Elephant Sounds, Internet Security, and Smithsonian Archives

Elephant Sounds, Internet Security, and Smithsonian Archives

The Morning Show - Season 1, Episode 284

  • Aug 19, 2014 1:00 pm
  • 1:43:12 mins

EAVESDROPPING ON AFRICAN ELEPHANTS  Over the last 15 years, a group of researchers from Cornell University have captured more than 300,000 hours of audio featuring the familiar trumpeting calls and the less-familiar deep rumblings of elephants in the African rainforest.  These “giants of the rainforest” are difficult for researchers to access and particularly vulnerable to poachers to sneak in under cover of the forest. Africa’s forest elephants could be extinct within a decade, warns Peter Wrege, director of Cornell’s Elephant Listening Project.  Using “basic audio instruments,” Wrege’s team eavesdrops on the elephants. Most of what they capture are the “common kind of vocalizations we call a rumble, a much deeper vocalization” based on “frequencies below what we can hear.”  But are the elephants saying something? “Certainly it carries information of some sort,” says Wrege. “We don’t necessarily know what that information is. Teasing apart what the noise means can be very difficult.”  A particularly menacing sequence of rumbles turns out to be a friendly greeting between sister elephants who haven’t seen each other in a long time, says Wrege. “Presumably it has a bonding function, and carries other information we don’t know.” One reason for the deep rumble may be that it lower-frequency sounds travel through the environment more easily, allowing elephants to communicate over long distances, says Wrege, noting that whales use similar sounds: “Blue whales probably can communicate across the entire Atlantic ocean basin.” Wrege says the initial goal of the Elephant Listening Project was to better understand the social system and behavior of Forest Elephants. But in recent years, the focus has shifted toward conservation:  “Forest elephants are being poached at an alarming rate,” says Wrege.  “We’re increasingly capturing the sound of gunshots on our elephant recordings.” Asia is the primary market for illegal ivory, but the U.S. comes in second. “Many of the buyers in Asia don’t realize elephants have to be killed to supply ivory,” they think the teeth fall out naturally, that it doesn’t take the death of this amazing animal, says Wrege.  SECURING YOURSELF ONLINE (This conversation starts at 29:22 in the show audio.) "I don’t want to say we’re fighting a losing battle, but it’s getting harder to keep information secure online," laments Dale Rowe, head of BYU’s Cybersecurity Research Lab.  Russian hackers recently stole 500 million email addresses and more than one billion user name and password combinations in the largest-known security breach to date. "No company or government entity is immune," says Rowe.   “The bad guys are going for the organization with the weakest security," says Rowe. "But the really big websites like Amazon are also the biggest target because of all the information they have on customers." Companies are paying more attention security than in years past, but Rowe says many don’t have the resources to deal with issues. “A lot of companies don’t invest in security before they’ve been hacked,” notes Rowe. Ironically, the most secure companies may be those who have been hacked. “I wouldn’t go to them the day after, but given them 6 months to a year.” While Rowe says the traditional teenager-in-the-basement is still an active hacker demographic, “we’re seeing a lot more organization and more recruiting. Hacking rings are spending large amounts of money to get people trained and recruit either teenagers in their basements or ex-security professionals.” China and Russia tend to have high concentrations of these organized cybercrime rings. Rowe says, “We’re seeing activity out of North Korea.” There are also active hacking groups across Eastern Europe and in the U.S. Customers put a lot of faith in companies to protect their information, but Rowe says it’s important to know where your information is. He recommends keeping a folder in your house with details on each online account you have, which personal information is part of each account and how to reach the company in the event of a security breach.  Be wary of websites that ask for personal information such as Social Security numbers and birth dates without a legitimate reason, says Rowe.  “A lot of times, when I’m using websites, I’ll try to use a fake date of birth—usually January 1st of the year I was born.”  How often should you change your passwords? Rowe recommends changing them every six months to a year and using password manager software to generate random passwords and keep track of them in an encrypted file.  ALTERNATIVE OR TRADITIONAL? (This conversation starts at 51:56 in the show audio.) Herbal remedies, acupuncture and medication are often considered “alternative” to traditional medicine, but BYU exercise science professor Ron Hager notes “alternative” method are often derived from what you could consider truly traditional: the ancient healing arts.  “While there are some tendencies towards thinking new technology being the best thing, it’s because we try to avoid stagnation,” says Hager. “There’s something to be said for stability.”  “Alternative” medicine seems to be catching on. “I think not only is the public becoming more in-tune, but the most exciting thing is there are efforts to produce good research that will corroborate or refute alternative practices.”  Even more traditional institutions are becoming more accepting: the National Institutes of Health has created a center devoted to “complementary and alternative medicine.” Hager says the center’s website is a great resource for learning which alternative methods are legitimate and which are bogus.  SNIFFING OUT SECRET STASHES OF CASH (This conversation starts at 1:13:38 in the show audio.) Billions of U.S. dollars are smuggled across the border to Mexico each year for illicit operations or money laundering. Border agents and trained dogs traditionally do the work of sniffing out secret stashes of cash. But the Department of Homeland Security would like a device to do the sniffing. Private firm KWJ Engineering has received a grant for the research.  KWJ president Joseph Stetter and his colleagues Suiquiong Li, Michael Carter and Melvin Findlay have managed the project’s first milestone: identifying the unique scent-fingerprint of U.S. paper money.  What is the smell?  “We’re sworn to secrecy on the specific chemical components,” says Stetter, because we don’t want to give smugglers any help in skirting our device. But he says money does have a specific scent and it is still evident years after the bills come off the printing press.  Even after the bill picks up the odor of sweat, smoke, or cologne, Li says the money-scent is still identifiable.   Stetter says the next challenge is creating an algorithm that can help the device determine when the stash of money is within the $10,000 legal limit and when it’s over that.  Another challenge is to make the device capable of sniffing out the money in a smelly environment like a border checkpoint where people, animals and car exhaust can be overpowering.  Why not just keep using dogs to sniff out the cash? Stetter says dogs have their disadvantages: they need to be fed and housed and trained. “A sniffing device won’t need to take breaks.”  THE SMITHSONIAN WANTS YOUR HELP (This conversation starts at 1:23:31 in the show audio.) Wouldn’t it be great if you could see all the archives of the Smithsonian online? They’re vast and varied, but many are handwritten, making them impossible to for text-recognition software to transcribe.  So, the Smithsonian is turning to volunteers to transcribe they’re work. Or “volunpeers” as Meghan Ferriter calls them.  Ferriter is project coordinator for the Smithsonian Transcription Center. Anybody can volunteer to help with transcription, as long as they have a computer. “You can track yourself, and set goals for yourself, and see how many projects you’ve helped complete,” says Ferriter.  And volunteers can choose the projects they want to work on:  “They tell us they feel like it’s 'choose your own adventure,'” says Ferriter.   How many hours does it take? “Every project is unique and requires a different amount of time,” says Ferriter.  "You can dip in and out over a cup of coffee, though we do recommend that you transcribe the first two or three pages at first so your eye becomes acquainted with the handwriting." Some popular projects include transcribing personal letters of famous artist, from Geogia O’Keefe to Thomas Eakins. “We even have the labels of bumblebee specimens for transcription,” says Ferriter.   “The goal is to make this information available in as many ways as possible,” says Ferriter. Once documents are transcribed by volunteers, they’re available to people all over the world, searchable by key word and even available for download as pdfs.  Ferriter says the volunteer response is outpacing her expectations: “I love my job and I think it’s wonderful. We learn something new every single day about our volunteers, about what motivates them.”