China accuses U.S. hackers of targeting its websites

China's military says overseas computer hackers targeted two of its websites an average of 144,000 times per month last year, with almost two thirds of the attacks originating in the United States.

The comments by Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng on Thursday followed accusations last week by an American cybersecurity company that Chinese military-backed cyberspies infiltrated and stole massive amounts of data from U.S. companies and other entities. China denied the allegations and its military said it has never supported any hacking activity.

Geng told reporters at a monthly news conference that an average of 62.9 per cent of the attacks on the Defense Ministry's official website and that of its newspaper, the People's Liberation Army Daily, came from the U.S.

China says its military cyberforce is purely for defense.

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Computer scientist wins Canada's top science prize

University of Toronto computer scientist Stephen Cook receives $1 million in research funding over five years. (NSERC)

A Toronto researcher who has dedicated his career to proving whether certain types of problems are solvable by computers has won this year's Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, which comes with $1 million in research funding.

Canada's top annual science prize has gone to Stephen A. Cook, a researcher in the department of computer science at the University of Toronto.

"It's quite an honour, I have to say," Cook said in an interview hours before officially receiving the medal from Governor General David Johnston at a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa Wednesday afternoon.

'We're interested in whether the problems can be solved at all feasibly — in other words, before the sun expires.'—Stephen Cook, University of Toronto

Cook's research focuses mainly on computational complexity and proof complexity, two areas of theoretical computer science and mathematics that involve figuring out how much time and memory it will take computers to solve different types of problems.

"In particular, we're interested in whether the problems can be solved at all feasibly — in other words, before the sun expires," he said.

That's important question for assessing how secure certain kinds of encryption actually are, such as the kind used by PayPal to send credit card information securely over the internet.

Cook notes that while the information is encrypted as it passes between your computer and PayPal's server, the encrypted data is publicly visible and interceptible by an eavesdropper.

"Paypal's computer knows how to decrypt it, but the assumption is the eavesdropper can't because it's computationally intractable," Cook said.

However, it hasn't yet been proven that the encryption scheme is unsolvable, so Cook and his colleagues are working to find out whether the assumption is actually true.

Funding for more thinkers

Cook said the prize money of $200,000 per year over five years will go towards supporting graduate students and hiring postdoctoral fellows to collaborate with him and his colleagues in their research.

"We're theoreticians so we don't have big laboratory costs," he said. "We sit and think and consult and travel."

Cook was officially forced into mandatory retirement in 2005. However, he manages to continue to teach and conduct research full-time at the university under contract.

The Herzberg medal, named after the winner of 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, recognizes researchers for excellence and "influence in research for a body of work conducted in Canada that has substantially advanced" their field.

According to a release from Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council announcing the award, Cook's inquiries "are now among the most essential theoretical results that all computer science graduates must understand."

Cook was the 1982 winner of the Turing award, the top research honour in the field of computer science.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council has also announced the winners of several other top prizes, including the John C. Polanyi Award, which recognizes a "recent outstanding advance" in science or engineering. That went to University of Toronto chemist Greg Scholes.

Scholes receives a grant of up to $250,000 for his research on the role of quantum mechanics in photosynthesis.

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Mars voyage in 2018 planned by U.S. non-profit

A man and a woman will make a privately funded, 501-day trip to Mars and back in 2018 under a plan unveiled Wednesday.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation plans to launch the carefully selected middle-aged American couple into space on Jan. 5 of that year, U.S. billionaire businessman Dennis Tito, chair of the new non-profit organization, told a news conference in Washington.

The space voyagers will come within 160 kilometres of the surface of the Red Planet, then swing around and return to Earth.

"I'm just really excited about this," said Tito. "This is a challenging but attainable goal, advancing human experience and knowledge. Now is the time."

Tito lamented NASA's lack of progress in human space flight since the moon missions 40 years ago.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in 2010 that he expects to be around to see humans land on Mars. (NASA/JPL/Cornell)U.S. President Barack Obama said in a 2010 speech that by the mid-2030s, he envisioned being able to send humans to orbit Mars and then return them safely to Earth, and he expected to be around to see humans land on Mars after that.

However, Tito said, "I'm going to be 95 years old. I don't want to wait."

He added that the 2018 launch date represents a window of opportunity when the journey from Earth to Mars will be the shortest, due to their alignment with one another. The next such opportunity won't come until 2031.

Tito personally funding project for 2 years

In order to move things forward, Tito said he has committed to personally funding the first two years of the project, until the end of 2014. He emphasized that it's not a commercial mission, and he doesn't expect to get rich from the venture.

"Let me guarantee you, I will come out a lot poorer as a result of this mission. But my grandchildren will come out a lot wealthier through the inspiration that this will give them."

He hopes to raise the rest of the money from private donors, charitable organizations, selling media rights and selling data to NASA.

He did not disclose how much it will cost, but said it will be comparable to a space flight into low-Earth orbit because the mission doesn't include any complications such as docking or entering Mars's atmosphere. Its course will be set as it leaves Earth so that no "propulsive manoeuvres" will be required once it's left Earth's atmosphere, and it will rely on Mars's gravity to turn it around for its return to Earth.

Tito said the mission will largely use existing technology. The components include a Canadian-made inflatable habitat unit that will be deployed after the spacecraft leaves the Earth and detach before it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere on the return journey.

However, the team still needs to figure out how to deal with challenges such as:

• Dangerous levels of radiation.
• Life support systems required on such a long space trip.
• Making sure the space vehicle can safely re-enter Earth's atmosphere despite extremely high speed.

The foundation will get help from NASA to solve some of those problems.

Tito, a former NASA rocket scientist and founder and chief executive of the investment management firm Wilshire Associates Inc., became the world's first space tourist when he paid an estimated $20 million US to take a Russian Soyuz spacecraft up to the International Space Station in April 2001.

However, he said he will not be one of the people on this journey, as the requirements will be too high.

Jane Poynter, president and chairwoman of Paragon Space Development Corporation, the company developing the life support systems for the mission, said at the news conference that the selection of the crew will be "rigorous to make sure they are resilient and can maintain upbeat and happy attitude in face of adversity."

They will spend a year and half with only each other for company in just 17 cubic metres of living space, breathing recycled oxygen, drinking water recycled from their sweat and urine every two days and eating food rehydrated with that recycled water.

Poynter said it's important that the crew members be a "trusted, tested" couple so they will be able to support each other through hard times.

And she said it's important that they be a man and a woman so that both boys and girls will see themselves reflected in the crew and be inspired.

"Inspiration is the namesake of this mission and of this foundation," she said.

Corrections and Clarifications

• The Mars voyagers will have 17 cubic metres, not feet, of living space. Feb. 28, 2013|8:19 a.m. ET

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Satellite imagery could help flood fight in Manitoba

Pictures from space could help flood fighters on the ground in Manitoba.

The Canadian Space Agency has awarded a grant to University of Winnipeg geography professor Joni Storie, who will study radar images that could allow flood forecasters to identify where flood waters naturally pool.

Radar images already help flood experts understand the extent of flooding, but determining where water naturally pools can help flood fighters minimize damage from flood waters, Storie said.

"This type of imagery that we acquire from the Canadian satellite has the ability to extract a lot of different types of information. I expect that we're going to be able to find these areas that will show an accumulation of water," she said.

The floodwater can then be drained to areas where it will do less damage, sparing valuable residential or agricultural land.

"You can put the water in a temporary storage location so that other places … are protected and they're not being flooded," Storie said.

Manitoba's first flood forecast of the year will be released Wednesday afternoon.

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Carbon storage project at U of R may be wound up, Premier Wall says

A Saskatchewan science project that developed what was hailed as the first guidelines in the world for safe carbon capture and storage is on the verge of shutting down.

Funding is running out for the University of Regina-based International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of CO2, known as IPAC-CO2.

'I don't think there's a need to continue because the work's been completed.'—Premier Brad Wall

And Premier Brad Wall said Tuesday that it could be "wound up."

"They've done some great work," Wall said at the legislature. "We wanted to lead in terms of the standards of CO2 storage and because of the work that's been done, we have those standards today."

Work is complete

"There might be some wind-up dollars required," he added. "I think we'll look at that in terms of the budget, but I don't think there's a need to continue because the work's been completed."

IPAC-CO2 was created in 2008 when the province and Royal Dutch Shell each put up $5 million over a five-year period. The federal government also contributed $4 million.

Carbon capture and storage involves gathering CO2 (or carbon dioxide) from power plants and refineries and injecting it deep into porous rock.

The goal is to prevent the gas from entering the atmosphere and contributing to climate change.

Jurisdictions such as Saskatchewan that rely heavily on coal-fired power plants need carbon capture and storage to work. But the technology has been panned as unproven and critics say not enough is known about the consequences.

Last November, the centre released guidelines on the best way to store carbon dioxide underground so it doesn't get back out.

IPAC also investigated claims from a Saskatchewan couple that CO2 from an oil company's carbon capture operation was leaking on their family farm near Weyburn. The centre determined that the company was not the source of gas found on Cameron and Jane Kerr's farm.

But the organization has been under scrutiny over concerns surrounding a contract for IT services that wasn't tendered.

When it was starting up, the centre, under management by employees of the University of Regina, got into a sole-sourced IT deal with Climate Ventures Inc.

Following a forensic investigation by Myers Norris Penny, the president of the university — Vianne Timmons — said some employees had not reported a conflict of interest.

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Computer scientist wins Canada's top science prize

University of Toronto computer scientist Stephen Cook receives $1 million in research funding over five years. (NSERC)

A Toronto mathematician and computer scientist has won this year's Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, worth $1 million.

Canada's top annual science prize has gone to Stephen Cook, professor emeritus in the department of computer science at the University of Toronto.

Cook's research focuses mainly on computational complexity and proof complexity, two areas of theoretical computer science and mathematics.

"His inquiries are now among the most essential theoretical results that all computer science graduates must understand," said a release from Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council announcing the award.

The prize will provide $1 million in research funding over five years and will be awarded by Governor General David Johnston at a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa Wednesday afternoon.

Named after the winner of 1971 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the Herzberg medal recognizes researchers for excellence and "influence in research for a body of work conducted in Canada that has substantially advanced" their field.

Cook was also the 1982 winner of the Turing award, the top research honour in the field of computer science.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council has also announced the winners of several other top prizes, including the John C. Polanyi Award, which recognizes a "recent outstanding advance" in science or engineering. That went to University of Toronto chemist Greg Scholes.

Scholes receives a grant of up to $250,000 for his research on the role of quantum mechanics in photosynthesis.

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Professional cellphone contract negotiators haggle for customers

Discussing cellphone bills, contracts and plans with their wireless provider is something many Canadians would rather not do — so a number of entrepreneurs are offering to haggle with service providers on their behalf.

Companies such as mybillsarehigh.com negotiate with wireless providers like Rogers or Bell to get customers a better deal, in return for a cut of the savings.

Mohamed Halabi, founder and CEO of mybillsarehigh.com says the trick is to know all the plans, past and present, offered by all the cellphone providers in Canada. But that doesn't necessarily make it fun to deal with customer service representatives for the wireless companies.

"Even me as an expense management professional, I mean, I [get] really frustrated, right?" he said. "So, I mean, it's obviously really hard for the average customer to do this."

CBC's Blair Sanderson had his wife Tara give Halabi's service a try, and then he reported on her experience. Tara was reluctant to participate at first because it meant providing her past wireless bills to Halabi, and calling her cellphone service provider to authorize him to make changes to her account. She also felt that she was getting a pretty good deal already.

However, Halabi did manage to get her a better contract. (Though in the end she reverted to her previous contract, so as not to benefit from her husband's story, as per CBC's journalistic standards.)

To hear the details, click on the play button in the audio player at the top of the story.

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Alberta's CO2 capture target falls after project scrapped

Another carbon capture and storage project has been scrapped in Alberta, raising questions about the province's ability to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Only two of four government-funded carbon capture projects remain on track in the province following Swan Hills Synfuels announcement this week that it's shelving its plan due to low natural gas prices.

"There's no question that the Alberta government of, say, five years ago was really over-focused on CO2 capture and storage and seemed to see it as some kind of magic bullet," said climate change scientist David Keith.

But Premier Alison Redford says her government still believes in carbon capture and storage, despite the cancellations.

"We still have $1.3 billion invested in other projects and we are still very supportive of those projects. So it is not a policy change, but we are not going to continue to push things if the private sector is telling us they don't make sense."

The province's carbon capture target for the four projects was five million tonnes annually by 2016. Now the target is about 2.6 million tonnes through two remaining projects: the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line and Shell Quest.

Bob Savage, director of Alberta Environment's climate change secretariat, said the province's new target is the equivalent of taking more than half a million cars off the road.

"Carbon capture and storage remains a key part of Alberta's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and is a technology that has a lot of potential. The challenge is figuring out a way to do it in a cost-effective manner," said Savage.

Key part of Alberta's commitment

Matt Horne, a director with environmental group the Pembina Institute, said one reason carbon capture and storage projects aren't making sense financially is because Alberta does not have a tax on carbon emissions.

"There is very little incentive here in Alberta to reduce those emissions. If Alberta's policy becomes stronger, there is going to be a stronger incentive to reduce those emissions and invest in technologies like carbon capture and storage."

Climate change scientist Keith argues that the Alberta government doesn't seem keen on spending serious money on cutting emissions.

"The government really seems to be kind of ignoring serious sustained action on cutting carbon emissions. And that's clearly a political response to the fact that the political pressure isn't as high as it was. But I think Alberta needs to take the long view," he said.

"The government should be involved by putting a price on people using the atmosphere as a free waste dump and getting serious about cutting carbon emissions."

Carbon capture technology is aimed at reducing carbon dioxide, a major contributor to greenhouse gases. The carbon is taken from an industrial source, such as a smokestack, liquefied and shipped by pipe to another location and stored deep underground in porous rock.

Proponents say it's the best way to feed the consumer appetite for fossil fuels while reducing the pollution.

Opponents say the technology is expensive and unproven, and it's not being done on a large scale anywhere in the world. They also voice health concerns, noting if the concentrated CO2 leaks, it could poison underground water sources or asphyxiate people if released to the surface.

With files from The Canadian Press

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Young people overshare financial info, Visa warns

Many young Canadians are "oversharing" their financial information, says a new survey that found nearly half of 18- to 34-year-old respondents admitting they take risks like texting their credit or debit card numbers.

The poll by Visa Canada found that 45 per cent of this demographic group also shared their payment card information via email, loaned their cards and didn't keep their PIN confidential.

This behaviour mirrors similar habits of sharing personal information on social media sites, said Gord Jamieson, head of payment system risk at the credit card company.

"Yet they're really not totally aware of who has access to this information and who else can be seeing this information and what would be done with it," he said from Toronto.

Not enough secrecy

The survey, released Tuesday, marks the start of fraud prevention month in March.

Individuals in the 18-34 group also reported the highest level of online sharing activities, including keeping an open profile on a social network site and posting to it daily, publicly sharing photos and posting their employment history.

"Just be careful what you put out there," Jamieson said, noting that public WiFi networks for mobile devices aren't necessarily secure.

For the older generations, they tend not to overshare quite as much.

Among those aged 35 and older, the survey found that 32 per cent reported taking risks with their payment card information. This group also reported less sharing of personal information online.

The survey also found that 43 per cent who had engaged in behaviour such as sharing payment card information or loaning their card had experienced some kind of fraud.

"So, is that a coincidence?" Jamieson asked. "They are creating that opportunity by engaging in that risky behaviour. Those people are twice as more likely to be victims of fraud today."

Identify theft possible

The survey also found that 56 per cent of respondents said they were more concerned now about identity theft than they were five years ago. While 50 per cent of respondents said they were more concerned about payment card fraud today compared to five years ago.

"They acknowledge it, but sometimes they don't practice what they should be doing," Jamieson said.

The survey found that less than half — 41 per cent — reported checking their payment card statements more than once a month.

Jamieson recommends setting up an alert system so a cardholder would be notified via email or text every time a transaction is made.

The Canadian Bankers Association says credit card fraud was $436.6 million in 2011, its most recent statistic, up about 19 per cent from 2010.

The online survey was conducted by market research firm Fabrizio Ward with 1,000 major credit and debit cardholders from Dec. 26 to Jan. 2.

Visa also produced a video about the perils of oversharing credit card information. It can be viewed on YouTube at www.TheConcertByVisa.ca.

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Samsung takes on Apple with new tablet

Samsung Electronics is beefing up its tablet range with a competitor to Apple's iPad Mini that sports a pen for writing on the screen.

The Korean company announced on Sunday in Barcelona, Spain that the Galaxy Note 8.0 will have an eight-inch screen, putting it very close in size to Apple's tablet, which launched in November with a 7.9-inch screen.

Samsung Electronics is beefing up its tablet range with a competitor to Apple's iPad Mini that sports a pen for writing on the screen. (Samsung/Associated Press)

It's not the first time Samsung has made a tablet that's in the Mini's size range: its very first iPad competitor had a seven-inch screen, and it still makes a tablet of that size, but without a pen.

Samsung will start selling the new tablet in the April to June period, at a currently undetermined price.

It made the announcement ahead of Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry's annual trade show, which starts Monday in Barcelona, Spain.

The Note 8.0 fills a gap in Samsung's line-up of pen-equipped devices. It falls between the Galaxy Note II smartphone, with its 5.5-inch screen, and the Galaxy Note 10.1, a full-size tablet.

Samsung has made the pen — called the stylus — one of the tools it uses to chip away at Apple's dominance in both tablets and high-end smartphones. Apple doesn't make any devices that work with a stylus, preferring to optimize its interfaces for fingers, mice and touchpads.

On Samsung's Note line, the pens can be used to write, highlight and draw.

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Tiny 'lunch-box' satellites carry huge Canadian hopes into space

They are no bigger than a lunch box or a big suitcase respectively, but small high-tech satellites that will blast into space aboard an Indian rocket on Monday carry significant expectations for Canada's future in space.

The BRITE and NEOSSat satellites will try to peer deep into stars and spot asteroids, other satellites and space debris. They also point to an emerging trend in the private- and public-sector space industries as budgets shrink and technology advances.

"I think we're showing that you can do really exciting things in space without the big budgets that people tend to associate with space programs," says Cordell Grant, satellite systems manager at the Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Cordell Grant integrates two BRITE satellites with the PSLV-C20 launch vehicle in India on Feb. 15, 2013. The satellites, enclosed in their XPOD separation systems with protective panels still on, can be seen angled upward on either side of the upper stage of the rocket. (Indian Space Research Organization/UTIAS)

Grant will be waiting — a wee bit nervously — as a rocket blasts off Monday from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the east coast of India. Inside the rocket's carefully stacked payload, along with two other satellites with significant Canadian ties, will be two nano-satellites that were designed at his lab.

Each of these nano satellites is a 20-centimetre aluminum cube about the size of a lunch box — the smallest astronomical satellite ever built. It weighs slightly less than seven kilograms and contains a telescope about 20 centimetres long, along with the technology needed to help point it at its targets: the stars that are most visible from Earth.

Solar cells on the outside can generate the 10 watts of power needed to run the devices as they orbit Earth every 100 minutes or so and measure the brightness of those stars to learn more about their inner workings.

The BRITE satellites have been in production since 2005, and are part of a complex international scientific relationship that sees most of the funding for this portion of the project come from Austrian sources, while much of the technological expertise comes from Canada.

In space terms, where an International Space Station can cost $150 billion, the BRITEs are relatively cheap, clocking in at between $1 milllion and $2 million for each nano-satellite.

"There's a lot of interest in the space community in general in what can be done with smaller satellites because as economic times are tighter, then people tend to look at space programs that are spending a lot of money and say how can we avoid spending that money but do useful things," says Grant.

Military satellite

The BRITE satellites will be going into orbit Monday along with two other satellites with a significant Canadian pedigree: NEOSsat and Sapphire.

The Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research Development Canada will use NEOSsat — or the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite — to try to spot asteroids and track high-altitude satellites and space debris.

The 73-kilogram microsatellite is the size of a small suitcase, runs on about 80 watts of power and follows in the space footsteps of MOST, a 60-kilogram star-watching device launched a decade ago and still gathering data.

Sapphire, a box-like structure that weighs in at 150 kilograms, is the Department of National Defence's first dedicated operational military satellite.

"It represents an important milestone in the development of Canada's space-based military capabilities," Defence Minister Peter MacKay said in October, when the satellite was being sent off from Ottawa to India for the launch.

The Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research Development Canada want to use NEOSSat to spot asteroids and track high-altitude satellites and space debris. (Canadian Space Agency)

"Sapphire will collect information on deep-space objects, and share it with the U.S. Space Surveillance Network. This integration of information will help increase the ability of both Canada and the U.S. to protect their assets and interests in space by preventing collisions."

The project, which cost more than $65 million, will track space debris that could collide with satellites used for telecommunications, weather, Earth observation and GPS.

Looking for asteroids

Guennadi Kroupnik, director of satellite communication and space environment projects for the Canadian Space Agency, says NEOSsat has been designed to work for a year, but with the hope that it will survive much longer.

Cost for the NEOSsat project, from inception to end of its useful life, is estimated at $24 million. The satellite will be on the lookout for asteroids and comets between the sun and Earth, along with other satellites and space junk "in order to track and ensure security of space assets being threatened by space debris," Kroupnik says.

That threat has increased significantly over the past few years, Kroupnik says, noting the 2007 test of an anti-satellite weapon by China's Ministry of Defence and a satellite collision involving Russian equipment that left debris behind.

The PSLV-C20 rocket containing several satellites sits on its launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. (Indian Space Research Organization)

The Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle carrying the Canadian satellites to space is doing something of a milk run, boosting seven satellites in total into their orbits, which should take place about 15 minutes after liftoff Monday.

Along with the Canadian projects, there is a joint French-Indian satellite (SARAL), and two smaller satellites from the U.K. and Denmark in the payload.

Canada doesn't have the facilities to launch anything into space, and the cost and availability of Indian rockets have proved attractive for the CSA and projects such as Grant's.

The BRITE satellites are the first two of a six-satellite plan, and Grant hopes the remaining ones will be launched within a year. All of them have been designed to last two years, but with the hope they could live on.

"If it lasts for two years then there's really no reason it can't last longer," says Grant.

"There's nothing on board that's going to run out like fuel or anything like that. So as long as everything is healthy, it could last quite a bit longer."

'Dynamic field'

Grant sees the BRITE project having the potential to open up a new market for "low-cost, high-performance satellites."

Kroupnik says it's premature to consider that smaller satellites will be able to replace larger platforms in the short or middle term.

But he sees them complementing larger satellites and expects the number of smaller ones blasting off will grow.

"It's a very dynamic field and we'll see most probably more and more smaller satellites flying to space."

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'Social reading' the next phase of e-book revolution

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Ya ain't seen nothing yet!" -- Al Jolson, The Jazz Singer (1927)

Those were the opening words spoken in the first feature-length talking picture. They proved prophetic for the movies, which have gone through constant, disruptive change ever since. And they could apply equally well to another cultural industry that in the past decade has gone through its own upheaval – publishing.

The United States leads the world in the growth of e-reading, but Canada isn't far behind. The latest figures show e-book sales have soared from practically nothing five years ago to about 16 per cent of all books sold in Canada in 2012.

That's worth sales of roughly $300 million CDN a year, up from $100 million when my collaborator Dave Redel and I produced a CBC Radio documentary for Ideas in early 2011 called Closing the Book. In making our sequel, Opening The Book, which airs Feb. 25, we learned that e-books promise to fundamentally change the way we read.

According to Bob Stein, a digital pioneer, the future of books is "social reading."

Digital booksellers, like Amazon and Indigo, have harnessed social media from the start. They and other sellers encourage their customers to comment on books in company-controlled chat spaces.

But these digital walled gardens are way too limited for Stein, who heads up the Institute for the Future of the Book and was the founder of the Criterion Collection, the celebrated video-distribution company where he dreamed up the idea of adding commentary tracks to movies on DVD.

Based in New York, Stein is working on a new application called Socialbook, which is like those Amazon and Indigo chatrooms — on steroids.

'Social reading'

Rather than limiting discussion of a certain book to a digital room in e-readers such as the Kobo or Kindle, Socialbook lets all your friends in your personal digital network know what you're reading and invites them into the conversation. Furthermore, Socialbook puts participants right into the text of the book, where they can scribble notes in the digital margin of the book, highlight portions, pull out quotes and even re-arrange the content. Socialbook is an app that lets all your friends in your personal digital network know what you're reading and invites them into the conversation. (Canadian Press)

Stein believes Socialbook and networked technologies like it make discussion about books far more social, dynamic and powerful. "I'm quite sure that this concept of social reading is much deeper than anything I've done before," Stein told us. "Criterion was cool, re-imagining the page [with CD-ROMs] to include audio and video. Great idea, I'm glad we did it and it was important, but the idea that media is becoming fundamentally social is much deeper."

Stein believes online sharing may become the dominant way of both consuming and producing stories.

"This idea that we read by ourselves is a relatively recent idea and is going to go away," he said. "The reality is that once you start locating texts inside of that dynamic network, you start opening up the possibilities for the book to become a place where readers can start to congregate and start to talk to each other, and once people start to see the power of that, they won't want to go back."

'This idea that we read by ourselves is a relatively recent idea and is going to go away'—Bob Stein, Socialbook developer

James Bridle, a London, UK-based editor, publisher and self-proclaimed book futurist, isn't as sold on the intense online socialization of reading and writing.

Bridle notes that in the 18th century, the French writer Montaigne sat in his lonely garret and basically invented the modern essay, not knowing if it would connect with readers. It turns out his essays did – and to great public acclaim, too.

Bridle thinks digital technology could be used to enhance one-on-one relationships between author and readers, which he thinks will be just as valuable in the future as social online reading and writing.

Stein, however, contends that social reading actually brings our culture full circle. In the pre-historic, preliterate era, storytelling was communal, as tales were told around the campfire.

New business models

Up until now, books in both paper and digital form have been pretty resistant to networking. They've been closed silos of information that publishers have been keen to keep inside their own covers (even if they're virtual covers). After all, publishers are in the business of selling access to that information in order to get you to buy a copy.

But Hugh McGuire, the Montreal-based founder of online publishers Pressbooks and Libravox, thinks that business model — pretty much the one in place for the last 500 years — is ready to be blown away. Digital pioneers say the old business model that's existed in the publishing industry for the last 500 years -- that books are closed silos of information -- is about to be blown away. (John Jaques/Pueblo Chieftain/Associated Press)

McGuire, who co-edited the recent anthology Book: A Futurist's Manifesto, believes the old model will be replaced with one that makes all the information in all future books open, accessible and free for analysis.

"One of the things I believe is that a lot of books will end up totally on the web, and that's something that horrifies people for, I think, cultural reasons," said McGuire.

He said a lot of people think "books are important and the web is for Twitter and Facebook and silly things. I say this is a ridiculous notion. First of all, there's an awful lot of schlock and not very good stuff which is published as books, and there's an enormous amount of serious information that is on the web."

To get at that serious information, read it and discuss it freely, McGuire thinks within the next five years, every page of every book will become its own searchable webpage with its own URL.

He also thinks nearly every book will come with an application programming interface (API), which is a sophisticated programming tool that will allow you to manipulate the information in weird and wonderful and highly informative ways.

Every book its own webpage

Say you and your friends are reading Bram Stoker's classic Dracula together online and you become interested in the bloodsucking count's extensive travels through Europe. McGuire says an API-coded version would allow you to produce a sophisticated map with just a few keystrokes. The map could then interface with a travel website, which would allow you to book transportation to London, a key location in the novel.

After your arrival in the UK capital, you and your friends could take a walking tour with smartphone in hand. After surfing to the book's website, the embedded API would synchronize with the GPS in your phone. And that would then give you various Dracula-themed literary references as you pass locations mentioned in the book, making for a much more interesting visit to London.

Of course, for a scenario like this to work, McGuire stresses the information in books has to be free and web-accessible, and that shatters the carefully guarded silos of the publishers.

"This is the great challenge that we have every time the media goes through a great transition," McGuire says. He likens it to the publishing landscape when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century.

"I imagine that [if there were] radio programs in the 1400s with interviews with Gutenberg asking him about how this was going to impact the business model of the scribes who copied bibles at the time. He didn't know … and it wasn't until [Martin] Luther came along that a good business model was found. So, we don't know!"

Sean Prpick and Dave Redel's CBC Radio documentary, Opening The Book, airs on Ideas at 9 p.m. (9:30 NT) on Feb. 25.

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Tiny 'lunch-box' satellites carry huge Canadian hopes into space

They are no bigger than a lunch box or a big suitcase, but the small high-tech satellites that will blast into space aboard an Indian rocket on Monday carry significant expectations for Canada's future in space.

These satellites will try to spot asteroids, track other satellites and space debris, and peer deep into stars — and they also point to an emerging trend in the private- and public-sector space industries as budgets shrink and technology advances.

"I think we're showing that you can do really exciting things in space without the big budgets that people tend to associate with space programs," says Cordell Grant, satellite systems manager at the Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Cordell Grant integrates two BRITE satellites with the PSLV-C20 launch vehicle in India on Feb. 15, 2013. The satellites, enclosed in their XPOD separation systems with protective panels still on, can be seen angled upward on either side of the upper stage of the rocket. (Indian Space Research Organization/UTIAS)

Grant will be waiting — a wee bit nervously — as a rocket blasts off Monday from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the east coast of India. Inside the rocket's carefully stacked payload, along with two other satellites with significant Canadian ties, will be two nano-satellites that were designed at his lab.

Each of these nano satellites is a 20-centimetre aluminum cube about the size of a lunch box — the smallest astronomical satellite ever built. It weighs slightly less than seven kilograms and contains a telescope about 20 centimetres long, along with the technology needed to help point it at its targets: the stars that are most visible from Earth.

Solar cells on the outside can generate the 10 watts of power needed to run the devices as they orbit Earth every 100 minutes or so and measure the brightness of those stars to learn more about their inner workings.

The BRITE satellites have been in production since 2005, and are part of a complex international scientific relationship that sees most of the funding for this portion of the project come from Austrian sources, while much of the technological expertise comes from Canada.

In space terms, where an International Space Station can cost $150 billion, the BRITEs are relatively cheap, clocking in at between $1 milllion and $2 million for each nano-satellite.

"There's a lot of interest in the space community in general in what can be done with smaller satellites because as economic times are tighter, then people tend to look at space programs that are spending a lot of money and say how can we avoid spending that money but do useful things," says Grant.

Military satellite

The BRITE satellites will be going into orbit Monday along with two other satellites with a significant Canadian pedigree: NEOSsat and Sapphire.

The Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research Development Canada will use NEOSsat — or the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite — to try to spot asteroids and track high-altitude satellites and space debris.

The 73-kilogram microsatellite is the size of a small suitcase, runs on about 80 watts of power and follows in the space footsteps of MOST, a 60-kilogram star-watching device launched a decade ago and still gathering data.

Sapphire, a box-like structure that weighs in at 150 kilograms, is the Department of National Defence's first dedicated operational military satellite.

"It represents an important milestone in the development of Canada's space-based military capabilities," Defence Minister Peter MacKay said in October, when the satellite was being sent off from Ottawa to India for the launch.

The Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research Development Canada want to use NEOSSat to spot asteroids and track high-altitude satellites and space debris. (Canadian Space Agency)

"Sapphire will collect information on deep-space objects, and share it with the U.S. Space Surveillance Network. This integration of information will help increase the ability of both Canada and the U.S. to protect their assets and interests in space by preventing collisions."

The project, which cost more than $65 million, will track space debris that could collide with satellites used for telecommunications, weather, Earth observation and GPS.

Looking for asteroids

Guennadi Kroupnik, director of satellite communication and space environment projects for the Canadian Space Agency, says NEOSsat has been designed to work for a year, but with the hope that it will survive much longer.

Cost for the NEOSsat project, from inception to end of its useful life, is estimated at $24 million. The satellite will be on the lookout for asteroids and comets between the sun and Earth, along with other satellites and space junk "in order to track and ensure security of space assets being threatened by space debris," Kroupnik says.

That threat has increased significantly over the past few years, Kroupnik says, noting the 2007 test of an anti-satellite weapon by China's Ministry of Defence and a satellite collision involving Russian equipment that left debris behind.

The PSLV-C20 rocket containing several satellites sits on its launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. (Indian Space Research Organization)

The Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle carrying the Canadian satellites to space is doing something of a milk run, boosting seven satellites in total into their orbits, which should take place about 15 minutes after liftoff Monday.

Along with the Canadian projects, there is a joint French-Indian satellite (SARAL), and two smaller satellites from the U.K. and Denmark in the payload.

Canada has never created the facilities to launch anything into space, and the cost and availability of Indian rockets have proved attractive for the CSA and projects such as Grant's.

The BRITE satellites are the first two of a six-satellite plan, and Grant hopes the remaining ones will be launched within a year. All of them have been designed to last two years, but with the hope they could live on.

"If it lasts for two years then there's really no reason it can't last longer," says Grant.

"There's nothing on board that's going to run out like fuel or anything like that. So as long as everything is healthy, it could last quite a bit longer."

'Dynamic field'

Grant sees the BRITE project having the potential to open up a new market for "low-cost, high-performance satellites."

Kroupnik says it's premature to consider that smaller satellites will be able to replace larger platforms in the short or middle term.

But he sees them complementing larger satellites and expects the number of smaller ones blasting off will grow.

"It's a very dynamic field and we'll see most probably more and more smaller satellites flying to space."

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Lazy eye cured by total darkness

Canadian researchers have found out how to restore normal vision to kittens with a lazy eye without using an eye patch.

The cure was relatively simple — putting the kittens in complete darkness for 10 days. Once the kittens were returned to daylight, they regained normal vision in the lazy eye within a week, reported researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax in the journal Current Biology this month.

Lazy eye is a condition where the brain effectively turns off one eye. It affects about four per cent of the population in humans, and the most common treatment is fix the vision problem (for example, by using glasses) and then patch the good eye, forcing the person to use their bad eye.

Treatment is most effective in younger children.

Kevin Duffy, a neuroscientist who co-authored the new study, told CBC's Quirks & Quarks that the condition is typically the result of a vision problem such as a cataract, a misalignment of the eyes, or poor focus in one eye, which then causes the brain to develop abnormally.

"If the eye is providing abnormal vision, then the circuits that connect to that eye are going to develop abnormally," he said. The brain "becomes effectively disconnected."

While patching is a common treatment, there are two main problems with it, Duffy said. One is that getting the child to wear a patch isn't easy. The other is that the patch prevents both eyes from learning to work together, which is needed for tasks such as judging distances.

In Duffy's study, kittens with normal vision developed lazy eye after having one eye sewn shut for seven days. The eye would be reopened, and the kittens would be allowed to see with both eyes for five weeks.

Tests showed they could see only one-third as well with the lazy eye as they could with their normal eye.

'Zero photons of light'

The kittens were then put in a special laboratory facility for 10 days.

"It's a darkroom inside of a darkroom inside of another darkroom," Duffy said. "So the central room is the proper darkroom and it has zero photons of light."

When the kittens were brought back to normal light conditions, the lazy eye regained normal vision within five to seven days.

The researchers think the darkness may put the brain into a state that allows it to change more easily.

"It may be that the pattern of activity produced by the eye in darkness is reminiscent of an earlier time of development," Duffy said, "and it may be that pattern of activity that's instructing the brain to revert back to the earlier stage."

Despite the promising results of the study, Duffy said he wouldn't yet recommend that the treatment be tested on humans.

Currently, he said, the researchers are trying to figure out whether they can get the same positive effect if:

• The period of complete darkness is shorter than 10 days.
• The darkness is not complete.
• The kittens are exposed to light for 30 minutes each day.

"All of these questions, I think, have to be answered," Duffy said, "and perhaps many more, before clinicians would be willing to implement this treatment in humans."

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Samsung takes on Apple with new tablet

Samsung Electronics is beefing up its tablet range with a competitor to Apple's iPad Mini that sports a pen for writing on the screen.

The Korean company announced on Sunday in Barcelona, Spain that the Galaxy Note 8.0 will have an eight-inch screen, putting it very close in size to Apple's tablet, which launched in November with a 7.9-inch screen.

Samsung Electronics is beefing up its tablet range with a competitor to Apple's iPad Mini that sports a pen for writing on the screen. (Samsung/Associated Press)

It's not the first time Samsung has made a tablet that's in the Mini's size range: it's very first iPad competitor had a seven-inch screen, and it still makes a tablet of that size, but without a pen.

Samsung will start selling the new tablet in the April to June period, at a currently undetermined price.

It made the announcement ahead of Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry's annual trade show, which starts Monday in Barcelona, Spain.

The Note 8.0 fills a gap in Samsung's line-up of pen-equipped devices. It falls between the Galaxy Note II smartphone, with its 5.5-inch screen, and the Galaxy Note 10.1, a full-size tablet.

Samsung has made the pen — called the stylus — one of the tools it uses to chip away at Apple's dominance in both tablets and high-end smartphones. Apple doesn't make any devices that work with a stylus, preferring to optimize its interfaces for fingers, mice and touchpads.

On Samsung's Note line, the pens can be used to write, highlight and draw.

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Evolution takes a similar course each time, study suggests

E. coli bacteria prefer to eat glucose, but once it is all gone, they can switch into a different metabolic mode to eat acetate. (Rocky Mountain Laboratories/NIAID/NIH)

Evolution is surprisingly predictable and its course seems relatively unaffected by chance events, a new study suggests.

Michael Doebeli, a mathematician and evolutionary biologist at the University of British Columbia, and postdoctoral researcher Matthew Herron conducted three separate experiments under the same laboratory conditions, observing 1,000 generations of E. coli bacteria as they evolved into two different strains — a process known as diversification that eventually gives rise to separate species.

They wanted to answer one of the big questions about evolution: Is diversification a predetermined process or is it partly driven by chance events?

'We have basically a genetic fossil record of what happened.'—Michael Doebeli, evolutionary biologist

That answer could in turn help answer a bigger question that some biologists have mused about.

That is, if you went back thousands of years and "replayed the tape of life," would you end up with humans and the species we know today, or would small differences caused by chance result in completely different plants and animals?

Doebeli was surprised to discover that in his study, all three bacterial populations evolved in almost exactly the same way, suggesting that chance or randomness doesn't play a big role, at least over a short period of time, such as 1,000 generations, and in laboratory conditions.

"It's a deterministic process — it unfolds in very similar ways in independent instances," said Doebeli. "We were surprised by just how parallel it actually is."

Not only did the bacteria go through similar mutations, but similar changes in the populations occurred at similar times.

Mathematical prediction

Doebeli said the process is consistent with mathematical predictions. The results were published this week in the journal PLoS Biology.

'For the same conditions, it will always occur in the same way.'—Michael Doebeli, evolutionary biologist

Doebeli's study involved growing E. coli bacteria in an environment with two nutrients, glucose and acetate.

The bacteria prefer to eat glucose, but once it is all gone, they can switch into a different metabolic mode to eat the acetate. Over 1,000 generations, the bacteria evolve via natural selection into two different strains:

• One that is better at eating glucose but bad at switching its system into acetate-eating mode.
• One that is not as good at eating glucose, but better at switching into acetate-eating mode.

That's because initially, when everyone is going after the same resource, an individual who can tap into a different resource has a distinct advantage and will be able to produce more descendants.

Throughout the process, which took about six months, the researchers removed and froze bacteria from different generations at regular intervals. At the end, they analyzed the changes to the DNA over time to see what changes occurred.

"We have basically a genetic fossil record of what happened," Doebeli said.

In all three cases, the diversification followed the same pattern, and each step occurred in the same order and took the same amount of time.

First, a strain that was unusually good at eating gluocose arose. Then a strain that was good at eating acetate came about. That led to more changes in the glucose specialist, which in turn led to more changes in the acetate specialist, and so on.

Key mutations 'not random'

Of course, Doebeli acknowledged, it's true that the mutations that allowed that process to take place occur randomly.

"But the ones that actually make it — the mutations that can actually proliferate — those are not random," he said. "They are determined by this environment."

Although the exact mutations differed between the three populations, they tended to occur in genes that had similar functions.

Doebeli said the study suggests this kind of diversification in an environment with multiple resources isn't something that happens "by chance every now and then."

"Under the right conditions, it's actually expected to occur," he said. "And for the same conditions, it will always occur in the same way."

He added that he thinks that finding is applicable to all organisms. However, he acknowledged that sexual reproduction — where mating between two strains can counteract divergence — does add some complications.

As for the question of whether this type of process played a big role in the evolution of humans, Doebeli said that process may have been "more deterministic than someone would have thought.

"But I don't think we can extrapolate from this 1,000-generation experiment to the emergence of humans."

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Lazy eye cured by total darkness

In the study, kittens with normal vision developed lazy eye after wearing a patch for seven days. (iStock)

Canadian researchers have found out how to restore normal vision to kittens with a lazy eye without using an eye patch.

The cure was relatively simple — putting the kittens in complete darkness for 10 days. Once the kittens were returned to daylight, they regained normal vision in the lazy eye within a week, reported researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax in the journal Current Biology this month.

Lazy eye is a condition where the brain effectively turns off one eye. It affects about four per cent of the population in humans, and the most common treatment is fix the vision problem (for example, by using glasses) and then patch the good eye, forcing the person to use their bad eye.

Treatment is most effective in younger children.

Kevin Duffy, a neuroscientist who co-authored the new study, told CBC's Quirks & Quarks that the condition is typically the result of a vision problem such as a cataract, a misalignment of the eyes, or poor focus in one eye, which then causes the brain to develop abnormally.

"If the eye is providing abnormal vision, then the circuits that connect to that eye are going to develop abnormally," he said. The brain "becomes effectively disconnected."

While patching is a common treatment, there are two main problems with it, Duffy said. One is that getting the child to wear a patch isn't easy. The other is that the patch prevents both eyes from learning to work together, which is needed for tasks such as judging distances.

In Duffy's study, kittens with normal vision developed lazy eye after wearing a patch for seven days. The patch was removed, and the kittens were allowed to see with both eyes for five weeks.

Tests showed they could see only one-third as well with the lazy eye as they could with their normal eye.

'Zero photons of light'

The kittens were then put in a special laboratory facility for 10 days.

"It's a darkroom inside of a darkroom inside of another darkroom," Duffy said. "So the central room is the proper darkroom and it has zero photons of light."

When the kittens were brought back to normal light conditions, the lazy eye regained normal vision within five to seven days.

The researchers think the darkness may put the brain into a state that allows it to change more easily.

"It may be that the pattern of activity produced by the eye in darkness is reminiscent of an earlier time of development," Duffy said, "and it may be that pattern of activity that's instructing the brain to revert back to the earlier stage."

Despite the promising results of the study, Duffy said he wouldn't yet recommend that the treatment be tested on humans.

Currently, he said, the researchers are trying to figure out whether they can get the same positive effect if:

• The period of complete darkness is shorter than 10 days.
• The darkness is not complete.
• The kittens are exposed to light for 30 minutes each day.

"All of these questions, I think, have to be answered," Duffy said, "and perhaps many more, before clinicians would be willing to implement this treatment in humans."

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

Tiny 'lunch-box' satellites carry huge Canadian hopes into space

They are no bigger than a lunch box or a big suitcase, but the small high-tech satellites that will blast into space aboard an Indian rocket on Monday carry significant expectations for Canada's future in space.

These satellites will try to spot asteroids, track other satellites and space debris, and peer deep into stars — and they also point to an emerging trend in the private- and public-sector space industries as budgets shrink and technology advances.

"I think we're showing that you can do really exciting things in space without the big budgets that people tend to associate with space programs," says Cordell Grant, satellite systems manager at the Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Cordell Grant integrates two BRITE satellites with the PSLV-C20 launch vehicle in India on Feb. 15, 2013. The satellites, enclosed in their XPOD separation systems with protective panels still on, can be seen angled upward on either side of the upper stage of the rocket. (Indian Space Research Organization/UTIAS)

Grant will be waiting — a wee bit nervously — as a rocket blasts off Monday from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on the east coast of India. Inside the rocket's carefully stacked payload, along with two other satellites with significant Canadian ties, will be two nano-satellites that were designed at his lab.

Each of these nano satellites is a 20-centimetre aluminum cube about the size of a lunch box — the smallest astronomical satellite ever built. It weighs slightly less than seven kilograms and contains a telescope about 20 centimetres long, along with the technology needed to help point it at its targets: the stars that are most visible from Earth.

Solar cells on the outside can generate the 10 watts of power needed to run the devices as they orbit Earth every 100 minutes or so and measure the brightness of those stars to learn more about their inner workings.

The BRITE satellites have been in production since 2005, and are part of a complex international scientific relationship that sees most of the funding for this portion of the project come from Austrian sources, while much of the technological expertise comes from Canada.

In space terms, where an International Space Station can cost $150 billion, the BRITEs are relatively cheap, clocking in at between $1 milllion and $2 million for each nano-satellite.

"There's a lot of interest in the space community in general in what can be done with smaller satellites because as economic times are tighter, then people tend to look at space programs that are spending a lot of money and say how can we avoid spending that money but do useful things," says Grant.

Military satellite

The BRITE satellites will be going into orbit Monday along with two other satellites with a significant Canadian pedigree: NEOSsat and Sapphire.

The Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research Development Canada will use NEOSsat — or the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite — to try to spot asteroids and track high-altitude satellites and space debris.

The 73-kilogram microsatellite is the size of a small suitcase, runs on about 80 watts of power and follows in the space footsteps of MOST, a 60-kilogram star-watching device launched a decade ago and still gathering data.

Sapphire, a box-like structure that weighs in at 150 kilograms, is the Department of National Defence's first dedicated operational military satellite.

"It represents an important milestone in the development of Canada's space-based military capabilities," Defence Minister Peter MacKay said in October, when the satellite was being sent off from Ottawa to India for the launch.

The Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research Development Canada want to use NEOSSat to spot asteroids and track high-altitude satellites and space debris. (Canadian Space Agency)

"Sapphire will collect information on deep-space objects, and share it with the U.S. Space Surveillance Network. This integration of information will help increase the ability of both Canada and the U.S. to protect their assets and interests in space by preventing collisions."

The project, which cost more than $65 million, will track space debris that could collide with satellites used for telecommunications, weather, Earth observation and GPS.

Looking for asteroids

Guennadi Kroupnik, director of satellite communication and space environment projects for the Canadian Space Agency, says NEOSsat has been designed to work for a year, but with the hope that it will survive much longer.

Cost for the NEOSsat project, from inception to end of its useful life, is estimated at $24 million. The satellite will be on the lookout for asteroids and comets between the sun and Earth, along with other satellites and space junk "in order to track and ensure security of space assets being threatened by space debris," Kroupnik says.

That threat has increased significantly over the past few years, Kroupnik says, noting the 2007 test of an anti-satellite weapon by China's Ministry of Defence and a satellite collision involving Russian equipment that left debris behind.

The PSLV-C20 rocket containing several satellites sits on its launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India. (Indian Space Research Organization)

The Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle carrying the Canadian satellites to space is doing something of a milk run, boosting seven satellites in total into their orbits, which should take place about 15 minutes after liftoff Monday.

Along with the Canadian projects, there is a joint French-Indian satellite (SARAL), and two smaller satellites from the U.K. and Denmark in the payload.

Canada has never created the facilities to launch anything into space, and the cost and availability of Indian rockets have proved attractive for the CSA and projects such as Grant's.

The BRITE satellites are the first two of a six-satellite plan, and Grant hopes the remaining ones will be launched within a year. All of them have been designed to last two years, but with the hope they could live on.

"If it lasts for two years then there's really no reason it can't last longer," says Grant.

"There's nothing on board that's going to run out like fuel or anything like that. So as long as everything is healthy, it could last quite a bit longer."

'Dynamic field'

Grant sees the BRITE project having the potential to open up a new market for "low-cost, high-performance satellites."

Kroupnik says it's premature to consider that smaller satellites will be able to replace larger platforms in the short or middle term.

But he sees them complementing larger satellites and expects the number of smaller ones blasting off will grow.

"It's a very dynamic field and we'll see most probably more and more smaller satellites flying to space."

22.11 | 0 komentar | Read More

OK for police to search cellphone if no password, says court

Ontario's highest court has signalled that the right of police officers to look through someone's phone depends on whether there's a password.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario says it's all right for police to have a cursory look through the phone upon arrest if it's not password protected, but if it is, investigators should get a search warrant.

The court's ruling comes in the case of a man who appealed his robbery conviction, arguing that police breached his charter rights by looking through his phone after his arrest.

Kevin Fearon was arrested in July 2009, after a jewelry stall at a flea market in Toronto was robbed, and police found pictures of a gun and cash as well as a text message about jewelry on his phone.

The Appeal Court denied his appeal, saying that police were allowed to look through Fearon's phone "in a cursory fashion" to see if there was evidence relevant to the crime, but after that they should have stopped to get a search warrant.

The court says if the phone had been password protected or otherwise locked to anyone other than its owner, "it would not have been appropriate" to look through the phone without a search warrant.

The Appeal Court judges referenced a decision in a murder case in which the judge did not allow evidence from a personal electronic device because it "functioned as a mini-computer," which has a high expectation of privacy. The contents of that device were only extracted by a police officer using specialized equipment in that case, the Appeal Court judges noted.

"There was no suggestion in this case that this particular cell phone functioned as a 'mini-computer' nor that its contents were not 'immediately visible to the eye,' the court said in its ruling, released Wednesday.

"Rather, because the phone was not password protected, the photos and the text message were readily available to other users."

The court, though, declined to create a specific new rule for all cellphone searches.

"It may be that some future case will produce a factual matrix that will lead the court to carve out a cellphone exception to the law," the ruling said. "To put it in the modern vernacular: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it."'

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Internet pricing ruling may mean better options for consumers

Rates for wholesale business internet services will be the same as residential, rather than higher as originally proposed. (CBC)

Independent internet providers say a new internet pricing ruling from Canada's telecommunications regulator may result in better packages for some consumers — especially businesses.

On Thursday, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission set the final rates that larger internet providers can charge small internet providers for "wholesale" access that small ISPs buy from companies such as Bell and Rogers to connect their networks directly to customers' homes and businesses.

"As a result of certain adjustments, some independent service providers will see significant reductions in the wholesale rates they pay," the CRTC said in a news release.

In particular:

• Rates for business internet services will be the same as residential, rather than higher as originally proposed.
• Bell's wholesale customers in Ontario and Quebec and Telus's wholesale customers in Alberta and B.C., who use an internet technology called DSL, will get rates "significantly lower" than those originally approved after costing errors were discovered in the studies they submitted to the CRTC.
• Cogeco's wholesale customers will also get a lower rate.

However, rates are now higher for customers of Rogers, Shaw and Videotron, who use cable internet technology, "due to the correction of certain cost methodology assumptions," the CRTC ruled.

"Large and small independent service providers now have the certainty they need to continue offering Canadians a choice of innovative and competitive services," said CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais in a statement. "We are pleased to finally close this chapter."

Tom Copeland, chair of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers and president of the small ISP Eagle.ca, said the decision means that independent ISPs will be able to continue to compete in the marketplace.

"We're happy that they realized that some of the markups they were allowing in general weren't appropriate," he said.

Now that independent internet providers can know, as best they can, what their wholesale costs will be, he added, "it'll allow us to be able to focus on providing a better level of service at a reasonable price."

Good for DSL, bad for cable customers

Marc Gaudrault, CEO of the independent internet provider Teksavvy Solutions, which offers both DSL and cable internet packages, said the ruling means residential and especially business consumers may see better DSL internet packages from independent internet providers.

"I don't know if rates will go down, but perhaps value for your money will go up," he said.

However, he added, "on the cable side, either rates will go up or value for your money will go down."

Gaudrault said his company, which has more cable than DSL customers, will have to reassess what to do in the weeks ahead.

He added that his company will probably continue to offer unlimited internet packages, but may have to reassess its rates.

Meanwhile, Rogers expressed some dissatisfaction with the ruling, despite the increase in its wholesale rate.

In a statement, the company said it asked the CRTC for higher rates "and while not all of our concerns were addressed, the rates have been adjusted." However, it noted that its rates remain lower than those of its competitors Bell, Videotron and Cogeco.

Bell said the ruling was "a complex set of decisions" and the company was assessing the impact on Bell and its wholesale partners.

Ruling ends usage-based billing saga

The CRTC pricing ruling is the final step in a process that started years ago, when Bell asked the CRTC to allow it to impose usage caps and extra charges for each gigabyte over the cap on its wholesale customers — something it described as usage-based billing and said was necessary to make heavy users pay their fair share.

The CRTC agreed with Bell in 2009.

Independent service providers, which had previously offered options such as unlimited internet packages, protested that the decision would force them to provide exactly the same packages to customers as the large internet providers and therefore make it impossible for them to compete.

Consumers, opposed to usage-based caps, also protested. Around half a million of them signed a petition organized by Vancouver-based Open Media, which advocates on behalf of consumers for an open internet.

In early 2011, before the new pricing went into effect, the federal government asked the CRTC to review its decision. The review resulted in a new pricing scheme that did not include caps, but was based on internet capacity rather than a flat rate. However, independent internet providers protested that the wholesale rates set initially were far too high and would force them to dramatically hike the price of their internet packages.

The CRTC reviewed and revised the rates, resulting in Thursday's decision.

Copeland cautioned that the price of internet service won't necessarily go down, as internet usage and network costs, which include far more than just wholesale pricing, have gone up overall for small internet providers.

The wholesale internet rates themselves, while lower than those originally set by the CRTC a year ago, are also higher than they were under the original wholesale pricing scheme five or six years ago, Copeland noted.

But he added that that is to be expected.

"They were prices from a different era," he said — an era before bandwidth-heavy applications such as streaming movies to people's televisions was commonplace. "They were based on an era where email was king."

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Greg Weston: Anti-hacking agency slow to learn about Chinese cyberattack

Confidential documents obtained by CBC News show that when Chinese military spies hacked into the control systems of Canadian pipelines and power grids last fall, this country's official cyber-response agency sprang into action – exactly 10 days later.

On Sept. 10, 2012, Calgary-based Telvent advised its customers that hackers had managed to penetrate the computers at both the high-tech firm and many of its clients, including huge energy companies and public utilities across North America.

But no one, apparently, told the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre, the federal agency set up to respond to cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.

Documents indicate the first the agency even heard about the attack was a news report 10 days later, saying a "Canadian energy company" had been hacked.

Even then, it took the organization more than 24 hours to determine the Canadian company hit was Telvent.

The 2012 cyberattack successfully breached a Calgary-based supplier of control systems for electrical power grids, municipal water systems, public transit operations, and most of Canada's major oil and gas pipelines. (Canadian Press)

Part of the problem was the federal response centre wasn't open to respond to anything on weekends. In fact, it was only staffed during banker's hours – eight hours a day, five days a week.

Whatever the cause, the Telvent embarrassment was hardly an anomaly.

Hundreds of pages of the agency's internal emails and cyber "incident reports" paint an organization unable to deal with an almost constant hail of cyberattacks on government and industry.

The documents show the government was consistently slow to respond to what would become Canada's worst cyberattack in the fall of 2010.

China-based hackers broke into the computer systems of at least three federal departments, seven Bay Street law firms, and two multinational corporations – all involved in the ultimately unsuccessful corporate takeover of Saskatchewan's Potash Corporation.

Documents show warning signs of a cyberattack throughout the fall of 2010, but no evidence of a co-ordinated response to it.

In mid-January 2011, all hell began to break loose with attack alerts pouring in daily.

Emails on Jan. 31 indicated the Finance Department and Treasury Board were both being slammed with severe cyberattacks, including significant volumes of sensitive government data being stolen by computers in China.

U.S. offers help after massive cyberattack

But it wasn't until three days later – and many meetings and a mountain of emails – that all of the computers at Finance, Treasury Board and Defence Research, also hit, were finally disconnected from the internet to prevent further loss of data.

Two weeks later, the first media reports about the massive cyberattack prompted the U.S. cyber response agency to offer "help and resources," to its Canadian counterpart, and to inquire if there were ways to mitigate the damage.

In an extraordinary exchange of emails, top officials at the Canadian cyber agency spent an entire day debating whether to share information with the Americans offering to help.

Meanwhile, the attacks were far from over.

Documents show six weeks after the three departments were unplugged from the internet, another federal agency was "severely impacted by a cyber incident."

On May 1, five more were hit, including the Privy Council, the prime minister's department.

Documents show the attacks continued on an almost daily basis through the rest of 2011 and all of 2012.

Experts say most of the attacks on the federal government over the past two years were likely the work of hundreds of different hackers from various countries with a variety of reasons for causing mayhem.

For its part, the Cyber Response Centre issued an unusual report to government a year ago, all but pleading for help.

While the Harper government has long boasted about its "cyber strategy," the report suggests those who had to implement it were not impressed.

The agency complained of "ambiguity of roles in an emergency," and how it is "difficult to prioritize clients and services without clearly defined mission and mandate."

It complained about an "aging" laboratory, and the high turnover of staff at the agency.

Last fall, Auditor General Michael Ferguson hammered the government for its much-touted cyber strategy.

Among many pages of scathing commentary, the federal spending watchdog found that over the past decade, successive governments have promised a lot more in cyber security than they have delivered.

Auditor general critical of federal cyber strategy

Most of the time, he said, the government did not seem to know how much money was available for cyber security, nor what it was being spent on.

The Cyber Response Centre, he concluded, was underfunded and otherwise ill-equipped to do its job.

All of which clearly frustrates security experts such as Canada's former head of intelligence and counter-terrorism , Ray Boisvert.

In an interview with CBC, the recently retired CSIS boss says the growing cyber threats are "as important if not more important than terrorism now."

He says the Cyber Response Centre is "a good start," but the federal government will "have to do far more than that."

"This government has invested some time and some money in this issue of late and I think it's all very helpful.

"But we cannot be the soft underbelly of North America."

Rafal Rohozinski of the SecDev Group is one of Canada's leading cyber experts.

'I think frankly that it requires co-ordination at the upper levels of political authority.'—Rafal Rohozinski of the SecDev Group

He says Canada is lagging behind its allies in making cyber security a co-ordinated effort among all government agencies and the private sector.

"I think frankly that it requires co-ordination at the upper levels of political authority. There has to be a decision made by the Prime Minister's Office that cyber security matters.

"There has to be a national security advisory team that deals with this just like they deal with any other aspect of national security."

Rohozinski says the Chinese attack on Telvent and its big utility customers is another wakeup call for Canada, and a reminder of what's at stake in securing cyberspace.

"It certainly puts us in the position of military potential vulnerability if some of our core assets are penetrated … by a foreign power or entity that can sidestep the securities that we have built within them."

Since the auditor general's scathing report last year, the Harper government has increased funding for the Cyber Response Centre, at least enough to operate 15 hours a day, seven days a week."

This week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper seemed to say all's well in cyberspace.

Asked for his reaction to this week's report fingering the Chinese for the cyberattack on Telvent, the PM said: "We are certainly aware of these kinds of security threats and risks that exist.

"We have professionals who constantly evaluate them and work with partners on addressing them."

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Could muzzling federal scientists be illegal?

"Federal civil servants in Canada, and in particular scientists, are being muzzled by the federal government," alleges a report by Democracy Watch and the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Clinic. (iStock)

The Information Commissioner of Canada is being asked to investigate whether "federal government policy forcing scientists to jump through hoops before speaking with the media" breaches the Access to Information Act.

The request was made as part of a complaint filed Wednesday by Democracy Watch, a non-profit organization that advocates for government accountability, and the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Clinic.

"In sharp contrast to past Canadian practice and current U.S. Government practice, the federal government has recently made efforts to prevent the media and the general public from speaking to government scientists," said Tyler Sommers, coordinator of Democracy Watch, in a statement.

He noted that the scientists conduct research that is paid for by taxpayers who therefore have a right to learn the results.

Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Clinic, said in a statement that "Canadians cannot make smart choices about critical issues such as climate change, oil sands development, and environmental protection if the public does not have full, timely access to the government's best scientific knowledge on those issues.

"This is why we've filed this complaint and why we are asking for a full investigation."

Sommers said the groups believe that parts of the act being violated include those that:

• State government information should be available to the public and necessary exceptions to the right of access should be limited and specific.
• Specify that the government should provide "timely access" to records without regard to the identity of a person making the request.

"We don't know how far-reaching the situation is," he added in an interview.

'We are asking for a full investigation into whether federal government policy forcing scientists to jump through hoops before speaking with the media violates access to information law.'—Calvin Sandborn, UVic Environmental Law Clinic

While he thinks certain sections of the act are being violated, based on a limited investigation by Democracy Watch and the Environmental Law Clinic, he suggested that the information commissioner, "may be able to uncover much more" in a more thorough investigation and issue a clear interpretation on how the act should be applied.

He added that the commissioner is currently reviewing Canada's access to information system in comparison to other countries worldwide, providing a good opportunity for such an investigation.

Report outlines techniques

The groups allege in a newly-released 26-page report that "federal civil servants in Canada, and in particular, scientists, are being muzzled by the federal government:"

• Directly, by not being allowed to speak to the media.
• Indirectly, through bureaucratic procedures that delay approval to speak to the media – delays that are incompatible with journalists' deadlines.

The report also alleges that the government is "manipulating the release of government information" by:

• Selecting which media inquiries to respond to.
• Having communications employees craft "approved lines" or provide scripted answers for civil servants to deliver.
• Using "subtle means of intimidation" when civil servants speak directly to the media, such as requiring an interview to be recorded or requiring a communications employee to sit in on the interview.

The report examines communications policy changes and their consequences at Environment Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Natural Resources Canada and the National Research Council and concludes that "there is a clear and significant trend showing that the federal government is closing off access to government information by tightly controlling and monitoring the release of government information to the public."

The report adds that it is "even more alarming" that the government has ignored international criticism "and seems intent on continuing down this path."

The report was based on internal government documents previously released through freedom of information requests, along with conversations with current and former federal public servants, journalists, members of non-profit organizations, and professors at Canadian universities.

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OK for police to search cellphone if no password, says court

Ontario's highest court has signalled that the right of police officers to look through someone's phone depends on whether there's a password.

The Court of Appeal for Ontario says it's all right for police to have a cursory look through the phone upon arrest if it's not password protected, but if it is, investigators should get a search warrant.

The court's ruling comes in the case of a man who appealed his robbery conviction, arguing that police breached his charter rights by looking through his phone after his arrest.

Kevin Fearon was arrested in July 2009, after a jewelry stall at a flea market in Toronto was robbed, and police found pictures of a gun and cash as well as a text message about jewelry on his phone.

The Appeal Court denied his appeal, saying that police were allowed to look through Fearon's phone "in a cursory fashion" to see if there was evidence relevant to the crime, but after that they should have stopped to get a search warrant.

The court says if the phone had been password protected or otherwise locked to anyone other than its owner, "it would not have been appropriate" to look through the phone without a search warrant.

The Appeal Court judges referenced a decision in a murder case in which the judge did not allow evidence from a personal electronic device because it "functioned as a mini-computer," which has a high expectation of privacy. The contents of that device were only extracted by a police officer using specialized equipment in that case, the Appeal Court judges noted.

"There was no suggestion in this case that this particular cell phone functioned as a 'mini-computer' nor that its contents were not 'immediately visible to the eye,' the court said in its ruling, released Wednesday.

"Rather, because the phone was not password protected, the photos and the text message were readily available to other users."

The court, though, declined to create a specific new rule for all cellphone searches.

"It may be that some future case will produce a factual matrix that will lead the court to carve out a cellphone exception to the law," the ruling said. "To put it in the modern vernacular: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it."'

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Seals offer glimpse into human sleep

Scientists are learning more about how sleep works by studying seals.

Researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of California say that fur seals sleep with half their brain at a time. "The left side of their brain can sleep while the right side stays awake," said Professor John Peever, in a news release from the University of Toronto.

"Seals sleep this way while they're in water, but they sleep like humans while on land. Our research may explain how this unique biological phenomenon happens."

The researchers are studying the chemicals active in seals' brains to help solve the mystery of how and why humans sleep.

Their study, published in this month's Journal of Neuroscience identified chemical cues that allow the seal brain to remain half awake and asleep. The findings may explain the biological mechanisms that enable the brain to remain alert during waking hours and go off-line during sleep.

The study's first author, University of Toronto PhD student Jennifer Lapierre found that acetylcholine – an important brain chemical – was at low levels on the sleeping side of the brain but at high levels on the waking side. But the study also showed that another important brain chemical – serotonin – was present at the equal levels on both sides of the brain whether the seals were awake or asleep.

It is estimated that about 40 per cent of North Americans suffer from sleep problems and understanding brain chemicals "could help solve the mystery of how and why we sleep" said Jerome Siegel of UCLA's Brain Research Institute.

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Officials shocked by flow of money in U of R carbon dioxide project

When IPAC was announced in 2008, it received $5 million from Royal Dutch Shell and $5 million from the provincial government. (CBC)

After concerns were raised about an apparent conflict of interest one at of Saskatchewan's most prominent scientific ventures, some started asking: were hundreds of thousands of tax dollars wasted?

Carmen Dybwad, CEO of the Regina-based International Performance Assessment Centre for the Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide (IPAC-CO2), says she was stunned when she first arrived and found out hundreds of thousands of dollars were pouring out of IPAC's bank account and going to a single private vendor.

"Just sorting all of this out was a version of hell," Dybwad told CBC News.

The vendor was Climate Ventures Inc., and when Dybwad took over as IPAC CEO in 2010, more than 60 per cent of her budget was going to the two-year-old company, which was supposed to provide IT services.

Dybwad says the resulting computer system was as incomprehensible as the monthly bill

"We couldn't understand what it was and why we would need all of this stuff," she said. "I think at the end of the day it was what they wanted and we were just supposed to shut up and write the cheques."

The creation of IPAC-CO2 was announced in November, 2008, as a non-profit company to help set up rules for the underground storage of CO2.

IPAC, located at the University of Regina, was launched with $5 million from oil giant Royal Dutch Shell and another $5 million from the Saskatchewan government.

When it came time to spend some of that money, IPAC bought computer services from Climate Ventures Inc., although the agreement to provide IT services was untendered — essentially, a handshake deal.

CBC News has learned that two administrators at the University of Regina — Malcolm Wilson and Ian Bailey — were for a while running IPAC and at the same time sitting on the board of Climate Ventures.

It's a situation the government has characterized as a conflict of interest.

Wilson, through his lawyer, denied there was a conflict and says he never received any compensation from CVI. Bailey is on long-term disability from his job at the U of R and wasn't available for a comment.

With Dybwad in charge at IPAC, CVI's activities came under greater scrutiny.

One example of a transaction that raised eyebrows was when CVI billed IPAC $7,500 a month to house its computer system in a basement. IPAC later learned that the true cost was less than $2,000 a month and that CVI was marking up the bill by thousands of dollars.

IPAC was billed more than $2 million for software and IT services, but in a note to the board IPAC management said "the greatest part of the $2.1 million dollars was spent for no acceptable business reason."

There was also almost $1 million worth of hardware of questionable use, according to Dybwad.

"There were boxes of hardware that weren't connected," she said. "There were things that were connected incorrectly. There were bits of hardware that I don't think they knew why we had them."

Despite the fact that IPAC paid for that hardware, there was a dispute about who owned it.

"CVI continued to maintain that they owned them," she said. "And basically we continued to pay them as we tried to negotiate getting our assets back. I know that sounds a little loopy, but that's what we did."

All of this seems to contradict what Donna Harpauer, the government minister responsible, told the NDP Opposition last June.

"The contract cost was within the acceptable range for similar goods and services and the goods and services were necessary," Harpauer said at the time.

Now, Harpauer says she made that claim based on what she had been told by government members on the IPAC board.

Asked recently if it sounded like taxpayers got value for their money, she said no.

Eventually IPAC was to able sever its relationship with CVI and keep its computers.

IPAC's monthly IT bill has dropped from $120,000 a month to $10,000.

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