Yikes!  Is that a histogram of sample values?  If so, it should have a normal distribution.

Fascinating analysis and set of signals.  My favorite, although simple with respect to others, is pasted below this text.  By the SETI Institute's criteria, this might be considered a candidate signal: it is Doppler-drifted and narrow-band.  The modulation scheme is very interesting.  A detector such as SonATA would efficiently integrate along the time axis except for the infrequent "pulse in frequency" excursions.  If those pulses in frequency had different intervals they could convey information. Hmmnn ...  :-)

Yes, you would think the SETI Institute biologists would love to mingle about here and discuss topics like this one. Unfortunately that is not the case.  I'm not sure why.  Are they just too busy?  Or is it that the real scientists don't like the concept of Open Science?  Or is it because of deficiencies in the planning and architecture of the setiQuest project?

Here is a talk that might interest you.  Next week's SETI Institute colloquium is titled "Life before genetics: autogenesis, information, and the outer solar system"

http://www.seti.org/weeky-lecture/life-genetics-autogenesis-information-...

The colloquium sounds interesting.  You can watch it live in the Google+ Hangout or you can watch it a day or two later when they post it to YouTube.

Hi Sigblips

I never meant to imply that I hadn't enjoyed our exchanges - indeed I actually said how much I enjoyed your frog DNA posting. What I was trying to say that the SETIQuest Forum wasn't put here for you and me to simply have a chat (enjoyable though that is). With 18000 members, and the Institute having world quality biology experts, and the deliberately contentious subject, I would have thought there would (and definately should) have been someone out there that knew that what I had proposed had actually been undertaken, and might have taken the effort to respond. I am just lucky that I have an inhouse expert who was able to put me right.

Sorry if a badly phrased post has upset you - it wasn't meant that way.

Regards

Dave Robinson

"Oh well apparently if you want to start an interesting debate, the SETIQuest forum isn't the place to go"

Huh?  I thought we were having an interesting debate.  I guess space frog DNA doesn't count?  I didn't like it but you should read that SETI DNA paper.  A free download version is available here http://gencodesignal.org

Too bad Douglas Vakoch hasn't commented yet on the communicating with DNA messages idea.

Some genetic experts are now saying that Junk DNA really isn't junk but it serves a purpose. They aren't sure exactly what that purpose is though.  Fascinating times ...

[11:03am] jrseti_: Hello! Sorry I am late - computer problems
[11:03am] lnigra: no worries. I've been there. in fact I'm always there :-)
[11:03am] jrseti_: http://setiquest.org/forum/topic/community-meeting-2013-05-07
[11:04am] jrseti_: Louis the only thing on the agenda
[11:04am] sigblips: 2) http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/news/seti-institute-partners-machine-...
[11:04am] sigblips: 3) https://twitter.com/setiquest/status/329259384783900673
[11:04am] sigblips: That's it for me.
[11:04am] lnigra: ok, here I go...
[11:05am] lnigra: Slowly getting the followups viewing feature done...
[11:05am] sigblips: Ohh and I forgot. Greetings Earthlings. Welcome to the 133rd weekly setiQuest IRC community meeting.
[11:06am] lnigra: looks like we can show all followup waterfalls a user participated in (classified) on the profile page tab (currently dead)...
[11:07am] lnigra: going to show the combined signal marking that produced the followup request on those thumbnails...
[11:08am] lnigra: will have a link to open a classify-like page displaying the set of waterfalls it came from and allow setizen to see the signal markings of all users and theirs highlighted in a different color...
[11:09am] lnigra: going to see if I can blink them so you can see the signal beneath all that or some other way of doing it - mouseover, buttons, etc.
[11:09am] Turingi joined the chat room.
[11:10am] lnigra: will also be able to move to the next or previous set of waterfalls in the followup chain, if it's multilevel.
[11:10am] direrra joined the chat room.
[11:11am] lnigra: probably won't have ability to browse all followups for a while after this first version is live. Just the ones the user was involved in.
[11:12am] sigblips: Which user?
[11:12am] lnigra: the person logged in - i.e., you
[11:13am] sigblips: Will you be able to see other users followup markings?
[11:15am] lnigra: yes, but other users won't be identified for now and as I mentioned, only on followups in which your markings were used to generate it and also any other followups that were part of that chain whether you classified them or not.
[11:15am] lnigra: does that make any sense?
[11:16am] sigblips: What if I didn't mark anything for the followup? My goal is to be able to use this as an audit tool.
[11:18am] lnigra: If you didn't mark anything, but you classified it, you're still part of the classification decision and will still get the followup waterfall in your profile and can link to the viewing page.
[11:19am] lnigra: also , OFF observations will also be included, so it may be that no one marked them on those, but that's the way it should be on OFFs
[11:19am] sigblips: What if I didn't classify it? If I wasn't online.
[11:20am] lnigra: Like I said, you won't be able to get to them initially. Being able to browse all followups and view them will come later.
[11:20am] lnigra: It will require a bit of work.
[11:21am] sigblips: Hmmm. ): That is going to seriously limit its usefulness for the time being.
[11:22am] lnigra: sorry
[11:22am] lnigra: you've waited this long... hehe
[11:23am] jrseti_: Sorry - i have to leave at 11:30
[11:23am] lnigra: ok, I'm done.
[11:23am] direrra: Question?
[11:23am] lnigra: sure
[11:24am] direrra: I know you can use machine language translation for documents...
[11:24am] direrra: ...how is SETI going to use it?
[11:24am] sigblips: That's the next topic.
[11:24am] sigblips: 2) http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/news/seti-institute-partners-machine-...
[11:25am] direrra: How premature of me...sorry
[11:25am] sigblips: Watch the the wonderful video with Gerry and Jon.
[11:25am] sigblips: jrseti: Is machine learning really like having a second brain? (:
[11:26am] jrseti_: That's the promise - right?
[11:26am] direrra: <---looking for part of my first brain
[11:26am] jrseti_: The video turned out really well. I credit the editor
[11:27am] lnigra: I think Mr. Fawlty found it on the floor, direrra :-)
[11:27am] direrra: Thank Goodness!
[11:27am] sigblips: The production looked very professional. Nice suit too!
[11:27am] jrseti_: thanks
[11:28am] jrseti_: About 3) https://twitter.com/setiquest/status/329259384783900673
[11:28am] lnigra: Dude, definitely nice threads, jrseti!
[11:28am] sigblips: Any SETI machine learning news / status you can report about?
[11:28am] jrseti_: I dress like that every day ;)
[11:29am] lnigra: hehe
[11:29am] jrseti_: I am still learning ML. No real progress yet - but I am leaning how to use the SkyTree software.
[11:29am] jrseti_: Lots of statistics
[11:30am] jrseti_: About 3) Who took that picture?
[11:30am] lnigra: only one criticism on production - music too loud.
[11:30am] lnigra: everything else, you two. Awesome!
[11:31am] sigblips: That picture was from the end of Jill's talk.
[11:31am] sigblips: * Gamify SETI Live and move to mobile platforms
[11:32am] jrseti_: I gotta go now - sorry - can't be avoided. About Jill's "challenge". I don't know much about it. I'll make sure she wiggles Setiquest in there somehow.
[11:32am] jrseti_: That seems like an old talk.
[11:32am] sigblips: * Data visualization that shows progress while capturing the huge dynamic range of the search.
[11:32am] sigblips: * Donate - Equipment, Time, Financial support.
[11:32am] sigblips: That talk was last Monday.
[11:32am] jrseti_: She wants SETILive on a mobile platform
[11:33am] jrseti_: I gotta bo. Bye!
[11:33am] jrseti_ left the chat room. (Remote host closed the connection)
[11:33am] lnigra: bye jrseti
[11:33am] direrra: Since jrseti just left, may I haw a room, Mr. Fawlty?
[11:33am] direrra: have
[11:34am] sigblips: Go for it.
[11:34am] lnigra: as long as you behave yourself. No unpaid guests - especially female.
[11:35am] direrra: Well, I'm sure you high-budget SETI guys know all about THAT...
[11:35am] direrra: One last question...
[11:35am] lnigra: ok
[11:36am] sigblips: I'm a zero-budget SETI guy. |:
[11:36am] direrra: If ATA is live, and only one person is on late at night/early in am, and get's a WOW! signal...
[11:37am] direrra: ...who would you phone for immediate follow-up?
[11:37am] lnigra: Wake jrseti up, I'll give you his number :-)
[11:38am] direrra: <---low probability, high impact event scenario...
[11:38am] direrra: Sure!
[11:38am] sigblips: If it passes all the ON-OFF followup tests (4 or 5) then several people at the SETI Institute will get an email. That is what I've heard.
[11:39am] lnigra: but with only one person (or three currently), a followup can't be triggered.
[11:39am] direrra: But that only works if4 people are on SETILive, right?
[11:39am] lnigra: There is a partial solution for that but only in my head right now...
[11:40am] direrra: ...and that is...
[11:40am] sigblips: SonATA could see the signal and act on it automatically. That is if the signal meets its criteria.
[11:40am] direrra: ...realizing the potential for crank calls, numerous mistaken IDs, etc., etc.
[11:41am] lnigra: SonATA doesn't look at waterfalls delivered to SETILive, so it would miss it. Here's my idea...
[11:42am] lnigra: Use the one users markings (or more users) as a guide to look for a signal in a manner similar to what SonATA does when it tries every possible straight line on the waterfall...
[11:42am] lnigra: We'd only look at one or a few in along the path the user(s) marked.
[11:43am] sigblips: Who would do this? A machine?
[11:44am] lnigra: A farily simple program running on the web server machine.
[11:44am] lnigra: er.. fairly
[11:44am] sigblips: That sounds sort of like a duplication of SonATA.
[11:45am] lnigra: Like I said, it is like what sonata does, but since SonATA never sees the waterfall, it's not a duplication at all.
[11:45am] direrra: Hmm - quick fix possible?
[11:45am] sigblips: Also several people were banned from the SETI Live forum less than a year ago for suggesting something along those lines.
[11:45am] direrra: Or do the priorities on the 'to-do' list demand attention?
[11:46am] direrra: !!!
[11:46am] Libertiny: direrra: Error: "!!" is not a valid command.
[11:46am] direrra: Yikes...
[11:47am] lnigra: sigblips, that's utter nonsense. If you think they were banned for posing suggestions, you should look back on the discussions. Sorry, but it was because certain people became and personally critical of me and others.
[11:47am] direrra: Whew!
[11:47am] direrra: <---remembers the abuse...
[11:47am] lnigra: direrra, it's definitely not on the priority list unfortunately.
[11:48am] direrra: lingra - understood
[11:48am] sigblips: Yes, you're right but that basic topic is what fueled it.
[11:48am] sigblips: Also, what you had to deal with on the SETI Live forum is nothing compared to what we had to deal with on the setiQuest forum.
[11:50am] direrra: Perhaps I've unfortunately and unintentionally exposed a sensitive topic (or two)...
[11:50am] lnigra: sure, but simply because I tried to explain that we weren't doing that at the time and why, people got all bent out of shape because they weren't there to discuss, they had an axe to grind against SI, imho, and SETILive isn't the place for that.
[11:51am] sigblips: I agree.
[11:51am] lnigra: thanks.
[11:51am] lnigra: Yup, that was a hot button, I guess, direrra. sorry.
[11:52am] direrra: Well, I think you guys are doing well, but...
[11:53am] direrra: <---pats sigblips and lingra on the back
[11:54am] sigblips: But what? You can't leave us hanging like that.
[11:54am] lnigra: where's the "but..."?
[11:54am] lnigra: yeah. do tell!
[11:54am] direrra: Bottom line...I see the issue as funding
[11:55am] direrra: ...and I'll leave it at that
[11:55am] sigblips: There is no funding and that is the problem of SETI.
[11:55am] direrra: ...bricks without straw...
[11:56am] lnigra: that's a cop out. It's always funding, isn't it. hehe.
[11:56am] lnigra: Personally, a couple full-time professional developers for a couple months would do wonders.
[11:56am] lnigra: for SETILive anyway.
[11:56am] direrra: Well, time for me to get back to my paying job...glad to be part of the discussion
[11:57am] lnigra: thanks direrra.
[11:57am] direrra left the chat room.
[11:57am] sigblips: True, but that probably isn't where the funding would be diverted to.
[11:59am] lnigra: Yes, I would think you're right. I'm hoping that if we can get SETILive turned over to SI, they'll put some resources into improving it as part of "gamify-ing" it.
[12:00pm] sigblips: That costs money ...
[12:00pm] lnigra: maybe summer interns?
[12:01pm] lnigra: SI may have an interest in doing something with it, though, even if only applying limited resources. Anything would be good.
[12:02pm] sigblips: A new rule I heard was that the REU interns are required to be doing something science-y.
[12:03pm] sigblips: We had a setiQuest REU intern a couple years ago.
[12:03pm] lnigra: Ah, I see. there are probably some legit science-y tasks that could be defined that would also benefit SETILive.
[12:04pm] sigblips: Maybe but I think they are thinking more pure science as opposed to code development.
[12:05pm] lnigra: Gotcha.
[12:05pm] lnigra: So beyond just science-y :-)
[12:06pm] sigblips: GSoC would be an ideal intern source for this sort of thing.
[12:07pm] lnigra: Yes, from what I know of it. Didn't some of SonATA or related stuff come out of that?
[12:07pm] sigblips: Yes, setiQuest had two GSoC interns a couple years ago. Mentoring them was a lot of work.
[12:08pm] lnigra: Summer intern projects are real difficult. Hard to define something that can be accomplished in two months and yet can be carried on afterwards if needed.
[12:09pm] sigblips: Yup.
[12:09pm] lnigra: We'll have four (I think) this summer in Far Horizons at Adler. We're already trying to work these things out.
[12:10pm] sigblips: Who is the sponsoring source?
[12:10pm] sigblips: I think the REU's were NSF.
[12:11pm] lnigra: I believe ours are all Illinois Space Grant Consortium, which is NASA-funded.
[12:12pm] lnigra: Yes, REU is a NSF program. Excellent program as well, btw. Lots of scientists get a great start with that.
[12:12pm] sigblips: This summer is probably safe but I wonder about next summer. With the sequester and all.
[12:13pm] lnigra: good question. All we can do is wait. Clearly, voting doesn't help :-)
[12:13pm] sigblips: You gotta love politics. (:
[12:13pm] lnigra: true dat.
[12:14pm] lnigra: Well, time to get back to work. Good talking with you as usual. Sorry about my little snit earlier.
[12:15pm] sigblips: No problem. Those were difficult times.
[12:15pm] lnigra: See you next week.
[12:15pm] sigblips: Bye.
[12:15pm] lnigra left the chat room. (Quit: Leaving)

After outlining this idea to my Son he tells me that I am describing a technique already proven in his field of Computational Chemistry, apparently they can take sections of DNA and undertake an analysis based upon the statistical "information metrics" ( presumably Entropy creeps in somewhere), and are able to determine whether that chunk of DNA will express a Protein, or is simply a chunk of Junk DNA.

He tells me that if you compare the amount of the Genetic Code that actually produces something useful, compared to the amount of Junk, then there is very little doubt that the Genetic information has evolved - or if it has  actually been designed, he wouldn't offer the designer a job working for him

Oh well apparently if you want to start an interesting debate, the SETIQuest forum isn't the place to go

Regards

Dave Robinson

More clarification:
The unused Dell servers do have 10 GbE cards. They don't have cables and transcievers to connnect to a switch. The current switches support UDP multicast, but they do not have enough 10 GbE ports to support all the unused servers. It is  the beamformer software that does not support UDP multicast.

Here is an ATA hardware update:

• The unused Dell servers don't have a 10 GbE card.
• The current 10 GbE switch doesn't properly support UDP multicast

This unfortunately means that my proposed data collection solution cannot run at the same time SonATA is observing. Some new hardware would be required and it is fairly expensive.  This would be a great donation opportunity for a 10 GbE network switch / router company.  Contact the SETI Institute if you're interested, I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.

"How long does it take to convert and send raw data from the ata to the data archive format?"

Very quickly, data conversion is not CPU bound.  It is an IO bound problem limited by disk and network speeds.

"How much money would it cost to upgrade their Internet?"

There are rumors of dark fiber up at the ATA. You'd have to ask a telco what the costs are to light it up and operate it.  My guess for 10 GbE would be a couple thousand for the optical switch/router, and a couple thousand a month to operate. Maybe less since the Internet would be bypassed with the AWS Direct Connect feature (Hat Creek, CA --> Oregon).

"Is there an official we will never turn the data back on statement yet?"

This IRC chat is the closest to a no more data statement.  I doubt they'll ever say never, why rule anything out?  I've been trying and failing to get the data turned on for the past 2 years.  At this point it seems unlikely.  Lack of interest, other priorities, ...

"If they ever decide to kill the data archive could someone at least give a warning so I can download some of it before it gets taken down?"

There is a desire within the SETI Institute to keep the setiQuest data archive on-line as an Internet resource. How future funding and resources will affect this is unknown.  There are plans of making it a permanent resource.

"It is getting a little awkward reading your posts because you can't seem to get a straight answer on simple questions.

Yes, it is frustrating.  

You haven't seen anyone creeping around the seti HQ whose knees bend the wrong way have you?"

No backward bending knees but I have seen a few people at the SETI Institute with pointy ears and antennae. (:

"You are a braver man than me, I wouldn't have dared put your last two postings up - all you need is some non scientific reporter getting sight of them"

Extraterrestrial space frog DNA discovered in the cosmos 

would be an amazing newspaper headline to see!  No one reads the setiQuest forum anymore so the odds of this happening is very low.  I also doubt any journalist would mistakenly comprehend my description and make such a wild leap of interpretation.  I'm not claiming Cold Fusion.  All I'm claiming is that a distorted RFI signal found in the setiQuest data looks like DNA.  It's not a hoax and it is not fake.  It's just an incorrectly analyzed signal and we can learn from it in several important ways:

* SonATA and SETI Live may both be susceptible to this sort of problem.

* Issues like this are found by looking at data. This highlights the value and importance of restarting the setiQuest data archive collection.  If you don't look, you can't learn.  We need to be smarter if the SETI enterprise has any hope of success.

* This sparked a new communication idea and I was hoping that Douglas Vakoch, the Director of Interstellar Message Composition, would have commented by now.  A DNA looking signal could be constructed in a way that is immune to the time aliasing distortion I found.  Then this signal could be sub-coded with actual DNA base pairs (GTATCATCGATCAGCAA...).  Pictorially it would look like DNA and internally it would contain DNA.  Sort of like a signal in a signal modulation.  It seems like a clever way to transmit and communicate a complex topic to ET.  If ET has ever seen the double helix of DNA they will immediately understand both levels of the message.

"Taking your analogy with microcontroller machine code; if you simply take a top level look at the byte pattern in any such program, it will look remarkably like a random collection of bytes."

I think you misunderstood me.  I was saying that both DNA and machine code can have similar looking structures. They don't look like noise.

Hi Sigblips

You are a braver man than me, I wouldn't have dared put your last two postings up - all you need is some non scientific reporter getting sight of them, not realizing you are have fun (and I really appreciate the humour, it is very funny) I can see the headlines now

"SETI Scientist discovers DNA in the cosmos. Genetic code suggests they are amphibian"

all they need is a screen shot of your Baudline display, and your reputation will join Pons and Fleishmann, especially when they report your denial as

"SETI Scientist admits to Frogs in space hoax"

If you can, I think that removing them might be a good idea.

I must admit that the fact Baudline can read genetic code is very impressive, however I think you should get your priorities right - get the coffee making function perfected and installed

I am not surprised that eyeballing the genetic code didn't  provide any answer to the Evolution/Intelligent Design question. Although if it was the latter I guess they aught to have included a nice header block that said something like

"(c) Global Organic Designers Inc
Magrathea "

Taking your analogy with microcontroller machine code; if you simply take a top level look at the byte pattern in any such program, it will look remarkably like a random collection of bytes. Whether the code has been hand crafted by a master programmer, or thrown together by some mythical evolutionary mechanism. The point that I was wondering if information theory or some such technique was able to differentiate between an evolved code or a designed code. Clearly one would have to analyse a very simple 'lifeform' maybe a simple virus. Maybe I am a few years too soon. I guess once we are in a position when we start designing custom viral payloads, we can make a direct comparison between intelligently designed viruses and naturally occuring ones.

Regards

Dave Robinson

I found a longer DNA strand with some gaps (damage).

Now if I only had some frog DNA to splice in to fix the damage ... (:

I just found this DNA strand in the setiQuest data!  It definitely has that distinctive double-helix look.

Unfortunately it is just some time aliasing distortion. Not SETI.  The signal is RFI.  The image is sort of like an optical illusion.  It shows how careful you need to be when analyzing signals.  Must keep searching ...

How long does it take to convert and send raw data from the ata to the data archive format?

How much money would it cost to upgrade their Internet? I remember you said the line is there it just isn't on or something, so it can't be millions of dollars can it? I kinda stopped trying to learn how to use the data when it seemed like there would never be any new data and going over really old data seemed to be pointless especially without the multi beam data.

Is there an official we will never turn the data back on statement yet?

If they ever decide to kill the data archive could someone at least give a warning so I can download some of it before it gets taken down?

It is getting a little awkward reading your posts because you can't seem to get a straight answer on simple questions. You haven't seen anyone creeping around the seti HQ whose knees bend the wrong way have you?

Thank you for the birthday wishes.

I agree that all the recent SETI Live talk in the weekly community IRC meetings hasn't helped the setiQuest mission. But integrating SETI Live into the meetings was important to keep the SETI Institute interested and critical to keep the meetings alive.  Can't have a meeting if no one shows up to talk with ...

You forgot from your parallel paths list:

4) SonATA open source development

This never lived up to its hoped for potential but it was one of the main setiQuest pillars.

I agree that money has played an important part in setiQuest's trajectory but I think you have it switched around. Things like forum discussion and open source code refereeing cost the SETI Institute money in the terms of time.  Those employees do get paid.  Providing ATA data, as I've proposed, doesn't cost the SETI Institute anything.  I've offered to write the code and configure the system to do this. The SETI Institute has a large pile of unused donated Dell servers sitting around and I'd require the use of one of those.  The ATA has a small bandwidth pipe to the Internet but I'm sure there is plenty of unused capacity.  Even a non-real-time trickle of ATA data is more than we have now.  The only thing missing is the SETI Institute's desire to allow this to happen.

There is a SETI - DNA paper that has been in the news recently:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/alien-code-in-human-genes_n_303...

IMO this paper is pure rubbish and lacks any hint of scientific method / discipline / rigor / ...

Now I am huge fan of the idea of finding a message, signature, or watermark embedded in DNA.  In fact, many years ago I added to baudline the feature of being able to read several standard DNA file formats. I've looked at all sorts of DNA with baudline.  Yes there is a strange structure in some DNA, it looks a lot like binary machine code but that is exactly what DNA is!  Nothing I've seen makes me think artificially designed, it is more form follows function.  An interesting tidbit is that viruses are extremely compact and look the most like white noise.  It is like any repetitive structure has been optimized away which makes a lot of sense for a virus from an evolutionary perspective.