Voyager I Approaches Interstellar Space

Dec. 4, 2012: Eleven billion miles from Earth, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a "magnetic highway" that connects our solar system to interstellar space. This could be one of Voyager 1's last steps on its long journey to the stars.

"Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun's environment, we now can taste what it's like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway," said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We believe this is the last leg of our journey to interstellar space. Our best guess is it's likely just a few months to a couple years away. The new region isn't what we expected, but we've come to expect the unexpected from Voyager."

The new results were described on Dec. 3rd at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

The "magnetic highway" is a place in the far reaches of the solar system where the sun's magnetic field connects to the magnetic field of interstellar space. This connection allows charged particles from inside the heliosphere (the magnetic bubble that surrounds the sun) to zoom out; and it allows charged particles from outside to stream in. When Voyager 1 is in the magnetic highway, onboard particle sensors can directly sample material from beyond our solar system.

Since December 2004, when Voyager 1 crossed a point in space called the termination shock, the spacecraft has been exploring the heliosphere's outer layer or "heliosheath." In recent years, the speed of the solar wind around Voyager 1 has slowed to zero, and the intensity of the magnetic field has increased.

According to data from two onboard instruments that measure charged particles, Voyager 1 first entered the magnetic highway on July 28, 2012. The region ebbed away and flowed toward Voyager 1 several times. The spacecraft entered the region again Aug. 25 and the environment has been stable since.

Spacecraft data revealed the magnetic field became stronger each time Voyager entered the highway region; however, the direction of the magnetic field lines did not change, as researchers would expect if Voyager 1 had truly entered interstellar space.

"We are in a magnetic region unlike any we've been in before -- about 10 times more intense than before the termination shock -- but the magnetic field data show no indication we're in interstellar space," said Leonard Burlaga, a Voyager magnetometer team member based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Voyager 1's exit from the solar system is, apparently, yet to come. But the magnetic highway is giving it a taste of what lies ahead.
　
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/03dec_voyager1

More Information

Voyager 1 and 2 were launched 16 days apart in 1977. After touring the outer planets in the 1980s, the two spacecraft have made a dash for the stars. Voyager 1 is now the most distant human-made object: 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from the sun. The signal from Voyager 1 takes approximately 17 hours to travel to Earth. Voyager 2, the longest continuously operated spacecraft, is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from the sun. While Voyager 2 has seen changes similar to those seen by Voyager 1, the changes are much more gradual. Scientists do not think Voyager 2 has reached the magnetic highway.

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The Mystery of the Mary Celeste

The Mary Celeste

(or Marie Céleste as it is fictionally referred to by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and others after him) was an American merchant brigantine famous for having been discovered on 4 December 1872 in the Atlantic Ocean, unmanned and apparently abandoned (one lifeboat was missing, along with its 7 crew), although the weather was fine and her crew had been experienced and capable seamen. The Mary Celeste was in seaworthy condition and still under sail heading toward the Strait of Gibraltar. She had been at sea for a month and had over six months' worth of food and water on board. Her cargo was virtually untouched and the personal belongings of passengers and crew were still in place, including valuables. The crew was never seen or heard from again. The Mary Celeste crew's disappearance is often cited as the greatest maritime mystery of all time.

The fate of her crew has been the subject of much speculation. Theories range from alcoholic fumes, to underwater earthquakes, to waterspouts, to paranormal explanations involving extraterrestrial life, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), sea monsters, and the phenomenon of the Bermuda Triangle, although the Mary Celeste is not known to have sailed through the Bermuda Triangle area. The Mary Celeste is often described as the archetypal ghost ship, since she was discovered derelict without any apparent explanation, and her name has become a synonym for similar occurrences. The ship was said to be "cursed" and had a long history of disasters and catastrophes, and three captains died on the ship. The ship was destroyed in 1885 when it was intentionally wrecked off the coast of Haiti in an attempted insurance fraud.

The Mary Celeste was a 282-gross ton brigantine. She was built by the shipbuilders of Joshua Dewis in 1861 as the ship Amazon at the village of Spencer’s Island, Nova Scotia. She was the first of many large ships that were built in that small community. The Amazon was owned by a group of eight investors from Cumberland County and Kings County, Nova Scotia, led by the shipbuilder Joshua Dewis, and William Henry Bigalow, a local merchant. The Amazon was registered at the nearby Nova Scotia town of Parrsboro, the closest local port of registry.

The Amazon's first captain, Robert McLellan, son of one of the owners, contracted pneumonia nine days after taking command, and he died at the very beginning of her maiden voyage. He was the first of three captains to die aboard her. John Nutting Parker, the next captain of the Amazon, struck a fishing boat, and had to steer her back to the shipyard for repairs. At the shipyard, a fire broke out in the middle of the ship. Her first trans-Atlantic crossing was also disastrous for her next captain, after she collided with another vessel in the English Channel near Dover, England. This resulted in the dismissal of the new captain.

After this awkward beginning, the brigantine had six profitable and uneventful years under her Nova Scotian owners. She travelled to the West Indies, Central America and South America, and transported a wide range of cargoes. In 1867, the ship ran aground during a storm off Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. After she was salvaged, she was sold for $1,750 to Richard Haines of New York, and was repaired at a cost of $8,825.03. In 1868, she was transferred to the American registry, and the following year was renamed the Mary Celeste. The new owners' intention was to take her across the Atlantic and make a profit trading with the Adriatic ports.

On November 5, 1872, under command of Captain Briggs, the Mary Celeste docked on New York City’s East River and took on board a cargo of 1,701 barrels of commercial alcohol intended for fortifying Italian wines on behalf of Meissner Ackermann & Co. It was worth about $35,000; the ship and cargo together were insured for $46,000. The Mary Celeste then set sail from Staten Island for Genoa, Italy.

In addition to her captain and a crew of seven, she carried the captain's wife, who had sailed with her husband many times, and their two-year-old daughter. Thus ten people were aboard. Briggs had spent most of his life at sea, and had captained at least five ships and owned many more. The crew for this voyage included a Dane and four Germans, but all spoke fluent English, had exemplary records, and were considered experienced, trustworthy and capable seamen. The first mate and cook were Americans.

Before the Mary Celeste left New York, Captain Briggs spoke with an old friend, David Reed Morehouse, from Nova Scotia, who was captain of the Canadian merchant ship Dei Gratia, also a brigantine. Briggs, Morehouse, and their wives had dinner together on the evening of November 4. Briggs and Morehouse had served together as sailors when they were young. During the conversation, they discovered they had a similar course across the Atlantic Ocean, through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean.

However, Morehouse was still waiting for his cargo to arrive when the Mary Celeste left port on November 5. Morehouse's cargo eventually arrived and on November 15, the Dei Gratia finally set off with 1,735 barrels (275.8 m³) of petroleum in her hold. The Dei Gratia left New York harbour seven days after the Mary Celeste (some sources say eight days later).

Sporadic bad weather had been reported in the Atlantic throughout October, although the Dei Gratia encountered none and her journey across the ocean in November was uneventful. Just short of a month after leaving port, on December 4, 1872 (some reports give December 5, owing to a lack of standard time zones in the 19th century), at approximately 13:00, the helmsman of the Dei Gratia, John Johnson, sighted a ship about five miles (8 km) off their port bow through his spyglass. The position of the Dei Gratia was approximately 38 degrees 20 minutes north and 17 degrees 15 minutes west, some 600 miles west of Portugal. Johnson's keen, experienced eyes detected almost at once that there was something strangely wrong with the other vessel. She was yawing slightly, and her sails did not look right, being slightly torn. Johnson alerted his second officer, John Wright, who looked and had the same feelings about her. They informed the captain. As they moved closer, they saw the ship was the Mary Celeste. Captain Morehouse wondered why the Mary Celeste had not already reached Italy, as she had a head start on his own ship. According to the account given by the crew of the Dei Gratia, they approached to 400 yards from the Mary Celeste and cautiously observed her for two hours. She was under sail, yet sailing erratically on a starboard tack, and slowly heading toward the Strait of Gibraltar. They concluded she was drifting after seeing no one at the helm or even on deck, though the ship was flying no distress signal.

Oliver Deveau, chief mate of the Dei Gratia, boarded the Mary Celeste. He reported he did not find anyone on board, and said that "the whole ship was a thoroughly wet mess". There was only one operational pump, two apparently having been disassembled, with a lot of water between decks and three and a half feet (1.1 m) of water in the hold. However, the ship was not sinking and was still seaworthy.

All of the ship's papers were missing, except for the captain's logbook. The forehatch and the lazarette were both open, although the main hatch was sealed. The ship's clock was not functioning, and the compass was destroyed; the sextant and marine chronometer were missing. The only lifeboat on the Mary Celeste, a yawl located above the main hatch, was also missing. The peak halyard, used to hoist the main sail, had disappeared. A rope, perhaps the peak halyard, was found tied to the ship very strongly and the other end, very frayed, was trailing in the water behind the ship.

Popular stories of untouched breakfasts with still-warm cups of tea on the cabin table are untrue and most likely originated with fictionalized accounts of the incident, especially one by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. At the inquiry, Oliver Deveau stated that he saw no preparations for eating and there was nothing to eat or drink in the cabin.

Deveau returned to his ship and reported to the captain. Two men, Charles Augustus Anderson and Charles Lund, then boarded the Mary Celeste. The cargo of 1,701 barrels of alcohol Deveau reported was in good order. However, when it was eventually unloaded in Genoa, nine barrels were found to be empty.

A six-month supply of uncontaminated food and fresh water was still aboard, and the crew's personal possessions and artifacts were left untouched, making a piracy raid seem extremely unlikely. It appeared the vessel had been abandoned in a hurry. There was no sign of a struggle, or any sort of violence.
As Dei Gratia was a Canadian vessel of British registry, Captain Morehouse sailed the Dei Gratia to Gibraltar, his first mate Oliver Deveau sailed the Mary Celeste to the same destination, arriving a week-and-a-half later. An investigation was held in the Vice Admiralty Court in Gibraltar to determine the circumstances of the Mary Celeste and apportion marine salvage rights.

During the sitting of the Vice Admiralty Court, the judge praised the crew of the Dei Gratia for their courage and skill. The Attorney General of Gibraltar, Frederick Solly—Flood QC, in his role as Queen’s Proctor to the court, deemed it necessary to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate the vessel and determine the causes of its abandonment in the middle of the ocean. Copies of the several log entries were made. The inquiry lasted three months and attracted media attention worldwide.

The Mary Celeste was visited by John Austin, surveyor of shipping in Gibraltar, assisted by an inspector, John McCabe. A local diver and marine expert named Ricardo Portunato was sent to examine in detail the exterior of the hull on the behalf of the Vice Admiralty Court. Austin discovered what he believed to be a few spots of blood in the captain's cabin, an "uncleaned" ornamental cutlass in Briggs' cabin, a knife (without blood), and a deep gash on a railing that he equated with a blunt object or an axe, but he did not find such a weapon on board. Portunato believed the damage was recent.

The results of the commission of inquiry encouraged the authorities in Washington, D.C. to send instructions to all consuls and officers in their ports to report anybody matching the description of Briggs or other crew members of the Mary Celeste, or any group that could have landed sailors belonging to the Mary Celeste. Word was also sent to look for any of the items missing from the Mary Celeste, such as the two pumps or her navigation equipment. No information was reported. Locals at ports in the Azores were questioned, but none was able to provide assistance.

James Winchester considered selling the Mary Celeste after the mysterious events for which she was now notable. His mind was made up when the vessel claimed the life of his father, Henry Winchester-Vinters, who drowned in an accident in Boston, Massachusetts when she was brought back to America. Winchester sold the Mary Celeste at an enormous loss. Over the next 13 years, the ship changed hands 17 times. By then, the Mary Celeste was in very poor condition.

Her last captain and owner, identified as G. C. Parker, made no profit whatsoever and deliberately wrecked the Mary Celeste in an insurance fraud in the Caribbean Sea on January 3, 1885. She was loaded with an over-insured cargo of scrap, including boots and cat food. The plan did not work, as the ship failed to sink after being run on to Rochelais reef off the western coast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti and south of Gonave Island. Parker then tried to burn the wreck, but even after the fire the vessel remained intact, although the ship's log was destroyed along with Benjamin Briggs' prior entries in it.

Parker then filed an exorbitant insurance claim for a cargo that never existed; a subsequent insurance investigation revealed the fraud. Parker sold the salvage rights for $500, claiming that there were 125 casks of Bass ale on board, 975 barrels of herring and $1000 in cutlery among other items. None of these items were actually on board. The ship and its cargo was insured by five companies for a total of $34,000.

Captain Parker was arrested, and put on trial for barratry, or the intentional destruction of a vessel. At the time, the sentence for doing so was death, so despite the clear evidence of the fraud and of Parker's guilt, the jury deadlocked, with five of the twelve jurors refusing to send him to death. Jurors routinely refused to convict people of this crime due to the death penalty, and three years later, the law was revised so that it was no longer a capital offense.

Despite Parker's acquittal, nearly everyone indicted for actions related to the shipwreck went bust, and Captain Parker himself died three months later.

The partially burnt hulk of the Mary Celeste was deemed beyond repair and she was left to eventually slip off the shoal and sink.

Speculation and Theories about the abandonment of the ship in 1872

• Piracy
• Seaquake
• Explosion
• Mutiny
• Drunkenness
• Premature Abandonment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste

The strange art of computer scheduling

In computer science, scheduling is the method by which threads, processes or data flows are given access to system resources (e.g. processor time, communications bandwidth). This is usually done to load balance a system effectively or achieve a target quality of service. The need for a scheduling algorithm arises from the requirement for most modern systems to perform multitasking (execute more than one process at a time) and multiplexing (transmit multiple flows simultaneously).

The scheduler is concerned mainly with:

• Throughput - The total number of processes that complete their execution per time unit.
• Latency, specifically:
• Turnaround time - total time between submission of a process and its completion.
• Response time - amount of time it takes from when a request was submitted until the first response is produced.
• Fairness / Waiting Time - Equal CPU time to each process (or more generally appropriate times according to each process' priority). It is the time for which the process remains in the ready queue.

In practice, these goals often conflict (e.g. throughput versus latency), thus a scheduler will implement a suitable compromise. Preference is given to any one of the above mentioned concerns depending upon the user's needs and objectives.

In real-time environments, such as embedded systems for automatic control in industry (for example robotics), the scheduler also must ensure that processes can meet deadlines, this is crucial for keeping the system stable. Scheduled tasks are sent to mobile devices and managed through an administrative back end.
　

Types of operating system schedulers

Operating systems may feature up to three distinct types of scheduler, a long-term scheduler (also known as an admission scheduler or high-level scheduler), a mid-term or medium-term scheduler and a short-term scheduler. The names suggest the relative frequency with which these functions are performed. The scheduler is an operating system module that selects the next jobs to be admitted into the system and the next process to run
.

Long-term scheduling

The long-term, or admission scheduler, decides which jobs or processes are to be admitted to the ready queue (in the Main Memory); that is, when an attempt is made to execute a program, its admission to the set of currently executing processes is either authorized or delayed by the long-term scheduler. Thus, this scheduler dictates what processes are to run on a system, and the degree of concurrency to be supported at any one time - i.e.: whether a high or low amount of processes are to be executed concurrently, and how the split between input output intensive and CPU intensive processes is to be handled. In modern operating systems, this is used to make sure that real time processes get enough CPU time to finish their tasks. Without proper real time scheduling, modern GUI interfaces would seem sluggish. The long term queue exists in the Hard Disk or the "Virtual Memory".

Long-term scheduling is also important in large-scale systems such as batch processing systems, computer clusters, supercomputers and render farms. In these cases, special purpose job scheduler software is typically used to assist these functions, in addition to any underlying admission scheduling support in the operating system.
　

Medium-term scheduling

The medium-term scheduler temporarily removes processes from main memory and places them on secondary memory (such as a disk drive) or vice versa. This is commonly referred to as "swapping out" or "swapping in" (also incorrectly as "paging out" or "paging in"). The medium-term scheduler may decide to swap out a process which has not been active for some time, or a process which has a low priority, or a process which is page faulting frequently, or a process which is taking up a large amount of memory in order to free up main memory for other processes, swapping the process back in later when more memory is available, or when the process has been unblocked and is no longer waiting for a resource. [Stallings, 396] [Stallings, 370]

In many systems today (those that support mapping virtual address space to secondary storage other than the swap file), the medium-term scheduler may actually perform the role of the long-term scheduler, by treating binaries as "swapped out processes" upon their execution. In this way, when a segment of the binary is required it can be swapped in on demand, or "lazy loaded". [Stallings, 394]

　

Short-term scheduling

The short-term scheduler (also known as the CPU scheduler) decides which of the ready, in-memory processes are to be executed (allocated a CPU) next following a clock interrupt, an I/O interrupt, an operating system call or another form of signal. Thus the short-term scheduler makes scheduling decisions much more frequently than the long-term or mid-term schedulers - a scheduling decision will at a minimum have to be made after every time slice, and these are very short. This scheduler can be preemptive, implying that it is capable of forcibly removing processes from a CPU when it decides to allocate that CPU to another process, or non-preemptive (also known as "voluntary" or "co-operative"), in which case the scheduler is unable to "force" processes off the CPU. In most cases short-term scheduler is written in assembly because it is a critical part of the operating system. the short term scheduling is also known as cpu scheduling.
　

Dispatcher

Another component involved in the CPU-scheduling function is the dispatcher. The dispatcher is the module that gives control of the CPU to the process selected by the short-term scheduler. This function involves the following:

• Switching context
• Switching to user mode
• Jumping to the proper location in the user program to restart that program

The dispatcher should be as fast as possible, since it is invoked during every process switch. The time it takes for the dispatcher to stop one process and start another running is known as the dispatch latency. [Galvin, 155].
　

Scheduling disciplines

Scheduling disciplines are algorithms used for distributing resources among parties which simultaneously and asynchronously request them. Scheduling disciplines are used in routers (to handle packet traffic) as well as in operating systems (to share CPU time among both threads and processes), disk drives (I/O scheduling), printers (print spooler), most embedded systems, etc.

The main purposes of scheduling algorithms are to minimize resource starvation and to ensure fairness amongst the parties utilizing the resources. Scheduling deals with the problem of deciding which of the outstanding requests is to be allocated resources. There are many different scheduling algorithms. In this section, we introduce several of them.

In packet-switched computer networks and other statistical multiplexing, the notion of a scheduling algorithm is used as an alternative to first-come first-served queuing of data packets.

The simplest best-effort scheduling algorithms are round-robin, fair queuing (a max-min fair scheduling algorithm), proportionally fair scheduling and maximum throughput. If differentiated or guaranteed quality of service is offered, as opposed to best-effort communication, weighted fair queuing may be utilized.
In advanced packet radio wireless networks such as HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access ) 3.5G cellular system, channel-dependent scheduling may be used to take advantage of channel state information. If the channel conditions are favourable, the throughput and system spectral efficiency may be increased. In even more advanced systems such as LTE, the scheduling is combined by channel-dependent packet-by-packet dynamic channel allocation, or by assigning IFDMA multi-carriers or other frequency-domain equalization components to the users that best can utilize them.
Scheduling algorithms include

• First in first out
• Shortest remaining time
• Fixed pre-emptive scheduling
• Round-robin scheduling
• Multilevel queue scheduling

　　

How to choose a scheduling algorithm

When designing an operating system, a programmer must consider which scheduling algorithm will perform best for the use the system is going to see. There is no universal "best" scheduling algorithm, and many operating systems use extended or combinations of the scheduling algorithms above. For example, Windows NT/XP/Vista uses a m ultilevel feedback queue, a combination of fixed priority preemptive scheduling, round-robin, and first in first out. In this system, processes can dynamically increase or decrease in priority depending on if it has been serviced already, or if it has been waiting extensively. Every priority level is represented by its own queue, with round-robin scheduling amongst the high priority processes and FIFO among the lower ones. In this sense, response time is short for most processes, and short but critical system processes get completed very quickly. Since processes can only use one time unit of the round-robin in the highest priority queue, starvation can be a problem for longer high priority processes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduling_(computing)

Scientists Study an Immortal Jellyfish

There is this genuinely immortal jellyfish called Turritopsis dohrnii that lives forever. When threatened or damaged, it reverts to its primal form as a polyp and then regrows itself back into an adult jellyfish.

Nathanial Rich from the New York Times magazine has written a long and fascinating article about this rare phenomenon and the researchers who are looking into it. It was published in the Times on November 28, 2012.

Scientists themselves do not understand how this jellyfish ages in reverse. There aren’t many scientific experts on jellyfish. This particular creature is very hard to keep alive in a laboratory. But there is one Japanese scientist, Shin Kubota, who is able to keep these immortal jellyfish alive in his laboratory in Shirihama, a beach town in Japan.

Shirihama is a spot of natural beauty and curiousity that even includes natural saltwater hot springs. Kubota uses these springs and then heads off to the laboratory to take care of the rare jellyfish. He also writes papers for scientific journals, sings his own kareoke songs, and philosophizes about whether man is ready for immortality. He thinks we are smart enough to learn what these rare jellyfish are doing, but he wonders of the human spirit is still too violent and moody to embrace and profit from immortality.
It’s a fascinating story, found at this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish-unlock-the-secret-of-immortality.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Positive Quiddity: Young Code Crackers

Introduction by the blog author

I’m including this story from Brown University because it is a demonstration of the flexibility of young minds. An annotated Roger Williams book included coded notes that could not be deciphered for centuries. But undergraduate students from different disciplines cracked it. Young adults who themselves think differently have special skills for seeing through camouflage.

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Reading outside the lines Brown students
are deciphering shorthand notes thought
to be work of Roger Williams
By MICHAEL P. McKINNEY, [Brown University] Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE –– A code is scrawled in the margins of a 17thcentury book kept in a Brown University library. The code’s author is thought to be Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. The shorthand symbols on page after page have remained mysteries for centuries, but now some Brown University undergraduates are cracking the code. A junior with a math concentration, a junior and senior both majoring in history, and a senior in American studies have spent four months combining disciplines to translate this sort of lost language and to divine, using historical events as a guide, what they believe one of the nation’s formative figures jotted down and why. The underlying book, "An Essay Towards the Reconciling of Differences Among Christians," which is by another author whose identity the students said is unknown, is missing the title page, but its more than 230 pages bear printed paragraphs in older English. But it’s what is written by hand above and around that print –– books within a book –– that the four students say is being revealed. "Roger Williams is writing all over this book in code –– it’s like something out of Harry Potter, but Harry Potter set in Rhode Island," said Ted Widmer, director of the university’s John Carter Brown Library, where the book has been since 1817. "It was in a language no one could speak." Lucas Mason-Brown, of Belmont, Mass., a junior with a math concentration, used a technique called "frequency analysis," which involves making a list of the symbols and determining their frequency of use to sort out their meaning. Mason-Brown said the shorthand on the book’s first 160 pages is fully translated. It is Williams copying information from another work, Peter Heylin’s "Cosmographie in Four Books," published in 1654.

Williams’ writing, according to the students, focused on various parts of Europe and made characterizations — generalizations, even — about people living there. The shorthand follows the geography that Heylin’s book presents, starting in Italy and including France, Spain, northern Europe, the British Isles and Russia. Williams’ writing also mentions Roman and medieval place names. Simon Liebling, a senior history major from Highland Park, N.J., said the students’ research suggests that Williams did the shorthand copying of text during his final trip to England so he could bring the knowledge back to America. Mason-Brown said the time of Williams’ final visit to England coincides with the publishing date of Heylin’s work. There was no Internet, no promise of finding a book in stores or libraries, no copier machines, but Williams had been trained in shorthand as a child. "This was a way for him to write extremely quickly," Liebling said. Another reason for shorthand could have included saving space, given the cost of paper, Mason-Brown said. He said the shorthand on the book’s final 20 pages is now partially translated, and the students say it appears to have a markedly different focus, one that includes mention of eunuchs and hermaphrodites. The students think that Williams might have used the back of the book to copy information from another author’s work but have not yet pinpointed what or whose it was. But it is the shorthand in the middle of "An Essay Towards the Reconciling of Differences Among Christians" that may prove most interesting –– and, so far, more difficult to decipher. Mason-Brown said he believes Williams was not copying but putting down his own thoughts in the book’s middle section. Chris Norris-LeBlanc, a junior from Pawtucket, said there are differences in the structure of the shorthand. And there is mention of a Williams contemporary, John Eliot, a Puritan who was the first to print a Bible in America, in the 1600s. The Williams project grew out of a presentation Widmer gave about a year ago to alumni gathering on campus. One of the people in the audience, Bill Twaddell, brought up the mystery book, Widmer said, and that eventually led to Widmer and some university faculty talking about what it would take to break the code. A call went out seeking students for an independent study. The students say there is a lot of work left –– more efforts to translate the shorthand and more understanding of what Williams chose to write. The research probably won’t be finished by the end of this academic year, they said. Mason-Brown and the other students, including senior Katharine Mead of Owego, N.Y., and Norris-LeBlanc meet each week or every other week, typically in a café at the university’s student center, to go over what they’ve done and to determine the next tasks. "If this tells us anything about Roger Williams," Mason-Brown said, "it’s that he is a genuine scholar." The students said they have access to many professors who gave them lists of possible source materials to see what matched the shorthand. Another significant thing in cracking the code is the Internet. Unlike Williams’ long trip to England, the students can log on and quickly access a text held at, say, Cambridge University, according to Norris-Le-Blanc. Mason-Brown said he and the other students are still talking about what they might do with their research. "As a final project, we’re going to try to put something together," Norris-LeBlanc said.

http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/images/Reading%20outside%20the%20lines.pdf

University of Georgia Vaccine Research

Man’s best friend: Common canine virus may lead to new vaccines for deadly human diseases
By James Hataway, November 27, 2012

Athens, Ga. - Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered that a virus commonly found in dogs may serve as the foundation for the next great breakthrough in human vaccine development.

Although harmless in humans, parainfluenza virus 5, or PIV5, is thought to contribute to upper respiratory infections in dogs, and it is a common target for canine vaccines designed to prevent kennel cough. In a paper published recently in PLOS ONE, researchers describe how this virus could be used in humans to protect against diseases that have eluded vaccine efforts for decades.

"We can use this virus as a vector for all kinds of pathogens that are difficult to vaccinate against," said Biao He, the study's principal investigator and professor of infectious diseases in UGA's College of Veterinary Medicine. "We have developed a very strong H5N1 flu vaccine with this technique, but we are also working on vaccines for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria."

PIV5 does not cause disease in humans, as our immune system is able to recognize and destroy it. By placing antigens from other viruses or parasites inside PIV5, it effectively becomes a delivery vehicle that exposes the human immune system to important pathogens and allows it to create the antibodies that will protect against future infection.

This approach not only ensures full exposure to the vaccine but also is much safer because it does not require the use of attenuated, or weakened, pathogens. For example, an HIV vaccine delivered by PIV5 would contain only those parts of the HIV virus necessary to create immunity, making it impossible to contract the disease from the vaccine.

"Safety is always our number one concern," said He, who is also a Georgia Research Alliance distinguished investigator and member of the Faculty of Infectious Diseases. "PIV5 makes it much easier to vaccinate without having to use live pathogens."

Using viruses as a delivery mechanism for vaccines is not a new technique, but previous efforts have been fraught with difficulty. If humans or animals already possess a strong immunity to the virus used for delivery, the vaccine is unlikely to work, as it will be destroyed by the immune system too quickly.

"Pre-existing immunity to viruses is the main reason most of these vaccines fail," He said.
　
But in this latest study, He and his colleagues demonstrate that immunity to PIV5 does not limit its effectiveness as a vaccine delivery mechanism, even though many animals-including humans- already carry antibodies against it.

In their experiments, the researchers found that a single dose inoculation using PIV5 protected mice from the influenza strain that causes seasonal flu. Another single dose experimental vaccine also protected mice from the highly pathogenic and deadly H5N1 virus commonly known as bird flu.

This recent work is a culmination of more than fifteen years of research and experimentation with the PIV5 virus, and He has confidence that it will serve as an excellent foundation for vaccines to treat diseases in both animals and humans.

"I believe we have the best H5N1 vaccine candidate in existence," He said. "But we have also opened up a big field for a host of new vaccines."

UGA Faculty of Infectious Diseases 

The University of Georgia Faculty of Infectious Diseases was created in 2007 to address existing and emerging infectious disease threats more effectively by integrating multidisciplinary research in animal, human and ecosystem health. Researchers from across the university focus on epidemiology, host-pathogen interactions, the evolution of infectious diseases, disease surveillance and predictors and the development of countermeasures such as vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. For more information about the Faculty of Infectious Diseases, see fid.ovpr.uga.edu.

UGA College of Veterinary Medicine

The UGA College of Veterinary Medicine, founded in 1946, is dedicated to training future veterinarians, to conducting research related to animal and human diseases, and to providing veterinary services for animals and their owners. Research efforts are aimed at enhancing the quality of life for animals and people, improving the productivity of poultry and livestock, and preserving a healthy interface between wildlife and people in the environment they share. The college enrolls 102 students each fall out of more than 800 who apply.

http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/man/

"Continuity" is critical in movies

Introduction by the blog author:

The continuity supervisor and continuity editing are essential for making any motion picture into a finished product that is worth viewing. This is true in spite of the fact that most of us have no idea what this continuity consists of.

About twenty years ago, Budweiser had a television commercial for Bud Dry beer. A desert landscape was shown that included a single actor, distant from the camera and neither moving nor speaking. The announcer than inquires, "Why are foreign movies so bad?" Then some lettering is shown that states: "Why ask why? Drink Bud Dry."

It was a great and iconic commercial, but the question is genuine. Perhaps a large element in the tedium and clumsiness of so many foreign movies is the lack of carefully planned and executed continuity.

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A script supervisor (also called continuity supervisor) is a member of a film crew responsible for maintaining the motion picture's internal continuity and for recording the production unit's daily progress in shooting the film's screenplay. The script supervisor credit typically appears in the closing credits of a motion picture.

Up until the late thirties and early forties, the script supervisor in the American film and television industry was typically called the continuity clerk, script reader or script girl. Individuals performing such duties were either credited with these titles or, more often, not credited at all. During this span of time, many script supervisors were indeed women, a fact that originally spawned the title "script girl." However, over the years, script supervisor positions throughout the American motion picture industry became more thoroughly integrated and formed a better balance among men and women. This fact, coupled with producers' desire to promote gender neutrality in a position that was increasingly taken up by men, produced the gradual change in nomenclature. By the fifties, the gender-specific term had virtually disappeared from film and television credits, but sometimes appeared in everyday speech.

In the most basic description, the script supervisor is the editor's and writer's representative on set, as well as being the right hand aide to the director and the director of photography. It is the script supervisor's job to make sure that at the end of the day the film can be cut together. In that sense, they back up every department, monitor the script during shooting and make sure that errors in continuity do not occur that would prevent the film from being able to be compiled in the editing room.

In pre-production, the script supervisor creates a number of reports based on the script, including a one-line continuity synopsis providing basic information on each scene such as the time of day, day in story order, and a one line synopsis of the scene. These reports are used by various departments in order to determine the most advantageous shot order and ensure that all departments, including production, wardrobe, hair and makeup, are in sync in regards to the progression of time within the story.
　

Responsibilities

During production, the script supervisor acts as a central point for all production information on a film shoot, and has several responsibilities:

• Continuity
– The supervisor is responsible for working with all departments (camera, lighting, sound, wardrobe, make-up, properties and sets) to make sure that continuity errors do not happen.The script supervisor takes notes on all the details required to recreate the continuity of a particular scene, location, or action. For every take, the script supervisor will note the duration of the take (usually with a stopwatch) and meticulously log information into a daily editor log about the action of the take, including position of the main actor (s), screen direction of their movement, important actions performed during the shot, type of lens used, and additional information which may vary from case to case. When multiple cameras are in use, the script supervisor keeps separate notes on each. These logs also notate a director's comments on any particular take as to whether it is no good, a hold take (ok, but not perfect), or a print take (a good take). All of these notes are crucial not just for continuity – they provide the editor information on what the director prefers, any problems with any of the takes and other notes to assist the editing process.

Axis & Eyelines

– The script supervisor is also the go-to person for determining the axis of a scene. The supervisor keeps track of and helps the director and the camera-operator set the camera position and off-camera eyelines ensuring that the coverage of a scene cuts seamlessly and that the characters within a scene always appear, without any confusion on the part of the viewer, to be looking precisely at the intended character or object.

Slating

– The script supervisor interacts with the clapper loader (second camera assistant) and the production sound mixer to make sure that each take of exposed film has a consistent and meaningful slate, that the sound and picture slates match. The script supervisor also notes the sound roll of each sync take, and the state of all MOS takes. This ensures that there is proper identification on the film footage in the editing room so the editor can find and use the correct takes.

Script

– The script supervisor is responsible for keeping the most current version of the shooting script. During shooting, the script supervisor notates any changes from the screenplay that are made by the actors, director or others during the actual filming process. If significant changes are made to the script that affect a future day's shooting, the script supervisor is responsible for providing those changes to the assistant director's team who then will distribute those changes to the rest of the crew. The script supervisor's script is also referred to as their lined script because during shooting, a script supervisor draws a vertical line down the page for each different camera setup. Each line designates the start and stop of that setup, a quick note of what the shot description was and whether or not the dialogue was on camera for that setup. This allows the editor to quickly reference which camera setups cover which portion of the dialogue or action.

Production Reports

– At the end of each shooting day, the script supervisor prepares daily reports for the production team. These reports vary in form depending on the studio or production company; however, they generally include a log of the actual times that shooting and breaks started and stopped, and a breakdown of the pages, scenes and minutes that were shot that day, as well as the same information for the previous day, the total script and the amounts remaining to be done. Also included are the number of scenes covered (completely shot), the number of retakes (when a scene has to be reshot), and the number of wild tracks. The script supervisor is the official timekeeper on any set.

Editor's Notes

– In addition to the production reports, each shooting day the script supervisor also compiles the continuity logs for the day's shooting as well as the relevant lined script pages for the scenes shot that day. Those notes are sent off to the editorial staff to assist them in the editing process. The script supervisor is the primary liaison between the director (who decides what scenes are to be shot) and the editor (who is usually not present during actual filming but needs to have exact records of the filming in order to do the job of cutting the film together.) The script supervisor is a technical rather than artistic position and is generally considered as part of the producer's or studio's staff. There is usually only one script supervisor on a given film production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_supervisor
　
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Continuity editing is the predominant style of film editing and video editing in the post-production process of filmmaking of narrative films and television programs. The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots.

In most films, logical coherence is achieved by cutting to continuity, which emphasizes smooth transition of time and space. However, some films incorporate cutting to continuity into a more complex classical cutting technique, one which also tries to show psychological continuity of shots. The montage technique relies on symbolic association of ideas between shots rather than association of simple physical action for its continuity.
　

Common techniques of continuity editing

Continuity editing can be divided into two categories: temporal continuity and spatial continuity. Within each category, specific techniques will work against a sense of continuity. In other words, techniques can cause a passage to be continuous, giving the viewer a concrete physical narration to follow, or discontinuous, causing viewer disorientation, pondering, or even subliminal interpretation or reaction, as in the montage style.

The important ways to preserve temporal continuity are avoiding the ellipsis, using continuous diegetic sound, and utilizing the match on action technique.

An ellipsis is an apparent break in natural time continuity as it is implied in the film's story. The simplest way to maintain temporal continuity is to shoot and use all action involved in the story's supposed duration whether it be pertinent or not. It would also be necessary to shoot the whole film in one take in order to keep from having to edit together different shots, causing the viewer's temporal disorientation. However in a story which is to occupy many hours, days, or years, a viewer would have to spend too long watching the film. So although in many cases the ellipsis would prove necessary, elimination of it altogether would best preserve any film's temporal continuity.

Diegetic sound is that which is to have actually occurred within the story during the action being viewed. It is sound that comes from within the narrative world of a film (including off-screen sound). Continuous diegetic sound helps to smooth temporally questionable cuts by overlapping the shots. Here the logic is that if a sonic occurrence within the action of the scene has no breaks in time, then it would be impossible for the scene and its corresponding visuals to be anything but temporally continuous.

Match on action technique can preserve temporal continuity where there is a uniform, unrepeated physical motion or change within a passage. A match on action is when some action occurring before the temporally questionable cut is picked up where the cut left it by the shot immediately following. For example, a shot of someone tossing a ball can be edited to show two different views, while maintaining temporal continuity by being sure that the second shot shows the arm of the subject in the same stage of its motion as it was left when cutting from the first shot.

Temporal discontinuity can be expressed by the deliberate use of ellipses. Cutting techniques useful in showing the nature of the specific ellipses are the dissolve and the fade. Other editing styles can show a reversal of time or even an abandonment of it altogether. These are the flashback and the montage techniques, respectively.

A fade-out is a gradual transformation of an image to black; whereas a fade-in is the opposite.  A dissolve is a simultaneous overlapping transition from one shot to another that does not involve an instantaneous cut or change in brightness. Both forms of transition (fade and dissolve) create an ambiguous measure of ellipsis that may constitute diagetic (narrative) days, months, years or even centuries. Through the use of the dissolve or the fade, one may allude to the relative duration of ellipses where the dissolve sustains a visual link but the fade to black does not. It cannot be argued that one constitutes short ellipsis and the other long however, as this negates the very functional ambiguity created by such transitions. Ambiguity is removed through the use of captions and intertitles such as "three weeks later" if desired.

The flashback is a relocation of time within a story, or more accurately, a window through which the viewer can see what happened at a time prior to that considered (or assumed) to be the story present. A flashback makes its time-frame evident through the scene's action or through the use of common archetypes such as sepia toning, the use of home-movie style footage, period costume or even through obvious devices such as clocks and calendars or direct character linkage. For example, if after viewing a grown man in the story present, a cut to a young boy being addressed by the man's name occurs, the viewer can assume that the young boy scene depicts a time previous to the story present. The young boy scene would be a flashback.

The montage technique is one that implies no real temporal continuity whatsoever. Montage is achieved with a collection of symbolically related images, cut together in a way that suggests psychological relationships rather a temporal continuum.

Just as important as temporal continuity to overall continuity of a film is spatial continuity. And like temporal continuity, it can be achieved a number of ways: the establishing shot, the 180 degree rule, the eyeline match and match on action.

The establishing shot is one that provides a view of all the space in which the action is occurring. Its theory is that it is difficult for a viewer to become disoriented when all the story space is presented before him. The establishing shot can be used at any time as a reestablishing shot. This might be necessary when a complex sequence of cuts may have served to disorient the viewer.

One way of preventing viewer disorientation in editing is to adhere to the 180 degree rule. The rule prevents the camera from crossing the imaginary line connecting the subjects of the shot. Another method is the eyeline match. When shooting a human subject, he or she can look towards the next subject to be cut to, thereby using the former's self as a reference for the viewer to use while locating the new subject within the set.

With the establishing shot, 180 degree rule, eyeline match, and the previously discussed match on action, spatial continuity is attainable; however, if wishing to convey a disjointed space, or spatial discontinuity, aside from purposefully contradicting the continuity tools, one can take advantage of crosscutting and the
jump cut.

Cross cutting is a technique which conveys an undeniable spatial discontinuity. It can be achieved by cutting back and forth between shots of spatially unrelated places. In these cases, the viewer will understand clearly that the places are supposed to be separate and parallel. So in that sense, the viewer may not become particularly disoriented, but under the principle of spatial continuity editing, crosscutting is considered a technique of spatial discontinuity.

The jump cut is undoubtedly a device of disorientation. The jump cut is a cut between two shots that are so similar that a noticeable jump in the image occurs. The 30 degree angle rule was formulated for the purpose of eliminating jump cuts. The 30 degree rule requires that no edit should join two shots whose camera viewpoints are less than 30 degrees from one another.

Discontinuous editing

Discontinuous editing describes the deliberate or accidental violation of rules of continuity when editing films. As a deliberate technique, it may be used to connote authenticity or to create alienation. The viewer's expectation of continuity can be violated by such methods as changing image size or tone between shots, changing direction or changing shots before the viewer has time to recognize what is happening. It is also known as montage editing, and employs a series of often rapid and non-matching cuts which creates a style the audience is conspicuously aware of, or alternatively that create uneven and unpredictable rhythms and emphasize the rapidity of movement between images.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_editing