Astronomers using ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory have demonstrated beyond doubt that dead stars known as white dwarfs can reignite and explode as supernovae. The finding came after the unique signature of gamma rays from the radioactive elements created in one of these explosions was captured for the first time. (from esa.int )
The explosions in question are known as Type Ia supernovae, long suspected to be the result of a white dwarf star blowing up because of a disruptive interaction with a companion star. However, astronomers have lacked definitive evidence that a white dwarf was involved until now. The ‘smoking gun’ in this case was evidence for radioactive nuclei being created by fusion during the thermonuclear explosion of the white dwarf star.
“Integral has all the capabilities to detect the signature of this fusion, but we had to wait for more than ten years for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch a nearby supernova,” says Eugene Churazov, from the Space Research Institute (IKI) in Moscow, Russia and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics,in Garching, Germany.
Although Type Ia supernovae are expected to occur frequently across the Universe they are rare occurrences in any one galaxy, with typical rates of one every few hundred years.
Integral’s chance came on 21 January 2014, when students at the University College London’s teaching observatory at Mill Hill, UK detected a type Ia supernova, later named SN2014J, in the nearby galaxy M82.
According to the theory of such explosions, the carbon and oxygen found in a white dwarf should be fused into radioactive nickel during the explosion. This nickel should then quickly decay into radioactive cobalt, which would itself subsequently decay, on a somewhat longer timescale, into stable iron.
Because of its proximity – at a distance of about 11.5 million light-years from Earth, SN2014J is the closest of its type to be detected in decades – Integral stood a good chance of seeing the gamma rays produced by the decay. Within one week of the initial discovery, an observing plan to use Integral had been drawn-up and approved.
Using Integral to study the aftermath of the supernova explosion, scientists looked for the signature of cobalt decay – and they found it, in exactly the quantities that the models predicted.
“The consistency of the spectra, obtained by Integral 50 days after the explosion, with that expected from cobalt decay in the expanding debris of the white dwarf was excellent,” says Churazov, who is lead author of a paper describing this study and reported in the journal Nature.
With that confirmation in hand, other astronomers could begin to look into the details of the process. In particular, how the white dwarf is detonated in the first place.
White dwarfs are inert stars that contain up to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun squeezed into a volume about the same size as the Earth. Being inert, they can’t simply blow themselves up. Instead, astronomers believe that they leech matter from a companion star, which builds up on the surface until a critical total mass is reached. At that point, the pressure in the heart of the white dwarf triggers a catastrophic thermonuclear detonation.
Early Integral observations of SN2014J tell a somewhat different story, and have been the focus of a separate study, reported online in Science Express by Roland Diehl from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany, and colleagues.
Diehl and his colleagues detected gamma rays from the decay of radioactive nickel just 15 days after the explosion. This was unexpected, because during the early phase of a Type Ia supernova, the explosion debris is thought to be so dense that the gamma rays from the nickel decay should be trapped inside.
“We were puzzled by this surprising signal, and some from the group even thought it must be wrong,” says Diehl. “We had long and ultimately very fruitful discussions about what might explain these data.”
A careful examination of the theory showed that the signal would have been hidden only if the explosion had begun in the heart of the white dwarf. Instead, Diehl and colleagues think that what they are seeing is evidence for a belt of gas from the companion star that must have built up around the equator of the white dwarf. This outer layer detonated, forming the observed nickel and then triggering the internal explosion that became the supernova.
“Regardless of the fine details of how these supernovae are triggered, Integral has proved beyond doubt that a white dwarf is involved in these stellar cataclysms,” says Erik Kuulkers, ESA’s Integral Project Scientist. “This clearly demonstrates that even after almost twelve years in operation, Integral is still playing a crucial role in unraveling some of the mysteries of the high-energy Universe.”
With military pomp and traditional rituals, South Africa buried Nelson Mandela on Sunday, the end of an exceptional journey for the prisoner turned president who transformed the nation. (from cnn.com)
Mandela was laid to rest in his childhood village of Qunu.
Tribal leaders clad in animal skins joined dignitaries in dark suits at the grave site overlooking the rolling green hills.
As pallbearers walked toward the site after a funeral ceremony, helicopters whizzed past dangling the national flag. Cannons fired a 21-gun salute, its echoes ringing over the quiet village.
Mandela’s widow, Graca Machel, dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief as she watched the proceedings.
“Yours was truly a long walk to freedom. Now you have achieved the ultimate freedom in the bosom of God, your maker,” an officiator at the grave site said.
Military pallbearers gently removed the South African flag that draped the coffin and handed it to President Jacob Zuma, who gave it to Mandela’s family.
At the request of the family, the lowering of the casket was closed to the media.
Sony proudly showed off its PlayStation 4 hardware for the first time at E3, and now we’re getting a peek at what developers are working with this generation thanks to the FCC. (from engadget.com)
The DUH-D1000AA prototype Development Kit for PS4 is listed in these documents, tested for its Bluetooth and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi radios. As one would expect, the diagrams show it eschews the sleek design of the consumer model for extra cooling, a shape made for rack mounts plus extra indicator lights and ports. Also of note is a “max clock frequency” listing of 2.75GHz, and although we don’t know how fast the game system will run by default, it’s interesting to hear what all that silicon may be capable of (as a commenter points out below, that may relate to the system’s 8GB of GDDR5 RAM) while maintaining a temperature between 5 and 35 degrees celsius. Hit the link below to check out the documents for yourself, after seeing this and the system’s controller become a part of the FCC’s database all we’re left waiting for is Mark Cerny’s baby.
IBM and four universities are planning a research project into cognitive computing, which seeks to build computers that operate in a manner closer to the human mind.(from pcworld.com)
The goal is to create systems that extend well beyond Watson, IBM’s computer that famously competed on the trivia game show Jeopardy and defeated two former champions, IBM said in a news release.The project will be undertaken with Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, IBM said.
IBM linked the research with “big data,” the term for using computers in new ways to process large volumes of structured and unstructured data in order to make it more accessible and useful.
Topics to be explored include how applications can boost group decision making, how processing power and algorithms apply to artificial intelligence, how systems should be designed for more natural interaction and how deep learning impacts automated pattern recognition in science.
IBM said there is a need for additional research to identify systems and processes to support computing models that allow systems and people to work together in different domains of expertise.
It is hoped that cognitive computers will process natural language and unstructured data, learning by experience as humans do, according to IBM’s website.
Computer won’t replace people, but will “act as a decision support system and help them make decisions, whether in health care, finance or customer service,” the company wrote.
“Computers today are just very large, very fast number crunchers and information manipulators,” IBM wrote. “They can process lots of data, but they really don’t think. ”
IBM is already working on a project called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics or SyNAPSE, which seeks to imitate how neurons receive sensory input and connect. The goal of that project is to mimic the brain’s computing efficiency, size and power usage — without being programmed.
Scientists from 135 research institutions are in Geneva this week for the launch of the Human Brain Project. The goal of the neuroscience project is to foster a deeper understanding of how the human brain works.(from swissinfo.ch)
where does a neuron start?
“Today we are beginning a journey to unify our understanding of the brain. It’s a very exciting journey and a very difficult journey that will require hundreds if not thousands of scientists over the next ten years. It will provide us with the foundation to understanding mental health, brain disease and ultimately who we are as humans,” coordinator Henry Markam told swissinfo.ch on Monday. Markam is a neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).
In January, the European Union (EU) selected the Human Brain Project (HBP) for one of its flagship grants, worth more than €1 billion (CHF1.23 billion). The project’s total budget is an estimated €1.2 billion.
Over the next 30 months, HBP scientists will set up and test research platforms covering the following subjects: neuroinformatics, brain simulation, high-performance computing, medical informatics, neuromorphic computing and neurorobotics. In 2016, these platforms will be ready for use by researchers all over the world.
As Markam told swissinfo.ch, the HBP will be especially helpful in coping with the challenges of aging.
“In the next few decades society faces enormous challenges of overpopulation and increasing aging and we are not ready. This will place new stresses on society and like a pressure cooker will produce new diseases,” Markam said.
“We believe this project will provide a concrete foundation for how to understand the brain, from genes through to cognition and behaviour. We will also be able to understand how the brain breaks down and gives us different diseases.”
(And at this point you will find a mainstream articel and a hint to their understanding of this very important Project. 6/66′)
What if you could build a computer that works just like the human brain? Scientists have started to imagine the possibilities: We could invent new forms of industrial machinery, create fully autonomous thinking cars, devise new kinds of home appliances. A new project in Europe hopes to create a computer brain just that powerful in the next ten years — and it’s incredibly well-funded. (from foxnews.com)
There’s just one catch: computers that fast simply haven’t been invented yet.
The Human Brain Project kicks off Oct. 7 at a conference in Switzerland. Over the next 10 years, about 80 science institutions and at least 20 government entities in Europe will figure out how to make that computer brain. The project will cost about $10 billion euros — or about $1.3B in US dollars.
The research hinges on creating a super-powerful computer that’s 1,000 times faster than those in use today. If you’re keeping track, that’s an “exascale” supercomputer, one fast enough to model a nuclear explosion or the complex, planetwide forces that shape the climate. Just a few years ago, scientists started using “petascale” supercomputers like Blue Waters at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Illinois that went online last year. “Well-known manufacturers of supercomputers like IBM, Cray, Intel, and Bull, are committed to building the first exascale machines by approximately 2020. So we are confident we will have the machines we need,” Henry Markram, the director of the Human Brain Project at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, told FoxNews.com. Markram also directs the Blue Brain project started in 2005 that hopes to reverse-engineering the human brain by rebuilding the molecules.
For scientists, these sorts of projects are all about understanding ourselves. The brain is the least understood organ in the human body. We don’t really know how the brain controls our thoughts, our bodily functions, or our behavior. And, Markham says the lack of processing power in modern computer is the least of our worries.
He says a computer brain will consume gigawatts of power, require new forms of memory, and force scientists to look at cutting edge storage techniques. But the immense technical hurdles will be worth the effort. The first phases will help us understand how the brain functions. In later phases, we’ll find out how we learn, how we see and hear, and why the brain sometimes doesn’t process information correctly.
Dr. Gayani DeSilva, a psychiatrist with a private practice in Orange, Calif., told FoxNews.com a human brain model could have “unimaginable” implications for medicine, helping us learn how we adapt, heal, and develop. “The more we know about our brains, the more we can utilize our brains to its full potential, intervene when issues arise, replicate in artificial creations the power of the brain’s ability to integrate a vast amount of information that then causes other systems to perform specific actions,” she says.
“The human brain is immensely complex, and a model reduces this complexity into a controlled system. In a model, scientists can test hypotheses as to how the human brain works, and what occurs in disease in order to understand how to treat neurological conditions. It’s analogous to astronauts training in a flight simulator prior to a shuttle launch,” added Amina Ann Qutub, a bioengineer at Rice University.
Fortunately, scientists won’t have to wait 10 years for the results. Markram says there will be initial models they can use for medical research with a year. In three years, they will have models that could help us build new kinds of computer chips. (That’s right: the brain project itself will help them build the computer brain.)
As with any cutting edge science, we don’t know yet what we don’t know. (“mh!” i’ll compare it to the found new knowledge in the field of human genomics. 6/66) Qutub says this is all unmapped territory. “The number of total cells including the neurons, vascular cells, and glia in a human brain is more than the number of stars in the Milky Way,” she said.
That’s enough to give scientists quite the headache.
Last month Mawuna Remarque Koutonin, an editor of siliconafrica.com, has made a vibrant call to “Close the Incubators and Accelerators, and Open FabLabs and MakerSpaces instead”, simply because Africa needs more people with the skills to fabricate something than additional people with oratory prowess. “More Makers, Not More Pitchers” is the basic message.
(from siliconafrica.com)
Mawuna Remarque Koutonin has recently met Koffi Sénamé Agbodjinou, founder of WoeLab, the first MakerSpace in Togo (West Africa). And, starting from today, he will start featuring the few African MakerSpaces which have the power to bring technology to the masses.
In the following Interview, Agbodjinou shared with him his passion for making things, his dedication to empowering people with technology through open and democratic projects and spaces, and above all his dream to “Make Everybody Equal in Front of New Technologies.”
Where did the MakerSpace idea comes from?
I have always been interested in the know-how and the efficient organizational system of african traditional societies. That’s why I have this double training of anthropologist and architect with an interest in reuse of traditional forms, economical options and self-build.
For a while I ignored the ICT environment because I thought it was remote of these worlds of modesty where I evolved, associating it to individualism, waste and pollution. This mistrust vanished little time ago when I discovered what the philosopher Pekka Himanen name « The Hacker Ethic » : recycling, solidarity, economy of means, autonomy… These values which are characteristic of a certain approach of ICT (particularly hackerspace and FabLab) and which reminded me strangely what I have been used to observe in traditional groups.
So I began first, in a research perspective, wondering how to put in relationship and make collaborate in the transformation of the African cities these two universes who share apparently some common values. I tried to establish a dialog between the hacker of the MIT and the traditional tamberma builder, both of them ‘makers’, according to my intuition.
One thing leading to another, the idea came to create a space to underline this identified proximity. I was so motivated to do it especially because my vision was that these new open-spaces and their technologies was the source of future important upheavals. It is an intuition which has just been validated by President Barack Obama himself because, in the famous Speech on the State of the Union of this week, he clearly suggested that the technologies like 3D printing which develops now in Labs will be the source of the next Industrial Revolution.
In short, in our approach, we can also find the sense of urgency and a responsibility to work so that Africa does not miss this new train on the departure.
How did you get started?
We began modestly, last summer with our own funds and some recycling. We first occupied a classroom of a small primary school; in return of some renovation works, we made. The operation is piloted by the association ‘L’Africaine d’architecture’. Since, the community has been tripled and, after six months of operations, WoeLab is a fast growing adventure with its very young team.
How does the center works?
We can say that until now, we tried to consolidate the capacities of the community, in particular with public sessions of OpenSource machines co-making. For that we did some workshops like the Boot-Woe-Camp last December. About sixty young people came and worked around different projects like the creation of a little digital milling CNC or the fabrication of an educational robot.
With our new place we will open permanently, respecting liberty, exchange and transparency. Through this three preoccupation I define our position: Democracy of Technology, Coworking (make collaborate people of various horizons, social classes, ages and expertises) and OpenSource.
In due term, WoeLab aspires to be a virtuous system with technologies in free access inside a friendly environment with benevolent ecosystem. In such an environment, passionate people will be ready to share their knowledge and transmit. Also, we’ll find intellectual, human and tool- resources to realize all kind of projects corresponding to our scope statement « LowHighTech !
Your Slogan is “Mila Woe”, what does it means?
« We gonna do it !»
You have 3 main activities: You act as a resource center, an incubator for early stage startups, and also as a networking place bringing together the various players in ICT fields in Togo. Can you share with us how are these activities going?
These three activities are complementary, they enrich each other : Collective Intelligence generated thanks to the status of spaces of Networking feed the startups which are incubated. Those one have a moral contract: donate a part of their benefits to keep alive the place, to maintain it open and free –access to our neighborhood.
You have 2 very interesting 3D printing projects. Tell us more about W.Afate project?
We haven’t yet found the potential of 3D printer in African context. Nevertheless, it’s a wonderful tool to educate to the ‘hacker’ mentality and Fablab. According to our experience, it’s the ideal model of co-making project for establishing relationships and learning while making.
First, we have started the assembly of one of these 3D printers (RepRap ‘: Mendel Prusa) with a kit from France. Spontaneously Afate realized the difficulty of getting a kit to make our projects possible. He began to build an empowering 3D printer made only with recycling, e-waste. The W.Afate is the first african 3D printer and the biggest pride of the Lab. The project is well advanced and we are beginning the phase of its documentation.
Where do you see the center in 5 years?
For me, it’s difficult to project myself so far. I can only say where we might be the next month.
This March, we begin the campaign ‘MI LA WOE’ (“We gonna do it”). It’s the second big time of our adventure. After a first time dedicated to the constitution of the core of the Lab and the consolidation of its capacity, I think that we are now ready to begin our principal challenge: go out and meet the population and begin to see to what extent we can be an appropriate answer to questions of everyday life.
We hope to discover that we are a “tool” that little people can easily use. We are planning workshops with women, a caravan inside the country and the thematic opening of the space dedicated to small craftsmen. The main axes of the program are: *Fablab and rurality, *Fablab and informal sector in Africa, *FabLab and improved quality of urban life. I think we will be judged based on our ability to handle basic issues in Togo, .
You are very passionate about the Makerspace. How the activities of the center are currently connected to the real life needs of Togolese people?
The projects which are developed in the WoeLab might have implications in all kind of field. An example : currently Sam, one of the Lab residents, is working on an independent refrigeration system working with solar energy. It’s a project, which if it succeeds, might change the life our moms in the markets.
That being said, we don’t want to reduce our work to activities that correspond to people need (It would seem like we always decide for them and there is the risk to be paralyzed if we have no ideas). We want the empowerment of the communities but also in the choice of their project.
This is why the option is to first enable ordinary people with the power to make by themselves through the acquisition of the mastery of iconic technologies of MakerSpaces like the RepRap. Then we bet that populations, when they will be initiated, will transform the use of those technologies to develop themselves their own projects closest to their daily preoccupations.
That’ also why we would like to promote the multiplications of MakerSpaces beginning from ours. We are convinced that more communities will be free from the influence of our WoeLab and will conquer new territories, more we will achieve our goal : discovering new problematics. We are going in this direction with the ‘RepLab’ program.
Yes, the RepLab program is with Archicamp, these two processes which allow you to develop an utopia which you call “African HubCités”. What is it exactly?
It’s a concept of alternative urbanization. It wants to give back to our populations the power of transforming the place where they are living thanks to a program of « Camps » of architecture (to propose solutions) and « Labs » (to make and replicate solutions). This concept might encourage the african city of tomorrow to become responsible and virtuous with an experimental architecture which will use local improved materials. We begin to experiment this method in some areas in Lomé. I am working on this project in our community. It’s probably one of the most ambitious project of WoeLab.
Obviously you need support and additional tools and equipment for the center, what are your current needs and how could our readers help you?
We do not have the same resources as other african FabLab witch are directly under the MIT Labs Initiative or other Western networks initiatives. And to be faithful to the hacker ethic, we have chosen so far not to introduce funding requests to public institutions or big groups. So we fund our space trough spontaneous acts of solidarity and donations.
We collect all kinds of tools and materials that can still be used. And we are mainly asking for new projects and are paying attention to all kind of collaboration proposals with other HackerSpaces or Fablabs in the world. We also offer our know-how and lessons learned to any Makerspace which would arrive in Togo.
We’ve recently received Mo Ajala from Nigeria, who is developing the idea on an innovative and ambitious project in Lagos implying the FabLab concept . This kind of visits is very enriching and stimulating for our dynamics. Roughly we would like to favor the exchanges of services, experiences and skills sharing rather than the financial exchanges. It will be possible soon also support directly projects incubated in the Lab via online sponsorship web sites.
As a Maker, what are your joys? What are the challenges?
I feel a bit like a traveler who has discovered this possibility that Einstein had suggested and that mathematicians call ‘wormhole’: a channel which allows, in a time folded on itself, to communicate in two different space-time .
I observe the young people of this small community that I manage, I see an incredible potential; but which requires to be put in the service of a real vision. It is certainly, for me personally, the biggest challenge. The African are submerged by information and have difficulty in sorting out.
If WoeLab can very modestly contribute to be this software, which allows to identify, to hold and to sublimate what is good for us, then the adventure will have been worth it.
“Integral has all the capabilities to detect the signature of this fusion, but we had to wait for more than ten years for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch a nearby supernova,” says Eugene Churazov, from the Space Research Institute (IKI) in Moscow, Russia and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics,in Garching, Germany.
