County health officials cancel advisory at two local beaches – Palm Beach Post

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The county department of health has canceled a health advisory at two beaches after sampling showed bacterial levels in the water were in the good range, a spokesman said.

The advisories were lifted at Ocean Inlet Park Beach and Sandoway Park Beach in Delray Beach.

Causes of the elevated level that prompted the advisory are unknown but are generally associated with wildlife, heavy recreational usage, high surf from high winds and high tides or runoff following heavy rain, according to county health officials.

Beach water is monitored at 13 locations from Boca Raton to Jupiter for enterococcus, a bacteria present in the intestinal tract of warm-blooded animals, including humans, and that have been found to indicate the presence of other bacteria that can make you sick. Exposure to enterococcus can lead to stomach upset and wound infections in people.

Samples taken by the health department are laboratory tested for concentrations of the bacteria and a value assigned to indicate poor, moderate or good ranges.

Health officials advise rinsing with fresh water after swimming in any natural body of water.

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County health officials cancel advisory at two local beaches - Palm Beach Post

Venter discusses genetic engineering, human longevity – The Daily Princetonian

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In a quote written on a chalkboard in the Caltech archives, Richard Feynman said, What I cannot create, I do not understand.

This quote is the root of inspiration for geneticist J. Craig Venters research and scientific mission. Genomics is at an exciting stage today where what we understand about the genome can be applied directly to human health, Venter said in a lecture titled From Synthetic Life to Human Longevity on Wednesday.

Venter explained that there was no point in increasing lifespan alone, but the challenge was to increase an individuals healthspan. He stated that 40 percent of men and 24 percent of women between the ages of 50-74 in the United States do not reach the age of 74. A third of this population dies of cardiovascular disease and another third of cancer, leaving all other causes of death to just a third of the overall percentage, he said.

Venter, co-founder of Human Longevity, Inc., said that his goal was to change medicines approach to being proactive, predictive, personalized, and preventative by using whole genome sequencing and cutting-edge imaging and measurement technology. Early detection is literally lifesaving, he said, explaining that over 40 percent of people who entered his lab thinking they were healthy turned out not to be.

He said that his own genome showed an increased risk for prostate cancer, which he corroborated with a measure of his testosterone levels. While men with over 22 triplet repeats of a certain sequence on their X chromosome have very low incidences of prostate cancer, Venter said he only had six, which placed him on the extremely low end of the spectrum. He said that based on his genome sequence and testosterone readings, he underwent a prostatectomy a few months ago.

Early prediction of diseases like Alzheimers, which can be predicted 20 years in advance of the first symptoms by using whole-genome sequencing and neuro-quant data, can be prevented with the right drugs, Venter noted. He added that the same could be done with cancer tumors, and there was the potential to move to entirely preventative cancer vaccines, something that already exists for some forms of the disease.

Venter said that genotype could predict not only disease but also other phenotypes. His Face Project uses machine learning to reconstruct a three-dimensional human face from the genome alone, he noted. Venter also said that recordings of a voice could be used to predict the speakers age, sex, and height.

All of this information comes from about 40,000 genome sequences that has produced over 20 petabytes of data, Venter explained. He added that the sequencing of one million human genomes could produce one quintillion bytes of data, an amount that nobody in the world knows how to handle, yet the government could not be convinced that genomics was a big data problem. Sequencing the first human genome, a project whose private arm was spearheaded by Venter, took over nine years, cost more than a billion dollars, and, in 1999, had the third largest computer in the world built solely for that purpose, he explained.

Venters other major project was the synthesis of a living organism from scratch, which he and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute accomplished in 2008 by converting digital binary bits into an organism that could live on its own.

The day we announced this, both the President and the Pope released statements, with the President calling for this to be the number one priority of the bioethics committee, and the Pope reassuring people that we had not actually created life, but just changed one of lifes motors, he said.

Venters team also discovered that the genome could be modularized so that entire sets of genes could be classified as metabolism, for example, and inserted into the genome. He said that to distinguish this synthetic life from existing organisms, into the genome of the organism was coded the names of the forty scientists that worked on the project, and quotations from James Joyce, Robert Oppenheimer, and Feynman.

Venter explained that despite having created an entirely new organism, scientists still do not understand the functions of a third of the genes, only that they appear throughout the biological tree and are necessary for the organisms survival.

Like any good science, we found out how little we know rather than how much we know, Venter said.

The event, part of the Princeton Public Lectures Vanuxem Lecture Series, was attended by members of the community in addition to Princeton students and faculty. The lecture took place in McCosh 50 at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

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A new tool for genetically engineering the oldest branch of life – Phys.Org

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March 8, 2017 G. William Arends Professor of Microbiology and theme leader of the IGB's Mining Microbial Genomes theme Bill Metcalf, left, with IGB Fellow Dipti Nayak. Credit: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

A new study by G. William Arends Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois Bill Metcalf with postdoctoral Fellow Dipti Nayak has documented the use of CRISPR-Cas9 mediated genome editing in the third domain of life, Archaea, for the first time. Their groundbreaking work, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has the potential to vastly accelerate future studies of these organisms, with implications for research including global climate change. Metcalf and Nayak are members of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.

"Under most circumstances our model archaeon, Methanosarcina acetivorans, has a doubling time of eight to ten hours, as compared to E. coli, which can double in about 30 minutes. What that means is that doing genetics, getting a mutant, can take monthsthe same thing would take three days in E. coli," explains Nayak. "What CRISPR-Cas9 enables us to do, at a very basic level, is speed up the whole process. It removes a major bottleneck... in doing genetics research with this archaeon.

"Even more," continues Nayak, "with our previous techniques, mutations had to be introduced one step at a time. Using this new technology, we can introduce multiple mutations at the same time. We can scale up the process of mutant generation exponentially with CRISPR."

CRISPR, short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, began as an immune defense system in archaea and bacteria. By identifying and storing short fragments of foreign DNA, Cas (CRISPR-associated system) proteins are able to quickly identify that DNA in the future, so that it can then quickly be destroyed, protecting the organism from viral invasion.

Since its discovery, a version of this immune systemCRISPR-Cas9has been modified to edit genomes in the lab. By pairing Cas9 with a specifically engineered RNA guide rather than a fragment of invasive DNA, the CRISPR system can be directed to cut a cell's genome in an arbitrary location such that existing genes can be removed or new ones added. This system has been prolifically useful in editing eukaryotic systems from yeast, to plant, to fish and even human cells, earning it the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2015 Breakthrough of the Year award. However, its implementation in prokaryotic species has been met with hurdles, due in part to their different cellular processes.

To use CRISPR in a cellular system, researchers have to develop a protocol that takes into account a cell's preferred mechanism of DNA repair: after CRISPR's "molecular scissors" cut the chromosome, the cell's repair system steps in to mend the damage through a mechanism that can be harnessed to remove or add additional genetic material. In eukaryotic cells, this takes the form of Non-Homologous End Joining (NHEJ). Though this pathway has been used for CRISPR-mediated editing, it has the tendency to introduce genetic errors during its repair process: nucleotides, the rungs of the DNA ladder, are often added or deleted at the cut site.

NHEJ is very uncommon in prokaryotes, including Archaea; instead, their DNA is more often repaired through a process known as homology-directed repair. By comparing the damage to a DNA template, homology-directed repair creates what Nayak calls a "deterministic template"the end result can be predicted in advance and tailored to the exact needs of the researcher.

In many ways, homology-directed repair is actually preferable for genome editing: "As much as we want CRISPR-Cas9 to make directed edits in eukaryotic systems, we often end up with things that we don't want, because of NHEJ," explains Nayak. "In this regard, it was a good thing that most archaeal strains don't have a non-homologous end joining repair system, so the only way DNA can be repaired is through this deterministic homologous repair route."

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, one of Nayak and Metcalf's first uses of CRISPR-Cas9 was to introduce an NHEJ mechanism in Methanosarcina acetivorans. Though generally not preferable for genome editing, says Nayak, NHEJ has one use for which it's superior to homologous repair: "If you just want to delete a gene, if you don't care how ... non-homologous end joining is actually more efficient."

By using the introduced NHEJ repair system to perform what are known as "knock-out" studies, wherein a single gene is removed or silenced to see what changes are produced and what processes that gene might affect, Nayak says that future research will be able to assemble a genetic atlas of M. acetivorans and other archaeal species. Such an atlas would be incredibly useful for a variety of fields of research involving Archaea, including an area of particular interest to the Metcalf lab, climate change.

"Methanosarcina acetivorans is the one of the most genetically tractable archaeal strains," says Nayak. "[Methanogens are] a class of archaea that produce gigatons of this potent greenhouse gas every year, play a keystone role in the global carbon cycle, and therefore contribute significantly to global climate change." By studying the genetics of this and similar organisms, Nayak and Metcalf hope to gain not only a deeper understanding of archaeal genetics, but of their role in broader environmental processes.

In all, this research represents an exciting new direction in studying and manipulating archaea. "We began this research to determine if the use of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in archaea was even possible," concludes Nayak. "What we've discovered is that it's not only possible, but it works remarkably well, even as compared to eukaryotic systems."

Explore further: Modifying fat content in soybean oil with the molecular scissors Cpf1

More information: Dipti D. Nayak et al, Cas9-mediated genome editing in the methanogenic archaeon, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618596114

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More people are driving on Hatteras beaches while record number … – Virginian-Pilot

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MANTEO, N.C.

Beach-driving rule changes that opened more of the Hatteras Island seashore for more days and longer hours helped spur an increase in permits to 36,000 last year.

The changes included smaller buffer zones around nesting areas, extending the beach-driving season by a month, and adding access ramps.

At the same time that more people motored onthe sand, officials last year counted a record 325 sea turtle nests.

The number of successful piping plover nestshas risen and fallen over the years. Recently, an average offewer than one bird per nest has survived to adulthood. One of the major reasons is predators and not beach driving, said Dave Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore since 2014.

The buffers are adequate to protect the species, he said.

People who rumble over the dunes to the oceanfront for its world-class surf fishing praise the changes and credit Hallac, said Bill Smith, president of the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association. Sixty-seven miles of Outer Banks beaches are part of the National Park Service.

The relationship between beach-driving advocates and park officials may be as good as they have ever been, Smith said.

Everybody is feeling a whole lot better, he said. Hallac has a difficult job balancing things between us and environmentalists.

Environmentalists and groups supporting vehicle access to the beaches clashed for years. Access became more restrictive. Beach-driving groups used the courts and lobbying to winchanges.

Environmental advocates laud the parks efforts to promote pedestrian access, said Geoff Gisler, attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. The group has concerns about reduced nest buffers and greater vehicle access in some popular nesting areas, he said.

We are watching for the effects, he said.

A 2014 federal mandate to ease driving restrictions and provide more access prompted the seashore to hold public hearings and conduct two environmental studies. Some changes came the next year while others followed. A document called the Final Rule was set in place Jan. 20. Hallac reported on the revisions to the Dare County Board of Commissioners on Monday.

We cant manage these areas without the communities and input from users, Hallac said in an interview Wednesday. These are the peoples parks.

Among the changes:

The National Park Servicebegan requiring beach-driving permits in 2012. The first year, 27,154 permits were sold. Sales rose last year to 36,432, the most yet. A short-term permit is $50 and a year-long permit is $120. Permits are available at park offices or online.

We expect a lot more people to get out and fish this summer, Smithsaid. These were big changes.

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Bang for your buck: Spring break beach showdown | Fox News – Fox News

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As families and friends search the Internet for last minute vacation deals, its an all an out showdown for the best beach resorts this spring.

Duking it out for the top spots on many U.S. travelers' lists are the ever-popular Florida and the soft sands of the Caribbean.

By comparing the overallprice, evaluating different beaches, resorts and assessing the family friendliness of these popular destinations, we discover which destination is truly worth it for a spring break you won't soon forget.

FLORIDA

First up, we take a look at the best of the best in the Sunshine State. The sun soaked beaches, crystal blue waters-- and a little help from Disney-- have made this state one of the largest tourist attractions in the U.S.. Just last year, Florida welcomed a record 112.8 million tourists.

The pros for Florida include the typically balmy temperatures, usually hovering in the low 80s, cheap flights from most major U.S. hubs, and the mere fact that you dont need to pull out your passport are all major plusses.

Orlando may be the world's theme park capital, but when tourists just want to relax, many head to what they call the heart of the golden coast, also known as Pompano Beach. The low-key area is centrally located between Palm Beach and Miami and was named TripAdvisors top travel destination on the rise. Its a popular fishing spot the coral reefs offer some of Florida's best diving.

Sitting directly on the beach, theFort Lauderdale Marriott Pompano Beach Resort & Spais a relaxing place to stay with gorgeous views of the of the Atlantic. Enjoy a massage at the resort spa, eat a meal at one of several on-site restaurants, and you can insome shopping and entertainment. Rates start in April at just $261 per night.

Families who want the sun of Miami-- but not necessarily all of the adult fun-- can take advantage of the reasonable flights and stay just outside the bustle of the cityat Turnberry Isle Miami.Play a round of golf, get a facial and let the kids enjoy the 35-foot waterslide, lazy river and toddler pool. A Family Fun package-- which includes activities like golfing for kids-- starts at just $399 per night.

Escape the usual spring break crowds and visit Amelia Island located on the Northeast coast of Florida. The southern most barrier island boasts 13miles of beautiful sandy beaches with golf courses and nature walks. The Omni Amelia Island Plantationis a great choice for families with its splash park and a 10,000 square foot family friendly pool. There is also a nature preserve center at the hotel that offers classes on turtle nesting and shark tooth hunting. The price isnt too bad, either, with rooms starting at just $259 a night.

CARRIBEAN

Next up, it's the Caribbean. This part of the world is famous for its iconic turquoise waters and pale white stretches of sand, making for some of the most premium beach spots in the world. The Caribbean consists of thousands of islands, so possibilities are basically endless when it comes to tourism. There are also a myriad of price ranges.

The pros include the rainforests, plentiful diverse cultures and beautiful beaches. The typical temperature hovers around 85 degrees and most islands are a short flight from the U.S.

If you want a relatively hassle free Caribbean vacation, head to Puerto Rico. The U.S. territory is rich in history, has great beaches and lacks the hassle of international customs and passports.

If you want to be checked in and get on the beach within an hour of landing, consider theSan Juan Marriott Resort and Stellaris Casino. This family friendly resort is located right in the very chic Candado Beach area. It boasts newly renovated rooms, offers two pools with a waterslide, plus plenty of activities for children. The on site restaurants can be pricey but explore the food scene just outside the resort for lower priced meal options. Mofongo is a can't-miss native treat. Rates start at $330 per night.

The Cayman Islandsis known as the playground for billionaires with its upscale beach resorts but you actually dont have to be loaded to vacation at this elite spot.

TheComfort Suites Seven Miles Beachrecently underwent a million dollar renovation and is bringing affordability to the Caymans. The hotel offers access to the famous 7 Mile beach and has studios and two bedroom suites with free Wi-Fi and breakfast. Prices start at just $215 per night.

Want to spend a little money? Upgrade to the The Westin Grand Cayman Seven Mile Beach Resort & Spawhich is fully equipped with a swim up bar and each room has granite bathrooms and very comfortable beds.

The Bahamas are always a tourist favorite because of the gorgeous waters and close proximity to the States. Just take a ferry or a twenty minute seaplane ride 50 miles south of Miami to Bimini. Bimini consists of two small islands in the Bahamas and is known as one of Ernest Hemingways favorite getaways.The Resorts World Bimini Bahamasby Hilton was just recently featured on ABCs "The Bachelor." The property sits on five miles of white sand beaches, sports multiple infinity pools and a world class spa, marina and casino. They offer lots of different packages with rates starting at $482 per night.

All inclusive resorts are an easy way for many families to vacation and there are plenty of them in the Caribbean. If you have that kid who is just too restless to lay around on a beach all day then try Nickelodeon's Hotel and Resorts in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.Kids will love the waterpark and green slime and the adults can relax in the swim up suites and lazy river. Lowest all inclusive rates are $159 nightly (per person) and kids under thirteen are free.

Carey Reilly is a lifestyle blogger, TV host, comedian and lover of cocktails. She is the editor of http://www.notsoskinnymom.com.Follow her on Twitter @careycomic and Instagram @careyreilly.

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White snowy beaches? There’s a slight chance of that this weekend … – Myrtle Beach Sun News

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White snowy beaches? There's a slight chance of that this weekend ...
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Yes, it might snow this weekend along the Grand Strand. The National Weather Service says while snowfall accumulation is more likely the North Carolina ...

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White snowy beaches? There's a slight chance of that this weekend ... - Myrtle Beach Sun News

Hubble solves the mystery bulge at the center of the Milky Way – Astronomy Magazine

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The Milky Way appears as a relatively flat structure when viewed along its plane in visible light. Gamma-ray emission, however, paints a different picture: two huge structures billowing outward from the galaxys bulge like an enormous hourglass. Named the Fermi Bubbles, these structures are the result of the Milky Ways supermassive black hole gorging itself on interstellar gas in the past. Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers have now determined just when these structured formed.

A team of astronomers led by Rongmon Bordoloi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has used distant quasars to trace the structure and motion of the northern Fermi Bubble, which rises 23,000 light-years above the plane of the Milky Way and contains enough cool gas to create 2 million Sun-size stars. By observing the ultraviolet light from 46 quasars with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) on HST (and adding one quasar observation with HSTs Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph), the team mapped out the motions of cool gas within the bubble to pin down its age: 6 to 9 million years.

Most galaxies contain a supermassive black hole at the center, and our Milky Way is no exception. Sgr A* resides in the Milky Ways bulge and has a mass equivalent to 4.5 million solar masses. Today, Sgr A* is relatively quiet, accreting slowly as the galaxy ages. By contrast, quasars are young, massive supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies in the early universe, sucking down huge amounts of gas and dust that shine brightly as the material is funneled into an accretion disk before finally passing into the black hole. Like these younger black holes, astronomers believe that our own supermassive black hole was once more active, at a time when the galaxy was still forming and material was more plentiful for accretion.

Sometimes, though, material doesnt actually make it all the way into the black hole. Matter can escape along the black holes spin axis, exiting the area and often the galaxy altogether as huge outflows that span tens or hundreds of thousands of light-years. The Milky Ways Fermi Bubbles are such an outflow; they were discovered in 2015 and named after NASAs Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope, which spotted them.

Learning more about the origins of these outflows requires information about their motion. We have traced the outflows of other galaxies, but we have never been able to actually map the motion of the gas, said Bordoloi in a press release announcing his groups results. The work also appeared in the January 10, 2017 edition of The Astrophysical Journal. The only reason we could do it here is because we are inside the Milky Way. This vantage point gives us a front-row seat to map out the kinematic structure of the Milky Way outflow.

As the quasars light travels through the bubble to reach Earth, it highlights the gas in bubble itself, allowing astronomers to determine information such as its chemical composition, temperature, and motion. The cool gas in the northern Fermi Bubble, which contains elements such as silicon and carbon, was clocked at 2 million miles per hour (3 million kph) an reaches temperatures of 17,700 degrees Fahrenheit (9,800 degrees Celsius).

Such cool gas is actually likely gas from the disk of the galaxy that has been swept up by and integrated into the outflow itself, which has temperatures of up to 18 million degrees F (nearly 10 million degrees C). It is these high temperatures that cause the gas to shine in energetic light, such as gamma rays.

Once the gas motion its direction of movement and velocity was measured, astronomers used this data to turn back the clock and pinpoint when the gas started moving. This origin is also the last known big meal enjoyed by Sgr A*, which hasnt managed to suck down such a significant amount of matter ever since.

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Seeing the Treasures of Messier’s List with Mobile Astronomy Apps – Space.com

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The March evening sky features many of the beautiful objects in the Messier List, a catalog of "nuisance objects" compiled by comet hunter Charles Messier in the late 1700s. His first object, M1, is the Crab Nebula, the faint remnant of a star that exploded in a supernova that was visible in daylight in 1054. Your astronomy app can help you find it.

If you spend any time with astronomers, sooner or later, you'll hear them use the phrase "M" something or other such as "M42" or "M31." They are referencing deep-sky objects from a list that was compiled by French astronomer Charles Messier during the 1770s. Messier was a lifelong comet hunter. On clear, moonless evenings, he swept the dark skies over Paris, looking for their telltale fuzzy smudges.

Unfortunately for him, his searches frequently turned up objects that were comet-like in appearance, but altogether different nebulas, star clusters and distant galaxies whose true natures were unknown at the time. To avoid being fooled again by these "nuisances," he recorded their appearance and location, and shared the information with fellow comet chasers.

With help from Messier's contemporaries, the list grew into a veritable treasure trove of celestial treats for amateur astronomers. All of them are observable with backyard telescopes and binoculars under dark skies, and quite a few are visible with unaided eyes. In this edition of Mobile Astronomy, we'll focus on the Messier List and how you can see the objects yourself and learn more about them with the help of your favorite astronomy app. We'll even tell you how to spot all 110 of them in a single night! [Messier 47: Blue Stars Sparkle in Spectacular Deep Space Star Cluster]

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Every year, new comets appear in the sky, and they brighten as their gas and dust are released by the warmth of the sun as they enter the inner solar system from the frigid realm beyond Neptune's orbit. They appear as fuzzy, glowing objects that move across the sky against the distant, fixed stars. Discovering a new comet has always been a prestigious honor, and doing so brings fame and accolades from fellow astronomers not to mention the honor of having one's name immortalized! Canadian astronomer David Levy has discovered almost two dozen comets and continues to search from his home in Arizona. On the other side of the globe, prolific amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Queensland, Australia, has discovered five.

It's becoming harder for amateur astronomers to beat the modern automated comet-hunting telescopes, but that was not so in early days of telescope astronomy. In 1705, Edmond Halley calculated that the bright comet that now bears his name would return around 1758, and the chase was on to be the first person to spot it. Messier was a junior astronomer working at the Marine Observatory at the Hotel de Cluny in Paris. In mid-1757, he began searching for the comet in the areas they were most likely to be the sky. On Jan. 21, 1759, he saw it but he was second to a German amateur astronomer, who had glimpsed it a few weeks beforehand.

Still, Messier was hooked. He continued searching for comets by sweeping the skies on clear, moonless nights. His 4-inch-aperture (100 mm) telescope was only slightly larger than most beginner telescopes in use today. The sky was still largely uncharted then, except for the prominent stars labeled on the published paper atlases. On Aug. 28, 1758, he spotted a possible comet in the constellation Taurus, but it didn't move from night to night. He decided to catalog these uncharted imposters, starting with this first object, which we now know as the Crab Nebula, or Messier 1.

Charles Messier (1730-1817) compiled his catalog of uncharted comet-like "nebulas" between 1758 and 1781. The French Academy of Sciences published the list for the benefit of the comet hunters of the day, but modern amateur astronomers delight in its treasures. The first page of the third edition, showing Messier 1 through 5, is presented on the right.

In 1771, after compiling 45 objects with descriptive notes and coordinates, Messier submitted the list to the French Academy of Sciences, and it was published in 1774. Some objects were contributed by Messier, and the rest were added by his contemporaries Pierre Mchain, Barnabus Oriani and Nicolas Louis de Lacaille. Their final list, published in 1784, contained 103 objects. Between 1947 and 1967, seven more objects were added by astronomers Helen Sawyer Hogg, Owen Gingerich and Kenneth Glyn Jones on the basis that they were mentioned in Messier's notes but that he either forgot them or had planned to add them later.

Virtually every astronomy sky-charting app will include the 110 objects, referring to them collectively as the Messier List or the Messier Catalog. The objects will be designated by their "M-codes" M1 through M110 (or Messier 1 through Messier 110). Amateur astronomers refer to the group as the Messiers. Because they are so famous, most of the objects also have proper names, like the Whirlpool Galaxy, the Pleiades and the Beehive Cluster. They run the gamut of deep-sky objects. Let's take a look at what's inside. [Spectacular Photos of Nebulas in Deep Space]

All but two items in the Messier List are deep-sky objects a label that covers any celestial object outside our solar system that isn't an individual star or small multiple-star system. Broken down by type, the list contains 40 galaxies, 57 star clusters, nine nebulas, the Crab Nebula supernova remnant, a rich patch of Milky Way stars, a double star and a star grouping. It's not clear why Messier chose to include the last two non-deep-sky objects, why he included some that would never have been confused with a comet or why he left out some other great objects. Let's describe what the object types are and where they typically occur in the sky.

A gallery of all 110 deep-sky objects in the Messier List, starting with Messier 1 at upper left. The collection includes a sampling of nearly every type of deep-sky object, including galaxies, nebulas, and star clusters.

To put things into context, the Milky Way is the band of light that stretches across the night sky. It represents the flattened disk of our home galaxy projected onto the sky. Open clusters are irregular knots containing dozens to thousands of stars that populate the spiral arms that form the plane of our galaxy. In the night sky, most of them are located within or near the Milky Way, and some have nebulosity surrounding them. Globular clusters are spherical collections of up to a million very old stars. These ancient clusters orbit our galaxy's core like swarms of bees, so they are generally located away from the Milky Way.

Nebulas are concentrations of gas in our galactic plane. They come in four types. Emission nebulas are composed of ionized hydrogen gas glowing with a pinkish light triggered by radiation from nearby stars. Reflection nebulasDark nebulas are dense clouds of interstellar dust that obscure the stars beyond them they look like a hole in space. And planetary nebulas are the spherical corpses of sun-like stars that have ejected their outer shells. The white dwarf star in their center makes the gases glow. These spectacular objects have dim, planet-like disks, and exhibit a variety of colors and internal structures. They can be found anywhere in the sky, but there are more near the plane of the galaxy where most of the galaxy's stars are.

Distant galaxies are distributed all over the sky, but we cannot observe the ones hidden behind the stars, gas and dust of our own galaxy. As a result, the Messier List galaxies are mainly located away from the plane of the Milky Way. They come in shapes ranging from featureless ellipsoids to flat disks surrounded by well-defined, curving spiral arms. When the galaxy is oriented edge-on to our line of sight (or close to it), all of its light is concentrated into a smaller area of the sky, making it appear brighter. Some galaxies feature dark dust rims that divide them in two. Galaxies that are oriented face-on to Earth are generally much dimmer, but they cover a larger area of sky and are among the most spectacular. [Galactic Evolution: How Galaxies Are Classified by Type (Infographic)]

Messier 1, also called the Crab Nebula, is none of the above. The Crab Nebula, located in the constellation Taurus, is the still-expanding remnant of a massive star that ended its life in a spectacular supernova explosion. The light from the event reached Earth on July 4, 1054, and it was so bright that it could be seen in daylight for many days, and then as a bright nighttime object for several years all chronicled by Chinese astronomers who observed it at the time. By Messier's era, the object would have been much dimmer and would have looked very comet-like. Now, 250 years later, it has dimmed further and is one of the toughest Messiers to see.

For four of the objects M47, M48, M91 and M102 modern astronomers failed to find anything comet-like where Messier indicated. Most of the missing objects have been explained as transcription errors, and the actual objects are located in different areas. Your astronomy app will have the complete corrected set.

Part of the fun of enjoying the Messier objects is sketching and imaging them. At left is Charles Messier's original drawing of the Orion Nebula, Messier 42. On the right is an image taken through a telescope using a DLSR camera by Rick Foster of Markham, Ontario.

On any given evening, at least some of the Messier List objects are observable from mid-northern latitudes. Many of them can be seen with unaided eyes, but magnification aids viewing for all of them. In fact, several of the objects cover too much sky for a telescope's narrow field of view. For these objects, binoculars of any size work best.

Many of the objects are dim, so you'll want to search for them on a moonless night, away from artificial lights. To preserve your eyes' sensitivity to dim light, turn your device's screen brightness to minimum, and enable the red-screen mode in the app. Better still, buy some red film and cut it to cover your device's screen. That way, phone calls or notifications won't pop up with bright white light. Messier 31, also known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is six moon diameters across from our viewpoint on Earth. It's brighter in the center and dims toward the edges. As your eyes adjust to the darkness, you'll see more of it.

When you open the search menu in SkySafari 5, the Messier List objects are included for you. The objects visible in your sky are bolded. If you sort the list by Visual Magnitude, the objects that are brightest and easiest to see will be listed first. In your astronomy app's sky chart, the deep-sky objects will use coded symbols representing the different object types.

Your astronomy app should contain the Messier objects under a separate listing. In addition to the Messier designation, the app will give the proper name and an NGC (New General Catalog) number. The NGC is the master catalog of 7,840 deep-sky objects covering the entire sky.

In the SkySafari 5 app, open the Search menu, and scroll to Messier Objects. The ones currently in the sky are bolded, so use the time control panel to ensure that the app is set to the time you are observing. By default, the display order is by Catalog Number, but I recommend switching to Visual Magnitude, which will bring the easier-to-see objects to the top of the list. If you wish to see where they are in the sky, tap the Settings and enable Highlight Objects. When you exit the Search menu, blue circles will be drawn around every Messier object. You might be surprised by how many there are!

To get you started, here are some Messier objects for each type of deep-sky object. Your app will contain a complete description of each object. Just like the constellations, Messier objects return annually during the same season. Be sure to check the app every now and again to see which new objects are visible during the course of the year.

M1 (Crab Nebula), faint supernova remnant in Taurus; telescope

M13 (Hercules Cluster), bright globular cluster in Hercules; binoculars/telescope

M31 (Andromeda Galaxy), spiral galaxy in Andromeda; naked eye/binoculars

M42 (Orion Nebula), emission/reflection nebula in Orion; binoculars

M45 (The Pleiades), open cluster in Taurus; naked eye/binoculars

M57 (Ring Nebula), planetary nebula in Lyra (rises before midnight); telescope

The SkySafari 5 app can display circles around classes of objects, including all the Messiers. This image shows the evening sky at 8 p.m. on March 27, 2017, the last evening of Messier Marathon season, when all 110 objects can be viewed in a single night. To do the marathon, you will need to observe the galaxies Messier 74 and Messier 77 (aka, Cetus A) first, before they set.

Take your time to enjoy each object. Take long looks, to tease out details. And remember to breathe your eyes function better when oxygenated. Many people enjoy sketching the objects with a pencil and paper, or photographing them through the eyepiece. If you gain access to stronger binoculars or a larger telescope in the future, take another look. More details and colors will be revealed. After you come back inside, look at the high-resolution color images available in the app or online, to get a better appreciation for what you saw. If you're hooked on Messiers, there are plenty of free apps devoted to them the images make terrific home screens!

In his list, Messier included only the objects that he could see from France, and only the ones bright enough for his modest telescope to see. There are dozens of objects seen only from the southern latitudes that certainly would have qualified for inclusion, had he been in the right location to look. In December 1995, English astronomer Sir Patrick Moore published his own list of 109 additional objects called the Caldwell List (his middle name). It encompasses the entire sky, with the objects in numerical order, from the north celestial pole to the south.

By the end of his life, Messier had discovered 15 comets, 12 bearing his name. His comets are long gone, but the objects in his list of "nuisances" are spectacular showpieces for stargazers, and a perfect way for beginners to sample the best of the night sky. Here's hoping you are inspired to take advantage of his efforts and enjoy his legacy for yourself.

As it happens, early spring ;is the only time of the year when its possible to observe every object in the Messier List in a single night from dusk to dawn. Astronomers call this challenge the Messier Marathon. To allow for seeing the fainter objects, pick a moonless evening on, or just before, the new moon (this year its March 27) and check for clear weather all night. Fuel up with snacks and drinks youll be awake all night! Pick a site free from lights with open sightlines. You can use your app to preview where the objects will be at different times through the night. (Heres a website with some tips.)

First, you'll need to catch the objects that set in the west after sunset, including M77 and M74. Then, you can work your way across the sky from west to east. As you do so, more objects will rise in the east. As dawn starts to break around 6 a.m., the last object, M30, will rise in the east, so it might be difficult to see. Part of the trick is to be organized and efficient. Check this site for a recommended viewing order.

The Messier Marathon is a rite of passage for astronomers, but not everyone is a fan. Astronomy author Stephen James O'Meara likens it to sprinting through the Louvre, glimpsing the paintings. Some skywatchers use computerized GoTo telescopes to make it easier, while a few seasoned pros can find the objects manually! It will likely take you several attempts. I wish you luck!

In a future edition of Mobile Stargazing, we'll dive into the Caldwell List objects. In the meantime, keep looking up!

Editor's note: Chris Vaughan is an astronomy public outreach and education specialist, and operator of the historic 1.88-meter David Dunlap Observatory telescope. You can reach him via email, and follow him on Twitter as @astrogeoguy, as well as on Facebook and Tumblr.

This article was provided by Simulation Curriculum, the leader in space science curriculum solutions and the makers of the SkySafari app for Android and iOS. Follow SkySafari on Twitter @SkySafariAstro. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article onSpace.com.

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SARAH WILD: SA’s astronomy centres to become one constellation – Business Day (registration)

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Vodafone donated a 32m dish outside Accra to the Ghanaian government for radio astronomy.

A major impetus for the African VLBI Network is to develop radio astronomers and engineers in African countries, particularly the eight African SKA partner countries that are scheduled to house small SKA sites of their own.

"If youre sitting with a birds eye view [of radio astronomy projects] in the Department of Science and Technology, it makes sense. It makes no sense to have initiatives dotted around," says Adam.

However, there were concerns over the absorption of HartRAO into SKA SA, even though they will both be included into the SARAO.

HartRAO began life in 1961 as the US National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Deep Space Station 51 and was instrumental in tracking probes outside Earths orbit. It specialises in VLBI and a type of science called geodesy, which measures various aspects of Earth, such as continental drift or its distance from the moon.

"As with any merger, there would be concerns. These we have addressed through constructive dialogue during the merger process," says Prof Ludwig Combrinck, acting MD at HartRAO.

These sentiments were echoed by Adam and Chetty, who say the countrys geodesy specialisation will be maintained and preserved.

"With there being a strong political imperative to grow astronomy broadly in SA, not just in the Western Cape and Northern Cape, the location of HartRAO in Gauteng ensures that it has a unique role to play," says Chetty.

He says HartRAO is crucial for training, especially African partner country training.

Initially, the SKA SA was driven from within HartRAO, but eventually became too large to be contained by the small radio astronomy facility.

This amalgamation shows how sprawling radio astronomy has become in SA. From a single dish in the hills of Hartebeesthoek, about an hours drive from Pretoria, radio astronomy is attracting scientists and students from all over the world.

This high-technology scientific discipline now employs hundreds of people across the country, trains students inside and outside SA and is responsible for building infrastructure worth billions of rand.

"The setting up of SARAO indicates the transitioning of SKA SA from an engineering project to a scientific institution, an astronomy observatory," says Chetty.

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Ancient stardust sheds light on the first stars – Astronomy Now Online

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This artists impression shows what the very distant young galaxy A2744_YD4 might look like. Observations using ALMA have shown that this galaxy, seen when the Universe was just 4% of its current age, is rich in dust. Such dust was produced by an earlier generation of stars and these observations provide insights into the birth and explosive deaths of the very first stars in the Universe. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Astronomers have used ALMA to detect a huge mass of glowing stardust in a galaxy seen when the Universe was only four percent of its present age. This galaxy was observed shortly after its formation and is the most distant galaxy in which dust has been detected. This observation is also the most distant detection of oxygen in the Universe. These new results provide brand-new insights into the birth and explosive deaths of the very first stars.

An international team of astronomers, led by Nicolas Laporte of University College London, have used theAtacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array(ALMA) to observe A2744_YD4, the youngest and most remote galaxy ever seen by ALMA. They were surprised to find that this youthful galaxy contained an abundance of interstellar dust dust formed by the deaths of an earlier generation of stars.

Follow-up observations using the X-shooterinstrument on ESOs Very Large Telescopeconfirmed the enormous distance to A2744_YD4. The galaxy appears to us as it was when the Universe was only 600 million years old, during the period when the first stars and galaxies were forming.

Not only is A2744_YD4 the most distant galaxy yet observed by ALMA, comments Nicolas Laporte, but the detection of so much dust indicates early supernovae must have already polluted this galaxy.

Cosmic dust is mainly composed of silicon, carbon and aluminium, in grains as small as a millionth of a centimetre across. The chemical elements in these grains are forged inside stars and are scattered across the cosmos when the stars die, most spectacularly in supernova explosions, the final fate of short-lived, massive stars. Today, this dust is plentiful and is a key building block in the formation of stars, planets and complex molecules; but in the early Universe before the first generations of stars died out it was scarce.

The observations of the dusty galaxy A2744_YD4 were made possible because this galaxy lies behind a massive galaxy cluster called Abell 2744. Because of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, the cluster acted like a giant cosmic telescope to magnify the more distant A2744_YD4 by about 1.8 times, allowing the team to peer far back into the early Universe.

The ALMA observations also detected the glowing emission of ionised oxygen from A2744_YD4. This is the most distant, and hence earliest, detection of oxygen in the Universe, surpassing another ALMA resultfrom 2016.

The detection of dust in the early Universe provides new information on when the first supernovae exploded and hence the time when the first hot stars bathed the Universe in light. Determining the timing of this cosmic dawn is one of the holy grails of modern astronomy, and it can be indirectly probed through the study of early interstellar dust.

The team estimates that A2744_YD4 contained an amount of dust equivalent to 6 million times the mass of our Sun, while the galaxys total stellar mass the mass of all its stars was 2 billion times the mass of our Sun. The team also measured the rate of star formation in A2744_YD4 and found that stars are forming at a rate of 20 solar masses per year compared to just one solar mass per year in the Milky Way.

This rate is not unusual for such a distant galaxy, but it does shed light on how quickly the dust in A2744_YD4 formed, explains Richard Ellis (ESO and University College London), a co-author of the study. Remarkably, the required time is only about 200 million years so we are witnessing this galaxy shortly after its formation.

This means that significant star formation began approximately 200 million years before the epoch at which the galaxy is being observed. This provides a great opportunity for ALMA to help study the era when the first stars and galaxies switched on the earliest epoch yet probed. Our Sun, our planet and our existence are the products 13 billion years later of this first generation of stars. By studying their formation, lives and deaths, we are exploring our origins.

With ALMA, the prospects for performing deeper and more extensive observations of similar galaxies at these early times are very promising, says Ellis.

And Laporte concludes: Further measurements of this kind offer the exciting prospect of tracing early star formation and the creation of the heavier chemical elements even further back into the early Universe.

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Ancient stardust sheds light on the first stars - Astronomy Now Online

If we assume global warming is a hoax, what should we expect to see? – Blastr

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[Credit: Shutterstock/boscorelli]

I will ask you to indulge me for a moment in a thought experiment. Its not hard, and it leads to a startlingly simple yet powerful conclusion, one I think you may find both important and terribly useful.

Still, it starts with a big ask, so forgive me. And that is: Lets make an assumption, one youve heard many times before. Lets say that global warming is a hoax.

I know, I know. But go with this, here. So, yes, lets say that climate change deniers people like House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith, Senator James Inhofe, and even Donald Trumphimself are right. Whatever the reasons (Chinese hoax, climatologist cabal clamoring colossal cash, carbon dioxide isnt a powerful greenhouse gas, or just a liberal conspiracy), lets say that the Earth is not warming up.

In that case, the temperatures we see today on average should be much like the ones we saw, say, 20 years ago. Or 50. Sure, youd see fluctuations. In a given spot on a given day the temperature in 1968 might have been a degree warmer than it was in 1974, or three degrees cooler than in 2010. But what youd expect is that over time, a graph showing the temperature would be pretty much flat, with lots of short-term spikes up and down.

Now, statistically speaking, you expect some records to be broken every now and again. Over time, every few years for a given day youd get a record high, and every few years a record low. The details will change from place to place and time to time, but again, if the average temperature trend is flat, unchanging, then you would expect to see just as many record cold days as record warm days. There might be small deviations, like, say, a handful of more cool than warm days, but the difference would be very small depending on how many days you look at.

Its like flipping a coin. On average, you should get a 50/50 split between heads and tails. But if you flip it 10 times, say, you wouldnt be shocked to see seven heads and three tails. But if you flip it a thousand times, youd really expect to see a very even split. Seeing 700 heads and 300 tails would be truly extraordinary.

So, if we remind ourselves of our basic assumption global warming isnt realthen we expect there to be as many record high days as there are record lows. Simple statistics.

So, what do we see?

Guy Walton, a meteorologist in Georgia, took a look at the data from the NOAAs National Centers for Environmental Information. Whenever a weather station in the US breaks a record, high or low, its catalogued (Walton has more info on this at the link above). He found something astonishing: For February 2017, the number of record highs across the US recorded was 6,201.

The number of record lows? 128.

Thats a ratio of over 48:1. In just one month.

Again, if temperatures were flat over time, and record highs and lows were random fluctuations, youd expect a ratio much closer to 1:1. In other words, out of 6329 records set in total, youd expect there to be about 3165 record highs, and 3165 record lows.

For fans of statistics, with a total of 6329 records broken, one standard deviation is the square root of that, or about 80. So, sure, something like 3265 highs and 3064 lows wouldnt be too unusual. If you start to see more of an imbalance than that, it would be weird.

Seeing 6201 record highs to 128 lows is very, very, very weird. Like, zero chance of that happening by accident.

Now, Phil, I can hear you thinking, thats just for the US (2% of the planet) over one month. And youve told us before that weather isnt climate; weather is what you expect now, climate is what you expect over long periods of time. So, maybe this is a fluke?

Walton notes that, if you look at records in the US going back to the 1920s, the six highest ratios of record highs to lows all occur since the 1990s. Huh.

And making this more global, a pair of Australian scientists looked at their countrys data, and found that their ratios were about even...until the 1960s. After that, highs always outnumber lows. From 2000-2014, record highs outnumbered lows there by 12:1.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research collated data from 1800 stations across the US and binned the data by decade by decade, which is a huge sample; any deviation from a 1:1 ratio would be extraordinary over that timescale.

They found this:

Huh. Not only are there more record highs than lows, the ratio between the two is getting higher with time.

So, looking back at our initial assumption the Earth isnt warming, and temperatures are flat theres a conclusion these data are screaming at us: That assumption is completely and utterly wrong.

And of course, all the evidence backs this up. All of it. Earths temperature is increasing. Thats because of the 40 billion tons of extra carbon dioxide humans put into the atmosphere every year (the amount we will see this year, expected to top 410 parts per million, has never been seen before in history as long as humans have walked the Earth). This CO2 allows sunlight to warm the Earth, but prevents all of it from escaping so that a little bit of extra heat remains behind, and thats warming our planet.

Over time, were getting hotter. 2014 was a record hot year, beaten by 2015, itself beaten by 2016. In fact, 15 of the 16 hottest years ever recorded have been from 2001 2016. Thats exactly what youd expect if we were getting warmer, and that means our initial assumption of hoaxery was dead wrong.

The science on this is so basic, the evidence of this so overwhelming, that not a single national science academy disputes or denies the scientific consensus around human-caused climate change, and also the overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate do, too.

Maybe you should listen to them, and not politicians who seem ideologically opposed to the science.

Or, you could flip a coin. But if it comes up science dozens of times more often than anti-science, well and forgive me if I sound like a broken record the conclusion is obvious.

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If we assume global warming is a hoax, what should we expect to see? - Blastr

The tortoise: Blue Origin sees small steps as key to space business – Christian Science Monitor

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March 8, 2017 A week after SpaceX founder Elon Musk stole headlines with his proposal to send two paying customers on a flight around the moon next year, another private space company came out with more modest news.

Blue Origin, founded by Amazon chief executive officer Jeff Bezos, has contracted with French telecom firm Eutelsat to send a communications satellite into orbit on its New Glenn rocket, scheduled for completion in 2020.

Since its founding in 2009, SpaceX has already carved out a niche in the satellite-launch market and resupplied the International Space Station. Meanwhile, Mr. Bezoss 16-year-old firm has only flown its New Shepard capsule and booster rocket to the edge of space.

But Blue Origin sports a tortoise on its coat of arms, and Mr. Bezos appears content to play that role to Mr. Musks hare. He says he's confident that small, incremental progress will help Blue Origin prosper in the long run.

I like to do things incrementally, Bezos remarked during Tuesdays Satellite 2017 Conference in Washington, The New York Times reports. His companys motto, gradatim ferociter, means Step by step, ferociously.

Eutelsat rewarded this approach in its decision to grant Blue Origin the contract. While the company has launched satellites with SpaceX in the past, Eutelsat's chief executive, Rodolphe Belmer, suggested that Blue Origin's slow and steady approach better aligns with that of his company.

Blue Origin has been forthcoming with Eutelsat on its strategy and convinced us they have the right mindset to compete in the launch service industry," Mr. Belmer said in a press release. "Their solid engineering approach ... corresponds to what we expect from our industrial partners.

While some have praised SpaceX's ambition, concerns are growing that, under Musks accelerated timelines, people working for the company might be run ragged by the demands, leading to human errors, as The Christian Science Monitor reported last week.

SpaceXhas repeatedly pushed back its target date for flying a crewed mission, raising eyebrows about its ability to make good on its promise to carry customers around the moon by next year.

"SpaceX has a great record of doing exactly what they say they're going to do but always several years later than they said they were going to do it, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told the Monitor last week.

Dr. McDowell, who teaches at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, made clear that he had full confidence that SpaceX would succeed in sending space tourists around the moon, but suggested 2020 might be a more likely deadline.

That would give Blue Origin more time to hone its technology and broaden its activities. In addition to satellite launches, the company plans to send deep-pocketed tourists into space aboard New Shepard, an activity that Bezos says will help the company further refine its technology and create a profitable business model for more ambitious space ventures.

"The tourism mission is very important, he said on Tuesday, CNBC reports. There are many historical cases where entertainment drives technologies that then become very practical for other things."

And while low-Earth orbit may not seem as exciting as the moon, Bezoss goals are no less ambitious than Musks.

The long-term vision is millions of people living and working in space, he said Tuesday, according to The New York Times.

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The tortoise: Blue Origin sees small steps as key to space business - Christian Science Monitor

"Fast Radio Bursts Could Be Powering Alien Probes" –Harvard … – The Daily Galaxy (blog)

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"Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven't identified a possible natural source with any confidence," said theorist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking."

As the name implies, fast radio bursts are millisecond-long flashes of radio emission. First discovered in 2007, fewer than two dozen have been detected by gigantic radio telescopes like the Parkes Observatory in Australia or the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. They are inferred to originate from distant galaxies, billions of light-years away.

Loeb and his co-author Manasvi Lingam (Harvard University) examined the feasibility of creating a radio transmitter strong enough for it to be detectable across such immense distances. They found that, if the transmitter were solar powered, the sunlight falling on an area of a planet twice the size of the Earth would be enough to generate the needed energy. Such a vast construction project is well beyond our technology, but within the realm of possibility according to the laws of physics.

Lingam and Loeb also considered whether such a transmitter would be viable from an engineering perspective, or whether the tremendous energies involved would melt any underlying structure. Again, they found that a water-cooled device twice the size of Earth could withstand the heat.

They then asked, why build such an instrument in the first place? They argue that the most plausible use of such power is driving interstellar light sails. The amount of power involved would be sufficient to push a payload of a million tons, or about 20 times the largest cruise ships on Earth.

"That's big enough to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances," added Lingam.

An artist's illustration of a light-sail powered by a radio beam (red) generated on the surface of a planet. The leakage from such beams as they sweep across the sky would appear as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), similar to the new population of sources that was discovered recently at cosmological distances.(M. Weiss/CfA)

To power a light sail, the transmitter would need to focus a beam on it continuously. Observers on Earth would see a brief flashbecause the sail and its host planet, star and galaxy are all moving relative to us. As a result, the beam sweeps across the sky and only points in our direction for a moment. Repeated appearances of the beam, which were observed but cannot be explained by cataclysmic astrophysical events, might provide important clues about its artificial origin.

Loeb admits that this work is speculative. When asked whether he really believes that any fast radio bursts are due to aliens, he replied, "Science isn't a matter of belief, it's a matter of evidence. Deciding what's likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It's worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge."

The paper reporting this work has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available online.

The Dily Galaxy via CfA

Image credit top of page, with thanks to Shutterstock/Jurik Peter

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"Fast Radio Bursts Could Be Powering Alien Probes" --Harvard ... - The Daily Galaxy (blog)

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Financial Auditing – Daily Caller

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As robots continue to play a growing role in our daily lives, white collar jobs in many sectors including accounting and financial operations are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Business are gravitating towards software to automate bookkeeping tasks, saving considerable amounts of both time and money. In fact, since 2004, the number of full-time finance employees at large companies has declined a staggering 40% to roughly 71 employees for every $1 billon of revenue,down from 119 employees, according to a report by top consulting firm The Hackett Group.

These numbers show that instead of resisting change, companies are embracing the efficiencies of this new technology and exploring how individual businesses can leverage automation and, more importantly, artificial intelligence aka robots. A quick aside on the idea of robots versus automation. As technology becomes more sophisticated and particularly with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) were able to automate multiple steps in a process. The concept of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) or robots for short has emerged to capture the notion of more sophisticated automation of everyday tasks.

Today, there is more data available than ever and computers are enhancing their capabilities to leverage these mountains of information. With that, many technology providers are focusing on making it as easy as possible for businesses to implement and utilize their solutions. Whether its by easing the support and management burden via Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery or more turn-key offerings that embed best practices in the solution, one can see a transformation from simply providing tools to providing a level of robotic automation that seems more like a service offering than a technology.

Of course, the name of the game for any business is speed, efficiency, and cost reduction.It is essential to embrace technologies that increase efficiency and savings because, like it or not, your competitors will. While there are some companies that stick with the old-school approaches, they end up serving small niches of customers and seeing less overall growth.

As long as the technology-based solution is less expensive and performs equally as well, if not better than alternative options, the market forces will drive companies to implement the automated technologies. In particular, the impact of robotic artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. In the modern work environment, automation means much more than just compiling numbers but making intelligent observations and judgements based on the data that is reviewed.

If companies and businesses want to ensure future success, its imperative to accept and embrace the capabilities provided by robots. Artificial intelligence wont always be perfect but it can dramatically improve your work output and add to your bottom line. Its important to emphasize that the goal is not to curtail employees but to find ways to leverage the robots toautomate everyday tasks or detail-oriented processesand focus the employees on higher-value activities.

Lets use an example: controlling spent in Travel & Expense (T&E) by auditing expense reports. When performing an audit, many companies randomly sample roughly 20% of expense reports to identify potential waste and fraud. If you process 500 expense reports in a month then 100 of those reports would be audited. The problem is less than 1% of these expense reports contain fraud or serious risks (cite SAR report), meaning the odds are that 99% of the reports reviewed were a waste of time and resources and the primary abuser of company funds most likely went unnoticed.

By employing a robot to identify risky looking expense reports and configuring the system to be hyper-vigilant, it has been shown that a sufficiently sophisticated AI system will flag 7% of the expense reports for fraud, waste, and misuse. (7% is the average Oversight Systems has seen across 20 million expense reports) If we look back to our previous example this means that out of 500 expense reports, employees would only have to review 35 instead of the 100 reports that would have been audited. Though these are likely not all fraudulent, they may provide other valuable information such as noting when an employee needs to be reminded about company travel policy.

While it may sound like robots are eliminating human jobs, its important to note that they can also be extremely valuable working collaboratively with employees. Although the example above focused on fraud, the same productivity leverage is available regarding errors, waste, misuse in financial processes, etc. With the help of robots, we can spend less time hunting for issues and more time addressing them. By working together with technology, the employee has a higher chance of rooting out fraud and will have the bandwidth to work with company travelers to influence their future behavior.

It is clear that in order to ensure future profitability, it is crucial for businesses to understand and take advantage of the significant role that robots can play in dramatically enhancing financial operations.

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How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Financial Auditing - Daily Caller

The Next US-China Arms Race: Artificial Intelligence? – The National Interest Online

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Although China could initially only observe the advent of the Information-Technology Revolution in Military Affairs, the Peoples Liberation Army might presently have a unique opportunity to take advantage of the military applications of artificial intelligence to transform warfare. When the United States first demonstrated its superiority in network-centric warfare during the first Gulf War, the PLA was forced to confront the full extent of its relative backwardness in information technology. Consequently, the PLA embarked upon an ambitious agenda of informatization (). To date, the PLA has advanced considerably in its capability to utilize information to enhance its combat capabilities, from long-range precision strike to operations in space and cyberspace. Currently, PLA thinkers anticipate the advent of an intelligentization Revolution in Military Affairs that will result in a transformation from informatized ways of warfare to future intelligentized () warfare. For the PLA, this emerging trend heightens the imperative of keeping pace with the U.S. militarys progress in artificial intelligence, after its failure to do so in information technology. Concurrently, the PLA seeks to capitalize upon the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence to leapfrog the United States through technological and conceptual innovation.

For the PLA, intelligentization is the culmination of decades of advances in informatization. Since the 1990s, the PLA has been transformed from a force that had not even completed the process of mechanization to a military power ever more confident in its capability to fight and win informatized wars. Despite continued challenges, the PLA appears to be on track to establish the system of systems operations () capability integral to integrated joint operations. The recent restructuring of the PLAs Informatization Department further reflects the progression and evolution of its approach. These advances in informatization have established the foundation for the PLAs transition towards intelligentization. According to Maj. Gen. Wang Kebin (), director of the former General Staff Department Informatization Department, Chinas information revolution has been progressing through three stages: first digitalization (), then networkization () and now intelligentization (). The PLA has succeeded in the introduction of information technology into platforms and systems; progressed towards integration, especially of its C4ISR capabilities; and seeks to advance towards deeper fusion of systems and sensors across all services, theater commands and domains of warfare. This final stage could be enabled by advances in multiple emerging technologies, including big data, cloud computing, mobile networks, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. In particular, the complexity of warfare under conditions of intelligentization will necessitate a greater degree of reliance upon artificial intelligence. Looking forward, artificial intelligence is expected to replace information technology, which served as the initial foundation for its emergence, as the dominant technology for military development.

Although the PLA has traditionally sought to learn lessons from foreign conflicts, its current thinking on the implications of artificial intelligence has been informed not by a war but by a game. AlphaGos defeat of Lee Sedol in the ancient Chinese game of Go has seemingly captured the PLAs imagination at the highest levels. From the perspective of influential PLA strategists, this great war of man and machine () decisively demonstrated the immense potential of artificial intelligence to take on an integral role in command and control and also decisionmaking in future warfare. Indeed, the success of AlphaGo is considered a turning point that demonstrated the potential of artificial intelligence to engage in complex analyses and strategizing comparable to that required to wage warnot only equaling human cognitive capabilities but even contributing a distinctive advantage that may surpass the human mind. In fact, AlphaGo has even been able to invent its own, novel techniques that human players of this ancient game had never devised. This capacity to formulate unique, even superior strategies implies that the application of artificial intelligence to military decisionmaking could also reveal unimaginable ways of waging war. At the highest levels, the Central Military Commission Joint Staff Department has called for the PLA to progress towards intelligentized command and decisionmaking in its construction of a joint operations command system.

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The Next US-China Arms Race: Artificial Intelligence? - The National Interest Online

artificial intelligence: How online retailers are using artificial … – Economic Times

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The next time you shop on fashion website Myntra, you might end up choosing a t-shirt designed completely by a softwarethe pattern, colour and texture without any intervention from a human designer. And you would not realise it. The first set of these t-shirts went on sale four days ago. This counts as a significant leap for Artificial Intelligence in ecommerce.

For customers, buying online might seem simpleclick, pay and collect. But it's a different ballgame for e-tailers. Behind the scenes, from the warehouses to the websites, artificial intelligence plays a huge role in automating processes. Online retailers are employing AI to solve complex problems and make online shopping a smoother experience. This could involve getting software to understand and process voice queries, recommend products based on a person's buying history, or forecast demand.

SO WHAT ARE THE BIG NAMES DOING? "In terms of industry trends, people are going towards fast fashion. (Moda) Rapido does fast fashion in an intelligent way," said Ambarish Kenghe, chief product officer at Myntra, a Flipkart unit and India's largest online fashion retailer.

The Moda Rapido clothing label began as a project in 2015, with Myntra using AI to process fashion data and predict trends. The companys human designers incorporated the inputs into their designs. The new AI-designed t-shirts are folded into this label unmarked, so Myntra can genuinely test how well these sell when pitted against shirts designed by humans.

Also Read: AI will help answer queries automatically: Rajeev Rastogi, Amazon

"Till now, designers could look at statistics (for inputs). But you need to scale. We are limited by the bandwidth of designers. The next step is, how about the computer generating the design and us curating it," Kenghe said. "It is a gold mine. Our machines will get better on designing and we will also get data."

This is not a one-off experiment. Ecommerce, which has a treasure trove of data collected over the last few years is ripe for disruption from AI. Companies are betting big on AI and pouring in funds to push the boundaries of what can be done with data. "We are applying AI to a number of problems such as speech recognition, natural language understanding, question answering, dialogue systems, product recommendations, product search, forecasting future product demand, etc.," said Rajeev Rastogi, director, machine learning, at Amazon.

An example of how AI is used in recommendations could be this: if you started your search on a retailers website with, say, a white shirt with blue polka dots, and your next search is for an shirt with a similar collar and cuff style, the algorithm understands what is motivating you. "We start with personalizationit is key. If you have enough and more collection, clutter is an issue. How do you (a customer) get to the product that you want? We are trying to figure it out. We want to give you precisely what you are looking for," said Ajit Narayanan, chief technology officer, Myntra.

A related focus area for AI is recommending the right sizes as this can vary across brands. "We have pretty high return rates across many categories because people think that sizes are the same across brands and across geographies. So, trying to make recommendations with appropriate size is another problem that we are working on. Say, a size 6 in Reebok might be 7 in Nike, and so on," Rastogi said in an earlier interview with ET.

Myntra uses data intelligence to also decide which payment gateway is the best for a transaction.

"Minute to minute there is a difference. If you are going from, say, a HDFC Bank card to a certain gateway at a certain time, the payment success rate may be different than for the same gateway and for the same card at a different time, based on the load. This is learning over a period of time," said Kenghe. "Recently, during the Chennai cyclone, one of the gateways had an outage. The system realised this and auto-routed all transactions away from the gateway. Elsewhere, humans were trying to figure out what happened.

SUPPORT FROM AI SPECIALISTS A number of independent AI-focused startups are also working on automating manually intensive tasks in ecommerce. Take cataloging. If not done properly, searching for the right product becomes cumbersome and shoppers might log out.

"Catalogues are (usually) tagged manually. One person can tag 2,000 to 10,000 images. The problem is, it is inconsistent. This affects product discovery. We do automatic tagging (for ecommerce clients) and reduce 90% of human intervention," said Ashwini Asokan, chief executive of Chennai-based AI startup Mad Street Den. "We can tag 30,000 images in, say, two hours."

Mad Street Den also offers a host of other services such as sending personalised emails to their clients' customers, automating warehouse operations and providing analysis and forecasting.

Gurugram-based Staqu works on generating digital tags that make searching for a product online easier. "We provide a software development kit that can be integrated into an affiliate partner's website or app. Then the site or app will become empowered by image search. It will recognise the product and start making tags for that," said Atul Rai, cofounder of Staqu, which counts Paytm and Yepme among clients. Staqu is a part of IBM's Global Entrepreneurship Program.

The other big use of AI is to provide business intelligence. Bengaluru-based Stylumia informs their fashion retailer clients on the latest design trends. "We deliver insights using computer vision, meaning visual intelligence," said CEO Ganesh Subramanian. "Say, for example, (how do you exactly describe a) dark blue stripe shirt. Now, dark blue is subjective. You cannot translate dark blue, so we pull information from the Net and we show it visually."

In product delivery, algorithms are being used to clean up and automate the process.

Bengaluru-based Locus is enabling logistics for companies using AI. "We use machine learning to convert (vaguely described) addresses into valid (recognizable) addresses. There are pin code errors, spelling mistakes, missing localities. Machine learning is critical in logistics. We even do demand predictions and predict returns," said Nishith Rastogi, chief executive of Locus, whose customers include Quikr, Delhivery, Lenskart and Urban Ladder.

Myntra is trying to use AI to predict for customers the exact time of product delivery. "The exact time is very important to us. However, it is not straightforward. It depends on what time somebody placed an order, what was happening in the rest of the supply chain at that time, what was its capacity. It is a complicated thing to solve but we threw this (challenge) to the machine," said Kenghe. "(The machine) learnt over a period of time. It learnt what happens on weekends, what happens on weekdays, and which warehouse to which pin code is (a product) going to, and what the product is and what size it is. It figured these out with some supervision and came up with (more accurate delivery) dates. I do not think we have perfected it, but it is a big deal for us."

THE NEXT BIG CHALLENGE One of Myntra's AI projects is to come up with a fashion assistant that can talk in common language and recommend what to wear for various occasions. But "conversational flows are difficult to solve. This is very early. It will not see the light of the day very soon. The assistants first use would be for support, say (for a user to ask) where is my order, (or instruct) cancel order," said Kenghe.

The world over, conversational bots are the next big thing. Technology giants like Google and Amazon are pushing forward research on artificial intelligence. "As we see (customer care) agents responding (to buyers), the machine can learn from it. The next stage is, a customer can say 'I am going to Goa' and the assistant will figure out that Goa means beach and give a list of things (to take along)," Kenghe said.

While speech is one crucial area in AI research, vision is another. Mad Street Den is trying to use AI in warehouses to monitor processes. "Using computer vision, there is no need for multiple photoshoots of products. This avoids duplication and you are saving money for the customer almost 16-25% savings on the operational side. We can then start seeing who is walking into the warehouse, how many came in, efficiency, analytics, etc. We are opening up the scale of operations," said Asokan.

Any opportunity to improve efficiency and cut cost is of supreme importance in ecommerce, said Partha Talukdar, assistant professor at Bengaluru's Indian Institute of Science, where he heads the Machine and Language Learning Lab (MALL), whose mission is to give a "worldview" to machines.

"Companies like Amazon are doing automation wherever they can... right to the point of using robots for warehouse management and delivery through drones. AI and ML are extremely important because of the potential. There are a lot of diverse experiments going on (in ecommerce). We will certainly see a lot of innovative tech from this domain."

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artificial intelligence: How online retailers are using artificial ... - Economic Times

Indian Startups Bet on Artificial Intelligence in 2017: Report – News18

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IANS

As data science gets set to drive the artificial intelligence (AI) market in 2017, a few Indian startups are initiating development of conversational bots, speech recognition tools, intelligent digital assistants and conversational services to be built over social media channels, a joint study by PwC-Assocham said.

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Organisations are looking to leverage AI capabilities for predictive modelling.

"Online shopping portals have extensively been using predictive capabilities to gauge consumer interest in products by building a targeted understanding of preferences through collection of browsing and click-stream data, and effectively targeting and engaging customers using a multi-channel approach," the report added.

To enable consumers to find better products at low prices, machine learning algorithms are being deployed for better matching of supply with consumer demand.

Some of the areas where AI can improve legal processes, said the findings, include improved discovery and analysis based on law case history and formulation of legal arguments based on identification of relevant evidence.

"Researchers and paralegals are increasingly being replaced by systems that can extract facts and conclusions from over a billion text documents a second. This has the potential to save lawyers around 30 per cent of their time," the findings showed.

China is expected to have installed more industrial robots than any other country -- 30 robots per 10,000 workers.

A few thousand workers have already been replaced by a robotic workforce in a single factory, the study added.

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Indian Startups Bet on Artificial Intelligence in 2017: Report - News18

Study identifies best exercise to reverse signs of aging – Fox News

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You already know working out regularly can help keep you slim, boost your mood, aid your sleep, and even stave off disease. But a new study has identified a potential mode of exercise that may help optimize the reversal of any unwanted signs of aging high-intensity interval training (HIIT).

The idea is that instead of long, steady movement (think: running several miles on a treadmill at the same speed and incline), alternating between quick spurts of intense, all-out exercise and lower-intensity exercise during HIIT can help raise your heart rate and enable you to shed more fat, faster.

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In the new study, published Tuesday in Cell Metabolism, researchers found HIIT in aerobic exercises like biking and walking revved cells ability to generate more proteins within mitochondria and their protein-building ribosomes essentially stunting aging at a cellular level.

"Based on everything we know, there's no substitute for these exercise programs when it comes to delaying the aging process," senior study author Sreekumaran Nair, a medical doctor and diabetes researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said in a news release. "These things we are seeing cannot be done by any medicine."

Researchers enrolled 36 men and 36 women from a younger group (ages 18 to 30) and an older group (ages 65 to 80). Each group received a different exercise assignment: either high-intensity interval biking, strength training with weights, or a regimen that combined strength training and HIIT.

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Next, they biopsied participants thigh muscles and compared their molecular makeup against those of sedentary volunteers. They also analyzed the participants lean muscle mass and insulin sensitivity, which is a marker for type 2 diabetes.

They found strength training aided muscle building, but the younger group that did HIIT saw a 49 percent increase in mitochondrial capacity and the older group saw a 69 percent increase. HIIT also helped reduce insulin sensitivity.

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The one thing HIIT wasnt good for? Building muscle. Thats why a mix of HIIT and strength training may offer the most benefits, as muscle mass tends to decline with aging, Nair noted.

"If people have to pick one exercise, I would recommend high-intensity interval training, Nair said in the release, but I think it would be more beneficial if they could do 3-4 days of interval training and then a couple days of strength training.

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Study identifies best exercise to reverse signs of aging - Fox News

Dow’s Boeing Is Sky High, But These Aerospace Stocks Near Buy Points – Investor’s Business Daily

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Textron could get a boost from the Air Force as it experiments with low-cost attack planes, and the company's Scorpion jet is reportedly an option. (Textron)

Here's your Investing Action Plan for Friday: what you need to know as an investor for the coming day.

The February jobs report will set the tone for the rest of the day, and a positive reading could shake the Dow Jones industrial average out of its recent funk. With earnings season largely over, many stocks have already broken out, broken down, or climbed past entry points. But a few opportunities remain in aerospace, even though Dow component Boeing (BA) has shot up to new highs recently.

Shares of Boeing closed down 0.6% at 180.57 on the stock market today, but have been heading for profit-taking sell territory, which starts at 192.20. While hopes are flagging for a tax overhaul that would benefit big exporters like Boeing, demand for commercial aircraft remains robust.

Meanwhile, other aerospace companies are along for the ride, and Boeing's plans to design a new midrange plane and launch a stretch version of the 737 Max could add to suppliers' order books.

Shares of Spirit Aerosystems (SPR) edged down 0.3% to 60.43 but remain near a 61.65 buy point. The stock broke out last week but promptly headed back below the entry.

Hexcel (HXL) also broke out last week but couldn't stay in buy zone. On Thursday, it dipped 0.4% to 53.99, below a 55.21 entry.

Then there's Textron (TXT), the maker of Cessna and Beechcraft planes and Bell helicopters. Shares fell 1.2% to 47.43 as they work their way through a flat base with a 51.03 buy point. Unlike the supplier stocks, Textron hasn't cleared its threshold and lost it again.

The company could get a boost from the Air Force as it experiments with low-cost attack planes, and Textron's Scorpion jet and Beechcraft AT-6 are reportedly options.

The Labor Department will release its monthly payroll report at 8:30 a.m. ET. Analysts expect a gain of 200,000 jobs for February, down from 227,000 in January, with the unemployment rate dipping to 4.7%. Monthly growth in average hourly earnings is expected to accelerate to 0.3% from 0.1%, potentially adding to signs that the tighter labor market is feeding inflationary pressures.

But barring a massive downside surprise, the data are unlikely to move markets that much as they have been pricing in a rate hike at the Federal Reserve's meeting next week.

3/09/2017 Stratasys reported fourth-quarter earnings Thursday that beat estimates but guidance fell short.

3/09/2017 Stratasys reported fourth-quarter earnings Thursday that beat estimates but guidance...

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Dow's Boeing Is Sky High, But These Aerospace Stocks Near Buy Points - Investor's Business Daily