Astronomy C13 - 2014-10-30: Climate Change from the Cambrian to the Ice Ag
Astronomy C13, 001 - Fall 2014 Origins: from the Big Bang to the Emergence of Humans - Charles Marshall, Eliot Quataert All Rights Reserved.
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Astronomy C13 - 2014-10-30: Climate Change from the Cambrian to the Ice Ag - Video
G. Jogesh Babu is director of the Center for Astrostatistics at Penn State, and Eric Feigelson is the center's associate director and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State. The authors contributed this article toSpace.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights
After a century hiatus, astronomy and statistics recently reconnected, giving rise to the new field of astrostatistics. Some of today's most important issues in astronomy require sophisticated statistical modeling. NASA's Kepler mission has detected several thousand planets orbiting other stars, but it was through statistics that astronomers inferred that most stars have planetary systems and hundreds of millions of Earth-like planets probably exist in the galaxy. And in cosmology, statistics refined the parameters of the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (Lambda-CDM) consensus model of the universe, which suggests the universe expanded following a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, slowed by dark matter and accelerated by dark energy.
Insights from the ancients
Such insights followed a long gap in the relationship between astrostatistics a term coined by us in our book of the same title published in 1996 and the broader field of astronomy.
Astronomy is perhaps the oldest empirical science quantitative measurements of celestial phenomena were carried out by many ancient civilizations. The geometric models of the Platonists in ancient Greece proposed a cosmological model involving crystalline spheres spinning around a static Earth, a vision that endured in Europe for 15 centuries.
It was another Greek natural philosopher, Hipparchus, who made one of the first applications of mathematical principles that we now consider to be in the realm of statistics. Finding scatter in Babylonian measurements of the length of a year, defined as the time between solstices, Hipparchus made the breakthrough decision to take guidance from the middle of a data range as the best value.
Centuries later, a debate emerged about whether it is better to gather many data points or a few. On one side, the Arabic astronomer Ab Rayn al-Brn argued for more measurements to compensate for the dangers of propagating errors from inaccurate instruments and inattentive observers. In contrast, some medieval scholars advised against gathering repeated measurements, fearing that errors would compound rather than compensate for each other. It was in the 16th century that the utility of the mean to increase precision a favored method today was demonstrated with great success by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.
In later centuries, some of the great thinkers of the day developed several elements of modern mathematical statistics specifically to address celestial mechanics, where Newton's Laws of Motion were producing astonishingly precise and self-consistent quantitative results for solar-system phenomena.
In the late 18th century, in order to model cometary orbits, Adrien-Marie Legendre developed a system to fit noisy data to a mathematical model, which is now called the L2 least squares parameter estimation. The least-squares method became an instant success in European astronomy.
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Planet Hunting to Sky Surveys, Astronomy and Statistics Realign (Op-Ed)
As Orbital Sciences Corporation looks for clues to Tuesdays catastrophic failure of its Antares launcher, three independent industry insiders tell Forbes that the blame squarely rests on one of two of the rockets Soviet-era engines.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a launcher engineer and industry expert told Forbes that before the Antares vehicle lost thrust it was evident that there was a lot of unburned kerosene going into the exhaust stream which he says suggests that it also lost engine pressurization.
It wasnt a failure in the fuel tanks, avionics, or navigation, but definitely with an engine, said the launcher engineer.
The Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket seen on launch Pad-0A during sunrise, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014, at NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
The Antares two-stage launcher system, which NASA tasked with re-supplying the International Space Station (ISS), experienced a catastrophic failure which triggered a self-destruct scenario within seconds after liftoff at 6:22 PM EDT from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility on Virginias Atlantic shore.
The rockets two engines were modified Soviet-era hardware initially acquired from Russia in the late 1990s by the now defunct Kirkland, Wa.-based Kistler Aerospace Corporation. At the time, prior to its merger with Rocketdyne, the Sacramento, Ca.-based Aerojet Corporation had been subcontracted by Kistler to modernize the engines. However, Aerojet subsequently gained title to the engines as part of Kistlers bankruptcy settlement. They were originally developed by the Soviet Union for their N-1 manned lunar rocket which experienced several failures resulting in the Soviet cancellation of their manned lunar landing program, said Bill Ketchum, a retired General Dynamics General Dynamics Corporation aerospace engineer, familiar with such systems.
The Aerojet Rocketdyne modifications mainly were to allow the engines to gimbal (making them steerable); to inspect them for cracking and to integrate them with new control electronics, plumbing and wiring.
Aerojet Rocketdyne gave the engines the new AJ-26 designation number and eventually sold them to the Dulles, Va.-based Orbital Sciences; that is, shortly after Orbital Sciences entered into a commercial contract with NASA for unmanned cargo resupply missions to the ISS.
Those NK-33/AJ-26 engines had been stored in 1975 in a non climate-controlled warehouse, said Dennis Wingo, an engineering physicist and CEO of Skycorp Incorporated at Moffet Field, Ca. No one wanted them, until Orbital Sciences came along with their Antares vehicle.
Wingo says the most likely culprit in Tuesdays launch failure is hardware stress, corrosion and cracking leading to engine failure, but he notes it could have also been a fuel line crack or rupture.
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Antares Failure Casts Doubt On U.S. Commercial Launch Strategy
E.O. Wilson: The Robots Arent Taking Over, and Heres Why (Oct. 27, 2014) | Charlie Rose
Evolutionary Biologist Edward O. Wilson talks to Charlie Rose about the future and why he thinks all this concern over artificial intelligence is overblown. Are the robots going to take...
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E.O. Wilson: The Robots Arent Taking Over, and Heres Why (Oct. 27, 2014) | Charlie Rose - Video
Ex Machina Movie TRAILER (2015) Oscar Isaac Sci Fi HD
http://www.joblo.com - "Ex Machina" Movie TRAILER (2015) Oscar Isaac Sci Fi HD A young programmer is selected to participate in a breakthrough experiment in artificial intelligence by evaluating...
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#39;Ex Machina #39; Teaser
http://www.hollywood.com #39;Ex Machina #39; Teaser Director: Alex Garland Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander A young programmer is selected to participate in a breakthrough...
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NEW WORLD ORDER, Acknowledged - USA Defense Secretary 10.30.14 See DESCRIPTION
http://www.harvestarmy.org - - SUBSCRIBE FOR PREDICTIONS THAT MAY AFFECT YOU - - Ladies and gentlemen, pay attention: The psychological #39;STAGE #39; is set. The #39;FIX #39; is in - Isis, Ebola, Russian.
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Ex_Machina International Trailer
Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson star in first trailer from Alex Garland #39;s film about the world #39;s first true artificial intelligence.
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Technology Wrap Ep 1
Anyone can deliver the tech news; only HiPhi can deliver it like this! HiPhi delivers the week #39;s Tech headlines in rhyme form. Stories mentioned: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/elon-musk-...
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Value of Aerospace Apprenticeships for Washington State
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By: AJAC apprentices about how they use apprenticeship to advance in their career, improve their quality of life, become self-reliant, improve their confidence and better support...
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Q79. When should a person with HIV begin taking HIV medicines?
From the HIV Avatar Project, posted by the Department of Behavioral Science and Community Health at the University of Florida hiv-avatar-project.com http://bsch.phhp.ufl.edu/
By: UF Behavioral Science and Community Health
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Q79. When should a person with HIV begin taking HIV medicines? - Video
A4M Fellowship in Aesthetic Anti-Aging Medicine @ IMA Dubai - Interview with Dr. Dolton Singh
A4M Fellowship in Aesthetic Anti-Aging Medicine @ IMA Dubai - Interview with Dr. Dolton Singh.
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Genetic Engineering and Plastic Surgery in India
Prime Minister Modi #39;s literal interpretation of Hindu Scriptures.
By: Muneeb Haroon
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Genetic Engineering and Plastic Surgery in India - Video
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2014
Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline
New Rochelle, NY, October 30, 2014Oligonucleotide-based therapeutics present unique challenges when it comes to testing their potential to cause reproductive and developmental harm. New consensus guidelines for toxicity testing that take into consideration the combined chemical and biological characteristics of these novel biopharmaceuticals are presented in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers. The article is available free on the Nucleic Acid Therapeutics website until November 30, 2014.
Joy Cavagnaro, Access BIO (Boyce, VA), Cindy Berman, Berman Consulting (Wayland, MA), Doug Kornbrust, Preclinisight (Reno, NV), Tacey White, Exponent (Philadelphia, PA), Sarah Campion, Pfizer (Groton, CT), and Scott Henry, Isis Pharmaceuticals (Carlsbad, CA), coauthored the white paper that highlights key points to consider in the design of scientifically valid and predictive toxicity studies. The authors summarize the findings of the Reproductive Subcommittee of the Oligonucleotide Safety Working Group (OSWG) in the article "Considerations for Assessment of Reproductive and Developmental Toxicity of Oligonucleotide-Based Therapeutics."
"I highly commend this latest white paper from the OSWG to researchers and regulators alike involved in the development and implementation of oligonucleotide or antisense based interventions," says Executive Editor Graham C. Parker, PhD, The Carman and Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, MI.
Nucleic Acid Therapeutics is under the editorial leadership of Co-Editors-in-Chief Bruce A. Sullenger, PhD, Duke Translational Research Institute, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, and C.A. Stein, MD, PhD, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA; and Executive Editor Graham C. Parker, PhD.
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About the Journal
Nucleic Acid Therapeutics is an authoritative, peer-reviewed journal published bimonthly in print and online that focuses on cutting-edge basic research, therapeutic applications, and drug development using nucleic acids or related compounds to alter gene expression. Nucleic Acid Therapeutics is the official journal of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Nucleic Acid Therapeutics website.
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New guidelines for reproductive & developmental toxicity testing of oligonucleotide drugs
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2014
Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline
Rochelle, NY, October 30, 2014Several companies are developing spacecraft designed to take ordinary citizens, not astronauts, on short trips into space. "Space tourism" and short periods of weightlessness appear to be safe for most individuals according to a series of articles on space biomedicine published in New Space, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The articles are available free on the New Space website until November 30, 2014.
James Vanderploeg, MD, MPH and colleagues, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, coauthored an article outlining the research that has been done to identify the risks and challenges involved in human commercial spaceflight. The authors describe the development of wearable biomedical monitoring equipment for spaceflight participants and of a medical and physiological database. In addition, the suthors also discuss topics such as the risk of electromagnetic interference and ionizing radiation to implanted medical devices in the article "The Human Challenges of Commercial Spaceflight: An Overview of Medical Research Conducted by the University of Texas Medical Branch Through the Federal Aviation Administration Center of Excellence."
"One of the most important areas of New Space research is to determine whether there are biomedical conditions that would disqualify ordinary citizens from a short ride to the edge of space. This first rigorous, peer-reviewed work on a broad range of volunteers indicates most people can take that brief trip," concludes Editor-in-Chief of New Space Prof. Scott Hubbard, Stanford University, in the Editorial "Space Biomedicine -- Who Can Travel to the Final Frontier?"
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About the Journal
New Space facilitates and supports the efforts of researchers, engineers, analysts, investors, business leaders, and policymakers to capitalize on the opportunities of commercial space ventures. Spanning a broad array of topics including technological advancements, global policies, and innovative applications, the journal brings the new space community together to address the challenges and discover new breakthroughs and trends in this epoch of private and public/private space discovery. The Journal is published quarterly online with Open Access options and in print. Complete table of contents are available on the New Space website.
About the Publisher
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Is space tourism safe or do civilians risk health effects?
BY THE NUMBERS
53: School districts represented at UNCs first fall teachers fair
150: Teacher candidates who had passed through the UNC Ballrooms by 11 a.m. Tuesday
2,601: Number of UNC College of Education and Behavioral Science students, a 20 percent increase since fall 2009.
729: Number of UNC College of Education graduates in 2013-2014, which is 42 more graduates than UNC had in 2009-2010.
78: Percent of UNC College of Education graduates who get jobs within a year of graduation.
74: Percent of UNC College of Education graduates who get jobs in Colorado following graduation
Pens clicked, feet tapped and papers were shuffled as dozens of future teachers sought to strut their stuff at the University of Northern Colorados first Fall Teachers Fair.
School district representatives from as far away as Alaska, Louisiana, Texas and Arizona were equally pleased to meet teacher candidates from UNC and other Colorado universities.
After all, both sides goals were the same: Gainful employment for future teachers.
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School districts recruit at UNCs first Fall Teachers Fair (video)
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
30-Oct-2014
Contact: Anna Mikulak amikulak@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science @PsychScience
From the playground to the board room, people often follow, or conform, to the behavior of those around them as a way of fitting in. New research shows that this behavioral conformity appears early in human children, but isn't evidenced by apes like chimpanzees and orangutans.
"Conformity is a very basic feature of human sociality. It retains in- and out-groups, it helps groups coordinate and it stabilizes cultural diversity, one of the hallmark characteristics of the human species," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Daniel Haun of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Jena.
"This does not mean that conforming is the right thing to do under all circumstances conformity can be good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, appropriate or inappropriate both for individuals and the groups they live in. But the fact is that we conform often and that human sociality would look very differently without it," Haun explains. "Our research shows that children as young as 2 years of age conform to others, while chimpanzees and orangutans instead prefer to stick with what they know."
The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is novel in that it provides a direct comparison between apes and humans indicating that the tendency to abandon one's own preferences just in to fit in appears to be particularly pronounced in humans.
In previous research, Haun and colleagues had found that both human children and chimpanzees rely on the majority opinion when they are trying to learn something new, which makes sense if the group has knowledge that the individual doesn't. But other research has shown that human adults sometimes follow the majority even when they already have the relevant knowledge, just so that they don't stand out from the group.
To find out whether very young children and apes would also show this so-called "normative" conformity, Haun and co-authors Michael Tomasello and Yvonne Rekers presented 18 2-year-old children, 12 chimpanzees, and 12 orangutans with a similar reward-based task.
Each participant was shown a box that contained three separate sections, each of which had a hole in the top. By interacting with the box, the participants learned that although the ball could be dropped in any of the three sections, only one of the sections would deliver a treat (peanuts for the apes and chocolate drops for the children).
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Toddlers copy their peers to fit in, but apes don't
SPEARFISH Dr. James Hess, professor of psychology and chairman of the School of Behavioral Sciences at Black Hills State University, recently pledged a $1 million gift to BHSU to establish the School of Behavioral Sciences Make a Difference Initiative. In exchange for scholarship funds, students will be challenged to lead sustainable community projects designed to make a difference in the lives of others.
Hess has been a psychology professor at BHSU for 32 years and his generous donation is equivalent to the salary he made in his first 19 years of teaching at BHSU. He says he intends to keep teaching as long as he feels like he is making a difference in the lives of students.
This million-dollar scholarship gift from Professor Hess will have a profound impact on students while they earn their degrees by providing scholarship funds and encouraging community leadership skills. However, the Make a Difference Initiative also ensures our graduates will become leaders in their future communities, BHSU President Tom Jackson, Jr., said. I commend Professor Hess for his visionary idea and express my sincere thanks for his generosity and commitment to Black Hills State University.
By establishing the Make a Difference Initiative, Hess hopes to change the culture of scholarship funding by encouraging recipients to give back right from the start and continue that practice long after they graduate.
Even while theyre receiving funds from the initiative, I want our scholarship recipients to engage and make a difference in the lives of others, said Hess. I want the students to remember their experience years from now, changing their attitude and encouraging them to continue giving back.
The initiatives board of directors will meet this year to polish the initiative and will distribute the first two $2,500 scholarships in 2015. In addition to the scholarship, recipients will receive a $2,500 match allocated for student projects. Future scholarships and projects will be added in the coming years, and the dollar amounts will be increased.
Students receiving the Make a Difference Initiative scholarships must give something more than going to class and getting good grades, said Hess.
Student projects must create sustainable solutions, said Hess, referencing the proverb give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Examples of sustainable solution projects described in the initiatives planning document include implementation of a self-concept improvement program for a womens shelter or designing a summer camp for children of divorced families.
Steve Meeker, BHSU vice president for university advancement, said Hess gift will teach students how to make a difference in peoples lives while also teaching them to give back in both time and treasure.
Dr. Hess gift is extremely generous, and he has a great plan to motivate future leaders, said Meeker. This gift sends a strong message as to what BHSU and our students mean to him and is very much appreciated.
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Professor donates $1 Million to BHSU
Cincinnati, OH (PRWEB) October 30, 2014
Why do customers engage with brands?
Customer experience can be a misleading term, because the experience is not built on a singular factor. Brands that have mastered the art of CX understand that an amalgamation of positive encounters combines to form the overall desired customer experience success.
At the 2014 Engagement & Experience Expo, AT&T and United Way will present sessions on fostering effective customer engagement paradigms that lead to all-encompassing customer experiences.
AT&T will present a session titled, How to Enable Change in Customer (and Associate) Centricity. In this session, attendees will learn how AT&T builds customer-centricity into the fabric of its organization, and how companies can follow that model to develop thriving customer experience strategies. Additionally, AT&T will share the importance of communication, engagement, and conversational intelligence in improving customer centricity.
Before building customer-centricity, marketers need to understand why customers engage with certain brands. United Way and The Behavioral Science Lab will speak from a behavioral economics perspective in a session titled, Increasing Brand Engagement Through Behavioral Economics. In this session, attendees will learn how United Way uses behavioral economics to understand the psychological and emotional factors that improve customer acquisition and sustained experiences. United Way will reflect on its past dearth of customer knowledge, and demonstrate how the introduction of data tools and behavioral economics insight has illuminated its understanding of the influencing factors of its donors.
Thanks to new technologies and enhanced analytic tools, todays brands are better equipped to create outstanding customer experiences, shared Erin Raese, President and COO, Loyalty360 The Loyalty Marketers Association. We are thrilled to feature highly regarded speakers from AT&T and United Way whose success stories can help show attendees the way.
About Engagement & Experience Expo Engagement & Experience Expo is a forum to openly discuss customer, brand and channel challenges and solutions. Discover how to optimize the customer experience at all touch-points and increase the impact of engagement throughout the customer lifecycle. Through a robust slate of best-in-class speakers and interactive discussions, attendees will learn about the latest theories, best practices, relevant case studies, emerging trends and strategies that drive measurable behavioral change and quantifiable results. The 4th annual Engagement & Experience Expo will be held Nov. 10-12, 2014, at the Renaissance Dallas Hotel in Dallas, Texas.
About Loyalty360 Loyalty360 is an unbiased, market driven, voice-of-the-customer focused clearinghouse and think-tank that is committed to bringing customer loyalty to the forefront as a critical marketing strategy. A trusted source for cutting-edge research, best practices, and networking opportunities, Loyalty360 gives members the expert insights and guidance they need to better understand loyalty and develop programs that effectively engage their customers and employees and build stronger relationships with them. [http://www.loyalty360.org
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AT&T, United Way Build Customer-centricity and Engagement
Menopause | Andropause Workshop Preview
Dr. Daved Rosensweet Dr. Jonathan Wright speak about the upcoming Specialty Workshop at the 22nd Annual World Congress on Anti-Aging Medicine in Las Vegas December 14, 2014. for more ...
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