As a Canadian who has spent the last two and a half years working as an intern architect in Helsinki, these questions have been on my mind. In my current role, I have had the opportunity to participate in numerous architectural competitions arranged by Finnish municipalities and public institutions. It has been my observation that the Finnish system of open, anonymous architectural competitions consistently produces elegant and highly functional public buildings at reasonable cost and at great benefit to the lives of the everyday people for whom the projects are intended to serve. Could Canada benefit from the adoption of a similar model? ‘Public project’ has never been a clearly defined term and may bring to mind the image of a bustling library for some while conjuring the image of a municipal power substation for others. In the context of this discussion, I will use the term to refer to projects that are explicitly in-service of the broader public such as community centres, museums, and other cultural venues. Finland’s architectural competition system Frequented by nearly 2 million visitors per year, the Oodi Central Library in Helsinki, Finland, has become a thriving cultural hub and an internationally recognized symbol of Finnish design innovation. Designed by ALA Architects, the project was procured through a 2-stage, open, international architectural competition. Photo by Ninara (flickr, CC BY 2.0) In Finland, most notable public projects begin with an architectural competition. Some are limited to invited participants only, but the majority of these competitions are open to international submissions. Importantly, the authors of any given proposal remain anonymous with regards to the jury. This ensures that all proposals are evaluated purely on quality without bias towards established firms over lesser known competitors. The project budget is known in advance to the competition entrants and cost feasibility is an important factor weighed by the jury. However, the cost for the design services to be procured from the winning entry is fixed ahead of time, preventing companies from lowballing offers in the hopes of securing an interesting commission despite the inevitable compromises in quality that come with under-resourced design work. The result: inspired, functional public spaces are the norm, not the exception. Contrasted against the sea of forgettable public architecture to be found in cities large and small across Canada, the Finnish model paints a utopic picture. Several award-winning projects in my current place of employment in Helsinki have been the result of successes in open architectural competitions. The origin of the firm itself stemmed from a winning competition entry for a church in a small village submitted by the firm’s founder while he was still completing his architectural studies.  At that time, many architecture firms in Finland were founded in this manner with the publicity of a competition win serving as a career launching off point for young architects. While less common today, many students and recent graduates still participate in these design competitions. On the occasion that a young practitioner wins a competition, they are required to assemble a team with the necessary expertise and qualifications to satisfy the requirements of the jury. I believe there is a direct link between the high architectural quality outcomes of these competitions and the fact that they are conducted anonymously. The opening of these competitions to submissions from companies outside of Finland further enhances the diversity of entries and fosters international interest in the goings-on of Finland’s architectural scene. Nonetheless, it is worth acknowledging that exemplary projects have also resulted from invited and privately organized competitions. Ultimately, the mindset of the client, the selection of an appropriate jury, and the existence of sufficient incentives for architects to invest significant time in their proposals play a more critical role in shaping the quality of the final outcome. Tikkurila Church and Housing in Vantaa, Finland, hosts a diverse range of functions including a café, community event spaces and student housing. Designed by OOPEAA in collaboration with a local builder, the project was realized as the result of a competition organized by local Finnish and Swedish parishes. Photo by Marc Goodwin Finland’s competition system, administered by the Finnish Association of Architects (SAFA), is not limited to major public projects such as museums, libraries and city halls. A significant number of idea competitions are organized seeking compelling visions for urban masterplans. The quality of this system has received international recognition. To quote a research paper from a Swedish university on the structure, criteria and judgement process of Finnish architectural competitions, “The Finnish (competition) experience can provide a rich information source for scholars and students studying the structure and process of competition system and architectural judgement, as well as those concerned with commissioning and financing of competitions due to innovative solutions found in the realms of urban revitalization, poverty elimination, environmental pollution, cultural and socio-spatial renewals, and democratization of design and planning process.” This has not gone entirely under the radar in Canada. According to the website of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), “Competitions are common in countries such as Finland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. These competitions have resulted in a high quality of design as well as creating public interest in the role of architecture in national and community life.” Canada’s architectural competition system In Canada, the RAIC sets general competition guidelines while provincial and territorial architect associations are typically responsible for the oversight of any endorsed architectural competition. Although the idea of implementing European architectural competition models has been gaining traction in recent years, competitions remain relatively rare even for significant public projects. While Canada is yet to fully embrace competition systems as a powerful tool for ensuring higher quality public spaces, success stories from various corners of the country have opened up constructive conversations. In Edmonton, unconventional, competitive procurement efforts spearheaded by city architect Carol Belanger have produced some remarkable public buildings. This has not gone unnoticed in other parts of the country where consistent banality is the norm for public projects. Jasper Place Branch Library designed by HCMA and Dub Architects is one of several striking projects in Edmonton built under reimagined commissioning processes which broaden the pool of design practices eligible to participate and give greater weight to design quality as an evaluation criterion. Photo by Hubert Kang The wider applicability of competition systems as a positive mechanism for securing better public architecture has also started to receive broader discussion. In my hometown of Ottawa, this system has been used to procure several powerful monuments and, more recently, to select a design for the redevelopment of a key city block across from Parliament Hill. The volume and quality of entries, including from internationally renowned architectural practices, attests to the strengths of the open competition format. Render of the winning entry for the Block 2 Redevelopment in Ottawa. This 2-stage competition was overseen directly by the RAIC. Design and render by Zeidler Architecture Inc. in cooperation with David Chipperfield Architects. Despite these successes, there is significant room for improvement. A key barrier to wider adoption of competition practices according to the RAIC is “…that potential sponsors are not familiar with competitions or may consider the competition process to be complicated, expensive, and time consuming.” This is understandable for private actors, but an unsatisfactory answer in the case of public, tax-payer funded projects. Finland’s success has come through the normalization of competitions for public project procurement. We should endeavour to do the same. Maintaining design contribution anonymity prior to jury decision has thus far been the exception, not the norm in Canada. This reduces the credibility of the jury without improving the result. Additionally, the financing of such competitions has been piece-meal and inconsistent. For example, several world-class schools have been realized in Quebec as the result of competitions funded by a provincial investment.  With the depletion of that fund, it is no longer clear if any further schools will be commissioned in Quebec under a similar model. While high quality documentation has been produced, there is a risk that developed expertise will be lost if the team of professionals responsible for overseeing the process is not retained. École du Zénith in Shefford, Quebec, designed by Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc Architectes is one of six elegant and functional schools commission by the province through an anonymous competition process. Photo by James Brittain A path forward Now more than ever, it is essential that our public projects instill in us a sense of pride and reflect our uniquely Canadian values. This will continue to be a rare occurrence until more ambitious measures are taken to ensure the consistent realization of beautiful, innovative and functional public spaces that connect us with one another. In service of this objective, Canada should incentivize architectural competitions by normalizing their use for major public projects such as national museums, libraries and cultural centres. A dedicated Competitions Fund could be established to support provinces, territories and cities who demonstrate initiative in the pursuit of more ambitious, inspiring and equitable public projects. A National Competitions Expert could be appointed to ensure retention and dissemination of expertise. Maintaining the anonymity of competition entrants should be established as the norm. At a moment when talk of removing inter-provincial trade barriers has re-entered public discourse, why not consider striking down red tape that prevents out-of-province firms from participating in architectural competitions? Alas, one can dream. Competitions are no silver bullet. However, recent trials within our borders should give us confidence that architectural competitions are a relatively low-risk, high-reward proposition. To this end, Finland’s open, anonymous competition system offers a compelling case study from which we would be well served to take inspiration. Isaac Edmonds is a Canadian working for OOPEAA – Office for Peripheral Architecture in Helsinki, Finland. My observations of the Finnish competition system’s ability to consistently produce functional, beautiful buildings inform my interest in procurement methods that elevate the quality of our shared public realm. The post Op-Ed: Could Canada benefit from adopting Finland’s architectural competition system? appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Workshop on “Harnessing Space-Based Earth Observation and GIS Technologies for Disaster Risk Management”  isro.gov.in

CIOs and business leaders know they’re sitting on a goldmine of business data. And while traditional tools such as business intelligence platforms and statistical analysis software can effectively surface insights from the collated data resources, doing so quickly, in real-time and at scale remains an unsolved challenge.Enterprise AI, when deployed responsibly and at scale, can turn these bottlenecks into opportunities. Acting quickly on data, even ‘live’ (during a customer interaction, for example), is one of the technology’s abilities, as is scalability: AI can process large amounts of information from disparate sources almost as easily as it can summarize a one-page spreadsheet.But deploying an AI solution in the modern enterprise isn’t simple. It takes structure, trust and the right talent. Along with the practical implementation challenges, using AI brings its own challenges, such as data governance, the need to impose guardrails on AI responses and training data, and persistent staffing issues.We met with Rani Radhakrishnan, PwC Principal, Technology Managed Services – AI, Data Analytics and Insights, to talk candidly about what’s working — and what’s holding back CIOs in their AI journey. We spoke ahead of her speaking engagement at TechEx AI & Big Data Expo North America, June 4 and 5, at the Santa Clara Convention Center.Rani is especially attuned to some of the governance, data privacy and sovereignty issues that face enterprises, having spent many years in her career working with numerous clients in the health sector — an area where issues like privacy, data oversight and above all data accuracy are make-or-break aspects of technology deployments.“It’s not enough to just have a prompt engineer or a Python developer. … You still need the human in the loop to curate the right training data sets, review and address any bias in the outputs.” —Rani Radhakrishnan, PwCFrom support to strategy: shifting expectations for AIRani said that there’s a growing enthusiasm from PwC’s clients for AI-powered managed services that can provide both business insights in every sector, and for the technology to be used more proactively, in so-called agentic roles where agents can independently act on data and user input; where autonomous AI agents can take action based on interactions with humans, access to data resources and automation.For example, PwC’s agent OS is a modular AI platform that connects systems and scales intelligent agents into workflows, many times faster than traditional computing methods. It’s an example of how PwC responds to the demand for AI from its clients, many of whom see the potential of this new technology, but lack the in-house expertise and staff to act on their needs.Depending on the sector of the organization, the interest in AI can come from many different places in the business. Proactive monitoring of physical or digital systems; predictive maintenance in manufacturing or engineering; or cost efficiencies won by automation in complex, customer-facing environments, are just a few examples.But regardless of where AI can bring value, most companies don’t yet have in-house the range of skills and people necessary for effective AI deployment — or at least, deployments that achieve ROI and don’t come with significant risk.“It’s not enough to just have a prompt engineer or a Python developer,” Rani said. “You’ve got to put all of these together in a very structured manner, and you still need the human in the loop to curate the right training data sets, review and address any bias in the outputs.”Cleaning house: the data challenge behind AIRani says that effective AI implementations need a mix of technical skills — data engineering, data science, prompt engineering — in combination with an organization’s domain expertise. Internal domain expertise can define the right outcomes, and technical staff can cover the responsible AI practices, like data collation and governance, and confirm that AI systems work responsibly and within company guidelines.“In order to get the most value out of AI, an organization has to get the underlying data right,” she said. “I don’t know of a single company that says its data is in great shape … you’ve got to get it into the right structure and normalize it properly so you can query, analyze, and annotate it and identify emerging trends.”Part of the work enterprises have to put in for effective AI use is the observation for and correction of bias — in both output of AI systems and in the analysis of potential bias inherent in training and operational data.It’s important that as part of the underlying architecture of AI systems, teams apply stringent data sanitization, normalization, and data annotation processes. The latter requires “a lot of human effort,” Rani said, and the skilled personnel required are among the new breed of data professionals that are beginning to emerge.If data and personnel challenges can be overcome, then the feedback loop makes the possible outcomes from generative AI really valuable, Rani said. “Now you have an opportunity with AI prompts to go back and refine the answer that you get. And that’s what makes it so unique and so valuable because now you’re training the model to answer the questions the way you want them answered.”For CIOs, the shift isn’t just about tech enablement. It’s about integrating AI into enterprise architecture, aligning with business strategy, and managing the governance risks that come with scale. CIOs are becoming AI stewards — architecting not just systems, but trust and transformation.ConclusionIt’s only been a few years since AI emerged from its roots in academic computer science research, so it’s understandable that today’s enterprise organizations are, to a certain extent, feeling their way towards realizing AI’s potential.But a new playbook is emerging — one that helps CIOs access the value held in their data reserves, in business strategy, operational improvement, customer-facing experiences and a dozen more areas of the business.As a company that’s steeped in experience with clients large and small from all over the world, PwC is one of the leading choices that decision-makers turn to, to begin or rationalize and direct their existing AI journeys.Explore how PwC is helping CIOs embed AI into core operations, and see Rani’s latest insights at the June TechEx AI & Big Data Expo North America.(Image source: “Network Rack” by one individual is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)

Martian "slope streaks" spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2017. Scientists previously thought these large, discolored features may be signs of running water. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona) Mysterious dark streaks flowing across Mars's surface may not be the result of running water after all, a new artificial intelligence (AI) analysis suggests.The streaks, first observed running along Mars's cliffsides and crater walls by NASA's Viking mission in 1976, were long thought by scientists to have formed as a result of the flow of ancient water across the now mostly desiccated planet's surface.But an AI algorithm trained on slope streak observations has revealed a different origin for the streaks — likely being formed from wind and dust, not water. The findings, published May 19 in the journal Nature Communications, could have important implications for where humans choose to explore Mars, and the places they search for evidence of possible ancient life. "That's the advantage of this big data approach," study co-author Adomas Valantinas, a planetary scientist at Brown University, said in a statement. "It helps us to rule out some hypotheses from orbit before we send spacecraft to explore."The sinewy lines are darker than the surrounding Martian ground and extend for hundreds of meters downhill. The shorter-lived of these features are called recurring slope lineae (RSL), and regularly spring up during Mars's warmer spells.This led some planetary scientists to suggest that seasonal temperature fluctuations could be causing ice or frozen aquifers to melt, or humid air to condense, sending streams of salty water trickling down the planet's craters. If this were true, it would make these regions of particular interest to future Mars missions.To investigate this, the scientists behind the study trained a machine learning algorithm on confirmed streak sightings before making it scan through 86,000 satellite images to create a map of 500,000 streak features.RELATED STORIES"Once we had this global map, we could compare it to databases and catalogs of other things like temperature, wind speed, hydration, rock slide activity and other factors." Bickel said. "Then we could look for correlations over hundreds of thousands of cases to better understand the conditions under which these features form."Using the map, the scientists found the streaks were most likely to form in places where wind speed and dust deposition was high, suggesting that they came from layers of fine dust sliding off steep slopes.Other studies have pointed to tantalizing evidence of water and even life on Mars. If the study findings hold up, they could serve as a guide to sift between the Red Planet's useful leads and its red herrings. Sign up for the Live Science daily newsletter nowGet the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.

June 3, 20258 min readWhite House Budget Plan Would Devastate U.S. Space ScienceScientists are rallying to reverse ruinous proposed cuts to both NASA and the National Science FoundationBy Nadia Drake edited by Lee BillingsFog shrouds the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this photograph from February 25, 2025. Gregg Newton/AFP via GettyLate last week the Trump Administration released its detailed budget request for fiscal year 2026 —a request that, if enacted, would be the equivalent of carpet-bombing the national scientific enterprise.“This is a profound, generational threat to scientific leadership in the United States,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. “If implemented, it would fundamentally undermine and potentially devastate the most unique capabilities that the U.S. has built up over a half-century.”The Trump administration’s proposal, which still needs to be approved by Congress, is sure to ignite fierce resistance from scientists and senators alike. Among other agencies, the budget deals staggering blows to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which together fund the majority of U.S. research in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, heliophysics and Earth science —all space-related sciences that have typically mustered hearty bipartisan support.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The NSF supports ground-based astronomy, including such facilities as the Nobel Prize–winning gravitational-wave detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), globe-spanning arrays of radio telescopes, and cutting-edge observatories that stretch from Hawaii to the South Pole. The agency faces a lethal 57 percent reduction to its $9-billion budget, with deep cuts to every program except those in President Trump’s priority areas, which include artificial intelligence and quantum information science. NASA, which funds space-based observatories, faces a 25 percent reduction, dropping the agency’s $24.9-billion budget to $18.8 billion. The proposal beefs up efforts to send humans to the moon and to Mars, but the agency’s Science Mission Directorate —home to Mars rovers, the Voyager interstellar probes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Hubble Space Telescope, and much more —is looking at a nearly 50 percent reduction, with dozens of missions canceled, turned off or operating on a starvation diet.“It’s an end-game scenario for science at NASA,” says Joel Parriott, director of external affairs and public policy at the American Astronomical Society. “It’s not just the facilities. You’re punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don’t just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on.”Adding to the chaos, on Saturday President Trump announced that billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman was no longer his pick for NASA administrator—just days before the Senate was set to confirm Isaacman’s nomination. Initial reports—which have now been disputed—explained the president’s decision as stemming from his discovery that Isaacman recently donated money to Democratic candidates. Regardless of the true reason, the decision leaves both NASA and the NSF, whose director abruptly resigned in April, with respective placeholder “acting” leaders at the top. That leadership vacuum significantly weakens the agencies’ ability to fight the proposed budget cuts and advocate for themselves. “What’s more inefficient than a rudderless agency without an empowered leadership?” Dreier asks.Actions versus WordsDuring his second administration, President Trump has repeatedly celebrated U.S. leadership in space. When he nominated Isaacman last December, Trump noted “NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration” and looked to a future of “groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology and exploration.” More recently, while celebrating Hubble’s 35th anniversary in April, Trump called the telescope “a symbol of America’s unmatched exploratory might” and declared that NASA would “continue to lead the way in fueling the pursuit of space discovery and exploration.” The administration’s budgetary actions speak louder than Trump’s words, however. Instead of ushering in a new golden age of space exploration—or even setting up the U.S. to stay atop the podium—the president’s budget “narrows down what the cosmos is to moon and Mars and pretty much nothing else,” Dreier says. “And the cosmos is a lot bigger, and there’s a lot more to learn out there.”Dreier notes that when corrected for inflation, the overall NASA budget would be the lowest it’s been since 1961. But in April of that year, the Soviet Union launched the first human into orbit, igniting a space race that swelled NASA’s budget and led to the Apollo program putting American astronauts on the moon. Today China’s rapidprogress and enormous ambitions in space would make the moment ripe for a 21st-century version of this competition, with the U.S. generously funding its own efforts to maintain pole position. Instead the White House’s budget would do the exact opposite.“The seesaw is sort of unbalanced,” says Tony Beasley, director of the NSF-funded National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). “On the one side, we’re saying, ‘Well, China’s kicking our ass, and we need to do something about that.’ But then we’re not going to give any money to anything that might actually do that.”How NASA will achieve a crewed return to the moon and send astronauts to Mars—goals that the agency now considers part of “winning the second space race”—while also maintaining its leadership in science is unclear.“This is Russ Vought’s budget,” Dreier says, referring to the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an unelected bureaucrat who has been notorious for his efforts to reshape the U.S. government by weaponizing federal funding. “This isn’t even Trump’s budget. Trump’s budget would be good for space. This one undermines the president’s own claims and ambitions when it comes to space.”“Low Expectations” at the High FrontierRumors began swirling about the demise of NASA science in April, when a leaked OMB document described some of the proposed cuts and cancellations. Those included both the beleaguered, bloated Mars Sample Return (MSR) program and the on-time, on-budget Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the next astrophysics flagship mission.The top-line numbers in the more fleshed-out proposal are consistent with that document, and MSR would still be canceled. But Roman would be granted a stay of execution: rather than being zeroed out, it would be put on life support.“It’s a reprieve from outright termination, but it’s still a cut for functionally no reason,” Dreier says. “In some ways, [the budget] is slightly better than I was expecting. But I had very low expectations.”In the proposal, many of the deepest cuts would be made to NASA science, which would sink from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion. Earth science missions focused on carbon monitoring and climate change, as well as programs aimed at education and workforce diversity, would be effectively erased by the cuts. But a slew of high-profile planetary science projects would suffer, too, with cancellations proposed for two future Venus missions, the Juno mission that is currently surveilling Jupiter, the New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto and two Mars orbiters. (The Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan would survive, as would the flagship Europa Clipper spacecraft, which launched last October.) NASA’s international partnerships in planetary science fare poorly, too, as the budget rescinds the agency’s involvement with multiple European-led projects, including a Venus mission and Mars rover.The proposal is even worse for NASA astrophysics—the study of our cosmic home—which “really takes it to the chin,” Dreier says, with a roughly $1-billion drop to just $523 million. In the president’s proposal, only three big astrophysics missions would survive: the soon-to-launch Roman and the already-operational Hubble and JWST. The rest of NASA’s active astrophysics missions, which include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), would be severely pared back or zeroed out. Additionally, the budget would nix NASA’s contributions to large European missions, such as a future space-based gravitational-wave observatory.“This is the most powerful fleet of missions in the history of the study of astrophysics from space,” says John O’Meara, chief scientist at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and co-chair of a recent senior review panel that evaluated NASA’s astrophysics missions. The report found that each reviewed mission “continues to be capable of producing important, impactful science.” This fleet, O’Meara adds, is more than the sum of its parts, with much of its power emerging from synergies among multiple telescopes that study the cosmos in many different types, or wavelengths, of light.By hollowing out NASA’s science to ruthlessly focus on crewed missions, the White House budget might be charitably viewed as seeking to rekindle a heroic age of spaceflight—with China’s burgeoning space program as the new archrival. But even for these supposedly high-priority initiatives, the proposed funding levels appear too anemic and meager to give the U.S. any competitive edge. For example, the budget directs about $1 billion to new technology investments to support crewed Mars missions while conservative estimates have projected that such voyages would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more.“It cedes U.S. leadership in space science at a time when other nations, particularly China, are increasing their ambitions,” Dreier says. “It completely flies in the face of the president’s own stated goals for American leadership in space.”Undermining the FoundationThe NSF’s situation, which one senior space scientist predicted would be “diabolical” when the NASA numbers leaked back in April, is also unsurprisingly dire. Unlike NASA, which is focused on space science and exploration, the NSF’s programs span the sweep of scientific disciplines, meaning that even small, isolated cuts—let alone the enormous ones that the budget has proposed—can have shockingly large effects on certain research domains.“Across the different parts of the NSF, the programs that are upvoted are the president’s strategic initiatives, but then everything else gets hit,” Beasley says.Several large-scale NSF-funded projects would escape more or less intact. Among these are the panoramic Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scheduled to unveil its first science images later this month, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope. The budget also moves the Giant Magellan Telescope, which would boast starlight-gathering mirrors totaling more than 25 meters across, into a final design phase. All three of those facilities take advantage of Chile’s pristine dark skies. Other large NSF-funded projects that would survive include the proposed Next Generation Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico and several facilities at the South Pole, such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.If this budget is enacted, however, NSF officials anticipate only funding a measly 7 percent of research proposals overall rather than 25 percent; the number of graduate research fellowships awarded would be cleaved in half, and postdoctoral fellowships in the physical sciences would drop to zero. NRAO’s Green Bank Observatory — home to the largest steerable single-dish radio telescope on the planet — would likely shut down. So would other, smaller observatories in Arizona and Chile. The Thirty Meter Telescope, a humongous, perennially embattled project with no clear site selection, would be canceled. And the budget proposes closing one of the two gravitational-wave detectors used by the LIGO collaboration—whose observations of colliding black holes earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics—even though both detectors need to be online for LIGO’s experiment to work. Even factoring in other operational detectors, such as Virgo in Europe and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan, shutting down half of LIGO would leave a gaping blind spot in humanity’s gravitational-wave view of the heavens.“The consequences of this budget are that key scientific priorities, on the ground and in space, will take at least a decade longer—or not be realized at all,” O’Meara says. “The universe is telling its story at all wavelengths. It doesn’t care what you build, but if you want to hear that story, you must build many things.”Dreier, Parriott and others are anticipating fierce battles on Capitol Hill. And already both Democratic and Republican legislators have issued statement signaling that they won’t support the budget request as is. “This sick joke of a budget is a nonstarter,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, in a recent statement. And in an earlier statement, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations, cautioned that “the President’s Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process.”The Trump administration has “thrown a huge punch here, and there will be a certain back-reaction, and we’ll end up in the middle somewhere,” Beasley says. “The mistake you can make right now is to assume that this represents finalized decisions and the future—because it doesn’t.”

By CHRIS McGOWAN This image of Jupiter from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows stunning details of the majestic planet in infrared light. (Image courtesy of NASA, ESA and CSA) Special effects have been used for decades to depict space exploration, from visits to planets and moons to zero gravity and spaceships – one need only think of the landmark 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Since that era, visual effects have increasingly grown in realism and importance. VFX have been used for entertainment and for scientific purposes, outreach to the public and astronaut training in virtual reality. Compelling images and videos can bring data to life. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) produces visualizations, animations and images to help scientists tell stories of their research and make science more approachable and engaging. A.J. Christensen is a senior visualization designer for the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. There, he develops data visualization techniques and designs data-driven imagery for scientific analysis and public outreach using Hollywood visual effects tools, according to NASA. SVS visualizations feature datasets from Earth-and space-based instrumentation, scientific supercomputer models and physical statistical distributions that have been analyzed and processed by computational scientists. Christensen’s specialties include working with 3D volumetric data, using the procedural cinematic software Houdini and science topics in Heliophysics, Geophysics and Astrophysics. He previously worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ Advanced Visualization Lab where he worked on more than a dozen science documentary full-dome films as well as the IMAX films Hubble 3D and A Beautiful Planet – and he worked at DNEG on the movie Interstellar, which won the 2015 Best Visual Effects Academy Award. This global map of CO2 was created by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio using a model called GEOS, short for the Goddard Earth Observing System. GEOS is a high-resolution weather reanalysis model, powered by supercomputers, that is used to represent what was happening in the atmosphere. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) “The NASA Scientific Visualization Studio operates like a small VFX studio that creates animations of scientific data that has been collected or analyzed at NASA. We are one of several groups at NASA that create imagery for public consumption, but we are also a part of the scientific research process, helping scientists understand and share their data through pictures and video.” —A.J. Christensen, Senior Visualization Designer, NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) About his work at NASA SVS, Christensen comments, “The NASA Scientific Visualization Studio operates like a small VFX studio that creates animations of scientific data that has been collected or analyzed at NASA. We are one of several groups at NASA that create imagery for public consumption, but we are also a part of the scientific research process, helping scientists understand and share their data through pictures and video. This past year we were part of NASA’s total eclipse outreach efforts, we participated in all the major earth science and astronomy conferences, we launched a public exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History called the Earth Information Center, and we posted hundreds of new visualizations to our publicly accessible website: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov.” This is the ‘beauty shot version’ of Perpetual Ocean 2: Western Boundary Currents. The visualization starts with a rotating globe showing ocean currents. The colors used to color the flow in this version were chosen to provide a pleasing look. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) The Gulf Stream and connected currents. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) Venus, our nearby “sister” planet, beckons today as a compelling target for exploration that may connect the objects in our own solar system to those discovered around nearby stars. (Image courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center) WORKING WITH DATA While Christensen is interpreting the data from active spacecraft and making it usable in different forms, such as for science and outreach, he notes, “It’s not just spacecraft that collect data. NASA maintains or monitors instruments on Earth too – on land, in the oceans and in the air. And to be precise, there are robots wandering around Mars that are collecting data, too.” He continues, “Sometimes the data comes to our team as raw telescope imagery, sometimes we get it as a data product that a scientist has already analyzed and extracted meaning from, and sometimes various sensor data is used to drive computational models and we work with the models’ resulting output.” Jupiter’s moon Europa may have life in a vast ocean beneath its icy surface. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) HOUDINI AND OTHER TOOLS “Data visualization means a lot of different things to different people, but many people on our team interpret it as a form of filmmaking,” Christensen says. “We are very inspired by the approach to visual storytelling that Hollywood uses, and we use tools that are standard for Hollywood VFX. Many professionals in our area – the visualization of 3D scientific data – were previously using other animation tools but have discovered that Houdini is the most capable of understanding and manipulating unusual data, so there has been major movement toward Houdini over the past decade.” Satellite imagery from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows the Sun in ultraviolet light colorized in light brown. Seen in ultraviolet light, the dark patches on the Sun are known as coronal holes and are regions where fast solar wind gushes out into space. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) Christensen explains, “We have always worked with scientific software as well – sometimes there’s only one software tool in existence to interpret a particular kind of scientific data. More often than not, scientific software does not have a GUI, so we’ve had to become proficient at learning new coding environments very quickly. IDL and Python are the generic data manipulation environments we use when something is too complicated or oversized for Houdini, but there are lots of alternatives out there. Typically, we use these tools to get the data into a format that Houdini can interpret, and then we use Houdini to do our shading, lighting and camera design, and seamlessly blend different datasets together.” While cruising around Saturn in early October 2004, Cassini captured a series of images that have been composed into this large global natural color view of Saturn and its rings. This grand mosaic consists of 126 images acquired in a tile-like fashion, covering one end of Saturn’s rings to the other and the entire planet in between. (Image courtesy of ASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) The black hole Gargantua and the surrounding accretion disc from the 2014 movie Interstellar. (Image courtesy of DNEG and Paramount Pictures) Another visualization of the black hole Gargantua. (Image courtesy of DNEG and Paramount Pictures) INTERSTELLAR & GARGANTUA Christensen recalls working for DNEG on Interstellar (2014). “When I first started at DNEG, they asked me to work on the giant waves on Miller’s ocean planet [in the film]. About a week in, my manager took me into the hall and said, ‘I was looking at your reel and saw all this astronomy stuff. We’re working on another sequence with an accretion disk around a black hole that I’m wondering if we should put you on.’ And I said, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve done lots of accretion disks.’ So, for the rest of my time on the show, I was working on the black hole team.” He adds, “There are a lot of people in my community that would be hesitant to label any big-budget movie sequence as a scientific visualization. The typical assumption is that for a Hollywood movie, no one cares about accuracy as long as it looks good. Guardians of the Galaxy makes it seem like space is positively littered with nebulae, and Star Wars makes it seem like asteroids travel in herds. But the black hole Gargantua in Interstellar is a good case for being called a visualization. The imagery you see in the movie is the direct result of a collaboration with an expert scientist, Dr. Kip Thorne, working with the DNEG research team using the actual Einstein equations that describe the gravity around a black hole.” Thorne is a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist who taught at Caltech for many years. He has reached wide audiences with his books and presentations on black holes, time travel and wormholes on PBS and BBC shows. Christensen comments, “You can make the argument that some of the complexity around what a black hole actually looks like was discarded for the film, and they admit as much in the research paper that was published after the movie came out. But our team at NASA does that same thing. There is no such thing as an objectively ‘true’ scientific image – you always have to make aesthetic decisions around whether the image tells the science story, and often it makes more sense to omit information to clarify what’s important. Ultimately, Gargantua taught a whole lot of people something new about science, and that’s what a good scientific visualization aims to do.” The SVS produces an annual visualization of the Moon’s phase and libration comprising 8,760 hourly renderings of its precise size, orientation and illumination. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) FURTHER CHALLENGES The sheer size of the data often encountered by Christensen and his peers is a challenge. “I’m currently working with a dataset that is 400GB per timestep. It’s so big that I don’t even want to move it from one file server to another. So, then I have to make decisions about which data attributes to keep and which to discard, whether there’s a region of the data that I can cull or downsample, and I have to experiment with data compression schemes that might require me to entirely re-design the pipeline I’m using for Houdini. Of course, if I get rid of too much information, it becomes very resource-intensive to recompute everything, but if I don’t get rid of enough, then my design process becomes agonizingly slow.” SVS also works closely with its NASA partner groups Conceptual Image Lab (CIL) and Goddard Media Studios (GMS) to publish a diverse array of content. Conceptual Image Lab focuses more on the artistic side of things – producing high-fidelity renders using film animation and visual design techniques, according to NASA. Where the SVS primarily focuses on making data-based visualizations, CIL puts more emphasis on conceptual visualizations – producing animations featuring NASA spacecraft, planetary observations and simulations, according to NASA. Goddard Media Studios, on the other hand, is more focused towards public outreach – producing interviews, TV programs and documentaries. GMS continues to be the main producers behind NASA TV, and as such, much of their content is aimed towards the general public. An impact crater on the moon. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) Image of Mars showing a partly shadowed Olympus Mons toward the upper left of the image. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) Mars. Hellas Basin can be seen in the lower right portion of the image. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) Mars slightly tilted to show the Martian North Pole. (Image courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio) Christensen notes, “One of the more unique challenges in this field is one of bringing people from very different backgrounds to agree on a common outcome. I work on teams with scientists, communicators and technologists, and we all have different communities we’re trying to satisfy. For instance, communicators are generally trying to simplify animations so their learning goal is clear, but scientists will insist that we add text and annotations on top of the video to eliminate ambiguity and avoid misinterpretations. Often, the technologist will have to say we can’t zoom in or look at the data in a certain way because it will show the data boundaries or data resolution limits. Every shot is a negotiation, but in trying to compromise, we often push the boundaries of what has been done before, which is exciting.”

If you’ve ever wondered whether the food on your plate could shape your brain’s future, the science is starting to say: yes, it might. While healthy eating has long been linked to better brain health, new research is getting more specific about which diets help, and when you should start following them.At this year’s annual Nutrition conference in Orlando, Florida, researchers presented findings that add weight to the growing link between diet and dementia. According to a news release, study author Song-Yi Park of the University of Hawaii at Manoa said, “Our study findings confirm that healthy dietary patterns in mid to late life and their improvement over time may prevent Alzheimer’s and related dementias. This suggests that it is never too late to adopt a healthy diet to prevent dementia.”The research focused on nearly 93,000 U.S. adults from the long-running Multiethnic Cohort Study. Participants were between 45 years and 75 years old when they entered the study in the 1990s. Over time, more than 21,000 developed Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias — but those who closely followed a specific eating plan, the MIND diet, were significantly less likely to be among them.Combining the Mediterranean Diet and DASH DietThe MIND diet (short for Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) blends the best elements of two established eating plans: the Mediterranean diet and the DASH diet.The Mediterranean diet is inspired by the traditional cuisines of countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain. It focuses on plant-based foods (fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains), healthy fats like olive oil, and moderate amounts of fish, poultry, and dairy, with red meat eaten sparingly. It’s been linked to a lower risk of heart disease and is also environmentally friendly.The DASH diet, originally designed to lower blood pressure, shares many similarities but puts extra emphasis on limiting sodium and increasing intake of nutrients like potassium, magnesium, and calcium. It includes low-fat dairy and lean protein sources and doesn’t rely on any hard-to-find foods.The MIND diet specifically promotes brain-healthy foods like leafy greens, berries, nuts, and olive oil, combining benefits of both approaches with a focus on protecting cognitive health.Read More: Is the Mediterranean Diet Healthy?The MIND Diet Over TimeAccording to Park and her team, people who scored highest in MIND diet adherence at the study’s start had a 9 percent lower risk of developing dementia. That number was even higher with around 13 percent for African American, Latino, and White participants. Looking at those who improved their adherence to the MIND diet over time, showed a 25 percent reduction in dementia risk compared to those whose dietary habits declined, which was consistent no matter the age or racial background.“We found that the protective relationship between a healthy diet and dementia was more pronounced among African Americans, Latinos, and Whites, while it was not as apparent among Asian Americans and showed a weaker trend in Native Hawaiians,” Park said in the press release. “A tailored approach may be needed when evaluating different subpopulations’ diet quality.”Interestingly, Asian Americans also tend to have lower dementia rates overall, which researchers believe could mean other cultural eating patterns might offer similar protection than the MIND diet for that group.The Best Time to Start Is NowOne of the most encouraging findings was that starting late still helped. Participants who began following the MIND diet more closely over a 10-year period, regardless of how old they were when they began, saw benefits. This suggests that even if you didn’t grow up eating brain-boosting foods, it’s not too late to change course.It’s worth noting that the study is observational, so, by itself, it can’t prove this specific diet causes better brain health. Study author Park notes that the next step is conducting interventional studies to verify these promising results.Still, the evidence is mounting. Whether you're 45 or 75, choosing greens over greasy snacks could make a real difference when it comes to aging with or without dementia.This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:National Institute of Aging. What Do We Know About Diet and Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease?Harvard Health Publishing. A practical guide to the Mediterranean dietNational Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Following the DASH Eating PlanHaving worked as a biomedical research assistant in labs across three countries, Jenny excels at translating complex scientific concepts – ranging from medical breakthroughs and pharmacological discoveries to the latest in nutrition – into engaging, accessible content. Her interests extend to topics such as human evolution, psychology, and quirky animal stories. When she’s not immersed in a popular science book, you’ll find her catching waves or cruising around Vancouver Island on her longboard.

In technical fields like information technology, definitions are fundamental. They are the building blocks for constructing useful applications and systems. Yet, despite this, it’s easy to assume a term’s definition and wield it confidently before discovering its true meaning. The two closely related cases that stand out to me are “security” and “privacy.” I say this with full awareness that, in my many writings on information security, I never adequately distinguished these two concepts. It was only after observing enough conflation of these terms that I resolved to examine my own casual treatment of them. So, with the aim of solidifying my own understanding, let’s properly differentiate “information security” and “information privacy.” Security vs. Privacy: Definitions That Matter In the context of information technology, what exactly are security and privacy? Security is the property of denying unauthorized parties from accessing or altering your data. Privacy is the property of preventing the observation of your activities by any third parties to whom you do not expressly consent to observe those activities. As you can see, these principles are related, which is one reason why they’re commonly interchanged. This distinction becomes comprehensible with examples. Let’s start with an instance where security applies, but privacy does not. Spotify uses digital rights management (DRM) software to keep its media secure but not private. DRM is a whole topic of its own, but it essentially uses cryptography to enforce copyright. In Spotify’s case, it’s what constitutes streaming rather than just downloading: the song’s file is present on your device (at least temporarily) just as if you’d downloaded it, but Spotify’s DRM cryptography prevents you from opening the file without the Spotify application. The data on Spotify (audio files) are secure because only users of the application can stream audio, and streamed content can’t be retained, opened, or transmitted to non-users. However, Spotify’s data is not private because nearly anyone with an email address can be a user. Thus, in practice, the company cannot control who exactly can access its data. A more complex example of security without privacy is social media. When you sign up for a social media platform, you accept an end-user license agreement (EULA) authorizing the platform to share your data with its partners and affiliates. Your data stored with “authorized parties” on servers controlled by the platform and its affiliates would be considered secure, provided all these entities successfully defend your data against theft by unauthorized parties. In other words, if everyone who is allowed (by agreement) to have your data encrypts it in transit and at rest, insulates and segments their networks, etc., then your data is secure no matter how many affiliates receive it. In practice, the more parties that have your data, the more likely it is that any one of them is breached, but in theory, they could all defend your data. On the other hand, any data you fork over to the social network is not private because you can’t control who uses your data and how. As soon as your data lands on the platform’s servers, you can’t restrict what they do with it, including sharing your data with other entities, which you also can’t control. Both examples illustrate security without privacy. That’s because privacy entails security, but not the reverse. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. If you have privacy, meaning you can completely enforce how any party uses your data (or doesn’t), it is secure by definition because only authorized parties can access your data. Mobile Devices: Secure but Not Private Casually mixing security and privacy can lead people to misunderstand the information security properties that apply to their data in any given scenario. By reevaluating for ourselves whether a given technology affords us security and privacy, we can have a more accurate understanding of how accessible our data really is. One significant misconception I’ve noticed concerns mobile devices. I get the impression that the digital privacy content sphere regards mobile devices as not secure because they aren’t private. But while mobile is designed not to be private, it is specifically designed to be secure. Why is that? Because the value of data is in keeping it in your hands and out of your competitor’s. If you collect data but anyone else can grab your copy, you are not only at no advantage but also at a disadvantage since you’re the only party that spent time and money to collect it from the source. With modest scrutiny, we’ll find that every element of a mobile OS that might be marketed as a privacy feature is, in fact, strictly a security feature. Cybersecurity professionals have hailed application permissions as a major stride in privacy. But whom are they designed to help? These menus apply to applications that request access to certain hardware, from microphones and cameras to flash memory storage and wireless radios. This access restriction feature serves the OS developer by letting users lock out as much of their competition as possible from taking their data. The mobile OS developer controls the OS with un-auditable compiled code. For all you know, permission controls on all the OS’s native apps could be ignored. However, even if we assume that the OS developer doesn’t thwart your restrictions on their own apps, the first-party apps still enjoy pride of place. There are more of them; they are preinstalled on your device, facilitate core mobile device features, require more permissions, and often lose core functions when those permissions are denied. Mobile OSes also sandbox every application, forcing each to run in an isolated software environment, oblivious to other applications and the underlying operating system. This, too, benefits the OS vendor. Like the app permission settings, this functionality makes it harder for third parties to grab the same data the OS effortlessly ingests. The OS relies on its own background processes to obtain the most valuable data and walls off every other app from those processes. Mobile Security Isn’t Designed With You in Mind The most powerful mobile security control is the denial of root privileges to all applications and users (besides, again, the OS itself). While it goes a long way toward keeping the user’s data safe, it is just as effective at subjecting everything and everyone using the device to the dictates of the OS. The security advantage is undeniable: if your user account can’t use root, then any malware that compromises it can’t either. By the same token, because you don’t have complete control over the OS, you are unable to reconfigure your device for privacy from the OS vendor. I’m not disparaging any of these security controls. All of them reinforce the protection of your data. I’m saying that they are not done primarily for the user’s benefit; that is secondary. Those of you familiar with my work might see the scroll bar near the bottom of this page and wonder why I haven’t mentioned Linux yet. The answer is that desktop operating systems, my preferred kind of Linux OS, benefit from their own examination. In a follow-up to this piece, I will discuss the paradox of desktop security and privacy. Please stay tuned.

Satellite view of coral reefs in New CaledoniaShutterstock/BEST-BACKGR​OUNDS There might be an upside to the loss of coral reefs. Their decline would mean oceans can absorb up to 5 per cent more carbon dioxide by 2100, researchers estimate, slowing the build up of this greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere. “It is a beneficial effect if you only care about the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere,” says Lester Kwiatkowski at Sorbonne University in Paris, France. But the decline of corals will also reduce biodiversity, harm fisheries and leave many coasts more exposed to rising seas, he says. Advertisement How much the world will warm depends mainly on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. So far the land and oceans have been soaking up around half of the extra CO2 we have emitted. Any factors that increase or decrease these so-called land or ocean carbon sinks could therefore have a significant impact on future warming. It is often assumed that corals remove CO2 from seawater as they grow their calcium carbonate skeletons. In fact, the process, also known as calcification, is a net source of CO2. “You’re taking inorganic carbon in the ocean, generally in the form of carbonate and bicarbonate ions, turning it into calcium carbonate and that process releases CO2 into the seawater, some of which will be lost to the atmosphere,” says Kwiatkowski. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter This means that if reef formation around the world slows or even reverses, less CO2 will be released by reefs and the oceans will be able to absorb more of this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere – a factor not currently included in climate models. Observations suggest coral reef calcification is already declining as rising seawater temperatures cause mass coral bleaching and die-offs. The higher level of CO2 is also making oceans more acidic, which can make it harder to build carbonate skeletons and even lead to their dissolution. Kwiatkowski and his team took published estimates of how corals will be affected by warming and ocean acidification and used a computer model to work out how this might change the ocean sink in various emission scenarios. They conclude that the oceans could take up between 1 and 5 per cent more carbon by 2100, and up to 13 per cent more by 2300. This doesn’t take account of other factors that can cause reef decline such as overfishing and the spread of coral diseases, says Kwiatkowski, so might even be an underestimate. On the other hand, the work assumes that corals aren’t able to adapt or acclimatise, says Chris Jury at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, who wasn’t involved in the study. “If the worst-case or even medium-case scenario in this study comes to pass, it means the near-total destruction of coral reefs globally,” says Jury. “I think that with consideration of realistic levels of adaptation and acclimatisation by corals and other reef organisms, the authors might come to different conclusions under a low to moderate level of climate change.” If Kwiatkowski’s team is correct, it means that the amount of emitted CO2 that will lead to a given level of warming – the so-called carbon budget – is a little larger than currently thought. “I think we would like our budgets to be as accurate as possible, even if we’re blowing through them,” says Kwiatkowski. Journal reference:PNAS DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2501562122 Topics: