DARPA Wants to Collect ‘Physiological Signals’ at a Distance and Through Walls
November 20th, 2011Via: Office of the Secretary of Defense / DARPA:
TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Information Systems, Biomedical, Electronics, Battlespace
OBJECTIVE: Demonstrate the ability to collect, localize, and evaluate physiological signals (e.g., heart rate) at distances greater than 10 meters, non-line-of-sight, and through solid objects (walls, rock, concrete, etc.).
DESCRIPTION: There is a need to remotely detect, collect, and evaluate physiological signals of interest. Applications and concepts-of-operations (CONOPs) that would benefit from this capability include, but are not limited to: building-clearing, warfighter health monitoring or battle damage assessment and triage, situational awareness and assessment. Existing micro-impulse radar (MIR) and ultra-wideband (U) technologies have the capability of detecting heartbeat and respiration at distances up to- 8 meters (1) but are limited in at greater distances and in challenging environments, such as penetration through thick or multiple walls, concrete, and RF-noisy environments. There is interest in counting and localizing the sources of multiple physiological signatures in a cluttered environment. For example, in a building that has experienced a catastrophic event (fire, earthquake, etc.), the detection of survivors and assessment of their medical condition, in addition to their location to within 1 meter accuracy, would improve the likelihood of recovery of personnel and their survivability. Additionally in a crowded environment it is highly challenging to uniquely identify persons based on collection of physiological signatures, such as electrocardiograms (ECGs). It is possible that high-frequency ECGs or other signals could improve the confidence level in unique identification. Approaches using “on body” sensors that transmit signals to remote locations will NOT be considered.
Research Credit: EPD
One in Three Americans in Poverty, or Just Above It
November 20th, 2011Via: New York Times:
They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.
Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.
When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.
After a lost decade of flat wages and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood — quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure.
Foreign Hackers Targeted U.S. Water Plant in Apparent Malicious Cyber Attack
November 20th, 2011Related/Update: Hacker Says Texas Town Used Three Character Password To Secure Internet Facing SCADA System
Via: Threat Post:
In an e-mail interview with Threatpost, the hacker who compromised software used to manage water infrastructure for South Houston, Texas, said the district had HMI (human machine interface) software used to manage water and sewage infrastructure accessible to the Internet and used a password that was just three characters long to protect the system, making it easy picking for a remote attack.
The hacker, using the handle “pr0f” took credit for a remote compromise of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems used by South Houston, a community in Harris County, Texas. Communicating from an e-mail address tied to a Romanian domain, the hacker told Threatpost that he discovered the vulnerable system using a scanner that looks for the online fingerprints of SCADA systems. He said South Houston had an instance of the Siemens Simatic human machine interface (HMI) software that was accessible from the Internet and that was protected with an easy-to-hack, three character password.
“This was barely a hack. A child who knows how the HMI that comes with Simatic works could have accomplished this,” he wrote in an e-mail to Threatpost.
—End Update—
Via: Washington Post:
Foreign hackers caused a pump at an Illinois water plant to fail last week, according to a preliminary state report. Experts said the cyber-attack, if confirmed, would be the first known to have damaged one of the systems that supply Americans with water, electricity and other essentials of modern life.
Companies and government agencies that rely on the Internet have for years been routine targets of hackers, but most incidents have resulted from attempts to steal information or interrupt the functioning of Web sites. The incident in Springfield, Ill., would mark a departure because it apparently caused physical destruction.
Federal officials confirmed that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were investigating damage to the water plant but cautioned against concluding that it was necessarily a cyber-attack before all the facts could be learned. “At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety,” said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard.
Britain ‘Will Join Euro Before Long’, Says German Finance Minister
November 19th, 2011Via: Telegraph:
Wolfgang Schäuble said that, despite the current crisis in the eurozone, the euro will ultimately emerge as the common currency of the entire European Union. He said he “respects” Britain’s decision to keep the pound, but insisted that the survival and eventual stabilisation of the euro will convince non-members to join the currency club. “This may happen more quickly than some people in the British Isles currently believe,” he added.
Mr Schäuble also said Germany will stand firm on its call for a financial transaction tax that Britain believes would badly harm the City of London.
Judge Declares Law Governing Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Unconstitutional
November 19th, 2011The NSA smiles at the part in bold below.
Via: Wall Street Journal:
In a succinct one-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn N. Hughes of the Southern District of Texas declared that the law authorizing the government to obtain cellphone records without a search warrant was unconstitutional.
“The records would show the date, time, called number, and location of the telephone when the call was made,” Judge Hughes wrote in the decision, dated Nov. 11. “These data are constitutionally protected from this intrusion.”
Judge Hughes’ decision comes as the U.S. government is facing increasing judicial challenges to its practice of obtaining information about the location of individuals without a search warrant. Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case where the government placed a GPS tracking device under a vehicle and monitored the driver’s movements for a month without a search warrant.
During the argument, Chief Justice John Roberts said to Michael Dreeben, deputy solicitor general of the Justice Department: “If you win this case then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States.” The Justice Department argues that people have no expectation of privacy on public roads.
Cellphone records are governed by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that permits law enforcement officers to obtain certain digital records – such as some e-mail and cellphone records – without a search warrant. A coalition of technology companies—including Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AT&T Corp.—is lobbying Congress to update the law to require search warrants in more digital investigations.
At Planned Sunny Isles Beach Condo, Cars and Drivers Ride Elevator Home
November 19th, 2011Via: Miami Herald:
Pull over into the designated space. Turn off the engine. And enjoy the oceanfront view as you escalate in a glass elevator that takes you, while you are sitting in your car, to the front door of your apartment.
No, this is not the latest Disney ride.
The $560 million Jetsonesque tower will rise in Sunny Isles Beach as part of a collaboration between Germany-based Porsche Design Group and a local developer, Gil Dezer. It likely will be the world’s first condominium complex with elevators that will take residents directly to their units while they are sitting in their cars.
“You don’t have to leave your car until you are in front of your apartment,” said Juergen Gessler, CEO of Porsche Design Group.
Here is how it will work: After the resident pulls over and switches off the engine, a robotic arm that works much like an automatic plank will scoop up the car and put it into the elevator. Once at the desired floor, the same robotic arm will park the car, leaving the resident nearly in front of his front door. Voila, home!
The glass elevators will give residents and their guests unparalleled views of the city or of the ocean during their high-speed ride, expected to last 45 to 90 seconds.
Fake Terror Plots, Paid Informants: The Tactics of FBI ‘Entrapment’
November 18th, 2011Via: Guardian:
Critics say the FBI is running a sting operation across America, targeting – to a large extent – the Muslim community by luring people into fake terror plots. FBI bureaux send informants to trawl through Muslim communities, hang out in mosques and community centres, and talk of radical Islam in order to identify possible targets sympathetic to such ideals. Or they will respond to the most bizarre of tip-offs, including, in one case, a man who claimed to have seen terror chief Ayman al-Zawahiri living in northern California in the late 1990s.
That tipster was quickly hired as a well-paid informant. If suitable suspects are identified, FBI agents then run a sting, often creating a fake terror plot in which it helps supply weapons and targets. Then, dramatic arrests are made, press conferences held and lengthy convictions secured.
But what is not clear is if many real, actual terrorists are involved.
Research Credit: noncompliant
All French Nuclear Reactors Need Safety Upgrades
November 18th, 2011Via: Reuters:
France needs to upgrade the protection of vital functions in all its nuclear reactors to avoid a disaster in the event of a natural calamity, the head of its nuclear safety agency said, adding there was no need to close any plants.
A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage
November 18th, 2011I have a special relationship with the McRib sandwich. Long ago, I had a friend who used to eat those things and the smell of them turned my stomach. He found my revulsion hilarious and he would taunt me by offering me some of the McRib, or blowing the putrid fumes my way. One time, he pulled back the soggy bun to reveal a gruesome, Giger-esque, horror within. Rubbery, gray-green-pink, form pressed “rib” with brown slime sauce…
And that’s when it hit me:
“You’re eating a slab of pig snouts and sphincters,” I said.
And then he’d load the thing up with fries, plop the bun back on top and just go to town on that mess.
Mmm mmm good.
I don’t know what percentage of the McRib “meat” component is comprised of pig snouts and sphincters, if any, (the article mentions pork offal slurry, which is close enough for me), but the image of that bread being pulled back, and the smell… *shiver* *goose bumps* The sick feeling is with me even now, decades later. It comes to me anytime I see a reference to McDonald’s. Whether my epiphany about the “true” nature of the McRib sandwich is real or not, I can assure you, it’s real to me.
The Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange, 1971 Warner Bros.
I should be thankful for the experience. It put me off McDonald’s for good.
Via: The Awl:
The physical attributes of the sandwich only add to the visceral revulsion some have to the product—the same product that others will drive hundreds of miles to savor. But many people, myself included, believe that all these things—the actual presumably entirely organic matter that goes into making the McRib—are somewhat secondary to the McRib’s existence. This is where we enter the land of conjectures, conspiracy theories and dark, ribby murmurings. The McRib’s unique aspects and impermanence, many of us believe, make it seem a likely candidate for being a sort of arbitrage strategy on McDonald’s part. Calling a fast food sandwich an arbitrage strategy is perhaps a bit of a reach—but consider how massive the chain’s market influence is, and it becomes a bit more reasonable.
Arbitrage is a risk-free way of making money by exploiting the difference between the price of a given good on two different markets—it’s the proverbial free lunch you were told doesn’t exist. In this equation, the undervalued good in question is hog meat, and McDonald’s exploits the value differential between pork’s cash price on the commodities market and in the Quick-Service Restaurant market. If you ignore the fact that this is, by definition, not arbitrage because the McRib is a value-added product, and that there is risk all over the place, this can lead to some interesting conclusions. (If you don’t want to do something so reckless, then stop here.)
The theory that the McRib’s elusiveness is a direct result of the vagaries of the cash price for hog meat in the States is simple: in this thinking, the product is only introduced when pork prices are low enough to ensure McDonald’s can turn a profit on the product.
Related:
McDonald’s Food Doesn’t Break Down Over Time?
Deconstructing The McRib’s Cult-Like Allure
Research Credit: BW
GE Filed 57,000-Page Tax Return, Paid No Taxes on $14 Billion in Profits
November 18th, 2011Via: The Weekly Standard:
General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn’t pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.
