MadBitcoinsTV — Livestream — #003 — Oct 21, 2014 – #bitcoin #news #live #test – Video

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MadBitcoinsTV -- Livestream -- #003 -- Oct 21, 2014 - #bitcoin #news #live #test
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MadBitcoinsTV -- Livestream -- #003 -- Oct 21, 2014 - #bitcoin #news #live #test - Video

Bitcoin Weekly 2014 October 22: Gavin Andresen Reddit AMA, Bitcoin community vs. NYDFS BitLicense, and more

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The current trends in the Bitcoin show that while progress is slow, its constantly building momentum. Last week, Andreas Antonopoulos went before the Canadian Senate and gave an amazing 2 hour talk, this week Gavin Andresen went to Reddit and gave amazing answers.

The public comments period for the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) regulatory proposal BitLicense have ended and numerous heavyweights in the Bitcoin community and Internet free-speech have weighed in including BitPay, Coinbase, Reddit, the Internet Archive, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, Reddit AMA

Yesterday, Gavin Andresen, notably the best-known Bitcoin Core developer and Chief Scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, participated in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). AMAs are a proud tradition on Reddit that allow experts, celebrities, politicians, etc. a chance to speak their mind to a multitude of people and have their thoughts recorded.

As of writing, Andresens AMA has reached 931 comments and he has actively participated in a large number of threads.

When asked what would be needed for Andresen to believe Bitcoin is established, he replied, We need regulatory clarity, ease of use, and no-single-point-of-failure security. The world is still waking up to Bitcoin and its effectsalthough business is slowly tuning inits going to be more regulatory questions like New Yorks infamous Bitlicense.

On the subject of the increasing value of individual Bitcoins (currently at $388) he showed a favor for speaking more often of Bits, or millionths of a Bitcoin. A Bit, as a result, would be $0.000388 approximately, meaning 100 Bits would be about 4 cents.

Apparently, he changed his name from Bell (his birth surname) to Andresen because his wife did not want to be known as Michele Bell.

Overall, reading Andresens responses to questions shows a solid foundation of a programmer who is passionate about Bitcoin. He sounds forthright, thoughtful, and knowledgeable and at the same time extremely sanguine about the future of Bitcoin itself.

If this sparks a readers interest, many could do worse than to peruse the comments in the AMA and pick out Andresens responses. CoinDesk has also picked out what they feel are the 12 best answers from his AMA.

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Bitcoin Weekly 2014 October 22: Gavin Andresen Reddit AMA, Bitcoin community vs. NYDFS BitLicense, and more

Hundreds of Comets Seen Orbiting Distant Solar System

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The exocomets swarming around Beta Pictoris mirror those seen in our own solar system, but for a few surprising differences.

This artist's rendition shows swarms of exocomets orbiting the young star Beta Pictoris

In 1986, while watching a star some 63 light-years away called Beta Pictoris, French astronomer Anne-Marie Lagrange and her colleagues noticed something deeply strange. They were watching because, two years earlier, other researchers observing the young, 23-million-year-old star had viewed edge-on the infrared glow of what seemed to be a giant spinning disk of dust and gas, similar to that from which our own solar system was born long ago. Beta Pictoris appeared to be in the latter stages of assembling its own planetary system, and astronomers essentially had a front-row seat. Studying the starlight shining through the disk Lagrange spied unexpected hints of motion coming and going over hours and days, almost as if some shadowy light-absorbing structures were every now and then swirling into view. For months Lagrange and her colleagues struggled to explain the observations; they considered stellar pulsations, drifting dust grains and other phenomena, but none closely matched the data. Grasping at straws, in 1987 they offered up one last, wild explanation, later proved to be true: They were seeing starlight shining through giant plumes of gas pouring off icy objects plunging through the disk toward the star. That is, they were seeing star-grazing cometsaka exocometsyears before the first discoveries of exoplanets. Lagrange would go on to devote her PhD work to Beta Pictoris under the tutelage of fellow French astronomer Alfred Vidal-Madjar of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics (IAP), and in 2008 helmed a team that discovered and imaged a giant planet, Beta Pictoris b, freshly formed around the star. Nearly 30 years after the discovery of Beta Pictoriss disk and comets, the system is one of the most-monitored objects in the sky. Today, Lagrange and a team of other French astronomers add one more facet to astronomers understanding of the embryonic planetary system, announcing the most complete census of its exocomets ever created. Their findings are published in Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Using eight years of archival data from the European Southern Observatorys HARPS planet-finding spectrograph, the team catalogued an unprecedented number of star-grazing comets around Beta Pictoris, detecting nearly 500 by the telltale absorption of starlight from their gassy tails passing in front of the star as seen from Earth. A few other stars are also known to harbor exocomets but never before have astronomers mapped such great numbers of these small, icy bodies so far beyond our solar system. This is a laudable study, and the determination of these researchers is remarkable, says Aki Roberge, an astronomer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center who wrote a commentary to accompany the paper. On one hand, star-grazing comets were discovered around Beta Pictoris a long time ago but on the other hand this study is only possible through sustained, dedicated monitoring over many years. By carefully analyzing the speeds and estimated sizes of each detected cometary gas cloud selected from more than 1,000 HARPS observations, the team discovered that the comets are divided into two distinct familiesan outer family sedately circling the star at distances comparable with the separation of Mercury from the sun and an inner family exhibiting a wide range of velocities, orbiting even closer in. Curiously, the family farther out from the star seems to be producing far more gas than the closer-in cometsthe exact opposite of what would be expected, given that comets in our solar system tend to grow more active the closer they come to the intense heat of our sun. According to the studys lead author, Flavien Kiefer, an astronomer at the IAP, the likely explanation is that the inner family consists of older comets that have nearly depleted their reservoirs of gas and dust, whereas the outer family is composed of fresher or bigger comets produced from the recent fragmentation of a larger parent body. Based on the orientations of their scattered, close-in orbits, the inner cometary family also appears to be trapped in an orbital resonance, herded around the star by the gravitational influence of a nearby massive planetperhaps Beta Pictoris b, or maybe another world as yet unseen. This resonance is very similar to the influence of Jupiter in our own solar system, which produces most of the short-period comets around the sun, Kiefer says. We could be seeing some of the ejected remnants from the formation of Beta Pictoris b. Its like we are observing a much younger version of our sun, just after it formed its planets. One mystery still unsolved is the nature of the parent body that produced the outer belt of comets around the star. Kiefer says the parent body might have been an extra-large comet that came from the inner belt, something trapped in resonance with Beta Pictoris b. If the giant comet passed too close to the planet, gravitational forces could have pulled the comet apart, exposing fresh material to evaporate in starlight. But Roberge notes that the outer belts progenitor could have been planetary in size. In 2013 she was part of a team that used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of radio telescopes to discover two giant clouds of carbon monoxide at the outer fringes of the Beta Pictoris system. One possible explanation for the positioning and shape of the clouds was the gravitational sculpting from a giant, unseen planet far from the star but another was the recent, destructive collision of two Mars-mass icy worlds. Fragments from such a collision could have cascaded down into the inner parts of the system as a swarm of massive comets. If the carbon monoxide clumps were caused by this putative massive collision, then that could just possibly be connected to these fragments were now seeing, Roberge says. Whether thats actually the case, I dont know, but it would make me very happy if this all hung together like that. Pinning down the plausibility of this alternate formation scenario will depend on dynamical modeling of the fragments produced by such a cataclysmic collision as well as on future observations of the orbiting carbon monoxide clouds. Beyond the comets source, the greatest mystery concerning them is: Where is their water? Astronomers have yet to see any indication of it, despite years of searching. If these are icy, water-rich comets like we expect them to be, wed expect to see the water photoevaporating and getting broken up into daughter products like hydrogen and oxygenand we havent really seen that yet, Roberge says. No one has made a hard prediction for how much water should be there and whether we couldve seen it or not but we all have this burning question in the back of our minds. Someone will probably stick their neck out on this soon. If deeper investigations fail to show any sign of water in Beta Pictoriss comets, Kiefer says, the solution may be that they are actually quite different from our own. They may perhaps being made mostly of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide ices rather than wateran unsettling prospect for astrobiologists hoping that most stars will harbor water-rich habitable worlds. He and his collaborators are already planning more in-depth studies of the stars comets as well as those of one of its siblings born from the same stellar nurserya star called HD 172555 that has already been revealed to have a few exocomets of its own. Roberge is also studying a handful of exocomets recently found around another star, 49 Ceti. Looking back on the recent history of a star far away but close to her heart, Lagrange feels vindicated by the ongoing waves of discovery. In the 1980s I didnt expect to still be working on Beta Pictoris 30 years later, she says, adding that she had been discouraged from studying the star for her PhD. Many people were very skeptical about the comet scenario, and did not believe that one could detect comets outside the solar system; it was barely known that solar system comets sometimes grazed the sun and evaporated. Im glad that this comet scenario has survived all these tests throughout the years.

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Hundreds of Comets Seen Orbiting Distant Solar System

Comets still undefeated after win over Mohawks

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The MUCC Comets were ready for a close football game on Friday when they hosted the Humboldt Mohawks. Despite winning the game 22-7 the Comets were in unfamiliar territory early in the contest and actually trailed 7-0. It was the Comets first possession of the game textbook football according to coach Dave Rogers, until quarterback Lee Taylor threw an interception from the eight-yard line. It was intercepted in the end zone and returned for Humboldts only points of the game, he said. Defensive lineman Kevin Cipywnyk said that interception only fuelled the fire of the defense for the rest of the game. It kind of fired us up a little more, made us come out harder and hit them, Cipywnyk said. The Comets defense controlled the game, keeping the Mohawks off the scoreboard for the remainder of the game. They even kept the Humboldt offense outside the Melfort 40-yard line until the last play of the game. The Comets offense had a hard time following suit. Rogers said the offense had difficulty finishing drives in the contest. We moved the ball up and down the field effectively and got down to the six yard line and didnt score. That was the story for us on offense today, he said. That happened on three occasions which is a concern for Rogers. Anytime you get into the red zone, inside the 20 yard line, and you dont get points it has to be a concern. That said, they did make their way into the endzone three times. With only a minute remaining in the first quarter Taylor connected with Jomar Malaggay from 53-yards out for a touchdown. The conversion tied the game 7-7. On Humboldts next possession Kalen Senecal had an interception for the Comets setting up a four-play touchdown drive which ended with Taylor running the last yard. With the conversion the Comets led 14-7. Midway through the second quarter the Comets added a single on a punt to go ahead 15-7. With no time remaining on the clock before halftime the comets capped off a 75-yard drive with a touchdown pass to Sean Renouf from eight yards out. With the conversion the score was 22-7. There was no scoring in the second half. The Comets wrap up the regular season on the road this Friday, October 24, against the Nipawin Bears. Rogers said the game will be a developmental one. The guys that played the end of this game they get a chance to play in Nipawin, he said. Following that the Comets will host a provincial quarter final playoff game on Saturday, November 1.

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Comets still undefeated after win over Mohawks

Two families of comets found around nearby star: Biggest census ever of exocomets around beta pictoris

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The HARPS instrument at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile has been used to make the most complete census of comets around another star ever created. A French team of astronomers has studied nearly 500 individual comets orbiting the star Beta Pictoris and has discovered that they belong to two distinct families of exocomets: old exocomets that have made multiple passages near the star, and younger exocomets that probably came from the recent breakup of one or more larger objects. The new results will appear in the journal Nature on 23 October 2014.

Beta Pictoris is a young star located about 63 light-years from the Sun. It is only about 20 million years old and is surrounded by a huge disc of material -- a very active young planetary system where gas and dust are produced by the evaporation of comets and the collisions of asteroids.

Flavien Kiefer (IAP/CNRS/UPMC), lead author of the new study sets the scene: "Beta Pictoris is a very exciting target! The detailed observations of its exocomets give us clues to help understand what processes occur in this kind of young planetary system."

For almost 30 years astronomers have seen subtle changes in the light from Beta Pictoris that were thought to be caused by the passage of comets in front of the star itself. Comets are small bodies of a few kilometres in size, but they are rich in ices, which evaporate when they approach their star, producing gigantic tails of gas and dust that can absorb some of the light passing through them. The dim light from the exocomets is swamped by the light of the brilliant star so they cannot be imaged directly from Earth.

To study the Beta Pictoris exocomets, the team analysed more than 1000 observations obtained between 2003 and 2011 with the HARPS instrument on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

The researchers selected a sample of 493 different exocomets. Some exocomets were observed several times and for a few hours. Careful analysis provided measurements of the speed and the size of the gas clouds. Some of the orbital properties of each of these exocomets, such as the shape and the orientation of the orbit and the distance to the star, could also be deduced.

This analysis of several hundreds of exocomets in a single exo-planetary system is unique. It revealed the presence of two distinct families of exocomets: one family of old exocomets whose orbits are controlled by a massive planet [1], and another family, probably arising from the recent breakdown of one or a few bigger objects. Different families of comets also exist in the Solar System.

The exocomets of the first family have a variety of orbits and show a rather weak activity with low production rates of gas and dust. This suggests that these comets have exhausted their supplies of ices during their multiple passages close to Beta Pictoris [2].

The exocomets of the second family are much more active and are also on nearly identical orbits [3]. This suggests that the members of the second family all arise from the same origin: probably the breakdown of a larger object whose fragments are on an orbit grazing the star Beta Pictoris.

Flavien Kiefer concludes: "For the first time a statistical study has determined the physics and orbits for a large number of exocomets. This work provides a remarkable look at the mechanisms that were at work in the Solar System just after its formation 4.5 billion years ago."

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Two families of comets found around nearby star: Biggest census ever of exocomets around beta pictoris

Alien Comets of Star Beta Pictoris Explained (Infographic)

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By Karl Tate, Infographics Artist | October 22, 2014 01:00pm ET

At only 23 million years old, the Beta Pictoris star system is very young compared to Earth's solar system. Beta Pictoris is still undergoing the initial condensation of its planets from smaller bodies, a process called accretion. The system is 63.4 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pictors, the Painter's Easel.

Full Story: Hundreds of 'Exocomets' Around Nearby Star Come in Two Flavors

The spectral signatures of exocomets (comets of another solar system) have been seen approaching Beta Pictoris and disintegrating as their water ice and other volatiles evaporate into space. Researchers say they have discovered two distinct families of comets around Beta Pictoris.

Hundreds Of Comets Spotted Around Nearby Star | Artist Impression Video

The exocomets at Beta Pictoris are not the only oddity around the young star. The star is also home the Beta Pictoris b, a huge gas giant planet 10 times the mass of Jupiter that is the fastest spinning alien planet ever known. The planet spins at a rate of about62,000 mph (100,000 km/h), with a single day on the planet lasting just eight hours.

Comet Quiz: Test Your Cosmic Knowledge

Whirling Dervish: Fastest-Spinning Exoplanet Beta Pictoris b Explained (Infographic)

Photos: Spectacular Comet Views from Earth and Space

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Alien Comets of Star Beta Pictoris Explained (Infographic)

Two Exocomet Families Found Around Baby Star System

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Scientists have found two families of comets in the developing Beta Pictoris star system, located about 64 million light-years from Earth, including one group that appears to be remnants of a smashed-up protoplanet.

The discovery bolsters our theoretical understanding of the violent processes that led to the formation of Earth and the other terrestrial planets in the solar system.

PHOTOS: Exquisite Exoplanetary Art

If you look back at the solar system when it was only 22 million years old, you might have seen phenomena thats a like more like whats happening in Beta Pic, astrophysicist Aki Roberge, with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., told Discovery News.

Rocky planets like the Earth, or any kind of solid planet, are built up out of comets and asteroids. Its the collisions of those bodies that build up the planets in the first place, she said.

Astronomers found the exocomets by analyzing eight years of archived data collected by the HARPS instrument on ESA's 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. They were focusing on small, evaporating bodies that passed across the face of their parent star, relative to the telescopes line of sight.

ANALYSIS: Dust to Dust: The Death of an Exoplanet

Our results show that the evaporating bodies observed for decades in the Beta Pictoris system are analogous to the comets in our own solar system, astronomer Flavien Kiefer, with the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, and colleagues wrote in an article published in this week's Nature.

One group of comets, designated population S, appears to be gravitationally tied to massive planet, possibly Beta Pictoris b, which circles its parent star about as far as Saturn orbits the sun. Astronomers strongly suspect a second gas giant planet exists beyond Beta Pic b.

NEWS: The Exoplanet With a Comet-Like Tail

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Two Exocomet Families Found Around Baby Star System

DermaMed Psoriasis Kit – Rescue Balm and Nutrition for Troubled Skin – Video

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DermaMed Psoriasis Kit - Rescue Balm and Nutrition for Troubled Skin
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DermaMed Psoriasis Kit - Rescue Balm and Nutrition for Troubled Skin - Video

Novartis' plaque psoriasis drug candidate AIN457 gets FDA committee recommendation

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PBR Staff Writer Published 21 October 2014

The US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee (DODAC) has approved Novartis' AIN457 (secukinumab), a selective interleukin-17A (IL-17A) inhibitor, to treat moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis in adult patients.

The DODAC recommendation is based on the safety and efficacy outcomes from ten psoriasis Phase II/III clinical trials which included nearly 4,000 patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis.

Novartis Pharmaceuticals global head development Vas Narasimhan said moderate-to-severe psoriasis is a serious condition where patients suffer from skin lesions that cause itching, pain and scaling.

"There is a need for novel therapies as not all treatments are appropriate or effective in every patient," Narasimhan said.

"Today's recommendation is based on the efficacy and safety data put forth in our robust clinical trial program and brings us one step closer to delivering an innovative, new treatment option for people suffering from moderate-to-severe psoriasis. We look forward to working with the FDA as it finalizes its review."

The Phase III clinical program for secukinumab included four placebo-controlled pivotal trials which examined secukinumab 300mg and 150mg in patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis.

In these studies, secukinumab met all primary and key secondary endpoints, including Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) 75 and 90 and Investigator's Global Assessment modified 2011 (IGA mod 2011) 0/1 responses, showing significant skin clearance at Week 12.

The company submitted a Biologics License Application (BLA) for secukinumab to the FDA in October 2013 and the FDA action date is expected in early 2015.

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Novartis' plaque psoriasis drug candidate AIN457 gets FDA committee recommendation