they need. That seems to be the case for Richard Perkins and Mike Tassey, who were told that an in-flight hacking platform was impossible. In response, the pair plan on showing off their off their Wi-Fi hacking, phone-snooping, home-made UAV at the Black Hat and Defcon hackerfests in Las Vegas. They call their creation the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, or WASP.

Built from an old Air Force target drone, the WASP packs a lot of technological power into a flying high-endurance package. A tiny on-board computer (Linux powered, natch) is bristling with hacking tools, along with a custom-built 340 million word dictionary for brute-forcing passwords, the BackTrack suite, a 4G T-Mobile card, an HD camera, and 32 GB onboard storage.

Just what does WASP do with those gigabytes? Originally, it was designed for Wi-Fi penetration — cracking network passwords while loitering above a target area. But the newly upgraded WASP can now trick GSM phones into connecting with its 4G card as if it were a standard cellphone tower. Once connected, the WASP quietly records any phone conversations or text messages while connecting the call via VOIP, thus giving the mark the impression that the call went through normally.

Keep in mind that nothing on the WASP is particularly new. The password cracking techniques have been around for quite some time, and the phone-spoof is based off a trick shown off at Defcon last year. But by placing them on a flying platform, Perkins and Tassey have shown that consumer technology and hacking techniques have progressed to the point where once untouchable targets are now vulnerable. In an enlightening quote from Forbes, they explain:

A military base like Area 51, Tassey points out, is surrounded by more than 25 miles of empty land to obscure it from outside snoops. “With WASP, we can cover that distance in about 20 minutes,” he says. “With radar designed specifically not to see birds, it’s very difficult to protect yourself from an object coming out of the sky and flying low.”

Not that they would ever dream of taking on Area 51, of course. Tassey and Perkins are both respected security researchers with lives and day jobs. Even when testing the hacking capabilities of the WASP, they took pains to ensure that they stayed within legal boundaries. They seem to have that motivation that has driven so many geeks, engineers, and tinkerers: Just to see if they can pull it off.

via geekosystem.com

 

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Wed, 03 Aug 2011 04:02:00 -0700 Astronomers find Earth's first trojan asteroid http://agentm.posterous.com/astronomers-find-earths-first-trojan-asteroid http://agentm.posterous.com/astronomers-find-earths-first-trojan-asteroid

In a blow to school children and Disney fans everywhere, Pluto was demoted from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006. The key argument against Pluto’s planet-hood was that other celestial bodies occupied its orbit, so Pluto was not the dominant gravitational object in that region.

The mere presence of other celestial bodies in Pluto’s orbit is only part of the story, though, because scientists have known for centuries that small objects called trojan asteroids can stably share an orbit with a larger celestial body. Astronomers have previously identified trojan asteroids in the orbits of Mars, Neptune, and Jupiter, but today astronomers from Athabasca University, UCLA, and University of Western Ontario are announcing the first direct observation of a trojan asteroid in Earth’s orbit.

Using Newton’s theory of gravitation, Joseph Louis Lagrange showed that there are five points, now known as Lagrangian points, in or near a planet’s orbit where a smaller object can orbit stably—the gravitational fields of the sun and the planet balance in these locations. The first two Lagrangian points (called L1 and L2) exist on either side of the planet on a line between the planet’s center and the center of the sun. L3 sits directly opposite the planet on the other side of the sun. L4 and L5 also sit in the planet's orbit, but in front of or behind it.

Each of these points are very important because they make excellent sites for space stations and observatories. For instance, the Solar and Heliocentric Observatory is located at Earth’s L1, and the James Webb Space Observatory is/was planned for L2. Langrangian points L3, L4, and L5 have been proposed as sites for future space stations and depots for the support of interplanetary missions. Similar Lagrangian points also exist in the orbit between the Earth and the Moon, and these could be exploited for lunar missions. There's a natural precedent for that, as small trojan moons have been identified in the orbits of some of Saturn’s moons.

Using Earth-based observations, it's easy to see whether objects occupy L1 or L2, because they are near Earth and sit either directly opposite the sun in the night sky or directly between the Earth and the Sun. We know that there are no trojan objects in these locations. From Earth, it's impossible to directly observe L3 because it is always on the opposite side of the sun from us. In principle, we should be able to observe objects at L4 and L5, but those observations are difficult because these points lie mostly in the daytime sky.

The authors of this study used archived data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to identify possible trojan asteroids at Earth’s L4 point, and the data revealed two candidate objects that were several hundred meters in diameter. This data was then combined with direct observations of the objects made in April 2011 at the University of Hawaii, which refined knowledge of the objects’ orbit. With this data, the researchers were able to positively identify one of those objects, called 2010 TK7, as the first known trojan asteroid in Earth’s orbit.

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The orbital oscillations of 2010 TK7. Paul Wiegert, the University of Western Ontario

2010 TK7’s orbit is not quite as stable as Lagrange originally predicted. Measurements show that it doesn't actually occupy the Lagrangian point itself, but oscillates around it. It also doesn't sit still in a single Lagrangian point, but shuttles between L3 and L4 with a period of about 400 years, and it is currently located near L4 at one of its closest approaches to Earth. If the current orbital pattern holds, over the next 200 years, 2010 TK7 will accelerate ahead of Earth until it reaches L3, slows, and eventually returns to L4 over the second 200 years of its 400 year cycle.

Due to the gravitational influence of other planets and the significant contribution of chaos to an asteroid’s orbit, it is impossible to accurately predict 2010 TK7’s behavior over more than a 250 year span, so it may not continue the cycle described above. One likely way it could change its cycle would be to break its pattern at L3 and begin to oscillate between L3 and L5 rather than L3 and L4. Thus, it is unclear whether 2010 TK7 will remain a trojan or whether other forces will eventually throw it out of its stable oscillations.

Nature, 2011 DOI:10.1038/nature10233  (About DOIs)
Paul Wiegert, The University of Western Ontario

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Wed, 27 Jul 2011 12:29:00 -0700 Huge Reservoir of Water Discovered in Space 30 Billion Trillion Miles Away http://agentm.posterous.com/huge-reservoir-of-water-discovered-in-space-3 http://agentm.posterous.com/huge-reservoir-of-water-discovered-in-space-3

This artist's concept illustrates a quasar, or feeding black hole, similar to APM 08279+5255, where astronomers discovered huge amounts of water vapor. Gas and dust likely form a torus around the central black hole, with clouds of charged gas above and below. Image credit: NASA/ESA

From a Caltech Press Release:

Water really is everywhere. Two teams of astronomers, each led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. Looking from a distance of 30 billion trillion miles away into a quasar—one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos—the researchers have found a mass of water vapor that’s at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world’s oceans combined, and 100,000 times more massive than the sun.

Because the quasar is so far away, its light has taken 12 billion years to reach Earth. The observations therefore reveal a time when the universe was just 1.6 billion years old. “The environment around this quasar is unique in that it’s producing this huge mass of water,” says Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and a visiting associate at Caltech. “It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times.” Bradford leads one of two international teams of astronomers that have described their quasar findings in separate papers that have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Read Bradford & team’s paper here.

A quasar is powered by an enormous black hole that is steadily consuming a surrounding disk of gas and dust; as it eats, the quasar spews out huge amounts of energy. Both groups of astronomers studied a particular quasar called APM 08279+5255, which harbors a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns.

Since astronomers expected water vapor to be present even in the early universe, the discovery of water is not itself a surprise, Bradford says. There’s water vapor in the Milky Way, although the total amount is 4,000 times less massive than in the quasar, as most of the Milky Way’s water is frozen in the form of ice.

Nevertheless, water vapor is an important trace gas that reveals the nature of the quasar. In this particular quasar, the water vapor is distributed around the black hole in a gaseous region spanning hundreds of light-years (a light-year is about six trillion miles), and its presence indicates that the gas is unusually warm and dense by astronomical standards. Although the gas is a chilly –53 degrees Celsius (–63 degrees Fahrenheit) and is 300 trillion times less dense than Earth’s atmosphere, it’s still five times hotter and 10 to 100 times denser than what’s typical in galaxies like the Milky Way.

The water vapor is just one of many kinds of gas that surround the quasar, and its presence indicates that the quasar is bathing the gas in both X-rays and infrared radiation. The interaction between the radiation and water vapor reveals properties of the gas and how the quasar influences it. For example, analyzing the water vapor shows how the radiation heats the rest of the gas. Furthermore, measurements of the water vapor and of other molecules, such as carbon monoxide, suggest that there is enough gas to feed the black hole until it grows to about six times its size. Whether this will happen is not clear, the astronomers say, since some of the gas may end up condensing into stars or may be ejected from the quasar.

Bradford’s team made their observations starting in 2008, using an instrument called Z-Spec at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO), a 10-meter telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Z-Spec is an extremely sensitive spectrograph, requiring temperatures cooled to within 0.06 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. The instrument measures light in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum called the millimeter band, which lies between infrared and microwave wavelengths. The researchers’ discovery of water was possible only because Z-Spec’s spectral coverage is 10 times larger than that of previous spectrometers operating at these wavelengths. The astronomers made follow-up observations with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA), an array of radio dishes in the Inyo Mountains of Southern California.

This discovery highlights the benefits of observing in the millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, the astronomers say. The field has developed rapidly over the last two to three decades, and to reach the full potential of this line of research, the astronomers—including the study authors—are now designing CCAT, a 25-meter telescope to be built in the Atacama Desert in Chile. CCAT will allow astronomers to discover some of the earliest galaxies in the universe. By measuring the presence of water and other important trace gases, astronomers can study the composition of these primordial galaxies.

The second group, led by Dariusz Lis, senior research associate in physics at Caltech and deputy director of the CSO, used the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in the French Alps to find water. In 2010, Lis’s team was looking for traces of hydrogen fluoride in the spectrum of APM 08279+5255, but serendipitously detected a signal in the quasar’s spectrum that indicated the presence of water. The signal was at a frequency corresponding to radiation that is emitted when water transitions from a higher energy state to a lower one. While Lis’s team found just one signal at a single frequency, the wide bandwidth of Z-Spec enabled Bradford and his colleagues to discover water emission at many frequencies. These multiple water transitions allowed Bradford’s team to determine the physical characteristics of the quasar’s gas and the water’s mass.

Read Lis & team’s paper here.

Tagged as: milky way, quasar, water

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Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:17:00 -0700 Why My Father Hated India http://agentm.posterous.com/why-my-father-hated-india http://agentm.posterous.com/why-my-father-hated-india

By AATISH TASEER

Ten days before he was assassinated in January, my father, Salman Taseer, sent out a tweet about an Indian rocket that had come down over the Bay of Bengal: "Why does India make fools of themselves messing in space technology? Stick 2 bollywood my advice."

My father was the governor of Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, and his tweet, with its taunt at India's misfortune, would have delighted his many thousands of followers. It fed straight into Pakistan's unhealthy obsession with India, the country from which it was carved in 1947.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Mohandas Gandhi visits Muslim refugees in New Delhi as they prepare to depart to Pakistan on Sept. 22, 1947.

PakistanNEW

PakistanNEW

Though my father's attitude went down well in Pakistan, it had caused considerable tension between us. I am half-Indian, raised in Delhi by my Indian mother: India is a country that I consider my own. When my father was killed by one of his own bodyguards for defending a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, we had not spoken for three years.

To understand the Pakistani obsession with India, to get a sense of its special edge—its hysteria—it is necessary to understand the rejection of India, its culture and past, that lies at the heart of the idea of Pakistan. This is not merely an academic question. Pakistan's animus toward India is the cause of both its unwillingness to fight Islamic extremism and its active complicity in undermining the aims of its ostensible ally, the United States.

The idea of Pakistan was first seriously formulated by neither a cleric nor a politician but by a poet. In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal, addressing the All-India Muslim league, made the case for a state in which India's Muslims would realize their "political and ethical essence." Though he was always vague about what the new state would be, he was quite clear about what it would not be: the old pluralistic society of India, with its composite culture.

Every day at sunset, Indian and Pakistani guards on the Wagah border face off in a militaristic flag-lowering exercise called the Beating Retreat Ceremony. WSJ's Tom Wright reports on India's effort to tone down the bizarre display.

Iqbal's vision took concrete shape in August 1947. Despite the partition of British India, it had seemed at first that there would be no transfer of populations. But violence erupted, and it quickly became clear that in the new homeland for India's Muslims, there would be no place for its non-Muslim communities. Pakistan and India came into being at the cost of a million lives and the largest migration in history.

This shared experience of carnage and loss is the foundation of the modern relationship between the two countries. In human terms, it meant that each of my parents, my father in Pakistan and my mother in India, grew up around symmetrically violent stories of uprooting and homelessness.

But in Pakistan, the partition had another, deeper meaning. It raised big questions, in cultural and civilizational terms, about what its separation from India would mean.

In the absence of a true national identity, Pakistan defined itself by its opposition to India. It turned its back on all that had been common between Muslims and non-Muslims in the era before partition. Everything came under suspicion, from dress to customs to festivals, marriage rituals and literature. The new country set itself the task of erasing its association with the subcontinent, an association that many came to view as a contamination.

Rex USA

Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, in May 2009. He was assassinated in January 2011.

Taseera2

Taseera2

Had this assertion of national identity meant the casting out of something alien or foreign in favor of an organic or homegrown identity, it might have had an empowering effect. What made it self-wounding, even nihilistic, was that Pakistan, by asserting a new Arabized Islamic identity, rejected its own local and regional culture. In trying to turn its back on its shared past with India, Pakistan turned its back on itself.

But there was one problem: India was just across the border, and it was still its composite, pluralistic self, a place where nearly as many Muslims lived as in Pakistan. It was a daily reminder of the past that Pakistan had tried to erase.

Pakistan's existential confusion made itself apparent in the political turmoil of the decades after partition. The state failed to perform a single legal transfer of power; coups were commonplace. And yet, in 1980, my father would still have felt that the partition had not been a mistake, for one critical reason: India, for all its democracy and pluralism, was an economic disaster.

Pakistan had better roads, better cars; Pakistani businesses were thriving; its citizens could take foreign currency abroad. Compared with starving, socialist India, they were on much surer ground. So what if India had democracy? It had brought nothing but drought and famine.

But in the early 1990s, a reversal began to occur in the fortunes of the two countries. The advantage that Pakistan had seemed to enjoy in the years after independence evaporated, as it became clear that the quest to rid itself of its Indian identity had come at a price: the emergence of a new and dangerous brand of Islam.

As India rose, thanks to economic liberalization, Pakistan withered. The country that had begun as a poet's utopia was reduced to ruin and insolvency.

The primary agent of this decline has been the Pakistani army. The beneficiary of vast amounts of American assistance and money—$11 billion since 9/11—the military has diverted a significant amount of these resources to arming itself against India. In Afghanistan, it has sought neither security nor stability but rather a backyard, which—once the Americans leave—might provide Pakistan with "strategic depth" against India.

In order to realize these objectives, the Pakistani army has led the U.S. in a dance, in which it had to be seen to be fighting the war on terror, but never so much as to actually win it, for its extension meant the continuing flow of American money. All this time the army kept alive a double game, in which some terror was fought and some—such as Laskhar-e-Tayyba's 2008 attack on Mumbai—actively supported.

The army's duplicity was exposed decisively this May, with the killing of Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad. It was only the last and most incriminating charge against an institution whose activities over the years have included the creation of the Taliban, the financing of international terrorism and the running of a lucrative trade in nuclear secrets.

This army, whose might has always been justified by the imaginary threat from India, has been more harmful to Pakistan than to anybody else. It has consumed annually a quarter of the country's wealth, undermined one civilian government after another and enriched itself through a range of economic interests, from bakeries and shopping malls to huge property holdings.

The reversal in the fortunes of the two countries—India's sudden prosperity and cultural power, seen next to the calamity of Muhammad Iqbal's unrealized utopia—is what explains the bitterness of my father's tweet just days before he died. It captures the rage of being forced to reject a culture of which you feel effortlessly a part—a culture that Pakistanis, via Bollywood, experience daily in their homes.

This rage is what makes it impossible to reduce Pakistan's obsession with India to matters of security or a land dispute in Kashmir. It can heal only when the wounds of 1947 are healed. And it should provoke no triumphalism in India, for behind the bluster and the bravado, there is arid pain and sadness.

—Mr. Taseer is the author of "Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands." His second novel, "Noon," will be published in the U.S. in September.

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Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:23:00 -0700 In Robotics, Human-Style Perception and Motion Are Elusive http://agentm.posterous.com/in-robotics-human-style-perception-and-motion http://agentm.posterous.com/in-robotics-human-style-perception-and-motion

The task requires hardly any thought. But as Dr. Brooks points out, training a robot to do it is a vastly harder problem for artificial intelligence researchers than I.B.M.’s celebrated victory on “Jeopardy!” this year with a robot named Watson.

Although robots have made great strides in manufacturing, where tasks are repetitive, they are still no match for humans, who can grasp things and move about effortlessly in the physical world.

Designing a robot to mimic the basic capabilities of motion and perception would be revolutionary, researchers say, with applications stretching from care for the elderly to returning overseas manufacturing operations to the United States (albeit with fewer workers).

Yet the challenges remain immense, far higher than artificial intelligence hurdles like speaking and hearing.

“All these problems where you want to duplicate something biology does, such as perception, touch, planning or grasping, turn out to be hard in fundamental ways,” said Gary Bradski, a vision specialist at Willow Garage, a robot development company based here in Silicon Valley.

“It’s always surprising, because humans can do so much effortlessly.”

Now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, the Pentagon office that helped jump-start the first generation of artificial intelligence research in the 1960s, is underwriting three competing efforts to develop robotic arms and hands one-tenth as expensive as today’s systems, which often cost $100,000 or more.

Last month President Obama traveled to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to unveil a $500 million effort to create advanced robotic technologies needed to help bring manufacturing back to the United States. But lower-cost computer-controlled mechanical arms and hands are only the first step.

There is still significant debate about how even to begin to design a machine that might be flexible enough to do many of the things humans do: fold laundry, cook or wash dishes. That will require a breakthrough in software that mimics perception.

Today’s robots can often do one such task in limited circumstances, but researchers describe their skills as “brittle.” They fail if the tiniest change is introduced. Moreover, they must be reprogrammed in a cumbersome fashion to do something else.

Many robotics researchers are pursuing a bottom-up approach, hoping that by training robots on one task at a time, they can build a library of tasks that will ultimately make it possible for robots to begin to mimic humans.

Others are skeptical, saying that truly useful machines await an artificial intelligence breakthrough that yields vastly more flexible perception.

The limits of today’s most sophisticated robots can be seen in a towel-folding demonstration that a group of students at the University of California, Berkeley, posted on the Internet last year: In spooky, anthropomorphic fashion, a robot deftly folds a series of towels, eyeing the corners, smoothing out wrinkles and neatly stacking them in a pile.

It is only when the viewer learns that the video is shown at 50 times normal speed that the meager extent of the robot’s capabilities becomes apparent. (The students acknowledged this spring that they were only now beginning to tackle the further challenges of folding shirts and socks.)

Even the most ambitious and expensive robot arm research has not yet yielded impressive results.

In February, for example, Robonaut 2, a dexterous robot developed in a partnership between NASA and General Motors, was carried aboard a space shuttle mission to be installed on the International Space Station. The developers acknowledged that the software required by the system, which is humanoid-shaped from the torso up, was unfinished and that the robot was sent up then only because a rare launching window was available.

“We’re in a funny chicken-and-egg situation,” Dr. Brooks said. “No one really knows what sensors or perceptual algorithms to use because we don’t have a working hand, and because we don’t have a grasping strategy nobody can figure out what kind of hand to design.”

Dr. Brooks is also tackling the problem: In 2008 he founded Heartland Robotics, a Boston-based company that is intent on building a generation of low-cost robots.

And the three competing efforts to develop robotic arms and hands with Darpa financing — at SRI International, Sandia National Laboratories and iRobot — offer some reasons for optimism.

Recently at an SRI laboratory here, two Stanford University graduate students, John Ulmen and Dan Aukes, put the finishing touches on a significant step toward human capabilities: a four-finger hand that will grasp with a human’s precise sense of touch.

Each three-jointed finger is made in a single manufacturing step by a three-dimensional printer and is then covered with “skin” derived from the same material used to make the touch-sensitive displays on smartphones.

“Part of what we’re riding on is there has been a very strong push for tactile displays because of smartphones,” said Pablo Garcia, an SRI robot designer who is leading the design of the project, along with Robert Bolles, an artificial intelligence researcher.

“We’ve taken advantage of these technologies,” Mr. Garcia went on, “and we’re banking on the fact they will continue to evolve and be made even cheaper.”

Still lacking is a generation of software that is powerful and flexible enough to do tasks that humans do effortlessly. That will require a breakthrough in machines’ perception.

“I would say this is more difficult than what the Watson machine had to do,” said Gill Pratt, the computer scientist who is the program manager in charge of Darpa’s Autonomous Robot Manipulation project, called ARM.

“The world is composed of continuous objects that have various shapes” that can obscure one another, he said. “A perception system needs to figure this out, and it needs the common sense of a child to do that.”

At Willow Garage, Dr. Bradski and a group of artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists have focused on “hackathons,” in which the company’s PR2 robot has been programmed to do tasks like fetching beer from a refrigerator, playing pool and packing groceries.

In May, with support from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. Bradski helped organize the first Solutions in Perception Challenge. A prize of $10,000 is offered for the first team to design a robot that is able to recognize 100 items commonly found on the shelves of supermarkets and drugstores. Part of the prize will be given to the first team whose robot can recognize 80 percent of the items.

At the contest, held during a robotics conference in Shanghai, none of the contestants reached the 80 percent goal. The team that did best was the laundry-folding team from Berkeley, which has named its robot Brett, for Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks.

Brett was able to recognize 68 percent of a smaller group of 50 objects. And the team has made progress in its quest to build a machine to do the laundry; it recently posted a new video showing how much it has sped up the robot.

“Our end goal right now is to do an entire laundry cycle,” said Pieter Abbeel, a Berkeley computer scientist who leads the group, “from dirty laundry in a basket to everything stacked away after it’s been washed and dried.”

 

 

 

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Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:52:00 -0700 “Dead Drops” preview at Aram Bartholl – Blog http://agentm.posterous.com/dead-drops-preview-at-aram-bartholl-blog http://agentm.posterous.com/dead-drops-preview-at-aram-bartholl-blog

 

I am pleased to preview ‘Dead Drops’ a new project which I started off as part of my ongoing EYEBEAM residency in NYC the last couple weeks. ‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data. Each dead drop contains a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is still in progress, to be continued here and in more cities. Full documentation, movie, map and ‘How to make your own dead drop’ manual coming soon! Stay tuned.

Dead drop (Wikipedia)

In the meanwhile drop some files here!

87 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (Makerbot)
Empire Fulton Ferry Park, Brooklyn, NY (Dumbo)
235 Bowery, NY (New Museum)
Union Square, NY (Subway Station 14th St)
540 West 21st Street, NY (Eyebeam)

—————————————————————————————————————-

Udate:

I have to admit I wasn’t prepared for this  unbelievable feedback I am got in the recent days. The preview post became a major release! This means while I try to hold up against a journalistic DNS attack I am putting together this site on the fly with my left hand:

http://deaddrops.com

The site is still a bit naked but step by step I am adding content (FAQ, how to, movie docu etc). If you want to embed your own dead drop in your city you are free to go. Check the instructions here.

 

 

 

All pics on flickr !

 

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Fri, 08 Jul 2011 15:46:00 -0700 How to be a 20-Something « Thought Catalog http://agentm.posterous.com/how-to-be-a-20-something-thought-catalog http://agentm.posterous.com/how-to-be-a-20-something-thought-catalog

Be really attractive. Your acne is gone, your face has matured without having wrinkles and everything on your body is lifted naturally. Eat bagels seven days a week, binge-drink and do drugs: you’ll still look like a babe. When you turn thirty, it’ll become a different story but that’s, like, not for a really long time.

Reestablish a relationship with your parents. You don’t live with them anymore (hopefully) so start to appreciate them as human beings with thoughts, flaws and feelings rather than soulless life ruiners who won’t let you borrow their car.

Go from eating delicious food at your parents’ house to eating Ragu tomato sauce over Barilla noodles. Develop an eating disorder to save money.

Move into an apartment on the corner of Overpriced and Dangerous. Sleep on a bare mattress with an Ikea comforter. Your mother talks to you about buying a top sheet and a duvet cover but feel like you’re not mature enough to own something called “duvet.”

Read the New York Times piece, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” Feel exposed and humiliated. Share it on your Facebook with the caption: “Um….” Your friends will comment “Too real” and that will be the end of that.

Work at a coffee shop but feel hopeful about your career in advertising, writing, whatever. Remember that you’re young and that the world is your oyster. Everything is possible, you still have so much to see and hear. You went to a good school and did good things. Figure if you’re not going to be successful, who the hell is?

Date people who you know you'll never be able to love. See someone for three months for no other reason than because it’s winter and you want to keep warm by holding another body. Date a Republican just so you can say you dated a Republican.

Eventually all these nobodies will make you crave a somebody. Have a real relationship with someone. Go on vacations together, exchange house keys, cry in their arms after a demoralizing day at work. Think about marrying them and maybe even get engaged. Regardless of the outcome, feel proud of yourself for being able to love someone in a healthy way.

Start your twenties with a lot of friends and leave with a few good ones. What happened? People faded away into their careers and relationships. Fights were had and never resolved. Shit happens.

Think of yourself at twenty and hanging out with people who didn’t mean a thing to you. Think about writing papers, about being promiscuous, about trying new things. Think of yourself now and your face looking different and your body feeling different and how everything is just different.

Form the habits that will stick with you forever. Drink your coffee with two sugars and skim milk every morning. Buy a magazine every Friday. Enjoy spending money on candles, smoke pot on Saturdays, watch the television before bed.

Move into a bigger apartment on the corner of Mature and Gentrification and finally buy a duvet cover. Limit your drug-use. If you find yourself unable to do so, start to wonder if you have a problem.

Have your parents come to your place for Christmas. Set the table, make the ham, wear a sophisticated outfit, This will all mean so much at the time.

Think about having children when you stop acting like a child. This may not ever happen.

Maybe this is assuming too much. Maybe this is generalizing. Maybe society uses age as an unrealistic marker for growth. Maybe. Still feel the anxiety on your 30th birthday and think to yourself, “Oh shit, I’m no longer a 20-something.” 

via thoughtcatalog.comTC mark

 

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Wed, 06 Jul 2011 05:51:00 -0700 Astronomers snap black hole murder in graphic detail (video) http://agentm.posterous.com/astronomers-snap-black-hole-murder-in-graphic http://agentm.posterous.com/astronomers-snap-black-hole-murder-in-graphic
Media_httpwwwblogcdnc_gaafu

We tend to imagine a black hole sucking everything around it straight into oblivion. The truth, however, is even more gruesome. Astronomers have just captured an ultra hi-res image of our neighbouring galaxy, Centaurus A, and it helps to reveal what actually happens. Matter is yanked helplessly towards a black hole at the galaxy's core, but it refuses to die quietly. For some unknown reason, it erupts as it falls, spewing out vast plumes of particles -- like blood from celestial murder. These death throes emit radio waves, allowing us to witness them using radio telescopes even though we are 12 million light-years away. If only we were closer; if only we could intervene. Alas, all we can do is watch the video after the break and hit the source links for a fuller explanation -- though, admittedly, none of those sound like awful options. 

 

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Fri, 27 May 2011 00:55:00 -0700 Habitable exoplanet confirmed? Warm and wet, scientists say | DVICE http://agentm.posterous.com/habitable-exoplanet-confirmed-warm-and-wet-sc http://agentm.posterous.com/habitable-exoplanet-confirmed-warm-and-wet-sc

Media_httpdvicecomass_idqwq

French scientists have confirmed with computer models that Gliese 581d, a planet orbiting a red dwarf star about 20 light years from here, has a stable atmosphere, comfortable temperatures, and a surface covered in liquid water. It's the first planet orbiting another star that could definitely support life, and it's basically next door.

While Gliese 581d is too small and far away to observe directly, we can infer some things about it from the gravitational effects that it has on its parent star and fellow planets. We know that Gliese 581d is about twice the size of Earth (and six times the mass), we know that it's rocky (not a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn). This means that it's large enough and dense enough to be able to hold on to a substantial atmosphere. We can also estimate about how much energy Gliese 581d receives from its red dwarf star, and based on all of this information, French scientists have been able to model a range of potential climates showing that "GJ581d will have a stable atmosphere and surface liquid water for a wide range of plausible cases."

"Will have" is a pretty strong language when you're talking about a planet some 117,569,996 million miles away, but based on the models, it sounds like it's a sure thing. That's not to say it would necessarily be a pleasant place to live, though. Gliese 581d probably depends on a significant greenhouse effect to keep itself warm since it gets relatively little energy from its star. The atmosphere is mostly CO2, and while you'd get clouds and warm rain and oceans and stuff, the surface itself would be "in a perpetual murky red twilight." The planet also may be tidally locked (meaning that one side perpetually faces its sun), and at double Earth's gravity, it's not exactly a vacation spot.

Despite all this, it would be an ideal place to find some extraterrestrial plant life, and where there are plants there might be animals, specifically animals which have adapted to high gravity, low light, low oxygen environment. So think small and low to the ground with big eyes. And of course, there's lots of potential for animal life in warm oceans, too.

While 20 light years is extremely close on the galactic scale, using current technology it would still take us humans about 300,000 years to reach the Gliese system. A better bet, at least for now, might be to just send an interstellar probe, which might be able to reach Gliese 581d in just a century or two.

Paper (PDF), via Cosmos

(The original headline as assigned by me read: "Habitable exoplanet CONFIRMED! Warm and wet, scientists say." It has been changed to better reflect the tone of the post. -Ed)


 

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Tue, 10 May 2011 19:46:00 -0700 God of War 4 online rumour strengthened by OPM http://agentm.posterous.com/god-of-war-4-online-rumour-strengthened-by-op http://agentm.posterous.com/god-of-war-4-online-rumour-strengthened-by-op

The UK Official PlayStation Magazine has lent credence to speculation that God of War 4 is in development and set to feature a multiplayer mode.

Backing up a similar report in respected unofficial PlayStation mag PSM3, the rumour section in this month's OPM - on sale now - writes: "Kratos is on his way back, with his next adventure set to feature multiplayer."

PSM 3 reported last month that it had heard from another source that God of War 4 "is coming, and will hit in September 2012".

"Our source works closely with the God of War universe, and let slip he'd be working on a related project at the same time," it said.

It's not the first time God of War 4's been rumoured to feature online multiplayer of course, and in February a CV even appeared online referencing a "God of War 4 cinematic test".

While last year's God of War 3 concluded a trilogy, Santa Monica Studio has said it's "not the end" for the hugely popular PlayStation franchise.

via CVG

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Fri, 06 May 2011 13:43:00 -0700 NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment - NASA Science http://agentm.posterous.com/nasa-announces-results-of-epic-space-time-exp http://agentm.posterous.com/nasa-announces-results-of-epic-space-time-exp

May 4, 2011: Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity.

Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).

"The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts," says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission.

GP-B (twist, 550px)

 

An artist's concept of GP-B measuring the curved spacetime around Earth. [more]

"This is an epic result," adds Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis. An expert in Einstein's theories, Will chairs an independent panel of the National Research Council set up by NASA in 1998 to monitor and review the results of Gravity Probe B. "One day," he predicts, "this will be written up in textbooks as one of the classic experiments in the history of physics."

Time and space, according to Einstein's theories of relativity, are woven together, forming a four-dimensional fabric called "space-time." The mass of Earth dimples this fabric, much like a heavy person sitting in the middle of a trampoline. Gravity, says Einstein, is simply the motion of objects following the curvaceous lines of the dimple.

If Earth were stationary, that would be the end of the story. But Earth is not stationary. Our planet spins, and the spin should twist the dimple, slightly, pulling it around into a 4-dimensional swirl. This is what GP-B went to space in 2004 to check.

The idea behind the experiment is simple:

Put a spinning gyroscope into orbit around the Earth, with the spin axis pointed toward some distant star as a fixed reference point. Free from external forces, the gyroscope's axis should continue pointing at the star--forever. But if space is twisted, the direction of the gyroscope's axis should drift over time. By noting this change in direction relative to the star, the twists of space-time could be measured.

In practice, the experiment is tremendously difficult.

GP-B (gyro, 200px)

 

One of the super-spherical gyroscopes of Gravity Probe B. [more]

The four gyroscopes in GP-B are the most perfect spheres ever made by humans. These ping pong-sized balls of fused quartz and silicon are 1.5 inches across and never vary from a perfect sphere by more than 40 atomic layers. If the gyroscopes weren't so spherical, their spin axes would wobble even without the effects of relativity.

According to calculations, the twisted space-time around Earth should cause the axes of the gyros to drift merely 0.041 arcseconds over a year. An arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree. To measure this angle reasonably well, GP-B needed a fantastic precision of 0.0005 arcseconds. It's like measuring the thickness of a sheet of paper held edge-on 100 miles away.

"GP-B researchers had to invent whole new technologies to make this possible," notes Will.

They developed a "drag free" satellite that could brush against the outer layers of Earth's atmosphere without disturbing the gyros. They figured out how to keep Earth's magnetic field from penetrating the spacecraft. And they created a device to measure the spin of a gyro--without touching the gyro. More information about these technologies may be found in the Science@NASA story "A Pocket of Near-Perfection."

Pulling off the experiment was an exceptional challenge. But after a year of data-taking and nearly five years of analysis, the GP-B scientists appear to have done it.

"We measured a geodetic precession of 6.600 plus or minus 0.017 arcseconds and a frame dragging effect of 0.039 plus or minus 0.007 arcseconds," says Everitt.

For readers who are not experts in relativity: Geodetic precession is the amount of wobble caused by the static mass of the Earth (the dimple in spacetime) and the frame dragging effect is the amount of wobble caused by the spin of the Earth (the twist in spacetime). Both values are in precise accord with Einstein's predictions.

"In the opinion of the committee that I chair, this effort was truly heroic. We were just blown away," says Will.

GP-B (black hole, 200px)

 

An artist's concept of twisted spacetime around a black hole. Credit: Joe Bergeron of Sky & Telescope magazine.

The results of Gravity Probe B give physicists renewed confidence that the strange predictions of Einstein's theory are indeed correct, and that these predictions may be applied elsewhere. The type of spacetime vortex that exists around Earth is duplicated and magnified elsewhere in the cosmos--around massive neutron stars, black holes, and active galactic nuclei.

"If you tried to spin a gyroscope in the severely twisted space-time around a black hole," says Will, "it wouldn't just gently precess by a fraction of a degree. It would wobble crazily and possibly even flip over."

In binary black hole systems--that is, where one black hole orbits another black hole--the black holes themselves are spinning and thus behave like gyroscopes. Imagine a system of orbiting, spinning, wobbling, flipping black holes! That's the sort of thing general relativity predicts and which GP-B tells us can really be true.

The scientific legacy of GP-B isn't limited to general relativity. The project also touched the lives of hundreds of young scientists:

"Because it was based at a university many students were able to work on the project," says Everitt. "More than 86 PhD theses at Stanford plus 14 more at other Universities were granted to students working on GP-B. Several hundred undergraduates and 55 high-school students also participated, including astronaut Sally Ride and eventual Nobel Laureate Eric Cornell."

NASA funding for Gravity Probe B began in the fall of 1963. That means Everitt and some colleagues have been planning, promoting, building, operating, and analyzing data from the experiment for more than 47 years—truly, an epic effort.

What's next?

Everitt recalls some advice given to him by his thesis advisor and Nobel Laureate Patrick M.S. Blackett: "If you can't think of what physics to do next, invent some new technology, and it will lead to new physics."

"Well," says Everitt, "we invented 13 new technologies for Gravity Probe B. Who knows where they will take us?"

This epic might just be getting started, after all….


Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

via NASA

 

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Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:55:00 -0700 Milking Fake Tweets » SCAMSUTRA http://agentm.posterous.com/milking-fake-tweets-scamsutra http://agentm.posterous.com/milking-fake-tweets-scamsutra

“If corporate media becomes impartial and stops serving its political masters, it will command respect of the people, instead of demanding it.”

(Disclaimer:- This disclaimer is for NDTV who unleash lawyers for stamping out free speech. I am neither an admirer of NDTV, nor of Ms. Dutt. My image gallery is proof of that. This article does not explicitly imply or state that NDTV uses fake tweets to distort public debate. I have stated my opinion.)

This show was supposed to be a discussion about the situation of Mr. Shanti Bhushan and Mr. Prashant Bhushan who are being accused without proof. A television channel is expected to be neutral, but this show appeared to be part of a media trial of Bhushans.

So I did a little experiment with this episode available online at ndtv.com website.

Show – The Buck Stops Here on NDTV anchored by Ms. Barkha Dutt. Episode title – “Bhushans: Smear Campaign or Fair Game?”

Date – 20th April, 2011

Methodology – I switched off the sound and made a note of visuals presented during the show.

(Note: I switched on sound briefly only once to listen to Agnivesh’s famous comment at 40th minute, as pointed out by folks on Twitter. This comment has been preserved at Mutiny along with a contest. Thanks to Jayant Gajria for the tip.)

My Observations

 

Visuals in the show had 2 categories of graphics: 

 

  1. Captions
  2. Twitter Buzz

Both these are labeled in the screenshot.

 

 

Visual Category 1 – CAPTIONS

Please note the subtle but aggressive build-up in captions rotated throughout the show:

  • Anti-Corruption Drive
  • Hit by Controversies
  • Lokpal Panel Co-chair in CD row
  • Bhushan & Sons
  • Bhushans embroiled in CD Row
  • CD: Chat between Bhushan, Mulayam
  • CD: Phone Chat about fixing a judge
  • Conflict of Interest?
  • Smear Campaign?
  • After CD, Land Row
  • Bhushans in Land Row
  • The ‘Plot’ Thickens
  • Serious Improprities?
  • Should Bhushans Quit?

My conclusion – There is a clear negative spin in captions to defame the Bhushans in a show where they are not present to defend their position. This is also known as a Media Trial

Visual Category 2 – TWITTER BUZZ

Out of all the tweets presented in this visual, I found these most interesting.

Irrespective of the fact whether the Bhushans are corrupt or not they should quit. We can’t give them preferential treatment.….@Forever_Tarun (Tarun Arora)

How can a few unelected, ‘self-declared honest pple’ hijack d democratic process&claim 2 represent 120 crore ppl? #annahazare….@neutralviews (neutral)

caesars wife has to be above suspicion. But having said that there wud b no1 left in civil society since v r all suspect 2sum extent….@iamrana (Rana)

A glance at twitter time-line of these worthies revealed that they belong to the Barkha Dutt Fan Club. Their tweets conveniently supported the agenda she was pushing in this episode.

It reminds me of those suspicious “viewer telephone calls” and “audience questions” which anchors often use in their shows.

The following tweet is more interesting:

 

those in eye of storm should quit. the movement is too important to be disturbed by such issues.
….@abhijain03 (Abhishek Jain)

 

 

Now Mr. Abhishek Jain is interesting because his account @abhijain03 has only 2 tweets so far!

The first tweet was on 19th March and second just happened to be on the day of Barkha’s show.

 

The non-communicative Mr. Jain has 16 followers out of which 10 are females. Actually, only 9, because 1 girl “Anshu Daga” likes him so much that she follows him through 2 identical accounts!

 

The status of these 9 mysterious followers (on 21 April) -

Name Twitter Account Date of First Tweet Total Tweets
Anshu Daga anshudaga5 17 March 20
Anshu Daga anshudaga6 23 March 21
Malina Maloo MalinaMaloo5 21 March 20
Hansika Goenka HansikaGoenka6 21 March 20
Jayanti Dugar JayantiDugar7 20 March 19
Deveshi Baid DeveshiBaid5 20 March 20
Hemaksh Jhajharia HemakshiJ97 16 March 20
Aashritha Bangad aashrithab141 15 March 20
Ishta Dalmia IshtaDalmia4 8 March 21
Jigyasa Gadia JigyasaGadia3 23 Feb 10

 

List of Coincidences

  • All accounts set up in the last one month (except JigyasaGadia3)
  • None of the accounts has a bio
  • In each account, tweets are made in batches of 10 on 2 days only. This gives us 2 x 10 = 20 tweets
  • They do not appear to be bot accounts because tweets are not uniform and there is no spam
  • All are accounts have female names (mostly Marwari names)
  • All have photographs of attractive females with similar numerical filenames
  • None of these accounts has tweeted to ANYONE
  • These 9 females (2 are same) follow Abhishek Jain even though he has tweeted only twice (it was once, before 10th). So they must be his friends… right? But then, he is not following ANY OF THEM.

This means they are not friends. In that case, who are they?

Observations

  • All accounts have collected 120-220 genuine followers by following 500-800 people
  • These accounts are not bots
  • Someone is creating a number of such accounts
  • Someone maintains these accounts by posting 10 tweets, once every 2 weeks
  • Accounts like anshudaga3, anshudaga5, anshudaga6 and anshudaga7 are created at different times and kept active simultaneously
  • 10 out of 16 such accounts are followers of a similar account which was quoted in a TV show with a tweet that conveniently supported the show’s agenda

Note: The following section has been updated. Confusion was caused by the address @ShaliniSharma displayed on TV.

 

Do put the ministers on the Lokpal Bill committee under same scrutiny. Can’t wait for that
….@ShaliniSharma_ (Shalini Sharma)

 

Alert folks on Twitter (including Hari, David and Vikas in comments section below) pointed out that NDTV had made a typing error and credited @ShaliniSharma (blank account) instead of @ShaliniSharma_

Ms. Shalini Sharma has made an excellent point. The screenshot of her tweet is presented below:

Real Shalini Sharma Tweet

 

I thank everyone for this correction and sincerely hope that NDTV is more careful in the future.

Now that the issue of the second suspicious tweet has been resolved peacefully, this post stands corrected.

My opinion that NDTV shows are not impartial still holds because their anchors (English and Hindi) continue being predictable by following the same strategy:

  • Dominate and browbeat guests who disagree, or belong to NDA. The way Nidhi Razdan ill-treated Rajiv Pratap Rudy of BJP in a March 2011 show, is a perfectly good example.
  • Politely allow excessive time to guests who are saying “the right thing”. Usually, Congressmen and Communists get sufficient time to blow their trumpet.
  • Selectively edit sound bytes from the person they target. This ALWAYS happens when NDTV is forced to show Narendra Modi (as in the case of Anna Hazare praising him recently)

To this list I can now add:

  • Shameless, blatant manipulation of social media such as Twitter to support their viewpoint by padding their shows with favourable tweets
  • Misleading viewers into thinking that selective social media extracts telecast on NDTV are a truthful representation of public opinion

All of this is my personal opinion, and it is possible I may be wrong.

Therefore, I request readers to verify facts from links provided and draw their own conclusions.

(All screenshots on this page were taken on April 21 and 22, 2011)

(Comments moderation will be done in case of spam)

 

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Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:52:00 -0700 BBC News - Skywatchers set for meteor show http://agentm.posterous.com/bbc-news-skywatchers-set-for-meteor-show http://agentm.posterous.com/bbc-news-skywatchers-set-for-meteor-show
 

Skywatchers set for meteor show

Infographic

Skywatchers are hoping for an impressive show over the next two days, when the Lyrid meteor shower reaches its peak.

Between 10 and 20 meteors per hour can be visible under ideal conditions; but experts say the shower is fickle.

Light from the Moon, which is in a so-called gibbous phase, could interfere with observations this year.

But stargazers are advised to watch in the hours before dawn to get their best views of the "shooting stars".

The radiant, or source, of the shower is located near Vega, a bright star which is hard to miss.

Binoculars or telescopes are not required, experts say the naked eye is best for watching the meteors.

The shower is caused when the Earth passes through a trail of debris left by comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1).

 

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Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:03:00 -0700 Children 'should read 50 books a year', says Gove http://agentm.posterous.com/children-should-read-50-books-a-year-says-gov http://agentm.posterous.com/children-should-read-50-books-a-year-says-gov

Children 'should read 50 books a year', says Gove

Children should be reading around 50 books a year, said Michael Gove.
Children should be reading around 50 books a year, said Michael Gove. Photo: Gary Lee/Photoshot

The Education Secretary said pupils should complete the equivalent of almost a novel a week because the academic demands placed on English schoolchildren have been “too low for too long”.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said the vast majority of teenagers read just one or two books as part of their GCSEs, normally including John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

Mr Gove said all schools should “raise the bar” by requiring pupils to read large numbers of whole books at the end of primary school and throughout secondary education.

It follows the publication of a report in December showing that reading standards among British teenagers had slumped from 17th to 25th in a major international league table.

His latest comments came after a tour of high-performing “charter schools” – state-funded institutions that are run free of Government interference – in the United States.

One primary in a hugely deprived area of Harlem, New York, set pupils a “50 book challenge” over the course of a year and children also competed to read all seven Harry Potter books in the quickest possible time.

The Infinity School is currently ranked higher than any other in the city, even though more than 80 per cent of its mainly African American and Hispanic pupils are from poor families eligible for free and reduced lunches. It is among almost 100 schools run by the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a charity established by two teachers in the mid-90s.

Speaking in the US, Mr Gove said: “KIPP have far higher expectations of their students than we have had. We, the Coalition Government, have attempted to raise the bar but, I think, haven’t been ambitious enough.

“Recently, I asked to see what students were reading at GCSE and I discovered that something like 80 or 90 per cent were just reading one or two novels and overwhelmingly it was the case that it included Of Mice and Men.

“Here, kids at the end of primary school are being expected to read 50 books a year. I think we should, as a nation, be saying that our children should be reading 50 books a year, not just one or two for GCSE.”

A recently launched review of the National Curriculum is expected to specify the key authors children should study at each key stage of their education.

As an interim measure, Mr Gove said he wanted to ask leading children’s authors to set out the 50 books each child should learn. The results will then be posted on the Department for Education website, with schools urged to issue the 50 book challenge to pupils.

Mr Gove suggested that authors to be studied by pupils of all ages should include JK Rowling, CS Lewis, Philip Pullman, Kenneth Grahame, Rosemary Sutcliff, Alan Garner and Ursula Le Guin.

He added: “One of the biggest problems in the English state education system is that only a minority can follow an academic education and that only a minority can go to university. Quite wrong.

“Our expectations have been too low for too long.

“The aspiration for someone to read 50 books a year isn’t from a school in the poshest part of Manhattan where they are all going to have bound copies of CS Lewis, this is a school where 83 per cent of the kids are on the equivalent of free school meals, but they still expect them to read 50 books a year.”

 

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Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:40:26 -0700 BBC News - Voyager: Still dancing 17 billion km from Earth http://agentm.posterous.com/bbc-news-voyager-still-dancing-17-billion-km http://agentm.posterous.com/bbc-news-voyager-still-dancing-17-billion-km
 
Voyager One, Nasa  

Voyager is approaching the edge of the bubble of charged particles the Sun has thrown out into space

The extraordinary Voyager 1 spacecraft is demonstrating its nimbleness more than 30 years after leaving Earth.

At the astonishing distance of 17.4 billion km, the Nasa probe is the most far-flung object made by humans.

But it seems age and remoteness are no barriers to this veteran explorer.

Voyager is executing a series of roll manoeuvres to get one of its instruments into the optimum position to measure particles sweeping away from the Sun.

Controllers at the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, report a perfect response from the probe.

"I liken Voyager like an old car," said project manager Suzanne Dodds. "It's got simple electronics, not a lot of fancy gadgets - but because of that it can operate for longer; it's not as finicky."

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 on a tour of the outer planets. Since completing that mission, it has been making the push for deep space.

The probe is heading in the general direction of the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy and will, in the next few years, leave the space dominated by the influence of our Sun and enter the province between the stars - interstellar space.

Scientists know that to be the case because of the way the solar wind is behaving at Voyager's current location.

This stream of charged particles forms a bubble around our Solar System known as the heliosphere. The wind travels at "supersonic" speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock.

At this point, the wind then slows dramatically and heats up in a region termed the heliosheath. Voyager has determined the velocity of the wind at its location has now slowed to zero. Very simply put, Voyager has reached the domain where the solar wind is starting to turn back on itself as it pushes up against the particles of interstellar space.

The new manoeuvres are designed to enable Voyager 1's Low Energy Charged Particle (LECP) instrument to investigate precisely what is going on around it.

"It counts the particles and measures their direction," explained Suzanne Dodds. "This will give us a much better picture of what's happening with the solar wind close to the heliopause (the "official" edge of the Solar System). It could be that as we do these measures we see its direction change. All we have out there is models and every time we get data the models don't quite fit what Voyager sees, and then we have to update the models."

On Monday this week Voyager rolled 70 degrees anticlockwise as seen from Earth from its normal orientation. It held the position by spinning gyroscopes for two hours, 33 minutes. The veteran last performed such a manoeuvre in 1990 when it took pictures of the planets it was leaving behind.

Once complete, Voyager rolled back and locked on to its guide star, Alpha Centauri.

Voyager 1 will do more roll-and-holds this week, and if the spacecraft continues to function well it will execute a series of weekly rolls to gather particle data every three months.

The Voyager 2 spacecraft which was also launched in 1977 is not quite as far from Earth. It is a mere 14 billion kilometres away. At these great distances, communication with the probes is a lengthy business. The one-way travel time for a radio message to get to Voyager 1 is now 16 hours.

"People love Voyager I think because the mission has lasted so long. We're still talking to it and it's just so far out in space; people have a real attachment to it. It did its grand tour past the planets and it just goes on, on this voyage of discovery."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

 

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Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:35:00 -0800 ISRO finds cave in moon, can be used as base station for astronauts http://agentm.posterous.com/indian-space-program-finds-giant-hole-in-moon http://agentm.posterous.com/indian-space-program-finds-giant-hole-in-moon

moon-hole.jpg

New Delhi: Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization have discovered a giant underground chamber on the moon, which they feel could be used as a base by astronauts on future manned missions to moon.

An analysis by an instrument on Chandrayaan-1 revealed a 1.7-km long and 120-metre wide cave near the moon's equator that is in the Oceanus Procellarum area of the moon that could be a suitable 'base station' for future human missions.

Scientists of the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad said in a research paper published in the latest issue of Current Science that the cave provides "a safe environment from hazardous radiations, micro-meteoritic impacts, extreme temperatures and dust storms."

Scientists said identifying sites for permanent base for human settlements on the moon is important for further exploration.

"Lava tubes provide a natural environmental control with a nearly constant temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius, unlike that of the lunar surface showing extreme variation, maximum of 130 degrees Celsius to a minimum of minus 180 degrees Celsius in its diurnal (day-night) cycle," they said.

According to them, the lava tubes offer a dust-free environment and adapting them for human use requires minimal construction.her exploration.

 

via Silicon India

 

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