5. The TSA needs a Barry White theme song

It’s unlikely that John Pistole, the Transportation Security Agency’s dour chief who once warned that terrorism must “always be considered imminent,” expected such public vilification over his agency’s new airport screening procedures.

But a protest that began with a few bloggers has, since Pistole announced the pat-down or body-scan policy in a one-paragraph note on TSA.gov a few weeks ago, become something closer to public execration. TSA screeners have been twitted by Saturday Night Live, Grammy-winning musician Steve Vaus, and cartoonist Tom Tomorrow. The agency itself has been rebuked by some of the same politicians who voted unanimously to create it a decade ago.

The surprise is that, beyond exempting flight attendants and pilots, the TSA has remained unyielding and impenitent. All Pistole would tell CBS News this week is that he’ll continue asking: “How can we be better informed if we modify our screening? Then, what are the risks that we deal with?” That’s Washington-ese for “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby.”

Photo by TSA

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/2300-1001_3-10005691-7.html?tag=mncol#ixzz17JchrIzJ

Tracking Device Fits on the Head of a

Pin: Mini-Gyroscopes to Guide

Smartphones and Medical Equipment

Science (Oct. 8, 2010) — University of Illinois chemistry professor Alexander Scheeline wants to see high school students using their cell phones in class. Not for texting or surfing the Web, but as an analytical chemistry instrument.

Scheeline developed a method using a few basic, inexpensive supplies and a digital camera to build a spectrometer, an important basic chemistry instrument. Spectrophotometry is one of the most widely used means for identifying and quantifying materials in both physical and biological sciences.

“If we want to measure the amount of protein in meat, or water in grain, or iron in blood, it’s done by spectrophotometry,” Scheeline said.

Many schools have a very limited budget for instruments and supplies, making spectrometers cost-prohibitive for science classrooms. Even when a device is available, students fail to learn the analytical chemistry principles inherent in the instrument because most commercially available devices are enclosed boxes. Students simply insert samples and record the numbers the box outputs without learning the context or thinking critically about the process.

“Science is basically about using your senses to see things — it’s just that we’ve got so much technology that now it’s all hidden,” Scheeline said.

“The student gets the impression that a measurement is something that goes on inside a box and it’s completely inaccessible, not understandable — the purview of expert engineers,” he said. “That’s not what you want them to learn. In order to get across the idea, ‘I can do it, and I can see it, and I can understand it,’ they’ve go to build the instrument themselves. ”

So Scheeline set out to build a basic spectrometer that was not only simple and inexpensive but also open so that students could see its workings and play with its components, encouraging critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. It wouldn’t have to be the most sensitive or accurate instrument — in fact, he hoped that obvious shortcomings of the device would reinforce students’ understanding of its workings.

“If you’re trying to teach someone an instrument’s limitations, it’s a lot easier to teach them when they’re blatant than when they’re subtle. Everything goes wrong out in the open,” he said.

In a spectrometer, white light shines through a sample solution. The solution absorbs certain wavelengths of light. A diffraction grating then spreads the light into its color spectrum like a prism. Analyzing that spectrum can tell chemists about the properties of the sample.

For a light source, Scheeline used a single light-emitting diode (LED) powered by a 3-volt battery, the kind used in key fobs to remotely unlock a car. Diffraction gratings and cuvettes, the small, clear repositories to hold sample solutions, are readily available from scientific supply companies for a few cents each. The entire setup cost less than $3. The limiting factor seemed to be in the light sensor, or photodetector, to capture the spectrum for analysis.

“All of a sudden this light bulb went off in my head: a photodetector that everybody already has! Almost everybody has a cell phone, and almost all phones have a camera,” Scheeline said. “I realized, if you can get the picture into the computer, it’s only software that keeps you from building a cheap spectrophotometer.”

To remove that obstacle, he wrote a software program to analyze spectra captured in JPEG photo files and made it freely accessible online, along with its source code and instructions to students and teachers for assembling and using the cell-phone spectrometer. It can be accessed through the Analytical Sciences Digital Library.

Scheeline has used his cell-phone spectrometers in several classroom settings. His first classroom trial was with students in Hanoi, Vietnam, as part of a 2009 exchange teaching program Scheeline and several other U. of I. chemistry professors participated in. Although the students had no prior instrumentation experience, they greeted the cell-phone spectrometers with enthusiasm.

In the United States, Scheeline used cell-phone spectrometers in an Atlanta high school science program in the summers of 2009 and 2010. By the end of the 45-minute class, Scheeline was delighted to find students grasping chemistry concepts that seemed to elude students in similar programs using only textbooks. For example, one student inquired about the camera’s sensitivity to light in the room and how that might affect its ability to read the spectrum.

“And I said, ‘You’ve discovered a problem inherent in all spectrometers: stray light.’ I have been struggling ever since I started teaching to get across to university students the concept of stray light and what a problem it is, and here was a high school kid who picked it right up because it was in front of her face!” Scheeline said.

Scheeline has also shared his low-cost instrument with those most likely to benefit: high school teachers. Teachers participating in the U. of I. EnLiST program, a two-week summer workshop for high school chemistry and physics teachers in Illinois, built and played with cell-phone spectrometers during the 2009 and 2010 sessions. Those teachers now bring their experience — and assembly instructions — to their classrooms.

Scheeline wrote a detailed account of the cell-phone spectrometer and its potential for chemistry education in an article published in the journal Applied Spectroscopy. He hopes that the free availability of the educational modules and software source code will inspire programmers to develop smart-phone applications so that the analyses can be performed in-phone, eliminating the need to transfer photo files to a computer and turning cell phones into invaluable classroom tools.

“The potential is here to make analytical chemistry a subject for the masses rather than something that is only done by specialists,” Scheeline said. “There’s no doubt that getting the cost of equipment down to the point where more people can afford them in the education system is a boon for everybody.”

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

HOW DO COMPUTER VIRUSES DAMAGE PROGRAMS? There are several different ways a computer can become infected. A virus is a small piece of software that attaches itself to an existing program. Every time that program is executed, the virus starts up, too, and can reproduce by attaching itself to even more programs.

When contained in an email, the virus usually replicates by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people listed in the victim’s email address book. Unfortunately, viruses don’t just replicate, they often cause damage. There is usually a trigger — a command or keystroke — that causes the virus to launch its “attack.” This can be anything from leaving a silly message to erasing all of the user’s data. For example, whenever the current minutes on an infected computer’s clock equaled the day (for example, at 6:27 pm on the 27th of any given month), the Melissa virus would copy the following Bart Simpson quote into the current document: “Twenty-two points, plus triple-word-score, plus 50 points for using all my letters. Game’s over. I’m outta here.”

WHAT ARE WORMS? Worms are a different type of infection. A piece of worm software uses computer networks and security holes in specific software or operating systems to copy itself from machine to machine. Because Microsoft’s Windows platform is so pervasive, for example, many hackers design their worms to exploit security holes in those products. In 2001, the worm Code Red spread rapidly by scanning the Internet for computers running Windows NT or Windows 2000. In contrast to a worm, a Trojan horse can’t replicate itself at all: it is simply a computer program pretending to be something harmless — a game, for example — but instead does damage when the user runs it, often erasing the hard drive.

PROTECT YOURSELF FROM COMPUTER VIRUSES:

1. Buy virus protection software and keep it up-to-date.

2. Avoid downloading programs from unknown sources; stick with commercial software purchased on CD-ROMs.

3. Make sure that the Macro Virus Protection feature is enabled in all Microsoft applications.

4. Never double-click on an email attachment containing an executable program. These will have extensions like .exe, .com, or .vbs.

5. Consider switching to a more secure operating system, like Linux.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

BACKGROUND: Along with the rise of wireless networks is rising concern about securing networks against fraud and identity theft. Researchers at Indiana University have devised a new cryptographic security scheme to protect individual passwords from prying eyes.

WIRELESS IS VULNERABLE: The most common forms of wireless network hacking include methods for secretly intercepting passwords or other sensitive information by posing as a trusted network point. Such an attack is particularly effective against wireless networks that let users relay messages for one another. These so-called “ad-hoc” networks are useful in emergency situations, when the normal networks are overwhelmed or not working, but they are also more vulnerable to security breaches.

HOW IT WORKS: Delayed password disclosure works something like this. Let’s say that you enter your password at an ATM to check your bank account information. If your password is “banana5,” you would only need to type “b.” The machine would then display a picture, which you have previously agreed goes with the “b.” To verify, you move on to the next letter, “a,” and the machine will display a second, agreed-upon picture to validate your password. There are an infinite number of picture possibilities for password verification.

BENEFITS: Existing security protocols concentrate on securing the link between two machines, but any hacker can use a computer as a fake access point, stealing information secretly. Delayed password disclosure counters this by allowing both parties to use a pre-arranged password or PIN for authentication that is not revealed during communications. Whenever a user initiates a wireless link, the agreed code is turned into a string of incoherent bits by a mathematical algorithm, while at the other end of the link, another algorithm is applied to the string and sent back to the user. In this way, the code can be checked mathematically to confirm that the person at the other end of the link shares the same secret password or PIN.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

December 1, 2006 — Investigators on a crime scene can now use a new tool for collecting chemical or biological samples. The sampler gun collects samples on a cotton pad — eliminating direct contact with anything harmful, as well as risk of contaminating evidence — a GPS system to record the samples’ location, a camera that snaps pictures for evidence, and a digital voice recorder and writing pad for taking notes.

Whether it’s a murder, a break-in, or an anthrax scare, investigators trying to solve a crime are burdened with collecting delicate, sometimes toxic evidence.

Mention white powder and mail, and who can forget the deadly anthrax scare that swept America? Jennifer Greenamoyer remembers it well. “This is the building where they sort the mail, and this building was contaminated and was the first building to be closed,” she says.

Greenamoyer was a congressional staffer during anthrax scare. “Even though I didn’t necessarily feel like I was exposed or I was kind-of at risk — you knew that other people in the building had been.”

She was safe, but there’s still danger to investigators going back inside to collect samples for analysis. A new device, called the Hands-Off Sampler Gun, eliminates the risk of collecting toxic materials.

“You don’t get exposed yourself to the potential agent, anthrax, and you’re also not contaminating the sample media,” computer scientist Torsten Staab, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, tells DBIS.

Traditional ways of gathering harmful chemicals use many gadgets. This device puts several technologies into one, easy-to-use gun.

Developed by computer scientists, the Hands-Off Sampler Gun has a cotton pad that grabs chemicals to eliminate direct contact with anything harmful. A GPS system tracks the location of a chemical and the investigator. It also includes a camera that snaps pictures for evidence and a voice recorder and writing pad to take digital notes. The all-in-one device is important to identify a chemical and its risk factor and make sure everything is safe for everyone.

The Sampler Gun could also be made useful for collecting evidence, like bloodstains at crimes scenes. “We have all the information at the end, electronically. It could be wirelessly transmitted from the field to the laboratory,” Staab says.

The FBI plans on field testing the device with its Hazardous Response Unit early next year.