Moores specializes in the atmospheric chemistry of planets within our solar system. A world-class researcher in the planetary sciences, Moores has participated in five international space missions to date and runs the with 10 students at the undergraduate, graduate and postdoc level.

"Methane on Mars holds a lot of interest to the planetary science community because it could potentially suggest life elsewhere in the Universe."

The community he refers to is a group of 1,500 top-ranking scientists from around the world who routinely collaborate on space missions.

Methane on Earth derives from livestock, decaying organic waste and the production of coal, natural gas and oil. How it is being produced on Mars, and why, is a big question.

In his lab, Moores and his team are creating a methane spectrometer that may one day fly to Mars and examine the phenomenon, detecting and measuring the presence of methane as often as every 15 minutes. The equipment is revolutionary because making this measurement is challenging – so much so that researchers working with NASA’s Mars rover, aptly named Curiosity, have only been able to measure gas near the surface a dozen times in the past 20 years.

Moores’ team is collaborating with ABB, a company specializing in optical remote sensing instruments for space applications. Using technology called integrated cavity output spectroscopy (ICOS), the team can send out very restricted wavelengths of light through gaseous samples, to measure how much light each wavelength is absorbing. ICOS uses extremely reflective mirrors within a gas cell to measure the absorption rate of gas as each photon bounces back and forth tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times.

Previously, Curiosity used a similar technology called a tunable laser spectrometer. However, this technology only allows photons to bounce back and forth 81 times, which means it takes hours to make precise measurements of the tiny amount of methane (as low as 100 parts per trillion) in the Martian atmosphere. ABB’s technology, however, can make this measurement in a matter of minutes.

“We’ve been improving this technology a lot in the last 20 years,” says Moores.

Methane measurements remain relatively consistent on Earth, but on Mars they’re changing on a timescale of a year by a factor of three, hovering lower in winter and spring, and climbing to exorbitant heights in summer and fall.

"We thought Mars was a dead planet, but exciting things are happening even today."

Methane is being actively produced by something that can change rapidly. It could be ancient organic materials seeping through the surface and decomposing over time, or a microorganism community beneath the surface. Or it could be geological reactions between hot water and different types of rocks.

�첥��Ƶing other planets has given Moores a new perspective on life on Earth. Having grown up in St. John’s, Newfoundland, he is familiar with cold, harsh environments and how technology can play an important role in survival and quality of life.

“Out in space we have a lot of technology that we rely on here on Earth – satellites and GPS technology, to name a few.

“As Canadians, we have a deep connection to space exploration because we understand the role of technology in surviving uninhabitable environments, and this work has given me a lot of appreciation for that relationship.”

The post What is happening on Mars? appeared first on Ascend Magazine.

Traditionally, data is exchanged by creating copies that are shared by data owners for end users. Bitnobi offers up a different approach – a privacy-protected decentralized data sharing platform that keeps the raw data at the source and sends only aggregate data to the end user.

The idea originated with a group including Marin Litoiu, a former IBM scientist and now a professor of software engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and in the School of Information Technology. Litoiu is the founder and chief scientific officer of Bitnobi.

"In the last two decades or so, data has become the new gold. It's used in AI and machine learning, and in intelligent systems in general."

“In the last two decades or so, data has become the new gold. It’s used in AI and machine learning, and in intelligent systems in general,” says Litoiu. “Its potential for improving every aspect of economy and society is tremendous.”

Litoiu was inspired to overcome the major challenges of data sharing and wanted to create a way to advance research and discovery without compromising privacy.

In 2013, a team composed of Litoiu, Michael Smit (Dalhousie University) and Litoiu’s postdoctoral Fellows at the time, Bradley Simmons and Mark Schtern, approached the problem of data sharing with a solution called DaaSPatcher, with the idea that data could be dispatched as a service. The group met with Hassan Jaferi, a commercialization manager with Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (formerly MaRS Innovation) in 2014 with the goal of taking the technology a step further.

Through �첥��Ƶ, they commercialized the technology and launched the data sharing startup. The name Bitnobi was inspired by “bit” – the ones and zeros that make up the language of computer science – and “shinobi,” closely related to “ninja.”

“Our technology eliminates the need to transfer copies of raw data from a data owner to a data consumer,” explains Jaferi, now CEO of Bitnobi. “Bitnobi flips the paradigm of data sharing from a ‘need to know’ to a ‘need to share.’”

By using a web interface provided by Bitnobi, end users run their software and data custodian premises, while the owners of the data remain in control at all times, determining the rules of engagement as to what and how much data can be accessed.

What Bitnobi offers is “clean, segmented and anonymized data,” explains Litoiu. “Bitnobi governs and audits usage policies on behalf of data custodians and federates data from different sources to prevent unauthorized usage.”

Given the number of serious data breaches that occur internationally, it’s a simple yet ingenious approach to data sharing that will prove to be a gamechanger for Canadian innovation.

Bitnobi has already caught the attention of major private and public sector partners in health care, government and defense – areas that are defined by heavy bureaucracy, data security, data privacy and governance. In a new partnership, Diabetes Action Canada is engaging Bitnobi to deploy a decentralized health care data-sharing network that will unlock diabetes data.

“Corporate organizations, like Roche Canada, have been very supportive of startup companies like Bitnobi in terms of providing us with the opportunity to develop proof of concept activities,” says Jaferi.

Marin Litoiu remains close to Bitnobi as a board member and chief science officer. His lab at York works with Bitnobi to envision future problems to tackle. Bitnobi has employed several York graduates and the University remains a shareholder in the company.

The post York innovation opens the door to decentralized data sharing appeared first on Ascend Magazine.