"Pale Blue Dot"- Carl Sagan

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” 
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g

The background behind the story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

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Attending #CIDU2012 in Boulder Colorado

I am currently attending Conference on Intelligent Data Understanding (CIDU) here in Boulder.
The conference theme for this year is "Bringing Data and Models Together". The presentations consist of scientists from a wide variety of fields: Space Science, Earth and Environment Systems, and Aerospace and Engineering Systems. This is a great conference bringing researchers practicing data mining, machine learning or computational intelligence.
I am enjoying all the talks. The final agenda for CIDU 2012 can be found  here.

This is the first time that the CIDU is being held in NCAR, Boulder, away from its "home".

I presented yesterday. First day first slot: nice!!
It was about "Estimation and Bias Correction of  Aerosol Abundance using  Data driven Machine Learning and Remote Sensing ". Basically this paper discusses a general framework to choosing the optimal set of variables for machine learning/bias correction. Neural network was used, however one can insert his/her favorite Machine learning tool (SVM, DT, RF, GP etc). This involves massive number crunching for brute force search among all possible combination of variables. For 15 variable case, it has more than 32 thousands of combinations to try. I wonder if Bayes Net can help me to intelligently reduce the search.

Forgot my SD card, and it is cloudy+started to snow. While driving down the road, I saw nice mountains!! However, no pictures on this post!
(Happy Dashain!!)
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Hack Kinect to automate map making

In the video Maurice Fallon, an MIT researcher, describe a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving.
Using LIDAR, MS Kinect, IMU (battery), the user gathers the data which is processed on the fly on a base (computer) and a 2D map is built in real time.
This could be very useful in disaster response zone.

--> Read more:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/automatic-building-mapping-0924.html

#WinkAtTheMoon for Neil Armstrong!

There is a Blue Moon today, coinciding with a private family memorial service for Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. In honor of Neil, NASA’s asking that you share publicly your photos of the moon tonight on Google+ and tag them with the hashtag #WinkAtTheMoon .
NASA will repost a gallery on the +NASA page of some of our favorite photos.

After Neil’s passing, his family stated: “For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”

From... https://plus.google.com/u/0/102371865054310418159/posts/MkFPThjWsiP

Curiosity @ Mars #msl

Curiosity will be landing on Mars this week.
You can follow it @MarsCuriosity
We wish the curiosity rover a nice journey and (√) a smooth landing.


The mission will take about 8 months to reach Mars.
Lets start with a minute video.



Here is the animation of landing to the red planet.


The process on the ground


For updates follow http://twitter.com/#!/MarsCuriosity
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

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