1468957720000

astronomy

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Undetected Alien Civilizations --"May Be Cloaking Their Existence Using Laser Technology" (Today's Most Popular)

Several prominent scientists, including Stephen Hawking, have cautioned against humanity broadcasting our presence to intelligent life on other planets. Other civilizations might try to find Earth-like planets using the same techniques we do, including looking for the dip in light when a planet moves directly in front of the star it orbits.

"We could cloak only the atmospheric signatures associated with biological activity, such as oxygen, which is achievable with a peak laser power of just 160 kW per transit. To another civilization, this should make the Earth appear as if life never took hold on our world", say astronomers at Columbia University.

Two astronomers at Columbia University in New York have now suggest humanity could use lasers to conceal the Earth from searches by advanced extraterrestrial civilisations. Professor David Kipping and graduate student Alex Teachey make the proposal in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

These events transits are the main way that the Kepler mission and similar projects search for planets around other stars. So far Kepler alone has confirmed more than 1,000 planets using this technique, with tens of these worlds similar in size to the Earth. Kipping and Teachey speculate that alien scientists may use this approach to locate our planet, which will be clearly in the 'habitable zone' of the Sun, where the temperature is right for liquid water, and so be a promising place for life.

Hawking and others are concerned that extraterrestrials might wish to take advantage of the Earth's resources, and that their visit, rather than being benign, could be as devastating as when Europeans first travelled to the Americas.

The two authors of the new study suggest that transits could be masked by controlled laser emission, with the beam directed at the star where the aliens might live. When the transit takes place, the laser would be switched on to compensate for the dip in light.

VLT_Laser_Guide_Star (1)

The image above shows a 22W laser used for adaptive optics on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. A suite of similar lasers could be used to alter the shape of a planet's transit for the purpose of broadcasting or cloaking the planet. (ESO / G. Hüdepohl).

According to the authors, emitting a continuous 30 MW laser for about 10 hours, once a year, would be enough to eliminate the transit signal, at least in visible light. The energy needed is comparable to that collected by the International Space Station in a year. A chromatic cloak, effective at all wavelengths, is more challenging, and would need a large array of tuneable lasers with a total power of 250 MW.

As well as cloaking our presence, the lasers could also be used to modify the way the light from the Sun drops during a transit to make it obviously artificial, and thus broadcast our existence. The authors suggest that we could transmit information along the laser beams at the same time, providing a means of communication.

"There is an ongoing debate as to whether we should advertise ourselves or hide from advanced civilisations potentially living on planets elsewhere in the Galaxy," says Kipping. "Our work offers humanity a choice, at least for transit events, and we should think about what we want to do."

Given that humanity is already capable of modifying transit signals, it may just be that aliens have had the same thought. The two scientists propose that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), which mostly currently looks for alien radio signals, could be broadened to search for artificial transits.

The Daily Galaxy via Royal Astronomical Society

Image Credit:

Today's 'Galaxy' Insight --The Search for Habitable Planets

Kepler Space Telescope Hits 1,000 Planet Milestone --"We're Closer than We've Ever Been to Finding Earth Twins"

"A Galaxy of Earth-like Planets" --The Kepler Mission Revolution

astronomy

1468957716000

astronomy

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Subatomic Particles "Maintain Ghostly, 'Neither-Here-Nor-There' Identity as They Travel Through Universe"

MIT physicists have found that subatomic particles called neutrinos can be in superposition, without individual identities, when traveling hundreds of miles. Their results, to be published later this month in Physical Review Letters, represent the longest distance over which quantum mechanics has been tested to date.

The team analyzed data on the oscillations of neutrinos -- subatomic particles that interact extremely weakly with matter, passing through our bodies by the billions per second without any effect. Neutrinos can oscillate, or change between several distinct "flavors," as they travel through the universe at close to the speed of light.

In the world of quantum, infinitesimally small particles, weird and often logic-defying behaviors abound. Perhaps the strangest of these is the idea of superposition, in which objects can exist simultaneously in two or more seemingly counterintuitive states. For example, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, electrons may spin both clockwise and counter-clockwise, or be both at rest and excited, at the same time.

The physicist Erwin Schrödinger highlighted some strange consequences of the idea of superposition more than 80 years ago, with a thought experiment that posed that a cat trapped in a box with a radioactive source could be in a superposition state, considered both alive and dead, according to the laws of quantum mechanics. Since then, scientists have proven that particles can indeed be in superposition, at quantum, subatomic scales. But whether such weird phenomena can be observed in our larger, everyday world is an open, actively pursued question.

The researchers obtained data from Fermilab's Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, or MINOS, an experiment in which neutrinos are produced from the scattering of other accelerated, high-energy particles in a facility near Chicago and beamed to a detector in Soudan, Minnesota, 735 kilometers (456 miles) away. Although the neutrinos leave Illinois as one flavor, they may oscillate along their journey, arriving in Minnesota as a completely different flavor.

The MIT team studied the distribution of neutrino flavors generated in Illinois, versus those detected in Minnesota, and found that these distributions can be explained most readily by quantum phenomena: As neutrinos sped between the reactor and detector, they were statistically most likely to be in a state of superposition, with no definite flavor or identity.

What's more, the researchers found that the data was "in high tension" with more classical descriptions of how matter should behave. In particular, it was statistically unlikely that the data could be explained by any model of the sort that Einstein sought, in which objects would always embody definite properties rather than exist in superpositions.

"What's fascinating is, many of us tend to think of quantum mechanics applying on small scales," says David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics at MIT. "But it turns out that we can't escape quantum mechanics, even when we describe processes that happen over large distances. We can't stop our quantum mechanical description even when these things leave one state and enter another, traveling hundreds of miles. I think that's breathtaking."

The team analyzed the MINOS data by applying a slightly altered version of the Leggett-Garg inequality, a mathematical expression named after physicists Anthony Leggett and Anupam Garg, who derived the expression to test whether a system with two or more distinct states acts in a quantum or classical fashion.

Leggett and Garg realized that the measurements of such a system, and the statistical correlations between those measurements, should be different if the system behaves according to classical versus quantum mechanical laws.

"They realized you get different predictions for correlations of measurements of a single system over time, if you assume superposition versus realism," Kaiser explains, where "realism" refers to models of the Einstein type, in which particles should always exist in some definite state.

Formaggio had the idea to flip the expression slightly, to apply not to repeated measurements over time but to measurements at a range of neutrino energies. In the MINOS experiment, huge numbers of neutrinos are created at various energies, where Kaiser says they then "careen through the Earth, through solid rock, and a tiny drizzle of them will be detected" 735 kilometers away.

According to Formaggio's reworking of the Leggett-Garg inequality, the distribution of neutrino flavors -- the type of neutrino that finally arrives at the detector -- should depend on the energies at which the neutrinos were created. Furthermore, those flavor distributions should look very different if the neutrinos assumed a definite identity throughout their journey, versus if they were in superposition, with no distinct flavor.

Applying their modified version of the Leggett-Garg expression to neutrino oscillations, the group predicted the distribution of neutrino flavors arriving at the detector, both if the neutrinos were behaving classically, according to an Einstein-like theory, and if they were acting in a quantum state, in superposition. When they compared both predicted distributions, they found there was virtually no overlap.

More importantly, when they compared these predictions with the actual distribution of neutrino flavors observed from the MINOS experiment, they found that the data fit squarely within the predicted distribution for a quantum system, meaning that the neutrinos very likely did not have individual identities while traveling over hundreds of miles between detectors.

But what if these particles truly embodied distinct flavors at each moment in time, rather than being some ghostly, neither-here-nor-there phantoms of quantum physics? What if these neutrinos behaved according to Einstein's realism-based view of the world? After all, there could be statistical flukes due to defects in instrumentation, that might still generate a distribution of neutrinos that the researchers observed. Kaiser says if that were the case and "the world truly obeyed Einstein's intuitions," the chances of such a model accounting for the observed data would be "something like one in a billion."

"What gives people pause is, quantum mechanics is quantitatively precise and yet it comes with all this conceptual baggage," Kaiser says. "That's why I like tests like this: Let's let these things travel further than most people will drive on a family road trip, and watch them zoom through the big world we live in, not just the strange world of quantum mechanics, for hundreds of miles. And even then, we can't stop using quantum mechanics. We really see quantum effects persist across macroscopic distances."

Kaiser is a co-author on the paper, which includes MIT physics professor Joseph Formaggio, junior Talia Weiss, and former graduate student Mykola Murskyj.

The Daily Galaxy via MIT

Gravity --"The Clue to the Dark, Quantum World of Our Universe"

Image of the Day: The 1st Ever Photo of Light As a Wave and a Particle

astronomy

1468957714000

astronomy

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NASA's Rebooted K2 Mission Yields 104 New Exoplanets --"A Brilliant Second Life!"

NASA's Kepler confirms 100+ exoplanets during its K2 mission. It's the largest haul of confirmed planets obtained since the space observatory transitioned to a different mode of observing includes a planetary system comprising four promising planets that could be rocky, Earthlike bodies.

An international team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona has discovered and confirmed a treasure trove of new worlds using NASA's Kepler spacecraft on its K2 mission. Among the findings tallying 197 initial planet candidates, scientists have confirmed 104 planets outside our solar system. Among the confirmed is a planetary system comprising four promising planets that could be rocky.

The planets, all between 20 and 50 percent larger than Earth by diameter, are orbiting the M dwarf star K2-72, found 181 light years away in the direction of the Aquarius constellation. The star is less than half the size of the sun and less bright. The planets' orbital periods range from five and a half to 24 days, and two of them may experience irradiation levels from their star comparable to those on Earth. Despite their tight orbits -- closer than Mercury's orbit around the sun -- the possibility that life could arise on a planet around such a star cannot be ruled out, according to lead author Ian Crossfield, a Sagan Fellow at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

The researchers achieved this extraordinary "roundup" of exoplanets by combining data with follow-up observations by earth-based telescopes including the North Gemini telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Automated Planet Finder of the University of California Observatories, and the Large Binocular Telescope operated by the University of Arizona. The discoveries are published online in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series.

Both Kepler and its K2 mission discover new planets by measuring the subtle dip in a star's brightness caused by a planet passing in front of its star. In its initial mission, Kepler surveyed just one patch of sky in the northern hemisphere, measuring the frequency of planets whose size and temperature might be similar to Earth orbiting stars similar to our sun. In the spacecraft's extended mission in 2013, it lost its ability to precisely stare at its original target area, but a brilliant fix created a second life for the telescope that is proving scientifically fruitful.

After the fix, Kepler started its K2 mission, which has provided an ecliptic field of view with greater opportunities for Earth-based observatories in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Additionally, the K2 mission is entirely community-driven with all targets proposed for by the scientific community.

Because it covers more of the sky, the K2 mission is capable of observing a larger fraction of cooler, smaller, red-dwarf type stars, and because such stars are much more common in the Milky Way than sun-like stars, nearby stars will predominantly be red dwarfs.

"An analogy would be to say that Kepler performed a demographic study, while the K2 mission focuses on the bright and nearby stars with different types of planets," said Ian Crossfield. "The K2 mission allows us to increase the number of small, red stars by a factor of 20, significantly increasing the number of astronomical 'movie stars' that make the best systems for further study."

To validate candidate planets identified by K2, the researchers obtained high-resolution images of the planet-hosting stars as well as high-resolution optical spectroscopy data. By dispersing the starlight as through a prism, the spectrographs allowed the researchers to infer the physical properties of a star -- such as mass, radius and temperature -- from which the properties of any planets orbiting it can be inferred.

These observations represent a natural stepping stone from the K2 mission to NASA's other upcoming exoplanet missions such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and James Webb Space Telescope.

"This bountiful list of validated exoplanets from the K2 mission highlights the fact that the targeted examination of bright stars and nearby stars along the ecliptic is providing many interesting new planets," said Steve Howell, project scientist for Kepler and K2 at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "This allows the astronomical community ease of follow-up and characterization, and picks out a few gems for first study by the James Webb Space Telescope, which could perhaps provide information about their atmospheres."

The Daily Galaxy via NASA/Kepler Mission

Hubble Reveals the "Chaotic Dance" of Pluto's Moons

'Chaotic Earths': Some Habitable Planets Could Experience Wildly Unpredictable Climates

NASA: "Wacky World of Exoplanets Continues to Surprise Astronomers"

astronomy

1468957458000

design

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Pokémon Go: Designing augmented reality games for mobile

"Fullerton, — People playing the Pokémon Go game on their smartphones

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, chances are you will have come across the global phenomenon that is Pokémon Go.

Following the popularity of its initial launch in Australia, New Zealand and the US earlier this month, the augmented reality (AR) gaming app based on the original Pokémon game designed for Nintendo Game Boy in the 1990s has caused similar hysteria among UK fans since its release here last week.

To give a glimpse into just how successful the app has been so far, it now has more daily users than Twitter on Android phones in the US, according to analytics site SimilarWeb, and Nintendo shares ended on Tuesday up 14.4% at ¥31,770 (£228), more than doubling its gains since the game first launched.

As far as AR apps go, the concept behind Pokémon Go is fairly simple. Niantic the California-based mobile game developer and spin-off from Google's parent company, Alphabet has created the multiplayer app using geolocation technology. Players are able to walk around the real world catching virtual monsters, such as Pikachu, and then train them to fight other monsters.

While Pokémon Go certainly isn't the first game of its kind, the fact that it has had a huge impact on the mobile gaming world in such a short space of time is likely to pique the interest of designers working within the AR field.

But it is going to take more than a few monster holograms and some 1990s nostalgia for others to emulate that success, according to Adrian Hon, founder and chief executive officer at London-based independent game developer, Six to Start.

“If Pokémon Go was called Monster Hunter and it was just a bunch of creatures that you had never heard of, people wouldn't care anywhere near as much,” Hon says. “[Nintendo] was able to make it work because it has this brand that has been around for 20 years and sold hundreds of millions of copies of its games.”

It is crucial then for designers to avoid the temptation of opting for Pokémon Go “knock offs”. Instead, he says, they ought to be focusing on developing games that look beyond cashing in on the novelty factor.

Hon is part of the team behind Zombies, Run!, the immersive audio AR app designed to make jogging more exciting by placing the user at the scene of a “zombie apocalypse” through the use of sound. Players have to undertake tasks such as collecting supplies, rescuing survivors and of course running away from zombies.

The app has proven hugely successful since it was first launched in 2012, after an initial $73,000 (£56,000) crowd funding campaign. It currently has over two million downloads and a quarter of a million active players. Hon puts much of this success down to creating a simple yet engaging narrative.

“We developed a really strong story in a really strong world,” he says. “Pokémon Go doesn't have a story, but Pokémon the brand does…If you can't use an existing brand, then you have to work really hard to make sure that the one you make is really strong, because that's ultimately what people are going to care about.”

Hon also makes the point that with the exception of Pokémon Go, which requires people to actually get off the sofa and leave the house in order to catch Pokémon and progress through the game the majority of AR apps are only likely to have lasting success if designed to complement the user's existing lifestyle.

“With Zombies, Run! we're very keen on not requiring the user to look at the screen all the time…because for us we didn't want people to have to alter their habits,” he says.

"zr4ios-runlog-thumb" — Six to Start's AR app, Zombies, Run!

Other experts maintain that it is important for designers to take advantage of the fact that AR gaming apps incorporate elements of both reality and fantasy.

“There's obviously something spectacular about seeing effectively holographic overlays of things seeming to exist in an environment that does exist,” says Nicolas Roope, creative partner at digital consultancy, Poke.

“But I think there has to be a reason to use a real environment…otherwise if the elements you are using are pure fantasy, then why not just present it within a full virtual reality environment?”

As well as the social design elements Roope says ought to be considered (particularly with multiplayer games like Pokémon Go, which has the capacity to create subcultures by facilitating physical meetings between game players based close by), he also thinks designers should keep in mind the more technical aspects of designing for AR.

While they may not physically be involved with the coding side of app game development, for example, Roope maintains that the two things go hand in hand.

“Thinking in game design is also understanding the logic…how do you pack the space in a room, how do you make sense of different surfaces and make the characters work within the architecture?” he says.

“The more you are able to do that, the more delightful and real these elements will feel.”

"LandsEnd_03" — Ustwo's VR app, Land's End

As for the future of AR gaming on smartphones, it remains to be seen how much more complex designers will be looking to develop apps like Zombies, Run! and Pokémon Go, or whether they may shift their focus altogether towards fully immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR).

Peter Pashley, head of development at Ustwo Games, says the game developer chose to work with VR when designing gaming apps such as Land's End which is set among the dramatic landscapes of an ancient civilisation because it provides “the ultimate medium for escapist experiences”.

But he sees the fundamental design challenge for both VR and AR mobile apps as the same: “to get the player to believe what they're seeing is real.”

While the current version of Pokémon Go, for instance, is quite basic when it comes to using AR to superimpose monsters on to the real world, Pashley expects that designers could move it on a lot further in future versions.

“You can totally imagine a more advanced version, using Hololens or Magic Leap tech, where you see these creatures take cover behind real walls, [or] you can bounce Pokéballs around real corners,” he says.

For the most part though, Pashley thinks that designers will opt to go one of two ways when designing AR games for smartphones as they become more advanced.

“The mobile market usually tends towards simplicity,” he says, “so I think we'll see a splitting of this new genre into titles more focused on the geo-social aspects and those which push the limits of the AR tech.”

The post Pokémon Go: Designing augmented reality games for mobile appeared first on Design Week.

design

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design

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How design businesses can survive and thrive post-Brexit

"Brussels — The European Commission Headquarters of European Community, Brussels, Belgium

It's nearly a month since the EU referendum result. One month of extreme political and economic change. Many consultancy owners are concerned about how revenues and profitability may be impacted; how successfully their businesses may continue to trade and perform.

It's worth remembering the design sector has been growing at well above the rate of the UK economy, and the quality and effectiveness of our offer is world-renowned. If we pick between the worry and uncertainty, what opportunities and positives can our industry take forwards? How can we pro-actively face these challenging times?

Pro-activity

“Here's what we always advise in times of turbulence,” suggests Shan Preddy of PREDDY&CO and author of How to Run a Successful Design Business, “One: Turn up the heat immediately on the satisfaction, retention and development of current and recent clients. They are the easiest, quickest and best source of future business. Two: Check over your vision, values, goals, business strategy, finances, product quality and marketing programmes. Perfect? If not, work on them. Three: Invest heavily in your team members by giving them expert internal and external coaching and training. With the right knowledge, skills and capabilities they will perform at their best and support you fully.” And Preddy adds: “Doing these three things now will protect you from bad, and prepare you for good times ahead, whatever the eventual impact of the referendum result.”

Jack O'Hern of accountancy firm Wright Vigar supports this message when he says: “If your market is going to be affected, then appropriate contingency planning ahead of falling sales or rising costs is the duty of a responsible management team, but avoid talking oneself into acting too quickly.”

Reasons to be cheerful

“Life must go on,” says business advisor Ian Cochrane, Chairman of Ticegroup. “There will be opportunities for positive thinking design consultancies to help their clients to grow and thrive in this new trading environment.” Measures are being put in place to stave off recession and boost the economy, and Cochrane flags that there are at least three reasons to be cheerful:

1. Borrowing should be easier moving forward and interest rates are likely to remain low for the foreseeable future. This will enable agencies to invest in staff, learning and technology to accelerate growth.

2. Corporation tax may go down which will not only attract inward investment to the UK but automatically increase post tax earnings and the valuation of design businesses.

3. The weaker sterling exchange rate will boost overseas sales potential.

“Agencies have a real opportunity to build and prepare their businesses ready for a possible trade sale in 3-5 years' time,” Cochrane says.

On consultancies' financial concerns, accountant Green and Purple's managing director, Peter Carter also has some good news. Design businesses which are service providers to the EU with few overhead costs in those markets, are in fact beautifully placed they are now more competitive than a supplier in their client's home country.

“Any piece of work you quote in GBP now is worth the same to you as it was, but costs your clients less, because of the pound's weakness, which will probably recover slowly but not for quite some time. If you already have any foreign-denominated retainers: happy days, they're worth more to you than they were last month,” says Carter.

Peter also flags that during the last few downturns we have seen a gradual shift where advertising and marketing spend is being seen as a recovery tool, rather than a discretionary nice-to-have, so consultancies aren't getting “switched off” in a downturn at least no more than other essentials like people and property costs. “Hold your nerve when quoting and tendering,” he advises, “you shouldn't need to drop your prices to undercut ‘local' competitors, and the UK has long had the edge in terms of sharp and effective design.”

The long game

“There is a long way to go until we are clear again on our working relationship with our European friends,” says design industry expert Kate Blandford of Kate Blandford Consulting. “Stay calm, keep up those friendships, continue to do your extraordinary work, building healthy commercial futures for your clients' brands.”

It's a sentiment echoed by business development consultant, Catherine Allison of Master the Art: “Surely now, more than ever, agency CEOs need to project positivity, ensure agency staff remain confident and engaged, invest in their personal development and train them to represent the agency in the best possible way? Only then will they be best placed to convert those new business opportunities that do come their way.”

So in these extraordinary days, months and years ahead, this will be the time to really master your messaging to your clients on the value you can bring to their business; the ROI and commercial growth they can expect to see from investing in design. As the DBA's chief executive Deborah Dawton says: “UK design is world leading. Our industry's proven ability to drive both business and economic growth has not changed, nor has the quality and effectiveness of our offer. UK design is a potent business asset and a sound commercial investment.”

It is our time to design a better future for business, government and society. The opportunity is there.

www.dba.org.uk

The post How design businesses can survive and thrive post-Brexit appeared first on Design Week.

design

1468957455000

design

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-24-july-2016/new-app-designed-deliver-doctors-patients-doors/
A new app designed to deliver doctors to patients' doors

It's no longer only restaurant food and cabbies that smartphone users can order to their door a new doctor “delivery service” app has been designed, which allows patients to request a general practitioner to arrive at their home within an hour and a half.

GPDQ GP Delivered Quickly is a start-up company, founded by NHS and private healthcare GP Dr Anshumen Bhagat, with the aim of creating a “more accessible and affordable private primary care solution”.

Patients are able to request a GP to arrive at any given location from Monday Sunday, 8am 11pm within an average of 90 minutes, for appointments and prescriptions. Appointments start at £120 for a 25-minute consultation, and go up in price if patients want extra time or to use the system's two-hour medication delivery service.

The company is registered with the Care Quality Commission, the medical profession's independent regulator, and uses doctors who are UK-trained and registered with the General Medical Council.

The user interface (UI) uses a simple colour scheme of white, black and pink, along a sans-serif typeface.

The UI includes a map, with plots showing where GPs are based in the user's vicinity. The user can then select an address, and they are given an expected arrival time, alongside an appointment fee.

Once they've ordered, they're given a profile and photo of the doctor they will be receiving treatment from, alongside a rating and a reviews system.

Following the appointment, they are encouraged to leave a star rating and review, and can view their past and previous appointments through a side menu.

Inspired by Uber and Airbnb

The app was designed by freelance designer Alisa Afkhami, who says Uber was the inspiration behind the user experience (UX) and digital design of GPDQ.

“You could say GPDQ is Uber but for GP visits,” she says. “A lot of user are already familiar with the Uber experience, so by following a similar experience this helps to create an instant sense of trust and ease, as they don't have to ‘learn' how to use our app.”

She adds: “As a start-up, we don't have the same resources as Uber, which now has a massive team of designers, experts, testers and developers but we can learn a lot from their design decisions and adopt them to our own concept.”

Inspiration was also drawn from the user interface design of Airbnb, Afkhami says. “It has such a clear hierarchy and visual language to display information that it just makes it so easy to digest and absorb,” she says. GPDQ aims to mimic this through its simplicity of use.

“Giving control” to patients

Afkhami says the app concept aims to “empower” patients, through allowing them to leave reviews and ratings, and giving them more control over when they see a doctor.

“Rather than waiting on hold at their GP surgery to try and get an available appointment in the next few weeks, patients can see a doctor right away at a place that's convenient for them. The rating system also allows GPDQ to maintain a high standard of care based on patient feedback.”

GPDQ is currently only available in central London but will be expanding to more UK cities soon, the company says.

The post A new app designed to deliver doctors to patients' doors appeared first on Design Week.

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1468957450000

design

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The Partners creates new branding for International AIDS Society

The Partners has created a new visual identity for the International AIDS Society (IAS), an organisation which brings together medical professionals, campaigners and those working towards a cure.

The new brand identity is based around a flat red ribbon icon, the universal symbol for awareness and support of HIV and AIDS. The logo sees a flat square with a black outline, with the letters IAS within it, alongside the red ribbon.

The simple colour scheme of red, white and black is incorporated throughout all visual communications, with the bright red colour being used boldly as the backdrop for advertising posters.

The Partners hopes the new design work will help to convey a sense of humanity, says Margaret Wolhuter, managing director at The Partners' health division.

“It was extremely important for us to reflect the IAS' deeply personal, human connection in our work,” she says. “The new strategy and design represent the humanity at the centre of the IAS brand and will help the organisation to grow further in their response to one of the biggest challenges facing humankind today.”

This has been communicated through taglines such as “Stronger together”, alongside stark facts about how many people contract, live and die from the condition every year, with the aim of conveying the “social and personal impact of HIV”, says the consultancy.

By using strings of ribbon motifs, each one also aims to symbolise “the voice of individual IAS members coming together as a powerful movement”, with the aim of counteracting “apathy, complacency, prejudice and ignorance” towards the condition, says Wolhuter.

IAS was founded in 1988, and is the world's largest association of HIV professionals, with members from more than 180 countries who work across all fronts to reduce the impact of HIV. It does this through initiatives that look to encourage scientific research to develop a cure, clinical management and treatment, journals and resources, the support of young people with the condition, among other things.

The post The Partners creates new branding for International AIDS Society appeared first on Design Week.

design

1468954564000

science

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Alien-Hunting 19 Years After "Contact"
This article was originally posted on Inverse.

"2016-07-19-1468952442-4627801-jodijpg.jpeg"

By Sarah Sloat

One of the most realistic parts of Contact is the blatant sexism that the brilliant young astronomer Eleanor Arroway encounters throughout the 1997 extraterrestrial-hunting film. The rumored inspiration for Arroway -- Jill Tarter -- said in 1999 that author Carl Sagan, who wrote the novel the movie was based off of, "included many of the 'character-building' experiences that are common to women scientists studying and working in a male-dominated profession, so Ellie seems very familiar to me."

"Character-building" in this scenario is being a prominent SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) astronomer who has to deal with backward dudes who think your scientific expertise is laughable science fiction and won't take you seriously because you're a woman. Great.

But for a movie that ends up with our protagonist on an intergalactic pseudo-beach chatting with an alien posing as her father, you may be surprised to know that what Contact nails doesn't stop there. Contact's realism is a reflection of the fact that Sagan knew what he was talking about. Until her breakthrough, Arroway lives a convincing life as a scientist -- working out of the same observatories as real SETI researchers, fighting for funding, and hunting for alien life by listening for radio signals between 1,200 and 3,000 MHz from systematically selected stars.

But what makes Arroway's discovery of alien-transmitted communication from the star Vega awesome material for a Hollywood blockbuster is that it's sold as a fantasy. Sagan knew the real science going on behind the fiction he created, but people who bought movie tickets didn't. People in 1997 didn't believe in SETI initiatives any more than the antagonists Arroway encountered.

If Contact was to get a remake today (but seriously, no) it wouldn't be able to instill the same sense of bewildered wonder. And that is a very good thing, namely because the work that Arroway portrays in the film is finally getting its due as a respectable field of science. Contact has proven to be prescient in 2016 (save for the actual we've-gotten-a-message-from-aliens part).

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Ellie reachers for a cracker-jack compass during her journey to Vega.

Take billionaire Yuri Milner: In Contact, Arroway's work (and eventual voyage to Vega) is saved by the financial intervention of Dr. Hadden Suit, whose wealth seemingly has no bounds. Suit works from the shadows, moving the pieces in Arroway's life, without the public knowing of the alien-hunting science going on behind closed doors. Comparatively, Milner is a real life financier who has made his intentions to help find evidence of extra-terrestrials extremely public.

In 2015, Milner announced his Breakthrough Listen initiative in collaboration with the SETI program at the University of California, Berkeley -- a $100 million project that uses telescopes to listen for extraterrestrial radio signals and search for laser signals. In January, he announced another $100 million dollar project with Breakthrough Starshot, an enterprise that plans to send laser-powered lightsails to the star system Alpha Centauri with the eventual goal of encountering life in deep space. That line, in any other year, would seem straight-up ridiculous.

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A Breakthrough Starshot solar sail.

But things are a bit different in 2016. Arroway probably would not need to patiently break down how radio signals work to suits in the U.S. government when they begin to investigate her work; they'd probably already know what's going on. Just look at the development of the FAST telescope being built in China, which Zheng Xiaonian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences says will have "the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life."

But mainly, a scientist of Arroway's caliber wouldn't have to take the same sort of inane criticism. SETI researchers are increasingly aware that they are no longer fringe weirdos. SETI communications director Seth Shostak told Inverse in January that, "I think there may be truth to SETI being taken more seriously by the public and it may be a consequence of the discovery of exoplanets filtering down to the public."

And while funding for exploratory science continues to be a struggle, SETI has been able to continue -- and even increase -- its programs. While it continues to monitor radio waves, sometimes with the help of public laptops, SETI is also able to use optical instruments to look for lasers and light patterns that could signify the presence of aliens.

In fact, on Thursday, SETI's Institute Director of Research Nathalie Cabrol published a proposal arguing for further developing alien-hunting techniques, specifically through the establishment of Virtual Institute with "new detection strategies."

"To find E.T., we must open our minds beyond a deeply-rooted, Earth-centric perspective, expand our research methods, and deploy new tools," said Cabrol in a press statement. "Never before has so much data been available in so many scientific disciplines to help us grasp the role of probabilistic events in the development of extraterrestrial intelligence. These data tell us that each world is a unique planetary experiment."

Cabrol's words are comparable to that of Arroway's, who praises the "acquisition of technology" as the catalyst for finally making contact probable. The good news for us: Cabrol is real, and one day, contact with aliens might be too.

MORE FROM INVERSE:

Photos via Giphy, Wikimedia Commons, IMDB

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http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fcindy-baxter%2Fweb-of-denial-groups-protesting_b_11000702.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
Web Of Denial Groups Protesting Democrat Focus Get $92m In Funding

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As Democrat Senators spent two days this week outlining the cash funneled to front groups in the fossil fuel-funded climate "Web of Denial," predictably, some of the spiders started crawling out of that web.

The senators received a sharply-worded missive from a line-up of 22 free market groups, 21 of whom have received money from fossil fuel companies - or "dark money" (money laundered to hide the funders), and the majority of whom are fighting climate action - or the science. The total funding added up to more than $92m.

"Sadly, our democracy and our freedom hangs in the balance as you use your office to bully and single out groups to blame rather than ideas to debate," they lamented.

The American Citizenry "deserve and increasingly demand healthy and respectful political dialogue, and well-informed, well-debated public policies."

The letter, hosted on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) website, started off reasonably politely, but quickly turned nasty as the writers accused the Senators of being tyrants, of shutting down free speech, yada yada yada.

In the interests of democracy and transparency, we decided to take a look at these groups.

We tallied up the funding they've received from just four entities since the late 90's: the Koch Brothers' various foundations, ExxonMobil, and the two Dark Money organizations, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

The total tally of funding came to over $92 million to 21 of the 22 groups that signed the letter.

Not all of this (that we know of) went to climate denial specifically, because we don't know the details of why Donors Capital Fund gave them a total of $57,569,564, or, indeed, who provided the DCF with that cash. Neither do we know the details of Donors Trust, which provided $19,163,715 to these groups. But at least some of it, we know, was for these groups' fight against the climate science - or against action on climate.

And all but one of these organisations have been working to either undermine the climate science, or to prevent action on climate change, either at State or a National level.

"You were elected by the people to build consensus and find compromise--to fiercely debate the most pressing issues of our day. Often, these debates are meant to be contentious and without a clear solution because innovation comes from great challenge," they told the 19 senators.

Yet many of them have worked fiercely to oppose any solutions to arguably THE most pressing issue of the day: climate change. For example, ALEC has written model bills and resolutions designed to undermine - or kill - innovation such as renewable energy. These groups have challenged the scientific consensus on the climate science, and blocked progress at state and federal level to curb emissions.

Then there is their insistence on debate. Many of this lot use the "doubt is their product" tobacco playbook - keep the "debate" going so that the public thinks there is a debate over climate science. That this debate is over doesn't stop them. So writing to the Senators complaining they are shutting down debate is pretty much what you'd expect them to do.

Let's break down the funding a little more.

The Heartland Institute received a total of 18,645,247 from Donors Capital Fund, and a total of $20,018,747 from the four of them. That's an enormous amount of money. Heartland staff have given presentations at ALEC annual meetings. ALEC itself has received $3,556,487 from these four funders.

The Franklin Center for Government and Policy Integrity has received a total of $29,570,920- mostly from the Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust. Its affiliated news outlets regularly publish articles questioning climate science and parroting long-debunked myths around climate change.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, of course, is on the list. Again, a big recipient of Donors Trust money ($5 million), and it still coordinates the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group that's been going since the late 1990's.

Then there's the money that we haven't tallied.

For example, the John Locke Foundation, according to Robert Brulle and spelt out by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) in the debate, received $21 million from Art Pope's father's foundation 2003-2013. Art Pope is a good friend of the Koch brothers.

So in the end, one looks at these 22 organisations who've slammed the Democrat Senators' speeches in the house, and you can only conclude one thing: they would say that, it's the kind of thing they're paid to do.

Here's the full details of the funding to these groups.

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-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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