On the topic of Natural Gas and European Stereotypes.

Jun 16, 2014 by Circus Bazaar

[dropcap size=big]W[/dropcap]hen the Gas dispute erupted between the Ukraine and Russia in 2009 it sparked Yanko Tsvetkov, a Bulgarian designer and illustrator to create a European map reflecting the stereo types that had become apparent. As pertinent in todays European as it was in 2009 the first one (below) was such an Internet hit that he was inspired to continue. Here is a quick run through some of the more politicised Kartiographic creations he came up with.

If you would like to see more of his magic visit his site on alphadesigner.com

Political_World_2005.ai — Where I live – Yanko Tsvetkov

Europe According to Germany — Europe from the perspective of Germany

Europe According to Britain — Europe from the perspective of Great Britain

Europe according to the Vatican — Europe from the perspective of the Vatican

Europe from the perspective of the United States

Biomimicry, Convergence Science and Internet Security.

Jun 16, 2014 by Karim Immanuel Chemlal

A feedback loop of creative research that is reshaping our world.

[dropcap size=big]B[/dropcap]iomimicry is the new buzz word that is likely to dominate bio sciences for many decades to come. Nature in its astonishing complexity has provided human technology with a ‘how to’ template fresh from the microbiological world. Understanding how these systems work could provide a whole new generation of antibiotics, vaccines and longevity treatments that could change the nature of human society. The ramifications of applying knowledge gained from these natural systems within medicine itself is enormous – let alone how it will certainly revolutionise emerging new sciences like nanotechnology, bioinformatics and cyber biological interfaces etc.

Using the immune system as a template

Recently a Stanford University study led by Professor Mark Davis discovered that human immune cells have the capacity to ‘remember’ certain types of pathogens, and not just the ones specifically encountered before. This association enabled them to quickly recognise a new pathogen which had some similar genetic traits to previous pathogens encountered and allow the immune system to get an early start in creating type specific immune cells.

Which raises another point.

“We grow and use experimental lab mice in totally artificial, ultra-clean environments,” Davis said. “That’s nothing like the environment that we live in. The CD4 cells from adult mice in the lab environment are almost entirely in the naïve state. They may be more representative of newborns than of adults.”

Understanding the mechanism by which cross-reactivityoccurs might further allow immunologists to develop “wide-spectrum vaccines” that cover a number of infectious organisms.

William Petri, MD, PhD, chief of infectious diseases and international health at the University of Virginia described the new study as paradigm-shifting. “It was one of those rare, seminal findings that changes the way I think about the immune response,” he said.

Such breakthroughs highlight how understanding how the immune system works is fundamental not only to specifically to biomedical sciences but to emerging spin off research area’s like nanobiology, bioinformatics and even internet security.

Biomicry and internet security?

Indeed it makes me wonder just how human immune cells ‘cross reactivity’ might be used in the IT world to design better software and security measures. Certainly within the medical field products like ‘Allerhunter’ use such software to predictively track the cross reactive nature of protiens within certain allergens.

But in the newly emerging area of Artificial immune systems software algorithyms attempt to simulate the complex processes found in the human immune system utilizing AIS models which emphasize designing arti-facts which are computational algorithms and techniques using simplified models of various immunological processes and functionalities. AIS’s also try to extract ideas from the BIS (biological immune system) in order to develop better computational tools for solving science and engineering problems. Which in itself is part of the rapidly emerging cross disciplinary field of convergence science where multiple disciplines from often disparate sources converge to create not only innovative new technologies but also entirely new avenues of scientific research and methodological practice.

Dipankar Dasgupta from the University of Memphis, USA is one of the pioneers in this cutting edge field of convergence science and bioinformatics.

“From an information-processing perspective, the immune system is a remarkable parallel and distributed adaptive system with (partial) decentralized control mechanism. It uses feature extraction, signaling, learning, memory, and associative retrieval to solve recognition and classification tasks. In particular, it learns to recognize relevant patterns, remember patterns that have been seen previously, and use combinatorics to construct pattern detectors efficiently. Also, the overall behavior of the system is an emergent property of many local interactions. These remarkable information-processing abilities of the immune system provide several important aspects in the field of computation.”

He goes on to explain how the internet security systems already use a similar simplistic innate immune system, which resides on the user’s PC and applies virus-checking heuristics to COM and .EXE files. For example if an unknown virus is detected on an individual PC , then a sample is captured that contains information about the virus and is sent to a central processing system for further examination. This is analogous to how the innate immune system works, as the first line of defense. The signature extraction mechanism is akin to clon-al selection where large numbers of possible code signatures are produced randomly and each one is checked against the potential virus until a positive match is found.

On a broader scale, cloud and network computing is also being aided by the use of a ‘negative selection’ algorithm that simulates how immune cells detect pathogenic infiltration to detect IT network intrusion. Each computer runs a broadcaster, which broadcasts the source and destination of each TCP SYN packet it sees to other computers running LISYS, and a detection node, which processes the information from the broadcasters. Each detection node receives data from broadcasters and mails an administrator if it detects a novel TCP connection. The multilayered nature of the BIS defense aparatus is allowing far more modalities to be explored and employed in cyber security. As a result AIS is explored as a base template for neural networks as well as for evolutionary and DNA computation.

Chips and bits

Going a little further down the technological rabbit hole and we see the options for bio-circuitry and bio-chip implants which are designed as organic components based on natural tissue. Implants in general as they become smaller and more interactive with surrounding tissue suffer from the bodies homeostatic response to the invasive implant which is to form scar tissue. The development of scar tissue has been observed around implants used for deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s patients. Which can be a major impediment as scar tissue barriers often form between the device electrodes and the nerves they must comunicate with. Added to that issue is the problem of how to get the implant to adequatley power and connect to the surrounding nerve cells which it must communicate with.

The latest solution to this is the use of biomemetic polymers. These conducting polymers can incorporate not only the structural features that work for standard electrodes, but also provide chemical structures that increase nerve cell attachment and/or inhibit the production of scar tissue. The typical issue with organic polymers previously – the ability to carry significant currents isn’t much of an issue now when it comes to interfacing with nerve cells.

A recent break through by the University of Texas and the Univesrsity of Tokyo published in the journal Advanced Materials highlights the cross linking of engineering and materials sciences with biological and molecular sciences to mimic and replicate technology compatible with biological systems.

When heated, the devices can change shape and still maintain their electronic properties (Photo Credit: University of Texas Dallas)

These transistors, which can lock on to nerves and other biological structures in 3-D while softening and morphing with the body itself, are the fruit of the two universities collaborative research. Jonathan Reeder, a graduate student in materials science and engineering and lead author of the work explained what has been achieved so far.

“The research, published in Advanced Materials, is one of the first demonstrations of transistors that can change shape and maintain their electronic properties after they are implanted in the body…Scientists and physicians have been trying to put electronics in the body for a while now, but one of the problems is that the stiffness of common electronics is not compatible with biological tissue,” he said. You need the device to be stiff at room temperature so the surgeon can implant the device, but soft and flexible enough to wrap around 3-D objects so the body can behave exactly as it would without the device. By putting electronics on shape-changing and softening polymers, we can do just that.”

Reeder goes onto to explain that the shapeform technology which allows implant transistors to soften and conform to internal body structure is still ongoing.

“We used a new technique in our field to essentially laminate and cure the shape memory polymers on top of the transistors,” said Voit, who is also a member of the Texas Biomedical Device Center. “In our device design, we are getting closer to the size and stiffness of precision biologic structures, but have a long way to go to match nature’s amazing complexity, function and organization.”

The rigid devices become soft when heated. Outside the body, the device is primed for the position it will take inside the body. During testing, researchers used heat to deploy the 2.25 millimeters diameter cylindrical device. They then implanted the device in rats. They found that after implantation, the device had morphed with the living tissue while maintaining excellent electronic properties. “The next step of the research is to shrink the devices so they can wrap around smaller objects and add more sensory components”, Reeder said.

Convergence science the Third Revolution?

This unprecedented blending of differing science methodologies to create new technologies demonstrates the growth of convergence science. A growth which appears to be pushing us towards a Kurzwiel like Singularity as multiple disciplines within science combine routinely accross national borders, insitutions and vast geographical distances to produce new breakthroughs. Hence the new term ‘Convergence Science’ where not only disciplines merge but individual projects draw many differing schools of science to aid them in creating new technolgies and new variations on existing tech.

The idea first popped up in 1962 when the first edition of Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was published. He suggested that as science accumulated incremental gains in its understanding that it would sometimes diverge from the normal gradualistic process of scientific understanding to make sudden leaps. These leaps would occur when anomalies arose from the data which motivated individuals to propose new laws and principles outside the conventional paradigm. This idea was akin to a concept in biosciences and evolutionary biology made popular by Stephen Jay Gould. That idea was ‘Punctuated Equilibrium’ where a critical mass of accumulated variables could precipitate a sudden and relatively fast shift in biological evolution. Kuhn proposed a very similar concept where paradigm shifts in conventional science like Einsteins General Relativity and Max Plancks development of Quantum theory arose from an accumulated cross linking of ideas by certain groups and individuals.

A recent white paper from MIT calls this emerging convergence science the Third revolution, following the industrial and Information revolutions, as the Life sciences, Physical sciences and Engineering combine routinely. Biomimcry is only one of such new sciences emerging from this convergence of disciplines. Bioinformatics, Synthetic biology, nanobiology, computational biology, biomaterials, system biology and tissue engineeering are some examples of the last decades’ growth in convergence science. Indeed the white paper goes on to describe an ongoing evolution of science where methodologies and research models converge to create a deeper interdisciplinary integration in the near future.

Convergence appears indeed to represent a new era of solving complex scientific problems, which is certainly not limited to, the biomedical sciences. Though the evolution of this new integration of research will not replace all of what we know as basic research by both individuals and institutions and collaborative groups, it does highlight a new direction that will enable novel opportunities to conduct more project driven tailored “high risk, high reward” and/or “use-inspired” research. Research which will reshape the genus of science in the university research communities themselves and rapidly prove to be of massive benefit to humankind and the world in general.

Russian T-72 Tanks Enter Ukraine – Thoughts from Kiev.

Jun 14, 2014 by Mychailo Wynnyckyj

“It seems Putin missed the adage of Marx according to which “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”

[dropcap size=big]I[/dropcap]n case there was still any doubt about the true nature of the war in Ukraine’s eastern regions, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced to the press this afternoon that several Russian tanks had crossed the border near the town of Snizhne (Donetsk Oblast). Amateur video footage of T-90 tanks has now been broadcast on all local newscasts, and has again catapulted the Ukrainian “crisis” to top story status on international networks. According to latest reports (10pm), one tank was disabled during a battle with Ukrainian forces near the border, but three others have been filmed driving through Makiyivka en route to Donetsk, together with two trucks full of heavily armed men.

The Ukrainian armed forces do not possess T-90 tanks – this modernized version of the Soviet-era T-72 is deployed only in Russia.

Until today, the conflict in Ukraine’s eastern regions had involved mercenaries armed with Russian-supplied weaponry – including the ultra-modern “Stinger”-style missile that last week shot down a Ukrainian military transport aircraft at an altitude of over 4000 meters (approx. 12000 ft.). But tanks are not supplied to mercenaries. This type of equipment is always manned by army personnel.

It is safe to say that Russian troops (regulars – not hired mercenaries) have now invaded territorial Ukraine. This act has nothing to do with local separatism (or even state-sponsored terrorism): Russia has invaded the sovereign territory of Ukraine. This cannot be interpreted as anything other than an act of war.

Much has been made of President Poroshenko’s “peace plan”. On Saturday, during his inaugural address, the President made clear that his first priority was to end the fighting in Ukraine’s eastern regions, and to simultaneously strengthen the country’s armed forces (essentially destroyed by years of central government neglect and internal corruption). During the past few days, details of the Poroshenko plan have been scarce, but EU officials have offered encouraging comments, and secretive meetings with Russian ambassador Zurabov and Kremlin officials have been held in the Presidential Administration building. In the meantime, media attention has been diverted from these talks by Russia’s increasingly vocal demands that Ukraine pay its gas debt (amounting to almost $2 billion USD) immediately – i.e. before resuming talks on purchase and transit prices. Furthermore, it would seem that the Kremlin is counting on global attention being diverted by the World Cup Final in Brazil (opening ceremony was today), while local Ukrainians rest for a while after a grueling 6 months of emotional and physical / economic and political turmoil.

But if Putin was counting on activist fatigue, he miscalculated. Today, approximately 30 Maidan self-defense force leaders picketed the head office of Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service demanding that Ukraine strengthen its patently porous eastern border. Since 2001, the Border Guard Service has been headed by Mykola Lytvyn – the brother of former two-time Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn (2002-2006 and 2008-2012), and a person that many of Ukraine’s erstwhile revolutionaries believe should resign due to incompetence and suspected corruption. It is notable that the head of the Border Guard Service is a Presidential appointee that does not require Parliamentary confirmation. Although only 5 days have passed since President Poroshenko’s inauguration, many Ukrainians are clearly becoming impatient with the pace of change adopted by Ukraine’s new administration.

Poroshenko apparently called Putin on the phone today to discuss ways to end the violence in the Donbas. However, for many in Kyiv, the situation has gone beyond words: even though he has officially been in office for less than a week, displeasure with the President’s perceived inaction is mounting in the capital. If Russian aggression is not countered soon, the benefit of the doubt that most Kyiv residents gave Poroshenko immediately after the May 25 vote, could evaporate very quickly. Whereas last week, I heard many calling for the dismantling of the tent city on Maidan immediately after the inauguration, this week, several of my friends and acquaintances have change their minds: a renewal of protests may yet be needed if the new President proves unworthy of the lofty title “Commander-in-Chief”.

Meanwhile, in the regions, the mood seems quieter. Last week, I spent 2 days teaching in Odesa. The 37 seminar participants were all top managers and owners of local businesses (generally mid-sized – employing 50-300 employees). Practically all were Russian speakers. At the end of the seminar, many thanked me for teaching in Ukrainian. In private conversations during breaks, several participants became quite emotional in their anti-Russian statements, claiming to have been apolitical until only very recently.

On May 2, Odesa lived through hell: 47 people are now confirmed to have died that day in clashes between pro-Russian armed thugs (backed by local police) who attacked a column of pro-Maidan demonstrators (backed by “ultra” football fans). Outnumbered by the angry pro-Ukrainian mob, the pro-Russian side retreated into the Trade Union Building which (apparently) was set on fire deliberately by the very leadership of the pro-Russia protest. The whole event is shrouded in a great deal of mystery and confusion, but according to those locals whom I spoke with, no one in Odesa doubts that the massacre was deliberately instigated by Russian covert operatives acting in alliance with Odesa’s corrupt local police. Apparently that day, the plan was to have the deaths of “peaceful pro-Russian protesters” blamed on the Kyiv government, and to thereby initiate a wave of separatism in this key southern Ukrainian port city. The plan backfired: Odesa chose peace, and its population chose Ukraine.

Having failed in covert action in the area he considers “New Russia”, Putin seems now to be resorting to more overt invasion. At the very least, today’s incursion by tanks can be equated to a violation of air space by military aircraft. At worst, it is the start of an invasion similar to that of Crimea, but with much larger logistical problems because the strategy will no longer benefit from surprise. It will be interesting to see how the Kremlin will try to spin today’s tank incident during upcoming days, but it seems Putin missed the adage of Marx according to which “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”

Indeed, President Poroshenko would do well to heed Marx’s warning also. The Ukrainian population expects their newly elected Commander-in-Chief to act quickly, decisively, and forcefully. Many are emboldened by the success of the Maidan, and are beginning to grumble that a repeat is not out of the question if the election of Poroshenko turns out to have been a mistake. Resumption of protest is unlikely before the end of the summer, but the President would do well to avoid testing the patience of Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, Mr. Putin would do well to leave these descendants of the Zaporozhian Cossacks alone. History (recent and medieval) shows that Ukrainians are patient, and show surprising restraint – even with invaders. But when a line is crossed…

God help us!

This is what Twitter looks like from Turkey

Jun 10, 2014 by Circus Bazaar

If you had not visited the site “Chilling Effects” it is high time you did.

[dropcap size=big]C[/dropcap]hilling effects was formed in 2001 by a group of internet activists that were concerned with the growing number of “cease and dessist” requests being sent globally. The major concern was that this was having a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech. On this website you will be able to view large archives of request notices sent from courts and governments around the world to service providers accross the internet requesting (among other things) to ban users on twitter.

Sparking my personal interest in this right now is that I am located in Turkey for the week so I decided to do some research on some of the more well known twitter bans. Below is what it looks like if your in Turkey and wanna follow one of these contreversial accounts.

As can be seen from the feature image of this article the requests keep coming and it seems that twitter is moving towards a solution more sympathetic to the removal of individual accounts rather then suffering nation wide bans in which less threatening expressions by the masses can be totally shut down on twitter. This can be seen by the fact that twitter has now employed it`s country withheld content tool in Pakistan for the first time.

“Twitter has deployed its Country Withheld Content Tool in Pakistan for the first time. Chilling Effects’ database now contains five requests to Twitter from the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, each of which asks for the removal of “blasphemous” or “un-ethical” tweets. The first request is dated May 5th, and the most recent on May 14th”

A full list of the requests is available here.

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

Jun 4, 2014 by Circus Bazaar

Laying back surfing the internet I found this beautiful video and couldn’t help but share it.

[dropcap size=small]I[/dropcap] know that it does not take into account women outside of western culture but nevertheless it is as beautiful as it is flawed. I expected there to be some type of political point at the end but there was none. In someways with all the saturation of politically inspired blogs it was just nice to have the thinking done by me and myself only.

The video was created by Phillip Scott Johnson. The full list of all the women in this film can be found here.

Tony Abbott´s Slash to Australian Foreign Aid

Jun 4, 2014 by Circus Bazaar

“It will force the approach of our aid bureaucracy to be re-examined and lead to more efficiencies – I am definitely in favor of that.”

[dropcap size=big]A[/dropcap] short time after gaining the Australian Prime Ministership the newly elected Tony Abbott made a decision that was described by the former AusAID Deputy Director-General Annemaree O’Keeffe as “ground trembling”. Following in the shadow of other newly elected right wing governments around the world he announced that AusAid (the body responsible for managing Australian overseas aid) would cease to be an executive agency, and would be integrated into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The reason for such a large change to the Australian foreign aid bureaucracy was to make diplomacy and aid delivery “more closely aligned”.

It has been claimed by many such as the former director general of AusAid Peter MaCawley that this course may effect Australia’s “standing in the Asian region” as well as be interpreted as a winding down of diplomacy in the region. Nevertheless the Australian government has moved ahead and issued a deadline of July 1st 2014 for this integration. But the process has been controversial. A leaked employee survey from the department of foreign affairs and trade (DFAT) showed only a minority of former AusAid staff felt part of the team and that private statements referring to the whole processes as more of a “hostile takeover”.

This comes in the wake of a national budget that has slashed overall foreign aid provided by Australia to the tune of AUD $7.6 billion dollars over the next five years. This alone represents the biggest overall cut in the new governments first budget. Cuts that have in general attracted a domestic backlash that has sent the new coalition governments poll ratings to a four year low of 36% according to latest data.

Criticism of the cuts and a the new policy of utilizing foreign aid as a tool to support foreign policy objectives is abundant in the development community in both Australia and internationally. But is there a flip side? We spoke to a former Australian aid official “Gary Andrews”, now a business development director at a Malaysian firm located in Kuala Lumpur.

Are you in favor of the cuts?

“I am not but by proxy it will force the approach of our aid bureaucracy to be re-examined and lead to more efficiencies – I am definitely in favor of that.

Are you saying that AusAid has been inefficient?

“What I am saying in effect is that there must be resource efficiencies to be gained by adopting an aid management approach that doesn’t allow for micro-management of project implementation. Significant taxpayers money is being spent on the engagement of managing contractors to manage the process so why should AusAID waste their resources by duplicating it? Their focus should be on the monitoring and evaluation of these programs and there are already mechanisms in place to do that. Now, had AusAID realized this, and taken management steps to do so, then they probably wouldn’t have needed as many staff as they had.”

So there will be positive outcomes from the cuts?

“Without supporting the Abbot government changes I am saying that (probably unintentionally) they will lead to these sort of efficiencies being realized. The Aid Bureaucracy will have to compromise what it does overall and sensibly one would think that they will withdraw from micro-management rather than sacrificing the other things that they are more legitimately required to do.”

Australia has consistantly ranked highly over the years in terms of the quantity of foreign aid provided, both overall and in per capita terms. However, the latest round of budget cuts and reorganisation of the very purpose behind Australian foreign aid clearly risks denting the standing of a country of blessed opulence. The best case scenario is that efficiencies that potentially can be gained through intergration and budget cuts can offset the all but certain slide in international foreign aid rankings and the inevitable scepticism resulting from hard nosed “aid for trade” type diplomacy the coming years will bring.