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Assignment 3: Phoenix Mars Mission with NASA's Peter Smith

Why I Selected this Topic

I selected the topic (https://soundcloud.com/bridging-the-gaps/phoenix-mars-mission-with-peter-smith ), to be to learn about the capability of Mars to support human life and what prospects this holds for humans in the future. There has been a lot of research and studies going on regarding the possible existence (and ability for life support) outside of the earth, so, part of my curiosity too, I wanted to understand the facts around this in this interview.

About the Researcher

Peter Smith is a senior research scientist at the University of Arizona, United State of America and principal investigator of NASA’s Phoenix Mass mission. He worked in the space programme in Hawaii for five years before going back to school to study optics at the University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center. Combining Physics and Optics, he built a career in building instruments used for space exploration, for example, he designed one of the cameras in the Mars pathfinder mission to mars

Peter Smith has also been involved in other space exploration activities including the pioneer Venus mission (1978), exploration of Jupiter and Titan, helping to build the microscope for Beagle 2, a European lander that failed to return data upon its arrival to Mars in December 2003 (https://www.spacefest.info/V/speakers/Smithspeak.html ). He also worked on the he Japanese MUSES-CNear-earth asteroid mission (Peter Smith - Pima Air & Space)

What the discussion was about and learnings

The discussion covered the Phoenix mission to polar region of planet Mars with the objective to find out if the planet had support some form of life and its conduciveness for the habitation of human and other earthly lives.

I learnt the following from the discussion:

Interest in space exploration to Venus diminished because of the unfavorable weather conditions there – the temperatures are hundreds of degrees and pressure of 3000 feet below sea level (90 bars), As a result of these extreme conditions, it is not likely to be a place where life can be found and, hence, worth the effort and budget required for exploration.

There are three crucial stages for a successful space mission, these are entry, decent and landing. The was particularly critical for the Phoenix mission due the failures of the previous two missions. The team went to a great length to fix the likely issues that could have made the space craft fail, about 25 of them. Landing in Mars is particularly difficult because of its think atmosphere, which makes parachutes not enough to slow down a fast-moving space craft.

A pointer to possible existence of life (or the ability of a planet to support life) is the present of water in the planet. The Phoenix mission discovered ice on the planet, and through the chemical reactions that had happened there, given rise to calcium carbonate, it was inferred that the ice sample has melted to form water at some point. However, the mission could not confirm the existence of life as it was not equipped with the instrument to do that.

The Phoenix mission generated a lot of interest (and anxiety) as after the successful pathfinder mission, two missions to Mars had failed; the Phoenix mission being the next after those. The mission originated as a result of a competition posed by NASA for a mission to Mars to be proposed. About twenty groups of took part in the challenge but Peter Smith’s group won the completion. They used a craft that was prec was in one of these groups. The focus of his group was hinged on low cost and science.  

Two mechanisms are generally used for landing on space missions, airbags and power landing mechanisms, the Phoenix mission used power landing mechanism, this was essentially due to the nature and weight of the craft.

Conclusion

Mars is not conducive for human existence for a number of reasons including:

The harsh weather condition and lack of water – humans can only survive without water for s short period

The human body is not geared for Mars time. A day on Mars is 24 hours and 37 minutes, though seemingly close to that of the earth, but the difference is enough to cause an effect of permanent jet lag to humans.

However, it is expected that in the future, maybe a few decades ahead, there will be human missions to Mars, first on fact-finding and, maybe, colonization later. But for humans to survive on Mars, there has to be provision of Water (which does not naturally exist as yet), probability by digging wells

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History of Information with Professor Paul Duguid

Why I Selected this Topic

I selected the topic (https://soundcloud.com/bridging-the-gaps/history-of-information-with-professor-paul-duguid ), given that I am currently doing a master’s in information security, so that I can understand the historical perspective on information, with expectation to understand how the protection of information has evolved.

About the Researcher

Paul Duguid is a professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, he was also formerly Professorial Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. His current research areas include the history of the concept of information and the history and development of trademarks. Professor Duguid is one of the editors of the book, “Information, a Historical Companion,” a work that traces the creation, management, and sharing of information through six centuries. The discussion is about the views expressed in the book.

What the discussion was about and learnings

The discussion covered the history of information and, especially, laid out that the concepts of information management has existed at varying degrees throughout ages. The concept of “information age” transcends generations, in fact, every age is an information age, meaning that information has always played a role in societies from historical times. It is difficult to discuss the concept of information in any age without looking at the history and role it played by in previous ages. The is a typified Fred Dretske, the philosopher, who says that information precedes the age.

I learnt the following from the discussion:

There is a mutual relationship between societies and information, while it is true that information shapes and controls the society, the society also shapes and controls the information available to it. A view/analysis of this mutual relationship helps us to study a society, throwing light into different aspects of the society. This can be summarized by saying that the way people control or handle information says a lot about them.

Information by definition is really contextual, it can only be adequately be defined from the perspective of the user. While we may seem to be talking about the same thing when we use the term, we rarely perceive or understand it in the same light or from the same view point.

The right information can be a veritable to solve most of our problems. For example, it is believed that information, by way of education, can promote freedom and a level of equality and harmonious coexistence due to the liberation from ignorance that it will bring to the society and its people.

Though the volume and velocity of information seems more in the present time, people throughout the ages have always felt that they had more information than they could consume. Also the issue of misinformation has roots in our history as it has been employed at different times in the past and is not as a result of the current volume and velocity of information available to us, but this volume, velocity and accessibility of information exacerbates it.

Another dimension to intellectual property rights, besides the general understand of right/ownership of information, is also that this “ownership” also allows us to link issues such as falsehood relating to such information to the owner of the intellectual right.

Conclusion

Although the research did not specifically discuss information security, it emphasized the requirement for information to be available to those who need it. Availability is a key concept in information security. Other concepts relevant to information security that were discussed included data, intellectual property and privacy.

Also deriving from item 2 in the learning points, the concept of the value of an information asset being based on the perspective of the owner could be deduced from the discussion.

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Artificial Intelligence: Fascinating Opportunities & Emerging Challenges

Why I Selected this Topic

I selected this topic (https://soundcloud.com/bridging-the-gaps/artificial-intelligence-opportunities-and-challenges-with-professor-bart-selman) because of the role AI is playing in recent years in both the defensive and offensive aspect of information security. While defenders, e.g., manufacturers of antivirus are deploying AI to better detect malicious software using non-traditional methods, attackers are also using the same technology to deploy attack payloads in ways capable of defeating defense systems. I want hope to have deeper understanding of the workings of AI through the podcast.

About the Researcher

Bart Selman is a professor of computer science at Cornel University, fellow of American Association of Artificial Intelligence and American Association for the Advancement of Science and the president elect of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. He has special focus on computational and representational issues. The areas he has worked on include tractable inference, knowledge representation, stochastic search methods, theory approximation, knowledge compilation, planning, default reasoning, and the connections between computer science and statistical physics. His current research areas are fast reasoning methods, multi-agent systems, integration of learning and reasoning techniques and analysis of large linked networks

What the discussion is about:

The discussion is about researches into artificial intelligence and the fascinating capabilities that have been developed/achieved in the field.  It also focused on the challenges of AI, one of which is the problem of explainability and lack of overarching regulation and global standardization of AI programmes. The problem of explainability seeks to bring transparency into the outcomes/results of AI processes as there are currently no way for machines/AI programmes to provide reasoning behind their results, which could create an issue of trust in the results.

I learnt the following from the discussion:

Research in AI has been on for about 60 years, however real progress began at the end of the 1990’s

A revolutionary landmark was achieved in the AI field in 2011/2012 with the deep learning computer programme. Deep Learning (DL) enabled computers to acquire different capabilities in specific areas through training on hundreds/thousands of samples, from which they are able to discern other samples (or perform other activities) they had not been trained on. Deep leaning is the mechanism behind autonomous cars, speech/image recognition, etc. Examples of the application of DL include language translators, deep blue machine the defeated Kasparov in the game of chess and the question answering IBM Watson computer.

The problem of explainability, the inability of AI systems to generate reasoning behind their outputs, which poses the issue of trust and ethics on the outcomes from AI programmes.  What I make of this is, for example, is the if AI is used to digital evidence analysis, it will be difficult for this to be admissible in the court of law. However, research is ongoing to enable AI systems to generate reasoning behind their decisions.  

Artificial general intelligence, which is focused on enabling AI system to act with flexibility similar to those of humans and adapt to different situation rather than focusing on specific areas such as self-driving cars, language interpretation, etc. Only little strides have been made in this area and it is project that it might take up to between 30 to 100 years for breakthroughs in this area of research.

There is a need to regulate AI or certify AI capabilities to meet certain standards to ensure ethical and trust standards are at acceptable levels. Regulation and cooperation between governments and researchers will also ensure that AI is not employed for negative purposes such as autonomous weapons

In conclusion, deriving from my reason for selecting this topic, I have found out that AI is a dual-use area, while, using deep learning algorithms, cyber defenders can make machines learn and identify malicious traits, the “bad actors” can also use the same techniques to learn how to circumvent deployed security mechanisms.