Using Open Data To Understand War And Peace Academic studies of wars and conflicts have been around for centuries, but a new one funded by the U.S. Defense Department could change our fundamental understanding of war and peace. The massive, publicly accessible conflict data archive called "The Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC)" project, headed up by Stanford and Princeton University academics, will also publish working papers and other research showing their findings. To start, the ESOC project is analyzing conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines (against the amazingly named MILF separatist group), Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Pakistan. ESOC is funded by a five-year, $8.6 million Defense Department grant. Of course, the military isn't paying to make all this conflict data available for altruistic reasons. Traditionally, academics in the social sciences (anthropology, economics, political science, etc.) have hesitated to work with the Defense Department directly. [Image: U.S.
Forget an Apollo 11 national park on the moon, let's focus on next big mission | Santhosh Mathew Undoubtedly, the moon landing is one of the most celebrated events in human history. An estimated 600 million television viewers around the world watched the Apollo 11 astronauts walking on the surface of the moon on 20 July 1969. Even for today's standards with easy access to broadcasting, I do not know any other event that could attract such a worldwide attention. Today marks the 44th anniversary of moon landing and provides an opportunity to look at the renewed interest in space exploration from a different perspective including the efforts to redirect asteroids, mining them and going to mars. This occasion cannot go without a sad note. Neil Armstrong, the Apollo 11 commander and first human to walk on the moon, died last August. Despite the lingering criticism of the space program, we cannot abandon a future in space. Not surprisingly, when the moonwalkers returned to earth, many earthlings asked this very same question.
LIVE REAL TIME SATELLITE AND SPACE SHUTTLE TRACKING AND PREDICTIONS Commercial Crew Program SNC's Dream Chaser test flight craft arrived at NASA Dryden to begin tests of its flight and runway landing systems while NASA astronauts will be at Langley to fly simulations of a Dream Chaser ... Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) Space Systems of Louisville, Colo., completed its first major, comprehensive safety review of its Dream Chaser Space System. Federal and state transportation experts tour Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to learn about new spaceport activities.