MadSc13ntist

Well, that didn’t take long. Only a few weeks after a team of scientists began a project using novel scanning techniques to analyze Egypt’s major pyramids, they’ve discovered strange temperature anomalies—but it’s still unclear what’s causing them.

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A new genetic analysis of human gut bacteria is turning up some really weird critters—so weird, in fact, that some biologists are speculating we’ve found an entirely new domain of life. We should take that possibility with a healthy dose of skepticism. But here’s why it’s even being discussed.

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Terrence J. McNeil, a 25-year-old in Akron Ohio, was arrested earlier today after months of observation by federal authorities. But the final straw, according to a Justice Department release, was a GIF he reposted on his Tumblr account that “solicited the murder of members of our military.”

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A pair of scientists from the University of Rochester has discovered something unexpected lurking far down in the mathematical depths of quantum mechanics: pi.

To be sure, pi, the endlessly repeating constant describing the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter, underpins much of what we understand about the physical and mathematical worlds, including quantum mechanics. But it wasn't expected to appear just out of the blue in calculations for the excited energy states of electrons in an atom, which is just what the Rochester physicists describe in a new paper published in the Journal of Mathematical Physics.

"The existence of such a derivation indicates that there are striking connections between well-established physics and pure mathematics that are remarkably beautiful yet still to be discovered," the authors write.

Electron shells in various atoms. Image: Wikimedia Commons

They didn't quite find pi in the form you or I normally consider it, which is (probably) just the number 3.14 with an endless string of junk after it. Instead, they found what's known as the Wallis formula. Rather than looking at pi as decimal digits, the Wallis formula instead imagines it as the product of an endless string of ratios between two integers.

It looks like the expression below. The Greek symbol here means "the product of a sequence," e.g. we evaluate the formula for every value of n and then multiply it by the result of the formula for n + 1 and just keep going up like that. So, if the formula was just n, the product a sequence for n (from 1 to 4) would be 1 * 2 * 3 * 4. Cool?

As with the pi we all know and love, the Wallis formula winds up almost but never quite converging on a definite value. Every multiplication save for the first handful wind up changing the result by an infinitesimal amount and so that result just winds up wavering up and down by infinitely small degrees. This is as we'd expect for pi.

So, how do we get from quantum mechanics to that thing above?

Rochester physicist Carl Hagen had teamed up with mathematician and physicist Tamar Friedmann, a visiting professor at the school, to attempt to characterize the excited energy states of electrons in an atom using an alternative principle usually used to approximate only the ground (non-excited) states of electrons. Could it be done?

Indeed it could, they discovered. The principle usually only works if there is no lower energy state than the one being approximated, but Friedmann and Hagen found that by breaking up the problem into many subproblems with each one corresponding to the angular momentum of an electron in a given energy state they could make it work by finding the lowest energy state of each individual level and then putting it all back together.

The scientists took their results and compared them with the values derived by Neils Bohr all the way back in 1913 when the idea of an atom with discrete energy levels was in its formative stages. Bohr's values are the exact correct values for the energy states of electrons in a hydrogen atom, while the values offered by the variational principle are rather more blurry approximations. Blurriness is pretty common in quantum physics.

Taking the differences between their variational principle-approximated numbers and the real ones, Friedmann and Hagen found that, taken as a sequence, these differences begin to align with the Wallis formula for pi. This was unexpected.

Wallis formula calculations. Image: Google

"What surprised me is that the formula occurred in such a natural way in the calculations, with no circles involved in determining the energy states," Hagen offered in a statement.

So, in the lowest energy level of the hydrogen atom, the variational principle gives an answer about 15 percent off from the exact solution. In the next highest energy level, the error drops to 10 percent, and as the energy levels increase, the error keeps going down until, as the energy levels approach infinity the error becomes infinitesimal.

Sound familiar? The error never goes away, but it becomes infinitely small, just as with pi. The sequence winds up looking a whole lot like the one given by the Wallis formula. (By the by, the error decreases in the atom because electrons of higher and higher energies have better defined orbits. Imagine seeing a baseball more clearly as it hurtles toward home plate than it appears in the pitchers stationary hand. Weird, eh?)

"It was a complete surprise," Friedmann said. "I jumped up and down when we got the Wallis formula out of equations for the hydrogen atom. The special thing is that it brings out a beautiful connection between physics and math. I find it fascinating that a purely mathematical formula from the 17th century characterizes a physical system that was discovered 300 years later."

NASA is preparing for a very stark future in which carbon cycles suddenly just stop working. Earth’s oceans and land ecosystems are currently uptaking about 50 percent of the carbon we’re emitting, NASA says, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll stay this way forever—especially since the amount of carbon being pushed into the atmosphere is rising as a whole.

In a press release, NASA said that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere measures at 400 parts per million (ppm), but it’s rising at 2 ppm every year. While we can pin much of that to human involvement, growing forests also add more carbon than they’re uptaking.

NASA is hoping that the measurements it’s finding through its Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite, which started sending measuring carbon-based greenhouse gas concentrations last year, will move UN ambassadors at an international climate conference in Paris at the end of November.

Image: NASA

The image above, generated through the Goddard Earth Observing System-5 (GEOS-5) model, shows swirls of concentrated CO2 overtaking the Northern hemisphere. This shouldn’t be a surprise—there’s evidence to suggest CO2 fluctuations are strongest in the Northern Hemisphere.

The GEOS-5 news is about a year old, but the space agency is presenting even more data from its Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite. It will also preview some field work in Antarctica, where NASA is already doing extensive work monitoring polar winds in a flying laboratories, and Alaska, where NASA is observing glacial melts.

The agency has started to image the sources of CO2 emissions, which range from large metropolitan cities to biomass burning like forest fires. The video above shows one such model, where you can see wisps of blue indicating carbon coming from large cities, and reds, where biomass burns are occurring. Central Africa, for some reason, has a lot of that.

“Along with the land and ocean observations, we now have a more complete picture that we’ve never had before, and you get a sense of all the variability and complexity of the processes controlling atmospheric CO2,” said Lesley Ott, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Ott also mentioned that NASA was developing systems that will enable even more measurements to be taken. For instance, allowing CO2 to be tracked in the dark so we can understand where those gases flow during the night when the atmosphere cools down. It all goes toward building a better documented picture of how the greenhouse gases circulate around the Earth.

“We have to try to understand all of these processes together in order to understand the atmospheric observations that we’re getting from our satellites, which is quite a big task,” Ott said.

AdBlock Plus organized a “Camp David” style summit a few days ago that brought advertisers and publishers together to discuss the contentious future of adblocking.

First, AdBlock Plus presented attendees with the idea that users would be able to help them define what constituted an “intrusive” ad, and ads deemed intrusive would not run. Acceptable Ads has already barred a lot of annoying ads, but this new development gives users more input.

But mainly, AdBlock Plus wanted “unvarnished advice on how we should formulate the new Acceptable Ads Committee, which will take over the Acceptable Ads initiative sometime next year.” The move to turn leadership of Acceptable Ads to a board outside of Eyeo, the maker of AdBlock Plus, has been controversial.

So what’s come out of the talks? AdBlock Plus says nothing in their blog post is finalized, but they’re thinking of having an independent nonprofit oversee the Acceptable Ads Committee. They also want to make sure the committee has representatives from different areas of the issue: publishers, advertisers, journalists, tech companies, and so on. And they said they heard a lot of suggestions about improving transparency which they plan to take into consideration.

Through people have been using adblockers for years, the issue hadn’t really come to a head until this year, when adblocking browsers became available for use on smartphones. That seemed to be the last straw. Publishers like newspapers and magazines, trying to stay solvent in a long-beleaguered industry, know that pop-up ads suck but depend upon them for revenue. But adblockers prevent more than just annoyance, they also block malware, making them a useful tool for any Internet user.

Last month, YouTube introduced us to a number of new initiatives aimed at roping people into a paid subscription. Today, we’re getting our first look at YouTube Music, the service’s tailor-made experience for kicking out the jams.

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Anger fuels aggression, but it doesn’t always have to cause a flare-up. When properly managed, it can actually serve a productive purpose. Here are some practical tips to help you better manage your anger.

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This is an interesting story. Someone posts a photograph of herself holding a winning horse-race betting ticket, and someone else uses the data from the photograph to forge the ticket and claim the winnings.

I have been thinking a lot about how technology is messing with our intuitions about risk and security. This is a good example of that.

I reported the Flash 0-day (CVE-2015-7645) two weeks before it was found in the wild https://t.co/nYeAWRG5jO

— Natalie Silvanovich (@natashenka) 16 Octobre 2015

Angler EK successfully exploiting Flash 19.0.0.207 2015-10-29

Angler EK exploiting Flash 18.0.0.209 on Windows 10 (build 10240) through Edge

Fiddler : AnglerEK_Edge_18.0.0.209_2016-03-11.zip

Nuclear Pack:
2015-10-30
Nuclear Pack which has been playing with landing URI pattern lately has integrated it

CVE-2015-7645 in Nuclear Pack on 2015-10-30

Sample in that pass : f5dd2623ae871d58483bf14ec5d635e4

Out of topic payload : 0b3de2a8d838883e10a1d824d20fe95c Kelihos Loader (harsh02)

Fiddler sent to VT

Magnitude:
2015-11-10

Magnitude trying to exploit CVE-2015-7645 2015-11-10

Spotted sample : 21993dd3b943d935a9296aeff831cbb9 CVE id confirmed by Timo Hirvonen
No payload but the actor behind that thread would like to see you Cryptowalled. Update might come.

Spartan :
2015-11-12
Without surprise as Spartan is the work of the coder of Nuclear Pack.
Note : old version of Chrome <= 43.0.257 and Firefox < 38 seems to be falling as well

Spartan pushing Pony and Alphacrypt via CVE-2015-7645 2015-11-12

Sample in that pass : 1c074c862d3e25ec9674e6bd62965ad8  (another one: 66f34cd7ef06a78df552d18c729ae53c )
(out of topic payload : Pony: 29c940f9d0805771e9c7ec8a5939fa25 (45.63.71.12 /myadvert/autoget.php) and Cryptowall 74ebff4acc4ad9c2a2e665ff293c02e6  NB earlier today drops were Pony and Alphacrypt ) 
Fiddler sent to VT

Neutrino:
Most probably appeared 2015-10-16

Necurs being dropped by Neutrino via CVE-2015-7645 2015-11-17

Sample in that pass: 7dd9813ef635e98dd9585deaefecfcff

(Out of topic payload : Necurs a83a96e87e80adef1e4598a645f2918c )

Fiddler sent to VT  (You might want to read the detailed analysis by Trustave)

Read More :
Adobe Flash: Type Confusion in IExternalizable.writeExternal When Performing Local Serialization - 2015-09-29 - Natalie Silvanovich
New Adobe Flash Zero-Day Used in Pawn Storm Campaign Targeting Foreign Affairs Ministries - 2015-10-13 - Feike Hacquebord - Brooks Li - Peter Pi - TrendMicro
Latest Flash Exploit Used in Pawn Storm Circumvents Mitigation Techniques - 2015-10-16 - Peter Pi - TrendMicro

Post Publication Reading :
Neutrino Exploit Kit – One Flash File to Rule Them All - 2015-12-28 - Daniel Chechik and Anat Davidi - Spiderlabs/Trustwave

A ruling from a court of appeals indirectly notes that web history isn't just metadata, and warrantlessly tracking it could violate the Wiretap Act.

The post Court Says Tracking Web Histories Can Violate Wiretap Act appeared first on WIRED.

Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was only sworn on November 6, but his government has already taken steps to address one of its predecessor’s most toxic legacies: the so called “muzzling” of government scientists.

Last Friday, scientists at Fisheries and Oceans Canada reported that they had been told they were allowed to speak to the media about their research without restrictions. And later in the day the newly appointed Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Navdeep Bains, suggested that the restrictive policies of the previous government were ending.

“Our government values science and will treat scientists with respect. That is why government scientists and experts will be able to speak freely about their work to the media and the public,” he is quoted as saying in a statement released by his office.

If things are really changing, we should be able to hear it from the scientists themselves—so I called scientists in several government departments who were at the center of muzzling controversies over the past ten years. In many cases it was the first time they’ve been able to speak about their research and experiences publicly since the previous government came into power in 2006.

“I got a phone call from my boss saying, pick up the phone Max, you can talk to anyone about your science"

“I’m really pleased to talk to you, and it’s so good to be back,” said Dr. Max Bothwell, an Environment Canada researcher, who I reached at his office on Vancouver Island.

It’s the first time in nearly a decade I’ve been able to speak with a Canadian government scientist directly, on the telephone, without spending days or weeks clearing the request through a media officer and submitting a list of questions for editing and approval.

In 2014 The Canadian Press tried to ask about a paper Dr. Bothwell published on Didymosphenia geminata, a species of algae wreaking havoc in Canadian waterways, but the interview was refused by Environment Canada. Document’s obtained by journalists through Access to Information requests showed that there were 110 pages of emails amongst 16 different communications officers discussing the request—and Dr. Bothwell, as if behind glass, was arguing with them about interview scripts and approved statements, trying to get his answers out.

During our conversation Dr. Bothwell made reference to the “nightmare” being over. After Trdueau was sworn in as Prime Minister, he heard about Fisheries scientists being given the permission to speak in the news, and emailed around Environment Canada looking for an answer. “I got a phone call from my boss saying, pick up the phone Max, you can talk to anyone about your science,” he said.

Dr. Kristi Miller heard the news directly from her manager before the rest of Fisheries and Oceans Canada; they anticipated the press would be calling her. After Dr. Miller was restricted from speaking about her 2011 paper on declining salmon stocks, published in the journal Science, her case became perhaps the most cited example of muzzling, and one of the few cases reported outside of Canada.

Dr. Bothwell studies Didymosphenia geminata, also known as "rock snot," a type of snot-like looking algae. Image: Drew Brayshaw/Flickr

She recalls that during the Harper years how things went from bad to worse. “Over time the limitations kept growing and there would be more and more bureaucracy to go through to speak to the media—starting with only answering questions provided in writing, and getting so bad that the communications people would write the answers,” she told me.

But now that they can speak openly, both scientists are more interested in talking about their current research than their silent past (though Dr. Miller says there’s a joke going around her office that Trudeau may reverse the muzzling decision once everyone realizes how boring scientists are).

Dr. Miller is working on a large scale genomic platform that will test fish for a huge number of fish disease agents at once and compare populations worldwide. ”We usually look for technology that’s used in the human medical arena first, this is the first time in my twenty year career that we’re ahead of the human medical world,” she explained.

As for Dr. Bothwell, he’s found some surprising things about the ”invasive” algae he studies. “I’m partially responsible for labelling it as invasive in the first place, but it’s not true. It’s a native organism in Canada, and it’s always been here,” he said. Dr. Bothwell went on to say that the massive blooms of D. geminata in Canadian rivers are actually caused by changing nutrient conditions—namely, low phosphorous levels.

“This is exactly the opposite of what I’ve been studying, what people in my field have been studying, for years, and that’s that algal blooms are caused by high phosphate conditions,” he explained, noting that in a soon-to-be released paper he investigates reducing algal bloom by adding phosphorus.

Just a week ago it would have been nearly impossible to ask a scientist about their day-to-day work

Both conversations reminded me that, not only do scientists love talking about their work, but the work is much easier to understand when you can speak directly to the scientist, ask follow-up questions, and engage with the minutia.

To really test this minutia I call Scott Dallimore, a Natural Resources Canada geologist who was prevented from speaking about a paper he authored, even though it was about a flood that happened 13,000 years ago. Dallimore studies coastal geology permafrost in the arctic, but I’m interested in what he did yesterday.

“I was on a boat,” he told me, “testing a new marine geophysical system for mapping shallow water. It’s related to arctic research on coastal stability.”

It’s a silly request, but just a week ago it would have been nearly impossible to ask a scientist about their day-to-day work. Those timelines didn’t exist. And while it’s still early days, science advocates are impressed with what the new government has already accomplished, and are hoping that access will remain open for more important questions in the future.

“This was one of their first actual acts since being sworn in and it’s a huge step in the right direction,” said Katie Gibbs, executive director of Evidence for Democracy, a group that promotes public interest science. “We really want to get that right actually enshrined either in a new communication policy or even better, in the scientists collective agreements.”

Her point serves as a reminder that despite the open phone lines, no-one is sure what exactly the new rules are. According to employees, Fisheries and Oceans Canada held meetings on Friday telling scientists they were allowed to take questions from the media about their research. When asked about specific rules and where the order came from, a spokesperson sent me a copy of Minister Bains’ statement (however, Minister Bains is not directly responsible for Fisheries and Oceans).

Environment Canada didn’t inform all its employees, but scientists I spoke with said their managers are aware that media calls should be put directly through. A spokesperson said the directive was announced on Friday, and that official policy is currently under review. They also linked to Minister Bains’ statement.

Natural Resources Canada, when asked about policy changes, simply said that “the department is committed to being open and transparent with its science, and is currently looking at ways to better communicate its science to the public.”

Clearly, there’s a lot of work that remains to done before this becomes official policy. And, as Gibbs and the scientists I spoke to point out, ensuring open communication with scientists is only the first step. Muzzling received a huge amount of media coverage, but the most damaging legacy of the Harper years are the budget cuts and program closures that put thousands of scientists out of work.

During the run-up to the election the Liberals staked a claim as the pro-science party, promising to address some of the budgetary damage of the past decade. Here’s hoping the rapid and scattered rollout of press freedoms signals an enthusiasm to move quickly on all their promises. Being able to talk to scientists is great, but restoring their ability to do science will really give them something to talk about.

Image: Shutterstock

On Wednesday, Motherboard reported that a "university-based academic research institute" had been providing information to the FBI, leading to the identification of criminal suspects on the dark web.

Circumstantial evidence pointed to Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) Software Engineering Institute and an attack carried out against Tor last year. After the publication of Motherboard's report, the Tor Project said it had learned that CMU was paid at least $1 million for the project.

On Thursday, other academics who focus on the dark web and criminal marketplaces expressed anger and concern at CMU's alleged behavior, feeling that the research broke ethical guidelines, and may have a knock-on effect on other research looking into this space.

“These revelations are likely to have a chilling effect on research. It can be much harder to gain people's trust when they can point to examples of researchers who have actively helped law enforcement operations,” Monica Barratt, a research fellow from the National Drug & Alcohol Research Centre in Australia who has researched the use of Silk Road in various countries, told Motherboard in an email.

"I’m concerned about the effects that these revelations may have on the ability of researchers to carry out their research."

Indeed, some researchers' work involves interacting and talking with people on the dark web. Now that an institution has clearly used information to help law enforcement, other netizens may be less willing to talk.

"I’m concerned about the effects that these revelations may have on the ability of researchers to carry out their research, particularly where this involves gaining the trust of those to whom the most important ethical obligation is: do no harm,” added Judith Aldridge, senior lecturer from Manchester University.

This echoes a statement provided by Nick Mathewson, co-founder of the Tor Project, to Motherboard on Wednesday. "If you're doing an experiment without the knowledge or consent of the people you're experimenting on, you might be doing something questionable—and if you're doing it without their informed consent because you know they wouldn't give it to you, then you're almost certainly doing something wrong. Whatever you're doing, it isn't science.”

The assistance of the "university-based research institute" is key to the case against Brian Farrell, who is charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine over the dark web marketplace Silk Road 2.0, as well as that of Gabriel Peterson-Siler, who is charged with possessing child pornography. The institute provided the FBI with IP addresses that led to both of these individuals, as well as the servers of several dark web sites, including Silk Road 2.0.

Nicolas Christin, an assistant research professor from CMU, who has published extensive research into the economics of dark web markets, pointed out that the researchers at CMU's Software Engineering Institute “are not academics.”

University lab - possibly at CMU - worked with FBI to compromise Tor network, expose users - https://t.co/oetyIveOxv Serious ethical issues
— Ethan Zuckerman (@EthanZ) November 11, 2015

“They are with CERT/SEI a semi autonomous entity at CMU. It is an FFRDC, not a traditional academic department. There is a big difference,” he told Motherboard in a Twitter direct message.

Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) are nonprofit entities that are sponsored by the US government. In July of this year, CMU's Software Engineering Institute's contract with the Department of Defense was renewed for $1.73 billion.

CMU did not respond to a request for comment.

Regardless, “I'm livid,” Tim Bingham, an independent drugs researcher told Motherboard in a phone interview. Tim said that the dark web plays an important role when it comes to monitoring emerging drugs or trends.

“Anything that hinders this work would create more harm than reduce it.”