Top 10 Unusual Finds By Ground Penetrating Radar

1) The Long-Lost Tomb of Ahuizotl
After a strong earthquake demolished a Colonial Spanish building in 1985, archaeologists moved in with GPR to see what lay beneath. They managed to detect many underground chambers and the remains of Aztec emperor Ahuizotl. Ahuizotl ruled as emperor during Columbus' expedition into the New World. The finding was the first of it's kind in the area. Spanish conquerors were well known to construct their own buildings over the Aztec's settlement.
2) Lower Market and Shrine in Petra, Jordan
GPR revolutionised the archaeological dig in 2001 at Petra. Despite there being no signs above ground of any historical importance, GPR was used to test the site. It found many different building structures, including a lower market, a shrine and a pavilion within an ancient garden. Due to the amazing finds thanks to GPR, an excavation was completed and the previously unknown architecture of the site was studied thoroughly.
3) Gravesite of Mohawk Mass Genocide Victims
Brantford, Canada uncovered a gruesome discovery when the ITCCS employed GPR at a historical Mohawk Institute. Hidden under 15-20 feet of soil were the bodies of many Mohawk children. The Mohawk Institute was set up by the Church of England in 1832 and ran until 1970. It seems the residential school had a darker past than most were lead to believe.
4) Entire 'Forgotten' Roman Settlement Unearthed in Italy
A previously unknown Roman settlement was found in Vescovio thanks to the use of Ground Penetrating Radar. Included in the finds was the Villa of the Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Traianos (AD 52-117) 1.5 meters underground. The villa was found to have a bathhouse with two dipping pools. As well as this, an entire marketplace was uncovered, a multitude of Roman crypts and a 2nd century AD amphitheatre.
5) A Mammoth in Iowa, America
A farmer happened upon an incredibly large bone in one of his fields. Over the years, he finds several more, keeping them in his living room at home. Astounded, he contacted the University of Iowa, asking them to help him find the rest and identify the animal they came from. Their conclusion? A mammoth. Using the latest GPR techniques, the team managed to recover over 30 bones including a femur, multiple ribs, a few toe bones and vertebrae.
6) The Remenants of Pumapunku, Bolivia
Believed by the Incans to be the site of the world's creation, Pumapunku was an unimaginable temple of mythic proportions. Around 167 meters by 117 meters, the ancient wonder has long been a mystery due to lack of written record, its age, weathering, looting and stone mining all taking their toll on the once magnificent building. However, thanks to GPR's digital imaging capabilities the long-hidden majority of the structure nestled under the ground has been recreated on screen. GPR successfully mapped out foundations of buildings, residential compounds, gravel pavements, pools, water conduits and terraces.
7) 'Noah's Ark', Turkey
Combining Ground Penetrating Radar and secret military satellite imagery, a group of scientists claim to have found Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat, Turkey. Two large pieces of the Ark have been reportedly found embedded in glacial ice. Measuring 123 feet long by 24 feet wide, the pieces are 23 feet deep at one end and over 100 feet deep in the ice on the other end.
8) Roman Gladiator School, Vienna, Austria
A multi-antenna ground penetrating radar system was used to find the 2,800 square meter compound buried deep beneath the ground. The huge settlement included multiple school buildings arranged around a central training area with wooden spectator stands. There was also a large gladiators' cemetery with impressive monuments, sarcophagi and rows of simplified graves.
9) WW2 1000lb Bombs in Germany
After heavy bombing by the allies in WW2, it is common procedure in heavily-bombed parts of Germany to scan for bombs before proceeding with any building work. It was during one of these routine checks that 3 live 1000lb American bombs were found hidden away under a building site. All three were found on the site of a previous BMW fabrication plant at shallow depths. Luckily all three were defused and removed.
10) Murder Mystery from 1832
In 2002, two grandsons decided to settle a family rumour regarding their grandfather. Along with 56 other Irish immigrants, the grandfather had arrived in Philadelphia for work. Offical stories said they all died within 8 weeks of a Cholera outbreak. The family rumour claimed the grandfather had been killed and buried in a mass grave with his comrades. After 7 years of fruitless searching, 1000s of artifacts uncovered and employing a geophysicist - the two brothers finally found what they were looking for. Recovering 7 bodies altogether from GPR scanning, they retrieved the bodies to discover blunt force trauma and bullet holes in the skulls. Further investigation cleared up the family legend once and for all - all 7 men were murdered by local vigilants as they desperately tried to escape a deadly outbreak of Cholera in the area.

 

The Past, Present, and Future of Computer Firewall Protection

Interestingly enough, the term "firewall" comes from a very literal place. In the 1800's a firewall was literally a wall that was built to confine any potential fires and keep them from spreading. They were popular in urban cities and places where buildings were close together and thus were at a great risk of a fire spreading. During the industrial revolution, when cities expanded and technology flourished, it was these urban places that used the new technology the most. So in the 1980's when computer security became an issue, it was also these urban cities that were at the most risk. The idea of confining a computer so outside disasters could not spread was based on the firewalls that were still erected in the cities. Thus, the computer firewall was born.
The first firewalls were known as "packet filter firewalls". They worked by dividing that computer space into packets and then inspecting each packet individually. Anything incoming had to match certain rules in order to make it past a virtual wall constructed around the system. The method was slow, but effective.
Since then firewalls have advanced. Computers are more complex than ever. Almost every home in the western world has one. With so much technology available, it has always been inevitable that someone would create harmful viruses and the like, sometimes for profit and sometimes just because they can. It is just a part of human nature, unfortunately. Luckily just as there are smart people trying to destroy the system, there are other smart people trying to protect it. That is where firewalls come in. As hackers come up with more creative ways to infiltrate a system, other geniuses come up with more creative ways to stop them. In present day there are three main types of firewalls that attempt to do this.

1. Application Layer Firewalls: These firewalls also work on the packet system, but have become pretty advanced since the 1980's. Application firewalls are programmed to recognize known pathogens such as Trojan horses and computer worms. There is an additional inspection layer to the packets to give them further filtering advantages.


2. Network Layer Firewalls: There are two sub-types of network layer firewalls; stateful and stateless. They are pretty much the same except for one major difference: stateful firewalls can be used in active sessions because they use a standard state information. Stateless firewalls are typically cheaper but also less reliable

 

The Give and Take of BYOD and MDM

We know that allowing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) has the potential to increase employees' productivity and also keep the workforce happy as well as improve customer satisfaction and engagement with potential customers, but the whole concept of BYOD is clearly not without significant risks and managing a BYOD programme can bring its own set of problems too.
Recent surveys have indicated that more than 30% of UK employers have no policies in place to ensure that corporate data is protected when mobile access to information is allowed or available. Employees themselves are anxious about the information pertaining to themselves and their personal life which could be accessible by their fellow employees. The main concern is the loss or theft of a mobile device containing information which could be sensitive or which could put their personal finances at risk. This is an understandable fear given that over a quarter of people have at some time lost their mobile device.
This is why organisations need to consider MDM as a safeguarding technique; passcodes and encrypted information are vital as is, increasingly, the ability to shut down or isolate a device which has gone astray.
If your business is one which deals with the public in any way then it is even more important to consider your security measures with regards to BYOD. One lost iPhone could result in the personal details of your clients landing in the wrong hands and the ramifications of this both legally and in terms of reputation could be huge.
Many companies are currently reviewing which types of mobile device present the least risk and which are the most secure. The jury is still out on this matter but nevertheless millions of people are walking around every day with valuable information in their pockets and that information could potentially be accessible to a 3rd party via a few key strokes... and that is a situation that needs to change.
Without stalling the mobile device revolution, corporations need to take charge of this situation in order to protect the public, their clients, employees and their very businesses from the threat of information falling into unscrupulous hands.
Some experts will argue that the device is not the issue but rather the way that the data on the device is managed. Regardless, employees may have to accept that participating in BYOD brings some responsibility along with the convenience and that could mean accepting an employer's right to completely wipe personal data on the device if it is lost or stolen and contains sensitive corporate data alongside personal information. So employees will need to ensure that they back up their own personal information so that in the event of a lost device, their company can wipe all data with no personal loss to the end user.
It is a give and take relationship which can work providing employers make their policies clear at the offset and employees take responsibility for their personal information held on a mobile device also used for work. MDM and BYOD are already part of life in the workplace for many people and as understanding on all sides increases, the end result can be a risk free and convenient solution for all.

 

4 Solutions for Ensuring a Safe and Legal Way of Recycling Computers

The high-tech manufacturing industry produces millions of products that seek to offer various industries with greater efficiency, productivity and convenience. However, electronics including computers contain toxic materials, posing a threat to the environment particularly when improperly disposed.
Televisions, EKG monitors, lab analyzer, computers among other types of electronic equipment contain hazardous materials such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chlorinated plastics (PVC) and brominated flame retardants. The solutions for computer recycling to ensure safe and legal ways of disposing the redundant computer equipment include:
· Charity donation
The organization can consider donating the computers to a local school or charity. This can go a long way in generating greater benefits to the under privileged people. Making donations also serve as a good public relations for the organization. However, as a result of significant funding from the government the appetite for second-hand computers is on the decline. As a result, most organizations choose to export the donated equipment to Eastern Europe and Africa.
· Trickle Down Policy
In the trickle down policy, a computer that is redundant but still functions can be reused in a different department. This is a standard practice; as a result, many of the organizations are using the policy. The benefits of this policy include: maximum gains are derived from the possible life of working the computer; can get the ideal opportunity of reformatting the computer hard drive considering it is for internal use; and it is an environmentally friendly policy.
The disadvantages with the trickle down policy include: the data in the computer needs to be removed before redeploying the machine; the machine should be tested for safety once it is redeployed; the end-of-life and non-working equipment will need to be disposed; and the end-of-life machine will have no or little residual value.
· In-house staff sales
The IT department within the organization needs to run an informal retail outlet. This will give employees a simple way for purchasing PCs or laptops. The problem with in-house sales is the fact that several of the employees will want to buy the same desirable items.
Therefore, the IT department will be forced to show favoritism in selling the highly desirable item. The benefits of the in-house staff sales include: the employees are kept happy; income is generated on behalf of the organization; and the process requires little time and fewer resources.

 

iPad For Beginners - Getting To Know The iPad

In this post we are going to guide you through the basic functions of the iPad and tell you what the main buttons do on the device.
To follow this guide you need to be holding the iPad in a vertical position. Make sure that the "Home" button is facing towards the floor.
The first thing you will notice is the camera lens at the top of the iPad and the "Home" button at the bottom. You will use the camera lens when you are holding a Facetime meeting or anything that involves a camera.
The "Home" button has a wide range of uses but to start you off on the right track the best way to think of it is an exit key. Anytime you are using an app and you want to get out of it just tap the Home button and you will go back to the main screen.
On the top left you will have the headphones socket - you should have some that came with the iPad and this is where you will plug them in. On the top right at the side you will have a slider button. This has two functions:
You can use the slider button to mute the iPad.
Or you can lock the screen display of the iPad to swap it from flipping between horizontal and vertical.
You can pick which one you want to use in Settings > General > "Use Side switch to".
Lastly, underneath the side switch you have the volume controls. If you tap the upper part of the button you increase the volume and if you tap the lower part of the button it will decrease.
If you hold the lower part of the button for a few seconds it will mute the iPad.
Right at the very bottom of the iPad underneath the Home button you have the socket to plug the charger in.
I hope this has given you a better understanding of what each button does on your iPad.
Try out each of the buttons and you will quickly become accustomed to what they do. Don't be worried to try if you are new as that is the only way you will learn.
As long as you remember to use the Home key at the bottom to get back to the starting screen if you get stuck. Once you understand the buttons on the iPad you will be ready to start using it which we will cover in another article.

 

Performance Testing For Modern Cloud-Based Apps

Performance testing has seen newer challenges in the cloud environment. Most businesses on restricted budgets find that online promotion or a strong online presence can help them. Further, many users prefer conducting their business online, making the case for cloud-enabled applications stronger. However, technology, including cloud technology, is dynamic and ever-changing. This presents newer grounds to cover, for performance testing methods as well. What worked well some months ago may not be adequate right now.
When it comes to performance testing solutions, the one element that comes to mind immediately would be real-time testing. But application monitoring needs to go beyond only real time testing, and bridge development and deployment, while keeping a sharp eye on its real-time performance. In cloud-based apps especially, the important of constant monitoring cannot be overlooked.
Certain elements are common to most application and performance testing.
Performance testing for cloud-based apps
Cloud-enabled applications have many advantages, such as helping to reduce operational costs. A small or mid-sized business firm can also successfully manage a business without needing to first make heavy investments in manpower or infrastructure in-house. Cloud based apps and resources use the cloud itself as a storing place, and the company that is harnessing it. Thus, testing for performance of cloud-based apps does not begin and end in the company's IT room. It is not dependent on the company that is using cloud technology. Instead, cloud-based applications will be affected by not just their platforms and environments, but also the different and rapidly changing environment within the cloud itself. Testing solutions for the performance of cloud based apps will need to take this into consideration.
Ensuring constant monitoring
Perhaps the one surefire method of ensuring strong performance of cloud-based apps is constant monitoring and hence testing and review methods too may need some modification. As part of performance monitoring of cloud apps, their ability to match expectations and requirements can be reviewed right from development up to deployment.
Updated performance testing solutions
Most cloud-based application monitoring is a service. If you have a vendor providing you services, you can ensure that your performance testing is in sync with the latest software changes and is keeping pace with the application updates. Your testing solutions could include a multi-pronged approach where the application is not tested in isolation.
Comprehensive performance testing
Your cloud application is dependent on its environment as well. Ideally, your application monitoring solution should take into account the working environment and the platform it is working on. Most performance testing should also reveal or detect discrepancies before they become apparent. For small or mid-sized businesses that operate through cloud-based applications mostly, sound performance monitoring and thorough and consistent application testing is indispensable.

 develops and delivers Application Monitoring Solutions, Service Level Agreement, and End to End Performance monitoring solutions available globally. Tevron has also successfully delivered enterprise Application Monitoring Solutions and Testing solutions to support every IT enterprise application to hundreds of customers across the globe. Tevron's solutions designed to support diverse environments, business processes and applications with a service oriented management.

 

Data Recovery Doesn't Have To Be A Nightmare

One of the worst things to have happen is for your hard drive to go corrupt and be required to find a way to see if you can do a full data recovery. You do not want to hear that all drives eventually stop working and you should back up your files on a routine basis. You do not want to hear this because it is often too late once the drive goes corrupt.
Before you completely panic, reboot your computer to see if you can fix the glitch. If this did not work, then take our hard drive out and hook it up to another computer. If it runs on the other computer, then it is not your hard drive that has failed.
When it does not work, you are likely to be depressed, very depressed. Luckily, not all is necessarily lost. There are ways to recover some of your data; it all depends on how badly the drive is damaged. If you hire someone else to do the work, then you may end up being out thousands of dollars. Worse yet, you may end up being out the money and not have any data recovered. Therefore, do not hire someone, do the work yourself. Unless you have written over your drive, your data is still there. You just have to figure out how to access it.
Mechanical Failure
Mechanical failures are defined as parts in the hard drive that have failed. You will often hear a clicking noise instead of a whirring noise. Unfortunately, this is a worst-case scenario situation. You will need an expert in the field of data recovery to get the information off your drive. You will need to decide how much your data is worth, because it can cost you thousands of dollars.
Logical Failure
Logical failures are failures on the human's part, such as formatting errors. The drive itself is not damaged so with the use of software, you can pull the data back off the drive. The software could cost you $30 or $40, but that is better than the hundreds an IT repair shop will charge you.
When you use software to recover lost data, you will want to make sure you select only the drive that is not readable. Then make sure you have a large enough recovery drive so everything can be smoothly transferred from one drive to the next. It will take hours to do a full scan and transfer of a drive. In some cases, it can take days. You will also have to completely reorganize and reformat the files once they are recovered. They are kept in a compact form to save space on your drive.
While you can recover data in most cases, it is best to back up your computer regularly. You can also work to prevent data loss by maintaining your drive. This is done by routine maintenance of defragmenting, virus scanning, and clutter removal. Even with proper care of your hard drive, you can experience loss that requires a hard disk data recovery. Just know at it is sometimes possible to complete data recovery from computer drives by yourself, while other times it is required to pull in the specialists.

 

On the energy-delay trade-off in geographic forwarding in always-on wireless sensor networks: A multi-objective optimization problem

The design and development of multi-hop wireless sensor networks are guided by the specific requirements of their corresponding sensing applications. These requirements can be associated with certain well-defined qualitative and/or quantitative performance metrics, which are application-dependent. The main function of this type of network is to monitor a field of interest using the sensing capability of the sensors, collect the corresponding sensed data, and forward it to a data gathering point, also known as sink. Thus, the longevity of wireless sensor networks requires that the load of data forwarding be balanced among all the sensor nodes so they deplete their battery power (or energy) slowly and uniformly. However, some sensing applications are time-critical in nature. Hence, they should satisfy strict delay constraints so the sink can receive the sensed data originated from the sensors within a specified time bound. Thus, to account for all of these various sensing applications, appropriate data forwarding protocols should be designed to achieve some or all of the following three major goals, namely minimum energy consumption, uniform battery power depletion, and minimum delay. To this end, it is necessary to jointly consider these three goals by formulating a multi-objective optimization problem and solving it. In this paper, we propose a data forwarding protocol that trades off these three goals via slicing the communication range of the sensors into concentric circular bands. In particular, we discuss an approach, called weighted scale-uniform-unit sum, which is used by the source sensors to solve this multi-objective optimization problem. Our proposed data forwarding protocol, called Trade-off Energy with Delay (TED), makes use of our solution to this multi-objective optimization problem in order to find a “best” trade-off of minimum energy consumption, uniform battery power depletion, and minimum delay. Then, we present and discuss several numerical results to show the effectiveness of TED. Moreover, we show how to relax several widely used assumptions in order to enhance the practicality of our TED protocol, and extend it to real-world network scenarios. Finally, we evaluate the performance of TED through extensive simulations. We find that TED is near optimal with respect to the energy × delay metric. This simulation study is an essential step to gain more insight into TED before implementing it using a sensor test-bed.

Why You Want Real Time Traffic Steering

If your smartphone discovers nearby Wi-Fi hotspots, wouldn't it be great if the phone automatically switched from its cellular connection to Wi-Fi, but only when the Wi-Fi link is providing better service, and then automatically changes back to cellular when needed? That's the idea behind real-time traffic steering. The concept involves adding intelligence into different networks that allows them to share information about their quality of service and enable devices to regularly make decisions about which network they prefer to join. It's not very interesting when your devices are only ever in the presence of one network at a time, but as networks continue proliferating around the world, real-time traffic steering is looking better and better.

All About Internet-Controlled Thermostats

Having a computer network installed at your home or business lets you do you much more than simply surf the Web. An Internet-controlled thermostat, for example, can both save you money and help the environment, by allowing you to control the building's heating and air conditioning systems while you're away.

What Is an Internet Thermostat?

A thermostat is simply a small device that contains sensors and is used to regulate temperature. You probably have one that controls the heating or air conditioning system in your home or business. Thermostats also are installed in motorized vehicles and vending machines to protect parts from overheating. An Internet thermostat is a programmable building thermostat capable of connecting to an network. Through an IP connection, you can remotely send instructions to an Internet thermostat to turn it on or off or change its programming.

How Internet Thermostats Work

Internet-controlled thermostats are one type of home automation device. Home automation systems increase the efficiency of managing various home electronics. For example, using a home automation system you can configure lights in a room to switch on automatically whenever a person enters, or you may set the home oven and coffee maker to run at certain times of day based on your meal schedule. Programmable building thermostats offer similar convenience as other types of home automation devices. Based on time of day, you can pre-set these devices to maintain certain temperatures while the house is occupied and other (more extreme) temperatures when unoccupied to save energy. Most modern thermostats support this level of programming through a keypad on the front of the unit with no network interface required.
Thermostats that support a network connection add another level of convenience and flexibility beyond basic programming. Instead of needing to be physically present at the keypad, you can interface to an Internet thermostat using a Web browser to override the thermostat's default programs as needed. These devices contain a built-in Web server that can be configured with a public enabling it to be reached from remote locations.

Reasons to Use an Internet Thermostat

Aside from the obvious benefits of programming a thermostat to save energy and money, situations where an Internet thermostat is particularly useful include

• shutting off a building's air conditioning system if you forgot to do so before leaving it
• telling the thermostat to postpone cooling (or heating) your home because you need to work late
• monitoring a building's temperature in case the air conditioner fails or another occupant changes the programming
• adjusting the programming from your computer as a "remote control" rather than walking over to the device in another room

Types of Internet Thermostats

Several manufacturers sell Internet-controlled thermostats for both residential and commercial use. Proliphix  has offered its Network Thermostats since 2004. Aprilaire also offers its Model 8870 Thermostat . These products interface via cables to a home network. All mainstream Internet thermostats consider home security as part of their designs. To avoid pranksters hacking into your network and messing with your home's temperature, the Web servers on these thermostats allow you to set login passwords. The thermostats also all utilize wired Ethernet rather than wireless protocols for greater protection. As with any network device, ensure you choose strong passwords to avoid being compromised.