Science, Global Supply Chains, and Operations Research

 Science, Global Supply Chains, and Operations Research

I was thrilled to see the cover of the recent Science magazine published by AAAS with a feature section on "Rethinking the global supply chain."

In this volume were several themed articles that I especially enjoyed, including "The information highway gets physical," in which ideas from the existing Internet are being promulgated to create a physical Internet for more effective logistics. Personally, and since we are part of a big NSF project to reenvision the existing Internet, I also see many synergies in the reverse direction through appropriate game theory models! In that nice article, written by Jeffrey Mervis, operations researcher Russ Meller was noted, and his co-authored book, "The Physical Internet: The Network of Logistics Networks." I sent Russ a congrats yesterday and he responded en route to the airport for a flight to Europe. I also enjoyed reading quotes from Kevin Gue, who gave a keynote recently at the Physical Internet conference in Quebec City  (and who is moving from Auburn U. to the U. of Louisville). I was already committed to being in Europe in May so I did not attend. The conference was hosted by Benoit Montreuil of Laval University in Quebec City, Canada.

Kevin J. Dooley of the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University also had a nice article, "The whole chain," in which he stated that Science is key to holistically managing sustainable supply chains, which I thoroughly agree with and which we have been emphasizing in many of our sustainable supply chain research articles with applications as varied as blood supply chains and even fast fashion!

In the volume there were also several additional articles on sustainable supply chains, and I found it interesting to see the lists of references and journals represented.

In particular, I very much enjoyed the article. "The science of sustainable supply chains," by Dara O'Rourke, who is at UC Berkeley. It was terrific to see cited therein our latest book, "Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products!"

And speaking of supply chains, today we heard the great news that our paper, Supply Chain Network Competition in Time-Sensitive Markets, Anna Nagurney, Min Yu, Jonas Floden, and Ladimer S. Nagurney, was accepted for publication in the journal, Transportation Research E! This paper was recently presented at the 18th European Conference on Mathematics for Industry, Taormina, Italy, June 9-13, 2014 and also at the Conference on Optimization, Control and Applications in the Information Age - in honor of the 60th Birthday of Professor Panos M. Pardalos, Chalkidiki, Greece, June 15-20, 2014.



You can read more about our paper in an earlier blogpost.

The above presentation can be downloaded in its entirely here.

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Facebook "emotional contagion" Study: A Roundup of Reactions

 Facebook "emotional contagion" Study: A Roundup of Reactions

In case you missed it, there was a dust-up this weekend around the web because of a social science study involving manipulation of Facebook news feeds of users (which might include you, if you are an English language user). Here are three points of contention (in order of intensity):

    Ethics - Was there informed consent?
    Statistical significance - The effect was small, but the data large, what does this mean?
    Linguistics - How did they define and track "emotion "?

First, the original study itself:

Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Kramer et al. PNAS. Synopsis (from PNAS)

    We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.

My two cents: We'll never see the actual language data, so the many questions this study raises are destined to be left unanswered.

The Roundup

In Defense of Facebook: If you can only read one analysis, read Tal Yarkoni's deep dive response to the study and its critics. It's worth a full read (comments too). He makes a lot of important points, including the weakness of the effect, the rather tame facts of the actual experiments, and the normalcy of manipulation (that's how life works) but for me, this take-down of the core assumptions underlying the study is the Money Quote:

    the fact that users in the experimental conditions produced content with very slightly more positive or negative emotional content doesn’t mean that those users actually felt any differently. It’s entirely possible–and I would argue, even probable–that much of the effect was driven by changes in the expression of ideas or feelings that were already on users’ minds. For example, suppose I log onto Facebook intending to write a status update to the effect that I had an “awesome day today at the beach with my besties!” Now imagine that, as soon as I log in, I see in my news feed that an acquaintance’s father just passed away. I might very well think twice about posting my own message–not necessarily because the news has made me feel sad myself, but because it surely seems a bit unseemly to celebrate one’s own good fortune around people who are currently grieving. I would argue that such subtle behavioral changes, while certainly responsive to others’ emotions, shouldn’t really be considered genuine cases of emotional contagion.


the Empire strikes back: Humanities Professor Alan Jacobs counters Yarkoni, using language that at times seemed to verge on unhinged, but hyperbole aside, he takes issue with claims that the experiment was ethical simply because users signed a user agreement (that few of them ever actually read). Money Quote:

    This seems to be missing the point of the complaints about Facebook’s behavior. The complaints are not “Facebook successfully manipulated users’ emotions” but rather “Facebook attempted to manipulate users’ emotions without informing them that they were being experimented on.” That’s where the ethical question lies, not with the degree of the manipulation’s success. “Who cares if that guy was shooting at you? He missed, didn’t he?” — that seems to be Yarkoni’s attitude.


Facebook admits manipulating users' emotions by modifying news feeds: Across the pond, The Guardian got into the kerfuffle. Never one to miss a chance to go full metal Orwell on us, the Guardian gives us this ridiculous Money Quote with not a whiff of counter-argument:

    In a series of Twitter posts, Clay Johnson, the co-founder of Blue State Digital, the firm that built and managed Barack Obama's online campaign for the presidency in 2008, said: "The Facebook 'transmission of anger' experiment is terrifying." He asked: "Could the CIA incite revolution in Sudan by pressuring Facebook to promote discontent? Should that be legal? Could Mark Zuckerberg swing an election by promoting Upworthy [a website aggregating viral content] posts two weeks beforehand? Should that be legal?"

This Clay Johnson guy is hilarious, in a dangerously stupid way. How does his bonkers ranting rate two paragraphs in a Guardian story?


Everything We Know About Facebook's Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment: The Atlantic provides a roundup of sorts and a review of the basic facts, and some much needed sanity about the limitations of LIWC (which is a limited, dictionary tool that, except for the evangelical zeal of its creator James Pennebaker, would be little more than a toy for undergrad English majors to play with). Article also provides important quotes from the study's editor, Princeton's Susan Fiske. This also links to a full interview with professor Fiske.

Emotional Contagion on Facebook? More Like Bad Research Methods: If you have time to read two and only two analyses of the Facebook study, first read Yarkoni above, then read John Grohol's excellent fisking of the (mis-)use of LIWC as tool for linguistic study. Money Quote:

    much of human communication includes subtleties ... — without even delving into sarcasm, short-hand abbreviations that act as negation words, phrases that negate the previous sentence, emojis, etc. — you can’t even tell how accurate or inaccurate the resulting analysis by these researchers is. Since the LIWC 2007 ignores these subtle realities of informal human communication, so do the researchers.

Analyzing Facebook's PNAS paper on Emotional Contagion: Nitin Madnani provides an NLPers
detailed fisking of the experimental methods, with special attention paid to the flaws of LIWC (with bonus comment from Brendan O'Connor, recent CMU grad and new U Amherst professor). Money Quote:

    Far and away, my biggest complaint is that the Facebook scientists simply used a word list to determine whether a post was positive or negative. As someone who works in natural language processing (including on the task of analyzing sentiment in documents), such a rudimentary system would be treated with extreme skepticism in our conferences and journals. There are just too many problems with the approach, e.g. negation ("I am not very happy today because ..."). From the paper, it doesn't look like the authors tried to address these problems. In short, I am skeptical the whether the experiment actually measures anything useful. One way to address comments such as mine is to actually release the data to the public along with some honest error analysis about how well such a naive approach actually worked.


Facebook’s Unethical Experiment: Tal Yarkoni's article above provides a pretty thorough fisking of this Slate screed. I'll just add that Slate is never the place I'd go to for well reasoned, scientific analysis. A blow-by-blow deep dive into the last episode of Orange Is The New Black? Oh yeah, Slate has that genre down cold.


Anger Builds Over Facebook's Emotion-Manipulation Study: The site that never met a listicle it didn't love, Mashable provides a short article that fails to live up to its title. They provide little evidence that anger is building beyond screen grabs of a whopping four Twitter feeds. Note, they completely ignore the range of people supporting the study (no quotes from the authors, for example). As far as I can tell, there is no hashtag for anti-Facebook study tweets.


Facebook Manipulated User News Feeds To Create Emotional Responses: Forbes wonders aloud about the mis-use of the study by marketers. Money Quote:

    What harm might flow from manipulating user timelines to create emotions?  Well, consider the controversial study published last year (not by Facebook researchers) that said companies should tailor their marketing to women based on how they felt about their appearance.  That marketing study began by examining the days and times when women felt the worst about themselves, finding that women felt most vulnerable on Mondays and felt the best about themselves on Thursdays ... The Facebook study, combined with last year’s marketing study suggests that marketers may not need to wait until Mondays or Thursdays to have an emotional impact, instead  social media companies may be able to manipulate timelines and news feeds to create emotionally fueled marketing opportunities.

You don't have to work hard to convince me that marketing professionals have a habit of half-digesting science they barely understand to try to manipulate consumers. That's par for the course in that field, as far as I can tell. Just don't know what scientists producing the original studies can do about it. Monkey's gonna throw shit. Don't blame the banana they ate.


Creepy Study Shows Facebook Can Tweak Your Moods Through ‘Emotional Contagion’. The Blaze witer Zach Noble summed up the negative reaction this way: a victory for scientific understanding with some really creepy ramifications. But I think it only seems creepy if you mis-understand the actual methods.

Final Thought: It's the bad science that creeps me out more than the questionable ethics. Facebook is data, lets use it wisely.

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Natural News reveals the ICP-MS food research lab - pioneering scientific research for clean food!

 Natural News reveals the ICP-MS food research lab - pioneering scientific research for clean food!

According to Natural News, Mike Adams has published a new video showing more details of the Natural News Forensic Food Lab, including proof that the lab isn't a "video set" but rather a fully-functioning analytical laboratory. This is where he is spearheading the research on heavy metals contamination in foods, superfoods and dietary supplements.

In the video, he explains why they spent so much money to build an ICP-MS lab and describes how some of the instrumentation and how it works. This video is being released in preparation for some groundbreaking new research we are about to reveal later this week on heavy metals contamination in popular health products.

Although some importers and manufacturers have remained in a state of denial over the heavy metals found in their products, the science we are conducting here at Natural News is irrefutable science conducted in the public interest. And as such, it cannot be stopped or silenced.

Now he is running high-tech equipment to reveal food toxins nobody is even regulating, much less talking about and finding on labels. This is huge. These heavy metal toxins can make you lose your mind, lose your immunity and even lose your life early. There is no excuse for not paying attention to this bombshell and doing something about it! If you don't do it for yourself, do it for your family, your kids, grandkids, parents or grandparents if they are still with us enjoying this planet. We are invited inside the spectroscopy lab to see what Mike Adams is working on right now, in May of 2014, and this is cutting edge!

To see some fascinating and interesting clips regarding the truth about the issue of heavy metals contamination in foods and more, one can easily log onto:

http://www.naturalnews.com/045090_Health_Ranger_food_research_laboratory_ICP-MS.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsvjUYkvMLo

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Eat-Cancer-Modern-Prevention/dp/1940192242/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398966083&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=dont+eat+cancjer

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Scientists Warn That a Widely Used Pesticide Could Be Worse for Bees Than DDT

 Scientists Warn That a Widely Used Pesticide Could Be Worse for Bees Than DDT

Todd Woody Takepart.com Yahoo News 24 Jun 14;

The indiscriminate use of DDT in the mid-20th century helped nearly exterminate America’s national symbol, the bald eagle, and the pesticide itself became a symbol of an industrial society at war with nature.

Now, more than 40 years after the United States Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT, thanks in large part to the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a class of agricultural pesticides called neonicotinoids (neonics) poses an even more serious threat to bees, other wildlife, and entire ecosystems, according to a preview of a report to be published next week by an international group of scientists.

“In the case of acute effects alone, some neonics are at least 5,000 to 10,000 times more toxic to bees than DDT,” wrote the scientists affiliated with the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides. “The evidence is also clear that neonics pose a serious risk of harm to honey bees and other pollinators.”

Studies have implicated neonics in the mass die-off of bees that pollinate a third of the global food supply. Many scientists believe the pesticide is one of several interrelated factors—including disease, parasites, and poor nutrition—responsible for the apian catastrophe that has unfolded over the past decade.

The task force analyzed more than 800 peer-reviewed studies that investigated the impact of neonics and an insecticide called fipronil on insects like bees, mammals, birds, and reptiles. Neonics and fipronil have become pervasive in the environment over the past two decades and now account for 40 percent of the global pesticide market, according to the report.

Neonics and fipronil belong to a class of so-called systemic pesticides that are absorbed into a plant’s roots, stems, leaves, flowers, pollen, and nectar. Farmers can spray plants with neonics, but seeds are now routinely treated with the chemical, meaning that as the plant grows the pesticide remains part of the flora.

And increasingly the fauna.

“The combination of persistence (over months or years) and solubility in water has led to large scale contamination of, and the potential for accumulation in, soils and sediments, ground and surface water and treated and non-treated vegetation,” the scientists wrote. “The effects of exposure to neonics range from instant and lethal to chronic. Even long term exposure at low (non-lethal) levels can be harmful.”

Neonics are nerve poisons, but the effects extend beyond the pests the pesticide is intended to kill, according to the report, damaging bees’ ability to forage and fly and increasing their susceptibility to disease. They are less harmful to birds and mammals but can have indirect consequences, such as killing off insects those animals eat.

Still, the scientists acknowledged that what they don’t know about neonics far exceeds what they do know. For instance, tests to determine neonics’ toxicity have only been done on four of 25,000 bee species, and few toxicological studies have been carried out on other pollinators, such as butterflies.

And 96 percent of those studies have been performed in the laboratory under controlled conditions. How neonics affect the behavior of bees and other wildlife remains largely unknown.

The full report will be published next week in the journal Environment Science and Pollution Research. But the scientists left no doubt about their conclusions.

“The current extensive use of this group of persistent highly toxic chemicals is affecting global biodiversity,” the report’s authors wrote, urging governments to regulate neonics more strictly and to begin a worldwide phaseout. “Their continued use can only accelerate the global decline of important invertebrates and, as a result, risk reductions in the level, diversity, security and stability of ecosystem services.”

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Oceanic plastic mystery: where's it all going?

 Oceanic plastic mystery: where's it all going?

It certainly isn’t news that the oceans are full of plastics; The news is perhaps how little we know about it.

(Image: plastics collected on the Malaspina Expedition. Credit: CSIC.)

“Our awareness of the significance of plastic pollution in the ocean is relatively recent, and basic questions remain unresolved. Indeed, the quantity of plastic floating in the ocean and its final destination are still unknown,” write scientists who participated in a recent Spanish science expedition.

They found plastics throughout the oceans, and a scientific paper on the results concluded that they’re getting into the marine food chain.

The researchers emphasized how little is known about the impacts of the plastics—and even where some of the plastic goes. A lot of it is unaccounted for: “Resolving the fate of the missing plastic debris is of fundamental importance to determine the nature and significance of the impacts of plastic pollution in the ocean.”

The Malaspina Expedition of 2010, sent out by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), was named after an early Spanish scientific circumnavigation from 1789 to 1794, headed by Alessandro Malaspina and José de Bustamante y Guerra.

They collected plastics in all the world’s oceans. And they found plastic in both the North Pacific and Atlantic, where it was known to occur in large amounts, but they also found large amounts in the southern oceans: the South Pacific, South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

"Ocean currents carry plastic objects which split into smaller and smaller fragments due to solar radiation. Those little pieces of plastic, known as microplastics, can last hundreds of years and were detected in 88% of the ocean surface sampled during the Malaspina Expedition 2010,” said Andrés Cózar, of the University of Cadiz.

"These microplastics have an influence on the behavior and the food chain of marine organisms.

“On one hand, the tiny plastic fragments often accumulate contaminants that, if swallowed, can be passed to organisms during digestion; without forgetting the gastrointestinal obstructions, which are another of the most common problems with this type of waste.

“On the other hand, the abundance of floating plastic fragments allows many small organisms to sail on them and colonize places they could not access to previously. But probably, most of the impacts taking place due to plastic pollution in the oceans are not yet known,” Cózar said.

The amounts of plastic estimated to be in the oceans is stunning. The Malaspina 2010 paper middle estimates are that there are 4.8 thousand tons in the North Pacific, 2.7 in the North Atlantic, 2.2 in the Indian Ocean, 2.6 in the South Atlantic and 2.1 in the South Pacific.

Some of the plastic is at the surface but even if it is buoyant, some is carried down through the water column via the added weight of biofouling, or being contained in the feces of marine life forms that eat the plastic.

And there may be other methods for sinking the plastics.

“Our observations also show that large loads of plastic fragments with sizes from microns to some millimeters are unaccounted for in the surface loads. The pathway and ultimate fate of the missing plastic are as yet unknown. We cannot rule out either of the proposed sink processes or the operation of sink processes yet to be identified,” the paper says.

It could be that the plastic is being broken down into such small pieces that they’re not getting caught in the sampling nets of marine scientists: “Missing micro- plastic may derive from  nano-fragmentation processes, rendering the very small pieces undetectable to convectional sampling nets, and/or may be transferred to the ocean interior.”

The University of Hawai`i’s Dave Karl edited the paper, Plastic debris in the open ocean, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors are
Andrés Cózar,  Fidel Echevarría, Ignacio González-Gordillo, Xabier Irigoien, Bárbara Úbeda, Santiago Hernández-León, Álvaro T. Palma, Sandra Navarro, Juan García-de-Lomas, Andrea Ruiz, María L. Fernández-de-Puelles, and Carlos M. Duarte.

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A Comprehensive Scientific Review of 'Chemical-Free' Products

 A Comprehensive Scientific Review of 'Chemical-Free' Products

Popular Science -  Charcoal is mostly made up of carbon, but also contains hydrogen and oxygen. When it burns it yields carbon dioxide.

I never thought anybody took the phrase "chemical-free" seriously, because, obviously everything contains chemicals. But it has become a marketing slogan that a lot of people apparently subscribe to, and indeed some of the top Google search results, for example this site authored by a PhD, no less, pursue this angle without strenuously qualifying that the term is meaningless.

But wait! Now a study has been done on all of the chemical-free products out there. If you like, check out the exhaustive manuscript over at Nature Chemistry. Here's the summary:

Manufacturers of consumer products, in particular edibles and cosmetics, have broadly employed the term 'Chemical free' in marketing campaigns and on product labels. Such characterization is often incorrectly used to imply--and interpreted to mean--that the product in question is healthy, derived from natural sources, or otherwise free from synthetic components. We have examined and subjected to rudimentary analysis an exhaustive number of such products, including but not limited to lotions and cosmetics, herbal supplements, household cleaners, food items, and beverages. Herein are described all those consumer products, to our knowledge, that are appropriately labelled as 'Chemical free'.

(SPOILER WARNING) If you don't have all of the 0 seconds required to read the list of products that are truly chemical-free, I'll ruin it for you: there aren't any.

A funny (fake) study, to be sure; the term "chemical-free" is irritating and blatantly wrong. However, there is an argument to be made for expanded testing of industrial chemicals that have been introduced into humans' lives in increasing quantities in the past few centuries. The phrase "chemical-free," in encouraging uninformed chemophobia, detracts from that more nuanced line of thought, and doesn't help anybody.

Read more: http://ehsmanager.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-comprehensive-scientific-review-of.html#ixzz36RMhMaCo

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What the Sith Jihad wants includes science crime scenes

 What the Sith Jihad wants includes science crime scenes

When I posted ISIS looks like Sith, not Jedi on Facebook, someone called ISIS "The Sith Jihad" in comments.  That's such a good label, I'm using it for them from now on. Unfortunately, the best image is one from the prequel trilogy to "Dune."  The rest are too offensive.  So be it.

I begin with Test Tube's Who Is ISIS And What Do They Want In Iraq?


You heard the presenter right; ISIS prepares quarterly reports.  Here's what Vox had to say about one of them in The surreal infographics ISIS is producing, translated.

    We know that ISIS, the al-Qaeda breakaway group that's gaining more and more ground in Iraq at the moment, is an exceptionally well-trained and disciplined fighting force, with a shockingly sophisticated social media strategy to boot. But did you know that they also produce annual reports with fancy infographics detailing all the operations they carried out over a given period?

    The most recent report, published on March 31, details the group's operations from November 2012 to November 2013. It's a dense, text-heavy 410 pages, with plenty of data tables tallying up various actions the group took. A previous report covered the period from November 2011 to November 2012 over a much more concise 198 pages. Each report begins with a big, splashy infographic counting up various actions undertaken in the previous year.

The infographics at the link show how many bombings, assassinations, prisoner rescues, and other military operations took place during the reporting period.  The latest includes how many cities they've captured.  I don't know whether to be disgusted or impressed.

That's not all ISIS wants.  Apparently they want to create a bunch of science (and culture) crime scenes.  Follow over the jump for the story explaining how and why that I originally included in Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Summer Solstice 2014).

USA Today via Pacific Daily News (Guam): In Iraq, echoes of Taliban's cultural purges
Jun. 20, 2014

    ISTANBUL - Ancient statues whispering of civilizations lost. Religious shrines from the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths. Tombs with relics and bones testifying to this region as the Cradle of Civilization - and where, in the city-states of Mesopotamia millennia ago, the world's first written
language was born.

    The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has an estimated half-a-million archaeological sites and countless priceless artifacts. Only recently recovered and restored following the 2003 war in Iraq, they are nonetheless in danger once again, this time from Islamic extremists taking over large swaths of Iraq who deem this rich heritage "un-Islamic."

    As Sunni Muslim insurgents loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant - known as ISIL or ISIS - take cities such as Mosul and Tikrit, and advance toward Baghdad, they have in a published manifesto called on followers to destroy all "infidel" statues, churches, tombs and shrines.

    Reports of church burnings and the destruction of shrines have already emerged from multicultural and ethnically diverse Mosul, which is being held by the insurgents. The city in Nineveh province has Assyrian Christian, Islamic and Jewish heritage and is the site of ancient churches and monasteries dating back to the 13th century.

ISIS is not the least bit tolerant.  They're in "good" company in this regard.

    Islamic extremists have a history of destroying art, architecture and cultural sites deemed "un-Islamic."

    In Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban dynamited two towering Buddha statues carved into a cliff in the country's Bamiyan Valley, to international outcry. Built in the 6th century, the statues were a testament to the country's rich religious history. In 2012, Mali Islamists razed shrines seen as idolatrous in Timbuktu, some of which held the remains of revered Muslim scholars and teachers.

I was wondering if Timbuktu would be mentioned, as I covered the destruction there in Science crime scenes 1 and Science Crime Scenes 2: Timbuktu.  At the time, I made the following observation about the similiaries between Mali and Afghanistan.

    Al Qaeda in Mali is making the same mistake that the Taliban did in Afghanistan when they defaced the Buddha statues, except they're doing it to other members of their own faith. That's the sign of kooks: practice your mistakes; you may get them right.

That seems to be the philosophy of ISIS, The Sith Jihad.  May saner heads prevail, just as they eventually did in Mali.

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NASA Television Coverage Set for Orbital-2 Mission to Space Station

NASA Television Coverage Set for Orbital-2 Mission to Space Station

     Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket for the Orb-2 cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station is lifted onto the Transporter/Erector/Launcher (TEL). The stage one core for the next mission, Orb-3, is on the left. Orbital is scheduled to launch its Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the space station on July 11 from the Mid-Atlantic Spaceport's Pad 0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket for the Orb-2 cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station is lifted onto the Transporter/Erector/Launcher (TEL). The stage one core for the next mission, Orb-3, is on the left. Orbital is scheduled to launch its Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the space station on July 11 from the Mid-Atlantic Spaceport's Pad 0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Image Credit: Orbital Sciences
   

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the upcoming Orbital Sciences Corp.'s mission to resupply the International Space Station.

Orbital's Cygnus cargo spacecraft is scheduled to launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's Launch Pad 0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Friday, July 11 at 1:40 p.m. EDT.

NASA TV will air a comprehensive video feed of launch preparations and other footage related to the mission beginning at 12:30 p.m. Launch coverage on NASA TV will begin at 1 p.m.

On Thursday, July 10, media briefings previewing the mission's science cargo and a prelaunch status from Wallops will be broadcast on NASA TV at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., respectively.

The Cygnus will be filled with more than 3,000 pounds of supplies for the station, including science experiments to expand the research capability of the Expedition 40 crew members aboard the orbiting laboratory, crew provisions, spare parts and experiment hardware.

Among the research investigations headed to the space station aboard Orbital-2 are a flock of nanosatellites that are designed to take images of Earth, developed by Planet Labs of San Francisco; and a satellite-related investigation called TechEdSat-4 built by NASA's Ames Research Center in California, which aims to develop technology that will eventually enable small samples to be returned to Earth from the space station. In addition, a host of student experiments are being flown in association with the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program, an initiative of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and NanoRacks.

This and future commercial cargo resupply flights will ensure a robust national capability to deliver critical science research to orbit, significantly increasing NASA's ability to conduct new science investigations to the only laboratory in microgravity.

If Cygnus launches as scheduled, the spacecraft will arrive at the space station on Tuesday, July 15. Station commander Steven Swanson of NASA and Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency will be standing by in the station's cupola to capture the resupply craft with the station's robotic arm and install it on the Earth-facing port of the station's Harmony module.

NASA TV coverage of capture and installation will begin at 6:15 a.m.  on July 15. Grapple is scheduled at approximately 7:24 a.m. Coverage of the installation of Cygnus onto Harmony will begin at 9:30 a.m.

For a full update of media activities and more information on the Orbital-2 mission, visit:                                           

http://www.nasa.gov/orbital

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv

For video b-roll and media resources on the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/stationnews

For more information about International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

-end-

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Sustainable Land Management Science Area at CEH

 Sustainable Land Management Science Area at CEH

CEH's new Science Strategy identifies three interdependent, major societal and environmental challenges: Securing the Value of Nature, Building Resilience to Environmental Hazards, and Managing Environmental Change. We're delivering our strategy by Science Areas and underpinning activities, and over the next few weeks we are profiling these on our blog.

This post focuses on our Sustainable Land Management science area, which is led by Dr Richard Pywell. The research we undertake in this area is delivered in the context of ensuring adequate provision of food, fuel and water while conserving biodiversity and vital ecosystem functions.

CEH develops practical solutions to restore and enhance ecosystem
functions that deliver goods and services crucial for human wellbeing,
such as pollination services for crops and biodiversity.


Population increase, climate change, pollution and other environmental stresses are expected to have highly detrimental impacts on ecosystems and natural resources vital for human wellbeing and livelihoods. Therefore novel land management approaches to optimise natural resources are needed.

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Teachers learn how to add agriculture to classrooms

 Teachers learn how to add agriculture to classrooms


Not long after schools were dismissed for the summer in the Fairbanks North Star Borough, over a

dozen teachers went right back to class.

As part of the Agriculture in the Classroom workshop, teachers had some classroom instruction, but also

visited muskoxen, reindeer, goats, sheep, chicken and cattle, and learned about qiviut, pasture grazing techniques, community and school gardens and practical classroom experiments like making butter.
A teacher is delighted at the feel of qiviut during an Agriculture in the Classroom session.


Taught by Melissa Sikes of the Fairbanks Soil and Water Conservation District and Marilyn Krause, a Ryan Middle School teacher, the workshop was held June 3-6. It emphasized not only educating the teachers about agriculture in Alaska but gave them ways to incorporate their new knowledge into classrooms.

“It’s really important for kids to know agriculture is a big part of their lives; it’s where food comes from,” Sikes said. “There are a lot of misconceptions about Alaska.”

She hopes the project ultimately leads to more children raising animals and even considering the possibilities of becoming farmers. “We want to inspire kids to see farming as a career,” Sikes aid.
As for the teachers, Sikes envisions them taking traditional lessons they would teach anyway and adding an agricultural angle to it, be it math, science or art. “The possibilities are endless,” she said. On the final day of lessons, Sikes said even though she was tired from all the activities, “it was worth it to see the teachers so excited,” she said.

Mari LaBrosse, a teacher at Ryan Middle School and Hunter Elementary School, will now incorporate planting and fibers into her classrooms. “I want to teach healthy eating with from a

garden,” she said. She was inspired to teach nutrition and encourage students to do science fair projects on growing plants.

“This is important because kids may not have access. Kids love anything to do with food.”
Some of the demonstrations were as simple as putting a farm fresh egg in a glass of water and an egg from the supermarket in another glass. The teachers had to decide which one would float. Surprisingly, it was the fresher egg that plummeted to the bottom of the water while the older egg floated. Sikes explained the science behind the concept and gave the teachers sample lesson plans based on the parts of an egg.

Finally, she told the teachers to let the children try a taste test. Sometimes when she visits classrooms, she concludes the lesson by making scrambled eggs. “I love taste testing with the kids,” Sikes said.
Passing around sheep fiber, Krause said, “The kids like to see and feel the different textures.” In her classrooms, students get to dye, spin and felt wool. “A lot of kids have never seen sheep hair, especially city kids,” she said. “They learn how long it takes to make a sweater.”

“Teachers are continual learners,” substitute teacher Jenny Tse said. “I’m excited to share my passion with the kids.” She enjoyed the Ag in the Classroom seminar so much she wants to take it again next year.

She pointed out that she learned about the peony industry and how to grow this new crop for Alaska, and she learned to card wool.

“You can integrate agriculture into every subject,” Tse said.

Tanana Middle School science teacher Emily Metzgar said what she learned will help her give students a better understanding of how science has real life applications. “I’ll be able to share what people are doing in Fairbanks agriculturally,” she said. She also got ideas on what subjects she wants to explore on her own and ideas for research projects she intends to pursue.

“It’s good for kids to get better connected to the local area. This involves chemistry, geology, water and soil. It’s going to make it more interesting for kids.”
Bob VanVeldhuizen teaches teachers about soil during an Agriculture in the Classroom session at the Fairbanks Experiment Farm.

The workshop was sponsored by FSWCD, Alaska Farm Bureau and Natural Resources Conservation Service. It was hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Several UAF professors and staff members from the School of Natural Resources and Extension gave lectures, presentations and demonstrations.

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What Is Forensic Science and Why Is It Used to Solve Crimes?

 What Is Forensic Science and Why Is It Used to Solve Crimes?


Forensics uses several branches of science to help collect and examine evidence. Often, the evidence will be

 part of a criminal investigation, but not always. For example, insurance companies also use forensic experts. Forensics also authenticate works of art.

DNA evidence like blood splatters and other bodily fluids found at a crime scene is one of the more dramatic examples of the use of forensic science, but most other examples are more mundane. One type of forensic science concerns itself with the handwriting analysis San Diego police departments or lawyers might use to solve cases of felony or fraud. Some experts believe that handwriting analysis and handwriting identification are two separate areas and that the former is a bit of a parlor trick. Handwriting identification, on the other hand, attempts to show who did or didn't write a certain document. Experts look at the slant of the letter, if the letters are separated or joined, the way the writer uses upper and lower case and the shapes of the individual letters. A seasoned expert can even tell when a person has written something with his or her non-dominant hand to try to hide his or her identity.

Determining who did and didn't put their hand to a certain document can help legal professionals solve cases of forgery, identity theft, threatening letters, ransom letters, stolen checks or other crimes.

Working with fingerprints is as much of an art form as a science. Forensics experts have always valued fingerprints because they can be found in places where DNA can't. Fingerprints can be left on a wealth of materials, including the inside of gloves. Depending on the material and the weather, fingerprints can be ephemeral, or they can last for centuries. They've been found on scrolls of papyrus from ancient Egypt.

There are eight different types of fingerprints but every fingerprint is unique. They have whorls, ridges, loops, deltas, arches, dots and bifurcations that all come together in a pattern that make it possible to identify an individual person. Some well-trained forensics experts only need to memorize a few points in a fingerprint to be able to pick it out in a batch of fingerprint cards.

Before a person hires a forensics expert, he or she will need to make sure that the expert is board certified by a professional forensics association and that they're qualified to offer testimony in court. Such experts can be found in forensic science companies like Spectrum Forensic International, LLC.

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Project Euler and blending math and computer science for education

Project Euler and blending math and computer science for education

Project Euler is a simple and surprisingly good educational tool for a blend of computer science and math. Highly recommended.

You are given a problem (good examples: [1] [2] [3] [4]), go off and work on it in whatever programming language you like using whatever tools you like, and submit your answer (multiple submissions allowed). Simple, but surprisingly fun and interesting.

It's been around for a while (since 2006), and, though I've looked at it a few times, I only recently got addicted to it. It's not, as I first thought, just a series of interview-style coding questions, but a much more interesting set of deeper challenges in math that require programming to explore and solve. It's a great way to refresh on math and fun too.

Honestly, I can't say enough good things about it. I've blown hundreds of hours on some addictive video game before, addicted to the point that it occasionally interferes with work and sleep even, and this has the same feel. It's a great little educational tool and fun as well.

Definitely worth a look. Seems like it'd work for older teenagers too if you're looking for a summer project for a teen that already has some programming skill.

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A Computer Science Book Reading List

A Computer Science Book Reading List

This is a list of good books on computer science.

Most are accessible to anyone with programming experience equivalent to an introduction to computer science course. Of course, everyone in the field has his or her own favorite books. There isn't a universally accepted list of "best", but I think all would agree that these are at least pretty good in both writing quality and technical content, and that you would not go wrong by reading them.


If you read one book from each category within CORE, SYSTEMS, and THEORY, then, congratulations: you've just completed the equivalent of an undergraduate major in computer science! Pick up a few from APPLICATIONS and you're at the Masters level. In my ideal CS department, this would be the main thread of the majors curriculum, to be augmented with mathematics and more computing application electives.

I made this list in the process of researching acquisitions for the Williams College library. I reviewed the curriculum (for topics) and syllabi (for book recommendations) of many of the top CS programs and liberal arts colleges, including: MIT, Cal Tech, University of Washington, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, Brown, Rice, Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd, and Wellesley. I gave special emphasis for each topic to the schools and professors that specialize in it, e.g., Rice for compilers and programming languages. I also looked at various recommendation lists on the web and the Amazon best-sellers in each category. I was familiar with many of the books already. For the others, I reviewed the table of contents, read sections, looked at reviews, and particularly examined code samples. I then selected the book in each topic that I would want to use if teaching the course. For some topics, there were a few choices that had very high quality but very different approaches, so I listed all of those. If teaching that course, I would try one a year to see which worked best with the students. I generally didn't choose the best graduate textbooks or reference books, but instead the ones that would be appropriate for first encountering a topic, e.g., in an undergraduate course.

I'm also often asked for recommendations for professional programmers without CS degrees or undergraduates who want to learn more CS without necessarily taking courses or majoring. This is a nice list for those groups as well. Because of the way that CS books are categorized, it is hard to browse them in a library. Some are filed under "engineering," others under "math," "programming," "computer science," or the application area, such as artificial intelligence books appearing in psychology, cognitive science, and biology. So, think of this as the book shelf that I wish you could find in a library, with all of the short-lived "Learning Ruby in 21 Days" and "Visual Fortran 2012 for Dummies"-type books that normally clutter such a section removed.

For convenience, I've linked the books to Amazon for everyone and the Williams College library for my students (some are not yet at Williams, but are coming soon.) If you're reading through these book-club style, just choose one book from each category--whichever your library has or appeals to you will be fine. To keep the list approachable, I didn't include all of the well-respected books in each category but tried to choose one or two. Rather than making this a catch-all, I'll let others maintain their own lists of best computer science books---but I do appreciate recommendations, especially for application areas farther from my specialization in computational graphics.

Programming & Specific Languages
In the long run, it doesn't matter what language you begin with, and any book in this group is sufficient to get started. Skip on to the CORE section after reading one.

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African organizations win 2014 RISE Awards to support computer science education

African organizations win 2014 RISE Awards to support computer science education

Friday, February 7, 2014 | 5:12 PM

"We need more kids falling in love with science and math.” That's what Larry Page said at last year's I/O, and it's a feeling shared by all of us. We want to inspire young people around the world not just to use technology, but to create it. Unfortunately, many kids don’t have access to either the education or encouragement they need to pursue computer science. So five years ago we created the Google RISE (Roots in Science and Engineering) Awards, which provide funding to organizations around the world that engage girls and underrepresented students in extracurricular computer science programs.

This year, the RISE Awards are providing $1.5 million to 42 organizations in 19 countries, including Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda. These organizations provide students with the resources they need to succeed in the field. For example, Africa ICT Right in Ghana is helping to address the need for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and training in underserved communities. Another awardee, Uganda-based Mbarara University of Science and Technology has been helping to bridge the gender gap by focusing on community outreach programs that encourage girls to pursue STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) courses. Visit our site for a full list of our RISE Award recipients.


Lagos-based Audax Solutions Ltd has been carrying out programs aimed at bridging the opportunity divide between African children and their age mates around the world. Click on the photo to learn more about this and other RISE Awardees.

This year, we’re also expanding the program with the RISE Partnership Awards. These awards aim to encourage collaboration across organizations in pursuit of a shared goal of increasing global participation in computer science. For example, more than 5,000 girls in sub-Saharan Africa will learn computer science as a result of a partnership between the New York based program ELITE and the WAAW Foundation in Nigeria.
We’re proud to help these organizations inspire the next generation of computer scientists.

Posted by Hai Hong, RISE Program Manager



 ====


Des organisations africaines remportent les RISE Awards 2014 pour soutenir la formation en informatique

"Nous avons besoin que davantage d'enfants tombent amoureux des sciences et des maths.” C'est ce qu'a déclaré Larry Page lors des I/O de l'an dernier, et c'est un sentiment que nous partageons tous. Nous voulons inciter les jeunes du monde entier, non seulement à utiliser la technologie, mais à la créer. Malheureusement, de nombreux enfants n'ont accès ni à la formation ni aux encouragements dont ils ont besoin pour découvrir l'informatique. C'est pourquoi nous avons créé, il y a cinq ans, les Google RISE (Roots in Science and Engineering) Awards, qui assurent un financement aux organisations du monde entier encourageant les filles et les minorités sous-représentées à entreprendre des études en informatique.

Cette année, les RISE Awards représentent 1,5 million de dollars, distribués à 42 organisations dans 19 pays, dont le Ghana, le Nigéria et Ouganda. Ces organisations fournissent aux étudiants les ressources dont ils ont besoin pour réussir dans le domaine. Par exemple, Africa ICT Right au Ghana aide à répondre aux besoins en infrastructures pour les TIC (technologie de l'Information et de la Communication) et à la formation des communautés peu desservies. Autre lauréat, l'Université Mbarara de Science et Technologie (Ouganda) aide à combler le fossé entre les sexes en se focalisant sur les programmes de sensibilisation incitant les filles à poursuivre des cursus en STEM (Science, Technologie, Ingénierie et Maths) courses. Consultez notre site pour découvrir la liste de tous les lauréats des RISE Award.

Audax Solutions Ltd (Lagos) a mis en œuvre des programmes visant à réduire l'inégalité des chances entre les enfants africains et leurs camarades du même âge dans le monde entier. Cliquez sur la photo pour en savoir plus et pour connaître les autres lauréats des RISE Awards.

Cette année, nous étendons encore le programme, avec les RISE Partnership Awards. Ces prix sont destinés à encourager la collaboration entre les organisations qui poursuivent un but commun : développer l'accès mondial à l'informatique. Par exemple, plus de 5000 filles d'Afrique sub-saharienne vont suivre des cours d'informatique grâce à un partenariat entre le programme ELITE basé à New-York et la Fondation WAAW au Nigéria.

Nous sommes fiers d'aider ces organisations à inspirer la nouvelle génération d'ingénieurs en informatique.

Publié par Hai Hong, RISE Program Manager

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On Secure Provenance and the logic behind the threat model

On Secure Provenance and the logic behind the threat model


In our USENIX FAST 2009 paper (the "Picasso" paper), we discussed a scheme for providing integrity and confidentiality assurances to provenance of files. While this is a good first step towards securing provenance, I think there are many more issues we need to resolve.

These days, I see many security related papers advocating this or that scheme to secure objects. However, I really don't buy anything that claims to solve problems by having access control or policies. Here is why: access control works fine if the system is centralized, or the sysadmin of the system is incorruptible. However, when you have a distributed system with no control over other principals/their systems, OR when even sysadmins may become an attacker, there is no guarantee that access control constraints will be honored.

So, in the "REAL World", we can't claim to have a system that will prevent attacks from happening. With enough money, even trusted hardware devices can be breached (my co-advisor Radu Sion likes to stress on this point ... nothing is invincible). So, what can we do? We can't prevent someone from lying about themselves, or from deleting / changing things in their possession. What we CAN do is to prevent people from lying about others (i.e. "honest" others). This is exactly what guarantee we provide in our Secure Provenance work ... we prevent people from undetectably "invent" history involving other honest people.

To give a real life analogy, suppose a forger has painted a fake Picasso painting. The forger benefits here by taking his fake Picasso, and then inventing a fake history / provenance record involving his painting. He must have some honest buyers / art galleries listed in the provenance, otherwise, if the provenance only lists his cronies, it won't be believed.

The forger will NEVER do the opposite thing, i.e. take a real Picasso, and then remove its provenance and claim it to be painted by him. :)

The analogy applies to many scenarios involving data. I won't claim that it applies to all cases ... there are scenarios where the adversary might want to claim something as his own. An example would be the case of copyright disputes ... imagine two scientists bickering over who discovered something. But in most cases, the forger's goal with data is just like real life objects ... the forger wants to pass off something as what it's not ... so he needs a fake history, and that fake history must involve "honest" principals.

There are tons of issues to solve in order to have secure provenance ... but I'll write more about them later.

BTW, the painting shown above is a "real" Picasso, it is the painting titled "Dora Maar au Chat" (Dora Maar with cat). It is one of the most expensive paintings in the world; it was auctioned off in 2004 for $95 million!! Now, that has got to be the costliest painting of a cat!!

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What algorithms should new CS students learn first

What algorithms should new CS students learn first?

Back in my college days, I tutored a lot. I actually paid my way through college by teaching computer programming to many students. At last count, I think I have taught C, C++, and Java to almost 150 students in total. And along the way, I taught them the basic algorithms they could test out.

Which brings on the question: what algorithms should newbies learn first?

From my experience, I think first-timers ought to start learning simple things (such as finding the maximum of three numbers), then progress towards slightly complex versions of these problems (such as finding the maximum of n numbers). Then they should focus on things such as finding the GCD using Euclid's method; Binary search, etc. Sorting can come next, and I started teaching my students Bubble sort (yes, I know, it's the worst performance algorithm, but easy for people to grasp, compared with Quicksort!!).

Once the students master searching, sorting, max-mins etc., I then taught them recursion. It was quite fun to teach them recursion using the analogy of a staircase ... you go down the stairs, doing something in each step as you go down and then return (or doing something in each step on your way up).

Bernhard Koutschan recently posted a list of the most important algorithms. (thanks to Daniel Lemire for pointing it out). Among my favorites for first-timers, only 2 made that list (Euclid's GCD, binary search). The rest of the algorithms in that list are a bit complex for the newbie CS students to grasp in their first semester ... at least that's what I felt during my tutoring days.

Lemire has also posted a shorter list of the 5 most important algorithms, along with a poll, in his blog. It will be interesting to see what shortlist people come up with.

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New Computer Science Building Planned at Maharishi University of Management

New Computer Science Building Planned at Maharishi University of Management

The Computer Professionals MS program at Maharishi University of Management is our largest academic program. We have graduated more than 1,300 students since 1996, with more than 500 currently enrolled. The program attracts students from all over the world, and has given them paths to success at more than 1,000 US companies and organizations.

The MSCS program is also our fastest growing program.. Enrollment has expanded from around 160 new students per year over the past few years, to over 300 this year, and we expect enrollment to continue growing over the next three years. We need to support this rapid expansion with more top-level faculty, additional courses, and classrooms and labs.

The 12,000 square foot McLaughlin Building, inaugurated in 2002 created a beautiful home for the program.  An additional new 18,000 square foot building, built next to the McLaughlin Building will accommodate this growth for the next five years.

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“Disruptive Innovation” in Universities is not as important as Value

“Disruptive Innovation” in Universities is not as important as Value

June 26, 2014 at 7:44 am 6 comments

The below-linked article by Jill Lepore is remarkable for its careful dissection of Christensen’s theory of “disruptive innovation.” (Thanks to Shriram Krishnamurthi for the link.)  As Lepore points out, Christensen’s theories were referenced often by those promoting MOOCs.  I know I was told many times (vehemently, ferociously) that my emphasis on learning, retention, diversity was old-fashioned, and that disrupting the university was important for its own sake, for the sake of innovation.  As Lepore says in the quote below, there may be good arguments for MOOCs, but Christensen’s argument from a historical perspective just doesn’t work.  (Ian Bogost shared this other critical analysis of Christensen’s theory.)

I just finished reading Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, and I see similarities between how Lepore describes reactions to Christensen’s theory of “disruptive innovation” and how Lewis describes the market around synthetic subprime mortgage bond-backed financial instruments.  There’s a lot of groupthink going on (and the Wikipedia description is worth reading), with the party line saying, “This is all so great!  This is a great way to get rich!  We can’t imagine being wrong!”  What Lewis points out (most often through the words of Dr. Michael Burry) is that markets work when there is a logic to them and real value underneath.  Building financial instruments on top of loans that would never be repaid is ludicrous — it’s literally value-less.  Lepore is saying something similar — innovation for its own sake is not necessarily valuable or a path to success, and companies that don’t disruptively innovate can still be valuable and successful.

I don’t know enough to critique either Lewis or Lepore, but I do see how the lesson of value over groupthink applies to higher-education.  Moving education onto MOOCs just to be disruptive isn’t valuable.  We can choose what value proposition for education we want to promote.  If we’re choosing that we want to value reaching students who don’t normally get access higher education, that’s a reasonable goal — but if we’re not reaching that goal via MOOCs (as all the evidence suggests), then MOOCs offer no value.  If we’re choosing that we want students to learn more, or to improve retention, or to get networking opportunities with fellow students (future leaders), or to provide remedial help to students without good preparation, those are all good value propositions, but MOOCs help with none of them.

Both Lewis and Lepore are telling us that Universities will only succeed if they are providing value. MOOCs can only disrupt them if they can provide that value better.  No matter what the groupthink says, we should promote those models for higher-education that we can argue (logically and with evidence) support our value proposition.

    In “The Innovative University,” written with Henry J. Eyring, who used to work at the Monitor Group, a consulting firm co-founded by Michael Porter, Christensen subjected Harvard, a college founded by seventeenth-century theocrats, to his case-study analysis. “Studying the university’s history,” Christensen and Eyring wrote, “will allow us to move beyond the forlorn language of crisis to hopeful and practical strategies for success.” … That doesn’t mean good arguments can’t be made for online education. But there’s nothing factually persuasive in this account of its historical urgency and even inevitability, which relies on a method well outside anything resembling plausible historical analysis.

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Volcanoes protected species from ice age

Volcanoes protected species from ice age
Tuesday, 11 March 2014

An international team of researchers has found evidence that the steam and heat from volcanoes and heated rocks allowed many species of plants and animals to survive past ice ages.

The research, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), will help scientists understand how species respond to climate change. The paper could solve a long-running mystery about how some species survived and continued to evolve through past ice ages in parts of the planet covered by glaciers.

Volcanic steam

Professor Steven Chown of the Monash University School of Biological Sciences worked collaboratively as part of the team, led by the Australian National University (ANU), that studied tens of thousands of records of Antarctic species, collected over decades by hundreds of researchers. They found there are more species close to volcanoes, and fewer further away, supporting their hypothesis that species have been moving gradually away from volcanic areas since the last ice age.

“Warming from volcanoes and other heated ground can improve conditions for life, especially under extremely cold conditions such those found during ice age periods. In this way, volcanic areas provide important refuges for life,” Professor Chown said.

While the study was based on Antarctica, the findings could help scientists understand how species survived past ice ages in other icy regions, including in periods when it is thought there was little or no ice-free land on the planet.

Antarctica has at least 16 volcanoes which have been active since the last ice age 20,000 years ago. The study examined diversity patterns of mosses, lichens and invertebrates, which are still common in Antarctica today.

"Around 60 per cent of Antarctic invertebrate species are found nowhere else in the world. This suggests that these species have been present for millions of years. How they survived past ice ages – the most recent of which ended less than 20,000 years ago – has long puzzled scientists, Professor Chown said.

"As well as learning more about the impacts of past climate change; the research findings could help guide conservation efforts in Antarctica. Knowing where the ‘hotspots’ of diversity are will help us to protect them as human-induced environmental changes continue to affect Antarctica."

The findings can be viewed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

Originally posted on monash.edu

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Ancient debris key to Earth's secrets

Ancient debris key to Earth's secrets
Monday, 24 March 2014

An international team of researchers, led by scientists from Monash University, has uncovered new evidence about the formation of Earth.

For years experts have known that the movement of tectonic plates caused continents to collide, resulting in a massive build-up of assorted geological 'debris', including great mountain belts and ranges. The collisions, which occurred millions of years ago, and some which are still happening today, have resulted in some of the world’s most stunning landscapes – which contain diverse varieties of rock, baffling scientists until now.

The major new study, published today in Nature, is the result of more than 10 years’ work by scientists from Monash University, the University of Melbourne, the University of Southern California and the Geological Survey of Victoria. Led by Professor Louis Moresi, The Dynamics of Continental Accretion, reveals for the first time the impact of these collisions, and crucially, how evidence of these events can be preserved largely intact in the Earth’s crust for millions of years.

The results may lead to significant new insights into regions where data is incomplete. This includes ancient deeply-buried geological material beneath the Antarctic and Africa, and in regions such as the Himalayas, North America, Australia, and South East Asia, where vast volumes of new crust has accumulated over the last 500 million years.

According to Professor Moresi, geologists are accustomed to finding unusual material mashed up in ancient mountain belts - what wasn’t certain is how this happened.

“Classical geology focused on examining old rocks formed millions or sometimes billions of years ago, in an attempt to piece information together. Through vastly improved computer power now available, an exciting new avenue has opened up for us,” said Professor Moresi.

The team combined advanced computer models with classical geological practices to gain new insights into rock sequences in eastern Australia. The computer model gave scientists an accelerated simulation of synthetic rocks behaving in a digital Earth. This indicated that rocks caught in collisions were swept in a huge arcing path, where they were stretched, rotated and dragged hundreds of kilometres from their original location - a process called subduction roll-back.

“Traditional geological studies, examines minuscule fractions of the rock record, piecing this together to get the bigger picture. Our research differs as not only did we have a substantial volume of geological data, but we also had access to comprehensive geophysical datasets, and the sweeping vision of the computer models which undoubtedly helped us to gain greater insights into the creation of some of Australia’s distinctive geology,” Professor Moresi said.

The computer modelling matched over 20 years of geological mapping and geophysical data interpretation in eastern Australia gathered by a team of experts from the Geological Survey of Victoria. The region surveyed had embedded blocks of older continental crust, suggesting a collision took place in Australia between 380 and 450 million years ago.

Professor Moresi said the team aim to use the research to analyse sites of more recent collisions.

“We hope that the insights we have gained can be applied to younger collisions such as Alaska. We know there’s a block of rock in this region that’s being pulled into the subduction zone right now, and that’s very exciting for us,” Professor Moresi said.

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Double rings discovered around asteroid is an accidental find

Double rings discovered around asteroid is an accidental find
Thursday, 27 March 2014

In a surprise discovery two rings have been found around the remote asteroid Chariklo, which lies more than a billion kilometres from Earth.

This is the first time rings have been discovered around an asteroid and makes it only the fifth object in our solar system to have rings – after Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Not only were the rings detected but amazing detail is now known about them, with the results published in the journal Nature today.

Not really looking for rings

The discovery was made by a team of researchers using a plethora of instruments and telescopes, including a new high-resolution camera on the Danish telescope at European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

The camera is actually designed to help in the search for exoplanets – planets that orbit other stars.



The special camera was designed to observe exoplanets in other star systems but has also shown its usefulness for observing objects in our own solar system. Jesper Skottfelt, Niels Bohr Institute.
Click to enlarge
Chariklo is 250 kilometres across and is the largest of the Centaurs, objects that have unstable orbits between Jupiter and Neptune.

There are about 250 Centaurs currently known about and, just like the mythical Centaurs that are half-man, half-horse, these objects share a mix of characteristics from both icy comets and rocky asteroids.

From Earth, Chariklo appears as a mere dot, even when it is viewed with powerful telescopes.

But when an asteroid passes in front of a star, the star’s light is blocked. Such events are known as occultations and happen remarkably often. Several asteroid occultations will be visible from different parts of Australia tonight.

Astronomers can use multiple telescopes scattered across hundreds of kilometres to map the size and shape of an asteroid during an occultation.

A coordinated effort

Last June Chariklo was to pass in front of an obscure star (UCAC4 248-108672). But the occultation could only be seen from South America so an observing campaign was coordinated across seven observatories including two telescopes operated by the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

Usually the star just fades for a few seconds as the asteroid passes by. Astronomers were expecting the star to fade for about five seconds while Chariklo blocked its light.

But surprisingly, a few seconds before and after the asteroid moved by, there was additional dimming of the starlight. Rings surrounding Chariklo were blocking star light too.

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Infrared light puts malaria to the test

Infrared light puts malaria to the test



Scientists have patented a new way to detect one of the most common and deadly diseases in the world.

A quick and inexpensive test that uses infrared light to detect malaria at a very early stage of its development could dramatically reduce the number of people who die from the disease.

The research by Monash University and the University of Melbourne has been hailed as a breakthrough by the journal Analytical Chemistry.

Lead researcher, Associate Professor Bayden Wood from Monash University said the test, which looks for fatty acids in the parasite that causes malaria, could be a game changer, especially for developing countries where malaria is most prevalent.

“Current tests for malaria suffer from serious limitations. Many are expensive, require specialist instruments and highly trained staff to judge whether blood samples contain the parasite. These are big hurdles given that the disease is rampant in developing nations," Associate Professor Wood said.
“What’s been holding us back is the lack of an accurate and inexpensive test to detect malaria early and stop it in its tracks. We believe we’ve found it."

The technique known as Attenuated Total Reflection-Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) utilizes infrared light to detect the vibrations of molecules. It essentially gives a snap shot of the entire chemistry of the system under investigation.

It’s the first time the ATR-FTIR has been used to test for malaria. Its infrared light means that scientists can look for the parasite at an earlier stage, and crucially determine the number of parasites in the blood.

Using filtered blood samples, researchers spiked red blood cells with parasites of different numbers and life stages.

Professor Leann Tilley from the University of Melbourne, said the new approach was the first to make it possible to detect the early stages of the parasite’s life cycle, known as the ring stage and the gametocyte stage.

"Malaria is tough to diagnose because only small numbers of immature parasites are present in the blood stream. Once they mature, the parasites hide away in the tissues. It is important to make an early diagnosis before the parasites lodge in brain capillaries causing complications that can lead to death," Professor Tilley said.

The scientists already knew that fatty acids were a marker for the disease from previous studies at the Australian Synchrotron. The Synchrotron allowed the team to see the different life stages of the parasite and the variation in its fatty acids. They then applied these insights to develop an inexpensive laboratory based test that has the potential to be portable.

Associate Professor Wood said not only did the test give clear results within minutes, it gave a clear indication of malaria at a much earlier stage of infection than current tests on the market.
“We have been missing a vital piece of the puzzle when it comes to eradicating this disease. While treatment for malaria has advanced significantly, access to drugs is not a reality for everyone, especially in developing countries.

"Now that we can detect the early stages of a parasite’s life in the blood stream the disease will be much easier to test and treat.

“The big advantage of our test is that it doesn't need scientists and expensive equipment. This has the potential to dramatically reduce the number of people dying from this disease in remote communities,” Associate Professor Wood said.

Potentially the method could also help to detect a number of other blood borne diseases.

Spread through the bite of an infected mosquito, malaria affects around 300 million people worldwide. Symptoms, which include fever and headaches, typically develop within a few days. Early diagnosis is critical to prevent the parasite from developing in the body. Left untreated malaria can lead to coma or death. Recent estimates suggest that more than 1.2 million people die every year.

Proving its significance on a global scale, the research has been selected by the American Chemical Society (ACS) as its Editor’s Choice. The research has been made freely available to the public as an open access paper. Starting this year, the ACS selects one paper per day from those accepted by its 44 journals to make the grade as Editor’s Choice research.

The next phase will see Associate Professor Wood and his team carry out clinical tests of the ATR devices in a human trial in Thailand. It’s hoped that that the test could be on the market within three years.

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Clever DNA may help bacteria survive

‘Clever’ DNA may help bacteria survive


A-DNA (left) B-DNA (right)
Scientists have discovered that bacteria can reshape their DNA to survive dehydration.

The research, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society Interface, shows that bacterial DNA can change from the regular double helix – known as B-DNA, to the more compact A-DNA form, when faced with hostile conditions such as dehydration.

Crucially, scientists have pinpointed a unique process in DNA, called the B-A-B transition, which allows it to change its structure in response to environmental change. Without impacting on the ability of the bacteria to function and reproduce, this unique structural alteration sees the B-DNA change to A-DNA, and then revert back to its original B-DNA form to ensure the bacteria survive.

Associate Professor Bayden Wood, from Monash University said the study gives vital new information on how bacteria can survive periods of time in arid environments.

“Our findings may be important in understanding how dormant bacteria that are transferred from dry surfaces may become active and reproduce in the human body,’ Associate Professor Wood said.

PhD student and first author of the paper, Donna Whelan said the most common form of DNA found in most organisms is B-DNA. However, the A-form has been thought to show protective qualities to allow bacterial spores to survive high UV exposure and other extreme environmental conditions.

“Our research, which utilised infrared light to investigate the structure of DNA inside live bacteria, demonstrates that bacteria can survive by adopting the A-DNA form after the majority of water is removed – and that really is groundbreaking,” Donna Whelan said.

The new findings build on research led by Associate Professor Wood and Donna Whelan in 2011 at the Australian Synchrotron, which indicated the same B-A-B DNA transition occurs in all cell types. Significantly, the team has now discovered this change may have a biological function in bacteria, potentially assisting them to survive dehydration.

Associate Professor Bayden Wood said the ability for DNA to transform and then change back again in human cells had puzzled scientists until now.

“In human cells the DNA is tightly bound by proteins known as histones, so the fact that it can change to a different form and then change back again is fascinating. We have no biological reason for why this DNA transition happens in human cells, but we may now understand its role in bacteria,” Associate Professor Wood said.

The interdisciplinary team at Monash investigated four species of bacteria using live cells. By carefully hydrating and dehydrating the bacteria and then analysing the cells using an infrared-based technique, which detects the vibrations of DNA, the team found all four species underwent the same B-A-B transition.

Professor Julian Rood, who coordinated the microbiology aspects of the research, said that because the majority of bacteria remained fully functional after hydration and rehydration the results suggest A-DNA may have a highly evolved protective capacity to ensure survival.

“We discovered A-DNA has an amazing ability to protect and ensure life continues even under extreme stress, in this case dehydration. In our tests, even after the majority of water was removed, A-DNA kicked in and then changed back to B-DNA to help the bacteria survive,” Professor Rood said.

The next phase of the research will see the team investigate how bacteria survive other conditions such as temperature, pH levels, oxygen, nutrients and antimicrobials and discover what role the 'clever' DNA plays under these conditions.

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