intelligentlife

Arxiv- Prisoners of their own device: Trojan attacks on device-independent quantum cryptography (7 pages) Device-independent cryptographic schemes aim to guarantee security to users based only on the output statistics of any components used, and without the need to verify their internal functionality. Since this would protect users against untrustworthy or incompetent manufacturers, sabotage or device degradation, this idea has excited much interest, and many device-independent schemes have been proposed. We point out here a critical weakness of device-independent quantum cryptography for tasks, such as key distribution, that rely on public communication between secure laboratories. Untrusted devices may record their inputs and outputs and reveal encoded information about them in their outputs during later runs. Reusing devices thus compromises the security of a protocol and risks leaking secret data. Possible solutions include securely destroying used devices or isolating them until previously generated data need no longer be kept secret. However, such solutions are costly and impose severe constraints on the practicality of many device-independent quantum cryptographic schemes. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

Nature - Public consultation and safety assessment would pave the way for embryo manipulation to treat genetic diseases.

Britain has set out a road map towards the first clinical tests of reproductive techniques that combine parents’ genes with DNA from a third party. The approach raises ethical questions, but could spare children from inheriting some rare diseases, including forms of muscular dystrophy and neurodegenerative disorders that affect around 1 in 5,000 people. These conditions are caused by defects in the mitochondria, the ‘power packs’ of the cell, which are inherited from a child’s mother through the egg. Experiments on primates, and with defective human eggs, have already shown that genetic material can be removed from an egg that has faulty mitochondria and transferred to a healthy donor ovum, leaving the flawed mitochondrial DNA behind. In principle, the resulting egg could then develop into a healthy child carrying both the parents’ nuclear genes and mitochondrial DNA from the donor. But the work amounts to genetic modification of embryos — which is currently illegal in the United Kingdom — and also involves destroying fertilized eggs.

Two procedures are being developed: pronuclear transfer and maternal spindle transfer. Nature - Scientists and politicians are working together to bring new reproductive techniques to Britain. Spindle Transfer US researchers have already used maternal spindle transfer to produce two healthy rhesus monkeys. Nature - Mitochondrial gene replacement in primate offspring and embryonic stem cells

Mitochondria are found in all eukaryotic cells and contain their own genome (mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA). Unlike the nuclear genome, which is derived from both the egg and sperm at fertilization, the mtDNA in the embryo is derived almost exclusively from the egg; that is, it is of maternal origin. Mutations in mtDNA contribute to a diverse range of currently incurable human diseases and disorders. To establish preclinical models for new therapeutic approaches, we demonstrate here that the mitochondrial genome can be efficiently replaced in mature non-human primate oocytes (Macaca mulatta) by spindle–chromosomal complex transfer from one egg to an enucleated, mitochondrial-replete egg. The reconstructed oocytes with the mitochondrial replacement were capable of supporting normal fertilization, embryo development and produced healthy offspring. Genetic analysis confirmed that nuclear DNA in the three infants born so far originated from the spindle donors whereas mtDNA came from the cytoplast donors. No contribution of spindle donor mtDNA was detected in offspring. Spindle replacement is shown here as an efficient protocol replacing the full complement of mitochondria in newly generated embryonic stem cell lines. This approach may offer a reproductive option to prevent mtDNA disease transmission in affected families.

Pronuclear Transfer Neurologist Douglass Turnbull of Newcastle University, UK, and his team have performed pronuclear transfer on defective human eggs, and found that normal development occurred in a small minority. Nature - Pronuclear transfer in human embryos to prevent transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease

Mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are a common cause of genetic disease. Pathogenic mutations in mtDNA are detected in approximately 1 in 250 live births and at least 1 in 10,000 adults in the UK are affected by mtDNA disease. Treatment options for patients with mtDNA disease are extremely limited and are predominantly supportive in nature. Mitochondrial DNA is transmitted maternally and it has been proposed that nuclear transfer techniques may be an approach for the prevention of transmission of human mtDNA disease. Here we show that transfer of pronuclei between abnormally fertilized human zygotes results in minimal carry-over of donor zygote mtDNA and is compatible with onward development to the blastocyst stage in vitro. By optimizing the procedure we found the average level of carry-over after transfer of two pronuclei is less than 2.0%, with many of the embryos containing no detectable donor mtDNA. We believe that pronuclear transfer between zygotes, as well as the recently described metaphase II spindle transfer, has the potential to prevent the transmission of mtDNA disease in humans.

3 pages of supplemental material Schematic representation of pronuclear transfer in abnormally fertilised human embryos. The main findings are potential development to blastocyst stage in vitro and very low levels of donor mtDNA carry over (less than 2%) If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

NIST - A team of physicists from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Harvard University has developed a theory describing how to both detect weak electrical signals and cool electrical circuits using light and something very like a nanosized loudspeaker.* If demonstrated through experiment, the work could have a tremendous impact on detection of low-power radio signals, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and the developing field of quantum information science. "We envision coupling a nanomechanical membrane to an electrical circuit so that an electrical signal, even if exceedingly faint, will cause the membrane to quiver slightly as a function of the strength of that signal," says JQI physicist Jake Taylor. "We can then bounce photons from a laser off that membrane and read the signal by measuring the modulation of the reflected light as it is shifted by the motion of the membrane. This leads to a change in the wavelength of the light."

JQI researchers think they have discovered a way to amplify faint electrical signals using the motion of a nanomechanical membrane, or loudspeaker. If shown in experiments, the scheme could prove a boon to magnetic resonance imaging and quantum information science. This schematic of the proposed device shows its use in detecting--in this example--a signal produced by the quantum-mechanical "spin" of a group of atoms. The atoms generate a faint radiofrequency signal in a coil (L) which is connected to microscale wires that form an electrical capacitor. This vibrates the 'nanomembrane' which in turn affects the resonant frequency of a laser optical cavity. The output is light at frequency that is the sum of the original laser frequency plus the signal from the atoms. Credit: Taylor/NIST Physical Review Letters - Laser Cooling and Optical Detection of Excitations in a LC Electrical Circuit

Present technology for measuring the wavelength of light is highly sensitive, which makes it ideal for detecting the nanoscopic motions of the loudspeaker caused by extremely faint electrical signals. And the ability to detect extremely faint electrical signals may someday make MRI medical procedures much easier. "MRI machines are so big because they are stuffed with really powerful superconducting magnets, but if we can reduce the strength of the signals we need for a reading, we can reduce the strength, and the size, of the magnets," Taylor says. "This may mean that one could get an MRI while sitting quietly in a room and forgo the tube." The same setup could be used to generate information-carrying photons from one qubit to another, according to Taylor. One popular quantum information system design uses light to transfer information among qubits, entangled particles that will exploit the inherent weirdness of quantum phenomena to perform certain calculations impossible for current computers. The 'nanospeaker' could be used to translate low-energy signals from a quantum processor to optical photons, where they can be detected and transmitted from one qubit to another. All this, and the team will throw in cooling the system for free. According to their calculations, translating the mechanical motion of the little loudspeaker into photons will siphon a considerable amount of heat out of the system (from room temperature to 3 kelvin or -270 C), which in turn will reduce noise in the system and provide for better signal detection.

We explore a method for laser cooling and optical detection of excitations in a room temperature LC electrical circuit. Our approach uses a nanomechanical oscillator as a transducer between optical and electronic excitations. An experimentally feasible system with the oscillator capacitively coupled to the LC and at the same time interacting with light via an optomechanical force is shown to provide strong electromechanical coupling. Conditions for improved sensitivity and quantum limited readout of electrical signals with such an “optical loud speaker” are outlined.

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A solution to the difficult issue of harvesting algae for use as a biofuel has been developed using microbubble technology pioneered at the University of Sheffield. The technique builds on previous research in which microbubbles were used to improve the way algae is cultivated.

Algae produce an oil which can be processed to create a useful biofuel. Biofuels, made from plant material, are considered an important alternative to fossil fuels and algae, in particular, has the potential to be a very efficient biofuel producer. Until now, however, there has been no cost-effective method of harvesting and removing the water from the algae for it to be processed effectively. Now, a team led by Professor Will Zimmerman in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield, believe they have solved the problem. They have developed an inexpensive way of producing microbubbles that can float algae particles to the surface of the water, making harvesting easier, and saving biofuel-producing companies time and money. The research is set to be published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering on 26 January 2012. The system developed by Professor Zimmerman´s team uses up to 1000 times less energy to produce the microbubbles and, in addition, the cost of installing the Sheffield microbubble system is predicted to be much less than existing flotation systems.

"We thought we had solved the major barrier to biofuel companies processing algae to use as fuel when we used microbubbles to grow the algae more densely," explains Professor Zimmerman. "It turned out, however, that algae biofuels still couldn´t be produced economically, because of the difficulty in harvesting and dewatering the algae. We had to develop a solution to this problem and once again, microbubbles provided a solution." Microbubbles have been used for flotation before: water purification companies use the process to float out impurities, but it hasn´t been done in this context, partly because previous methods have been very expensive. The system developed by Professor Zimmerman´s team uses up to 1000 times less energy to produce the microbubbles and, in addition, the cost of installing the Sheffield microbubble system is predicted to be much less than existing flotation systems. The next step in the project is to develop a pilot plant to test the system at an industrial scale. Professor Zimmerman is already working with Tata Steel at their site in Scunthorpe using CO2 from their flue-gas stacks and plans to continue this partnership to test the new system. Dr. Bruce Adderley, Manager Climate Change Breakthrough Technology, said, "Professor Zimmerman´s microbubble-based technologies are exactly the kind of step-change innovations that we are seeking as a means to address our emissions in the longer term, and we are delighted to have the opportunity to extend our relationship with Will and his team in the next phase of this pioneering research."

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Damaged human heart muscle cannot be regenerated. Scar tissue grows in place of the damaged muscle cells. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim are seeking to restore complete cardiac function with the help of artificial cardiac tissue. They have succeeded in loading cardiac muscle cells onto a three-dimensional scaffold, created using the silk produced by a tropical silkworm. It is a step down a long road towards creating a tissue for repairing damaged hearts.

At the university there, coin-sized disks are being produced from the cocoon of the tasar silkworm (Antheraea mylitta). According to Chinmoy Patra, an Indian scientist who now works in Engel’s laboratory, the fibre produced by the tasar silkworm displays several advantages over the other substances tested. “The surface has protein structures that facilitate the adhesion of heart muscle cells. It’s also coarser than other silk fibres.” This is the reason why the muscle cells grow well on it and can form a three-dimensional tissue structure. “The communication between the cells was intact and they beat synchronously over a period of 20 days, just like real heart muscle,” says Engel. Despite these promising results, clinical application of the fibre is not currently on the agenda. “Unlike in our study, which we carried out using rat cells, the problem of obtaining sufficient human cardiac cells as starting material has not yet been solved,” says Engel. It is thought that the patient’s own stem cells could be used as starting material to avoid triggering an immune reaction. However, exactly how the conversion of the stem cells into cardiac muscle cells works remains a mystery.

Disks cut from the cocoon of the tasar silkworm grub provide a basic scaffold for heart muscle If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

Science Daily - Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have measured the propagation velocity of quantum signals in a many-body system. A quantum computer based on quantum particles instead of classical bits, can in principle outperform any classical computer. However, it still remains an open question, how fast and how efficient quantum computers really may be able to work. A critical limitation will be given by the velocity with which a quantum signal can spread within a processing unit.

The communication and processing of information in a quantum computer is based on concepts that are inherently different from those used in classical computers. This is due to the fundamental differences between quantum particles and classical objects. Whereas the latter are, for example, either black or white, quantum particles can take on both colours at the same time. It is only at the process of measurement that the particles decide on one of the two possible properties. As a consequence of this peculiar behaviour, two quantum objects can form one entangled state in which their properties are strictly connected, i.e. quantum correlated. At present there is no general model for predicting how fast a quantum correlation can travel after it is generated.

Propagation of quantum correlations in an optical lattice. Left: artist’s view (Graphic by woogie works animation studio). Right: a) In the initial state, each lattice site is filled by exactly one atom. The height of the barrier between the sites is then abruptly lowered, bringing the system out of equilibrium. b) After the barrier has been lowered, an entangled doublon-holon pair is formed. The correlated doublons and holons move across the system with opposite momenta. (Credit: MPQ) Nature - Light-cone-like spreading of correlations in a quantum many-body system

In relativistic quantum field theory, information propagation is bounded by the speed of light. No such limit exists in the non-relativistic case, although in real physical systems, short-range interactions may be expected to restrict the propagation of information to finite velocities. The question of how fast correlations can spread in quantum many-body systems has been long studied. The existence of a maximal velocity, known as the Lieb–Robinson bound, has been shown theoretically to exist in several interacting many-body systems (for example, spins on a lattice)—such systems can be regarded as exhibiting an effective light cone that bounds the propagation speed of correlations. The existence of such a ‘speed of light’ has profound implications for condensed matter physics and quantum information, but has not been observed experimentally. Here we report the time-resolved detection of propagating correlations in an interacting quantum many-body system. By quenching a one-dimensional quantum gas in an optical lattice, we reveal how quasiparticle pairs transport correlations with a finite velocity across the system, resulting in an effective light cone for the quantum dynamics. Our results open perspectives for understanding the relaxation of closed quantum systems far from equilibrium, and for engineering the efficient quantum channels necessary for fast quantum computation

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China Briefing - 2011 Provincial GDP figures Wikipedia GDP per capita by province in China. Jiangsu Province’s GDP grew 9.2 percent to RMB4.8 trillion (US$759 billion) in 2011, according to the provincial government’s report. Jiangsu’s GDP per capita reached US$9,500. In 2012, Jiangsu (80 million), Zhejiang (56 million), Inner Mongolia (25 million) should be over US$10,000 GDP per capita. They will join Shanghai (23 million), Beijing (20 million), and Tianjin (13 million) with GDP per capita over US$10,000. Liaoning (44 million) and Guangdong (105 million) should get over the US$10,000 per capita level in 2013. Shandong (96 million) and Fujian (37 million) should get over the US$10,000 per capita level in 2013 or 2014. Getting over US$12,000 per person in 2010 dollars is the level where a country is believed to exceeded the level of a middle income trap. Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin are all over the US$12,000 per capita level as of the end of 2011. The other provinces should clear the US$12,000 per capita levels 1 to 2 years after they clear the US$10,000 per capita levels. By 2015, China should have provinces with a combined population of about 500 million with per capita GDP over US$12,000. I am projecting all of China to have a per capita GDP of about $9000-10000 in 2010 US dollars in 2015 NBF last projection of China's GDP

Year GDP(yuan) GDP growth USD/CNY China GDP China+HK US GDP   


2011     47.2   9.2        6.3     7.5        7.8       15.2
2012     53     8.0        6.1     8.7        9.0       15.9
2013     59     8.5        5.8    10.2       10.5       16.5
2014     66     8.5        5.5    11.9       12.2       17.2
2015     73     8.5        5.2    14         14.3       18
2016     80     8          4.9    16.3       16.7       18.8
2017     88     8          4.6    19.1       19.5       19.6
2018     97     8          4.3    22.6       23         20.5
2019    107     8          4.1    26         26.5       21.5
2020    115     7.5        3.9    29.6       30         22.4
2021    125     7.5        3.7    33.7       34.2       23.4
2022    135     7.5        3.5    38.5       39         24.5
2023    145     7          3.3    44         44.5       25.6
2024    157     7          3.1    50.6       51         26.7
2025    170     7          3      56.5       57         27.9
2026    183     7          3      61         61.5       29.2
2027    198     7          3      66         66.4       30.5
2028    214     7          3      71.2       72         31.9
2029    235     7          3      78.4       79         33.3
2030    259     7          3      86.4       87         34.8

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DARPA’s Power Efficiency Revolution for Embedded Computing Technologies (PERFECT) program seeks to improve power efficiency for embedded computer systems, providing more computing per watt of electrical power. To increase awareness of this program and attract potential researchers, DARPA has scheduled a Proposers’ Day workshop Feb. 15 in Arlington, Virginia. The goal of 75 GFLOPS/watt would enable a 15 megawatt supercomputer to achieve an EXAFlop of processing.

In the past, computing systems could rely on increasing computing performance with each processor generation. Following Moore’s Law, each generation brought with it double the number of transistors. And according to Dennard’s Scaling, clock speed could increase 40 percent each generation without increasing power density. This allowed increased performance without the penalty of increased power.

As transistor operating voltages approach logic threshold voltage, device operating characteristics change dramatically, decreasing both reliability and maximum operating frequency. Since reliability and operating frequency are critical to its user base, commercial industry has only limited ability to reduce operating voltage to avoid these clock frequency decreases. PERFECT seeks revolutionary approaches to processing-power efficiency to overcome these limitations. This approach includes near threshold voltage operation and massive heterogeneous processing concurrency, combined with techniques to effectively use the resulting concurrency and tolerate the resulting increased rate of soft errors.

PERFECT aims to achieve the 75 GFLOPS/w goal by taking novel approaches to processing power efficiency. These approaches include near threshold voltage operation and massive heterogeneous processing concurrency, combined with techniques to effectively use the resulting concurrency and tolerate the resulting increased rate of soft errors. The program seeks to leverage and incorporate anticipated industry fabrication geometry advances to 7 nanometers. PERFECT does not plan to build hardware, rather it seeks to develop a simulation capability to measure and demonstrate progress. It plans to specifically address embedded systems processing power efficiencies and performance, and is not concerned with developments that focus on exascale processing issues. PERFECT program envisions three phases. The first phase initiates concept development and looks to provide sufficient proof of impact on processing power efficiency to justify continuing development. The second phase will work to develop technology and techniques to obtain processing system improvement of 75-times greater processing power efficiency. In this phase the performance impact of each development expects to be validated by simulation or equivalent demonstration. The goal of the third phase is to develop each technology or technique and provide a path to implementation.

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Argus Media - California's Monterey formation, which the EIA estimates holds 15.4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, cannot even attract new investment from the oil major in its home state, Chevron.

Other than Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), no major or large independent is earmarking drilling capital for the Monterey. The reticence to invest stems from a combination of factors, from geology to the high cost of doing business in California. Oxy, which produces about 45,000 b/d of oil equivalent (boe/d) from California shale, said its Monterey wells have average initial production rates of about 370 boe/d. Some wells in other shale resource plays, such as the Granite Wash of Texas and Oklahoma, start up with output more than five times that high. But one economic plus of the Monterey is that California oil sells at prices in the same range as Brent crude, rather than West Texas Intermediate (WTI). Another plus: some wells can be drilled vertically and stimulated with hydrofluoric acid, which is cheaper than horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Monterey oil deposits are 6,000-12,000ft below ground. “If we went back to what we said roughly a year ago or a little more than a year ago, I think we are a little more optimistic on the verticals and a little more pessimistic on the horizontals,” Oxy chief executive Stephen Chazen said. Oxy's pace of development may be slowed by California's permitting process, which would become even more difficult under proposed state legislation. A bill seeks to impose additional reporting and record keeping requirements designed to protect groundwater, even in desert areas where no groundwater is present. The company's California shale-drilling program, including 150-175 wells this year, will yield “more predictable production growth going forward.” While Oxy has permits in hand to continue its current pace of drilling through the end of 2011, Chazen acknowledges “some uncertainty around future permits, particularly related to injection wells.” “If we can get the permitting issues worked out in the next six months, you will see significantly higher rig counts in California,” he said. “Right now, I just do not have a basis to raise that rig count in California. I do not have enough confidence in the permitting process.” Companies are not only slow to move because of politics. Major producers have tied up much of the land in the Monterey, but they have little incentive to exploit the formation when shallower deposits in the same region offer lower costs and potentially higher returns, according to Mike Edwards, vice-president at US independent Venoco.

The oil boom will happen when aggressive oil players like Hess and Continental Resources buy out positions of the oil majors and overcome any regulations in California. Monterey Geology Energy and Petroleum Magazine - The Monterey is not likely to see the types of multi-stage fracs performed in other shale plays, with operators preferring large-volume hydrofluoric acid jobs. Edwards said that Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) published a white paper several years ago stating that its engineers didn’t see an economic benefit to hydraulic fracturing. “We’ve tried some fracs,” he said. “We haven’t concluded that the model doesn’t work, but we believe acid jobs will yield better results overall.” Overall, the Monterey shale is estimated to contain more than 400 Billion barrels of original oil in place. It remains to be seen if new superfracking techniques will be superior to hydroflouric acid. The Monterey shale is rather atypical of the types of shales found elsewhere in the country. For one thing, it’s much younger, only about five to 17 million years old compared to other shales that are around 300 million years old. This means that the shale is in the peak oil generating window. It’s also quite thick and not at all homogeneous. It’s been characterized as a large deposit of diatomaceous material. At shallower depths it has very low permeability and needs stimulation to recover oil. Further down, as temperature and pressure increase, the shale becomes more brittle and contains more natural fractures. Ultimately it evolves into a quartz phase, and any part of the shale may contain sandstones as well. Occidental Petroleum investory report from November, 2011 If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

Humanity+ recently convened at the 2011 Constitutional Convention to evaluate its mission, projects, and overall plans for the future. The Board discussed the responsibilities of its Board members, what projects are doable, how to better strategize, whether to have an Executive Director at this time, and if reducing the size of the Board would be beneficial.

With the restructuring, Thomas McCabe graciously stepped down as Executive Director and several Board members have indicated resigning due to other commitments. We will be increasing the number of Advisors and plan for each Board member to take a leadership position with one project for the coming year. The projects that received the most positive feedback from our survey are Humanity+ conferences, H+ Magazine, Future Day, Virtual TV Minds Matter, Humanity+ Press, and H+SN.

The Board of Directors gives our warmest thanks to Tom McCabe for his role as ED. During his term some of his contributions include taking the lead on the 2011 Humanity+ Matching Challenge, the Aubrey de Grey Advocacy Prize, bringing in new Humanity+ Advisors, and initiating the Humanity+ Facebook cause. To date, Tom remains a valued member of the Board of Directors.

We and look forward to a successful 2012!

There is a seven page transcript about Newt Gingrich talking about his passion for space and colonizing the moon.

We did a movie called A City upon a Hill and we had Buzz Aldrin in the movie, and he is so convincing, and he said you have to realize the only person who had gone around the Earth at that point was Yuri Gagarin, a Russian, and the only American who had been in space had been on a suborbital flight. And here’s the President saying we will get to the Moon inside this decade. And you had to invent everything. Yeah, we had all the precursors and we had the V-2 and we had this and we had that, but the truth was if you listed every problem they solved by July of 1969, its one of the great periods of development in human history. And they just did it. I’m giving this background for our friends in the news media because twice recently Governor Romney has made fun of me for having bold ideas in space and has suggested that the idea of having a permanent lunar colony – he actually didn’t catch the weirdest thing I’ve ever done and I’m going to tell you all because sooner or later his researchers will find it – at one point early in my career I introduced the Northwest Ordinance for Space, and I said when we get – I think the number was 13,000 – when we have 13,000 Americans living on the Moon they can petition to become a state. And here’s the difference between romantics and so-called practical people. I wanted every young American to say to themselves: I could be one of those 13,000. I could be a pioneer. I need to study science and math and engineering. I need to learn how to be a technician. I can be part of building a bigger, better future. I can actually go out and live the future looking at the solar system and being part of a generation of courageous people who do something big and bold and heroic. And I will as President encourage the introduction for the Northwest Ordinance for Space to put a marker down that we want Americans to think boldly about the future and we want Americans to go out and study hard and work hard, and together we are going to unleash the American people to rebuild the country we love [applause]. So, I’m going to give you a set of goals and then I’m going to make a set of observations about how to achieve those goals. By the end of my second term we will have the first permanent base on the Moon, and it will be American. We will have commercial near-Earth activities that include science, tourism, and manufacturing, and are designed to create a robust industry precisely on the model that was developed by the airlines in the 1930s, because it is in our interest to acquire so much experience in space that we clearly have a capacity that the Chinese and the Russians will never come anywhere close to matching. And by the end of 2020 we will have the first continuous propulsion system in space capable of getting to Mars in a remarkably short time, because I am sick of being told we have to be timid, and I’m sick of being told we have to be limited to technologies that are 50 years old. Candidly, if we truly inspire the entrepreneurial spirits of America, we may get some of this stuff a lot faster. Now, I’m going to make some modest observations and some big observations. Modest Observation Number 1: We should be practical about using equipment. That is, for example, the Atlas 5 ought to be interchangeable and ought to be as usable for NASA projects as it is for Air Force projects. We should get in the habit of absorbing small units of space. You know, it’s very difficult right now to get the bureaucracy to think about the fact that somebody is about to launch a commercial launch and it actually has a little extra space for 40 pounds, but that doesn’t fit either the NASA or the military model. When we fly troops around we normally fly them on commercial airliners with other people. So we’re used to the idea that you can share space. You can send things that don’t have to be a military-only aircraft, or a NASA-only aircraft. I just suspect that even the NASA administrators actually fly on commercial planes with other people. So I want to know if we break down all the bureaucratic barriers and we go to what I want to call a common sense model: If it’s cheaper, faster, and it works – do it! Second: We need to learn how to do five or eight launches a day, not one. We need to get in the habit of saying: You know, this is going to be like an airport. We are going to be so busy – you know, if we are going to be getting to the Moon permanently and be starting to get to Mars and build this near-Earth capability, and do it all within eight years, we better start thinking more like airports than like space systems. And we better start figuring out – so how are we going to manage this many things? It’s not that we can’t do it, it’s just that we just don’t push ourselves, we don’t think about it, we don’t design the systems for it. But I want constant activity. There’s a reason. The World War II generation built tons of airplanes, so the designers that came out of World War II made lots of mistakes. And they learned from them. If you are a military aircraft designer today, you are lucky if you work on more than one airplane in your lifetime. That’s how slow and cumbersome and bureaucratic we’ve become. You don’t have any learning curve. I want us to have so much constant energetic, excited activities that people are learning again. And that we’re drawing the best talent in the country back to the Space Coast because it’s exciting and it’s dynamic and who knows what next week is going to be like. And does that mean I’m a visionary? You betcha! You know, I was attacked the other night for being grandiose. I just want you to know: Lincoln standing at Council Bluffs was grandiose. The Wright Brothers going down to Kitty Hawk was grandiose. John F. Kennedy standing there saying we’ll get to the Moon in eight years was grandiose. I accept the charge that I am an American and Americans are instinctively grandiose because they believe in a bigger future. Now just a couple more core observations. I want you to understand where I’m coming from. I very much believe in a project you can Google called Strong America Now, which is an effort to develop “Lean Six Sigma” for the Federal Government. I believe we’ve got to become agile, lean, competent, constantly evolving, and that means replacing the civil service laws that are 130 years old with a totally new practical management system that comes much closer to the way Boeing is doing the Dreamliner. Callista and I went down to Boeing outside of Charleston and they were walking us through – I don’t know how many of you know this, but this is just an example – The Dreamliner is built in Italy, Wichita, Japan, and Korea, and it’s flown in in units that are then brought together at Charleston. And they are walking around and they said this particular work area currently takes sixteen days – our goal is to get it down to six with the same number of people. And I looked at that and I thought to myself – Department of Housing and Urban Development [laughter]. But let’s be honest, I could have said Air Force Space Command, I could have said NASA. I mean we want to become lean and aggressive, and here’s my bias: They told me in the Corps of Engineers that in order to improve the Port of Charleston so they could receive ships that are starting to come through the Panama Canal in 2014 when they finish widening it, that to do the study of the project takes eight years. Not the project – the study! And I said to them: you know we fought the 2nd World War in three years and eight months, so we beat Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, in 44 months. Now I want to imprint this on you because if I become your President…you will have a 365 day a year relentless pressure to be faster, quicker, leaner, more innovative, more thoughtful, more daring, more visionary. So let’s go back to how to do it. I would want 10% of the NASA budget set aside for prize money. Lindberg flies to Paris for $25,000. You set up prizes – for example, I forget what the Bush administration estimate was, but it was something like $450 billion to get to Mars with a manned mission. So let’s put up $10 billion. And if somebody figures it out, we save $440 billion. If they don’t figure it out, it didn’t cost us anything. But you’ll have for $10 billion – and I’d make it tax free because Americans love things tax free so much. It’s not the monetary value, it’s the psychic thrill that Uncle doesn’t get any of it. And this is why you are going to have to learn to have a lot more launches every day because if we put up the right prizes – and Bob Walker and I, shortly before I left Congress, actually hosted a two-day National Academy of Engineering Workshop on prizes, which is online, as it was published, and we were talking about the historic use of prizes going back to the 17th Century. You put up a bunch of interesting prizes, you are going to have so many people showing up who want to fly, it’s going to be unbelievable. So the model I want us to build is largely the model of the 20s and 30s, when the government was actively encouraging development, but the government wasn’t doing it. The government was paying a reward, it was subsidizing the airmail, it was doing a variety of things. There were prizes – you know, Jimmy Doolittle got famous winning prize money before World War II, then he got famous for bombing Tokyo; I mean, he had a life that was very interesting. We’d be better off to do 1% of the current studies and ten times the number of experiments just flying. If it doesn’t work we’ll walk off saying, well, that was kind of interesting. There is a great story of Bernie Shriver, who had been the great leader of Air Force ICBM development, calling his successor, and his said: “You know, you’ve had 17 successful launches,” and the guy said – he was very proud – “You’re right.” And he [Bernie] said: “You’re not trying, because if you had been trying you would have inevitably made mistakes. You’re only doing stuff that’s safe, what you already know how to do.” So I came here today to ask you, because you’re here, and you know people all over the country who believe in space, you know how exciting it can be at its best, you know what a total mess, what an embarrassment our current situation is. How can we build a bureaucracy this big and get into a period when we rely on the Russians, while we watch the Chinese plan to surpass us, and we sit around bureaucratically twiddling our thumbs with no real reform?

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Confirming Kepler’s planet candidates is a crucial part of the process, because no matter how tantalizing a candidate appears to be, its existence needs to be verified. We have more than 60 confirmed Kepler planets and over 2300 candidates, many of which will eventually get confirmed, but it’s interesting to see that the mission’s latest announcements relate to multiple planet systems and how their presence can itself speed up the verification process.

In today’s focus are the eleven new planetary systems just announced, 26 confirmed planets in all, which actually triples the number of stars known to have more than one transiting planet. One of the systems, Kepler-33, has been demonstrated to have five planets. We also have five systems (Kepler-25, Kepler-27, Kepler-30, Kepler-31 and Kepler-33) showing a 1:2 orbital resonance — the outer planet orbits the star once for every two orbits of the inner planet — and four systems with a 2:3 resonance, with the outer planet orbiting twice for every three times the inner planet completes its orbit.

Image (click to enlarge): The artist’s rendering depicts the multiple planet systems discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission. Out of hundreds of candidate planetary systems, scientists had previously verified six systems with multiple transiting planets (denoted here in red). Now, Kepler observations have verified planets (shown here in green) in 11 new planetary systems. Many of these systems contain additional planet candidates that are yet to be verified (shown here in dark purple). For reference, the eight planets of the solar system are shown in blue. Credit: NASA Ames/Jason Steffen, Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics

Usefully for verification purposes, these are systems in which the planets are relatively close to their host stars, with orbital periods between six and 143 days, the tight configuration creating a clear Transit Timing Variation (TTV) signature as the planets tug and pull on each other. TTV makes verification much simpler and eases the need for backup observations from ground-based telescopes. We’ve looked at Transit Timing before in its application for possible detection of exomoons, but it’s also useful for analyzing planetary systems around fainter, more distant stars.

Eric Ford (University of Florida) and colleagues discuss the utility of TTVs in the paper on their work on Kepler-23 and Kepler-24:

For systems with MTPCs [multiple transiting planet candidates], correlated TTVs provide strong evidence that both transiting objects are in the same system. Dynamical stability provides an upper limit on the masses of the transiting bodies. For closely-spaced pairs, the mass upper limit is often in the planetary regime, allowing planets to be confirmed by the combination of correlated TTVs and the constraint of dynamical stability.

And Jack Lissauer (NASA Ames) and team discuss the validity of Kepler’s multiple planet candidates in a separate paper. The italics are mine:

Roughly one-third of Kepler’s planet candidates announced by Borucki et al. (2011) are associated with targets that have more than one candidate planet. False positives (FPs) plague ground-based transit searches, but the exquisite quality of Kepler photometry, combined with the ability to measure small deviations in center of light during transits (Jenkins et al. 2010; Batalha et al. 2010), have been used to cleanse the sample prior to presentation in Borucki et al. (2011). Accounting for candidates on each one’s individual merit, Morton & Johnson (2011) estimated the fidelity of Kepler’s planet candidates (fraction of the candidates expected to be actual planets) to be above 90%. Yet the fidelity of multiple planet candidates is likely to be higher than that for singles (Latham et al. 2011; Lissauer et al. 2011a). We show herein that the vast majority of Kepler’s multiple planet candidates are true multiple planet systems.

Find multiple planets in the same system, then, and the odds on their being verified are excellent, what Lissauer calls ‘validation by multiplicity,’ based on our knowledge of the properties of the host star and examination of planetary transits that show similar signatures around the same star. Thus the gravitational dance of multiple planets leads to faster verifications as the orbital period of each planet changes through the slightest of variations in its transit timing. Now we have yet another crop of exoplanets, fifteen of them between Earth and Neptune in size. But whether these smaller planets are rocky worlds or gaseous ‘Neptunes’ will have to be the subject of further study.

The papers are Lissauer et al., “Almost All of Kepler’s Multiple Planet Candidates are Planets” (preprint); Ford et al., “Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: II. Confirmation of Two Multiplanet Systems via a Non-parametric Correlation Analysis,” accepted at the Astrophysical Journal (preprint); Steffen et al., “Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: III. Confirmation of 4 Multiple Planet Systems by a Fourier-Domain Study of Anti-correlated Transit Timing Variations,” accepted by MNRAS (preprint); and Febrycky et al., “Transit Timing Observations from Kepler: IV. Confirmation of 4 Multiple Planet Systems by Simple Physical Models,” in press at the Astrophysical Journal (preprint).

From the Independent: "It is one of medicine's mysteries: what has caused Britain's plummeting rate of heart disease over the last decade? Deaths from heart attacks have halved since 2002 and no one is quite sure why. Similar changes have occurred in countries around the world but the death rate in England, especially, has fallen further and faster than almost anywhere. ... The researchers looked at 840,000 men and women in England who had suffered a total of 861,000 heart attacks between 2002 and 2010. Overall, the death rates fell by 50 per cent in men and 53 per cent in women. ... For the last 70 years we have been in the grip of a heart disease epidemic that began in the 1940s, rose to a peak in the 1970s and then began to fall. All Western countries were affected and all followed broadly the same pattern. ... researchers conclude that just under half the decline in heart attack death rates in England over the last decade is due to better hospital treatment; the rest is due to changes in lifestyle and the widespread use of pills to lower cholesterol and blood pressure." One might theorize that - at the high level - increased heart disease across the last seven decades is a consequence of the fat and sedentary lifestyles that tend to accompany increases in wealth across the board, while reductions are largely due to improvements in medical technology.

Link: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-curious-case-of-the-vanishing-killer-6294626.html

This week has brought several interesting articles about human enhancement. Although much of this technology is still in the research phase, some tech is beginning to make it to the market.

Here is an open access PDF format mini-review on what is known of growth hormone and aging - that less of it is generally better: "A recent report of virtually complete protection from diabetes and cancer in a population of people with hereditary dwarfism revived interest in elucidating the relationships between growth, adult body size, age-related disease and longevity. In many species, smaller individuals outlive those that are larger and a similar relationship was shown in studies of various human populations. Adult body size is strongly dependent on the actions of growth hormone (GH) and the absence of GH or GH receptor in mice leads to a remarkable extension of longevity. Many mechanisms that may account for, or contribute to, this association have been identified. It is suggested that modest modifications of the diet at different ages may extend human healthspan and lifespan by reducing levels of hormones that stimulate growth."

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22261798