It looks like Trump was set up, took the bait & then made the situation worse by letting George pin him down. We explain what hell is going on with Donald Trump this week, the Pandora’s Box just opened in Libya, follow up on the supposed Russian hack of the DNC & the real possibility it was the NSA that dumped to Wikileaks.

Plus the chemical attacks in Syria, the security situation in Rio & a supersized Overtime segment!

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— Show Notes —

Episode Links:

• Trump’s comments on Russia denounced as ‘shocking and dangerous’ | US news | The Guardian
• Fox News on Twitter: “Secret Service Code Names. #SpecialReport #DemsInPhilly #DemConvention https://t.co/E5dMOKNpfd”
• America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems – The Washington Post
• Hillary says “We will work to get money out of politics!” on the same day she accepts a $25 million donation from George Soros « InvestmentWatch
• Are voting machines the next target of Russian hacking? One security expert thinks so. – Recode
• Russia Expert Stephen Cohen: Trump Wants To Stop The New Cold War, But The America Media Just Doesn’t Understand | Video | RealClearPolitics
• Hillary Clinton: Donald Trump has ‘absolute allegiance to Russian wish-list foreign policy’ – Washington Times
• Clinton blames Russia for DNC hack as Trump seems to back annex of Crimea | US news | The Guardian
• NSA whistleblower says DNC hack was not done by Russia, but by U.S. intelligence – The Duran
• Islamic State calls on members to carry out jihad in Russia | Reuters
• Records show how often SDPD uses its Stingray | SanDiegoUnionTribune.com
• US launches air strikes on IS in Libya – BBC News
• WIKILEAKS: Hillary Took Cash From Company Accused of Sponsoring ISIS
• Travis Helwig on Twitter: “Shoutout to the huge font size on the paper teaching Trump about the Syrian Refugee crisis. https://t.co/0u5fvABilf”
• Recruited by MI5: the name’s Mussolini. Benito Mussolini | World news | The Guardian
• SITE Intel Group on Twitter: “#ISIS ‘Amaq published an English version of its infographic on ISIS suicide attacks in #Iraq #Libya #Syria in 7/2016 https://t.co/knceKTrpjS”
• Crypto Cannabis Conference 2016 to Examine Bitcoin, Legalization
• Donald Trump’s feud with Khan family cast in awkward new light as Vietnam War draft dodge comes under scrutiny | US elections | News | The Independent
• Ghazala Khan Is a Gold Star Mother. Here’s What That Means. – The New York Times
• Ghazala Khan: Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice. – The Washington Post
• j7fwAy.jpg (1005×600)
• Sanders delegates recount ‘Orwellian’ message control by Clinton supporters during DNC
• Palestinian Human Rights Sign Yanked Out of Washington Delegate’s Hand: “This Is Almost Like Racism” – Slog – The Stranger
• Trump asks why US can’t use nukes: MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough reports
• Ally of Trump staffer Paul Manafort: The staff is suicidal, he’s mailing it in
• Trump on Khan remarks: ‘I don’t regret anything’ | TheHill
• Joe Biden marries two gay White House officials at his house | Americas | News | The Independent
• US sent $400 million in cash to Iran as prisoners were freed, WSJ reports
• Private company wins U.S. clearance to fly to the moon
• Journalist facing jail over hacking seeks reprieve from Obama – POLITICO
• Jeep hackers at it again, this time taking control of steering and braking systems | The Verge
• Armed man busted at Trump Tower after Secret Service calls cops – NY Daily News
• Inside Ryan’s primary strategy | TheHill
• Trump Spokeswoman: Obama’s Policies “Probably” Killed Humayun Khan, Who Died in 2004
• Who was Capt Humayun Khan? – BBC News
• In Khizr Khan and his late son, a complex portrait of patriotism – CNNPolitics.com
• Full Movie: “Clinton Cash” – YouTube
• NBC Ignores the Resignations of High Ranking DNC Officials Over Hacked E-Mails
• Senior GOP Officials Exploring Options If Trump Drops Out – ABC News

The post Trump: The Wrath of Khan | Unfilter 198 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The Winter Propaganda Games are in full force, ramping up before the actual games begin and the media working in hand with egomaniac politicians would have you believe the Olympics are taking place in the middle of a war zone.

Then the GCHQ, the NSA, and the Canadian spy agencies spend some more time in the light, as new revelations have come out. We’ll bring you up to date.

Plus an update from across the pond, our follow up, and much much more.

On this week’s episode of, Unfilter.

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— Show Notes —

NSA is Crazy

• President Obama taps Adm. Mike Rogers to run NSA

Rogers, who today runs the Navy’s Fleet Cyber Command, oversees a total force of approximately 15,000 sailors and civilians – plus contractors- of which about 5,000 are specifically charged with giving the Navy the same kind of reach and flexibility in cyberspace that it has at sea.

• 4 Things You Need to Know About Future NSA Director Michael Rogers

“The network must be treated as a weapons system as we continue the fight to maintain our advantage in cyberspace, and thus across the other four war fighting domains: sea, air, land and space,” he said in a Q&A on the Feb. 2013 issue of Military Information Technology magazine, which dubbed him the “Cyberspace Warrior.”

• NSA nominee Michael S. Rogers has made fans during a steady rise to the top t

“He was the best there was, and he was going to lead us into the cyberfuture,” said retired Adm. Gary Roughead, who in 2011 picked Rogers to head Fleet Cyber Command, the Navy’s cyber organization, which was seen as a steppingstone.

• CSEC used airport Wi-Fi to track Canadian travellers: Edward Snowden documents – Politics – CBC News

A top secret document retrieved by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and obtained by CBC News shows that Canada’s electronic spy agency used information from the free internet service at a major Canadian airport to track the wireless devices of thousands of ordinary airline passengers for days after they left the terminal.

After reviewing the document, one of Canada’s foremost authorities on cyber-security says the clandestine operation by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) was almost certainly illegal.

Joint Committee on National Security Strategy has a chat with PM David Cameron

• David Cameron: ‘I don’t think Snowden’s had an enormous public impact’ (Wired UK)

“I think the public reaction as I judge it has not been one of
‘shock horror!’ but one of ‘intelligence agencies carry out
intelligence work: good’,” Cameron said. Apparently Mr Cameron
hasn’t seen this
YouGov poll from June 2013, which showed that 56 percent of
people think that Edward Snowden did the right thing (compared to
27 percent of people who think he did the wrong thing) and 52
percent think he shouldn’t be prosecuted.

• David Cameron: TV crime dramas show need for ‘snooper’s charter’

Mr Cameron highlighted how crimes in television dramas are solved by tracking
the use of mobile phones. He warned that investigators will lose this
ability as criminals and terrorists resort to using the internet instead.

Earlier this week Mr Cameron told BBC Radio 2 that he likes to relax by
watching Elementary, a modern-day version of Sherlock Homes set in the US,
and Homeland, a thriller about a CIA agent on the trail of a soldier she
believes is an Al-Qaida operative.

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Winter Propaganda Games

• Nightly News: Hacked Within Minutes: Sochi Visitors Face Internet Minefield

The U.S. State Department has told Americans coming to Sochi that they should have “no expectation of privacy,” even in their hotel rooms.

• Cybersecurity expert explains the risks at Sochi Olympics

A July 2013 article in the Washington Times reveals that there was a significant cybersecurity threat during the 2012 London Olympic Games. “There was a credible [threat of] attack on the electricity infrastructure supporting the Games,” said Oliver Hoare, head of Olympic cybersecurity.

• United States reveals ‘specific’ threats to Olympic Games

“There are a number of specific threats of varying degrees of credibility that we’re tracking,” he said. “And we’re working very closely with the Russians and with other partners to monitor any threats we see and to disrupt those.”

“The primary threat, from a terrorism perspective, comes from Imarat Kavkaz, probably the most prominent terrorist group in Russia. It’s made its intent clear to seek to carry out attacks in the run-up to the Games,” said Olsen. “We think the greater danger from a terrorist perspective is in potential for attacks to occur outside of the actual venues for the Games themselves in the area surrounding Sochi or outside of Sochi in the region.”

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The post Olympic Fear Games | Unfilter 84 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at counting Earth-like planets, what musical training does for your brain, the Olympic torch, viewer feedback about sharks, a spacecraft update on India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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How Common Are \’Earth-Like\’ Planets?

• Astronomers have analyzed all four years of Kepler data in search of Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars
• Based on the analysis, they estimate that 22 percent of stars like the sun have potentially habitable Earth-size planets, though not all may be rocky or have liquid water
• Kepler Space Telescope
• Launched in 2009 its mission was to look for planets around other stars by looking for a \’dip\’ in the brightness of a star, about one hundredth of one percent, indicating that something was passing in front of it
• After 3 consecutive dips in light from the star it is labeled a exoplanet candidate
• About 150,000 stars were photographed every 30 minutes for four years leading to the current reported number of more than 3,000 planet candidates
• Kepler had to be pointed with such precision in order to find these planets that it would be like steadily looking at a grain of salt from a 0.4 km [1/4 mi] away
• The Keck Telescopes in Hawaii helps astronomers to determine each star\’s true brightness and calculate the diameter of each transiting planet, with an emphasis on Earth-diameter planets.
• \”Habitability\”
• The team\’s defined habitable as a planet that receives between four times and one-quarter the amount of light that Earth receives from the sun
• Earth-size planets in Earth-size orbits are not necessarily hospitable to life, even if they orbit in the habitable zone of a star where the temperature is not too hot and not too cold
• Some of those planets may have thick atmospheres, making it so hot at the surface that DNA-like molecules would not survive
• A habitable planet would have a rocky surfaces that could harbor liquid water suitable for living organisms
• Narrowing Down The Data
• The team focused on the 42,000 stars that are \’sun-like\’ and found 603 candidate planets orbiting them
• Of those only 10 were Earth-size, that is, one to two times the diameter of Earth and orbiting their star at a distance where they are heated to lukewarm temperatures suitable for life
• Extrapolating
• All of the potentially habitable planets found in their survey are around K stars, which are cooler and slightly smaller than the sun although analysis shows that the result for K stars can be extrapolated to G stars like the sun
• In order to get a better idea of the number of stars with planets around them you have to account for missed planets, as well as the fact that only a small fraction of planets are oriented so that they cross in front of their host star as seen from Earth
• Adding in those numbers led them to believe that roughly 22 percent of all sun-like stars in the galaxy have Earth-size planets in their habitable zones.
• The astronomers in this study defined sun-like stars to be of two class types, Class G (like our sun) and Class K
• Class G and K stars make up roughly 19.5% of all stars, 22% of those stars gives 4.3% of ALL stars have potentially habitable Earth-size planets. (1 out of 25)
• Multimedia
• YouTube | One in Five Sun-Like Stars Have \’Goldilocks\’ Planets | VideoFromSpace
• Further Reading / In the News
• Prevalence of Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
• Astronomers answer key question: How common are habitable planets? | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Musical Training and the Brain

• Older adults who took music lessons as children but haven\’t actively played an instrument in decades have a faster brain response to a speech sound than individuals who never played an instrument
• The Brains Response Time
• As people grow older, they often experience changes in the brain that compromise hearing and show a slower response to fast-changing sounds, which is important for interpreting speech
• Previous studies have show such age-related declines are not inevitable, in fact recent studies of musicians suggest lifelong musical training may offset these and other cognitive declines
• The Study
• This recent study, explored whether limited musical training early in life is associated with changes in the way the brain responds to sound decades later
• For the study, 44 healthy adults, ages 55-76, listened to a synthesized speech syllable (\”da\”) while researchers measured electrical activity in the auditory brainstem
• The brainstem is the region of the brain processes sound and is a hub for cognitive, sensory, and reward information
• Results
• The results showed that the more years study participants spent playing instruments as youth, the faster their brains responded to a speech sound.
• In fact none of the study participants had played an instrument in nearly 40 years, so it wasn\’t simply a recent or \’maintenance\’ result
• Participants who completed 4-14 years of music training early in life had the fastest response to the speech sound (on the order of a millisecond faster than those without music training).
• A millisecond faster may not seem like much, but the brain is very sensitive to timing and a millisecond compounded over millions of neurons can make a real difference
• Further Reading / In the News
• Just a few years of early musical training benefits the brain later in life | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Olympic Torch in Space

• The Olympic Torch was taken on a space walk for the first time on Nov 9, 2013
• Russian officials made it clear that the torch would remain unlit at all times for safety reasons.
• The Olympic torch was carried into space ahead of the 1996 and 2000 Olympics in Atlanta and Sydney but has never before been taken on a spacewalk
• In an usual situation, when the new crew arrived there were nine crew members and three Soyuz vehicles at the ISS, there have not been nine crew members on the ISS since 2009.
• The new crew brought the unlit torch along, then the space station’s current crew, took the torch out on a spacewalk, the three returning crew members brought the torch back to Earth
• The real reason for the spacewalk is to do some routine Russian maintenance outside the station
• The torch was given back to Olympic officials and it will be used in the opening ceremonies of the February games
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Raw: Spacewalkers Hand Off Olympic Torch | AssociatedPress
• Further Reading / In the News
• Russia launches Sochi Olympic torch into space | Phys.org
• Crew Launches to Space Station with Olympic Torch | UniverseToday.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

New Shark Species

• Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
• Two new shark species have been discovered
• Carolina Hammerhead
• Rare New Species of Carolina Hammerhead Shark Discovered | ScienceWorldReport.com
• Scientists have now announced that they\’ve discovered a new species of rare shark, the Carolina hammerhead
• The Carolina hammerhead has long eluded discovery due to the fact that it is outwardly indistinguishable from the common scalloped hammerhead
• The new species, named Sphyrna gilberti, was actually discovered as scientists were looking for more common hammerheads.
• South Carolina is a well-known pupping ground for several species of sharks, which means that researchers were collecting samples there for study
• The scalloped hammerheads that they were collecting had two different genetic signatures in both the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes
• The scientists found that the anomalous scalloped hammerhead had been described in 1967 and had 10 fewer vertebrae than the normal scalloped hammerhead. Intrigued
• In the end, the scientists found that there was genetic evidence to show that this hammerhead was, in fact, a new species.
• At this point scientists aren\’t sure exactly how many individuals still exist in the wild
• \’Walking\’ Shark
• New \’Walking\’ Shark Species Caught on Video | LiveScience
• YouTube | New species of \”walking\” shark found in Indonesia – Conservation International (CI) – 2013 | ConservationDotOrg
• A new species of \”walking\” shark has been discovered in a reef off a remote Indonesian island
• Hemiscyllium halmahera, named after the eastern Indonesian island of Halmahera where it was found
• These sharks don\’t always rely on \”walking\” to move about — often, they only appear to touch the seafloor as they swim using their pectoral and pelvic fins in a walk like gait
• The shark grows up to 70 cm [27 in] long and is harmless to humans
• The animals lay eggs under coral ledges, after which the young sharks lead relatively sedentary lives until adulthood
• These sharks do not cross areas of deep water and are found in isolated reefs

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission

• Last time on SciByte
• SciByte 107 | Dinosaurs & Satellites (October 29, 2013)
• The Trip to Mars
• India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) safely injected into its initial elliptical Earth parking orbit on Nov. 5
• India’s PSLV rocket is not powerful enough to send MOM on a direct flight to Mars
• ISRO’s engineers devised a procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over several weeks – and at an extremely low cost
• The goal is to gradually maneuver MOM – India’s 1st mission to the Red Planet – into a hyperbolic trajectory so that the spacecraft will
• The spacecraft was initial in an elliptical orbit around Earth, it then proceeds to fire its engines when it is at its closest point in orbit above Earth.
• This maneuver increases the ship\’s velocity and gradually widens the ellipse eventually raising the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory
• They expected to achieve escape velocity on Dec. 1 and depart Earth’s sphere of influence tangentially to Earth’s orbit to begin the 300 day (10 month) voyage to Mars
• Estimates are that it will arrive in the vicinity of Mars on September 24, 2014
• Small Glitch
• During a fourth repositioning, on Mon Nov 11, that was to take it 100,000 kilometres (62,000 miles) from Earth, the thruster engines briefly failed, leading the autopilot to take over.
• The supplemental burn on Nov 12 successfully raised it to the proper orbit
• The Other Mars Mission
• NASA\’s MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch on Nov. 18 – from Cape Canaveral, Florida
• It\’s goal is to \”Study the Martian atmosphere , unlock the mysteries of its current atmosphere and determine how, why and when the atmosphere and liquid water was lost\”
• Both Mission Goals
• The main aim of MOM is to detect methane in the Martian atmosphere, which could provide evidence of some sort of life form
• Both MAVEN and MOM’s goal are to study the Martian atmosphere
• MOM science teams have said they will “work together” with NASA\’s MAVEN team to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Mars Mission Isro successfully completes first midnight manoeuver | rajnews41
• Further Reading / In the News
• Indian Mars mission on track, makes first engine burns | Phys.org
• India\’s Mars Orbiter Mission Rising to Red Planet – Glorious Launch Gallery | UniverseToday.com
• Indian Mars mission suffers glitch but \’no setback\’ | Phys.org

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Warm Reset
• NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity experienced an unexpected software reboot (also known as a warm reset) on the 7th
• During a communications pass as it was sending engineering and science data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, for later downlinking to Earth
• occurred about four-and-half hours after new flight software had been temporarily loaded into the rover\’s memory
• At the time the event occurred, Curiosity was in the middle of a scheduled, week-long flight software update and checkout activity
• A warm reset is executed by flight software when it identifies a problem with one of its operations
• The reset restarts the flight software into its initial state. Since the reset, the rover has been performing operations and communications as expected
• This is the first time that Curiosity has executed a fault-related warm reset during its 16-plus months of Mars surface operations
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Science Laboratory: Curiosity Performs Warm Reset | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Nov 16, 1972 : 41 years ago : Skylab III : Skylab III, carrying a crew of three astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on an 84-day mission that remained the longest American space flight for over two decades (until Norm Thagard broke it aboard Mir in 1995 and Shannon Lucid, Feb 2002-Sep 2003). The Skylab III crew, Gerald P. Carr, William R. Pogue and Edward C. Gibson, maintained their physical condition by walking treadmills and riding an on-board stationary bicycle. Among the thousands of experiments conducted during this flight, the astronauts took four space walks, including one on Christmas Day to observe the comet Kohoutek. After 1214 orbits, the crew returned to Earth, splashing down on 8 Feb 1974. Skylab 3 | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Friday, Nov 15 | After dark | The Summer Triangle | You can see the bright star Vega high in the W-NW after dark this month, the brightest star above it is Deneb with the dimmer Altair to the lower left.
• Planets
• Venus | Dusk | In the SW setting at least and hour after dark
• Mars | 1-2am local | High in the SE, still moving E against the background stars moving farther to the lower left of Regulus

• Jupiter | 9pm local | Rises in the E-NE with the stars Castor and Pollux to its left.

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove

The post ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks | SciByte 109 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at the possibilities for future Olympic technology, land speed records not at the olympics, discoveries from Flickr, spacecraft updates, Curiosity update and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

A horse is a horse

• The low down
• The first successfully cloned horse was born in 2003
• Today, there are only a few hundred equine clones, created mainly for breeding
• In 2007 the FEI’s general assembly decided that cloning was "potentially against the spirit of sport in that it was unfair
• Significance
• July 2012 the Féderation Equestre Internationale (FEI) lifted a ban on cloned horses and their progeny competing in the Olympic Games
• The FEI has been careful to emphasize that cloning is a breeding technique only
• A key factor in the decision was the high price of cloning, which has since come down
• The federation determined that the clones were only 98 percent copies of the originals, the 2 percent margin was what ultimately caused the FEI to overturn the ban
• Currently the American Quarter Horse Association won’t allow clones, neither does the Jockey Club, which registers thoroughbreds in North America
• A key factor in the decision was the high price of cloning, which has since come down
• The federation determined that the clones were only 98 percent copies of the originals, the 2 percent margin was what ultimately caused the FEI to overturn the ban
• Currently the American Quarter Horse Association won’t allow clones, neither does the Jockey Club, which registers thoroughbreds in North America
• A top stallion for in vitro fertilization can go for tens of thousands of dollars
• The cloning process can cost more than a hundred thousand U.S. dollars, and there are no guarantees that the clone will match the talent of the original
• The most common use for cloned horses is to perpetuate genetic material, while the original horse can travel and compete
• Most male horses in high-level competitions are geldings and a mare can bear only so many foals
• Of Note
• In the end only 300-odd horses compete in the Olympics, and clones would have to battle their way to the top just as traditionally bred horses do.
• Needless of any cloning ruling it is widely agreed that environment, training, nutrition, and relationship with the rider have an incalculable impact on the horse’s performance
• Multimedia
• IMAGE Prometea the world’s first cloned horse with her mother in 2003 | National Geographic, Photograph by Giovanna Lazzara, AP
• Further Reading / In the News
• Cloned Horses Coming to the Olympics? | National Geographic

— NEWS BYTE —

Possible Olympic tech for the future

_{Credit: John MacNeill | Credit: John MacNeill}

• Holographic Obstacles
• In Olympic equestrian events 100 riders are injured in eventing falls every year, and when a multi million-dollar horse goes down, even a minor injury like a twisted ankle can end its career
• Line-of-sight infrared beams could monitor the edges of the obstacles; if the horse breaks the beam, the system would instantly alert the judges, and the crowd, to the fault
• Smart Landing Pads
• Scoring the exact length of a long or triple jump can be imprecise and time-consuming when landing in a sand pit
• Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a 2,016-pressure-sensor array to map where an athlete hits the ground
• Underneath the sand in the landing pit, a dozen or so of the mats could record the exact point of touchdown where computer could automatically calculate the length of the jump
• Head-up Goggles
• During events swimmers are not able to see where they stand in the event
• With an integrated head-up display could broadcast a live view of the competition and help racers to better pace themselves
• Automatic Goalkeeper
• German researchers have developed an automated goal-tracking system for american soccer (football)
• Actuators around the net generate a magnetic field across the face of the goal.
• When the ball passes through that field, a chip embedded in the ball sends a signal to the ref’s watch within one tenth of a second.
• Retractable Diving Board
• On a good day, a diver’s head misses the board by a couple of inches
• In the one second a typical diver is airborne above the plane of the board, it could retract as much as three feet
• Multimedia
• IMAGE | PopSci.com Credit :John MacNeill
• Further Reading / In the News
• Summer Olympics: 2020 – How technology is going to make the 2020 Olympics better, safer, and more exciting | PopSci.com

Land speed record

_{YouTube channel : NationalGeographic | Credit: Ken Geiger, National Geographic}

• The low down
• At the Cincinnati Zoo five cheetahs each complete several sprints a day, bolting out of the back of one of the zoo’s vans and chasing fluffy toy dogs as they were pulled across a meadow on a high-speed cord.
• They used to long sprints regularly running for zoo crowds on a USA Track & Field-certified course
• It’s not only good for the individual cats, who get much-needed exercise, but good for the species as well
• The zoo’s track-star cheetahs have helped raise over a million U.S. dollars for conservation
• Significance
• Olympian Usain Bolt’s made a new world record of 9.58 seconds in a standing 100-meter dash
• On June 20, Sarah an 11-year-old cheetah was radar-timed at up to 61 miles (98 kilometers) an hour in a standing 100-meter dash
• The June 20 sprint is the fastest timed 100 meters ever run by anything on the planet
• Of Note
• Even though this record was broken almost certain that cheetahs in the wild—lean, hungry, chasing down antelopes for their own survival or that of their cubs – have run considerably faster.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Cincinnati Zoo Cheetah Sets New World Speed Record in 100 Meter Run | CincinnatiZooTube
• YouTube Cincinnati Zoo Cheetah Sets New World Speed Record in 100 Meter Run | NationalGeographic
• Social Media
• Cincinnati Zoo @CincinnatiZoo
• Further Reading / In the News
• Cincinnati Zoo
• Cheetah Breaks Speed Record—Beats Usain Bolt by Seconds | news.NationalGeographic.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

New species on Flickr

• The low down
• While randomly flipping through images posted on the online database an entomologist spotted a previously unknown species of lacewing
• The new lacewing, which has a 30-millimeter wingspan, were taken in a forested park north of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by an amateur photographer and then posted online
• The entomologist suspected the creature was an undescribed species; however, the the photographer had released the insect after taking its picture
• Researchers had to wait until the shutterbug revisited the area and collected a specimen before they could officially write up their discovery
• Multimedia
• IMAGE New Lacewings species, Semachrysa jade | Credit: Guek Hock Ping
• Further Reading / In the News
• ScienceShot: New Species Discovered, Thanks to Flickr | https://news.sciencemag.org

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

Slowly but surely inch by inch Voyager 1 eyes the edge of the Solar System

• Last time on SciByte
• Habitable Planets & Chimps | SciByte 24 – Voyager 1 – Update [December 7, 2011]
• Talking Robots & Voyager 1 | SciByte 51 – Voyager 1 takes one step closer to interstellar space [June 19, 2012]
• The low down
• Researchers are eyeing three key parameters for signs that Voyager 1, which launched in 1977, has escaped into interstellar space
• Two of these three parameters are now changing faster than at any other time in the last seven years
• A single day (July 28), the probe measured a 5-percent jump in the level of high-energy cosmic rays coming from outside our solar system, researchers
• The last 5-percent increase Voyager 1 observed took place over a full week in May
• Three days later, however, both measurements had returned to near their previous levels
• Further Reading / In the News
• Signs Changing Fast for Voyager at Solar System Edge | NASA.gov
• Voyager 1 Spacecraft Zooms Ever Closer to Solar System’s Edge | Space.com
• Winds of Change at the Edge of the Solar System | UniverseToday.com
• Signs changing fast for Voyager at solar system edge | Phys.org

Morpheus setback

• The low down
• The Morpheus project is what one former project manager called ““Home Depot engineering”
• They are designed as low-budget projects using off-the-shelf parts to build something very quickly that gets 80 percent of the answer and allows the project to keep moving forward
• These type of projects partner with non-traditional aerospace companies
• Significance
• The Morpheus is designed to deliver about 1,100 pounds (500 kg) of cargo to the moon, burn liquid oxygen and methane fuel
• Designed and built by engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the insect-like vehicle, had previously made several flights attached to a crane before the attempted free-flight on August 9, 2012
• The engines, appeared to ignite as planned, lifting the vehicle into the air. But a few seconds later, Morpheus rolled over on its side and plummeted to the ground.
• Of Note
• An investigation is currently underway to determine the cause
• Multimedia
• YouTube Morpheus Landing Explodes on First KSC Free Flight Test | SpaceVidsNet
• Social Media
• Morpheus Lander @MorpheusLander
• Further Reading / In the News
• Project Morpheus
• Morpheus Lander Crashes and Burns | UniverseToday.com
• NASA’s Morpheus lander in fiery crash at Cape Canaveral | Reuters.com

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –

Curiosity Rover Update

_{Credit: JPLnews | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech}

• Last time on SciByte
• Curiosity Rover & Interview with Dr. Robert Zubrin | SciByte 57 – Curiosity Rover [August 7, 2012]
• Mayan Calendar & Cancer Research | SciByte 46 – Curiosity Rover [May 15, 2012]
• Mayan Calendar & Cancer Research | SciByte 46 – Curiosity Rover [May 15, 2012]
• Sub Glacial Lakes & Updates | SciByte 33 – The future of space [February 14, 2012]
• Spacecraft Updates | SciByte 23 – NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity” Rover : Updates and more [November 30, 2011]
• Curiosity Rover | SciByte 22 – Launching This Week : NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory “Curiosity” Rover [November 22, 2011]
• Landing accuracy
• The rover touched down about one-and-a-half miles (2.4 kilometers) from the point it was targeting
• Zeroing in on Rover’s Landing Site | mars.jpl.nasa.gov/
• **Curiosity’s Location
• Curiosity Cradled by Gale Crater | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• A Whole New World for Curiosity | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Sky crane crash caught on film?
• An image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been annotated to show the relative positions between NASA’s Curiosity rover and the impact site of its sky crane, or descent stage.
• This image was used to determine whether the rover was pointed in the right direction to have captured an image of the plume from the crash of the descent stage
• Witnessing the Descent Stage Crash?
• Inspecting Curiosity’s Descent Stage Crash Site | mars.jpl.nasa.gov/
• All the colorful images
• Previous rovers, like Spirit and Opportunity took color images by combining black & white images taken through colored filters
• Curiosity’s Mastcam takes color pictures in the exact same manner that consumer cameras acquire color images.
• The color images we receive are what a cell phone or camcorder would record
• First High-Resolution Color Mosaic of Curiosity’s Mastcam Images | Mars.JPL.NASA.gov
• White Balancing
• Scientists can re-balance the colors of an image to better represent how the terrain colors would look on Earth
• Exposed by Rocket Engine Blasts (Color) / White-Balanced | mars.jpl.nasa.go
• A look at the landing area
• An area excavated by the blast of the Mars Science Laboratory’s descent stage rocket engines shows details of the underlying materials
• Of particular note is a well-defined, topmost layer that contains fragments of rock embedded in a matrix of finer material.
• Exposed by Rocket Engine Blasts | mars.jpl.nasa.gov/
• Landings on Mars have become more and more precise over the years
• Landing Accuracy on Mars: A Historical Perspective | mars.jpl.nasa.gov/
• Software Update
• The software update will occur during a series of steps Aug. 10 through Aug. 13, and will install a new version of software on both of the rover’s redundant main computers
• The rovers software was made to be upgraded as needed for the different phases of the mission
• The new software versions key capability is image processing to check for obstacles
• The software update completed without any complications Aug 14
• Drivers License
• There are plans to test the steering actuators on Sol 13
• Engineers are hoping drive forward a couple of meters, and then maybe turn and back up
• Multimedia
• YouTube Mars Curiosity Rover Report (Aug.10, 2012) | JPLnews
• Image Galleries
• Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover | JPL.NASA.gov
• Jet Propulsion Laboratoty Photojournal
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Rover Curiosity Survives ‘Brain Surgery,’ Set for 1st Drive | Space.com
• First High-Resolution Color Mosaic of Curiosity’s Mastcam Images | Mars.JPL.NASA.gov
• This Week in the Future, August 6–10, 2012 | PopSci.com
• Photo mystery solved? Mars rover snapped pic of rocket stage crash, NASA says | Phys.org
• Curiosity Mars rover installing smarts for driving | Phys.org
• Mystery Cloud in Mars Rover Landing Photo Solved | Space.com
• NASA Primes Mars Rover Curiosity for Software Upgrade | Space.com
• First High-Resolution Color Mosaic of Curiosity’s Mastcam Images | NASA.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Aug 19, 1887 : 125 years ago : Eclipse by baloon : Mendeleeff observes eclipse | Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834–1907) used a balloon to ascend above the cloud cover to an altitude of 11,500 feet (3.5 km) to observe an eclipse in Russia. He made the solo ascent above Klin without any prior experience. While his family was rather concerned, he paid no attention to controlling the balloon until after he had completed his observations, at which time he worked out how to land it. Mendeleev is the Russian chemist known for the ordering of the Periodic Table of the Elements. Yet, he was interested in many fields of science. He studied problems associated with Russia’s natural resources, such as coal, salt, metals, and the petroleum industry. In 1876, he visited the U.S. to observe the Pennsylvania oil fields.

Looking up this week

• Did you see …

• Perseid Meteor shower

• Keep an eye out for …

• Wednesday | Aug 15 | Around Twilight | In the West you can see Spica, Mars and Saturn again if you missed it earlier this week. Spica is the highest point, Saturn is to the right, and Mars is the nearest the horizon

• Thursday | Aug 16 | First light of Dawn | Orion is starting to come up in the east-southeast, to the right of Venus

• Friday | Aug 17 | Early morning | Mars, Saturn and Spica are again visible

• Friday | Aug 17 | New Moon

• Venus and Jupiter | Dawn | In the east before and during dawn

• Further Reading and Resources

• Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast: August 13–19, 2012 | UniverseToday.com

• Sky&Telescope

• SpaceWeather.com

• StarDate.org

• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au

• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org

• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz

• AstronomyNow

• HeavensAbove

The post Future Olympic Tech & Fast Cheetahs | SciByte 58 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at olympic science, an innovative writing technique, morse code, music, an update on the Red Bull Stratos mission, spacecraft update and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Olympic Science

_{Credit: International Olympic Committee for 2012 Summer Olympics}

• Measuring times
• Time is measured in 1,000th of a second that has to be that close to both actual time and consistent
• Races are started by electronic starter guns, with starting blocks that indicate when a runner reacts faster than humans can respond, making the runners re-start the race
• More than 2,000 digital frames a second aid the timing system for the most accurate and precise system possible
• For longer racing event with a lot of competitors RFID, Radio Frequency Identification, attached to shoes or bicycles allow accurate timing and tracking for each competitor
• Technology
• Some Long Jumpers utilize stereoscopic cameras, from BMW, to measure speed and angles of launch
• Swimmers usitize fluid dynamic measurements so that they can train and compete in the most aerodynamic way as possible to
• Runners can also use treadmill technology that provides support to minimize the weight of the athlete affecting the legs by creating a pressure bubble that can support part of the athletes weight
• The Olympic pool utilize a number of different technologies to minimize waves including adjustable depth, gutters along the edges of the pool and lane lines
• Mechanical engineers analyze top athletes to be able to both help athletes improve their technique and expand knowledge that could help provide information to be used for people with movement disorders, it can also used design more realistic and stronger robotic arms
• Changing Technology Rules
• The LZR Racer Suit is a line of extremely high-end swimsuits manufactured by Speedo using a high-technology swimwear fabric composed of woven elastane-nylon and polyurethane.
• Swimmers wearing the LZR suit at the 2008 Beijing Olympics consisted of : 94% of all swimming races won, 98% of all medals won, and 23 out of the 25 world records broken
• By 24 August 2009, 93 world records had been broken by swimmers wearing a LZR Racer
• These results prompted FINA to reevaluate suit policies making the LZR banned for use in competitions
• Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA) is the International Federation (IF) recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for administering international competition in the aquatic sports
• **Oscar Pistorius
• South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius is the first double-amputee athlete to compete at the Olympics.
• Pistorius is competing in the regular olympics using prosthetics Carbon fiber spring-like prosthetics designed for sprinter
• Although the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) deemed him ineligible for the 2008 Summer Olympics based on the belief that he held an unfair advantage further scientific studies have shown he hold no advantage or able-bodied athletes
• Safety Equipment
• Safety headgear in different for each sport it will be used in dependent upon the specific needs for the sport
• Helmet safety foam comes in both the stiff and flexible to maximize the needed protection and comfort
• Paralympics
• Paralympic wheelchairs are specifically designed for each sport. With designs for speed, mobility, toughness, etc.
• Of Note
• A google search for “London 2012 _” will show a display of the schedule and results of competition on the right side of the window
  Multimedia
• Video Gallery Science Of The Summer Olympics: Engineering In Sports | Science360
• Social Media
• London 2012 @London2012
• Further Reading / In the News
• 2012 London Olympics official page
• Science Of The Summer Olympics: Engineering In Sports | Science360.gov
• Fina extends swimsuit regulations | news.bbc.co.uk
• High-Tech Swimsuits: Winning Medals Too | time.com
• Fast Times: Speedo, Like Michael Phelps, Goes For World Domination in an LZR Suit | The Wall Street Journal: Sports
• Phelps secures his place in the history books after landing his eighth gold medal! | Speedo.com
• Best Inventions of 2008 | TIME

— NEWS BYTE —

Writing with your eyes

_{Credit: YouTube channel h2so4hurts | Credit: Lorenceau et al., Current Biology}

• The low down
• People “locked in” by paralyzing disorders have long relied on blinks or facial twitches to build sentences one letter at a time
• Jean Lorenceau of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris may have a new technology might allow people who have almost completely lost the ability to move their arms or legs to communicate freely
• Significance
• Eye-writing technology tricks the neuromuscular machinery into doing something that is usually impossible: to voluntarily produce smooth eye movements in arbitrary directions
• Smooth pursuit, this eye motion is different from saccadic motion, in which we rapidly shift our eyes to, say, skim lines of text or scan a crowd
• Smooth movements are normally impossible to control those movements smoothly in any direction
• Lorenceau found by accident with another experiment that he was able to learn to do so.
• To determine if other people could learn to do this he designed his own reverse-phi display with 200 disks that switch between black and white and are projected on a gray background.
• When we see two images that are the photographic negatives (dark to light & light to dark) in rapid succession our brain sees the object in the image moving away from the negative image
• This gives us the impression of motion when there is none
• Over three 30-minute sessions, he was able to trained six volunteers
• For the volunteers, who couldn’t see what they were writing, it was like writing with a pen that had run out of ink
• Although some participants had a harder time of learning to control their eye movements than others by the end of the sessions most could freely draw legible letters and numbers
• Of Note
• This technology might also help to improve eye movement control in people with certain conditions such as dyslexia or ADHD and/or for experts, such as athletes or surgeons, whose activities strongly rely on eye movements
• Now working on a better version of his eye writer, tests should start next year
• Multimedia
• YouTube Writing in Cursive with Your Eyes Only | h2so4hurts
• YouTube Reverse Phi Motion | porrophagus
• Further Reading / In the News
• Writing in cursive with your eyes only | MedicalXPress
• Write to Me Only With Thine Eyes | ScienceMag.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Morse Code in space

_{Credit: fit.ac.jp}

• The low down
• Satellite is a 10 cm cube, weighing 2.9lb [1.33kg]
• The main mission of the satellite to demonstrate the high speed transmitter
  developed.
• It can send a jpeg VGA-picture(480×640) within 6 seconds, and will write messages in the night sky with Morse code as
• The beacon signal is a standard Morse code CW signal starting with “HI” with telemetry data following
• Multimedia
• YouTube Deployment of small satellites from the ISS and F–1 CubeSat mission version 2 | FSpacelab
• Further Reading / In the News
• FITSAT–1 (NIWAKA) : A Small Artificial Satellite Developed at the Fukuoka Institute of Technology
• Tiny Japanese Satellite Will Write Morse Code Messages in the Sky | Space.com

Musical Variety

• The low down
• The Million Song Dataset is a freely-available collection of audio features and metadata for a million contemporary popular music tracks.
• The songs come from nearly 45,000 artists with only 2,650 songs released between 1955 and 1959 and 177,808 songs released between 2005 and 2009.
• Quantitative analysis for this study examined three aspects of those songs; timbre, pitch, and loudness of nearly half a million songs
• Timbre accounts for the sound color, texture, or tone quality
• Pitch roughly corresponds to the harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements
• Timbral variety peaked in the 1960’s and has been in steady decline to the present day and implies a homogenization of the overall timbral palette, which could point to less diversity in instrumentation and recording techniques
• While it may be no surprise that music has gotten louder the same notes and chords that were popular in decades past are popular today
• Musicians today seem to be less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, instead following the paths well-trod
• Of Note
• The Million Song Dataset, huge as it is, may not provide a representative slice of pop music, especially for old songs
• The database draws on what’s popular now, as well as what has been digitized and made available for download
• The older digitised music may not be the same that people enjoyed when those songs first came out.
• Million Song Dataset

— Updates —

Red Bull Stratos dives again

_{Red Bull Stratos}

• Last time on SciByte
• Meteorites & Lasers | SciByte 38 – Skydiving at the orbital extreme [March 20, 2012]
• The low down
• On July 25, 2012, Baumgartner completed the final milestone before his attempt of jumping from 120,000ft [36,500 meters]
• The test launch had twice been delayed due to bad weather
• Significance
• The helium-filled balloon for this test flight was over four times as large as the one that carried Baumgartner for the first test flight in March and took about 90 minutes to reach the desired altitude
• Baumgartner rode his specially-made pressurized capsule via the helium balloon and jumped from an altitude of over 29,455 meters (96,640 feet),
• He was in freefall for 3 minutes, 48 seconds, reaching speeds of 862 km/h (536 mph), then floated down on his parachute for about 10.5 min
• Of Note
• He landed in the New Mexico desert, just about 15 minutes by helicopter from his launch site
• His final jump will break the current jump record held by Joe Kittinger a retired Air Force officer, and Baumgartner’s current adviser and mentor, who jumped from 19.5 miles [31.5 km] in 1960.
• There is no official date for the record-setting attempt, since it is subject to favorable weather conditions and critical post-jump assessments of the capsule and equipment
• For his final jump he hopes to not only break the sound barrier with his body, but also break the record for the longest freefall
• Multimedia
• YouTube VIDEO : Felix Baumgartner’s Test Jump Teaser
• YouTube VIDEO :Jump testing in Roswell New Mexico – Red Bull Stratos
• YouTube VIDEO : The Capsule – Red Bull Stratos 2012
• Social Media
• Red Bull Stratos @RedBullStratos
• Further Reading / In the News
• Home | Red Bull Stratos
• Skydiver Baumgartner Takes Test Jump from 30 kilometers | UniverseToday.com
• Skydiver Leaps from 18 Miles Up in ‘Space Jump’ Practice | Space.com

— Spacecraft Updates —

Curiosity Rover lands on Sunday … stay tuned next week for more

• Next time on SciByte …
• Next week’s SciByte will be 2 days after the landing, expect me to say a few things
• The low down
• NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter will relay near real time signals the moment that NASA’s Curiosity rover touches down onto the Martian surface
• Multimedia
• [NASA TV online live coverage of Curiosity landing](https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov or www.nasa.gov)
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Science Laboratoty, Curiosity rover
• GetCurious
• T Minus 9 Days – Mars Orbiters Now in Place to Relay Critical Curiosity Landing Signals | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• August 1, 1774 : 238 years ago : Oxygen : Joseph Priestley, British Presbyterian minister and chemist, identified a gas which he called “dephlogisticated air” – later known as oxygen. Priestley found that mercury heated in air became coated with “red rust of mercury,” which, when heated separately, was converted back to mercury with “air” given off. Studying this “air” given off, he observed that candles burned very brightly in it. Also, a mouse in a sealed vessel with it could breathe it much longer than ordinary air. A strong believer in the phlogiston theory, Priestley considered it to be “air from which the phlogiston had been removed.” Further experiments convinced him that ordinary air is one fifth dephlogisticated air, the rest considered by him to be phlogiston

Looking up this week

Keep an eye out for …

• Wed | Aug 1 | Full Moon

• Wed | Aug 1 | Before Dawn | Jupiter will the the

• Fri | Aug 3 | Evening | The Summer Triangle approaches its greatest height. Face east and look almost straight up after nightfall. The brightest star there is Vega. Toward the northeast from Vega (by two or three fist-widths at arm’s length) is Deneb. Toward the southeast from Vega by a greater distance is Altair.

• Before Dawn | Jupiter & Venus are in the East they are now about the distance of you pinky finger to your pointer finger stretched out at arm’s length, 14*. Venus is the brighter of the two to the lower left, making Jupiter the higher of the two.

• Before Dawn | Betelgeuse, the red giant star, is still to the lower right of Venus by about the same distance apart as Jupiter and Venus

• At Dusk | Mars & Saturn are low in the west-southwest. Saturn is above Spica, by about three finger widths are are nearly the same brightness

• Further Reading and Resources

• More on what’s in the sky this week

• Sky&Telescope

• SpaceWeather.com

• StarDate.org

• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au

• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org

• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz

• AstronomyNow

• HeavensAbove

The post Olympic Science & Red Bull Stratos | SciByte 56 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Software powering many of the devices we use has a critical flaw that can give an attacker root access, we’ll give you the details.

Plus why the server admins for the Olympics have moved into their data center, and we get on our CISPA sopa box!

All that and more on this week’s TechSNAP!

Thanks to: