The Mysterious Web That Connects All Galaxies In The Universe
January 22nd, 2014Via: Business Insider:
For the first time, astronomers were able to see a string of hot gas known as a filament that is thought to be part of the mysterious underlying structure that dictates the layout of all the stars and galaxies in our universe.
Scientists believe that matter in the universe is arranged into a gigantic web-like structure. This is called the cosmic web.
There are signatures of this structure in the remaining radiation from the Big Bang and in the layout of the universe itself. Without some mysterious force pulling visible matter into this web, galaxies would be randomly scattered across the universe. But they aren’t.
We can see that galaxies are found in groups and those groups come together in larger clusters.
Computer models tell us that those galaxy clusters are linked by long filaments of hot gas and dark matter — a mystery substance that we can’t see because it doesn’t radiate or scatter light but that makes up most of the web.
It’s believed that gas and dark matter flow along the filaments to form clumps of galaxies where the strands intersect. So filaments are important because they represent what the universe looks like on a large scale. The problem is that, even though we should technically be able to see hot gas filaments, they are really hard to detect.
To find this strand of gas, astronomers where able to take advantage of an extremely bright mass of energy and light known as a quasar.
The light from a quasar located 10 billion light-years-away acted like a “flashlight” to make the surrounding gas glow, researchers report Jan. 19 in the journal Nature. This boosted the Lyman alpha radiation that hydrogen gas emits to detectable levels over a huge swath of the region.
The researchers were able to figure out the wavelength of the Lyman alpha radiation emitted by the gas and used the Keck telescope in Hawaii to get an image at that wavelength.
What they were able to see is a cloud of gas extending two million light years across intergalactic space — the largest ever found. And it wasn’t just a diffuse cloud, there are areas where there is more gas and areas of darker, emptier space. The gas-filled areas are filament, while the emptier areas are the gaps between filaments and galaxy clusters.
Research Credit: emulsified
Utah Is Ending Homelessness by Giving People Homes
January 22nd, 2014Via: Nation of Change:
In eight years, Utah has quietly reduced homelessness by 78 percent, and is on track to end homelessness by 2015.
How did Utah accomplish this? Simple. Utah solved homelessness by giving people homes. In 2005, Utah figured out that the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail says for homeless people was about $16,670 per person, compared to $11,000 to provide each homeless person with an apartment and a social worker. So, the state began giving away apartments, with no strings attached. Each participant in Utah’s Housing First program also gets a caseworker to help them become self-sufficient, but the keep the apartment even if they fail. The program has been so successful that other states are hoping to achieve similar results with programs modeled on Utah’s.
Army Studying Replacing Thousands of Grunts with Robots
January 21st, 2014Via: Military Times:
During remarks at the Army Aviation Symposium in Arlington, Va., on Jan. 15, Cone quietly dropped a bomb. The Army, he said, is considering the feasibility of shrinking the size of the brigade combat team from about 4,000 soldiers to 3,000 over the coming years, and replacing the lost soldiers with robots and unmanned platforms.
“I’ve got clear guidance to think about what if you could robotically perform some of the tasks in terms of maneuverability, in terms of the future of the force,” he said, adding that he also has “clear guidance to rethink” the size of the nine-man infantry squad.
He mentioned using unmanned ground vehicles that would follow manned platforms, which would require less armor and protection, thereby reducing the weight of a brigade combat team.
Over the past 12 years of war, “in favor of force protection we’ve sacrificed a lot of things,” he said. “I think we’ve also lost a lot in lethality.” And the Army wants that maneuverability, deployability and firepower back.
The Army is already on a path to shrink from 540,000 soldiers to about 490,000 by the end of 2015, and will likely slide further to 420,000 by 2019, according to reports.
Files Show Chicago Archdiocese Hid Decades Of Child Sex Abuse
January 21st, 2014Via: CBS:
For decades, those at the highest levels of the nation’s third-largest archdiocese moved accused priests from parish to parish while hiding the clerics’ histories from the public.
In some cases, abuse by priests happened while there were in seminary school before they were ordained. In other instances, priests were promoted, despite knowledge of abuse charges.
The documents, released through settlements between attorneys for the archdiocese and victims, describe how the late Cardinals John Cody and Cardinal Joseph Bernardin often approved the reassignments. The archdiocese removed some priests from ministry, but often years or decades after the clergy were known to have molested children.
Chinese Bootcamps for Internet Addicts
January 21st, 2014Via: news.com.au:
CHINA is the first country to label internet addiction a clinical disorder. But instead of shutting the laptop and going for a stroll, in China there are guarded boot camps intended to deprogram hooked teens.
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This addiction and social detachment is striking nationwide concern across China, so to stamp it out the country is putting teens into military-style camps where internet addicts are kept behind bars, guarded by soldiers to go cold turkey.
Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom
January 21st, 2014A buddy of mine did damn near the same thing, except he slept in his lab at the university, as well as his vehicle. He had a Toyota pickup with a shell on the back. This was at a university with a very heavy cop presence. They would have definitely busted someone in a van. That lone van in the parking lot at night screams, “RED ALERT! RED ALERT! Someone not paying rent.”
But that pickup… He never got busted.
Via: Amazon:
In this frank and witty memoir, Ken Ilgunas lays bare the existential terror of graduating from the University of Buffalo with $32,000 of student debt. Ilgunas set himself an ambitious mission: get out of debt as quickly as possible. Inspired by the frugality and philosophy of Henry David Thoreau, Ilgunas undertook a 3-year transcontinental jour¬ney, working in Alaska as a tour guide, garbage picker, and night cook to pay off his student loans before hitchhiking home to New York.
Debt-free, Ilgunas then enrolled in a master’s program at Duke University, determined not to borrow against his future again. He used the last of his savings to buy himself a used Econoline van and outfitted it as his new dorm. The van, stationed in a campus parking lot, would be more than an adventure—it would be his very own “Walden on Wheels.”
Freezing winters, near-discovery by campus police, and the constant challenge of living in a confined space would test Ilgunas’s limits and resolve in the two years that followed. What had begun as a simple mission would become an enlightening and life-changing social experiment. Walden on Wheels offers a spirited and pointed perspective on the dilemma faced by those who seek an education but who also want to, as Thoreau wrote, “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
Ukraine Tracks Protesters Through Cellphones
January 21st, 2014Via: New York Times:
The Ukrainian government used telephone technology to pinpoint the locations of cellphones in use near clashes between riot police officers and protesters early on Tuesday, illustrating that techniques that can be used to target commercial information can serve law enforcement as well.
People near the fighting between riot police and protesters received a text message shortly after midnight saying “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”
The phrasing echoed language in a new law making participation in a protest deemed violent a crime punishable by imprisonment. The law took effect on Tuesday.
Syria: Senior War Crimes Prosecutors Say Photographs and Documents Provide ‘Clear Evidence’ of Systematic Killing of 11,000 Detainees
January 21st, 2014Via: Guardian:
Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the “systematic killing” of about 11,000 detainees, according to three eminent international lawyers.
The three, former prosecutors at the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime security forces from March 2011 to last August.
Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained and bore signs of torture. Some had no eyes; others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution.
The UN and independent human rights groups have documented abuses by both Bashar al-Assad’s government and rebels, but experts say this evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the 34-month crisis.
Botnet Made Up of Hacked Refrigerators and Other Appliances Sent Hundreds of Thousands of Spam Emails
January 21st, 2014Via: The Age:
Call it the attack of the zombie refrigerators.
Computer security researchers say they have discovered a large “botnet” which infected internet-connected home appliances and then delivered more than 750,000 malicious emails.
The California security firm Proofpoint, which announced its findings, said this may be the first proven “internet of things” based cyber attack involving “smart” appliances.
Proofpoint said hackers managed to penetrate home-networking routers, connected multimedia centres, televisions and at least one refrigerator to create a botnet — or platform to deliver malicious spam or phishing emails from a device, usually without the owner’s knowledge.
Security experts previously spoke of such attacks as theoretical.
But Proofpoint said the case “has significant security implications for device owners and enterprise targets” because of massive growth expected in the use of smart and connected devices, from clothing to appliances.
Tesla Motors Does Over-the-Air Repairs
January 21st, 2014Wow. I wonder what else they can do to those cars from remote? I wonder if they have disabled one for any reason?
Via: MIT Technology Review:
Tesla and GM have both issued fire-related recalls, but Tesla’s fix doesn’t require owners to bring their cars in.
Tesla Motors is using over-the-air software updates to quickly fix the sort of problems that often arise when bringing a new car to market.
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Expect over-the-air updates to become more common, although companies will need to work to make sure they can be done securely.
