Can big data make sense of climate change?

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

14-Oct-2014

Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline

New Rochelle, October 14, 2014 Big Data analytics are helping to provide answers to many complex problems in science and society, but they have not contributed to a better understanding climate science, despite an abundance of climate data. When it comes to analyzing the climate system, Big Data methods alone are not enough and sound scientific theory must guide data modeling techniques and results interpretation, according to an insightful article in Big Data, the highly innovative, peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Big Data website.

In "A Big Data Guide to Understanding Climate Change: The Case for Theory-Guided Data Science," James Faghmous, PhD and Vipin Kumar, PhD, The University of Minnesota--Twin Cities, explore the challenges and opportunities for mining large climate datasets and the subtle differences that are needed compared to traditional Big Data methods if accurate conclusions are to be drawn. The authors discuss the importance of combining scientific theory and First Principles with Big Data analytics and use examples from existing research to illustrate their novel approach.

"This paper is a great example of leveraging the abundance of climate data with powerful analytical methods, scientific theory, and solid data engineering to explain and predict important climate change phenomena," says Big Data Editor-in-Chief Vasant Dhar, Co-Director, Center for Business Analytics, Stern School of Business, New York University.

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About the Journal

Big Data , published quarterly in print and online, facilitates and supports the efforts of researchers, analysts, statisticians, business leaders, and policymakers to improve operations, profitability, and communications within their organizations. Spanning a broad array of disciplines focusing on novel big data technologies, policies, and innovations, the Journal brings together the community to address the challenges and discover new breakthroughs and trends living within this information. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Big Data website.

About the Publisher

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Can big data make sense of climate change?

Current models for predicting outcomes after mild traumatic brain injury perform poorly

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

14-Oct-2014

Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline

New Rochelle, NY, October 14, 2014For the 5-15% of patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) who will have lingering physical, behavioral, or cognitive problems 3 to 6 months after their injury, identification of this at-risk population is essential for early intervention. Existing models used to predict poor outcomes after mTBI are unsatisfactory, according to a new study, and new, more relevant predictive factors are different than those used in cases of moderate or severe TBI, as described in the study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/neu.2014.3384 until November 14, 2014.

Hester F. Lingsma and a multidisciplinary, international team of authors evaluated two existing prognostic models for mTBI in patients selected from the TRACK-TBI Pilot observational study carried out at three medical centers in the U.S. Both models performed poorly. Based on further analysis, the authors identified older age, pre-existing psychiatric conditions, and less education as the three strongest predictors of poor outcomes, as they report in the article "Outcome Prediction after Mild and Complicated Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: External Validation of Existing Models and Identification of New Predictors Using the TRACK-TBI Pilot Study."

John T. Povlishock, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Neurotrauma and Professor, Medical College of Virginia Campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, notes that, "this is an extremely important study utilizing the TRACK-TBI database. This meticulously performed investigation highlights the dangers in assessing outcome following mTBI, emphasizing that other comorbid factors such as older age, preexisting psychiatric disorders, and less education, perhaps a function of socioeconomic status, can negatively impact outcome. This important communication should be considered routinely as we move forward in our assessments of outcomes following mTBI, whether or not these outcomes are framed in the context of advanced imaging, biomarker evaluation, and/or other metabolic/functional screens."

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About the Journal

Journal of Neurotrauma is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published 24 times per year in print and online that focuses on the latest advances in the clinical and laboratory investigation of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury. Emphasis is on the basic pathobiology of injury to the nervous system, and the papers and reviews evaluate preclinical and clinical trials targeted at improving the early management and long-term care and recovery of patients with traumatic brain injury. Journal of Neurotrauma is the official journal of the National Neurotrauma Society and the International Neurotrauma Society. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://www.liebertpub.com/neu.

About the Publisher

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Current models for predicting outcomes after mild traumatic brain injury perform poorly

Dr. Kourosh Maddahi Begins International Press Tour for Bestselling Book "Anti-Aging Dentistry – Restoring Youth One …

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- Beverly Hills Dentist and Amazon Bestselling Author Answers London's Calling for a New Approach to Age Reversal

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --Leading Beverly Hills celebrity cosmetic dentist Dr. Kourosh Maddahi embarks on an international press tour to promote his recent Amazon bestseller "Anti-Aging Dentistry Restoring Youth One Smile at a Time." The acclaimed dentist, who pioneered a new standard in anti-aging medicine using strategic dental shaping, placement and coloring, will begin his tour in London, where he will take media appointments from October 17 through October 20.

Unlike traditional approaches to age-reversal, which may include Botox, facial fillers, and invasive surgical procedures, Dr. Maddahi's book reveals an entirely fresh approach to treating facial sagging, wrinkles, and hollowing via anti-aging dentistry. In addition, "Anti-Aging Dentistry - Restoring Youth One Smile at a Time" also discusses the dentist's many celebrity patients, as well as surprising information on how bad dental habits contribute to premature aging.

"I cannot express how thrilled I am to be bringing my methods for anti-aging dentistry overseas," says Dr. Maddahi. "I have many patients who travel to my office from all around the globe and it is a pleasure to finally engage with them on their home turf."

Currently, Dr. Maddahi's "Anti-Aging Dentistry-Restoring Youth One Smile at a Time" has found itself atop nine Amazon bestseller lists, which include the medical, health, as well as beauty and fashion selections.

"The positive response to my book has been truly overwhelming and humbling," says Dr. Maddahi. "Already, I have had the pleasure of discussing my methods further with so many outstanding media outlets; it is such a pleasure to continue this discourse in the UK."

Since the book's release, Dr. Maddahi has been featured by several prominent US television programs and media publications, such as CBS' Good Day Sacramento, AARP Online, CBS Tampa Bay, and Great Day San Antonio. Now, beginning in London, the esteemed dentist hopes to relay even more tips and insights into maintaining a youthful appearance through his breakthrough dental practices.

"Anti-Aging Dentistry -Restoring Youth One Smile At A Time" is available at Barnes and Noble, iTunes and on Amazon. For more information or to book an appointment with Dr. Maddahi, please visit http://www.drmaddahi.com/.

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Dr. Kourosh Maddahi Begins International Press Tour for Bestselling Book "Anti-Aging Dentistry - Restoring Youth One ...

MIT Students Bash Mars Colonization Plan

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The Mars One Foundation's plan to send colonists to Mars in 2024 is judged unrealistic.

The Mars One Foundation's ambitious plan to send colonists to Mars in 2024 is an unrealistic goal given current technology levels, according to a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate engineering students.

Most troubling for the tens of thousands of would-be Mars colonists who've applied with the foundation, lead author Sydney Do wrote that growing crops in a Mars habitat would quickly "produce unsafe oxygen levels."

Do, along with colleagues Koki Ho, Samuel Schreiner, Andrew Owens, and Olivier de Weck, published an assessment of the Mars One program's timetable and likelihood of success, presenting the paper at the 65th International Astronautical Congress in Toronto.

The Mars One Foundation, a non-profit based in the Netherlands, held an open casting call for would-be Mars colonists last summer, with the idea of forming a 40-candidate group that would begin training in 2015 for a series of colonizing missions launching in about a decade. More than 100,000 people from around the globe applied, according to the foundation, including 30,000 Americans.

Mars One founder and CEO Bas Lansdorp claimed last year that it would cost in the neighborhood of $6 billion to send the first four-person crew to Mars, with additional colonists sent later.

The good news for Mars One is that Do and his colleagues think that first mission could be done for even cheaper.

"The space logistics analysis revealed that, for the best scenario considered, establishing the first crew fora Mars settlement will require approximately 15 Falcon Heavy launchers and require $4.5 billion in funding," the MIT students wrote.

Unfortunately, that's about the only positive about the Mars One program in the researchers' paper, titled "An Independent Assessment of the Technical Feasibility of the Mars One Mission Plan."

Do and his colleagues figure the cost of maintaining the Mars colony while adding additional colonists would grow and grow, perhaps prohibitively. Though the colonists would presumably try to utilize Martian materials as much as possible, the graduate students estimated that only 8 percent of the colony's needs would be met by in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).

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MIT Students Bash Mars Colonization Plan

The explosive beauty of a dying star

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A beautiful image captured by the Hubble telescope shows in glorious detail the contours of the Butterfly Nebula.

NASA/ESA/Hubble SM4 ERO Team

There's an ancient belief that, just before it dies, the mute swan bursts into beautiful song, going out in a blaze of glory. While stars don't exactly make audible sounds, their death throes can be a spectacular thing.

Take this image of the Butterfly, or Bug, Nebula, NG 6302, located 3,800 light years away in the constellation of Scorpius, originally captured by the Hubble space telescope in 2009. It is a type of nebula called a bipolar nebula, for its shape: two wings that that spread out from a central core -- a dying star.

As a star enters the final stages of its life, finally running out of nuclear fuel, it sheds its outer layers into space, forming a cloud of matter around the star, which becomes very dense, very hot and very bright -- a white dwarf. This lights up the surrounding nebula in all its glory.

The white dwarf at the centre of NG 6302 is one of the hottest stars in the Milky Way galaxy, burning at around 222,000 degrees Celsius (400,000 degrees Fahrenheit), indicating that it was once massive -- five times the mass of our Sun.

This star shed its layers over a period of about 2,200 years, and has a "wingspan" of over three light years. Wrapped around the star, you can see a torus -- a donut-shape -- of dust, obscuring it, and cinching the "waist" of the hourglass. This ring of dust constricts the outward expansion of the nebula, giving it its shape.

The colours and shapes in the nebula's wings reveal its complex history. As it evolved into a red giant, with a diameter 1,000 times that of the Sun, the star started shedding its outer layers. At its equator, matter was ejected at a relatively low speed of around 32,000 kph (20,000 mph), while matter from the stars poles was ejected at a much higher speed; this formed the original dust torus and wings of the nebula.

As the star started to turn into a white dwarf, heating up drastically, the stellar wind blasted particles at a speed of around 3.2 million kph (2 million mph), further altering the shape and composition of the wings.

The red regions in the image indicate the presence of nitrogen, the coolest gas visible in the image. White regions indicate light emitted by sulphur, where the fast-moving gas and particles from later in the star's death cycle overtook and collided with the slower-moving gas, producing shockwaves. Hydrogen is visible in brown, helium in blue and oxygen in cyan and purple.

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The explosive beauty of a dying star

NATO Reassures Baltics Over Russia Threat: Military alliance can deploy troops in 48 hours – Video

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NATO Reassures Baltics Over Russia Threat: Military alliance can deploy troops in 48 hours
A spokesman for NATO has told the Latvian Information Agency that the military alliance could deploy troops to the Baltic states within 48 hours in the event...

By: UKRAINE TODAY

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NATO Reassures Baltics Over Russia Threat: Military alliance can deploy troops in 48 hours - Video

Report: Russian hackers spied on NATO

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DALLAS, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- A Russian group of hackers exploited a flaw in a computer operating system to spy on NATO and other security targets, a report says.

The Dallas based cybersecurity firm that uncovered the plot, iSight Partners, said a previously undiscovered flaw in Microsoft's Windows system allowed sensitive documents pertaining to the NATO summit held in Wales in September to be targeted.

ISight dubbed the hacking group the Sandworm Team, the Washington Post reported. It was presumably working for the Russian government and has been active since at least 2009, the report said, adding that a Polish energy firm, the Ukrainian government's computers and at least one nation in Western Europe were also targeted.

The flaw, known as zero-day for the amount of time programmers are aware of it, likely allowed hackers to find e-mails, Power Point presentations and encryption keys in computers considered secure.

Although policy statements were released after the NATO summit, much of the planning occurred in secret. The agenda included preparing a unified response to Russia's influence in Crimea and Ukraine, and plans for confronting the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

U.S. President Barack Obama attended the meeting, as did Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and high-level military and civilian leaders from each NATO country.

2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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NSA Whistleblower Reveals Who Could Be Behind The Ebola Outbreak – Video

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NSA Whistleblower Reveals Who Could Be Behind The Ebola Outbreak
Paul Joseph Watson talks with NSA whistleblower Wayne Madsen on the Alex Jones Show about the current Ebola outbreak and about ISIS. http://www.infowars.com/85-of-nurses-not-trained-for-ebola/.

By: TheAlexJonesChannel

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NSA Whistleblower Reveals Who Could Be Behind The Ebola Outbreak - Video

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NSA Sentry Eagle placed spies in private companies

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Top 5 reasons to deploy VMware with Tegile

The National Security Agency (NSA) has since 2004 sent spies into private companies in a bid to compromise networks from within, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

Agents sent in by the NSA targeted global communications firms under a highly classified 'core secrets' program dubbed Sentry Eagle previously known only to a handful of officials.

The documents published by Snowden mouthpiece The Intercept indicate operatives in the core secrets program worked in concert with companies to weaken encryption and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to break security mechanisms.

Draft documents published online detailing Sentry Eagle explain that the program used the "full capabilities" of signals intelligence (SIGINT), computer exploitation, defence and network warfare to ensure the protection of US cyberspace.

The document listed facts ranging from unclassified to top secret necessitating "extraordinary protection", and demonstrated the chasm between unclassified information the NSA saw fit for public consumption and that appearing at times too sensitive for the eyes of allies.

Programs in the latter camp include an effort dubbed Raven which, according to unclassified information, reveal that the NSA "exploits foreign ciphers", and also worked with US commercial companies to weaken encryption systems.

Publication of the "facts relating to NSA personnel (under cover), operational meetings, specific operations, specific technologies, specific locations and covert communications related to SIGINT" were all banned under these efforts.

A sentry program called Owl proved the NSA worked with US and foreign commercial companies and "partners" to make their products exploitable for SIGINT; Hawk detailed network exploitation; Raven on cracking encryption; Condor on network attacks; Falcon on defense, and Osprey on intelligence agency cooperation.

The documents revealed field agents working under the Osprey program for target exploitation (TAREX) alongside the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon. These personnel dabbled in clandestine 'off net' operations, intercepting and compromising a targets' assets through the supply chain.

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NSA Sentry Eagle placed spies in private companies

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Debate: Does Mass Phone Data Collection Violate The 4th Amendment?

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John Yoo, a former lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, argues that the NSA's phone records surveillance program is constitutional. Jeff Fusco /Intelligence Squared U.S. hide caption

John Yoo, a former lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, argues that the NSA's phone records surveillance program is constitutional.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."

Legal scholars and courts have been wrangling for more than a year over whether the National Security Agency's collection of millions of Americans' phone records a program first disclosed to the public by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 violates those protections. Some legal experts disagree over whether the record collection even qualifies as a search or seizure, and, if it does, whether collecting those records is "unreasonable" or requires a warrant.

In a recent Intelligence Squared U.S. debate, two teams of constitutional law experts faced off on the motion "Mass Collection of U.S. Phone Records Violates The Fourth Amendment." In these Oxford-style debates, the team that sways the most people to its side by the end is the winner.

Before the debate, the audience at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia voted 46 percent in favor of the motion and 17 percent against, with 37 percent undecided. After the debate, 66 percent agreed with the motion and 28 percent were opposed. That made the team arguing in favor of the motion the winner of the debate.

Those debating:

FOR THE MOTION

The Constitutional Accountability Center's Elizabeth Wydra, with teammate Alex Abdo of the ACLU, argues that collecting data that can reveal "deeply private information" without suspicion of wrongdoing violates the Fourth Amendment. Jeff Fusco/Intelligence Squared U.S. hide caption

The Constitutional Accountability Center's Elizabeth Wydra, with teammate Alex Abdo of the ACLU, argues that collecting data that can reveal "deeply private information" without suspicion of wrongdoing violates the Fourth Amendment.

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Debate: Does Mass Phone Data Collection Violate The 4th Amendment?