MindMover
MindMover's JournalReady, Set, Rover does Mars: Curiosity Project Scientist Lays Out Mars Tour Plans
After engineers run a months-long setup of the Mars Science Laboratory, now parked in a crater, scientists will take the rover on a nearly two-year journey that includes a visit to a six-kilometer-high mountain
By David Appell | August 7, 2012
After a hair-raising ride through the atmosphere, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has landed safely on Martian soil with cheers all around. Now engineers are busy checking out the rover Curiosity's condition while the mission's science team takes a first look around the surface locale. In the months ahead (the prime mission is slated to last a few months shy of two years) scientists plan to drive Curiosity around its touchdown site in Gale Crater and then up the slope of Mount Sharp, which rises six kilometers from the basin floor. Along the way they will look for geologic evidence that water once flowed across the landscape as well as signs of ancient microbial life.
Scientific American talked Monday with John Grotzinger, MSL project scientist, to get an insider's perspective on the landing and upcoming plans. Grotzinger has been on the MSL team since 2007, working from his office at the nearby California Institute of Technology, where he specializes in sedimentology, stratigraphy, geo-biology and ancient surface processes on Earth and Mars.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=curiosity-project-scientist-lays-out-mars-tour-plans
So which bank is helping Iran get around our sanctions ...
Counterparties: “You f—ing Americans. Who are you to tell us that we’re not going to deal with Iranians.”Just over a month ago, Standard Chartered’s CEO urged bankers to regain their “social legitimacy” and asserted that “good banking is never needed more than now”. That message was in line with the bank’s image as “boring but good“, as one FT headline put it.
Standard Chartered now stands accused of helping Iranian banks – including the central bank – circumvent US sanctions by concealing roughly 60,000 transactions involving at least $250 billion from US regulators, and having reaped “hundreds of millions of dollars in fees” for itself over a decade. The whole damning complaint is here, and Business Insider pulled the choicest bits here.
In this section, a StanChart Group Executive Director provides a great example of banker braggadocio, now destined to rank among the industry’s all-time PR lows:
In short, SCB [Standard Chartered Bank] operated as a rogue institution. By 2006, even the New York branch was acutely concerned about the bank’s Iran dollar-clearing program. In October 2006, SCB’s CEO for the Americas sent a panicked message to the Group Executive Director in London. “Firstly,” he wrote, “we believe [the Iranian business] needs urgent reviewing at the Group level to evaluate if its returns and strategic benefits are … still commensurate with the potential to cause very serious or even catastrophic reputational damage to the Group.” His plea to the home office continued: “[s]econdly, there is equally importantly potential of risk of subjecting management in US and London (e.g. you and I) and elsewhere to personal reputational damages and/or serious criminal liability.”
Lest there be any doubt, SCB’s obvious contempt for U.S. banking regulations was succinctly and unambiguously communicated by SCB’s Group Executive Director in response. As quoted by an SCB New York branch officer, the Group Director caustically replied: “You f—ing Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians.”
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/08/06/counterparties-you-fucking-americans-who-are-you-to-tell-us-that-we%E2%80%99re-not-going-to-deal-with-iranians/
Chart of the day, HFT edition
This astonishing GIF comes from Nanex, and shows the amount of high-frequency trading in the stock market from January 2007 to January 2012. (Which means that the Knightmare craziness of last week is not included.)
The various colors, as identified in the legend on the right, are all the different US stock exchanges. You might think there are only two stock exchanges in the US, but you’d be wrong: there are only two exchanges where stocks are listed. There are many, many more exchanges where stocks are traded.
What we see here is relatively low levels of high-frequency trading through all of 2007. Then, in 2008, a pattern starts to emerge: a big spike right at the close, at 4pm, which is soon mirrored by another spike at the open. This is the era of traders going off to play golf in the middle of the day, because nothing interesting happens except at the beginning and the end of the trading day. But it doesn’t last long.
By the end of 2008, odd spikes in trading activity show up in the middle of the day, and of course there’s a huge flurry of activity around the time of the financial crisis. And then, after that, things just become completely unpredictable. There’s still a morning spike for most of 2009, but even that goes away eventually, to be replaced with sheer noise. Sometimes, like at the end of 2010, high-frequency trading activity is very low. At other times, like at the end of 2011, it’s incredibly high. Intraday spikes can happen at any time of day, and volumes can surge and fall back in pretty much random fashion.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/08/06/chart-of-the-day-hft-edition/
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[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/erimenta/6139351694/]Austin's Core Effigy Ouroboros[/url]
Studies of Substance Abuse with Interventions for the Youth of Native American Indian Communities #6
Definitions #1Tobacco is one of the most frequently used drugs by Native youth. According to data for 12–17-year-olds from the last available NHSDA, 27.5% of American Indians/Alaskan Natives were current smokers, compared with 16.0% of Whites, 10.2% of Latinos, 8.4% of Asian Americans, and 6.1% of African Americans (SAMHSA, Office of Applied Studies, 2002). A study using MTF data (Wallace et al., 2002) reported that among 12th graders, the 30-day prevalence of cigarette smoking for American Indians is 46.1%, as compared to 34.3% for the overall population. Native American 12th graders also have the highest rate of smoking half a pack or more of cigarettes a day, at 17.1% versus an overall total rate of 12.7% (Wallace et al., 2002). LeMaster, Connell, Mitchell, and Manson (2002) used data from the Voices of Indian Teens Project to determine the prevalence of cigarette and smokeless tobacco use among Native communities. Their sample consisted of 2,390 youth ages 13 to 20 attending high schools in five Indian communities west of the Mississippi. Approximately 50% of the youth reported having smoked cigarettes, with 30% smoking “once in a while.” Slightly less than 3% (2.8%) reported smoking 11 or more cigarettes a week, and only 1.2% said that they smoked a pack or more a day. The lifetime prevalence of smokeless tobacco use was 21%, with 3.6% reporting use 4–6 days a week and 6.7% reporting use every day.
Inhalants are commonly among the first substances used by Indian youth, often preceding the use of alcohol (Beauvais et al., 1989). Beauvais (1992a) reported that Indian youth living on reservations had higher lifetime inhalant use rates than did Indian youth not living on reservations or White youth. Among 8th graders, 34% of reservation Indians reported lifetime inhalant use, compared with 20% for nonreservation Indians and 13% for Whites. The 12th graders surveyed reported lifetime use rates of 20% for reservation Indians, 15% for nonreservation Indians, and 10% for Whites. Reservation Indians in the 8th grade also had the highest rates of 30-day inhalant use (15%), followed by nonreservation Indians (8%), and Whites (5%). Among 12th graders, nonreservation Indians had the highest rate (3%), with reservation Indian and White students using at the same rate (2%). Native youth living apart from their families in boarding schools were also found to have extremely high prevalence rates, with 44% of students reporting that they had used inhalants (Okwumabua & Duryea, 1987). In contrast, a study conducted with urban American Indian communities found that 12.3% of the youth surveyed reported some lifetime inhalant use (Howard, Walker, Silk Walker, Cottler, & Compton, 1999). MTF survey data reviewed by Wallace et al. (2002) revealed that American Indian 12th graders had the highest past-year prevalence rate for inhalant use at 9.4%, as compared with 12th graders of all other ethnic groups combined at 6.6%. The 30-day prevalence rate was also higher than all but one other ethnic group at 4.3%, in contrast to an all-ethnic groups rate of 2.4% (Cuban Americans were the only group with a higher 30-day prevalence, at 6.6%).
Estimates of the prevalence of alcohol use among American Indian youth vary significantly. On the basis of national data of American Indian students collected from 1975 to 1994, Beauvais (1996) reported that 15% of Native youth had consumed alcohol or used drugs at least once by the age of 12, 62% had been intoxicated at least once by age 15, and 71% of 7th through 12th graders had used alcohol during their lifetime. May (1986) reported that approximately one third of Native Americans had tried alcohol by 11 years of age. This latter rate is substantiated by another study, which found that 44% of 4th and 5th graders surveyed in the Pacific Northwest and Oklahoma (mean age _ 10.3 years) had tried alcohol (Moncher, Holden, & Trimble, 1990).
Among American Indian boarding school students, the lifetime prevalence rate of alcohol use was found to be 93%, with 53% of these considered to be at risk for serious alcohol abuse (Dinges & Duong-Tran, 1993). A longitudinal study following urban American Indian youth in Seattle showed that at Year 5 (mean age 15.8 years) 41.5% of the youth reported having drunk alcohol to the point of intoxication (Walker et al., 1996). Beauvais (1992a) compared drinking rates for reservation Indians, nonreservation Indians, and White students in the 8th and 12th grades. Nonreservation Indian 8th graders were more likely to report lifetime alcohol use (80%) than reservation Indian (70%) or White (73%) 8th graders. However, lifetime prevalence rates for 12th graders were highly comparable among these three groups. Reservation Indians in both the 8th and 12th grades were most likely to report having been drunk in their lifetime (49% of 8th graders, 87% of 12th graders), followed by nonreservation Indians (42% and 76%) and Whites (27% and 73%). A similar pattern was found for the 30-day prevalence of having been drunk, with 8th and 12th graders on reservations having the highest rate, followed by nonreservation Indians, and then Whites.
In 1998 the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported slightly higher rates of alcohol use for American Indian youth as compared with youth from other ethnic groups. They reported that 93% of American Indian and 87% of non-American Indian high school seniors had tried alcohol during their lifetime. The rates for past month use were 56% and 51%, respectively. More recently, Wallace et al. (2002) reported a past-year alcohol use prevalence of 76.5% and a 30-day prevalence of 55.1% for Native American Indian 12th graders, rates similar to other ethnic groups. In comparison to all other ethnic groups combined, however, Native American Indian students had the highest rate of daily alcohol use (6.1% vs. 3.5%) and were the group most likely to have consumed five drinks or more in a row in the previous 2 weeks (37.0% vs. 30.8%).
Marijuana use is also significantly higher among American Indian and Alaskan Native youth than other groups. Beauvais (1996) found that nearly 50% of Indian students in the 7th through 12th grades reported having used marijuana on at least one occasion. In another study (Beauvais, 1992a) found that of the 8th graders surveyed, 47% of reservation Indians, 26% of nonreservation Indians, and 13% of Whites reported lifetime marijuana use. For 8th graders, 30-day prevalence was also highest for reservation youth (23%), followed by nonreservation (10%) and White youth (5%). Twelfth-grade youth living on reservations had higher lifetime (77%) and 30-day (33%) rates of use than did nonreservation Indian (58% and 21%) and White students (38% and 13%). Data from the MTF surveys (Wallace et al., 2002) also show that American Indian teens had the highest annual (45.3%) and 30-day (29.6%) marijuana prevalence rates as compared with teens of other ethnic groups. In addition, they were more likely than teens of other ethnic groups to use on a regular basis. Almost 10% of Indian 12th graders said that they use marijuana daily, compared with 5.4% of the total 12th grade population.
A study using data from the Voices of Indian Teens Project sampled 9th to 12th graders in seven predominantly American Indian schools in four western communities. Using a total sample size of 1,464 youth, Novins and Mitchell (1998) found that 55.7% of Native teens reported using marijuana at least once during their lifetime, and 40.0% had used marijuana in the past month. Among those youth who had used marijuana in the past month, 42.5% reported using 1 to 3 times, 27.5% reported using 4 to 10 times, and 30.0% said that they had used 11 or more times.
Epidemiological research indicates a high level of normative adolescent substance use. However, it suggests that much of this use is experimental or episodic in nature, with only a small minority of youth qualifying as heavy users. Within the Native American population, youth tend to initiate substance use at a younger age, continue use after initial experimentation, and have higher rates of polysubstance use (Beauvais, 1992a; U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment [OTA], 1990). Substance initiation in Indian communities typically occurs between the ages of 10 and 13, with the onset for some individuals beginning as early as 5 or 6 years of age (Beauvais, 1996; Okwumabua & Duryea, 1987).
The stage, or gateway, theory has been proposed to explain the progression of adolescent drug involvement (Golub & Johnson, 1994; Kandel & Faust, 1975; Kandel & Yamaguchi, 1993; Kandel, Yamaguchi, & Chen, 1992; Weinberg, Radhert, Colliver, & Glantz, 1998). This theory postulates that for most individuals, initiation of drug use follows a specific sequence: (a) legal substances, such as tobacco and alcohol; (b) marijuana; (c) other illicit drugs; (d) cocaine; and (e) crack. However, an adolescent’s use of substances at one stage does not necessarily mean that he or she will move on to the next stage. The applicability of stage theory to American Indian and Alaskan Native youth has been questioned. One study found that among American Indian youth (ages 9–15) living in South Carolina, the use of alcohol predicted subsequent use of tobacco and illicit drugs, similar to what might be expected given the stage theory (Federman, Costello, Angold, Farmer, & Erkanli, 1997). However, Novins et al. (2001) found that among users of both alcohol and marijuana, approximately 35% reported using alcohol first, whereas 35% reported using marijuana first.
Further, these researchers found that 75% of youth using substances from three or more classes reported patterns of use inconsistent with stage theory. They recommend that a modification which categorizes substances as initiating (tobacco, alcohol, inhalants, marijuana) or heavy (other illicit drugs) more accurately and appropriately captures the drug use trends of Native American Indian youth.
Update: 1 dead, 9 injured in lightning strike at Pocono
Source: ABC News
LONG POND, Pa. - August 5, 2012 (WPVI) -- Officials at Pocono Raceway say one person is dead and nine are injured after a lightning strike in the parking lot behind the grandstand after a race.
Pocono officials say two people were taken to hospitals in critical condition after Sunday's lightning strike. Track president Brandon Igdalsky confirms that one of them later died at Pocono Medical Center. He provided no details.
Track vice president Bob Pleban says five people were treated at the scene. Three others were hospitalized with moderate or minor injuries.
Pleban says it's not clear if all 10 were actually struck by lightning. It's unknown whether one or multiple lightning strikes occurred.
The race was called because of rain, with 98 of the 160 scheduled laps completed.
Read more: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=8762518
Six hours from touchdown on Mars ... LIVE FEED
Now six hours from touchdown. The current distance is 50,241 miles, closing at 8,285 mph, an increase of 75 mph in the past hour as the planet's gravity tugs on the spacecraft.
The Curiosity rover, the six-wheeled robot the size of a car, has a mass of 1,982 pounds. It is 9 feet, 10 inches long, 9 feet wide and stands 7 feet tall once the camera mast is erected. Its wheels are 20 inches in diameter and the instrument-laden arm is 7 feet long. The craft is powered by plutonium in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, a switch to nuclear away from the solar panels used on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers to provide longer life and greater capabilities.
The 10 science instruments include the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, Chemistry and Camera, Chemistry and Mineralogy, Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, Mars Descent imager, Mars Hand Lens Imager, Mast Camera, Radiation Assessment Detector, Rover Environmental Monitoring Station, and Sample Analysis at Mars.
"We're about to land a rover that is 10 times heavier than (earlier rovers) with 15 times the payload," says Doug McCuistion, director of Mars exploration at NASA Headquarters. "Tonight's the Superbowl of planetary exploration, one yard line, one play left. We score and win, or we don't score and we don't win.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/msl/status.html
If it is this procedure, you should be out tomorrow ...
Curiosity Lands on Mars: Know What You're Watching When You're Watching '7 Minutes of Terror'
Later today, at 10:30 p.m. West Coast time, NASA's Curiosity rover is scheduled to touch down on the surface of Mars. If it's successful, the landing will represent not just a step forward for Martian exploration; it will also represent progress for interplanetary navigation.
But ... if it's successful. People are calling Curiosity's impending landing "seven minutes of terror" for a reason: Though there are many reasons to hope that the landing will go smoothly -- more than 2.5 billion reasons, in fact -- there is also much potential for the touch-down to go spectacularly wrong.
Here's a guide to Curiosity's trip as it's gone so far and as it's expected (and hoped) to conclude.
What is Curiosity, exactly?
The rover is basically a really expensive, and really advanced, robotic photographer. Curiosity -- full name: The Mars Science Laboratory -- is, as our Ross Andersen has put it, "a dune buggy equipped with a set of tools and instruments to shame Inspector Gadget." It carries ten instruments in total, among them two rectangular "eyes" -- the first a primary imaging camera featuring different filters and focal lengths, and the second a large, circular camera that can fire a laser that turns rock into vapor. (Another camera on the rover picks up the images from the laser-firer and interprets their composition.)
So "this rover can go around firing laser beams at rocks and other materials to find out what they're made of; I'd say that's one of its most impressive instruments," planetary scientist Michael Mischna told Andersen. And the rover can also gauge Martian weather. It can film in HD. And in 360-degree panoramas.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/curiosity-lands-on-mars-know-what-youre-watching-when-youre-watching-7-minutes-of-terror/260725/
Nah, we don't need anymore gun control ... WTF
Tell me one law in Pakistan that has not been broken ...
Pakistan water-fulled car claims spark joy, worryISLAMABAD - Pakistani officials who have failed for years to fix the country's rampant energy shortages have latched on to a local engineer's dubious claim to have invented a water-fuelled car, sparking criticism from experts who bemoan what the episode says about the sorry state of the government.
Excitement over the supposed discovery has been fueled by sensationalist TV talk show hosts, who have hailed the middle-aged engineer, Agha Waqar Ahmed, as a national hero and gushed about the billions of dollars Pakistan could save on oil imports.
Several prominent Pakistani scientists have also jumped on the bandwagon, including the head of the government's top scientific council and another state-run science foundation.
The only catch seems to be that developing a vehicle that efficiently runs on water defies the basic laws of physics, detractors say. Critical Pakistani scientists say it is the car's battery, not the water, that's key to powering the vehicle. That has done little to dent the hype surrounding Ahmed's invention.
"Demonstration of water-fuelled car astonishes experts," read the headline in Dawn newspaper at the end of July after the engineer drove his vehicle in front of a crowd of over 100 Pakistani officials, engineers, scientists and journalists at a sprawling sports complex in Islamabad.
http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC120805-0000032/Pakistan-water-fulled-car-claims-spark-joy,-worry
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