Map of the internet could make it stronger

The most comprehensive maps yet of the the internet's infrastructure could help shore it up against disasters and sabotage

IN MANY ways the internet is like another country. It has its own communities, cultures and even currency. But its infrastructure ? the fibre optic cables that span the globe, and the thousands of buildings housing servers and routers ? passes through almost every nation.

Internet cartographers have tried for years to chart its extent in the physical world, in order to manage traffic and assess weaknesses. Such vulnerability was shown on 27 March, when three scuba divers were arrested for trying to cut an undersea cable off the coast of Egypt, where several critical cables come together in one of the internet's "choke points". And last year, superstorm Sandy's impact on internet connectivity in New York rippled all the way to Chile, Sweden and India.

Previous attempts to map the internet have been from within, using "sniffer" software to report the IP addresses of devices visited along a particular route, which, in theory, can then be translated into geographical locations. But this approach doesn't work, says Paul Barford at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "After 15 years nobody can show you a map of the internet," he says.

Such software is often inadvertently blocked by internet service providers (ISPs). Routers also try to find the shortest route between points, so sniffers end up mapping the internet's major highways, but few of the back roads. "It leaves a very large part of the internet effectively invisible," says Matthew Roughan at the University of Adelaide in South Australia.

Barford and Roughan head up two separate projects that are attempting to change that. Instead of relying on sniffers, they are scouring ISP databases to find published information about local networks, and piecing these together into a global map. Roughan's Internet Topology Zoo is a growing collection of maps of individual networks. Barford's Internet Atlas expands on this, adding crucial buildings and links between networks to flesh out the map. So far the Internet Atlas, perhaps the most comprehensive map of the physical internet, maps 10,000 such structures and 13,000 connections. Barford presented the work at the University of Cambridge on 28 March.

Both teams say that a global view of the internet's infrastructure will be invaluable for assessing key vulnerabilities. "You need to be able to see data from multiple networks to be able to judge this type of risk," says Roughan. For example, Honolulu stands out in the Internet Atlas as an important hub because of its mid-Pacific location, used to link countries across the ocean. Damage there would have knock-on effects throughout the Pacific Rim.

The maps can also show where planned backup cables and servers, ready to step in when the front line fails, aren't likely to work. Cables are typically laid beside electricity wires, railways or anywhere there is an existing right of way and easy access. In Australia, for example, both primary and backup cables running from Adelaide to Perth cross 1000 kilometres of desert beside the only road between the cities. "Anything that happens to one will happen to the other," says Roughan.

The maps show which portions of the internet are most at risk, says Barford. "They suggest where proactive disaster planning should be focused."

This article appeared in print under the headline "Building an internet atlas"

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Swiss offer to mediate in North Korea crisis

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland has offered to mediate with North Korea as tension rises on the Korean peninsula following U.N. sanctions imposed in response to a North Korean nuclear weapon test in February.

The Swiss foreign ministry recently made contact with the North Korean authorities but there are no current plans for any talks, a spokeswoman said.

"Switzerland is willing to contribute to a de-escalation on the Korean peninsula and is always willing to help find a solution, if this is the wish of the parties, such as hosting meetings between them," she said in an emailed statement.

North Korea has issued increasingly strident warnings of imminent war with South Korea and the United States, urging diplomats on Friday to consider leaving Pyongyang.

Swiss media say that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who took over in December 2011 after the death of his father Kim Jong-il, apparently spent several years in Switzerland being educated under a pseudonym.

Neutral Switzerland often hosts peace talks and mediates in international conflicts, more recently between Russia and Ukraine and between the United States and Iran and Cuba.

The Swiss Foreign Ministry said it had been involved in more than 15 sets of peace negotiations in the past seven years, including in Sudan, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Nepal.

Former Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who in 2003 became the first foreign government official to cross the demarcation line separating North and South Korea, said Pyongyang's wishes had not changed much since then.

"For North Korea, symbols are very important," she told the SonntagsZeitung newspaper in an interview. "What the North Koreans still want is recognition and security guarantees from the United States."

Five Swiss and five Swedish officers monitor the demilitarised zone between the North and South. Urs Gerber, the Swiss head of the operation, said not much has changed in recent months. "We are just monitoring the situation more intensively," he also told the SonntagsZeitung.

(Reporting by Emma Thomasson; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/swiss-offer-mediate-north-korea-100337459.html

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The Facebook Phone Is Smarter Than You Think

It's really easy to want to hate a phone that is all Facebook all the time, especially when it gives the social network more and more of our data to mine for more ads to put on more prominent screens. Especially when the device itself, a middling (albeit sub-$100) HTC First?to wit, the first of many that will run Facebook's Android-based "Home" software, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at its launch event Thursday?is a a mediocre smartphone that doesn't do anything exceptionally different. The so-called "Facebook Phone" runs a hidden version of Android; after the Facebook front door, it's all the same.

RELATED: You Can Use Facebook for Free Cellphone Calls Now

So: Why would anyone want to get into this thing? The techies immediately suggested that people who love Facebook will flock to Home because it's a simpler way to do just that?embrace something they already use on their phones all the time. But what if you're just a casual Facebook browser, not obsessed with every last party photo and not quite part of a generation for whom Facebook messages pre-empt email? Well, there is more than a silver lining to Zuckerberg's most blatant jump into your mobile life: This "Facebook Phone" offers some key user interface experiences that are way better than their counterparts on other Android phones?and even the iPhone.

RELATED: Everyone Is Taking These Facebook Phone Leaks Very Seriously

These little things might not be enough to get you to hand over your data or eyeballs to Facebook, and certainly not to trade in your Apple device for some so-so Android. But the rest of the mobile industry would do well to learn from the truly brand-new things that entered the world today. Let's take a moment to recognize the innovation unveiled Thursday from Menlo Park?even if it was from a guy in a hoodie and not a turtleneck:

RELATED: Facebook's War on Cellphone Bills Takes One Giant Leap for Cheap Calls

Instead of having to open and close an application every time someone sends you an SMS or Facebook message, one of those little bubbles?hello up there, Sheryl!?pops up on the side of what you're doing. Your bubble-headed friend's chat shows up with a single tap. Or, you know, you can just ignore the head and keep on doing what you're doing. It's fast. It's smooth. It's more productive than disruptive. These are things you're supposed to say about Apple. Plus if you're chatting with someone and want to help each other, it provides a much faster way to share information, and on the go. And that's something you're supposed to be saying about Google. I haven't tried the phone with my own two hands (launch day is April 12), but those on hand at Facebook HQ Thursday say Chat Heads is "responsive with very little lag" and not too intrusive. Once the heads pile up, you can swipe across to view the entire carousel.?

RELATED: Facebook Phones 'Home' with HTC First ? and Lots of Chatting Heads

Notifications: Gone in a tap!

The new Facebook software has the same default notifications hub that comes on all Android devices?the pull down one that Apple stole from Google. But rather than having to get rid of those annoying updates from your LinkedIn app with a swipe, Facebook Home more prominently stacks the Facebook happenings you actually care about, and right on the home screen.

Now, that looks a lot similar to the notifications that pop up on any smart phone. But it's very seamless?with or without Chat Heads. How many times have you swiped a notification to get rid of it on my iPhone, only to open some buggy app that never loads? With the Facebook phone, a simple tap rids the screen of an unwanted notification. You can also bundle them all up and dismiss them once and for all. But because it's Facebook, you know, you might actually be interested.

Home's homescreen: Now with a purpose.

So maybe Facebook photos aren't the ideal thing to hover in the background of a phone. (We get enough baby pictures on the actual website, thanks.) The "Cover Feed," as Facebook calls it, allows you to scroll through recently posted images from your Facebook feed, in full bleed and packed with information. That's probably only a minor upgrade for people who constantly use their phone to look at photos on Facebook?or spend too many minutes in bed or on a bathroom line looking at Instagram.

But, imagine if we could put other, more useful things right there on the first stop, for quick access? As of right now, our phone backgrounds serve as high-tech time pieces, which seems a little dated.?

All of which is to say, it might not be worth it to get a Facebook phone?maybe for your teenage niece, or something. And it shouldn't be forgotten that, after?the unveiling, Zuckerberg said advertising could be coming to the Cover Feed?and no other major phone is that invasive from the "on" button.?But no other major phone is this intuitive with the little things. So for a moment, let's appreciate the finer parts of the Facebook phone.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-phone-smarter-think-214025943.html

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Hallucinations of musical notation

Apr. 4, 2013 ? Professor of neurology, physician, and author Oliver Sacks M.D. has outlined case studies of hallucinations of musical notation, and commented on the neural basis of such hallucinations, in a new paper for the neurology journal Brain.

In this paper, Dr Sacks is building on work done by Dominic ffytche et al in 2000 [i], which delineates more than a dozen types of hallucinations, particularly in relation to people with Charles Bonnet syndrome (a condition that causes patients with visual loss to have complex visual hallucinations). While ffytche believes that hallucinations of musical notation are rarer than some other types of visual hallucination, Sacks says that his own experience is different.

"Perhaps because I have investigated various musical syndromes," writes Dr Sacks, "and people often write to me about these? I have seen or corresponded with a dozen or more people whose hallucinations include -- and sometimes consist exclusively of -- musical notation."

Sacks goes on to detail eight fascinating case studies of people who have reported experiencing hallucinations of musical notation, including:

• A 77 year old woman with glaucoma who wrote of her "musical eyes." She saw "music, lines, spaces, notes, clefs -- in fact written music on everything [she] looked at."
• A surgeon and pianist suffering from macular degeneration, who saw unreadable and unplayable music on a white background.
• A Sanskrit scholar who developed Parkinson's disease in his 60s and later reported hallucinating ornately-written music, occurring with a Sanskrit script. "Despite the exotic nature of the script the result is still western music," he said.
• A woman who reported seeing musical notation on her ceiling upon waking in the morning.
• A woman who said she wasn't a musician, but would hallucinate when she had high fevers as a child. She said that the notes were "angry, and [she] felt unease. The lines and notes were out of control and at times in a ball."

It is striking that, of Dr Sacks' eight case studies, seven were gifted musicians. Sacks comments, "This is perhaps a coincidence, but it makes one wonder whether there is something about musical scores that is radically different from verbal texts." Musical scores are far more visually complex than standard (English) text, with not just a variety of notes, but also many symbols that indicate how the notes should be played.

Dr Sacks also says that he has a mild form of Charles Bonnet syndrome himself, in which he sees a variety of simple forms whenever he gazes at a blank surface. "When I recently returned to playing the piano and to studying scores minutely, I began to 'see' showers of flat signs along with the letters and runes on blank surfaces."

Another striking feature of these hallucinations is that -- like text hallucinations -- they are generally unreadable. They can seem playable at first, but on closer inspection it transpires that the music is often nonsensical or impossible to play, such as an example reported in one of the case studies: a melody line three or more octaves above middle C, and so may have half a dozen or more ledger lines above the treble staff.

Usually, the early visual system analyses forms and sends the information it has extracted to higher areas, where it gains coherence and meaning. Normally, in the act of perception, the entire visual system is engaged. Paradoxically, according to Sacks, "one may have to study disorders of the visual system to see how complex perceptual and cognitive processes are analysed and delegated to different levels? and hallucinations of musical notation can provide a very rich field of study here."

Oliver Sacks is Professor of Neurology at the NYU School of Medicine and Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick.

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Journal Reference:

1. O. Sacks. Hallucinations of musical notation. Brain, 2013; DOI: 10.1093/brain/awt057

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/r_YqfK1lZY0/130404073007.htm

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Cuba cleric: Francis criticized church at conclave

HAVANA (AP) ? Pope Francis issued a strong critique of the church before the College of Cardinals just hours before it selected him as the new pontiff, according to comments published Tuesday by a Roman Catholic magazine in Cuba.

According to Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega, then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio urged the Vatican to eschew self-absorption and refocus its energies outward.

"The church is called on to emerge from itself and move toward the peripheries, not only geographic but also existential (ones): those of sin, suffering, injustice, ignorance and religious abstention, thought and all misery," Bergoglio said.

Ortega said Bergoglio's comments were made to cardinals as they gathered to select Benedict XVI's replacement, and reflect his vision of the contemporary Catholic Church. He said Bergoglio later gave him a handwritten version and permission to divulge its contents.

"Cardinal Bergoglio made a speech that I thought was masterful, insightful, engaging and true," Ortega said.

Ortega added that the remarks offer insight about the direction in which the new pope could take the church following his March 13 election.

In his statements, the future pontiff also warned of the dangers of stagnation.

"When the church does not emerge from itself to evangelize, it becomes self-referential and therefore becomes sick. ... The evils that, over time, occur in ecclesiastical institutions have their root in self-referentiality, a kind of theological narcissism." Bergoglio said.

He also criticized "a mundane church that lives within itself, of itself and for itself."

Finally Bergoglio said that whoever became the new pope should be "a man who ... helps the church to emerge from itself toward the existential outskirts."

Orgeta first revealed Bergoglio's comments in a weekend Mass, and they were published Tuesday on the website of Palabra Nueva magazine, along with a photo of the two men embracing after Bergoglio had donned the papal white robes and rechristened himself Francis.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-03-26-Cuba-Pope/id-347f3cf1daec40c2a5f56a4d2d667a64

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