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Anonymous Claimed Responsibility On Mexican Websites Hack

17. September 2011

Anonymous claimed responsibility to the recent attacks on Mexican government websites. (Photo : thehackernews.com)

The hacker collective group Anonymous, famous for DDoS attacks, has become very furious this year and commanded a lot of cyber attacks around the world including Sony, PayPal, BART, and CIA websites along with its LulzSec, AntiSec. Yesterday, the notorious group claimed the responsibility for taking down several Mexican government websites including Defense and Public Security on September 15.

As a part of the Anonymous’ operation ‘OpIndependencia’ the hacktivist group forced the websites to go offline the day before of the anniversary of Mexico’s independence from the Spanish in 1810. In a tweet on twitter, the group Anonymous, who gained infamy for supporting WikiLeaks and AntiSec, claimed the responsibility and threatened to publish e-mail addresses, contact information and phone numbers of the government officials who are corrupted. They also stated that they will attack President Felipe Caldron’s homepage next time. But, the reason the attack, yet not been disclosed.

In the meantime, three members of another hacker group X-Ploit, who also claimed responsibility of the attacks, stated that they are tracking senators’ Web surfing habits, including visit to porn sites. In addition, to instigate the attack, they are also tracking Mexico’s Health Ministry, national Water Commission and National Statistics Institute sites. LoTek, a member of the group X-Ploit, said, “We’re only looking to show that we don’t agree [with the government]. In other places, these protests are not heard, but a hacked website is read by millions.”

Though, recently, FBI and police arrested many hackers, the group didn’t walk back. They always claim that they are legion, they don’t forgive. In a tweet on twitter, the hacker group Anonymous wrote, “We don’t need bombs, bullets, rocks or guns, we only need hashtags and our voices at the top of our lungs.”

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NASA Discovers First Planet That Orbits On Two Suns

16. September 2011

NASA scientists discovered a new planet Kepler-16b that orbits on two suns. (Photo: dailymail.co.uk)

Scientific movies are generally imaginary and fictitious. There are numerous movies, in which the directors introduced many new planets that never seen before. About 30 years ago, in a movie based on space science named ‘Star Wars’, the director depicted a world that had two Suns. Who knew that, it would come true one day? Yes, the scientists of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have detected a ‘circumbinary planet’ that is orbiting on two Suns.

The planet is situated about 200 light-years from earth and was discovered by the NASA’s space observatory spacecraft Kepler that observed the transits. It is NASA’s first mission that can find the ‘Earth-size’ planets in or near the habitable zone. Laurance Doyle of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California, along with his team has been researching for transiting planets using the information of more than 150000 stars recorded by the Kepler space telescope, according to the science release of NASA.

NASA named the newly detected planet as ‘Kepler-16b’. The planet ‘Tatooine’, described in the movie Star Wars, was very hot and desert type planet. However, the Kepler-16b is cold, gaseous and it is not suitable for the existence of human beings, according to the science news. By the telescope, the scientists measured the size, confirmed that Kepler-16b is about the size of Saturn, and thought to be made up of about half rock and half gas. The two parent Suns are much smaller than our Sun. Among them, one is 69 percent and other is 20 percent the mass of our Sun. The planet rounds the Suns every 229 days.

“This discovery confirms a new class of planetary systems that could harbor life. Given that most stars in our galaxy are part of a binary system, this means the opportunities for life are much broader than if planets form only around single stars. This milestone discovery confirms a theory that scientists have had for decades but could not prove until now,” said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator.

Scientific discoveries always show the stunning and impressive things that we dare imagine. There is no doubt, the new discovery of the planet show the diversity of planets in our galaxy. This will help the scriptwriters and scientists find the new way to think more broadly about the outer space.

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Video Games May Not Help In Cognitive Development After All

15. September 2011

The side effects of too much gaming. (Photo: playfin.com)

By all accounts, video games have surged in popularity since the past few years, not only because of new advancements in technology, but also because of the positive attitude towards them these days. The phrase ‘Video games increase brain and cognitive development’ has been used so much that it has become a cliche and anybody who still feels video games are bad for the society is looked down upon as old or a social pariah. However, in spite of the so called health benefits of video games, a new study by the Florida state university has proved that video games do not really contribute to a person’s cognitive development. To make a long story short, the researchers of that institute are insinuating that religious and counter-cultural groups may be right about them after all!

Dr Walter Boot, who is the assistant professor at the institute, along with a joint collaboration by a few researchers from the university of Illinois, showed that all the media and pop culture hype about video games improving the gamers thinking and cognitive abilities are based on a flawed formula. These researchers feel that although there are some instances where gamers are known to have a better reasoning ability than non-gamers, it is only because these people were intellectually capable to begin with and got addicted to gaming later on, and not the other way around. To substantiate his point, Dr Boot claimed that every volunteer recruitment poster for video game experiments contain the words ‘ expert wanted’ which proves that these particular researchers were expecting the gamers to have developed cognitive skills beforehand.

In order to prove his point even further, in a past experiment with video gamers, Dr Boot and his colleagues recall that when they were running their own video game testing experiment, they realized that in spite of trying their best, no volunteer showed the promised ‘cognitive development’ and the experiment failed to keep up with the required standards, thus proving that the whole video game training methods is flawed where it is high time people do something about.

To get things clear right now, Dr Boot and his fellow researchers are not saying that video games are a danger to our society where they poison the mind of the gamers. All they are saying is that correlation does not relate to causation and people should think twice before coming to a conclusion of an experiment, as it would result in flawed and misrepresented conclusions. However, this is more of a wake up call to all those anti-conformist gamers who think that playing a video game will magically make them a smarter and a better person. As for all the video game researchers, it is high time they come up with better ways to experiment with video games.

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Written by Yash Karnad

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Sonar Obstacle Avoidance Assistance Device For Blind

14. September 2011

Steve Hoefer recently designed a new sonar device for the blind. (Photo: ecouterre.com)

Those who have the light of eyes can see and guide themselves to find their own way through the complex environment. However, for the people, who are blind and can’t see the environments around them, is really difficult to walk through a complex environments without the help of others. They have to make their way by checking obstacles using a white stick. Recently, a ‘Hand-Mounted Haptic Feedback Sonar Obstacle Avoidance Assistance Device’ was developed for the people who are visually impaired.

Steve Hoefer developed this extraordinary device with ultrasonic sensors and vibration motors around the surface of the headband and named ‘Tacit’. The sensors send out pulses and can sense objects from about 1 inch (2cm) to 10 feet (3.5m). The motors create pressure to make the users conscious about any obstacle in-front of them. There are two motors- one on the right side and other on the left side. Pressure is applied on either side of the wrist to determine whether the obstacle is situated on the right side or the left. The vibration motors vibrate faster to give more pressure if the users come closer to the obstacle.

“Designing the supporting gauntlet to hold the hardware went through a number of iterations as well. To the visually impaired the sense of touch is important, so gloves were out, even fingerless ones as the fingers and palms have some of the highest density of touch-sensitive nerves in the body,” said Hoefer to the website Grathio. He added, “I decided to use neoprene as a base fabric since it’s a solid, durable, shock absorbent base for electronics and is flexible and stretchy so it won’t resist movement.”

In his website, Hoefer explained the parts of the project, and posted the link of the source code for the project. He says that the cost of materials to develop the device is around $65 at retail price.

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How A Person’s Happiness May Have A Lot To Do With His Genes

14. September 2011

An ideal happiness scenario. (Photo: lovekhfilm.com)

The human emotion is complicated enough to make even the most brilliant of minds scratch their heads, however the most baffling human emotion is happiness. There is no universally accepted definition for it as each and every individual have their own way of making themselves happy. For this reason, many researchers have studied for years in relative vain, in order to find a common source of happiness between each individual. However, a new study from the University of California Los Angeles, has come up with a confounding discovery that shows that a person’s idea of happiness or sorrow can be determined by his genetic structure.

The researchers studied a genetic receptor known as oxytocin OXTR, which plays a key role in determining the happiness levels in a person, and tried to find its correlation between the depression faced by the person in question. The researchers realized that this oxytocin receptor has two variants, A and G, which determines the amount of stress or happiness the person may face. After conducting an experiment with 326 volunteers at the institute, the scientists realized that people with one or more A variants or nucleotides showed more sensitivity to stress, which meant they were more likely to face less serenity than those people with two or more G nucleotides. In order to comprehend the reaction type of the patients, the researchers made them fill out questionnaires after analyzing their saliva for the oxytocin variants.

Nevertheless, according to Dr Shelley Taylor, the head researcher of this project, even people with a large abundance of A nucleotides can be as cheerful and stress free as the other group, under certain conditions. This research was funded by the national science institute and the national society of aging in America and was also partaken with a collaboration from the Ohio state university.

Even though a person’s attitude towards happiness and sorrow was known to be somewhat genetically related, this research takes a new step in identifying the core of a person’s inner thoughts such as happiness. After a more thorough study on the Oxytocin receptors is undertaken, people may actually be able to develop more advanced therapeutic methods to cure sadness.

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Written by Yash Karnad

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Astronomers Discover 50 New Planets Including 16 “Super Earths”

13. September 2011

European Astronomers have discovered 50 new planets including 16 “Super Earths.” (Photo: blogs.e-rockford.com)

We all know that Earth is the only planet where there are all sorts of elements for the existence of human beings. But, long since, the astronomers had been working hard in search of a planet where humans can survive. According to the researches, about 600 alien planets were discovered in the universe. By the way, the European astronomers have discovered new 50 planets including 16 ‘Super Earths’ and one of these new planets is potentially perfect for the survival of human beings.

On September 12, the astronomers announced the discovery of 50 new ‘exoplanets’ orbiting nearby stars and it is the largest number of planets that ever announced at a time. The astronomers used the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) on the 3.6 meters telescope, which is known as ‘The Planet Hunter’ in the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, and they proposed their research findings at the conference on Extreme Solar Systems meeting at Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.

“The harvest of discoveries from HARPS has exceeded all expectations and includes an exceptionally rich population of super-Earths and Neptune-type planets hosted by stars very similar to our Sun. And even better — the new results show that the pace of discovery is accelerating,” says Mayor, the leader of the research team.

For eight years the astronomers have been using HARPS technique for observing the Sun like planets and discovered more than 150 new planets. But, maximum of the discovered are smaller than Neptune and these are known as ‘exoplanets’. In the recent findings the astronomers discovered a planet named HD 85512 b situated at the edge of the habitable region and considered to be perfect for the existence of humans. The planet is 3.6 times of the mass of the Earth, according to the ESO’s science release.

“The detection of HD 85512 b is far from the limit of HARPS and demonstrates the possibility of discovering other super-Earths in the habitable zones around stars similar to the Sun,” adds Mayor.

There is no doubt, the new research will bring a new hope to the astronomers to discover more such type of planets that contains all the elements need for the survival of humans and other animals. Researchers are now planning for developing new instruments and techniques for further research.

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New Ways To Detect The Method Of A Wi-Fi Hack Attack

13. September 2011

An ideal WiFi router. (Photo: dailybayonet.com)

Due to its scalability and versatility, the Wi-fi is arguably one of the most important internet technologies of all time. Besides allowing its users to access the web from any given location, it offers speeds that are unrivaled by traditional modems or broadbands, thus making it very popular among savvy internet users. However, all this caviar comes at a price because wi-fi’s are notoriously easy to hack into, which puts all their users at a great risk. To add insult to injury, since these hacks often occur silently, the user may not even be aware of his predicament until it is too late, which makes it even harder to avert the attack. Fortunately, a group of researchers from the North Carolina state university have devised a key way to detect a Wi-Fi attack at a given point of time.

Since these attacks take many forms, Wenye Wang, a researcher from the institute, and her team examined the two most viable scenarios or models. The most prominent model involved a scene where a hacker would constantly assault a victim’s Wi-fi system until he has reached his destination. The second model represented a scene where a hacker would attack a person’s wi-fi rather periodically, in order to avoid making a mistake which would lead to his apprehension. The team of researchers compared these two models and used a wide range of determining factors, like skill of the hacker,security of the Wi-Fi etc, in order to determine the outcome, thus creating the order gain matrix in the process.

The order gain matrix allows the researchers to use a number of determining factors to compare the probability ratio of the ability of the hacker to access the victim’s network to the ability of the victim to access his own network. This matrix also helped the researchers to comprehend the method by which the victim’s computer could be hacked, thus paving ways to develop counter attacks that may actually help the security experts to ward of any cyber attack. As an extra point, this new formula may even give those computer experts a better understanding on how Wi-Fi works.

However, as internet and Wi-Fi users, we should do more from our part in order to keep our computers from being hijacked. Since the only reason why Wi-Fi’s are so hackable is due to the large number of unsecured connections used, we should make it a point to password secure any Wi-Fi connection we may need in the future.

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Written by Yash Karnad

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Supercomputers Could Predict Major World Conflicts

11. September 2011

Supercomputers could be used to predict major world events. (Photo: allmediany.com)

Supercomputers, in the recent world, have high processing capacity and these computers have the ability to compute millions of complex mathematical calculations per second. Supercomputers are mainly used for highly calculation intensive assignments like quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling etc. However, a recent study, by US researchers, dictates that supercomputers have the ability to predict major world events.

The US researchers found that a supercomputer being fed millions of news articles and data of contemporary situations of the Arab world, especially Libya and Egypt, was able to predict the ‘deteriorating national sentiment’ that led to the recent revolutions in those countries. Earlier this research, clues about the location of Osama Bin Laden also found using this computational technology.

The recent research’s findings were published in the journal First Monday by Kalev Leetaru, from the University of Illinois’ Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts and Social Science. Though the study was done with hindsight, the same system could be used for the prediction of the upcoming conflicts, according to the researchers.

The analysis was carried out based on the information from many sources including the US government-run Open Source Center and BBC Monitoring that deal with the local media output around the world. News outlets of the New York Times, published in 1945, were also analyzed for the new research. In total, Kalev gathered more than 100 million articles, according to the BBC News.

The analysis was based on two types of statistics: mood and location, BBC says. Mood detection or ‘automated sentiment mining’ analyzed whether the information of the articles contained good news or bad news and searched for words such as ‘terrible’, ‘horrible’, and ‘nice’. On the other hand, location analyzer analyzed the locations where the events occurred and then plotted the coordinates on a map.

For the recent research, Tennessee University’s SGI Altix supercomputer called Nautilus was used, which has 1024 Intel Nehalem cores and can process 8.2 trillion floating-point operations per second. BBC reports, the supercomputer also generated maps for different countries based on several specific inquiries.

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BAE Developed Body Wearable Antennas For Soldiers

10. September 2011

Firearms maker BAE Systems has developed a series of light-weight body wearable antennas for soldiers. (Photo: pocket-lint.com)

BAE Systems, surfaced in 1999, is the world’s second largest defense, security and aerospace company based on the 2010 revenues. The Company works for the development of the military by providing various products and services including advanced electronics, security, information technology solutions and support services. However, recently, the company has announced that it has created light-weight body wearable antenna or BWA which will reduce soldier’s load on the battlefield.

The antennas used for the technology are woven into the fiber of the uniform of the military and as a result, the soldiers are now free from using the conventional radio whip-antenna system. There is a camera mounted on the helmet of the soldier that provides real time video. A wrist mounted commercially available touch-screen Smartphone is used for this technology which utilizes its sensors to provide an augmented operation picture. The soldiers can tag objects like potential hazards that will appear highlighted on the phones video images.

The new technology allows the soldiers to communicate easily with their colleagues on the front line and the soldiers can transmit voice, video data and GPS location. A system using this technology could improve the situational awareness of a military team as a whole, allowing soldiers to see through the eyes of their team mates in real time. If one soldier spots a situation, they can alert the team and share what they can see through their helmet mounted camera, according to the BAE systems. Another main advantage of the wearable antennas is that it does not depend on the position of the wearer. The antenna also provides continuous 360 degrees coverage.

“Frontline soldiers carry a huge amount of weight when on patrol. Research into body wearable antennas has shown we could reduce this burden and in the future give forces improved communication capabilities and a significant advantage on the battlefield,” said Jon Pinto, Antennas and Electromagnetic Group Leader at BAE’s Advanced Technology Center.

BAE System is now trying to explore the potential to incorporate body wearable antennas into the suits of firefighters for use during search and rescue, for police patrol team members to have the GPS locations of colleagues and in other hazardous fields like mining, oil and gas.

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