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20 March 2019 TECH www.theasianindependent.co.uk Facial recognition software to help identify US Civil War soldiers WASHINGTON : Scientists have developed a software that uses crowdsourcing to help algorithms identify faces in photos, that could uncover the mysteries of the nearly 4 million photographs of Civil Warera images that may exist in the historical record. Kurt Luther, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech in the US, was inspired to develop the software for Civil War Photo Sleuth while visiting the Heinz History Center's exhibit called "Pennsylvania's Civil War" in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he stumbled upon a Civil War-era portrait of Oliver Croxton, his great-great-great uncle who served in Company E of the 134th Pennsylvania, clad in a corporal's uniform. "Historical photos can tell us a lot about not only our own familial history but also inform the historical record of the time more broadly than just reading about the event in a history book," said Luther. The Civil War Photo Sleuth project allows users to upload photos, tag them with visual cues, and connect them to profiles of Civil War soldiers with detailed records of military history. Photo Sleuth's initial reference database contained more than 15,000 identified Civil War soldier portraits from public domain sources like the US Military History Institute and other private collections. More than 600 users contributed more than 2,000 Civil War photos to the website in the first month after the launch, and roughly half of those photos were unidentified. Over 100 of these unknown photos were linked to specific soldiers, and an expert analysis found that over 85 percent of these proposed identifications were probably or definitely NASA decodes how our Moon got 'sunburns' WASHINGTON : The Moons 'sunburns'—distinctive patterns of swirls—are a result of interactions between the Sun's damaging radiation with pockets of lunar magnetic field, according to NASA data. Every object, planet or person travelling through space has to contend with the Sun's damaging radiation. Research using data from NASA's Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun (ARTEMIS) mission suggests that lunar swirls could be the result of solar wind interactions with the Moon's isolated pockets of magnetic field. The Sun releases a continuous outflow of particles and radiation called the solar wind. The solar wind washes over the planets, moons and other bodies in our solar system, filling a bubble of space—called the heliosphere—that extends far past the orbit of Pluto. On Earth, we are largely protected from the damaging effects of the solar wind. Since the solar wind is magnetised, Earth's natural magnetic field deflects the solar wind particles around our planet so that only a small fraction of them reach our planet's atmosphere. Unlike Earth, the Moon has no global magnetic field. However, magnetised rocks near the lunar surface do create small, localised spots of magnetic field that extend anywhere from hundreds of yards to hundreds of miles. This is the kind of information that needs to be well understood to better protect astronauts on the Moon from the effects of radiation, researchers said. The magnetic field bubbles by themselves are not robust enough to protect humans from that harsh radiation environment, but studying their structure could help develop techniques to protect our future explorers. "The magnetic fields in some regions are locally acting as this magnetic sunscreen," said Andrew Poppe, a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley in the US. These small bubbles of magnetic "sunscreen" can also deflect solar wind particles— but on a much smaller scale than Earth's magnetic field. While they are not enough to protect astronauts by themselves, they do have a fundamental effect on the Moon's appearance. Under these miniature magnetic umbrellas, the material that makes up the Moon's surface, called regolith, is shielded from the Sun's particles. As those particles flow toward the Moon, they are deflected to the areas just around the magnetic bubbles, where chemical reactions with the regolith darken the surface. This creates the distinctive swirls of darker and lighter material that are so prominent they can be seen from Earth— one more piece of the puzzle to help us understand the neighbour NASA plans to re-visit within the next decade. correct. Presently, the database has grown to over 4,000 registered users and more than 8,000 photos. "Typically, crowdsourced research such as this is challenging for novices if users don't have specific knowledge of the subject area," said Luther. "The step-by-step process of tagging visual clues and applying search filters linked to military service records makes this detective work more accessible, even for those that may not have a deeper knowledge of Civil War military history," he said. Person identification tasks can be challenging in larger candidate pools because there is a larger risk for false positives. The novel approach behind Civil War Photo Sleuth is based on the analogy of finding a needle in a haystack. The data pipeline has three haystackrelated components: building the haystack, narrowing down the haystack, and finding the needle in the haystack. When combined, they allow users to identify unknown soldiers while reducing the risk of false positives. Any time a user uploads a photo to identify it, the photo gets added to the site's digital archive or "haystack," making it available for future searches. Following upload, the user tags metadata related to the photograph such as photo format or inscriptions, as well as visual clues, such as coat colour, chevrons, shoulder straps, collar insignia, and hat insignia. These tags are linked New Delhi : WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new ‘Advanced Search’ feature that will be available for iOS beta testers soon. According to a WABetaInfo report, the feature will let users search for all types of messages including photos, links, audio, GIFs, and more in chat. WhatsApp currently allows for text search through its search feature. WhatsApp currently allows for text search through its search feature. It looks like the ‘Advanced Search’ feature will let users search for more like photos, GIFs, links, documents, videos, documents, and audio. The Advanced Search feature will also display the number of media files stored on the user’s device segregated as photos, videos, GIFs, audio, etc. When one clicks on a specific type of media, all the messages containing that media are displayed. It will also show a preview of the media. So for instance, when users type photos in WhatsApp’s Advanced Search bar, they will be shown a preview of each image in a listicle format. The search can be further filtered by typing a specific word for the exact photo users are looking for. As per the report, to search filters to prioritise the most likely matches. For example, a soldier tagged with the "hunting horn" hat insignia would suggest potential matches who served in the infantry, while hiding results from the cavalry or artillery. Next, the site uses state-ofthe-art face recognition technology to eliminate very different-looking faces and sort the remaining ones by similarity. Both the tagging and face recognition steps narrow down the haystack. Finally, users find the needle in the haystack by exploring the highest-probability matches in more detail. A comparison tool with pan and zoom controls helps users carefully inspect a possible match and, if they decide it's a match, link the previously unknown photo to its new identity and biographical details. Retracing historical Civil War photos through facial recognition software like Photo Sleuth has broad applications beyond identifying historical photos, too. The software has the potential to generate new ways to think about building person identification systems that look beyond face recognition and leverage the complementary strengths of both human and artificial intelligence. WhatsApp iOS beta testers to get ‘Advanced Search’ feature soon WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new 'Advanced Search' feature that will be available for iOS beta testers soon. The feature will let users search for all types of messages including photos, links, audio, GIFs, and more in chat. WhatsApp’s ‘Advanced Search’ feature is under development at this moment and is not available. It will be rolled out for iOS beta testers initially and Android availability is expected to follow. In the development phase, the audio preview has not been enabled, neither it is known whether it will be possible to search for Locations and vCards using this feature.
www.theasianindependent.co.uk WORLD March 2019 21 The successful strike made by a dozen Mirage 2000 jets of the Indian Air Force on Feb 26 to take out the biggest training camp of Jaish-e- Mohammed at Balakot in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, in just about ten days after the terror attack on the CRPF at Pulwama, speaks as much of the decisiveness of the Modi regime on the national security front as of all that obviously went into that action by way of defence preparedness, functional consolidation of India's intelligence set-up and a comprehensive diplomatic reach out to the world by our Prime Minister himself on the issue of Pakistan-sponsored terror. Indian jets also pounded the terrorist launch pads at Muzaffarabad and Chakothi in POK. In all of this, the role of the National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, in the formulation of responses at the level of both policy and tactics and also overseeing the execution of a brilliant operation of the IAF swiftly completed on a note of complete surprise for the adversary, was noteworthy. India has retained the moral high ground in going after a set of dangerous terrorists condemned even by the UN Security Council. Pakistan had consistently projected them as 'non- state' actors on its soil but had remained totally complicit with them for reasons known to the entire world. The event gives a new turn to India-Pakistan relations leaving little scope for India to shift from its firm stand against cross-border terrorism. India's Foreign Secretary in a media briefing disclosed that credible intelligence was received that JeM was training fidayeen for attempting further suicide terror attacks in various parts of India and that, in the face of this imminent danger, a preemptive strike had become absolutely necessary. He made it clear that the action at Balakot was a 'preemptive nonmilitary strike targeting militants and not the people or the State of Pakistan'. The forthright statement of India has helped to give the right message to the world about India's bona fide in responding to a grave threat to its national security. The note of understanding struck by major powers like the US, UK, France, Australia, Russia and even China on the Balakot operation vindicates India's policy against terrorism. This is a marked success of our military and diplomatic moves. For decades now, Pakistan's deep state had been unabashedly pursing a 'proxy war' against India in the name of Kashmir using faith-based terrorism to avenge the ignominious defeat of 1972 it had suffered at the hands of Return of the political will India in the Bangladesh war. It first instigated militant separatism in Kashmir -- through the slogans of Plebiscite and Azadi and also sponsored the armed 'Khalistan' movement in Punjab but could not derail the overpowering democratic processes there. It was in the Nineties that, following the success of anti-Soviet armed campaign in Afghanistan for which Pakistan was given all the credit by the US-led West, the Pak army-ISI combine planned to replicate the Afghan Jehad in Kashmir by sending in Mujahideen from across the Valley and subduing the Kashmiris to the call of Jehad through its agents and acolytes. Jamaat-e-Islami outfits like Hizbul Mujahideen and Dukhtarane Millat were made to take orders from the Pak-based Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Maulana Hafiz Sayeed. The Hurriyat totally converted into a Pak proxy. The network of Pak agents within the administration and outside, including those who took shelter under the umbrella of politics was constantly expanded to create an atmosphere of alienation and public unrest. Also, Maulana Masood Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), which was an old collaborator of Al Qaeda- Taliban combine -- it was a constituent along with Taliban of the first set of Mujahideen sent to the valley under the label of Harkatul Ansar way back in 1993 -- was utilised for raising fidayeen or suicide bombers. These were lately being trained for using car bombs. What is more disconcerting is that the Balakot training camp was the venue for raising Border Action Teams comprising of both Jaish militants and army soldiers. The attack on the CRPF convoy at Pulwama was the doing of a Jaish Fidayeen who used a car bomb with over 60 kg of RDX mix. The act owned by the Pak-based JeM was a manifestation of the new level of escalation of terror caused by the Pak army after it had discovered that stone pelting and grenade lobbing on security camps by its agents in Kashmir were bringing it diminishing returns. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Washington, The US and South Korea will suspend two large-scale joint military exercises this year, American officials said, as part of President Donald Trumps efforts to maintain the truce he struck with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. A limited version of the training drills known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle however, are still expected to go forward, The New York Times quoted the officials as saying on Friday. The decision to scale back the military exercises follows nuclear talks in Hanoi this week between Trump and Kim that ended without an agreement on how or whether to shut down North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme. As the Trump administration continues to seek a resolution, a Defence Department official said the high-profile missile exercises that Pyongyang views as provocative will be toned down. The official said the decision to formally suspend the large-scale drills was officially expected to be announced by the US and South Korea in the next few days. It is the latest in a series of planned unlike his predecessors, took a hard line towards Pakistan once he discovered -- after extending the hand of friendship to then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif -- that in Pakistan the civilian government was a mere fig leaf for its army and that the Pak army-ISI combine was determined to use terrorism as the instrument of state policy to get hold of Kashmir. The terror attack on Pathankot air base in January 2016 led to the declaration of Modi government that 'terror and talks could not go together' -- a policy that has been proved right by the course of developments. The punitive surgical strike on terror launch pads carried out by Indian troops across the LOC within days of Uri attack the same year was in glaring contrast to the supine response of the government of the day to the deadly LeT sponsored Mumbai attack of 2008- 26/11 being rightly described as India's 9/11. For lack of understanding of the distinction between Islamic radicals of Al Qaeda-Taliban axis who took on the US and the India-specific outfits nurtured by Pak ISI as instruments of cross border terrorism against this country the then government first committed a foreign policy blunder of granting a 'shared victimhood' to Pakistan in regard to terrorism, at the Havana summit and then went on to spinelessly accept the line of John Kerry -- visiting Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee -- that 26/11 was solely the doing of 'non state' actors of Pakistan. In the period that followed, the Pakistan army worked with the presumption that it could keep up its proxy offensive against India without any fear of retribution. It is the Modi government that got President Donald Trump to abandon the artificial construct of a distinction between 'good terrorists' and 'bad terrorists', call the bluff of Pakistan on its role in the 'war on terror' that was a combat against Islamic radicals and clearly direct Pakistan to stop providing safe havens to terrorists across the Islamic spectrum. The government has unflinchingly stuck to the policy of 'talks and terror do not go together' and Indians are totally behind the government on this -- the charge of 'politicisation' raised by peaceniks and sections of the opposition is not cutting much ice. In the current geo-political context, Pakistan is left with no option but to sue for peace -- its sabre rattling by way of sending some F-16s to unsuccessfully attempt to bomb a military establishment on our side of LOC a day after the Balakot strike, has not taken it anywhere. An Indian pilot intercepting the enemy plane fell in Pak hands. Pakistan was compelled to declare his release after India rightly warned it that any ill-treatment of the pilot would be considered a war provocation. Since India's Pak policy revolves round the issue of Pakistan effectively giving up on cross-border terrorism, India should legitimately demand handing over of Maulana Hafiz Sayeed and Maulana Masood Azhar for trial in 26/11 and Pulwama attack respectively as a condition for talks. Pakistan should not be permitted to exploit its proximity to Saudi Arabia and UAE in the OIC nor should it be allowed to manoeuvre the support of Russia and China on the Afghan table. Meanwhile, India's war machine should remain in full swing to take on any military adventure of Pakistan -- the threat of nuclear flash point does not work for Pakistan any more. Pakistan, however,is likely to step up its aggressiveness in Kashmir and it would be quite in order for India to take to an approach of 'offence is the best defence' along the LOC. US, S. Korea to suspend large-scale military exercises military exercises that Washington and Seoul have cancelled in the past year in order to avoid roiling Pyongyang. Trump has also said that the war drills cost too much. Last June, without consulting the Pentagon, the President suspended major military exercises with South Korea following his first summit with Kim in Singapore. American and South Korean soldiers, airmen and sailors have continued to carry out joint training sessions. In addition, the two sides have staged so-called tabletop or virtual exercises.
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March 2019

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