refractal

Despite the epistimological drift away from master systems and centralized command and control, the rhetoric surrounding large scale data mining projects has changed remarkably little:

The first five minutes of an attack on the North American continent would require the swift response of widely deployed forces. Millions of informational inputs would be automatically channeled into various command headquarters. The assimilation and use of this information for decision and control would depend on vast systems which provide automated information processing assistance to military and governmental leaders. Acting in the public interest, we at System Development Corporation have helped create this new information technology. In developing these systems, we are specifically concerned with the analysis and synthesis of these systems, training men in their use, the instruction of the great computers on which the systems are based — and research into future generations of these systems. The SAGE air defense system is one example involving extensive SDC effort. The new SAC Control System, now in development, is another. Two other extremely large systems are in their initial stages. Our approach to these systems projects is interdisciplinary, spanning Operations Research, Engineering, Human Factors and Computing Programming. To staff our rapidly expanding programs in Santa Monica, Calif., Lexington, Mass., Washington, D.C., and Paramus, N.J., we are seeking scientists and engineers in all these fields. Address Mr. R. W. Frost, 2430 Colorado Avenue, Santa Monica, California.

In order to study the readable volume around an RFID reader, we built experimental probes that would flash an LED light when they successfully read an RFID tag. The readable volume is not the same as the radio field, instead it shows the space within the field in which an RFID tag and an RFID reader will interact with each other. [link] + [discussion]

Off the coast of Western Australia

Container port, Long Beach, CA

Nile River Delta, Egypt

Oil fields (left), near Odessa, TX

Oil tanker disgorging, Long Beach, CA

Farm land in Ukraine

Radiolab this week treats the ever fascinating topic of parasites. In the hour long podcast, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich diffuse into the wondrous world of zombie cockroaches and cordyceps ladden ants (really this one is a must see!). Cordyceps is particularly surreal because, of its hundreds of varieties, each has evolved to commandeer the neural functions of a different species in order to hop another link of the biosphere.

See also:

Brainwashed by a neuroparasite

Discover Magazine Gallery – Zombie animals and the parasites that control them

Cymothoa exigua is a parasitic crustacean of the family Cymothoidae. It tends to be 3 to 4 cm long. This parasite attaches itself at the base of the spotted rose snapper’s (Lutjanus guttatus) tongue, entering the fish’s mouth through its gills. It then proceeds to extract blood through the claws on its front three pairs of legs.

As the parasite grows, less and less blood reaches the tongue, and eventually the organ atrophies from lack of blood. The parasite then replaces the fish’s tongue by attaching its own body to the muscles of the tongue stub. The fish is able to use the parasite just like a normal tongue. It appears that the parasite does not cause any other damage to the host fish. Once C. exigua replaces the tongue, some feed on the host’s blood and many others feed on fish mucus. They do not eat scraps of the fish’s food.This is the only known case of a parasite functionally replacing a host organ.

There are many species of Cymothoa, but only C. exigua is known to consume and replace its host’s tongue.

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