In this era of the digital world, where connectivity with the world is increasing with every single day provided by the internet, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and smart glasses, this comfort has come as a less rewarding profit. The current lot is paying its price by the trade of their privacy. We- humans, are risking our privacy in exchange for this convenience. The security of data is the primary concern of today, and if not dealt properly, it will eventually lead to severe threats such as National and global security.
Is Your Data Privacy Getting Compromised?
It is the need of the moment to decide whether we want to be the Master of Technology or the slaves. Researchers- while they are coming with new inventions every single day to ease human life in different aspects and changing the world into a global village, must consider the threats coming along and the solution to counter these threats. Encryption of streaming data is one of the most robust and applicable solutions to this merging problem of data breaching. End to End encryption of all communicating and streaming data will make the data transmission all safe and secure
End to End Encryption of Data
Mohammad Nadeem Siddiqui, a renowned Pakistani Journalist, and researcher have presented some great ideas to encrypt the text message applications. He invented a spectacular technology named NET ( Natural Encryption Technology), which secures the digital data using Intangible Time Medium.
Mr. M Nadeem Siddque
Natural Encryption Technology
The Natural Encryption Technology (NET) uses time interval technique, based on the fact that time is a universal physical quantity accessible to everyone without any restrictions and laid the foundation of end to end encrypted text message applications. NET uses the medium of time, codes, and decodes signals with time via a sound beep or breaking signals. This technology makes the transmission data-free; in case a hacker tries to decode the signal, he won’t get anything other than the encrypted time interval because the signal does not contain data or information.
Information Security Black Holes
The NET provides the users with information black holes to protect the data from being stolen. No hacker can decrypt the signal; even if he succeeds to hack the signal, he won’t get any information as the signal is just a sound beep. Even the information superhighway and information tunnels are not able to secure the data altogether, the information security black hole idea is ideal for information security.
Intangible Time Medium
According to Einstein, Time is the fourth dimension in space, and both time and space are working together. Through the invention of NET, Nadeem Siddiqui has proved the importance of time by using it as an intangible medium in transferring data.
He presented the Law of Intangible Time Medium which states that “The Universe all living and non-living things existed, being creating will soon be destroyed when a divine encoded a message to be received by all things existed. The encoded divine message which is already released, transferred to all things via Intangible Time Medium”.
Muhammad Nadeem Siddiqui presented his ideas in four international conferences and three national and international competitions, where it was accepted and reviewed. Pakistan needs more enthusiasts like him to set a benchmark in the field of information technology.
For the first time in space history, an all-female spacewalk was conducted by astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir at the International Space Station.
A series of spacewalks have been arranged after Luca
Parmitano from Italy took over as the commander at ISS when Alexei Ovchinin
from Russia left. The ISS system is being upgraded and this Friday the two females
hailing from the United States of America, left the Quest airlock to work on
the failed power systems and replace the batteries. The expected time of the
spacewalk was around six hours, but it lasted successfully for seven hours.
Christina had red stripes on her spacesuit wearing the helmet marked number 18 and Meir had no stripes and wore the helmet marked number 11. This was done so that the two can be differentiated during the spacewalk as the control room watched them from the earth through the cameras installed on the Station.
Astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch preparing on the ISS for the first all-female spacewalk Credits: NASA
Astronaut Christina Koch is an electrical engineer who is also going to break the record soon as the longest single spaceflight by a woman, as reported by the US space agency NASA. Jessica Meir, a marine biologist, recently joined the crew station at the International Space Station for the first time and this was her first spacewalk and she became the 15th woman to walk in space. Last year, such a spacewalk was canceled due to a lack of spacesuit of the right size.
After completion of the tasks, the failed system will be returned to the earth after it is loaded by the ISS team members on to the next SpaceX Dragon resupply ship so that it can be further analyzed.
An out of this world achievement!
NASA live-streamed the event which was watched by many viewers from around the world and Ms. Koch and Ms. Meir also took questions from a girl scout group and from the public on twitter and were congratulated live by the US President Donald Trump for this historic achievement.
Many space enthusiasts and prominent personalities appreciated the successful and significant achievement.
Space brings out the best in us. Congrats to Astronauts Koch & Meir, first spacewalk featuring 2 women. Looking forward to the day when it’s routine. 👍🏻👍🏻 https://t.co/LtiMzkU1Ld
A grand Science festival “Lahore Science Mela 2019” has recently been organized by a nonprofit organization, Khwarizmi Science Society (KSS) in collaboration with Ali Institute of education on 12 and 13 October 2019 at the Ali Institute, Lahore. From CERN to LAST (Lahore Astronomical Society), many incredible organizations and groups participated.
Thousands of residents of Lahore and other cities visited LSM 2019
The festival focused on the wonders of Chemistry, including elements, mining, mineral compounds, and significant industrial processes, for celebrating the 150th anniversary of the periodic table of elements. The Mela successfully provided an excellent platform for scientific organizations to introduce themselves to the public and hosted 70 schools from around Punjab this year. The Mela equally inspired kids, youngsters, and adults. Thousands of residents of Lahore and other cities visited in two days.
(L to R) Dr. Sabieh with Dr. Mustafa at Lahore Science Mela 2019
A significant highlight of the Mela was the collaboration with CERN’s Media Lab, its representative Dr. Joao Antunes Pequenao visited Pakistan and exhibited the Large-Hadron Collider Interactive Tunnel. Moreover, the audience of the Mela had enjoyed with a live virtual tour of CERN’s CMS from the Ali Auditorium.
Dr. Joao is the chief troublemaker at the CERN Media Lab. He has a background in physics but spends most of his professional time conceiving interactive applications for science visualization and education. Over the years, his 3D animations, simulation images, and scientific illustrations have been frequently featured in several major media outlets worldwide. His main approach for science communication is the creation of visual and personalized metaphors for complex scientific concepts.
Joao has been key in establishing
state-of-the-art multimedia installations for science centers and visit points
at top research institutions worldwide. He regularly collaborates with artists
developing science-inspired pieces, coaches’ scientists on public outreach and
mentors many students. One of his big side projects is “Phantom of the
Universe” (http://phantomoftheuniverse.com/), an award-winning planetarium show about
Dark Matter viewed by over 10 million people in more than 500 planetariums in
82 countries and 22 languages.
Dr. Joao Antunes Pequenao visited Pakistan and exhibited the Large-Hadron Collider Interactive Tunnel
Here are some excerpts of his recent conversation with Scientia’s editorial team member Abdullah Khan on the first day of Lahore Science Mela 2019.
Q. What can you tell us about the Large Hadron Collider?
A: So, I’ll start with the Accelerator. The Large Hadron Collider is a 27 km long accelerator where we accelerate very fast protons (which are the nucleus of hydrogen atoms). We push them very fast with lots of energy, two beams going in opposite directions, and we make them collide at four precise points. At these points, we have detectors to observe and measure what comes out of these collisions. One of these detectors is the CMS detector (or the CMS experiment as we call it). CMS stands for Compact Muon Solenoid and is one of two generic detectors, the other one being the ATLAS detector, which is the bigger one. This detector, together with ATLAS, was responsible for the discovery of the famous Higgs boson in the year 2012.
It is an experiment that has over 4000 scientists and engineers from all over the world, including Pakistan. Pakistan is an Associate Member State of CERN, which means that Pakistani engineers and scientists have the same standing at CERN as those from any Member State or Associate Member State. As seen in the virtual visit, physicists work at the CMS experiment. In CMS, all these collisions that happen at a rate of many millions of times per second generate massive data, and what researchers do is analyze the data and try to find patterns that indicate the presence of particles which can be vital for us to understand the universe.
The Large Hadron Collider is a 27 km long accelerator
Q: So, the purpose of this work is what Stephen Hawking said, “Small questions, big answers.” Does it base on finding new particles?
A: It’s more than finding new particles! It dives deep into some critical questions like, why is the universe the way as it seems, and how did it become like that — trying to find a logic behind it. There must be a logic somewhere. Laws are governing this universe, we are already aware of a few of them, but we don’t know what is behind them. So, we are finding little by little, what may be at its origin. For example, do you know that 80 percent of the matter in the universe is dark matter? We don’t know much about it or even what it is. We are trying to find out why is it that most of the universe is made up of matter, not antimatter. Every particle has a mirror image particle (like an evil twin), which is its antiparticle. Why is it that there are only particles and not antiparticles outside the laboratory? These are the kind of questions which are fundamental for us to understand why the universe is the way it is.
Q:But there are some particles whose life is concise, like nanoseconds. How could we detect them?
A: That’s an excellent question. We don’t detect these particles directly, even the famous Higgs boson, and we can’t see those directly. What we see is the products of the disintegration of these particles. You see, these particles are very short-lived, which means that after a fraction of a second, they die and break down into something else. And it is that “something else”, which has a pattern, that we detect. Research in experimental particle physics in great part consists of finding such techniques, of distinguishing these patterns, in the middle of all the noise that is generated.
Q: That’s great! So, how many Pakistani scientists are working at CERN, and do you know any of them?
A: I know half a dozen at CERN, but there are many more. I can’t give you the exact number. That can be found online.
Q: So, the CERN’s lab and Large Hadron Collider is between borders of Switzerland and France. Who’s funding it?
A: The Member States fund CERN. It’s an international organization, like the UN. CERN has a council and the Member States, and they contribute an equal proportion of their GDP. But Pakistan is not a Member State; it is an Associate member state. Pakistan also contributes, but not in proportion; it is different in that case.
CERN is one of the world’s largest centers for scientific research
Q: How can Pakistani students visit and work at CERN? What are the opportunities for researchers?
A: For students, there are many options. Just go https://careers.cern and there is a zone that says, “students opportunities” where one can find many programs. There are short term internships, summer student programs for undergrads, and there is a technical student program which is an excellent one-year job for students who can be integrated into a research team with attractive salaries. It is a life-changing experience! As for researchers, the best is to coordinate with the Pakistani universities and research institutes already involved with the organization.
Q: Let us know about your career and achievements and who inspired you most in pursuing such an off-beat career?
A: When I was 14 years old I had a little accident. During the weeks I spent at the hospital, someone offered me a copy of “Cosmos”, by Carl Sagan. That book changed radically the way I perceived the Universe and made me decide to pursue a scientific career. I also had a neighbor who was an engineer and since the age of 4 gave me great playful lessons on rocket science, planetary dynamics, and Flash Gordon! I was very influenced by Sci-Fi movies and the cool graphical representation of scientific interfaces and physical phenomena. At the age of 15, I started coding and doing visualizations. I always liked art and storytelling, so it was just a little step to put Science, Technology, Storytelling, and Art together to build my career a few years later.
Global Cat Day is an exciting event held in October to celebrate the furry creatures – CATS! This year too it was celebrated with full zeal by cat enthusiasts. Before we share the public comments on “World Cat Day”, let’s take a look at why cats are good for health!
How cats are good for health
Cats can also bring physical health benefits to their owners. For instance, one study that Medical News Today previously covered found that people who live with cats have a lower risk of experiencing a heart attack.
Research has shown that cats can protect you against allergies, asthma, and heart attacks. While this may simply be because “cat people” are naturally calmer and better able to handle stress, it is quite possible that having a feline friend is soothing and reassuring, and this ultimately contributes to protecting heart health.
Another study that MNT covered argued that infants who grow up with furry pets, including cats, are less likely to develop allergies and obesity.
This, the researchers explain, maybe because infants exposed to such animals had more abundant populations of two gut bacteria — Ruminococcus and Oscillospira — which appear to have protective effects.
Cats are one of the most beloved pets
Early exposure to cats is also associated with a lower risk of asthma in children, according to research published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology last year.
The authors believe that this is due to the fact that interaction with cats contributes to children’s absorption of a type of sialic acid, which does not naturally occur in the human body but which does appear to regulate inflammatory reactions.
Here is a look at how the “Global Cat Day” 2019 was celebrated on Twitter!
16th Oct marks #GlobalCatDay. When it comes to cat advocacy, one of the best things to do is to get your cats neutered by a qualified veterinarian, and to encourage others to do the same. This helps to reduce stray cats problems.#KSPCA#AnimalWelfare#CatsLoverpic.twitter.com/i7vieBTVMl
As we started to detail NASA’s Space Apps challenges for this year in our previous article(Part One), let’s continue to explore the other categories.
Our Moon
The Moon has been an inspiration for mythical stories, tales of adventure and romance throughout human history! This category provides you with NASA data related to our neighbor for finding creative solutions to certain challenges. The challenges in this category are as follows:
Fans of interplanetary travel rejoice! This category provides you with NASA data on our neighboring planets and asks you to solve different challenges based on the exploration of planetary systems, near and far from our home planet! The challenges are:
Team RaheQamar at last years NASA Space Apps Challenge
To the Stars
This category goes a step ahead of the previous one, it provides the participants with an opportunity to study and explore the vast Universe with their Scientific, technologic and artistic viewpoints! It allows you to design space missions with an entrepreneurial and creative mindset. The categories are:
Fly by wireless
Orbital scrap metal-video game
The Trans-Neptunian spaceway
Up, out and away
Invent your own challenge
This final category allows you to go full-throttle with your creativity! It gives you the freedom to create your own challenge and apply it to any Space problem. This is an exciting way to show-off your space science and technology prowess!
So these are the categories in the NASA Space Apps challenge 2019. We hope to see you at work solving challenges and taking the next giant leap at this global event!
“Hunter’s moon” has been a favorite topic among stargazers and astronomers. This term is used for a full moon that rises in the skies during the month of October. It was named after traditional folklore where it was said that hunters killed prey during the bright moonlight, saving food for the following harsh winters.
Below we have gathered some pictures of this year’s hunter moon from all around the world. Take a look!
Often times, people confuse the Harvest moon and Hunter’s moon with each other. Although the harvest moon precedes the latter in the month of September, it usually comes in October after every four years. To avoid such mixing up, different names have been given to each month’s moon across different regions.
This Hunter’s moon is linked with feasting as well. In some native tribes of the Northern Hemisphere region, a big feast used to be held to mark the appearance of this October moon. But, there this is a long-forgotten tradition now. However, there is a yearly festival associated with it held in September or early October every year since 1968 in Lafayette, Indiana.
ESA has established a two missions space program, ExoMars to address the possibility of extra-terrestrial life by investigating the Martian environment. This program is in coordination with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The first mission consisting of trace gas orbiter and Schiaparelli (an entry, descent and landing demonstrator module) was launched on 14 March 2016 on a Proton rocket.
The ExoMars rover. Credit: ESA
The main objective of this mission is to search for the sign of trace gases, mainly methane and their geological and seasonal distribution in the Martian atmosphere. You might be wondering why the signs of methane are essential; it is because it can signify active or past biological processes on mars as most methane produces as a by-product of microbial metabolism in the decomposition of biomass.
The subsequent mission, includes a European rover and a Russian surface platform, will fly to Mars in 2020. This mission is first of its kind to have the combined capability of moving across the surface and studying mars at depth for two specific types of subsurface life signatures, morphological and chemical. The TGO used in the previous mission will operate as a rover’s data relay satellite.
Since the principal motive for this mission is to land the rover at a site with high potential for finding well-preserved organic material, so ExoMars drill is designed to extract various soil samples at a depth of 2 meters while investigating mineralogy of borehole using an infrared spectrometer. The acquired samples then deliver to the inlet port of the Rover Payload Module for analysis.
Panoramic camera system (PanCam) designed for digital terrain mapping includes two broad-angle cameras for multi-spectral stereoscopic panoramic imaging and a high-resolution camera for high-resolution color imaging. Stained Glass will ensure the prevention of color change from ultraviolet radiation, thus providing exact colorful images of the surface of the red planet.
The main priorities of the Russian surface platform are imaging of landing-site, climate monitoring, and atmospheric investigations. LARA (Lander Radio science experiment) will provide details of the internal structure of Mars such as a change in angular momentum due to mass redistribution like the movement of ice from polar caps to atmosphere and HABIT (Habitability, Brine Irradiation, and Temperature package).
These will examine the exchange of volatile between surface and atmosphere, radiation environment and compare it with investigations made by ExoMars 2016 TGO.On 21 October 2015, the landing site for the 2018 launch was Oxia Planum since launch got delayed by 2020. Mawrth Vallis also selected in addition to the former site as possible locations. The final site will be selected approximately one year before launch.
NASA’s Space Apps challenge 2019 has an interesting and exciting list of challenges for its participants! Here are some details on these challenges that will give the background to understand them:
Earth’s Oceans:
Oceans
are nature’s most prominent blessing for human survival. It was the first thing
that is compulsory to exist after just after the Earth’s formation. From
seashores to the seafloors, sea ice and the creature under the ocean Earth’s
sea are wondrous.
But you
know, with every passing year there, the problems are increasing in oceans’
atmosphere and deep inside the ocean.
The
water covers roughly 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, and it appears to be
practically none of that marine breed is untouchable to be harmful. From
research, it is stated that only 13.2 percent of the world’s sea remains truly
wild.
Ocean
garbage and excessive use of polythene are affecting marine life; it is getting
hard for them to survive. However, it also has a devastating effect on the
ecosystem of the ocean. Another element is the rise in sea level which could
end Human life, especially those who are living in coastal zones.
NASA in its Space Apps Challenge will be providing its data for you to find the solution to overcome these problems and make the Earth’s ocean again a blessing for Humans and marine life as well. The challenges in this category are:
As we all know, the Earth is comprised of land, water, air, and living things. To understand Earth, it is necessary to understand all these components work together. NASA provides you its data about Earth, which will help you to develop solutions. These solutions will be in the form of a game, a story, a video. Any product that you deem suitable according to the challenge. The main theme is to capture the essence of living on our blue planet! Following are the challenges in this category:
On November 7, 2016, when darkness was about to prevail in the US, even darker news shocked the whole world. CNN was projecting Donald Trump, the least probable candidate ever in US election history, as the winner of the election and 46th president of the United States of America. I thought maybe it was just a coincidence, a mere glitch of democracy, but it was not as later developments showed. It was a well-crafted victory driven by most powerful tools on the earth, probably more potent than nuclear arsenals: data and artificial intelligence.
The process behind this started many years before this historic win. It started when a Canadian data scientist, Christopher Wylie, saw a research paper on how personality traits can be linked to political affiliation accurately. It was just another psychology paper, but there was something that made it so attractive: data. Before the AI era to analyze people and their behavior, companies would hire psychologists, those after several or sometimes many sessions provided their results. But this paper was using facebook data for analyzing the public and their choices. Like it was possible to get substantial scale data freely, and more data meant more precise artificially intelligent models. Based on this paper’s idea, Wylie founded a company with the name of Cambridge Analytica, which turned the election for Donald Trump.
Why was Facebook data so crucial to all of this? Because data is one of the essential commodities for artificial intelligence and techniques used by Cambridge Analytica and is truely recalled “oil of the future.” To understand the importance of data, we first need to understand how artificial intelligence or machine learning systems work — most AI systems based on discovering like a child. To make a model learn, you first need to have training data. Suppose you want a computer to visualize a picture and tell whether it is a dog or a cat. You have to feed some of the relevant pics of these animals; the model can guess the picture. Then you will feed your model with labels, and it changes itself to produce correct labels. This process will keep on going for all the pictures many times, and in the end, the model will be able to predict a new picture for cat and dog. And the more data you have, the more accurate your model would be.
The cat-dog model may look simple to you, but the powerful thing about this technology is how easy it is to scale it up. All you have to do is to formulate your problem like the cat-dog one. Do you want cars to be driverless? Put cameras on it, made a few hundred drivers run a car for some thousands of miles. Record driver’s activity along with camera pictures, train your model with this pair of data, and you can develop a driverless car. Do you want a computer to diagnose cancer? Take one hundred thousand examples of ultrasounds of people with and without cancer and fed with artificially intelligent models, you will get a cancer diagnosis system that can outperform even expert doctors.
Similarly, in the US election campaign, social media have had massive secret data. Fortunately for Wylie, at that time, Facebook allowed scientists to gather data for research purposes. Wylie collaborated with a psychology professor and made a cute “personality quiz” app that you might have seen on Facebook and other websites. But the malicious thing about this app was that it not only collected personality traits with the psychological questionnaire but also collected other data of the user such as likes, status updates and friend lists, and even data of the friends.
Okay, Cambridge Analytica got this treasure; however, the most critical question is, how did they use it to win the election? For a candidate to win an election, he/she has to approach voters and convince them through tv advertisements, newspaper ads, billboards, rallies. This kind of advertisement target everyone equally, but everyone has a mentality. Some people might be convinced with religion-based messages while others may like anti-corruption campaigns and so on. So one kind of message may not work for everyone. Then the question is, how can we feed people messages that indeed affect them.
Psychology has one answer to this question: personality models. Based on a quiz of 100 questions, you can broadly classify a person into one of the personality types. Based on the personality type, you can find many things about a person, such as his political ideology, things he will like, things to change his ideology. Around 250,000 people took personality quizzes, and Cambridge Analytica got their likes, status updates, place of living, and friend lists. Along with these quizzes, it created a labeled dataset of 250,000 people: each person’s facebook data and personality type. Cambridge Analytica also had data from all the friends of these 250,000 people: a total of 80,000,000 people. They used the labeled data to find the personality type of each person, and now they know almost everyone in the USA.
But this was not the end of the story. This data provided a complete view of how voters in different areas think. Knowing what people think is not enough. To win a presidentship, especially for someone as bad as Donald Trump, you also need to change how people perceive you. To do this, they started by doing targeted camping on Facebook. On Facebook, you can target a specified audience for ads. Cambridge Analytica used this tool and targeted a very specified audience with ads that were most relevant to them. This audience was the people who were most prone to certain kinds of things like laws about guns, healthcare. They also provided powerful campaign slogans and issues to hit. This way, Cambridge Analytica provided a data-driven and kind of an artificially intelligent machine to create propaganda and won the election for Doland Trump. They weaponized the data and AI.
Unfortunately, we can not label this success as coincidental since Cambridge Analytica successfully used their skills to meddle elections of many countries. It tells us how relevant data and artificial intelligence are and how they can use it to perform illegal acts. Therefore, the real threat of artificial intelligence is not about the robot apocalypse or computers taking over the world, but a powerful technology is a toy for evil.
One of the most exciting science events of the year is World Space Week which is held from 4 to 10 October annually across different countries and continents. It is “an international celebration of science and technology and their contribution to the betterment of the human condition”. Here is a look at how WSW 2019 was celebrated around the world.
CERN, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, showed a glimpse into new technologies while celebrating WSW 2019.
Did you know that the Timepix technology developed at CERN is being used for radiation monitoring in space?
The Australian Space Agency honored scientist Brian O’Brien, who developed experiment modules for the Apollo Missions.
According to data from the Dust Detector Experiment designed by Australian Professor Brian O'Brien and flown to the Moon on Apollo 11, 12, 14 and 15, dust accumulates on the lunar surface at the rate of 1mm per 1,000 years. #WSW2019 📸 : @NASApic.twitter.com/5i3j9LJs9U
— British Geological Survey (@BritGeoSurvey) October 4, 2019
The theme for this year was The Moon: Gateway to the Stars. UK Space Agency shared an interview with Scientist Jim Green on the future missions to Moon.
We’re all about the Moon this World Space Week. 🌑 @NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green spoke to us recently at @UKspace2019 about the Moon and plans for international collaboration.
Different activities were held around the world to celebrate World Space Week. Pakistan Science Club also organized various activities for kids and science enthusiasts.
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