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New Horizons’ Pluto Flyby with Dr Mark Showalter

I came to know about all the planets in our solar - system when I was merely in the 2nd grade. At that time, Pluto wasn't excluded to be a planet [1]. Whenever I looked and gazed upon the moon, I was thinking about the lunar landings, had many questions such as will we still be able to locate the US flag there. I therefore insisted my mother to buy me a telescope and thereby I started to carefully observe the sky for hours, saw many constellations of stars, and planets such as Venus and Mars. My curiosity to search further planets increased so much so that I wanted to have a look far off planets such as Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Discussion with Dr. Mark Showalter, He raised a remarkable point that Pluto shouldn't be boycotted as a planet just because it's small size. He gave an example of a small apple tree in his backyard, though it's smaller than others, yet it gives apples. We came to know that Nix and Hydra the two small moons of Pluto were discovered in 2005 and 2006. Pluto is quite hard to observe, since it's too small and is in front of the Sagittarius Constellation, so there are always many stars in the background. So in order to observe Pluto properly, a camera is a must to revolve around it's surface. The New Horizon Spacecraft will be revolving 2000 km from Pluto's surface and it's camera's would be getting resolution of about 70 metres per pixel.

Mark Showalter is a Senior Research Scientist and Fellow of the Institute. His research focuses on the dynamics of rings and small moons in the Solar System[2]. His research career is one that has steadily progressed outward through the solar system. He’s hitched a ride on some of NASA’s highest-profile missions to the outer planets, participating in Voyager’s “grand tour” of the giant planets, Cassini’s extended exploration of the Saturn system, and the New Horizons mission to Pluto[3]. He said that the New Horizons’ observations surprised him, and that he was working on reconciling them with what Hubble had seen[4].

His future aspirations are to further explore the space. According to him the last chance to change the trajectory is 8 days to avoid any anomaly. One of his curiosity prior to the mission was to search for volcanoes on Pluto, which were eventually discovered by the New Horizon Spacecraft team [5].

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Dark Data

The topic of Dark Data has always intrigued me because it's all about secrecy and I'm curious to know more about data that's out of our reach or what lies beneath in the world of the deep dark web. I've heard alot of stories about it on the internet, which makes most people scared to delve deeper into the dark web. If the internet was an iceberg, the only data available to us is the tip of the iceberg, the submerged part of the iceberg is yet to be discovered or kept top secret to the general public.

This Discussion is basically about the data we don't have, or is not accessible to common public in general. Dark Data explores the many ways in which we can be blind to missing data and how that can lead us to conclusions and actions that are mistaken, dangerous, or even disastrous. Examining a wealth of real-life examples, from the Challenger shuttle explosion to complex financial frauds, Hand gives us a practical taxonomy of the types of dark data that exist and the situations in which they can arise, so that we can learn to recognize and control for them. In doing so, he teaches us not only to be alert to the problems presented by the things we don't know, but also shows how dark data can be used to our advantage, leading to greater understanding and better decisions.

The things which I learned from the discussion is that false information might feed fabrication of data. In order to prevent data misinformation we must not include the data which we don't see. Or impose standards to high quality data as it's strategically possible to take certain data and use it to advantage. One must always approach days with caution and rely on information sources who have been trustworthy. To tackle misinformation, we must go back to question, about where did we get that data from and check it. Because majority of people follow something doesn't make it necessarily correct.

David J. Hand is emeritus professor of mathematics and senior research investigator at Imperial College London, a former president of the Royal Statistical Society, and a fellow of the British Academy. His many previous books include The Improbability Principle, Measurement: A Very Short Introduction, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction, and Principles of Data Mining.

Dark data comes in many forms, including blanks in a data table, cases we are unaware exist, unexamined data gathering metaphorical dust in our databases, and data we are unable to link to data we have.

Ideally, whenever we have to make a decision we collect all the relevant data and condense it down so that we can make the best decision. However, the notion of “all the relevant data” is an elusive one, and very often, perhaps most often, much of the relevant data cannot be collected so that we are forced to base our decisions on partial information. The data we cannot use to inform our decisions are dark data.

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Memory

The topic of memory has always intrigued me the most. I am very curious to know how our brain is able to store events, dating many years back. And in other times, why do we tend to recollect some incident which had occurred to us in a special way or at a specific event. Furthermore, Why don't we remember just everything from our past are some of the questions I have regarding our memory.

The following discussion is regarding the various aspects of a human memory. What exactly is a memory? How much do we know about the processes that a human brain executes to store and retrieve a memory?

Daniel Schacter is a cognitive psychologist and is professor of psychology at Harvard University. His research explores the relation between conscious and unconscious forms of memory, the nature of memory distortions, how we use memory to imagine possible future events, and the effects of aging on memory.

He emphasis about the two types of memories which are , conscious memory or explicit memory which is recollection of factual information, previous experiences and true concepts. Other one is implicit memory which does not require the conscious or explicit recollection of past events or information and the individual is unaware that remembering has occurred.

He has published books like, Searching for memory and 7 deadly sins of memory.

The 7 deadly sins of memory according to him are as follows:

1. Transience

Transience means the influence from one memory on another one. And that memories are subject of forgetting over a period of time.

2. Absentmindedness

Absentmindedness means here that the person's attention is focussed on something different

3. Blocking

Blocking is where memory is available, when we try to remember but can't caught up with the memory with time. And we usually tend to remember it all of a sudden.

4. Misattribution

Remembering some action but misinterpreting the context.

5. Suggestibility

Where memory is corrupted by misunderstandings.

6. Bias

Occurs when current feelings and worldview distort remembrance of past events.

7. Persistence

Cases when we are traumatized by bad memories which we can't get rid off.

Memory plays an important role in everyday life but does not provide an exact and unchanging record of experience: research has documented that memory is a constructive process that is subject to a variety of errors and distortions. Yet these memory “sins” also reflect the operation of adaptive aspects of memory. Memory can thus be characterized as an adaptive constructive process, which plays a functional role in cognition but produces distortions, errors, or illusions as a consequence of doing so. The key aspect of memory is that it's not just for recollecting the past, but also to look ahead at the future.

“We as humans inherently use past scenarios to imagine possible future scenarios by taking flexible pieces of the past and combining them to create novel ideas for the future.” Dr. Daniel Schacter

Memory is fragile because we are subject to forgetting and memory is not always as accurate as we would like to believe. Memory is powerful because most of the time it serves us well, forming the foundation of our knowledge of the world and of ourselves. In the case of emotionally experiences, memory is a source of tremendous power in our lives.'

https://www.psichi.org/page/191EyeFall14cCannon#.YzY44cYo8zY