Astronomy data bounty spurs debate over access

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Smaller telescopes will be needed to investigate events spotted by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.

Now under construction atop a mountain in northern Chile, the 8.36-metre Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will sweep the entire southern sky every three nights when it starts operating in 2022 creating a wealth of data that will be available to all US astronomers and dozens of international partners. It promises to be a democratizing force and to usher in a new era of survey astronomy.

But that promise could go unrealized without the proper infrastructure, astronomers warn. Without access to the tools and facilities needed to analyse the huge data set and to do follow-up observations, many astronomers could be locked out of the bounty. Especially vulnerable are researchers and students at small and minority-serving institutions, which often find it hard to secure telescope time.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF), which is footing the telescopes US$473-million construction bill, has commissioned a National Research Council (NRC) panel to formulate a strategy that maximizes the scientific return of the LSST. It is a complicated problem, says the panels chair, Debra Elmegreen. To help it decide, the panel has asked astronomers to provide input by 6October on how they intend to use the LSST and what support they would need to be able to do so. The panels report is due early next year.

A big part of the facilitys appeal is that it will detect unexpected events such as supernovae or stars being swallowed by black holes but exploring details such as their composition and temperature will require access to other ground-based telescopes. Large US research universities typically have private access to such telescopes, but small ones tend to rely on public instruments, which are under threat from budget cuts. In 2012, a panel recommended that the NSF divest itself of several facilities, which would halve the number of nights open to visiting observers. The agency plans to follow the recommendation, but has been delayed by a budget stalemate in the US Congress.

Another common concern is that analysing big data sets requires correspondingly large computing resources. The LSST will collect so much data (30 terabytes per night) that few small institutions will have the capability to analyse the information directly. Youre not going to copy the whole LSST data set, says Joshua Pepper, an astronomer at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Even a subset is beyond the range of a professor and an office desktop.

One solution is to create an online portal that would let astronomers mine the database remotely. There is a smaller-scale precedent: the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which uses a 2.5-metre telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. Its portal enables anyone to view and filter the telescopes output; as a result, the data have been used in more than 5,800 publications that have been cited 245,000 times.

LSST director Steven Kahn notes that there have always been plans for an online portal. But the flow of data will be so massive that even basic processing is an enormous job, says Keivan Stassun, an astronomer with joint appointments at Vanderbilt University and Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee, who chairs the SDSS executive committee. The LSST will collect more data in three nights than the entire SDSS catalogue, so Stassun worries that despite its best intentions, the LSST could find itself lacking resources. Thats not a criticism of LSST; its a statement of capacity, he says.

The make-up of the NRC panel has also raised eyebrows. The only member from a small institution is Elmegreen, an astronomer at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Because the panels main remit is to maximize the LSSTs scientific return, she considers its primary mission to be ensuring wide availability of data. Im a little bit conflicted, she says, because Id like to make sure that everyone has access to telescopes. But the big push today is to make sure that people have access to data.

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Astronomy data bounty spurs debate over access

Philosophers, Knowledge and Children’s TV programmes By Dom Davis – Video

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Philosophers, Knowledge and Children #39;s TV programmes By Dom Davis
Norfolk Developers 2nd September 2014 Philosophers, Knowledge and Children #39;s Television Programs Dom Davis (@idomdavis) The problem with AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is that it #39;s meaning...

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IPsoft has taken the wraps off an artificial intelligence system Amelia thats already smart enough to join and empower the average workforce and get colleagues quickly updating their resumes and paying for the premium tier of LinkedIn membership.

Amelias creators, IPsoft, claim that although she can partner with human co-workers to achieve new levels of productivity and service quality, she can also be up and running and doing her job in a fraction of the time it would take to train a person.

Amelia will allow people to indulge in more creative forms of expression, as opposed to doing routine business process tasks. This platform will free us from the mundane, disrupting industries in the way that machines have previously transformed manufacturing and agriculture. Were going to have to rethink work by redefining existing roles and identifying new ones, said Chetan Dube, Chief Executive Officer, IPsoft.

This is a bold and very optimistic claim, but IPsoft has been developing the artificial intelligence behind Amelia (named in honor of Amelia Earhart) for 15 years. The result isnt simply a clever software trick that can mimic human behavior and therefore something that can be employed for completing a menial, repetitive, unvarying task, but something that can think like a human and build knowledge maps as its understanding grows.

When investigating smart solutions, we must first analyze what it means to be intelligent. Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. If a system claims to be intelligent, it must be able to read and understand documents, and answer questions on the basis of that. It must be able to understand processes that it observes. It must be able to solve problems based on the knowledge it has acquired. And when it cannot solve a problem, it must be capable of learning the solution through noticing how a human did it. Amelia is that mensa kid, who personifies a major breakthrough in cognitive technologies, said Dube.

So, Amelia absorbs new information in the same way as a person and understands natural language and context meaning that shed fit right in at a call center for example. In fact, IPsoft sees her being a star employee within financial trading, procurement processing or manning a tech help desk. -afprelaxnews

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Global Trends in Aerospace Components and Five Axes Machines Required to Meet the Increasing Demand – Video

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Global Trends in Aerospace Components and Five Axes Machines Required to Meet the Increasing Demand
This presentation is vital to understand the current global trends in aerospace component types and how OEMs look to potential suppliers for supply chain sup...

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GMO labeling measure in Colorado triggers heated debate

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Farmer Paul Schlagel tills acres of sugar beets in Longmont last week. Schlagel uses GMOs and is against the labeling measure. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

With the Nov. 4 ballot measure, Colorado is at the forefront of a fierce food fight raging across the nation: whether or not to label foods made with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, so consumers can easily see if the food they buy is a product of genetic engineering.

Similar ballot initiatives failed in California and Washington in the past two years.

This spring, Vermont became the first state to approve GMO labeling. But then a group of national organizations led by the Grocery Manufacturers Association filed a lawsuit in federal court that challenges the new law. This could be the first of many lawsuits to block mandatory GMO labeling, experts say, and now Colorado jumps into the high-stakes debate.

"It will be a hot issue for quite a while in this state," said Katie Abrams, an assistant professor at Colorado State University who researches consumer understanding of food labels. "And it's going on in more places than just Colorado."

GMO labeling will also be on the ballot in Oregon, and this year about 35 similar bills were introduced in 20 states.

If the measure passes in Colorado, by 2016 packaged or raw foods made with GMOs that are sold in retail outlets must be labeled with the phrase "produced with genetic engineering." Exemptions include processed food intended for immediate human consumption, like at restaurants and delis.

Most processed food sold in America today, from beverages to baby food, include GMO ingredients such as corn syrup, corn oil, soy meal and sugar.

More than 90 percent of Americans believe the federal government should require GMO labels, according to an ABC News poll.

Chef/owner Bradford Heap tastes a dish at Salt Bistro in Boulder. Heap has eliminated GMO foods at his two restaurants. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

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GMO labeling measure in Colorado triggers heated debate