Pinball on a Galactic Scale
By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
28 February 2007
The center of our Milky Way galaxy crackles with lethal gamma-rays, emitting trillions of electron volts of energy. Yet most astrophysicists consider our corner of the universe a relatively placid place, so the source of all this energy has remained mysterious. Now, members of an international team think they have found the answer: high-energy protons ejected by the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the galaxy.
In 1998, scientists confirmed what they had long suspected: The Milky Way's center hosts an immense black hole, equivalent to the mass of about 2.6-million suns. Like all black holes, it pulls in huge amounts of matter to its ultimate doom. But when compared to the hearts of other galaxies, the Milky Way's hole had been considered puny, with not enough mass to generate much radiation in the gamma-ray wavelengths. Nevertheless, in 2004, astronomers found that the black hole was indeed generating gamma-rays, thereby forcing a search for the mechanism that could produce them.
That mechanism appears to be magnetism. Reporting in this week's issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team led by David Ballantyne of the University of Arizona in Tucson concludes that the Milky Way's central black hole is strong enough to generate a powerful but chaotic magnetic field that extends out a distance of about 10 light-years. To reach their conclusions, the researchers used computer programs to calculate the hypothetical trajectories of some 220,000 protons, which are ejected from the Milky Way's black hole and get bounced around by its magnetic field like in a galactic-sized version of a pinball machine. They then compared those paths with recent observations by ground-based instruments of the location of the gamma-rays and found that 69% of the computer-generated trajectories matched what the observed data were showing. The protons were slamming into hydrogen atoms within huge clouds of gas that slowly orbit the black hole about 10 light-years out. These collisions produce the gamma radiation astronomers have observed at the center of the Milky Way.
Co-researcher Fulvio Melia, also of the University of Arizona, says the findings could help astrophysicists understand how the most powerful black holes in the universe likewise produce gamma radiation. "The same particle slinging almost certainly occurs in all black-hole systems," Melia says.
The findings are interesting, but not necessarily conclusive, says astrophysicist Valerie Connaughton of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There could be an alternative explanation, such as a recent supernova in the vicinity of the galactic center, she says, which could be accelerating the high-energy protons being detected. Further observations are needed, she says, because "we still don't really understand all of the physics involved."
Your point on cost is a good one. As to peer review, I believe it is quite alive and well. For example, a competitor's paper came out in Science last year while mine was still in review elsewhere. His got accepted, I read it, and found that most of his results were not consistent with mine. Moreover, I could figure out why his were an artifact. So, I pulled no punches and hammered the other guy's data in my paper. My paper got published, justice is ultimately served. I think people in our field will be able to appreciate the differences in the two papers (after the fact that both got published). So, in the end, it will be judged by the scientific community.
You want to promote free open access and open peer review. Go for it. You should know that this has not been well embraced by the scientific community, though certain options are available. For example, you could publish your study in a prestigious medical journal, or even Science/Nature etc., or you could go for open acess/open review in PLoS One. PLoS One publishes all articles as long as there are no obvious errors in the methodology. Then, they have a forum/blog/wiki like system of commenting from anyone who registers to comment (for free). So, basically, open access, open review. So far, it's a flop. Do you really want to go that route, or are you more likely to go for Science if your stuff is really that good?
As these discussions go, I would like to emphasize that NOTHING will be accomplished by blaming scientists. We certainly will keep results and important data to ourselves until such time as it forms a story worth publishing. Demanding anything before that is a recipe for disaster. After something is published, I for one want as many people in the world to read it as possible. However, the major journals out there operate as business via advertising and publishing costs, then again via subscription costs. As a business, they want to keep their circulation to paying subscribers only. Currently, it costs scientists more to publish in open access journals, because those journals do not recuperate their operating costs by subscription fees. In a sense, the researcher (and ultimately the taxpayer) will be charged even more to get the data out.
On another note, many researchers have partial funding from agencies which are not taxpayer funded, like Howard Hughes, American Cancer Society, Alzheimer's Foundation, etc. This is also very common for postdoctoral fellow or graduate student fellowships. So just because a particular area of research got a dime of taxpayer money, does that automatically mean it should all be open access? It's not often easy to figure out the final contribution from multiple funding sources to a specific project.
Most journals actually provide free access to articles after a certain time frame (like six months, or a year). Additionally, most articles that have broad interest are typically well publicized by news outlets (the applicable conclusions from the research, at least). Frankly, I don't think most of Joe. Q. Public gives a damn about the details of 99% of the research articles published, or could even understand it. As a biologist, I'm not sure I could understand most physics papers, for example. This whole bruhaha seems more about some principle that important to some vocal minority than a genuine public concern. In the end, important taxpayer funded research finds the light of day at the appropriate juncture.
Personally, as someone who is proud of his work and wants it to be widely known, open access is great. Practically, I don't think it's THAT big a deal. And I think most journals are doing enough to publicize the broad picture.
"It seems pointless to seek ideas and feedback if you're going to ignore and delete the opinions you don't like."
Clearly they saw those criticisms, so I don't think they're being totally ignored. I'm willing to bet they're well noted as the concerns of a vocal minority. And there's the rub... Dell doesn't HAVE to do jack sh*t just to appease a few Linux activists. Their main business is going to remain, for quite a while, wintel machines. As to their website, it's their website, they can do whatever the hell they want. Don't like it? Don't buy from them. Easy enough.
ZOMG!! They've already penetrated CTU!! Anyone else catch those Apple Cinema displays all over the CTU office? Hey, if it's good enough for CTU, it's good enough for the rest of us. Then again, CTU does seem to have a chronic problem with hackers...
...that they would never risk losing their license over something like dumb like subliminal messaging. They promise to fix the problem. My question is, do they really have to "intentionally" put up subliminal images to lose their license. I think the casinos should ditch their machines for sheer stupidity in doing something like this, lest the casinos themselves tarnish their "good" image. Not that I believe something like this is a sheer coincidence or "glitch".
Ya, you're partly right -- they said it was close to death when they landed it... I'm sure it was in its last throes. Maybe I'm just pissed about the Japanese pseudoscience of whaling.
Also, it's not exactly "paper" they're printing on:
"We used N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA) gels to construct sheets with inducible non-Euclidean gtar. The gels are produced by mixing NIPA monomers with bisacrylamide (BIS) (6% by weight of NIPA) cross-linker in water. The addition of catalysts initiates polymerization of a cross-linked elastic hydrogel [Supporting Online Material (SOM) text]. This gel undergoes a sharp, reversible, volume reduction transition at Tc = 33C (19), above which its equilibrium volume decreases considerably. Calibration experiments (fig. S1) using various homogeneous (each of a different fixed NIPA concentration) gel discs provide the relation between the monomer concentration and {eta}, the shrinkage ratio of the "activated" gel. These measurements show that dilute gels shrink a lot, whereas gels with high monomer concentrations undergo moderate shrinking."
Perhaps he has been "vindicated", but I'm not at all sure that the results are valid. Just because he was cleared of misconduct by the investigative board, that does not mean there isn't still some caveat to his experiments that muddles a clear interpretation of the results. What is more promising, however, is the fact that another colleague managed to get similar results. The conditions are just too difficult to recreate however (and there was some debate as to whether Taleyarkhan actually helped the colleague out significantly, so as to make the second run not really an "independent" experiment), so until more truly independent labs can reproduce the results, I'll still be taking this with a grain of salt.
I used to love his earlier work, but then I went to college and took real science classes, and then I went to grad school and got a ph D in biology and eventually realized he's probably done more to harm science than he has to promote it. He's a fearmongerer, who takes the worst of science's potential and treats it as if it's the only future outcome (dinosaurs running rampant, nanotech gone arwy, global warming is a ecoterror hoax). Take what he says with a grain of salt.
that they have to resort to this, but I can understand their frustration. On the other hand, should a real outbreak ever occur, they are the ones most likely to rely on major international support, and under current forecasts, an outbreak is most likely to occur in the asian arena anyway. i wonder if they would have tried to "sell" the scientific data on the earthquake/tsunami (not that those weren't detectable from far away, but it's a conceptual exercise) that hit them the hardest...or "sell" the geophysical data on the terrain to those who wish to observe from satellites. of course, then their pride should certainly forbid them from accepting any humanitarian help after the tsunami. if they hold this virus data back, sadly, they made the worse for wear if an outbreak does occur.
Your first line is: "Last year, the Sierra club provided more than 90 million dollars to climate scientists."
Stop the lies!! This is why any arguments you might contribute to the discussion have to be taken with a grain of salt. You flat out LIE!! The Sierra club doesn't really fund basic research on climate science -- you're just rehashing the same lies you hear on right-wing media and propagating them without using your brain to filter out the BS first.
The 1998 vote on Kyoto WAS unapposed. Why? Maybe because nearly a decade ago, there wasn't as much conclusive research into the issue and politicians didn't want to rock the popular boat of economic recovery. Now, only those in the pockets of big oil will STILL deny the impact of humans on global climate change. So NOW, if the government doesn't act, it certain SHOULD be held accountable. Also, I don't see many people specifically using the Kyoto protocol vote to criticize the president. It's the far more doable things that the current administration isn't doing -- like actually ADMITTING that global warming is caused by human industry, the country most responsible for excessive carbon emission being the US.
...and read about original research hot off the press there. www.pubmed.org. many articles are now available free (some as soon as they appear, some with a specified lag, i.e. 6 months or so). That's if you really care about "freeing" the research from the dark corners. I find, on the contrary, that most people are much more satisfied by the simplified analysis offered in lay journals (Scientific American, Discover, etc.) or news outlets/blogs, than the primary literature. Those who do care about R&D, like the pharmas and the universities themselves, already know how to pursue "freeing" the research from the academic arena. This new approach (who knows what it is, the article isn't very informative) isn't going to help anything.
...especially if they suck as a game. Too often, "innovative" or "original" are used to describe gameplay elements that are outright lame. I find it hard to believe that novel games that don't suck have no chance.
Why'd you ask then? Adblock isn't fool proof. It blocked the ad on that page, but it also blocked the interesting animation you wanted to see. I believe you can block certain portions of a page. Not every site is full of malicious code!
I don't have mod points, but I think your post was very interesting. It's amazing how there's this type of "mafia" behavior in these MMOGs. Especially because when you think about it, this powerful organization BoB and others like it are probably full of zit-faced nerds with little else going on in their lives, as opposed to the recreational player in it for fun. See that South Park episode on WoW? That was hilarious... It's crazy to think that people can go on power trips in a virtual world in a manner totally incompatible with what their personality would allow them to achieve in the real world.
...because he legitimately had use of the G-mail term in advance. But if he's smart, he'll either capitalize on the name recognition and make a really nice mail portal system, or sell to Google. Providing a somehow "inferior" product under that name might not work out so well in the long run.
Also, while you make some decent points, it's obvious that you've never actually seen the full Ben Franklin quote, otherwise you wouldn't be referring to him while making your claims. So, for your benefit, I shall now reproduce the full quote, with the parts that you're missing highlighted for ease of understanding.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Thanks, but I did read the same wiki page you did before posting: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin. And since I didn't put quotes around the statement, I will NOT be accused of incorrectly quoting when all I was doing was paraphrasing. Also, I'm aware that the attribution to Franklin is an oversimplification. Now that that's out of the way, you have failed to change my opinion that the quote is relevant. Were you trying to make some SPECIFIC point about the words you highlighted or do you want to play the guessing game? Since the rest of your post comes along as pontification, I'm surprised you leave your actual point so vague.
Frankly, I don't think government should always be to blame everytime a tragedy occurs. As to the point of blurred out images, the better safe than sorry argument seems overkill. And yes, there is a COST to being "better safe". Not everyone thinks, as you do, that the cost should be paid every time with our ESSENTIAL liberties. Have you listened to the news lately about how our attorney general doesn't think habeus corpus is explicitly implied in the constitution? Well, technically, neither are free speech, press, religion or assembly. Don't be fooled into thinking that some liberties are less essential than others -- you won't have any left to give away after a while.
I don't really mind the use of blurred out images for some things, but I think to use the mantra "better safe than sorry" too loosely is wrong. Torture a potential terrorist? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Tap the communications of innocent citizens? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Bomb a random middle easter country back to the stone age? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Ban all liquid on flights (you do know that whole London liquid terror thing didn't pan out, right)? Hey, "better safe than sorry"? I could go on, but you see the point. "Better safe than sorry" has been used way too much unnecessarily, and sometimes in a very counter-productive manner. The analogy with the firewall/server security is deeply flawed. A company has certain rights to do what is necessary within the law to protect itself from hackers. The government does NOT have really have any grounds to do some of the things it has done in the name of security. "Better safe than sorry" in that realm is a sorry excuse to take away the rights of ordinary citizens. Before I get flamed by those who think they are more patriotic should consider Ben Franklin's words when he said that those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.
S. marcescens is a bacterium. Any and all mold are fungi, as you stated. So the summary is using the terms interchangeably, and inappropriately. It is possible that the pink stains are inaccurately referred to as mold, and that might explain the summary author's remarks.
Slashdot Mirror
Pinball on a Galactic Scale By Phil Berardelli ScienceNOW Daily News 28 February 2007 The center of our Milky Way galaxy crackles with lethal gamma-rays, emitting trillions of electron volts of energy. Yet most astrophysicists consider our corner of the universe a relatively placid place, so the source of all this energy has remained mysterious. Now, members of an international team think they have found the answer: high-energy protons ejected by the supermassive black hole that lies at the heart of the galaxy. In 1998, scientists confirmed what they had long suspected: The Milky Way's center hosts an immense black hole, equivalent to the mass of about 2.6-million suns. Like all black holes, it pulls in huge amounts of matter to its ultimate doom. But when compared to the hearts of other galaxies, the Milky Way's hole had been considered puny, with not enough mass to generate much radiation in the gamma-ray wavelengths. Nevertheless, in 2004, astronomers found that the black hole was indeed generating gamma-rays, thereby forcing a search for the mechanism that could produce them. That mechanism appears to be magnetism. Reporting in this week's issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team led by David Ballantyne of the University of Arizona in Tucson concludes that the Milky Way's central black hole is strong enough to generate a powerful but chaotic magnetic field that extends out a distance of about 10 light-years. To reach their conclusions, the researchers used computer programs to calculate the hypothetical trajectories of some 220,000 protons, which are ejected from the Milky Way's black hole and get bounced around by its magnetic field like in a galactic-sized version of a pinball machine. They then compared those paths with recent observations by ground-based instruments of the location of the gamma-rays and found that 69% of the computer-generated trajectories matched what the observed data were showing. The protons were slamming into hydrogen atoms within huge clouds of gas that slowly orbit the black hole about 10 light-years out. These collisions produce the gamma radiation astronomers have observed at the center of the Milky Way. Co-researcher Fulvio Melia, also of the University of Arizona, says the findings could help astrophysicists understand how the most powerful black holes in the universe likewise produce gamma radiation. "The same particle slinging almost certainly occurs in all black-hole systems," Melia says. The findings are interesting, but not necessarily conclusive, says astrophysicist Valerie Connaughton of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. There could be an alternative explanation, such as a recent supernova in the vicinity of the galactic center, she says, which could be accelerating the high-energy protons being detected. Further observations are needed, she says, because "we still don't really understand all of the physics involved."
You want to promote free open access and open peer review. Go for it. You should know that this has not been well embraced by the scientific community, though certain options are available. For example, you could publish your study in a prestigious medical journal, or even Science/Nature etc., or you could go for open acess/open review in PLoS One. PLoS One publishes all articles as long as there are no obvious errors in the methodology. Then, they have a forum/blog/wiki like system of commenting from anyone who registers to comment (for free). So, basically, open access, open review. So far, it's a flop. Do you really want to go that route, or are you more likely to go for Science if your stuff is really that good?
On another note, many researchers have partial funding from agencies which are not taxpayer funded, like Howard Hughes, American Cancer Society, Alzheimer's Foundation, etc. This is also very common for postdoctoral fellow or graduate student fellowships. So just because a particular area of research got a dime of taxpayer money, does that automatically mean it should all be open access? It's not often easy to figure out the final contribution from multiple funding sources to a specific project.
Most journals actually provide free access to articles after a certain time frame (like six months, or a year). Additionally, most articles that have broad interest are typically well publicized by news outlets (the applicable conclusions from the research, at least). Frankly, I don't think most of Joe. Q. Public gives a damn about the details of 99% of the research articles published, or could even understand it. As a biologist, I'm not sure I could understand most physics papers, for example. This whole bruhaha seems more about some principle that important to some vocal minority than a genuine public concern. In the end, important taxpayer funded research finds the light of day at the appropriate juncture.
Personally, as someone who is proud of his work and wants it to be widely known, open access is great. Practically, I don't think it's THAT big a deal. And I think most journals are doing enough to publicize the broad picture.
Clearly they saw those criticisms, so I don't think they're being totally ignored. I'm willing to bet they're well noted as the concerns of a vocal minority. And there's the rub... Dell doesn't HAVE to do jack sh*t just to appease a few Linux activists. Their main business is going to remain, for quite a while, wintel machines. As to their website, it's their website, they can do whatever the hell they want. Don't like it? Don't buy from them. Easy enough.
How open it is??!?? I wanna know how SOURCE it is!!
ZOMG!! They've already penetrated CTU!! Anyone else catch those Apple Cinema displays all over the CTU office? Hey, if it's good enough for CTU, it's good enough for the rest of us. Then again, CTU does seem to have a chronic problem with hackers...
...that they would never risk losing their license over something like dumb like subliminal messaging. They promise to fix the problem. My question is, do they really have to "intentionally" put up subliminal images to lose their license. I think the casinos should ditch their machines for sheer stupidity in doing something like this, lest the casinos themselves tarnish their "good" image. Not that I believe something like this is a sheer coincidence or "glitch".
Ya, you're partly right -- they said it was close to death when they landed it... I'm sure it was in its last throes. Maybe I'm just pissed about the Japanese pseudoscience of whaling.
Also, it's not exactly "paper" they're printing on:
"We used N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA) gels to construct sheets with inducible non-Euclidean gtar. The gels are produced by mixing NIPA monomers with bisacrylamide (BIS) (6% by weight of NIPA) cross-linker in water. The addition of catalysts initiates polymerization of a cross-linked elastic hydrogel [Supporting Online Material (SOM) text]. This gel undergoes a sharp, reversible, volume reduction transition at Tc = 33C (19), above which its equilibrium volume decreases considerably. Calibration experiments (fig. S1) using various homogeneous (each of a different fixed NIPA concentration) gel discs provide the relation between the monomer concentration and {eta}, the shrinkage ratio of the "activated" gel. These measurements show that dilute gels shrink a lot, whereas gels with high monomer concentrations undergo moderate shrinking."
...they promptly capture it and kill it. Bravo. If they really want to 'study' it, perphaps they should just observe for a while...
Perhaps he has been "vindicated", but I'm not at all sure that the results are valid. Just because he was cleared of misconduct by the investigative board, that does not mean there isn't still some caveat to his experiments that muddles a clear interpretation of the results. What is more promising, however, is the fact that another colleague managed to get similar results. The conditions are just too difficult to recreate however (and there was some debate as to whether Taleyarkhan actually helped the colleague out significantly, so as to make the second run not really an "independent" experiment), so until more truly independent labs can reproduce the results, I'll still be taking this with a grain of salt.
I used to love his earlier work, but then I went to college and took real science classes, and then I went to grad school and got a ph D in biology and eventually realized he's probably done more to harm science than he has to promote it. He's a fearmongerer, who takes the worst of science's potential and treats it as if it's the only future outcome (dinosaurs running rampant, nanotech gone arwy, global warming is a ecoterror hoax). Take what he says with a grain of salt.
Thank you for playing another edition of "Another stupid Slashdot yes/no question answered."
way to prove the terrorists have won, boston. bravo.
that they have to resort to this, but I can understand their frustration. On the other hand, should a real outbreak ever occur, they are the ones most likely to rely on major international support, and under current forecasts, an outbreak is most likely to occur in the asian arena anyway. i wonder if they would have tried to "sell" the scientific data on the earthquake/tsunami (not that those weren't detectable from far away, but it's a conceptual exercise) that hit them the hardest...or "sell" the geophysical data on the terrain to those who wish to observe from satellites. of course, then their pride should certainly forbid them from accepting any humanitarian help after the tsunami. if they hold this virus data back, sadly, they made the worse for wear if an outbreak does occur.
Stop the lies!! This is why any arguments you might contribute to the discussion have to be taken with a grain of salt. You flat out LIE!! The Sierra club doesn't really fund basic research on climate science -- you're just rehashing the same lies you hear on right-wing media and propagating them without using your brain to filter out the BS first.
The 1998 vote on Kyoto WAS unapposed. Why? Maybe because nearly a decade ago, there wasn't as much conclusive research into the issue and politicians didn't want to rock the popular boat of economic recovery. Now, only those in the pockets of big oil will STILL deny the impact of humans on global climate change. So NOW, if the government doesn't act, it certain SHOULD be held accountable. Also, I don't see many people specifically using the Kyoto protocol vote to criticize the president. It's the far more doable things that the current administration isn't doing -- like actually ADMITTING that global warming is caused by human industry, the country most responsible for excessive carbon emission being the US.
...and read about original research hot off the press there. www.pubmed.org. many articles are now available free (some as soon as they appear, some with a specified lag, i.e. 6 months or so). That's if you really care about "freeing" the research from the dark corners. I find, on the contrary, that most people are much more satisfied by the simplified analysis offered in lay journals (Scientific American, Discover, etc.) or news outlets/blogs, than the primary literature. Those who do care about R&D, like the pharmas and the universities themselves, already know how to pursue "freeing" the research from the academic arena. This new approach (who knows what it is, the article isn't very informative) isn't going to help anything.
...especially if they suck as a game. Too often, "innovative" or "original" are used to describe gameplay elements that are outright lame. I find it hard to believe that novel games that don't suck have no chance.
Why'd you ask then? Adblock isn't fool proof. It blocked the ad on that page, but it also blocked the interesting animation you wanted to see. I believe you can block certain portions of a page. Not every site is full of malicious code!
I don't have mod points, but I think your post was very interesting. It's amazing how there's this type of "mafia" behavior in these MMOGs. Especially because when you think about it, this powerful organization BoB and others like it are probably full of zit-faced nerds with little else going on in their lives, as opposed to the recreational player in it for fun. See that South Park episode on WoW? That was hilarious... It's crazy to think that people can go on power trips in a virtual world in a manner totally incompatible with what their personality would allow them to achieve in the real world.
...because he legitimately had use of the G-mail term in advance. But if he's smart, he'll either capitalize on the name recognition and make a really nice mail portal system, or sell to Google. Providing a somehow "inferior" product under that name might not work out so well in the long run.
You have to turn off all your content filtering (if you have popup blockers, Adblock etc).
Thanks, but I did read the same wiki page you did before posting: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin. And since I didn't put quotes around the statement, I will NOT be accused of incorrectly quoting when all I was doing was paraphrasing. Also, I'm aware that the attribution to Franklin is an oversimplification. Now that that's out of the way, you have failed to change my opinion that the quote is relevant. Were you trying to make some SPECIFIC point about the words you highlighted or do you want to play the guessing game? Since the rest of your post comes along as pontification, I'm surprised you leave your actual point so vague.
Frankly, I don't think government should always be to blame everytime a tragedy occurs. As to the point of blurred out images, the better safe than sorry argument seems overkill. And yes, there is a COST to being "better safe". Not everyone thinks, as you do, that the cost should be paid every time with our ESSENTIAL liberties. Have you listened to the news lately about how our attorney general doesn't think habeus corpus is explicitly implied in the constitution? Well, technically, neither are free speech, press, religion or assembly. Don't be fooled into thinking that some liberties are less essential than others -- you won't have any left to give away after a while.
I don't really mind the use of blurred out images for some things, but I think to use the mantra "better safe than sorry" too loosely is wrong. Torture a potential terrorist? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Tap the communications of innocent citizens? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Bomb a random middle easter country back to the stone age? Hey, "better safe than sorry". Ban all liquid on flights (you do know that whole London liquid terror thing didn't pan out, right)? Hey, "better safe than sorry"? I could go on, but you see the point. "Better safe than sorry" has been used way too much unnecessarily, and sometimes in a very counter-productive manner. The analogy with the firewall/server security is deeply flawed. A company has certain rights to do what is necessary within the law to protect itself from hackers. The government does NOT have really have any grounds to do some of the things it has done in the name of security. "Better safe than sorry" in that realm is a sorry excuse to take away the rights of ordinary citizens. Before I get flamed by those who think they are more patriotic should consider Ben Franklin's words when he said that those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.
S. marcescens is a bacterium. Any and all mold are fungi, as you stated. So the summary is using the terms interchangeably, and inappropriately. It is possible that the pink stains are inaccurately referred to as mold, and that might explain the summary author's remarks.