NASA’s Swift satellite spots ‘dormant’ black hole devouring a star

London, Aug 25 : NASA's Swift satellite have spotted a truly extraordinary event, the awakening of a distant galaxy's dormant black hole as it shredded and consumed a star.

Two new studies provide new insights into a cosmic accident that has been streaming X-rays toward Earth since late March.

NASA's Swift satellite first alerted astronomers to intense and unusual high-energy flares from the new source in the constellation Draco.

"Incredibly, this source is still producing X-rays and may remain bright enough for Swift to observe into next year," said David Burrows, professor of astronomy at Penn State University and lead scientist for the mission's X-Ray Telescope instrument.

"It behaves unlike anything we've seen before," he stated,

The galaxy is so far away that it took the light from the event approximately

3.9 billion years to reach Earth.

The second study was led by Ashley Zauderer, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

It examines the unprecedented outburst through observations from numerous ground-based radio observatories, including the National Radio

Astronomy Observatory's Expanded Very Large Array (EVLA) near Socorro, N. M.

According to the new studies, the black hole in the galaxy hosting Swift J1644+57 may be twice the mass of the four-million-solar-mass black hole in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.

Soon, computers to tell your intensity of pain

Washington, Sept 14 : The need for a better way to objectively measure the presence or absence of pain instead of relying on patient self-reporting has long been an elusive goal in medicine.

But now, using advances in neuroimaging techniques, researchers including one of Indian-origin from the Stanford University School of Medicine trained a computer algorithm to interpret magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of the brain and determine whether someone is in pain.

Researchers took eight subjects, and put them in the brain-scanning machine. A heat probe was then applied to their forearms, causing moderate pain. The process was repeated with a second group of eight subjects.

The idea was to train a linear support vector machine - a computer algorithm invented in 1995 - on one set of individuals, and then use that computer model to accurately classify pain in a completely new set of individuals.

"We asked the computer to come up with what it thinks pain looks like," said Neil Chatterjee, currently a MD/PhD student at Northwestern University.

"Then we could measure how well the computer did." And it did amazingly well. The computer was successful 81 percent of the time.

Now, ‘robot legs’ that improve movement in stroke patients

London, Sept 24 : Dutch engineers have developed exoskeleton `robotic legs,' to help improve the movement of stroke patients.

The prototype device, called the Lower-extremity Powered ExoSkeleton, or LOPES, works by training the body and mind of a patient to recover a more natural step.

The machine, created by engineers at the University of Twente in Enschede in the Netherlands over several years, is also being tested on spinal injury patients who have recovered some restricted movement in their legs.


It can do all the walking for the patient, or it can offer targeted support in either one leg or with one element of the walking process. The machine can also detect what the patient is doing wrong.

"For instance, some people cannot lift their foot up appropriately. What this device does is it senses that the foot is not lifting properly," the BBC quoted Dr Edwin van Asseldonk, who is working on the project, as saying.

"It then compares it with a reference pattern and then exerts a force or torque to assist that subject in doing it," he explained.

Dr van Assledonk believes that by physically showing patients how to walk properly, the machine can help them develop the brain signals required to drive improved movement.

HP donates WebOS system code to open source developers

The code behind the mobile operating system, WebOS, is being released to open source software developers by Hewlett Packard.

The tech company acquired the software when it bought the smartphone maker Palm for $1.2bn (£767m) last year.

The firm said it would continue investing in the project to help third parties add enhancements.

"By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices," said the firm's president and chief executive, Meg Whitman.

Investment

A statement from the company said it would make the underlying code behind WebOS available under an open source licence. It said third-party developers, partners and HP's own engineers could then "deliver ongoing enhancements and new versions into the marketplace".

'U-turn'

Analysts said the decision secured the platform's future, at least in the short to medium term.

"Given how successful HP was in selling off their tablet computers cheaply when they scrapped the platform we always suspected there would be some sort of u-turn," said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe.

"However we still don't think it will become a major platform to rival Google's Android and Apple's iOS. It will appeal to many generic tablet makers out there - but its long term future will probably be to power HP printers, and other peripheral devices."

Colin Gillis, senior tech analyst at BGC Partners, said HP had ultimately missed an opportunity to disrupt the market with a line of mobile computers powered by its own software.

"It no longer has to contend with what would have been another viable operating system as it prepares to launch its Windows 8 tablets."

Technology: Will Google Wallet ever open on Verizon phones?

The statement also insisted that "Verizon does not block applications." Nevertheless, it hasn't provided a good explanation for why it asked Google to remove the Wallet app from Galaxy Nexus phones that were built to support it.

Here's the part of the blog post where irony comes in. The Net neutrality rules the FCC adopted last December bar broadband Internet service providers from blocking legal applications or services. But the rules provide a sweeping exemption for wireless carriers; the only legal apps they can't block are voice and video calling services that compete with the carriers' offerings. So if Verizon wanted to hold off Google Wallet until its Isis service was ready to go, it wouldn't face any obstacles from the FCC.

That provision was a compromise promoted by Google and Verizon in a framework for Net neutrality released in August 2010. "We both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly," their joint proposal declared. "In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the wireline [neutrality] principles to wireless," except for the one requiring ISPs to disclose their network-management practices.

David Sohn, senior policy counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, said it's in the public interest to maintain a competitively neutral environment in broadband that's open to new innovators. That innovation shouldn't be confined to wired networks, Sohn said. Proponents of the neutrality rules, he said, "certainly wanted to achieve a world where even in the wireless space, new entrants can come up with products and make them available without having to worry about competitively based discrimination from the carriers."

Harold Feld, legal director for Public Knowledge, said it's impossible to determine whether Verizon is stiff-arming Google for competitive reasons or just trying to work out some kinks in Google Wallet before rolling it out. That's because the FCC's permissive rules don't give Google -- or anyone else -- the opportunity to challenge the wireless company's decision. "Verizon is never going to come out and say, we're never going to let a rival payment service on our phone," Feld said, adding, "The disadvantage of not having a process [at the FCC] is, you never know."

Virgin Galactic Spacecraft Triumphs in Hair-Raising Test Flight

A recent test flight of Virgin Galactic's private SpaceShipTwo spacecraft caused some tense moments for those participating and observing, but ultimately a new safety feature on the suborbital craft allowed its three-person crew to regain control and bring it safely back down to Earth.


Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo during its first test flight in May

After being carried aloft by the WhiteKnightTwo aircraft in the test flight of Sept. 29, plans called for SpaceShipTwo to be released into a rapid descent, according to the log kept by Scaled Composites, the spacecraft's maker.

Upon release, however, "the spaceship experienced a downward pitch rate that caused a stall of the tails," the log explains. "The crew followed procedure, selecting the feather mode to revert to a benign condition."


Indeed, it is thanks to the spacecraft's feather system -- a safety feature that lets the SpaceShipTwo's tail section be rotated for smoother re-entry -- that the craft landed safely.

"
A Rotating Tail Structure

The first test of SpaceShipTwo's feather system took place in May. After that successful flight, George Whitesides, CEO and president of Virgin Galactic, called the craft's feathering re-entry mechanism "probably the single most important safety innovation within the whole system."

Re-entering the dense atmosphere from the vacuum of space has long been considered one of the most technically challenging parts of space flight, and Scaled Composites' feather innovation was inspired by the humble shuttlecock, which relies on an aerodynamic design and the laws of physics to control speed and attitude.

Specifically, once out of the atmosphere, SpaceShipTwo's entire tail structure can be rotated upwards to about 65 degrees. That feathered configuration allows an automatic control of attitude with the fuselage parallel to the horizon, creating considerable drag as the spacecraft descends through the upper regions of the atmosphere.

Hands-Free Re-entry Capability

The feather configuration is also highly stable, effectively giving the pilot a hands-free re-entry capability that has typically not been possible before, according to Virgin Galactic.

Eventually, at an altitude of aboutfollowing re-entry, the feather lowers to its original configuration and the spaceship becomes a glider for the flight back to the spaceport runway.

A Deal With NASA

This latest successful test of SpaceShipTwo is good news for NASA, which just last week signed a deal whereby the space agency will hire the craft to carry technology payloads into space.

The agreement calls for NASA to charter a full flight from Virgin Galactic, with the option of two additional charter flights. If all options are exercised, the contract value is US$4.5 million.

 Moses as its new vice president of operations. Moses served at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida as the Launch Integration Manager from 2008 until the landing of the final Shuttle mission in July 2011.

'The Only Logical Alternative'

SpaceShipTwo may be the only crewed suborbital vehicle in flight test today, but Interorbital Systems is working on orbital flight instead, Randa Milliron, CEO and cofounder of the company, told TechNewsWorld.


Suborbital flights are those that do reach space, but do not complete a full orbital revolution. Orbital flights, by contrast, are those that are placed on a trajectory on which they could remain in space for at least one orbit.

Either way, commercial companies such as Virgin Galactic and Interorbital Systems are really "the only logical alternative" for NASA right now, Milliron said.

"Mojave is still the center of a huge space revolution," she added. "For us, orbital is real space. That's the only place to be."

US Agency Sharpens Tool for Protecting Software Code

Software programmers work hard to produce secure, error-free code. Of course, bad things can happen -- but really, with increasingly diligent effort, how many things can go wrong? Quite a few, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Because cybersecurity is a national goal affecting both the private and public sector, NIST and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are involved in a joint program to protect the development and use of software.

NIST has just released an enhanced tool that is designed to help programmers check for errors in software development that can cause costly operational problems. The tool also offers increased protection against hackers.

Researchers at the agency have dramatically enlarged a database that helps programmers detect flaws in software. The purpose of the reference resource is to provide researchers, developers and end users with a database of both known software security errors and fixes for these flaws. The newly released SAMATE Reference Dataset (SRD), version 4.0, is freely available online and can be used for both proprietary and open source applications, including Linux.

Complex software configurations such as those used for operating systems or Web browsers usually require multiple programmers to write up to millions of lines of computer code. The code has to be checked for operational and security vulnerabilities and errors through the use of static analyzers. But the analyzers can find only the weaknesses they have been programmed to find.

The SRD 4.0 tool has vastly increased the field of potential weaknesses that need to be checked. The NIST release now covers 175 broad categories of weaknesses -- an addition of 100 categories from the existing level.

"Within those broad categories there are numerous specific instances -- or cases -- of code errors, which we estimate now at about 60,000," Paul E. Black, Ph.D., the NIST lead for the SAMATE project, told CRM Buyer.

Prior to the issuance of the 4.0 version of NIST's tool, the earlier version covered only 2,000 cases. Each specific case is about a page of computer code showing a problematic way of composing functions, loops, or logic operations written in languages such as Java, C and C++. The dataset is fully searchable by language, type of weakness and code construct. Search results are available in a downloadable Zip file.


"Use of the SRD 4.0 tool is not limited to any sector. We welcome government, academia and the private sector to fully utilize it. In fact, the private sector can use the SRD to learn what problems should be avoided and to understand how these tools can help improve their software," Black said.

Within the private sector, companies can use the tool directly with their programming staffs, or vendors who offer code security services and products can use it as a benchmark for their offerings, he added.


"It brings rigor into software assurance, so that the public can be more confident that there are fewer dangerous weaknesses in the software they use," he said.

"Any objective framework for evaluating research efforts is valuable," Gwyn Fisher, chief technology officer for Klocwork, told CRM Buyer.

"The ongoing effort by NIST to develop such a framework is very much appreciated by the community and provides a significant benchmark that is vital to any realistic measurement of improvement," he added.

"This program is where government organizations can play a perfect role, in fact, as NIST has done in other research areas over the years. There is no competitive aspect to this, and its very existence is of great value to the research and vendor communities," Fisher said. Klocwork has taken part in NIST-sponsored activities.

"A variety of tools, techniques, processes, and training are needed to create and maintain secure applications," Michael Coates, OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) board chairman, told CRM Buyer.

"The data provided by SAMATE is another repository of knowledge that can be used for developer education or to help increase the effectiveness of static analysis tools, furthering the ultimate goal of increasing application security," he said.


"The area of static code analysis for security can be complex, and companies must consider the accuracy and comprehensiveness of such a tool against other options. The SAMATE Reference Dataset can serve as a benchmark for companies to compare and contrast a variety of tools against a common baseline," Coates said.

NIST has maintained a working relationship with private industry under the SAMATE project.

"In fact, we have received test suite contributions to our repository from many private sources, including security product vendors, and we have received much valuable input from the private sector in shaping the direction of the SRD and the Static Analysis Tool Exposition," Black said.

NIST plans to continue to improve the tool, and work toward covering more CWE applications.

"We would like to expand into more software languages," said Black, "and even into the software design phase that precedes the composition phase."

Samsung up after beating Apple in court

   
SEOUL: Shares in Samsung Electronics Co rose nearly 2 percent early on Monday after a U.S. court rejected a bid by Apple Inc to ban sales of Samsung's Galaxy line of products in the United States.

The ruling deprived the iPhone and iPad maker of crucial leverage in a global patent battle between the two companies.

Shares in Samsung climbed 1.5 percent minutes after the market open,
  

Bank Technology News Names Netuitive "Top 10 Tech Company to Watch"

RESTON, VA, Dec 05, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Netuitive, Inc., a leading provider of predictive analytics software for IT, today announced it has been named one of Bank Technology News "Top 10 Tech Companies to Watch" featured in the December issue.

Cloud, predictive analytics, security and mobile payment providers lead the publications' list of the most intriguing vendors for the banking industry in 2012. Netuitive's predictive analytics software was recognized for its ability to reduce operational risk by assuring the stability of mission critical applications.

Powered by its patented Behavior Learning Engine(TM), Netuitive software correlates real-time performance and application data from a multitude of data sources and presents it as a composite "health score" for each application or service. This composite view enables early detection of performance anomalies that could be leading indicators of a cascading application failure or service degradation.

Morgan Stanley uses Netuitive's software to manage its private cloud environment encompassing more than 100,000 virtual desktops, and for which Netuitive was awarded Morgan Stanley's prestigious "CTO Award for Innovation" earlier this year.

"Large global banks were early adopters of virtualization and the first to address performance challenges in exponentially more complex IT environments," said Nicola Sanna, President & CEO, Netuitive. "They quickly learned that only through machine-driven analysis could they achieve service level visibility and ensure quality of experience for critical services. Predictive analytics is now becoming recognized as a must-have for application performance management in large environments made even more complex by virtualization and cloud computing."


About Bank Technology News Established in 1987, Bank Technology News is the source for financial service technology coverage. It is read by IT executives, senior banking professionals, solution providers and analysts who are actively involved in recommending, purchasing, implementing and supporting the technology necessary to carry out an institution's strategic vision.

About Netuitive Netuitive provides predictive analytics software for IT. Netuitive replaces human guesswork with automated mathematics and analysis to forecast, identify and resolve IT performance issues before they impact quality of service. Hundreds of customers, including eight of the 10 largest banks, rely on Netuitive to proactively manage the performance of their critical applications and underlying IT infrastructures -- physical, virtual and cloud. Industry recognition includes the 2011 "CTO Award for Innovation" from Morgan Stanley, the 2011 CODiE Award for "Best Systems Management Solution," the 2010 EMA Award for "Best Analytics," and "Best of VMworld" Awards in 2007, 2009 and 2011. For more information,