Saturday, April 28, 2007

Plagiarizism - A Kala dhubba on Pakistani Academia

This is a video by Bruce Schneider, whose paper was plagiarized. This is from a security conference called CRYPTO.



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PakSEF and ScitechWire are trademarks of the Pakistan Science and Engineering Foundation

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Technology versus Humanity

For a while now, I have been wondering about the moral responsibility of people like us, who work in the tech industry here in the Bay Area for human rights abuses enabled by our products. Here's the first real effort I have seen to put some legal and real shape to the concerns:

Yahoo! sued over torture of Chinese dissident
Chinese political prisoner sues Yahoo! in a US federal court in what is believed to be first case of its kind
Rhys Blakely

A Chinese political prisoner sued Yahoo! in a US federal court, accusing the internet company of helping the Chinese government torture him by providing information that led to his arrest.
The suit, filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act, is believed to be the first of its kind made against an American internet company.
More here....

One of the few stories I have seen in this regard was:

Gag Orders
Is the work of Cisco Systems and other high-tech companies helping China to crack down on dissent?
By DK Sweet
EARLIER this year, on CNBC, business news junkies were treated to another superlative on-camera performance by one of America's foremost business superstars. Donald Trump may best personify the cheesy pop-culture idea of a celebrity businessman, but to the stockholder class, Cisco Systems' John Chambers is the Real Deal. Compare the income, size, growth and influence of international Internet infrastructure colossus Cisco to The Donald's twice-bankrupt real estate empire and Trump might as well be Chambers' pool boy.
More here...

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Pakistan's wetter weather linked to global warming

New data from millennium-long tree-ring analyses are indicating that mountains in northern Pakistan have grown significantly wetter over the past century than they have been over the last millennium — quite possibly due to human-induced global warming, the researchers say.

In the Karakorum and Himalaya mountains in northern Pakistan, the upper reaches of the Indus Valley (which supplies the world's largest irrigation network), a group of researchers collected samples of Juniper tree rings that dated back as far as A.D. 828. "Tree rings can tell a lot about precipitation changes over time," such as how much precipitation fell and whether it fell in the form of rain or snow, says Kerstin Treydte of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL in Birmensdorf, Switzerland, and lead author of the study in today's Nature.

Treydte's team measured the oxygen isotope ratio in the rings and found that most of the precipitation in the region fell as snow, which they expected given the high elevations. And over the last 1,100 years, the hydrologic cycle there intensified at an unprecedented rate, Treydte says. The team suggests that the precipitation increases aren't just temporary changes, and the increases may be too great to be due to natural variability.

New isotopic research on the rings of 1,172-year-old Juniper trees in the mountains of northern Pakistan is revealing that the 20th century was the wettest century of the past millennium, possibly due to human-induced global warming. Image is courtesy of Kerstin Treydte.

The tree rings revealed periods of wetter-than-normal weather that lasted about a decade, such as around the years 1200, 1350, 1500 and 1870, and drier periods around 1270, 1420, 1600 and 1720, the team reported. In the 1790s and 1890s, the tree ring record showed severe droughts, which correlate with historical records of drought and famines in India. The data collected from the tree rings also roughly corresponds to historical records of extreme weather in other parts of the world, Treydte and colleagues wrote.

"But what is most significant, Treydte says, is "a cluster of peak precipitation periods during the late 19th and 20th centuries" that are at the upper limits of what the data show for the last 1,100 years. Furthermore, "we have empirical evidence that precipitation increased as temperatures increased," she says.

Increasing global temperatures over the past 150 years are "at least partly" the result of "the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases during this time," the team wrote. "We're not atmospheric scientists," Treydte says, "so we're not going to argue that the increasing precipitation is directly caused by a carbon dioxide increase" in the atmosphere. "What we will say, is that at the same time as the Industrial Revolution began, [carbon dioxide] increased, and there was a coincidental increase in precipitation — so there could be a human role," she says.

One of the biggest uncertainties in predicting climate change involves the hydrologic cycle — both "the net effect of water in the climate system and the way in which water will be redistributed over the surface of the planet," wrote Michael Evans of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson in an accompanying commentary also in today's Nature. Understanding the hydrologic cycle and how it might be affected by warming temperatures is complex (see Geotimes, March 2006).

But research indicates that warming temperatures can lead to increases in the moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere, altering the hydrologic cycle and characteristics of precipitation events, including the frequency, amount, intensity and duration, Treydte and colleagues wrote. And Treydte's team's "compelling" results roughly match climate models' predictions for the hydrologic cycle's intensity, Evans wrote, which adds further support to the researchers' hypothesized link between certain climate change effects and increases in greenhouse gas emissions. Such a link would certainly help improve confidence in climate models, he wrote.

Still, Evans noted, correlating anthropogenic climate change with the hydrologic cycle is tricky, as many factors must go into the models, and many uncertainties remain. Although this is the first tree-ring isotope record that is longer than a couple hundred years, more research is necessary. A denser network of precipitation gauges, for example, would help researchers distinguish natural variability from human-induced climate change, he wrote. "All of these advances will assist in the crucial work of climate-change detection and attribution."

[Article cross-posted from GeoTimes]

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

City’s plants struggle to stay green due to smog: study

KARACHI: Air pollution in the city has caused a 60 percent increase in various diseases and has damaged the natural ability of plants to release oxygen, stated a report prepared by the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) after a survey of 28 of Karachi’s main arteries.

Five scientists, two engineers and other technical staff studied air and noise conditions by using two mobile laboratories. They tested shopkeepers and pedestrians and took blood samples of drivers and traffic policemen, which were later tested at Liaquat National Hospital.

“Cancer and other diseases of the ear, throat and lungs have increased by 60 percent, due to the smoke emitted by vehicles, which is basically a form of carbon dioxide,” the report said.

Air pollution and high-rise buildings have damaged the greenery of Karachi by blocking proper sunlight for plants. “Air pollution has altered plant colouring by making it blackish. Leaves have also shrunk. Buildings are affected as there is a thick layer of oil and dust on their entire structure,” said the report.

Air pollution is much higher than the standards set by the World Health Organization and the World Bank, especially along the stretch of MA Jinnah Road between Tibet Center Saddar and Mereweather Tower.

The SUPARCO team has asked the relevant officials to impose a ban on diesel vehicles and garbage burning. In addition, two-stroke rickshaws should be replaced with four-stroke ones.

The team pointed out that Karachi’s roads were planned for 750 vehicles in an hour, but were being used by 11,000 vehicles.

Dr Qaiser Sajjad, an ENT surgeon at Abbasi Shaheed Hospital and secretary of the Pakistan Medical Association, said that children were the worst affected by air pollution. He added that the high court had taken a suo moto action by ordering the authorities concerned to eradicate pollution in three months. However, the government had as yet not taken this matter seriously.

“If the government does not take the necessary steps, then in the coming five years the situation will become uncontrollable,” he said. ppi/DailyTimes



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ScitechWire and PakSEF are trademark of the Pakistan Science & Engineering Foundation