Senator: VA lying about number of veteran suicides

Light-emitting wallpaper on BuzzFeed

[photopress:10howl2.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Kirk Johnson’s piece in today’s Times, “A Bid to Lure Wolves With a Digital Call of the Wild” is about
the Howlbox, a solar-powered, automated device which simulates wolf calls, and records the responses, making it possible to conduct a wolf census.

Under a research project at the University of Montana in Missoula, scientists are betting that the famous call-and-response among wolves can be used to count and keep track of the animals.

Tricked by technology, scientists say, wolves will answer what amounts to a roll call triggered by a remotely placed speaker-recorder system called Howlbox. Howlbox howls, and the wolves howl back. Spectrogram technology then allows analysis that the human ear could never achieve — how many wolves have responded, and which wolves they are.

“With audio software, we’ll be able to identify each wolf on a different frequency, so we can count wolves individually, kind of like a fingerprint,” said David Ausband, a research associate at the University of Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, where Howlbox was developed.

The devices, using off-the-shelf technology, cost about $1,300, including $300 for a solar panel. Audio recordings in the wild are nothing new, of course. Bird and amphibian researchers, in particular, have long used recordings to find or flush out critters. Howlbox’s innovations are the tools of digital analysis and programmed instructions that tell Howlbox when to howl, when to sleep because the wolves are sleeping, and how to store each day’s file on a disk.

The experiment will begin with a pilot project in which four Howlboxes will be placed in remote areas of Idaho in June. That month was chosen because it is when the packs gather with their spring-born pups in what is called a rendezvous. [photopress:19howlbox.190.jpg,thumb,alignright]
Wolf pups will howl at almost anything, scientists say. But a test here in Montana in January also showed that adult wolves can also be fooled by a good sound system.

Money is a driving force behind the research, much of which is being paid for by the Nez Perce Indian tribe in Idaho, which has deep cultural links to the western gray wolf.

Traditional tracking tools like radio collars and aerial surveillance were used extensively after wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s under the Federal Endangered Species Act. But federal protections will end later this month, and so too will the deep pockets needed for flyovers and catching and collaring.

A spokesman for the Nez Perce tribe, Curt Mack, said Howlbox might be a cost-efficient answer.

Spotted in “Counting Wolves” at Popular Science.

The biodiversity issues aside – we’re eager to take a look at the device – which might be adaptable for other purposes: automated warning systems, locating disaster victims – especially if mounted on a portable platform, like a ‘bot of some sort.

SurvivalReview.com is about a month old, and features reviews of survival gear, and so far, it looks good. Its principal author is, we believe, a recent veteran of USAF. SR describes itself this way:

online destination for unbiased reviews on outdoor and survival gear. We put all of the products we review through the POT (”Painfully Obsessive Testing”) procedure to insure that the info you are getting is legit. We will not provide “paid reviews” from vendors or manufacturers. We will strive to have the best photos and videos supporting the evidence we put out there. Hopefully we can build an aware community of survival and outdoor gear lovers. As always if you ever have a product you’ve been thinking about investing in or knowing more about shoot us an email and let us know what it is. We will do our best to put it through the POT. Happy Reading!

We wish them well, more obsession and less pain, and hope to point our readers to SR’s reviews when we can. Here’s an excerpt from a recent review

:

The SureFire E1E Executive Flashlight is a high powered flashlight that fits easily in the palm of your hand. I love this little thing. It provides 15 lumens for 1.5 hours according to the specs but our testing has proven to exceed that runtime. The rugged Mil-Spec Type III hard anodized aluminum body has survived everything we’ve thrown at it. The glass at the business end is Tempered Pyrex, which is some tough stuff as well.

The tailcap switch is much more convenient than your typical MagLite. Push for momentary on, or press further to click it to constant-on. This could be very handy for signaling because short bursts on the tailcap switch makes morse easy.

A Heart Device Is Found Vulnerable to Hacker Attacks – New York Times

To the long list of objects vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, add the human heart.

The threat seems largely theoretical. But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.

They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person. In this case, the researcher were hacking into a device in a laboratory.

James C. McKinley, Jr.’s  report from Havana last Thursday describes Cuban government attempts to control information flow, including Internet access. Cubans have extremely limited web access, but they use memory stick and flash drives to store and distribute information:

A growing underground network of young people armed with computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress.Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly.

Mr. Alarcón seemed flummoxed when students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google. The video spread like wildfire through Havana, passed from person to person, and seriously damaged Mr. Alarcón’s reputation in some circles.

Something similar happened in late January when officials tried to impose a tax on the tips and wages of employees of foreign companies. Workers erupted in jeers and shouts when told about the new tax, a moment caught on a cellphone camera and passed along by memory sticks.

“It passes from flash drive to flash drive,” said Ariel, 33, a computer programmer, who, like almost everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his last name not be used for fear of political persecution. “This is going to get out of the government’s hands because the technology is moving so rapidly.”

Cuban officials have long limited the public’s access to the Internet and digital videos, tearing down unauthorized satellite dishes and keeping down the number of Internet cafes open to Cubans. Only one Internet cafe remains open in Old Havana, down from three a few years ago.

Hidden in a small room in the depths of the Capitol building, the state-owned cafe charges a third of the average Cuban’s monthly salary – about $5 – to use a computer for an hour. The other two former Internet cafes in central Havana have been converted into “postal services” that let Cubans send e-mail messages over a closed network on the island with no links to the Internet.

 Because Ms. Sánchez, like most Cubans, can get online for only a few minutes at a time, she writes almost all her essays beforehand, then goes to the one Internet cafe, signs on, updates her Web site, copies some key pages that interest her and walks out with everything on a memory stick. Friends copy the information, and it passes from hand to hand. “It’s a solid underground,” she said. “The government cannot control the information.”

It is spread by readers like Ricardo, 28, a philosophy student at the University of Havana who sells memory sticks to other students. European friends buy blank flash drives, and others carry them into Cuba, where the drives available through normal channels are very expensive and scarce.

Like many young Cubans, Ricardo plays a game of cat and mouse with the authorities. He doubts that the government will ever let ordinary citizens have access to the Internet in their homes. “That’s far too dangerous,” he said. “Daddy State doesn’t want you to get informed, so it preventively keeps you from surfing.”

James McKinley, “Cyber-Rebels in Cuba Defy State’s Limits,” The New York Times, March 6, 2008.

Doesn’t this make a good case for relaxing

the United States trade embargo on Cuba? With the limited access to information, the government’s control of information flowing is weakening. An influx of visitors from the United States would probably leadto more phone and data lines – and the more connections there are, the harder they’ll be to control. The more visitors, and the more luggage the bring, the more flash drives will be left behind.

See also:

• Wikipedia on Samizdat.
  
• Alarcon video on Youtube.
• Consenso  des de Cuba (in Spanish)
• Generacion Y Blog

  (in Spanish)

Politicker

– Inside Politics for Political Insider – has been started by Jared Kushner, the publisher of The New York Observer

. At present they’ve got about a dozen sites up, includings PoliticsNJ.com, (Now PolitickerNJ.com ) which was acquired, rather than being built by the Observer group. To the extent that it creates more detailed coverage of statehouses – and perhaps some competition to provide richer news streams, and more transparency, this could be a very good thing. The plan seems to be to use two or three full-timers in each state, and a much larger number of “editors” – who will come from the ranks of political insiders. Perhaps if the recruitment is sufficiently heterogeneous, biases will be overcome or at least clearly stated. Since New York isn’t one of the states that’s up yet, it’s difficult for us to judge – but the New Jersey site looks pretty good.

Aida Edemariam, in The Guardian

, interviews Joseph Stiglitz about his new book, written with Linda Bilmes, The Three-Trillion-Dollar War.

Taras Grescoe, (bio, slightly out of date,

here; in a Times Op-Ed called “How to Handle an Invasive Species? Eat It,” has a proposal for dealing with, among other invasive species, the Asian carp.

Closer to home, the Asian carp, which has been working its way north from the Mississippi Delta since the 1990s, is now on the verge of reaching the Great Lakes. This voracious invader, which weighs up to 100 pounds and eats half its body weight in food in a day, has gained notoriety for vaulting over boats and breaking the arms and noses of recreational anglers.

it is high time we developed a taste for invasive species

Having outcompeted all native species, it now represents 95 percent of the biomass of fish in the Illinois River and has been sighted within 25 miles of Lake Michigan. The only thing preventing this cold-water-loving species from infesting the Great Lakes, the largest body of fresh water in the world, is an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

One of the great unsung epics of the modern era is the worldwide diaspora of marine invasive species. Rising water temperatures brought on by global warming have allowed mauve stingers and harmful algae to thrive far beyond their native habitats. Supertankers and cargo ships suck up millions of gallons of ballast water in distant estuaries and ferry jellyfish, cholera bacteria, seaweed, diatoms, clams, water fleas, shrimp and even good-sized fish halfway around the globe.

Thanks to the ballast water discharged by ships entering American ports, Chinese mitten crabs now infest San Francisco Bay, and the Chesapeake’s oysters are preyed upon by veined rapa whelks native to the Sea of Japan. Sixty percent of the species in the St. Lawrence River were introduced by ships that ply the seaway to Lake Ontario. Continue reading →

Matthew Wald has a piece in yesterday’s Times about the rules governing the growing piles of waste from nuclear power plants, which the federal government is obliged to store – indefinitely, for all practical purposes. [photopress:NRC_yucca_drawing.jpg,thumb,pp_image]

What’s most disturbing isn’t actually new

– Wald’s explanation of the long-standing setup is troubling enough:

• The federal government has obliged itself to “dispose” of nuclear waste for a fee of one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour
• Because it hasn’t taken the waste away on time – nuclear utilities have sued the federal government for their costs in storing the waste until it’s picked up
• it was supposed to have started picking up the waste in 1998
• this is costing about $500 million per year; because these payments are the result of lawsuits – they’re paid out of a “judgment fund,”

According to Wald,

Initially, the Energy Department tried to pay the damages out of the Nuclear Waste Fund, the money collected from the nuclear utilities, plus interest, which comes to about $30 billion. But other utilities sued, saying that if the government did that, there might not be enough money left for the intended purpose, building a repository. So the government now pays the damages out of general revenues.

The damages are large relative to the annual budget of the Energy Department, which is about $25 billion. But the money comes out of the Treasury, not the Energy Department. Under a law passed in the Carter administration, such payments are recognized as obligations of the federal government and no further action by Congress is required to make them.

The money comes out of a federal account called the Judgment Fund, which is used to pay settlements and court-ordered payments. For the last five years, the fund has made payments in the range of $700 million to $1 billion, with the average payment being $80,000 to $150,000. In contrast, payments to utilities have been in the tens of millions.

Matthew Wald, “As Nuclear Waste Languishes, Expense to U.S. Rises,” The New York Times

, 17 February 2008.

Perhaps a useful goal here would be, at a minimum, to attribute these costs to the cost per kilowatt hour of nuclear power. Strong evidence that, before we see nuclear power as central to our energy problems, we hedge our bets with safer options.

Lawrence Livermore lab explanation of the Yucca Mountain project here.