Monthly Archives: January 2014

Deathlok and Lorelei joining ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’

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Jan. 24 (UPI) -- ABC's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is bringing on two more signature characters.

Fictional cyborg Deathlok, and Lorelei, a villain from Thors home of Asgard, will join the superhero series when it returns to the small screen in February. S.H.I.E.L.D. executive producer Jeph Loeb made the announcement Thursday on the set of the show.

Weve been leaving breadcrumbs along the way, Loeb said regarding Deathlok. This is a major Marvel character appearing on TV, on film for the first time.

Before the season went on its winter hiatus, J. August Richards's character Mike Peterson lost a leg and was given a high-tech eye, both actions were signs the he would soon transform into the infamous cyborg Deathlok.

"There's an awful lot of enhancements that he'll have. His speed, his strength and he's well-known for his cybernetic eye," Loeb said.

As for Thor's Lorelei, who will be played by Elena Satine, Loeb revealed that she'd be coming to "hunt down another Marvel character."

"Lorelei is from Asgard. She's a beautiful redhead who has the ability to sway men's minds. She has this in her own unique way of speaking," he added.

Deathlok will make his first appearance on S.H.I.E.L.D. during the show's Feb. 4 episode.

[TV Guide] [Deadline]

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Deathlok and Lorelei joining 'Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'

Vacation rental the Beaches of Panama City, Florida – Regency Towers Resort – Video

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Vacation rental the Beaches of Panama City, Florida - Regency Towers Resort - Video

Foreign media slam Fraser Island beaches as ‘dangerous’

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Topics: beach, danger, dangerous, editors picks, fraser island, media

FRASER Coast beaches are getting served negative publicity around the world as the foreign press decides it's unsafe to venture in for a swim in our seas.

The United Kingdom'sTelegraph, the United States' Huffington Post and one of Sweden's top newspapers, Expressen, have slammed our sandy shores as dangerous, listing us as one of the most dangerous beaches globally.

"The seas surrounding Fraser Island, to the south-east of Queensland, are a no-go zone," the Telegraph published.

"That is unless you mind swimming with sharks and jellyfish, while battling strong rip currents.

"Head inland and you're likely to bump into some of the world's deadliest spiders, the odd saltwater crocodile, as well as dingoes, which are known to occasionally attack humans."

The Expressen of Sweden gave equally uninviting perspectives on our native fauna.

"The water outside Queensland at the Australian east coast is not to be trifled with," they wrote in their list of the world's 14 most dangerous beaches. Especially the area around Fraser Island is crawling with dangerous aquatic animals. Sharks, poisonous octopus but above all, sorts of poisonous jellyfish."

Expressen said between October and April, jellyfish coast along northern Australia and Queensland beaches, with many of them cordoned off due to stinger risks.

"The jellyfish harvests up to 200 lives a year," they said.

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Foreign media slam Fraser Island beaches as 'dangerous'

Great whites frolic near beaches

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A hooked juvenile white shark breaching while being led away from the surf zone for tagging off Bennetts Beach in 2011. Photo: CSIRO

Up to 250 juvenile great white sharks are living off the NSW coast and spending a lot of time off beaches in depths of one to five metres, CSIRO research has found.

Tagged great whites have been tracked swimming along the coast from Lake Macquarie to Seal Rocks. These sharks are ''abundant along a section of coastal waters in the Port Stephens region'' from about September to January each year, the study says.

The sharks are residing along three beaches: northern Stockton, which is south of the Port Stephens estuary, and Bennetts (also known as Hawks Nest Beach) and Mungo Brush to its north. Satellite tracking showed juvenile white pointers occupied waters from inshore to depths of 120 metres, about 25 kilometres offshore.

A juvenile white shark with a tag on the dorsal fin, ready for release. Photo: CSIRO

''They spend a significant amount of time in the surf zone in water depths of one to five metres, where they are readily observable and frequently encountered by the public,'' a CSIRO report said.

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Research in 2010 and 2011, based on tagging and monitoring, estimated the sharks spend ''an average of 36.5 per cent'' of their time off Port Stephens in ''near-shore waters including the surf zone''.

In 2012-13, great whites were recorded spending 20 per cent of their time in the surf zone.

''This study provides further confirmation the Port Stephens region is a key nursery area for juvenile white sharks in eastern Australia,'' the report said.

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No dogs on the beach, Volusia County Council votes

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Last Updated: Thursday, January 23, 2014, 6:17 PM DELAND --

The "no dogs allowed" signs on most of Volusia County's beaches will remain.

The county council on Thursday voted against a pilot program to allow leashed dogs on all of the beaches.

Councilman Josh Wagner pushed the pilot program, which would allow dogs on most beaches between 4 p.m. and 9 a.m. The program would have lasted three months, with the council given the option of extending or ending the program.

There was some concern about enforcement. Dogs would not only have to be leashed, but owners would also be required to pick up after them.

When we reported this story earlier this month, 47 percent said they would be in favor of allowing dogs on the beaches, while 42 percent said they were against. About 11 percent had no opinion.

There are two dog beaches in Volusia County -- Smyrna Dunes Park and Lighthouse Point Park.

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No dogs on the beach, Volusia County Council votes

Volusia County says no to dogs on beaches

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DAYTONA BEACH Dogs wont be allowed on Volusia County Beaches after all.

The Volusia County Council said no Thursday to a proposal to temporarily allow leashed dogs on the beaches. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports discussion about the issue touched on parasites, bites and possible confrontations between dog owners and people who would rather visit a dog-free beach.

You would have a steaming heap of dog excrement for your next tourist to step on and have it ooze between his toes, Councilman Doug Daniels said after the debate ended. What is he going to tell people back home? That is not a good picture.

Two weeks ago, the council agreed 6-1 to draft a test ordinance that would have allowed leashed dogs on everywhere on the beach. It would have been in place for up to three months.

But on Thursday, after hearing from the countys health department, federal officials and residents, the council decided to ditch the proposal. The vote was 5-2. County Chair Jason Davis and Councilman Josh Wagner, who proposed the idea, were the dissenting voters. Wagner has pursued a plan to allow dogs on the beach for five years.

The county was already gearing up to implement the plan. County Manager Jim Dinneen said enforcement would have been strict. Someone caught not cleaning up after their dog or letting it run unleashed would have been fined. The county had suggested a fine of at least $50, with no warnings.

Several councilmembers feared turning Volusia Countys beach patrol into a puppy patrol.

Unless were willing to be known as the dog Gestapo down there ... I dont think thats a direction we want to go, said Councilwoman Deb Denys.

County health director Dr. Bonnie Sorensen recommended against the proposal due to threats of hookworms, roundworms and even rabies.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service opposed the plan based on its potential impact on shorebirds and sea turtle nests.

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Volusia County says no to dogs on beaches

Continental Telescope Array Could Usher Astronomy Revolution in Africa

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Able to detect light from the first stars just 380,000 years after the big bang, the Square Kilometer Array will be the world's biggest radio observatory and promises to spur science and economic development in Africa

Thousands of radio telescopes are being built in Africa as part of the Square Kilometer Array, to be the world's largest network of radio telescopes, which could help usher in a new age of astronomy in Africa.

Scientists are predicting an astronomy renaissance on the African continent in coming years, thanks in part to a giant radio telescope array being built there. But the road to cosmic cachet is not an easy one, and African science advocates are scrambling to take full advantage of the opportunities coming their way. "Astronomy really is about to explode across the African continent," astronomer Kartik Sheth of the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory said January 9 at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society near Washington, D.C. The challenge, he said, is to make sure African astronomers benefit from the surge of facilities being built in their midst. "We want to build long-term sustainable collaborations that are mutually beneficial to the U.S. and to Africa. We dont want brain and data drain from Africa to the U.S." The biggest game-changer on the continent will be the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world's largest network of radio telescopes designed to survey the sky faster than any instrument before it. Roughly 3,000 radio disheshaving a combined total surface equal to a light-collecting area of about a square kilometerwill be spread across vast distances to offer a resolution akin to a single dish encompassing the whole span. "SKA will be the premier project of the coming decades, completely revolutionizing radio astronomy," said Ted Williams, director of the South African Astronomical Observatory. "The largest part of the SKA will be sited in Africa, and it's continent-wide, extending across eight African countries:" Botswana, Ghana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia. A smaller portion of the project will be built in Australia. South Africa, headquarters for the African contingent of the project, mounted a competitive campaign to bring the observatory to Africa, and the news in 2012 that its bid had won the lion's share of the project was unexpected to many. "We kind of took them by surprise but we did our homework very well," says Takalani Nemaungani, an engineer at South Africa's Department of Science and Technology who led his country's SKA lobbying campaign. Nemaungani sold the SKA committee on South Africa's clear skies (necessary for precision radio astronomy), the promised political support of its president and cabinetwho have passed legislation to strictly limit the amount of radio noise in the remote site areaand its expertise in engineering and infrastructure. Construction of the $1.6-billion observatory is due to begin in 2016 and will be added to in phases, with the first observations to take place in 2019 and full operation by 2024. South Africa's apartheid past posed a special challenge. Until the race-separation policy ended in 1994 the country faced local unrest and international opprobrium. Trade sanctions imposed on South Africa by other countries, especially the U.S., hampered the nation's economy but resulted in some unintended consequences in boosting homegrown technologies. "Because of the embargoes and sanctions here, there were technologies and expertise we had to build for ourselves to sustain the country," Nemaungani says. For example, the international oil embargo against South Africa enacted in 1987 forced the nation to become the world leader in technology to convert coal to oil. Still, Africa's goal of astronomical ascendancy faces serious challenges, including many African countries' high levels of unemployment, poverty, poor education and lack of investment in science. According the UNESCO 2010 Science Report (pdf), scientific development in sub-Saharan Africa faces "poor infrastructure development, a small pool of researchers and minimal scientific output. The continent has failed to invest in science, technology and innovation (STI) as drivers of economic growth and long-term sustainable development." Proponents of Africas new age of astronomy want to change all that. "SKA is helping us to change perspectives on Africa as a destination for high-tech opportunities and industry," Nemaungani says. "We're using astronomy as a gateway science to interest young kids to study math and science. That's where a big project like SKA can make an impact." Virtually everywhere in South Africa people have heard about the SKA, although they might not know much about it, Williams said. Leaders are particularly working to help South Africa's black population reap the new scientific opportunities, which have traditionally gone to the nation's privileged whites. "Several generations of Africans were told, 'You can't do this,'" he told Scientific American. "The message we're trying to send is, 'Yes, you can.'" And the SKA is just one of numerous astronomical projects on the continent. The High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) gamma-ray observatory opened in 2002 in Namibia, new telescopes are being built in Burkina Faso and Ethiopia, and the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) was inaugurated in South Africa in 2005 and came fully online in 2011. Ted Williams was a Rutgers University astronomer in 1998 when he first came to South Africa to investigate the possibility of building SALT. His wife insisted on coming on the trip because it was a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity to visit. It was not long, though, before the two moved to Cape Town. In his time there Williams has seen significant technological, scientific and social advancement. "When we started on SALT, nobody could have conceived that a project like SKA would go to South Africa," Williams says. "So much has changed."

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Continental Telescope Array Could Usher Astronomy Revolution in Africa

Telescope array could usher in astronomy revolution in Africa

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SKA Organisation

An article by Scientific American.

Scientists are predicting an astronomy renaissance on the African continent in coming years, thanks in part to a giant radio telescope array being built there. But the road to cosmic cachet is not an easy one, and African science advocates are scrambling to take full advantage of the opportunities coming their way.

"Astronomy really is about to explode across the African continent," astronomer Kartik Sheth of the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory said January 9 at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society near Washington DC The challenge, he said, is to make sure African astronomers benefit from the surge of facilities being built in their midst. "We want to build long-term sustainable collaborations that are mutually beneficial to the US and to Africa. We dont want brain and data drain from Africa to the US."

The biggest game-changer on the continent will be the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world's largest network of radio telescopes designed to survey the sky faster than any instrument before it. Roughly 3,000 radio dishes having a combined total surface equal to a light-collecting area of about a square kilometer will be spread across vast distances to offer a resolution akin to a single dish encompassing the whole span. "SKA will be the premier project of the coming decades, completely revolutionizing radio astronomy," said Ted Williams, director of the South African Astronomical Observatory. "The largest part of the SKA will be sited in Africa, and it's continent-wide, extending across eight African countries:" Botswana, Ghana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia. A smaller portion of the project will be built in Australia.

South Africa, headquarters for the African contingent of the project, mounted a competitive campaign to bring the observatory to Africa, and the news in 2012 that its bid had won the lion's share of the project was unexpected to many. "We kind of took them by surprise but we did our homework very well," says Takalani Nemaungani, an engineer at South Africa's Department of Science and Technology who led his country's SKA lobbying campaign. Nemaungani sold the SKA committee on South Africa's clear skies (necessary for precision radio astronomy), the promised political support of its president and cabinet who have passed legislation to strictly limit the amount of radio noise in the remote site area and its expertise in engineering and infrastructure. Construction of the $1.6-billion observatory is due to begin in 2016 and will be added to in phases, with the first observations to take place in 2019 and full operation by 2024.

South Africa's apartheid past posed a special challenge. Until the race-separation policy ended in 1994 the country faced local unrest and international opprobrium. Trade sanctions imposed on South Africa by other countries, especially the US, hampered the nation's economy but resulted in some unintended consequences in boosting homegrown technologies. "Because of the embargoes and sanctions here, there were technologies and expertise we had to build for ourselves to sustain the country," Nemaungani says. For example, the international oil embargo against South Africa enacted in 1987 forced the nation to become the world leader in technology to convert coal to oil.

Still, Africa's goal of astronomical ascendancy faces serious challenges, including many African countries' high levels of unemployment, poverty, poor education and lack of investment in science. According the UNESCO 2010 Science Report, scientific development in sub-Saharan Africa faces "poor infrastructure development, a small pool of researchers and minimal scientific output. The continent has failed to invest in science, technology and innovation (STI) as drivers of economic growth and long-term sustainable development."

Proponents of Africas new age of astronomy want to change all that. "SKA is helping us to change perspectives on Africa as a destination for high-tech opportunities and industry," Nemaungani says. "We're using astronomy as a gateway science to interest young kids to study math and science. That's where a big project like SKA can make an impact."

Virtually everywhere in South Africa people have heard about the SKA, although they might not know much about it, Williams said. Leaders are particularly working to help South Africa's black population reap the new scientific opportunities, which have traditionally gone to the nation's privileged whites. "Several generations of Africans were told, 'You can't do this,'" he told Scientific American. "The message we're trying to send is, 'Yes, you can.'"

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Telescope array could usher in astronomy revolution in Africa

By chance, astronomy students spot humongous space explosion

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It was a euphoric moment for students at the University of London after they serendipitously spotted a powerful supernova in the M82 galaxy. The supernova is one of the closest to be spotted from Earth in recent decades, say scientists.

The sky was getting cloudy.

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Instead of the planned practical astronomy class, Steve Fossey at the University of London Observatory, decided to train four undergrads how to use a CCD camera on one of the observatorys automated 0.35meter telescopes, according to the press release by the University of London.

The students decided to look at the Messier 82 galaxy, located 12 million light years from Earth. "It is a very photogenic galaxy and fascinating, so we often look at it," Fossey says.

What followed was a serendipitous discovery of a supernova, an exploding star.

Working with Dr. Fossey, the students Ben Cooke, Tom Wright, Matthew Wilde, and Guy Pollack spotted the explosion in nearby galaxy Messier 82, the press release stated.

Fossey and his students noticed a starlike object on the galaxy, which Fosseydid not recognize from previous observations, according to the press release.

They looked up online archive images of the galaxy, and it appeared that what they were looking at was probably some kind of a new star in the galaxy, the team said in the press release.

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By chance, astronomy students spot humongous space explosion

Penn State alumnus turns art into science and vice versa

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Every student has stories of their professors unique personalities but one has been to the moon and back, at least metaphorically.

A Penn State alumnus and currently an instructional designer for the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nahks TrEhnl is the artistic astronomer or the astronomic artist, whatever you want to call him.

He has finally found a way to mix his pallet with his two favorite interests, only to arrive back at Penn State, where he first realized his passion for them.

Long ago in time and space

TrEhnl got into space, robots and aliens some 30 years ago like many kids his age.

He grew up during the Voyager probe era with the mindset: Soon we'll get to see even more incredible things no one has ever seen before.

TrEhnl owned many astronomy books at the time, but one in particular had an effect on him that would solidify his interest in astrobiology to this day.

One of these had a particularly profound effect on me, containing a passage something to the effect of . . . and just think what if, on a planet around that star you see in your telescope, there's another creature with its own telescope, looking back at you? TrEhnl said via email. My interests in astrobiology, life elsewhere in the universe, and all that lit up big time, and its just stuck ever since.

When he was young, TrEhnl said he found a relief in Star Trek and the idea of life on other planets as he moved around the country every few years.

His fathers job with the United Way allowed him to travel to Tennessee, Mississippi , Georgia , Iowa and Texas before staying in Pennsylvania for the second half of high school.

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Penn State alumnus turns art into science and vice versa

Artificial intelligence revisited

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Ever thought of what would it feel like to live during the age of the gold rush? Digging hard, excitedly looking for gold. Miners get envious when others find gold, causing them to dig more furiously, determined to strike gold themselves. What happens, though, when someone hits a rock that looks exactly like gold, but really isnt? All the miners get curious. They all wonder, will the outside world take this for gold? One brave chap goes and markets it. Lo and behold! The world likes it! Now the miners start scavenging for this rock. In that, they forget their quest for the real gold. Except, maybe, a few grumpy miners who found the first gold.

Back in the 80s, after Steve Jobs brought about the personal computer revolution, computer engineers began running around like miners in a gold rush. But, there is one other endeavor I want to point out today: The quest for artificial intelligence, the quest to duplicate the human mind or, if I may, the quest for real artificial intelligence.

Douglas Hofstadter, a Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Oregon, won the Pulitzer prize in 1980 for his seminal book Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The book, also known as GEB, sprung from his summer excursion in 1972. While camping around in forests and besides lakes, he thought about thinking itself. He thought about the brain and its wondrous ability to create an abstract concept called thought. He aligned his reasoning with self evaluating mathematical systems and realized that there lay an answer in Kurt Gdels 1931 mathematical proof that mathematical systems could generate statements not just about numbers but about itself. Hofstadters was the first quest for real artificial intelligence in the history of mankind.

GEB introduced the field of artificial intelligence, an inter-disciplinary study of logic, math, cognition and neuroscience. The miners had started looking for gold, digging furiously.

IBM was one such miner. Relentless in its search for artificial intelligence, its stronghold in the computer industry worked to its advantage as a computer could only perform mathematical calculations of that cadre.

In 1988, IBM undertook a project called Candide. Candide started by accepting defeat on the path set forward by Hofstadter, deeming the problem of constructing mathematical systems on understanding the constructs of language, semantics and symmetry as too complex. Instead, they found a rock that looked just like gold. They called it machine learning.

Machine learning is so similar to the way a child learns that it is a surprise they dont call it human learning. The underlying concept is that of learning by analogy. If a mathematical system is trained with huge amounts of data, the system learns the patterns and will predict an outcome based on the patterns it sees. This is exactly how a baby learns a language.

But heres why it is not the real deal. A fully-grown human brain can do more than a babys brain. Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, said in his Ted Talk. That is the physics approach. That is the exact opposite of reasoning by analogy.

The problem with analogies is that they are limiting. Analogies can only help one hop about horizontally. But it requires reasoning to dive deeper down vertically. A system that works by analogy will be able to predict, by training through huge amounts of data or by evaluating all permutations and combinations, that Obama is an important person or that I use one in a plural sense in my writing. But it will not be able to discover gravity, nor general relativity.

Yes, IBM marketed it, and the world liked it! A lot of swag that the information technology world has is accredited to this move of IBM. It enables weather forecast, auto spell-check, search engines, Siri and Deep Blue the IBM computer that beat Gary Kasparov in the famous chess game of 1997.

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Artificial intelligence revisited

Android app claims to use artificial intelligence to fight cyber threats

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A SECURTIY UPSTART called Zimperium has launched mobile software that learns from smartphones to fend off malicious cyber attacks.

Claiming to be the first security software to be powered by artificial intelligence (AI), the app is called zIPS, with the "IPS" standing for "intrusion prevention system". The aim of the AI is to better spot malware before it causes harm or spreads to other devices.

The zIPS software works whether the smartphone is offline or online and can protect against malicious apps, such as those that can self-modify, and network attacks like a "man in the middle" attack where a hacker intercepts data being sent between one user and another.

"With zIPS, corporations will now have the opportunity to use [bring your own device] as an advantage to their security. zIPS is the first security solution that can combat modern cyber-attacks on mobile," said Zimperium's founder and CEO Zuk Avraham. "There is already evidence of attacks that are happening to infiltrate organisations, which only zIPS can prevent."

Prior to working on the Android app, Avraham worked as a security researcher for the Israeli Defense Forces and Samsung electronics before setting up Zimperium in response to what he thinks is a poor selection of good mobile security software.

According to MIT Technology Review, Zimperium said that there have as yet been no programs that can detect, notify and protect against cyber attacks deployed through mobile devices.

The zIPS Android app has arrived in the Google Play store for all Android devices at a time when malware on Android is at an all time high.

Last year, Trend Micro warned that Google's Android mobile operating system is so beset by cyber criminals creating malicious apps that the malware was on track to hit the million mark before the end of 2013.

The firm said that this was attributable to hackers seeking to exploit Android's growing global user base.

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Android app claims to use artificial intelligence to fight cyber threats