How a Diamond Is Like a Champagne Cork

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New CO2 Sucker Could Help Clear the Air

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> Dear Friends of NCSE,
>
> A new creationist bill in Indiana, and more on the two antievolution > bills in New Hampshire. Plus a new issue of Evolution: Education and > Outreach.
>
> CREATIONIST LEGISLATION IN INDIANA
>
> Senate Bill 89, prefiled in the Indiana Senate and referred to the > Committee on Education and Career Development, would, if enacted, > amend the Indiana Code to provide that “[t]he governing body of a > school corporation may require the teaching of various theories > concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the > school corporation.” The sponsor of the bill is Dennis Kruse > (R-District 14), who chairs the Senate Committee on Education and > Career Development. In 1999, while serving in the Indiana House of > Representatives, Kruse pledged to introduce a law to remove evolution > from the state’s science standards, according to the South Bend > Tribune (August 27, 1999). Instead, however, he introduced bills with > the same wording as Senate Bill 89, House Bill 1356 in 2000 and House > Bill 1323 in 2001. Both died in committee.
>
> “The obvious problem,” commented NCSE’s executive director Eugenie C. > Scott, “is that the Indiana legislature can’t authorize a school > district to violate the Constitution. And the Supreme Court held, in > its 1987 decision in Edwards v. Aguillard, that it’s unconstitutional > for creation science to be taught in the public schools.” She added, > “It’s disturbing that a veteran legislator like Kruse is ignorant of > — or indifferent to — the blatant unconstitutionality of his bill.” > The most recent antievolution bill in Indiana, 2006′s House Bill 1388, > was aimed at supposed errors in textbooks, although its sponsor had > previously announced his intention to introduce legislation requiring > the teaching of “intelligent design” in the state’s public schools; HB > 1388 died in committee. The current legislative session resumes on > January 4, 2012.
>
> For the text of SB 89 as introduced, visit:
> http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2012/IN/IN0089.1.html
>
> For the text of HB 1356, HB 1323, and HB 1388, visit:
> http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2000/IN/IN1356.1.html
> http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2001/IN/IN1323.1.html
> http://www.in.gov/legislative/bills/2006/IN/IN1388.1.html
>
> And for NCSE’s previous coverage of events in Indiana, visit: > http://ncse.com/news/indiana
>
>

Iran Shows Off Downed Spy Drone as U.S. Assesses Technology Loss

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) — The unmanned RQ-170 Sentinel is still highly classified, yet since one came down in Iran five days ago, it’s a lot less secret.

The Lockheed Martin Corp. spy drone, which is designed to be virtually invisible to radar and carries advanced communications and surveillance gear, made a 2 1/2 minute television debut yesterday on Iran’s state-owned Press TV channel. U.S. intelligence officials are assessing the apparent loss of its highly classified technology.

The official Iranian Republic News Agency reported that the Foreign Ministry yesterday protested the “violation of Iran’s airspace by a U.S. spy drone on Dec. 4,” the day Iranian forces claimed to have shot down the aircraft, 140 miles inside the Iranian border from Afghanistan.

Several U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the drone program is classified, said the greatest concern is that access to the aircraft could give Russian or Chinese scientists insight into its flight controls, communications gear, video equipment and any self-destruct or return-to-base mechanisms.

In addition, they said, the remains of the RQ-170 could help a technologically sophisticated military or science establishment develop Infrared Surveillance and Targeting (IRST) technology that under some conditions are capable of detecting stealth aircraft such as drones and the new Lockheed Martin F- 35s.

Seems Real

The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment yesterday on whether the aircraft the Iranians displayed is real. A U.S. defense official, however, said the plane appears to be an actual RQ-170, though he said U.S. experts were still examining the video.

Two U.S. officials with knowledge of the RQ-170 program said that some details, including the seams on the drone’s fuselage, its access ports and its unusual air intake, appear to confirm that it’s genuine.

The aircraft shown on Iranian TV — or at least its forward and upper surfaces — appeared to be in good condition for a high-altitude plane that the Iranians initially said they had shot down.

The most frightening prospect raised by what appears to be a largely intact Sentinel is that the Iranians’ second claim about how they brought it down — by hacking into its controls and landing it themselves — might be true, said a U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on the basis of anonymity because the RQ-170 is part of a Secret Compartmented Intelligence (SCI) program, a classification higher than Top Secret.

Hacking Claim

The official said the possibility that the Iranians or someone else hacked into the drone’s satellite communications is doubly alarming because it would mean that Iranian or other cyber-warfare officers were able to disable the Sentinel’s automatic self-destruct, holding pattern and return-to-base mechanisms. Those are intended to prevent the plane’s secret flight control, optical, radar, surveillance and communications technology from falling into the wrong hands if its controllers at Creech Lake Air Force Base or the Tonopah Test Range, both in Nevada, lose contact with it.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration didn’t seriously consider bombing the wreckage or sending special operations forces into Iran to destroy or retrieve it because either would be an act of war, the two officials said.

The officials said that, depending on the real condition of the wreckage, Chinese or Russian access to the drone is a much greater concern than a possible Iranian effort to reverse- engineer the RQ-170, which they said is unlikely given the drone’s special coatings and other materials.

Basic Stealth Technology

As for its stealthy shape, they said, an RQ-170 has been photographed, and basic stealth shape and skin technology is now some 35 years old.

The officials said that the loss of the RQ-170 is a warning about the limitations of drone technology and the dangers of relying too heavily on it.

First, they said, although the newest drones are being designed to operate autonomously, they still need to navigate by communicating with global positioning satellites, and those communications, the satellites and ground stations are vulnerable to jamming and spoofing, or deception, by sophisticated enemies.

In recent years, one of the officials said, computer hackers thought to be part of extensive Chinese or Russian cyber espionage efforts have attacked the computer networks of numerous defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin; broken into two satellite ground stations and planted keystroke logging software in some military computers.

Air Defense Systems

Second, even the most advanced drones aren’t immune to air defense systems, and advances in infrared detection and Doppler radar, the same kind used to detect tornadoes and other air turbulence, are likely to render them more vulnerable. Drones are called “low observable,” not “invisible,” for a reason, one of the officials said.

The RQ-170 was flying a reconnaissance mission inside Iranian airspace when its controllers lost contact with it, the two U.S. officials said.

The officials said that for three years the U.S. has been flying two types of unmanned surveillance missions over Iran and along the Afghanistan-Iran border from a 9,200-foot runway at a former Soviet airbase in Shindand in western Afghanistan’s Herat province. Publicly available satellite photographs don’t show the new runway, only an old one built by Soviet forces when they occupied Afganistan two decades ago.

Monitoring Construction

In addition to monitoring construction and other activity at suspected Iranian nuclear facilities from high altitudes, the officials said, the Central Intelligence Agency has been using drones to monitor cross-border traffic and Iranian support for insurgents.

The CIA, not the Air Force, flies the missions inside Iran so they are covert operations that the U.S. government can deny.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said it presented its protest to the Swiss ambassador to Tehran, Livia Leu Agosti, who represents U.S. interests in the country.

In a letter to UN leaders, Iran denounced “the provocative and covert operations” against Iran by the U.S. The “blatant and unprovoked” air violation “is tantamount to an act of hostility,” Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee said in the letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, current president of the Security Council.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Walcott in Washington at jwalcott9

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34

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Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_wolpert_the_real_reason_for_brains.html

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How Sharks Go Fast

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/11/how-sharks-go-fast.html?ref=wp

Why you shouldn’t believe everything you read

http://bit.ly/ssf8Zp
Did you know smoking can improve the performance of long-distance runners? If you saw this article by Kenneth A. Myers in the Canadian Medical Association Journal you might have wondered about its editing — especially if you skipped the abstract. Myers tried, Travis Saunders wrote on Obesity Panacea, “to illustrate how you can fashion a review article to support almost any crazy theory if you’re willing to cherry-pick the right data.”

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Netflix Viewing Seen Swelling U.S. Cable Bills Next Year: Tech

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — Time Warner Cable Inc. and U.S. pay- TV companies, weighing how to profit from surging Internet demand spurred by Netflix Inc. and Hulu, are on the verge of instituting new fees on Web-access customers who use the most.

At least one major cable operator will institute so-called usage-based billing next year, predicts Craig Moffett, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. He said Cox Communications Inc., Charter Communications Inc. or Time Warner Cable may be first to charge Web-access customers for the amount of data they consume, not just transmission speed.

“As more video shifts to the Web, the cable operators will inevitably align their pricing models,” Moffett said in an interview. “With the right usage-based pricing plan, they can embrace the transition instead of resisting it.”

U.S. providers like Time Warner Cable have weighed usage- based plans for years as a way to squeeze more profit from Web access, and to counter slowing growth and rising program costs in the TV business. While customer complaints hampered earlier attempts, pay-TV companies are testing usage caps and price structures that point to the advent of permanent fees.

“We’re basically a broadband provider,” Peter Stern, chief strategy officer for New York-based Time Warner Cable, said Nov. 17 at the Future of Television conference in New York. “As a convenience for our customers, we package and distribute television and provide service around that.”

Google Deterrent

Rogers Communications Inc., the largest Canadian cable company, has been billing broadband customers based on consumption since 2008. U.S. providers AT&T Inc. and St. Louis- based Suddenlink Communications LLC are experimenting with usage-based plans.

Cable companies see usage-based billing as a way to limit the appeal of online services like Netflix and Hulu LLC, and reduce the threat from new entrants like Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc.

“It’s the reason why Apple or Google would inevitably be reticent about committing a significant amount of capital to an online video model,” Moffett said. “You can’t simply assume just because you can buy the content more cheaply, you can offer a product that’s cheaper to the end user.”

Netflix and Hulu’s subscription services have driven up Web usage at peak hours once reserved for watching TV. Google, Amazon, Apple Inc. and premium channels HBO and Showtime have also put shows online and followed viewers onto mobile devices like iPads and Android tablets.

Web Demand

While demand for Web service grows, cable operators are battling to preserve profit in the mature pay-TV business and withstand competition from satellite carrier DirecTV, Verizon Communications Inc.’s FiOS and AT&T’s U-Verse. Programmers like Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN are also demanding higher fees.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest U.S. cable operator behind Comcast Corp., lost 126,000 pay-TV accounts in the third quarter.

The incentives to focus on Web access are compelling. Cable’s broadband gross margins are about 95 percent, versus 60 percent for video, according to Moffett. As programming costs increase nearly 10 percent a year, video margins are crimped, he said.

Time Warner Cable is testing meters to measure broadband consumption for the purpose of tiered pricing, Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said in June. In April, he said usage-based billing is “inevitable.” A previous attempt in 2009 was abandoned amid customer complaints.

Low-Impact Users

“Some form of usage-based billing might have some utility for customers who use the Internet very little, or only use low- bandwidth applications like e-mail,” said Alex Dudley, a Time Warner Cable spokesman.

AT&T, based in Dallas, charges digital subscriber line, or DSL, customers who exceed a monthly limit of 150 gigabytes in three consecutive months $10 extra for every additional 50 gigabytes of data they use.

Suddenlink, with about 1.4 million customers in states including Missouri, Arizona, Texas and North Carolina, began instituting usage caps in some markets in October. Users pay $10 for each 50 gigabytes they use over their monthly allowance.

Data usage is surging by almost 50 percent a year, Chief Executive Officer Jerry Kent said in an interview. Suddenlink’s broadband revenue rose 12 percent in the third quarter, versus a 1.6 percent gain from pay-TV.

“Our video business is challenged,” Kent said. “My broadband margins are double my video margins.”

Movie Quotas

Cox, the third-largest U.S. cable company, segments Web- access customers based on data speed, allowing those who purchase faster service to use more data overall.

While those who exceed the caps aren’t charged, they are told to reduce usage or choose a different plan, said Todd Smith, a spokesman for Atlanta-based Cox. He wouldn’t say whether Cox will start charging based on total data used.

Comcast, based in Philadelphia, and St. Louis-based Charter, No. 4 in the U.S., have instituted caps large enough that most customers aren’t affected. Neither charges overage fees, nor do they have near-term plans to charge subscribers based on consumption, according to Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury and Charter’s Anita Lamont.

The standard cap for Comcast, Charter, Cox and Suddenlink is 250 gigabytes per month. That’s enough for a household to send or receive 12,000 one-page e-mails and watch 60 standard- definition movies with excess capacity for other tasks, according to Suddenlink.

Netflix Protests

Netflix steers customers with enough bandwidth toward high- definition movies, which soak up about double the data. If the average U.S. household, which watches more than five hours of television a day, were to transfer all that viewing to an online, high-definition source, their usage would total almost 10 gigabytes a day and break through the current caps.

Charging by Web usage, cable companies may discourage customers from dropping traditional pay-TV service and slow the growth of Netflix, Hulu and an expanding list of online alternatives, Moffett said.

The possibility of usage-based pricing has brought protests from Los Gatos, California-based Netflix and warnings from Charlie Ergen, chairman of rival Dish Network Corp., which operates the Blockbuster movie-rental business.

$20 Surcharge?

“That Netflix subscription of $7.99 could go to an extra $20 a month for bit streaming,” Ergen said during Dish’s conference call on Nov. 7, making a total monthly subscription “the equivalent of $27.99.”

Consumption-based pricing is anti-competitive if the goal of broadband providers is to boost revenue by diminishing the value of rivals, wrote Netflix General Counsel David Hyman in a July Wall Street Journal editorial.

The practice “is not in the consumer’s best interest as consumers deserve unfettered access to a robust Internet at reasonable rates,” said Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski publicly supported usage-based pricing in December, a victory for cable companies concerned that usage-based billing would run afoul of net neutrality rules prohibiting Internet services from favoring one form of content for another.

While lower caps may slow the online shift, cable companies won’t be able to stop it. According to media researcher SNL Kagan, about 12.1 million U.S. households will receive TV shows and movies from Internet services rather than a traditional pay TV provider by 2015, up from 2.5 million homes at the end of 2010, SNL Kagan estimates.

Cable’s best option is to find ways to profit from the online shift, said Moffett. If the companies were to lose all of their video customers, the revenue decline would be more than offset by a lower programming fees and set-top box spending, he said.

“In the end, it will be the best thing that ever happened to the cable industry,” Moffett said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Sherman in New York at asherman6

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo Peter Elstrom at pelstrom

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Walk-Through-Wall Effect Might Be Possible With Humanmade Object, Physicists Predict

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