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Tuesday, June 11, 2013
How the Feds Have Tried to Fight Leaks (So Far)
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Throughout the Obama presidency, the federal government has struggled to find the right mix of tactics to stop internal leaks such as the major NSA breach by Edward Snowden.
New Survey Will Hunt for Nearby Alien Planets on the Cheap
After it launched into space in 2009, NASA?s Kepler Space Telescope sniffed out thousands of potential planets around other stars, simply by watching for the dips in starlight as planets pass over ? transit ? the disc of their stars.
Among Kepler's portfolio of planets are gas giants like Jupiter, but many of these are so close to their stars that their atmospheres sizzle at over 1,000 degrees. Others are Neptune-sized, or smaller "super-Earths" lurking in their stars? habitable zones.
Yet the great strengths that led to Kepler?s success were also its weakness; it stared at one patch of sky in the Milky Way constantly, amongst the patterns of the constellations Lyra and Cygnus where the density of stars is highest. [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]
While the mission may have seen more stars in this area of sky, some of the stars and their transits that Kepler observed are so faint that ground-based telescopes can?t conduct follow-up observations. What?s needed is a telescope, or a set of telescopes, that can look for planetary transits of the closest and brightest stars across a much wider area of sky, researchers say.
Enter the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). It's the successor to the highly successful Super-WASP project, which was assembled on a shoestring budget and sports two observatories in the Canary Islands and South Africa.
NGTS is being built atop Cerro Paranal at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile?s Atacama Desert. It will be the perfect counterpoint to the space-based Kepler, advocates say.
"We have the Kepler machine that has found over 2,000 planet [candidates], which is wonderful," said Didier Queloz, an exoplanet expert who recently joined the University of Cambridge as Professor of Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory. "Most of them are Neptune-sized, but the problem is that all these planets are so faint that we cannot measure their mass or do anything about them."
Researchers know that these planets are there but, without the necessary instrumentation, there is not much they can do in the way of truly understanding what they and their atmospheres are made of.
"For scientists, it is a lot of frustration because in that sense Kepler is an experiment that brought even bigger questions," Queloz said.??
Searching for small nearby planets
NGTS? job is to find planets around bright or nearby stars for which these questions can be solved. It is not interested in any old planets, but instead mostly the smaller "hot Neptunes" and any super-Earths that if finds.?
Researchers intend to measure the densities of 100 such worlds by getting the radius of the planets from the size of their transits ? the bigger the planet, the more starlight is blocked. Follow-up radial velocity observations by other ground-based instruments, which look at how a star "wobbles" thanks to the gravity of an orbiting planet, will reveal the mass of the planets. [7 Ways to Discover Alien Planets]
"This will be the first statistical sample of measured densities for small planets," said the University of Warwick?s Peter Wheatley, who is NGTS? co-principal investigator. "We believe this sample will allow quantitative tests of planet formation, migration and evolutionary models, and will drive the development of future models."
The NGTS team doesn?t plan to stop there. They are thinking even more ambitiously, with the intent of finding super-Earths and Neptunes around stars bright enough for large telescopes ? such as Hubble, the Very Large Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope ? to characterize their atmospheres using transmission spectroscopy. This method studies the starlight that is absorbed as it passes through the thin atmospheric veils that coat these worlds.
Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdon, who is not a member of the NGTS consortium, said that its findings will be valuable.
"It [NGTS] will likely produce several dozen new detections, which is good because it helps us understand the formation processes and the occurrence rate of Neptune-sized planets better," he said. "Plenty of the candidates that they will find will also have radial velocity follow-ups, which is another good thing as it allows for independent confirmation and, more interestingly, simultaneous determination of planetary radii and masses, which can then be used to estimate planet compositions."
As far as detecting planets in the habitable zone, Wheatley doesn?t rule it out, although he admits it?s not one of NGTS? primary goals (unlike Kepler).
"It is actually possible that we will find planets in the habitable zone around red dwarf stars," he said. "Our simulations show we should be sensitive to two or three habitable zone planets, but we?re not making them one of our primary science goals as they are right at our detection limits."
Of course, whether life could exist on a Neptune planet, be it hot or cold, is uncertain, particularly as scientists don?t yet fully understand the make-up of hot Neptunes. Furthermore, could the telescope array discover something smaller than a hot Neptune?
"We hope to detect perhaps 20 super-Earths around stars brighter than 13th magnitude as well as 60 or more hot Neptunes," said NGTS team member Matt Burleigh of the University of Leicester. "The super-Earths will most likely be found around the smaller radius, lower mass red dwarf stars in the survey area. Some could even be in their host star?s habitable zones, which are much closer to red dwarfs than solar-type stars."
A wider survey
In comparison to the Kepler spacecraft, NGTS? advantage is its total survey area of 100 square degrees, scientists say.
"The field of view of NGTS is similar to that of Kepler, but we are planning to observe around four fields per year for at least four years and so we should cover at least sixteen times the sky area that Kepler does," said Wheatley.?
The idea is that, by covering more sky, the survey will hit upon more brighter and/or nearby stars that Kepler?s restricted field of view misses, in the hope of snaring planets for which it is easier, in the long term, to measure characteristics such as atmospheric composition. [The Strangest Alien Planets (Images)]
NGTS? predecessor, Super-WASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets), has detected 65 exoplanets since it went online in 2004. SuperWASP doesn?t have any telescopes to its name, but rather just arrays of camera lenses bought from eBay.
So NGTS, with its custom-built 8-inch (20 centimeters) aperture telescopes, each affixed to its own individual mount and each sporting a large format CCD camera, is a big step up. But it's still dwarfed by its giant neighbors, the four 8-meter telescopes of ESO's Very Large Telescope, which NGTS will sit next to atop the peak of Cerro Paranal. (NGTS is the first private instrument to be granted permission to build at the ESO site at Cerro Paranal).
Currently being assembled for just less than two million pounds (around $3 million) NGTS will see first light in 2014.
SuperWASP allowed many scientists like Wheatley and Burleigh to cut their teeth on exoplanet detection, so that when it comes to NGTS they?ll be able to dive straight in.
NGTS is coming along at the vanguard of a new wave of planet-detecting instruments. For example, ESPRESSO, the Echelle SPectrograph or Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations, is to be the successor to the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph, which? holds the record for the most exoplanet discoveries from a ground-based instrument, and will be attached to the VLT to make sensitive radial velocity measurements.
Then there's TESS, NASA?s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which will perform similar work as NGTS, searching the nearest or brightest stars for transits.?
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency?s CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite), which like TESS is slated to launch in 2017, will target previously confirmed planets in order to improve the measurements of these transits that have been uncovered from Earth.
NGTS will be able to provide planet fodder for all of these missions and instruments to investigate further, in conjunction with the likes of the James Webb Space Telescope or the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).
"To confirm our planets and measure their mass and density, we require sensitive radial velocity measurements, initially with HARPS and then also with ESPRESSO on the VLT," Wheatley said. "And to detect the atmospheres of NGTS planets, we need a wide range of VLT and eventually E-ELT instrumentation for transmission spectroscopy and secondary eclipse observations. So we need ESO facilities to achieve our science goals, and ESO needs NGTS to provide small planet targets to the VLT and eventually E-ELT."
This story was provided by?Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program.
Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/survey-hunt-nearby-alien-planets-cheap-140546654.html
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Monday, June 10, 2013
2 Koreas talk in border village after tensions
Chun Hae-sung, center, the head of South Korea's working-level delegation, walks with delegates Kwon Young-yang, left, and Kang Jong-won as they leave for Panmunjom at the Office of the South Korea-North Korea Dialogue in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. North and South Korea will meet in the village straddling their heavily armed border Sunday for the first government-level talks on the peninsula in more than two years as they try to lower tension and restore stalled projects that once symbolized their rapprochement. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Chun Hae-sung, center, the head of South Korea's working-level delegation, walks with delegates Kwon Young-yang, left, and Kang Jong-won as they leave for Panmunjom at the Office of the South Korea-North Korea Dialogue in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. North and South Korea will meet in the village straddling their heavily armed border Sunday for the first government-level talks on the peninsula in more than two years as they try to lower tension and restore stalled projects that once symbolized their rapprochement. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Chun Hae-sung, center, the head of South Korea's working-level delegation, speaks to the media while standing with delegates Kwon Young-yang, left, and Kang Jong-won before leaving for Panmunjom at the Office of the South Korea-North Korea Dialogue in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. North and South Korea will meet in the village straddling their heavily armed border Sunday for the first government-level talks on the peninsula in more than two years as they try to lower tension and restore stalled projects that once symbolized their rapprochement. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Visitors take souvenir photos as military soldiers patrol at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at Panmunjom, a "truce village" on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A visitor stands on their toes while taking souvenir photos in front of a wire fence covered with ribbons carrying messages left by visitors wishing for the reunification of the two Koreas, at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at Panmunjom, a "truce village" on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Visitors look through a wire fence decorated with ribbons carrying messages visitors left wishing for the reunification of the two Koreas, at the Imjingak Pavilion near the border village of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013. Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at Panmunjom, a "truce village" on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? Government delegates from North and South Korea began preparatory talks Sunday at a "truce village" on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects.
The meeting at Panmunjom, where the truce ending the 1950-53 Korean War was signed, is the first of its kind on the Korean Peninsula in more than two years. Success will be judged on whether the delegates can pave the way for a summit between the ministers of each country's department for cross-border affairs, which South Korea has proposed for Wednesday in Seoul. Such ministerial talks haven't happened since 2007.
The intense media interest in what's essentially a meeting of bureaucrats to iron out technical details is an indication of how bad ties between the Koreas have been.
Any dialogue is an improvement on the belligerence that has marked the relationship over recent years, which have seen North Korean nuclear tests and long-range rocket launches, attacks in 2010 blamed on the North that killed 50 South Koreans, and a steady stream in recent months of invective and threats from Pyongyang and counter-vows from Seoul.
"Today's working-level talks will be a chance to take care of administrative and technical issues in order to successfully host the ministers' talks," one of the South Korean delegates, Unification Policy Officer Chun Hae-sung, said in Seoul before the group's departure for Panmunjom.
The southern delegation will keep in mind, he said, "that the development of South and North Korean relations starts from little things and gradual trust-building."
During the morning talks, the delegates discussed the agenda for the ministerial meeting, location, date, the number of participants and how long they will stay in Seoul, if the meeting is held there, the Unification Ministry, which is responsible for North Korea issues, said.
Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk told reporters that there were no major disputes and the talks would continue.
Analysts express wariness about North Korea's intentions, with some seeing the interest in dialogue as part of a pattern where Pyongyang follows aggressive rhetoric and provocations with diplomatic efforts to trade an easing of tension for outside concessions.
Recent months saw North Korean threats of nuclear war, Pyongyang's claim that the Korean War armistice was void, the closing of a jointly run factory park and a North Korean vow to ramp up production of nuclear bomb fuel.
If the Koreas can arrive at an agreement for ministerial talks, that meeting will likely focus on reopening the factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong that was the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, and on other scrapped rapprochement projects and reunions of families separated by the Korean War.
Pyongyang pulled its 53,000 workers from the Kaesong factories in April, and Seoul withdrew its last personnel in May.
Success will also mark a victory for South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who took office in February and has maintained through the heightened tensions a policy that combines vows of strong counter-action to any North Korea provocation with efforts to build trust and re-establish dialogue.
It wasn't immediately clear how long Sunday's meetings would last; reporters weren't being allowed access to the venue.
The Koreas have been communicating on a recently restored Red Cross line that Pyongyang shut down during earlier tensions this spring. The site of Sunday's meeting holds added significance because the armistice ending the Korean War was signed there 60 years ago next month. The Panmunjom truce, however, has never been replaced with a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula technically at war.
Representatives of the rival Koreas met on the peninsula in February 2011 and their nuclear envoys met in Beijing later that year, but government officials from both sides have not met since.
The meeting follows a summit by U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in California. White House national security adviser Tom Donilon said Obama and Xi found "quite a bit of alignment" on North Korea and agreed that Pyongyang has to abandon its nuclear weapons aspirations.
China provides a lifeline for a North Korea struggling with energy and other economic needs, and views stability in Pyongyang as crucial for its own economy and border security. But after Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test in February, China tightened its cross-border trade inspections and banned its state banks from dealing with North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un late last month sent to China his special envoy, who reportedly told Xi that Pyongyang was willing to return to dialogue. President Park will travel to Beijing to meet Xi later this month.
The talks between the Koreas on Sunday could represent a change in North Korea's approach, analysts said, or could simply be an effort to ease international demands that it end its development of nuclear weapons, a topic crucial to Washington but initially not a part of the envisioned inter-Korean meetings.
Pyongyang, which is estimated to have a handful of crude nuclear devices, has committed a drumbeat of acts that Washington, Seoul and others deem provocative since Kim Jong Un took over in December 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il.
__
AP writer Sam Kim contributed to this report from Seoul.
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Sunday, June 9, 2013
How would you change Samsung's Series 7 Gamer?
Samsung isn't normally spoken of in the same breath as Razer, Alienware or Clevo, which is why its 17-inch Series 7 Gamer was such a surprise. But could it run with the big boys? Surprisingly, yes. When we reviewed it, we were impressed by its performance and powerful display -- the only downside was its pitiful (and wholly expected) two-hour battery life. The question is, if you were beavering away in Samsung's laptop design department, what would you have done differently?
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Md3Rr-qtmdE/
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Texas actress charged in Obama ricin threat
In this undated photo, actress Shannon Richardson poses for a photo, in Texarkana, Texas. Richardson made an initial appearance in a Texarkana, Texas, courtroom Friday, June 7, 2013, after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette)
In this undated photo, actress Shannon Richardson poses for a photo, in Texarkana, Texas. Richardson made an initial appearance in a Texarkana, Texas, courtroom Friday, June 7, 2013, after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette)
Shannon Richardson, right, is led from the emergency room at CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System in Texarkana, Texas, Friday, June 7, 2013. Richardson made an initial appearance in a Texarkana courtroom after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette, Curt Youngblood) MANDATORY CREDIT
FILE - In this May 31, 2013 file photo, members of an FBI hazardous materials team prepare to enter a residence in New Boston, Texas in connection with a federal investigation surrounding ricin-laced letters mailed to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two U.S. law enforcement officials say Shannon Richardson of New Boston, Texas, has been arrested Friday, June 7, in the investigation. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette, Evan Lewis) MANDATORY CREDIT
FILE - In this May 31, 2013 file photo, authorities search a residence in New Boston, Texas in connection with a federal investigation surrounding ricin-laced letters mailed to President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Two U.S. law enforcement officials say Shannon Richardson of New Boston, Texas, has been arrested Friday, June 7, in the investigation. (AP Texarkana Gazette, Evan Lewis) MANDATORY CREDIT
In this undated photo, actress Shannon Richardson poses for a photo, in Texarkana, Texas. Richardson made an initial appearance in a Texarkana, Texas, courtroom Friday, June 7, 2013, after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. She could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said. (AP Photo/Texarkana Gazette)
TEXARKANA, Texas (AP) ? A pregnant Texas actress who first told the FBI that her husband sent ricin-tainted letters to President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, then allegedly said she sent them because her husband "made her" do it, was charged Friday with threatening the president.
Shannon Guess Richardson, 35, appeared in a Texarkana courtroom after being charged with mailing a threatening communication to the president. The federal charge carries up to 10 years in prison, U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Davilyn Walston said.
Richardson, a mother of five who has played bit roles on television and in movies, was arrested earlier Friday for allegedly mailing the ricin-laced letters last month to the White House, Bloomberg and the mayor's Washington gun-control group. The letters ? which authorities determined were mailed from Richardson's hometown of New Boston or nearby Texarkana and postmarked in Shreveport, La. ? threatened violence against gun-control advocates, authorities said.
Her court-appointed attorney didn't immediately return a message seeking comment.
According to an FBI affidavit, Richardson contacted authorities on May 30 to implicate her estranged husband, Nathaniel Richardson. She later failed a polygraph test, and investigators looking into her story found numerous inconsistencies, the document said.
Among the inconsistencies: Nathaniel Richardson would have been at work at a time when Internet searches tied to the letters were made on the couple's laptop and at the time they were postmarked.
During an interview with authorities Thursday, Shannon Richardson admitted mailing the letters knowing they contained ricin, but she said her husband had typed them and made her print and send them, the affidavit said.
No charges have been filed against Nathaniel Richardson. His attorney, John Delk, told The Associated Press Friday that his client was pleased with his wife's arrest and was working with authorities to prove his innocence.
Delk said he wasn't anticipating that Nathanial Richardson would be arrested. "But until I'm sure they're not looking at him being involved, I can't say much more," he said.
Delk previously told the AP that the couple is going through a divorce and that the 33-year-old Army veteran may have been "set up" by his wife.
FBI agents wearing hazardous material suits were seen going in and out of the Richardsons' house on Wednesday in nearby New Boston, about 150 miles northeast of Dallas near the Arkansas and Oklahoma borders. Authorities conducted a similar search on May 31.
The house is now under quarantine for "environmental or toxic agents," according to a posting at the residence. Multiple samples taken from the couples' home tested positive for ricin, according to the affidavit. Federal agents also found castor beans ? the key ingredient in ricin ? along with syringes and other items that could be used to extract the lethal poison, the affidavit says.
Bloomberg issued a statement Friday thanking local and federal law enforcement agencies "for their outstanding work in apprehending a suspect," saying they worked collaboratively from the outset "and will continue to do so as the investigation continues."
Shannon Richardson appears in movies and on TV under the name Shannon Guess. Her resume on the Internet movie database IMDb said she has had small television roles in "The Vampire Diaries" and "The Walking Dead." She had a minor role in the movie "The Blind Side" and appeared in an Avis commercial, according to the resume.
She was seen leaving a Texarkana hospital on Friday shortly before the court hearing, though it was unclear why she was there. A hospital spokeswoman didn't return a phone message seeking comment.
Delk said the Richardsons were expecting their first child in October. Shannon Richardson also has five children ranging in age from 4 to 19 from other relationships, four of whom had been living with the couple in the New Boston home, the attorney said.
Nathaniel Richardson works as a mechanic at the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana, Texas, a facility that repairs tanks, Humvees and other mobile military equipment. He and Shannon were married in October 2011.
According to court records, Shannon Richardson is in federal custody. The government is requesting that she be held without bond, and a detention hearing is scheduled for next Friday, the records show.
The FBI is investigating at least three cases over the past two months in which ricin was mailed to Obama and other public figures. Ricin has been sent to officials sporadically over the years, but experts say that there seems to be a recent uptick and that copycat attacks ? made possible by the relative ease of extracting the poison ? may be the reason.
If inhaled, ricin can cause respiratory failure, among other symptoms. If swallowed, it can shut down the liver and other organs, resulting in death. The amount of ricin that can fit on the head of a pin is said to be enough to kill an adult if properly prepared. No antidote is available, though researchers are trying to develop one.
___
Danny Robbins reported from Dallas. Associated Press writer Adam Goldman contributed to this report from Washington.
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