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Sunday, April 7, 2013

The Potential and the Risks of Data Science - NYTimes.com

Columbia University held a daylong symposium on Friday as a kind of brainy coming-out party for its new Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering. The institute is a collection of interdisciplinary centers including ones for cybersecurity, financial analytics, health analytics, new media and smart cities. It points to the direction universities will have to take if the bundle of technologies called Big Data?? new data and artificial intelligence tools?? really are to transform industries, as its champions predict.

The symposium, ?From Big Data To Big Ideas,? was mainly a celebration of the promise of the technology in fields from health care to transportation, with presentations from Columbia professors and computer scientists from companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Bloomberg.

The privacy and surveillance perils of Big Data came up only in passing. But during a question-and-answer portion of one panel, Ben Fried, Google?s chief information officer, expressed a misgiving. ?My concern is that the technology is way ahead of society,? Mr. Fried said. There is danger, he suggested, if only a technical elite understand Big Data and its implications, with the risk of a runaway technology or a public rejection.

I spoke with Mr. Fried briefly afterward. ?I think it is a mistake if conversations about this technology leave out the humanities,? he said. Broader social concerns, he explained, should be a guide and will affect the spread and use of Big Data technology.

Mr. Fried works for a company that has at times tested the limits of Big Data technology, notably the privacy threat posed by overaggressive data collection. But he makes a good point, and he?s not the only one making it.

Alex Pentland, a computational social scientist at the MIT Media Lab, is leading a group at MIT and elsewhere in exploring the implications of what he calls ?a data-driven society.?

At Columbia, Mark Hansen, a professor of journalism and director of the institute?s New Media Center, has his own plan for bringing the humanities into Big Data. He teaches students from Columbia?s Graduate School of Journalism how to do some data programming. The goal, Mr. Hansen explains, is not to make them professional programmers, but mainly to give journalists?? whom he calls ?society?s explainers of last resort??? a firmer understanding of computer technology. Software algorithms, he said, are not impartial. They are written by people, and can embody human values and biases.

Mr. Hansen?s small-scale educational program recalls the major initiative at Dartmouth College in the 1960s, when mainframe computers, the transforming technology of the day, came into widespread use in business, government and science. It was there that two professors, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, developed Basic, a simplified programming language, initially for Dartmouth students. They were influenced by the concerns raised by C.P. Snow, the English scientist and novelist, in his 1959 lecture, ?The Two Cultures,? which analyzed the difference between scientific and literary intellectuals, and pointed to the danger of the schism.

The Columbia data sciences institute is just getting under way. New centers could be added. One of the panelists on Friday suggested Columbia might want to add something like the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, which focuses on the impact of technology on society.

The Columbia institute is a science-led undertaking, and its director is a computer scientist, Kathleen R. McKeown. Incidentally, Ms. McKeown, who was the first female professor to receive tenure at Columbia, holds a bachelor?s degree in comparative literature.

Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/the-potential-and-the-risks-of-data-science/

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Thursday, April 4, 2013

N. Korea moves missile after warning U.S.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? North Korea has moved a missile with "considerable range" to its east coast, South Korea's defense minister said Thursday, but he added that there are no signs that Pyongyang is preparing for a full-scale conflict.

The report came hours after North Korea's military warned that it has been authorized to attack the U.S. using "smaller, lighter and diversified" nuclear weapons. It was the North's latest war cry against America in recent weeks. The reference to smaller weapons could be a claim that Pyongyang has improved its nuclear technology. Or a bluff.

South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said he did not know the reasons behind the North's missile movement, and that it "could be for testing or drills."

He dismissed reports in Japanese media that the missile could be a KN-08, which is believed to be a long-range missile that if operable could hit the United States.

Kim told lawmakers at a parliamentary committee meeting that the missile has "considerable range" but not enough to hit the U.S. mainland.

The range he described could refer to a mobile North Korean missile known as the Musudan, believed to have a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles). That would make Japan and South Korea potential targets ? along with U.S. bases in both countries ? but there are doubts about the missile's accuracy.

The Pentagon announced that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack.

Experts say North Korea has not demonstrated that it has missiles capable of long range or accuracy. Some suspect that long-range missiles unveiled by Pyongyang at a parade last year were actually mockups.

"From what we know of its existing inventory, North Korea has short- and medium-range missiles that could complicate a situation on the Korean Peninsula (and perhaps reach Japan), but we have not seen any evidence that it has long-range missiles that could strike the continental U.S., Guam or Hawaii," James Hardy, Asia Pacific editor of IHS Jane's Defence Weekly, wrote in a recent analysis.

Kim Kwan-jin said that if North Korea were preparing for a full-scale conflict, there would be signs including the mobilization of a number of units, including supply and rear troops, but South Korean military officials have found no such preparations.

"(North Korea's recent threats) are rhetorical threats. I believe the odds of a full-scale provocation are small," he said. But he added that North Korea might mount a small-scale provocation such as its 2010 shelling of a South Korean island, an attack that killed four people.

Pyongyang has been railing against joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises taking place in South Korea and has expressed anger over tightened U.N. sanctions for its February nuclear test. Many of the threats come in the middle of the night in Asia ? daytime for the U.S. audience.

Analysts say the threats are probably efforts to provoke softer policies from South Korea, to win diplomatic talks with Washington and to solidify the image of young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

At times, Pyongyang has gone beyond rhetoric.

On Tuesday, it announced it would restart a plutonium reactor it had shut down in 2007. A U.S. research institute said Wednesday that satellite imagery shows that construction needed for the restart has already begun.

For a second day Thursday, North Korean border authorities denied entry to South Koreans who manage jointly run factories in the North Korean city of Kaesong. South Koreans already at the plant were being allowed to return home.

South Korea has prepared a military contingency plan should North Korea hold South Korean workers hostage in Kaesong, Defense Minister Kim said. He wouldn't elaborate.

Outraged over comments in the South about possible hostage-taking and a military response from Seoul, a North Korean government-run committee threatened to pull North Korean workers out of Kaesong as well.

North Korea's military statement Thursday, from an unnamed spokesman from the General Bureau of the Korean People's Army, said its troops had been authorized to counter U.S. "aggression" with "powerful practical military counteractions," including nuclear weapons.

It said America's "hostile policy" and "nuclear threat" against North Korea "will be smashed by the strong will of all the united service personnel and people and cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means."

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Washington is doing all it can to defuse the situation.

"Some of the actions they've taken over the last few weeks present a real and clear danger and threat" to the U.S. and its allies, Hagel said Wednesday.

South Korea's Defense Ministry said its military is ready to deal with any provocation by North Korea. "I can say we have no problem in crisis management," deputy ministry spokesman Wee Yong-sub told reporters.

The defense minister, however, was criticized by lawmakers over a North Korean defector who stole a South Korean fishing boat Wednesday night and fled back to North Korea across the western sea border.

Kim said South Korean radar had a "blind spot" in the area and South Korean troops were unaware the defector was fleeing until he almost reached the North Korean side. Lawmakers questioned his military's readiness to detect and counter enemy troops who might use similar blind spots.

This spring's annual U.S.-South Korea drills have incorporated fighter jets and nuclear-capable stealth bombers. The allies insist they are routine exercises. Pyongyang calls them rehearsals for a northward invasion and says it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself.

On Sunday, Kim Jong Un led a high-level meeting of party officials who declared building the economy and "nuclear armed forces" as the nation's priorities.

Pyongyang is believed to be working toward building an atomic bomb small enough to mount on a long-range missile. Long-range rocket launches designed to send satellites into space in 2009 and 2012 were widely considered covert tests of missile technology, and North Korea has conducted three underground nuclear tests.

"I don't believe North Korea has the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear weapons mounted on missiles, and won't for many years. Its ability to target and strike South Korea is also very limited," nuclear scientist Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said this week.

In comments posted to CISAC's website, Hecker said North Korea knows a nuclear attack would be met with "a devastating nuclear response."

Hecker has estimated that North Korea has enough plutonium to make several crude nuclear bombs. Its announcement Tuesday that it would restart a plutonium reactor indicated that it intends to produce more nuclear weapons material.

The U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies has analyzed recent commercial satellite imagery of the Nyongbyon nuclear facility, where the reactor was shut down in 2007 under the terms of a disarmament agreement. A cooling tower for the reactor was destroyed in 2008.

The analysis published Wednesday on the institute's website, 38 North, says that rebuilding the tower would take six months, but a March 27 photo shows building work may have started for an alternative cooling system that could take just weeks. Experts estimate it could take three months to a year to restart the plant.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington in Washington and Youkyung Lee in Seoul contributed to this report.

___

Follow Sam Kim at twitter.com/samkim_ap

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/skorea-north-korea-moved-missile-east-coast-062418562.html

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Mozilla intros experimental web payment API for Firefox OS

Mozilla's fledgling Firefox OS has yet to seed out to actual consumers, but when it does an "easy and secure" payment platform should be in place. Announced via the company's developer-focused Hacks blog, navigator.mozPay() is a Javascript API crafted in the vein of Google Wallet, but with a key difference: it'll allow direct carrier billing and support for various payment providers. So when users trigger the 'Buy' button from within a web app, they'll be presented with a window from which to complete the purchase, with the entirety of the transaction taking place "in-app." Despite the desire to open this payment API up to all comers and deliver flexibility to consumers and merchants, the first batch of Firefox OS handsets will actually feature a whitelist of approved payment providers -- something Mozilla hopes will eventually change as this API evolves and becomes more secure. But Firefox OS isn't the last stop for the payment platform, as it'll be headed to the desktop browser and Firefox for Android soon.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Mozilla

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/uu7RiyNWFcw/

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nefen pregnant: Rekindling Relationships | reenasramble

reconnecting, relationships, family, love I recently visited my extended family in India after many years and it made me realize how important it is to rekindle relationships with loved ones. ?Especially with family, you can easily take relationships for granted, feeling like they will always be there. ?However, relationships of any type require effort and attention to flourish. ?You may continue to be related by blood and maybe some sense of duty but without the effort, the feelings will fade.

This is why I wanted to make sure that I took my husband and sons to visit the relatives we had not seen in over 5 years. ?When we last visited, my boys were quite young and though they had a great time, they do not remember that trip. ?Some friends here have a surprised reaction that I value these connections with cousins, aunts and uncles who I only saw every few years at best. ?I guess we all connected well and shared enough love and memories that sustained us during the absence. ?I wanted my kids to enjoy the same feelings and get a chance to build their own connections. ?I think we succeeded.

Whether it be with friends or family, we should make the effort to reconnect now and then. ?I do believe that when you have a strong relationship with someone you can reconnect easily even when you don?t speak or meet regularly. ?However, if there has been a long disconnect, we should try to send a note, talk, or visit. ?This serves to remind both parties that the relationship is still important and has not dwindled. ?This communication will work to strengthen the bond. ?Of course life is busy and with so many people in our lives it is hard to regularly communicate with all but now and again we should get in touch. ?In the meantime, social media helps us connect on a superficial level!

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Source: http://reenasramble.com/2013/04/03/rekindling-relationships/

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Source: http://nefen-pregnant.blogspot.com/2013/04/rekindling-relationships-reenasramble.html

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

China announces two new bird flu cases, including one death

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has found two more cases of a new strain of bird flu and one of the victims has died, state media said on Wednesday, bringing to nine the number of cases.

A 38-year old cook became ill early last month while working in the province of Jiangsu, where five of the other cases were found. He died in hospital in Hangzhou city on March 27, the Xinhua news agency reported. Samples tested positive for the new H7N9 strain on Wednesday.

The second patient, also in Hangzhou, is a 67-year old who is under treatment. Xinhua said no connection between the two cases had been discovered, and no one in close contact with either patient had developed any flu-like symptoms.

Of the seven other cases of the new strain, two have died, both in the business hub of Shanghai. The other five are in a critical condition in hospital in Nanjing.

Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou are all close to each other in eastern China.

The Agriculture Ministry said it had yet to find any animals infected with H7N9, though added it was possible it had been brought to China by migratory birds.

The World Health Organization said on Monday that the first three cases had shown no evidence of human-to-human transmission, but that there were questions about the source of the infection and the mode of transmission.

China has stepped up its alert level since the cases came to light and has said it is being transparent in dealing with the outbreak.

China has a checkered record when it comes to tackling bad news, which has been known to be covered up by officials fearing it may attract unwanted attention from superiors and damage promotion prospects.

In 2003, authorities initially tried to cover up an epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged in China and killed about a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and David Stanway; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/strain-bird-flu-infects-four-others-china-xinhua-012646972.html

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Greater recognition of face blindness needed, experts say

Apr. 2, 2013 ? Imagine not being able to recognise your own child at nursery or even pick out your own face from a line-up of photos. This is just how severe face blindness, or prosopagnosia, can be.

"In extreme cases, people might withdraw socially -- become depressed, leave their job, or just suffer endless embarrassment," said Bournemouth University (BU) psychologist Dr Sarah Bate.

Dr Bate leads the BU Centre for Facial Processing Disorders, which carries out research to advance understanding of the causes of prosopagnosia and develops training strategies that can help to improve face recognition skills.

The Centre is campaigning for formal recognition of face blindness, and has launched an e-petition for the issue to be discussed in parliament.

"Children with prosopagnosia can find it really difficult to make friends because all children wear school uniforms in the UK -- this takes away any external cues to recognition," said Dr Bate.

"If children with face blindness seem socially withdrawn, this is often misinterpreted as an indicator of other socio-emotional difficulties or behavioural problems because of the lack of professional awareness of prosopagnosia."

She added: "Because prosopagnosia is not a formally recognised disorder, many people are reluctant to inform their employer that they have the condition, despite it influencing their performance at work or their relations with colleagues and clients.

"Indeed, many people feel they would be discriminated against if managers became aware of their condition, and this may prevent promotion and impede other opportunities in the workplace."

Until the last decade or so, face blindness was virtually unknown, with just a handful of documented cases.

But now thousands of people have contacted Bournemouth University, the largest research centre in the UK investigating the condition.

Dr Bate estimates one in 50 people suffer from prosopagnosia to some degree -- some struggle to put a name to a face while others can't recognise people they have known their whole lives.

Those with severe forms of the condition typically cannot recognise spouses, children or other family members and some cannot even recognise their own reflections in the mirror.

Dr Bate said: "I imagine there is such low awareness of prosopagnosia because it has traditionally been thought of as a rare disorder, and only recently has it become clear that it affects many people.

"Someone said to me recently that public awareness about prosopagnosia is where Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was 20 years ago, and there's a real upwards battle to achieve sufficient recognition amongst the public and professionals."

The disorder can be acquired following neurological trauma or illness, such as a head injury or stroke, but many more people suffer from a developmental form of the condition and have lifelong difficulties in face recognition.

There may be as many as 1.5 million prosopagnosics in the UK alone, but public and professional awareness of the condition is low.

Dr Bate hopes that the Centre's campaign will lead to greater recognition of prosopagnosia.

It includes an e-petition, which needs 100,000 signatures to have the condition discussed in Parliament.

"It's going to take a while to achieve the required number of signatures, but it will get people talking about prosopagnosia and discussing the importance of proper recognition," she said.

"If the issue does get discussed by government, it's possible that we can use our research to advise about the need for professional awareness of the condition, and work with appropriate committees to provide information that can be distributed via the NHS and educational and occupational pathways."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Bournemouth University.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/kHmx-RSk_D8/130402091138.htm

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