HealthTap wants to make online health care more trustworthy
The sad fact is that most sources of health care advice online are sorely lacking in reliability. People with potential health issues are usually stuck wading through a wide array of potential diagnoses for their symptoms which may or may not have been fact-checked by an actual doctor. HealthTap says it can change this perception with a service that verifies the credentials of physicians and incentivizes doctors to participate by enhancing their reputations.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

THREE DIMENSIONAL PHOTOS NOW CAN BE TAKEN OF THE SUN
Find Global warming lesson Information Read the facts on global warming.

On October 26, 2006, NASA launched two STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft. Using the Moon’s gravity for a gravitational slingshot, the two nearly identical spacecraft, STEREO-A and STEREO-B, split up with one pulling ahead of the Earth and the other gradually falling behind. It’s taken over four years but on February 6, 2011, the two spacecraft finally moved into position on opposite sides of the Sun, each looking down on a different hemisphere. The probes are now sending back images of the star, front and back, allowing scientists for the first time to view the entire Sun in 3D.

Each of the probes captures images of half of the Sun and beams them back to Earth where researchers combine the two opposing views to create a sphere. To track key aspects of solar activity such as flares, tsunamis and magnetic filaments, STEREO’s telescopes are tuned to four wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet radiation.

Space weather forecasting

The resultant 3D images will allow researchers to improve space weather forecasts to provide earlier and more accurate warnings for potentially damaging coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that can impact aircraft navigation systems, power grids and satellites. Previously, an active sunspot could emerge on the far side of the Sun before the Sun’s rotation turned that region toward Earth, spitting flares and clouds of plasma with little warning.

“Not anymore,” says Bill Murtagh, a senior forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. “Farside active regions can no longer take us by surprise. Thanks to STEREO, we know they’re coming.”

As part of NASA’s ‘Solar Shield’ project, the NOAA is already using 3D STEREO models of CME’s to improve space weather forecasts, but the full Sun view should improve these forecasts even more. And the forecasting benefits aren’t just limited to Earth. The global 3D model of the Sun also allows researchers to track solar storms heading for other planets, which is important for NASA missions to Mercury, Mars and even asteroids.

“With data like these, we can fly around the Sun to see what’s happening over the horizon—without ever leaving our desks,” says STEREO program scientist Lika Guhathakurta at NASA headquarters. “I expect great advances in theoretical solar physics and space weather forecasting.”

More answers

NASA also expects the 3D images of the Sun to shed light on previously overlooked connections. For instance, researchers have long suspected that solar activity can “go global,” with eruptions on opposite sides of the Sun triggering and feeding off each other. The global images will allow them to actually study the phenomenon.

In conjunction with NASA’s Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the STEREO-A and STEREO-B probes should be able to image the entire globe of the Sun for the next eight years. Therefore, these initial images are just the beginning of what should be some truly stellar images and movies that NASA says will be released in the weeks ahead as more of the data from the STEREO probes is processed.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha


Could virtual sex be the Kinect’s killer app? (NSFW)

Once open source drivers for Microsoft’s Kinect were created, it was inevitable the device would be put to use in a virtual sex game. With it around a month since such drivers started appearing, ThriXXX, a company responsible for a range of 3D sex games that are already compatible with a number of sex toy peripherals, has now produced a video demo of a Kinect being used to virtually fondle a number of computer generated ladies. Read More

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha


Protect Yourself:

Fighting Computer Crimes

Computer Scientists Attach

Images to Passwords to Prevent Fraud

September 1, 2005 — Web sites that visualize images while the user enters a password could help prevent impostors from stealing personal data or money. The user would see a familiar image for every letter typed, thus being warned if they see a different one. This could prevent phishing, the cyber crime practice of masquerading as a commonly used Web site to have users type in the passwords they would use on the real site.

WASHINGTON, D.C.–It’s the crime of the future, and it’s happening right now. However, now there is someone trying to stop it. Markus Jakobsson, computer scientist at Indiana University School of Informatics in Bloomington, Ind., says: “We’re the good guy. We make the move. Then we go over to the other side of the table, and we’re the bad guys. We make the move.”

Jakobsson is working to find out what the next computer crime will be. He believes more elaborate phishing schemes are in the works. His or her target, Jakobsson says is anybody with an e-mail account.

Phishing is when criminals send you a fake e-mail to try and get your personal information. “The strongest evidence that you’re being phished is that you’re getting an e-mail from a bank that you don’t have a banking relationship with,” he says.

One solution: delayed password disclosure. It not only uses a password, but also pictures. Jakobsson says, “For every character you enter, you get a new image on the screen. If there’s even one image that you don’t recognize, that means you’re being attacked.”

Each letter or number in your password would correspond to a picture. For example, if your password were dog, when you entered the “D,” a picture of a house would appear. You would recognize correct pictures, but if the wrong image appears, you would stop entering your password.

Jakobsson says until our passwords change, you need to take steps to protect yourself whenever you go on line; any time you use your password. Jakobsson warns computer uses to, never give out any personal information on line, don’t use your mother’s maiden name for any reason, and remember, if it seems like you are being played — you probably are.

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


Software removes pedestrians from Google Street View

Google Street View, while very useful, fascinating, and full of wonderful bloopers, does rub some privacy advocates the wrong way. Should people on public streets have a reasonable expectation of not ending up with their photo on the Internet? There’s a whole other article in that, but in any case… for all the folks who do have a problem with it, a computer science graduate student is working on a solution: software that digitally removes pedestrians from Street View images. One of the byproducts of the current version of the system is somewhat unsettling, however – areas where people were in images are sometimes marked by ghost-like shapes, or even by disembodied shoes and feet. Read More

Received & published by Henry Sapiecha