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Constantine, Capitale 2015 de la Culture arabe » : Un salon du livre pour la fin de la manifestation
L’esplanade de l’université Mentouri de Constantine accueillera, dans le cadre des festivités organisées à l’occasion de la clôture de la manifestation «Constantine, capitale de la culture arabe», un Salon national du livre, et ce du 11 au 16 avril.
Lors d’une conférence de presse animée au siège du cabinet du wali, lundi, le président-directeur général de l’Entreprise nationale des arts graphiques (ENAG), Messaoudi Hamidou, a annoncé la participation de pas moins de 140 éditeurs et distributeurs de livres à ce Salon, sélectionnés sur une liste initiale comptant 500, en tenant compte de leur proximité avec la ville, qu’elle soit géographique, ou que lesdites maisons aient publié des ouvrages dans le cadre de l’événement culturel arabe, ou encore qu’ils disposent dans leur catalogue de livres en relation avec Constantine. Ainsi, le comité d’organisation a opté pour l’installation d’un chapiteau de 4.000 m2 qui accueillera «plusieurs milliers d’ouvrages publiés en Algérie et dans le monde entier». Le choix de l’université Mentouri paraît, à cet égard, des plus appropriés, vu que le site est bien desservi en transports en commun (bus, tramway), de même que cela assure une importante fréquentation du Salon de la part de la nombreuse communauté estudiantine. Outre l’exposition-vente des livres, notamment ceux édités par le commissariat de «Constantine, capitale de la culture arabe», le Salon comprendra des conférences-débats qui seront animés par des auteurs et des universitaires, à l’image de Nedjma Benachour, Waciny Laredj, Amine Zaoui et Abdallah Hammadi. Au sujet de la présence de Constantine au Salon international du livre de Paris, et dont elle était l’invitée d’honneur, le PDG de l’ENAG s’est déclaré satisfait des conditions dans lesquelles s’est opéré cette participation. «Les hommes de lettres et les personnalités sélectionnés ont dignement représenté la ville ; d’ailleurs, l’espace réservé à Constantine a vu défiler nombre de personnalités politiques françaises, dont le président François Hollande et le Premier ministre Manuel Valls », a-t-il notamment avancé. Enfin, à une question relative à l’absence de maisons d’édition arabes, annoncées pourtant dans un premier temps par le commissariat de l’événement, M. Hamidou a affirmé que cela est dû à la conjoncture économique actuelle. «Nous nous sommes entendus avec la tutelle sur la nécessité de ne conférer qu’un cachet national à ce Salon, autrement il nous aurait fallu demander une rallonge budgétaire au ministère des Finances, ce qui aurait été malvenu», tout en précisant que le Qalon a nécessité une enveloppe de 30 millions DA. Pour rappel, le Salon national du livre de Constantine a été précédé par l’organisation de deux expositions du livre au niveau de l’esplanade attenante à la place du 1er-Novembre (ex-La Brèche).
Issam B.
The truth about exoplanets
Astronomers are beginning to glimpse what exoplanets orbiting distant suns are actually like.
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The trickle of discoveries has become a torrent.
Little more than two decades after the first planets were found orbiting other stars, improved instruments on the ground and in space have sent the count soaring: it is now past 2,000. The finds include 'hot Jupiters', 'super-Earths' and other bodies with no counterpart in our Solar System — and have forced astronomers to radically rethink their theories of how planetary systems form and evolve.
Yet discovery is just the beginning. Astronomers are aggressively moving into a crucial phase in exoplanet research: finding out what these worlds are like. Most exoplanet-finding techniques reveal very little apart from the planet's mass, size and orbit. But is it rocky like Earth or a gas giant like Jupiter? Is it blisteringly hot or in deep-freeze? What is its atmosphere made of? And does that atmosphere contain molecules such as water, methane and oxygen in odd, unstable proportions that might be a signature of life?
The only reliable tool that astronomers can use to tackle such questions is spectroscopy: a technique that analyses the wavelengths of light coming directly from a planet's surface, or passing through its atmosphere. Each element or molecule produces a characteristic pattern of 'lines' — spikes of light emission or dips of absorption at known wavelengths — so observers can look at a distant object's spectrum to read off what substances are present. “Without spectroscopy, you are to some extent guessing what you see,” says Ian Crossfield, an astronomer at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
But spectroscopy has conventionally required a clear view of the object, which is generally not available for exoplanets. Most new worlds show up only as an infinitesimal dimming of a star as the otherwise invisible planet passes across its face; others are known only from the slight wobble of a star being tugged back and forth by the gravity of an unseen companion. Astronomers often say that trying to study such an object is like staring into a far-off searchlight (the star) and trying to see a firefly (the planet) hovering nearby.
In recent years, however, observers have begun to make headway. Some have extracted the spectra of light passing through the atmospheres of exoplanets as they cross the face of their parent stars — the equivalent of measuring the colour of the firefly's wings as it flits through the searchlight beam. Others have blocked the light of the parent star so that they can see exoplanets in distant orbits and record their spectra directly.
In the past two years, astronomers have begun to record spectra from a new generation of custom-built instruments such as the Gemini Planet Imager on the 8.1-metre Gemini South telescope at the summit of Cerro Pachon in Chile. Exoplanet spectroscopy will be a priority for several spacecraft and ground-based telescopes that are now in development. And astronomers are waiting eagerly for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will bring unprecedented light-gathering power and sensitivity to the task when it launches in 2018.
These are heady times for those hoping to get a deep understanding of new-found worlds, says Thayne Currie, an astronomer at Japan's Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. “We are on the cusp of a revolution.”
Transit spectroscopy
The first exoplanet in orbit around a Sun-like star was discovered in 1995, when astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland detected a regular, back-and-forth wobble in the movement of star 51 Pegasi. They concluded1 that it was caused by the gravity of a planet at least 150 times the mass of Earth — roughly half the mass of Jupiter — orbiting the star every 4 days or so. Other discoveries followed as exoplanet fever took hold, and led telescope managers to make more observing time available for planet-hunting.
The list of finds soon sparked an idea for astronomer David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He reasoned that when a planet 'transits', or passes in front of a star, molecules in its atmosphere will absorb some of the starlight, and leave their spectroscopic fingerprints in it. Might it be possible to detect those fingerprints?
To find out, Charbonneau decided to look for sodium. “It's not particularly abundant,” he says, “but sodium has very clear spectroscopic features” — excited molecules of it emit two very strong lines of light, which give sodium street lights their familiar yellow-orange colour. When the sodium is backlit, the light that floods through it has dark bands at the same points of the spectrum, and Charbonneau hoped that these would be comparatively easy to spot.
They were: in 2002, Charbonneau and his co-workers announced2 that they had used the Hubble Space Telescope to detect a sodium signal from a Jupiter-sized exoplanet transiting HD 209458, a star about 47 parsecs (150 light years) from Earth. It was both the first detection and the first spectroscopic measurement of an exoplanet atmosphere. Within a few years, space-based transit observations were recording more complete spectra, and detecting gases such as carbon monoxide and water vapour.
Using this technique means looking for very tiny changes in a star's spectrum, says Charbonneau — maybe 1 part in 10,000. Hubble was and is observers' first choice of instrument: it does not have to contend with absorption of light by gases in Earth's atmosphere, so its spectra are very clean and easy to interpret. But competition for observing time is intense, so astronomers also use ground-based telescopes.
These do have to deal with atmospheric interference, but can overcome it by collecting more light than Hubble can. This allows them to detect fainter objects and to separate individual spectral features more clearly. That pays off because most exoplanets are in star systems that are moving relative to Earth. “So their wavelengths are Doppler-shifted,” says Charbonneau, meaning that the radiation coming from them is stretched or squeezed by their movement, displacing the spectral lines slightly from the corresponding lines in Earth's atmosphere. Because the two sets of spectral lines no longer overlap, observers can know for sure how much of the signal comes from the exoplanet. Using this method, astronomers have been able to detect gases making up as little as 1 part in 100,000 of a planet's atmosphere.
An extension of the transit-spectroscopy technique has allowed astronomers to measure the light reflected from a planet's face. They do this after the planet moves across the face of its star, when it will be on the far side of its orbit, with its daylight side facing Earth (see 'Star shades'). Observers will not be able to see it as a separate object — but they will know that its spectrum is combined with that of the star, says Nicolas Cowan, an astronomer at the McGill Space Institute in Montreal, Canada. Shortly afterwards, however, the planet will pass behind the star and be eclipsed — at which point, says Cowan, “you go from a planet and star to just a star. If you measure the difference in flux, you can tell how much light comes from the planet.” The process is demanding, he says, but it can measure the infrared spectra of a Jupiter-sized planet in a close orbit even if it is less than 0.1% as bright as the star.
Source: Spectrum, NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech); Direct Imaging, C. Marois et al./NRC Canada
An even more ambitious application of this technique is to follow an exoplanet through a complete orbit. By subtracting the star-only spectrum obtained during the planet's eclipse, observers can get spectra of the planet's atmosphere as its silhouette changes from a thin crescent just after transit to a half-moon shape as it swings to the side, then a full-face view on the far side. This allows them to produce a comparatively fine-grained map of the atmosphere and how it changes over time. Cowan and his co-workers first reported3 using this technique in 2012, with infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. They showed that the exoplanet HD 189733b was hottest within about 10 degrees of its equator, as predicted. Since then, other researchers have used Hubble and Spitzer4 to map exoplanet atmospheres in more detail. And Cowan says that with the JWST, “it will be easy to make a 3D map of the atmosphere of a hot Jupiter.”
Transit spectroscopy does have its limitations. Some exoplanets have nearly featureless spectra characteristic of clouds, which consist of droplets or fine dust particles that do not leave their imprint on the spectrum in the same way as isolated molecules5. The clouds are a big headache, says Charbonneau. “We don't have any direct measurement of what the clouds are made of. We just know they block the light.” They aren't necessarily made of water vapour. Charbonneau points out that the cloud-shrouded super-Earth GJ 1214b, 12 parsecs from Earth, is so hot that its clouds could be made of zinc sulfide and potassium chloride. On still hotter worlds, the clouds could contain droplets of iron or rock.
Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, points to another limitation of the transit method. “When light hits a transiting planet, it isn't just absorbed,” she says. “It also gets bent in the atmosphere”, making it impossible for an observer on Earth to see. This bending, known as refraction, increases as the atmosphere becomes thicker. If alien astronomers were trying to get a spectroscopic reading of Earth, she says, refraction would prevent them from probing any deeper than 10 kilometres from the surface6. But most of Earth's water is in the lowest 10 kilometres of its atmosphere, she says — so by analogy, “water is going to be one of the hardest things to find in an Earth-like exoplanet”.
Direct imaging
An alternative approach to finding and studying exoplanets is trying to block out the starlight and image them directly, the equivalent of looking for the firefly by holding a hand in front of the searchlight. Early efforts to do this were futile: even the dimmest parent star is much brighter than an exoplanet. The secret of success is to seek brighter fireflies wandering well away from the searchlight — that is, young planets still glowing from the heat of formation, in orbits far from their stars. The first directly imaged exoplanets were announced by two groups simultaneously in 2008. The objects included 3 planets about 60 million years old orbiting the star HR 8799 (ref. 7), and a single planet more than 100 million years old orbiting Fomalhaut (ref. 8), a bright star some 8 parsecs from Earth.
To obtain the spectra of such objects, astronomers turned to adaptive optics, a technology that corrects for the twinkling of a star caused by turbulence in Earth's atmosphere and makes it much easier to spot any exoplanets in its vicinity. Also essential are discs inserted into the telescope's optical pathway to block light from the star, and sophisticated signal processors to digitally sharpen the images.
“These are heady times for those hoping to get a deep understanding of new-found worlds.”
“Direct-imaging spectra are beautiful and tell you a lot about the planets and how they formed,” says Bruce Macintosh, an astronomer at Stanford University in California and a co-discoverer of the HR 8799 planets. In 2011, he and his colleagues reported9 the first detection of water vapour on one of those planets using a first-generation direct-imaging instrument that could observe only exoplanets with temperatures higher than 1,000 kelvin. Now, Macintosh is the principal investigator for the Gemini Planet Imager, which, along with the similar Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) imager at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, is a second-generation instrument built to directly image and take spectra of exoplanets down to about 600 kelvin.
The Gemini instrument launched a multiyear search for Jupiter-like planets orbiting hot, young stars in November 2014. Early observations of 51 Eridani, a 20-million-year-old star about 30 parsecs away, spotted a Jupiter-like world 2.5 times farther from the star than Jupiter is from the Sun10. The spectrum showed that this exoplanet, dubbed 51 Eridani b, has an atmosphere containing more methane — a known component of Jupiter's atmosphere — than any other exoplanet. “The really exciting thing with 51 Eridani b and other new exoplanets,” says Currie, “is that we see them when their spectra look a little more normal” and Jupiter-like than those of planets that are even younger and hotter, where methane is strangely absent. That could provide crucial insight into planet formation, the current theory of which is based mostly on data from the Solar System.
SPHERE has embarked on a similar survey, but started later, in February 2015, and has less to report. Thus far, says team member Anthony Boccaletti, an astronomer with the Paris Observatory, the most interesting discovery11 is a group of five gas clumps moving at high velocity away from the young star AU Microscopii, which is known to be unusually prone to flares and other activity. “We don't really know what they are,” he says.
Star surveys
Exoplanet spectroscopy has come a long way from its early days, when practitioners were struggling to extract extremely faint signals from noisy environments. The first results were often problematic. Now, Crossfield says, “for the most part what we are finding holds up and is repeatable”.
A coming generation of instruments promises to reveal even more. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scheduled to launch in August next year, will spend two years searching for exoplanets transiting more than 200,000 of the brightest stars in the solar neighbourhood. Exoplanets will also be targets for the JWST. With its 6.5-metre telescope and advanced instruments, Webb should see many more than the 2.4-metre Hubble. “TESS and Webb will own this space in five years,” predicts Macintosh.
Two other planned — but not yet approved — space missions will use exoplanet spectroscopy. NASA's 2.4-metre Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, expected to launch in the mid-2020s, would spend most of its time on cosmological questions, but is expected to find and study about 2,600 exoplanets. Currie says that it should be able to image Jupiter-like planets orbiting nearby stars, although smaller, colder bodies similar to Pluto or the hypothetical 'Planet X' speculated to exist at the edge of the Solar System — or Earth, for that matter — will remain out of reach. “We would need a 10-metre-scale telescope in space to do other Earths,” says Macintosh.
The second mission is ARIEL, the Atmospheric Remote-Sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, one of three candidates for a medium-class mission to be launched by the European Space Agency in 2026. The 1-metre telescope would be dedicated to transit spectroscopy and a survey of exoplanets at temperatures higher than 500 kelvin.
In about a decade, astronomers hope to see the completion of three super-giant telescopes: the 24.5-metre Giant Magellan Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the Thirty-Meter Telescope planned for Mauna Kea, and the European Extremely Large Telescope on Cerro Armazones in Chile. All three will be equipped with adaptive optics systems, and it's a safe bet that they will be doing exoplanet spectroscopy to test models based on the data gleaned up to that point.
Those measurements could be astronomers' first realistic chance to find life in the wider Universe, says Charbonneau. “I'm so excited.”
Portes ouvertes sur les biotechnologies les 11-12 avril au CRBt
Chers collègues,
J'ai le plaisir et l’honneur de vous inviter à assister à nos premières portes ouvertes sur les biotechnologies que nous organisons le 11 – 12 avril, au CRBt, sis à la Nouvelle Ville Ali Mendjeli à Constantine.
Nous avons dédié ces premières journées, entres autres, aux différents représentants du secteur socio-économique dans le but de faire connaitre notre centre et ce que la recherche partenariale en biotechnologie pourrait apporter à la société en général.
Vous ne saurez ignorer que le Centre de Recherche en Biotechnologie est actuellement l’unique centre de recherche dédié à la recherche en biotechnologie à l’échelle nationale. A ce titre, il est habilité à coordonner les réseaux de recherche et développement technologique dans le domaine des biotechnologies, afin de contribuer à répondre aux besoins du pays dans les secteurs de la santé, l’agriculture, l’agroalimentaire, l’environnement et l’industrie.
Aussi, ces journées seront l’occasion pour nous de discuter la possibilité de création d’équipes et/ou laboratoires mixtes en choisissant des thématiques qui sont au cœur des priorités et préoccupations du pays.
En outre, avec la nouvelle orientation du Directeur Général de la DGRSDT, le CRBt compte mettre à la dispositions des étudiants en post graduation les ressources humaines et matériels de ces laboratoires afin de les accompagner dans la réalisation de leur travaux de recherche. Nous espérons que ces journées seront une opportunité pour découvrir nos activités de recherche et nos compétences.
Nous vous prions de nous confirmer votre participation, ou celles de vos représentants, par courriel et/ou fax aux numéros indiqués dans le flyer, ci-joint, et ce avant le 8 avril, 2016.
Concours de recrutement des enseignants: 6.000 dossiers déposés en 3 jours
par A. El Abci
Plus de 6.000 dossiers ont été déjà déposés en trois jours, depuis le début des inscriptions au concours de recrutement des enseignants des trois paliers d'enseignement, fixé pour le 30 du mois d'avril en cours, selon le directeur des concours et examens à la direction de l'éducation de Constantine, Med Larbi Aliouache. Sur ce sujet et sur les inscriptions qui doivent se faire uniquement par Internet, dira-t-il, les postes budgétaires dont a bénéficié la wilaya s'élèvent à 902 postes dont 105 pour le secondaire, 189 pour le moyen et 608 pour le cycle primaire. Et notre interlocuteur de poursuivre que pour ce qui concerne les facilités mises à la disposition des intéressés, relatives aux inscriptions par le biais d'Internet, la direction de l'éducation a ouvert 22 centres au niveau de la wilaya, répartis sur l'ensemble des 12 communes et ce, pour une bonne assurance de la réception de tous les dossiers. Faisant savoir, dans ce sillage, que la décision du ministère de tutelle d'élargir la possibilité de passer le concours à de nouvelles spécialités et filières, à l'instar des sciences politiques et d'autres encore, qui n'y ouvraient pas droit auparavant, est à l'origine de cette espèce de rush attendu. Sachant, ajoutera-t-il, que pour les dépôts de dossiers des candidats à ce concours de recrutement d'enseignants des trois paliers (primaire, moyen et secondaire), ont pour date limite fixée au 14 du mois en cours. Et de rappeler que le concours en question est fixé au 30 de ce mois d'avril, pour ce qui a trait aux épreuves écrites et ceux qui les passeront avec succès, seront convoqués pour l'examen oral qui aura lieu les 8 et 9 juin.
Le Salon de l’étudiant s’installera à Constantine, Alger, puis Oran
L’édition 2016 du Salon de l’étudiant algérien, organisé par The Graduate Fair, se tiendra du 14 au 19 avril dans trois villes du pays.
L’événement exposera ses stands d’abord dans la ville de Constantine le 14 avril au niveau de l’hôtel Novotel. Les 16 et 17 avril, ce sera au tour du Palais des expositions Moufdi Zakaria (Alger) d’accueillir le salon. Et enfin, après l’Est et le Centre, ce sera au tour de l’Ouest du pays de voir s’installer les différents exposants du salon.
La manifestation se déploiera donc à Oran, à l’hôtel Four points, le 19 avril. Pour ce qui est des nouveautés de cette édition, en plus de son déroulement au niveau de trois villes différentes - une première -, le salon s’est engagé dans un partenariat avec la Mission commerciale tunisienne à Alger. Cette dernière, selon Amel Seddiki, l’organisatrice de l’événement, organise en marge du salon les Rencontres professionnelles tuniso-algériennes B2B et B2C dans le secteur de l’enseignement supérieur et la formation technique et professionnelle.
«Une quinzaine d’universités, d’écoles et d’instituts supérieurs et institutions de formation tunisiens privés, parmi les plus importants du pays, seront à Alger (dimanche 17 avril) et à Oran (mardi 19 avril) pour des contacts avec les institutions homologues et les étudiants algériens. Plusieurs cursus pour l’enseignement et la formation seront proposés à l’occasion, notamment l’aéronautique (aérospatiale, pilotage…), l’engineering, l’informatique et télécoms, les finances, la médecine, le tourisme, le management, le marketing, etc.», explique Amel Seddiki.
Pour ce qui est des objectifs du Salon de l’étudiant algérien, cette dernière révèle l’ambition de rapprocher les apprenants algériens des différents organismes de formation nationaux et étrangers. «Nous avons l’ambition de rapprocher les apprenants algériens des différents organismes de formation algériens et étrangers afin que l’étudiant puisse éventuellement découvrir des filières qu’il ne connaissait pas auparavant et qui peuvent très bien le fasciner. Il pourra découvrir de nouveaux horizons, de nouveau pays d’accueil pour des formations à l’étranger», explique-t-elle en énumérant les différentes possibilités, à l’instar de l’apprentissage d’une langue étrangère, l’épanouissement personnel grâce à la maturité acquise, ainsi que la valorisation du curriculum vitae (CV) grâce au diplôme obtenu.
«Le premier objectif des études à l’étranger est de mettre en valeur sa formation, un parcours international a plus de valeur pour le recruteur. Cela montre que l’étudiant est autonome et ouvert d’esprit», développe encore l’organisatrice de l’événement dont le supplément El Watan étudiant est partenaire.
S’agissant de l’essence-même de cet événement, Amel Seddiki fait valoir que le Salon de l’étudiant algérien «se veut l’un des rares, sinon l’unique, espace de rencontre entre, d’une part, les formateurs (algériens et étrangers), toutes spécialités et catégories confondues, et, d’autre part, les apprenants de tous les niveaux et profils.»
Pour l’organisatrice, le départ, chaque année, de plus de 25 000 Algériens à l’étranger pour faire des études révèle un réel besoin et une problématique lancinante en matière de formation, qu’elle soit de base ou de perfectionnement. Pour pallier cela, le salon «se propose d’établir cette jonction pour permettre aux uns et aux autres de trouver toutes les réponses à leurs questions et ouvrir de nouvelles perspectives à travers les propositions d’un large éventail de formules adaptées à des besoins spécifiques», explique-t-elle.
The Graduate Fair - Salon de l’étudiant algérien - est un lieu de rencontre incontournable entre les acteurs de l’éducation (enseignants, formateurs, chefs d’établissement, conseillers d’orientation…), et les usagers du système éducatif (élèves, étudiants, parents, salariés ou demandeurs d’emploi en recherche de formations complémentaires…).
Fatma Zohra Foudil
Constantine - Entamé il y a une année: La semaine culturelle de Constantine pour la clôture
La manifestation «Constantine, capitale de la culture arabe 2015» arrive à sa fin et la semaine culturelle de Constantine prévue du 2 au 6 avril en cours sera la dernière semaine du genre organisée dans ce cadre. Aussi, cette manifestation de 6 jours, visiblement conçue par les organisateurs comme la cerise sur le gâteau, devait être inaugurée hier à 17h par le ministre de la Culture M. Azzedine Mihoubi à la salle Ahmed Bey, en présence des autorités locales et d'un public nombreux constitué de familles constantinoises.
Si l'on se réfère au programme établi par les organisateurs, la cérémonie d'ouverture de la semaine culturelle constantinoise aura été marquée par un spectacle haut en couleur exécuté par des troupes participantes à partir de la galerie menant à la grande salle de spectacles. Ces troupes ont simulé un mariage constantinois accompagné de la ghaita, la zorna, le t'bal et l'inévitable orchestre de musique malouf, pour accompagner l'entrée à la salle des membres de la délégation officielle, des invités et des familles constantinoises. Ceci fait, suivra l'inauguration des différentes expositions organisées dans les galeries de la salle autour de l'artisanat traditionnel constantinois, expositions auxquelles participent plus d'une dizaine d'associations et de maisons constantinoises connues sur la place. Mais la cérémonie officielle et protocolaire se déroulera dans la grande salle de spectacles et elle sera suivie d'un gala de malouf animé par les maîtres du genre comme Salim Fergani, Abbas Righi, la troupe des Aïssaoua et par les artistes constantinois Zineddine Bouabdallah et Zineddine Bouchaala.
Les journées suivantes seront sensiblement du même tonneau pour ce qui est des spectacles de musique. Toutefois, les organisateurs ont tenu à apporter une touche de modernité avec une soirée de jazz qui sera animée par la troupe SMOKE le mardi 5 avril à la grande salle Ahmed Bey. Le programme de la semaine comprend aussi des représentations théâtrales pour adultes et pour enfants qui se dérouleront sur les planches du Théâtre régional de Constantine (TRC), de l'animation et du folklore. A remarquer que les différentes expositions de l'art pictural et des miniatures, de livres sur l'histoire et les élites de Constantine, de photographies sur l'histoire de la ville et ses personnages les plus représentatifs à travers l'histoire, d'un mariage constantinois authentique et de projections de films documentaires, organisées dans les galeries de la grande salle Ahmed Bey, se dérouleront parallèlement chaque jour et pendant toute la durée de la semaine culturelle. Celle-ci sera clôturée dans la soirée du 6 avril par une ultime représentation de la musique malouf qui sera animée par des artistes du genre avec, à leur tête le cheikh Ahmed Aouabdia.
Fermeture du pont Sidi Rached: Les accès au centre-ville à l'asphyxie
par A. Mallem
La fermeture à la circulation du pont de Sidi-Rached pour on ne sait encore combien de temps commence déjà à faire vivre le calvaire aux automobilistes.
Les conséquences de la fermeture de cet important axe de communication avec le centre de la ville se sont fait surtout ressentir au niveau des hauteurs de la ville où les automobilistes commencent à éprouver des difficultés dans leurs déplacements. En effet, nous avons pu le constater hier matin, et c'est encore le week-end, quand la circulation est devenue plus animée que les habitants des hauts quartiers de la cité Emir Abdelkader et Bab El-Kantara ont pu mesurer les conséquences de cette nouvelle restriction apportée à leurs déplacements : beaucoup de gens, surtout les plus âgés, ont dû attendre longtemps dans les stations habituelles en espérant qu'un taxi consente à les transporter au centre-ville. Mais tous les taxieurs fuient ce trajet à cause du plan de circulation, tout aussi contraignant, mis en place par la commune. Le plan oblige les automobilistes voulant se diriger vers la Brêche à emprunter la rue Tatache Belkacem (ex rue Thiers), plutôt une ruelle étroite, défoncée par endroits et mal colmatée par les services de la commune, toujours encombrée et fait perdre beaucoup de temps.
Hier matin, journée chômée pour l'administration et les entreprises publiques, la circulation n'était pas aussi dense que durant les journées œuvrées, mais elle était assez fournie par les vagues de véhicules qui prenaient le chemin du centre-ville, dissuadant tout taxieur qui voudrait s'y aventurer. C'est pourquoi nous avons remarqué des femmes d'un certain âge, des hommes aussi et des jeunes qui ont abandonné la recherche d'un taxi et entrepris de faire le chemin à pied. «Moi je suis descendu de la cité Emir Abdelkader à pieds car je n'ai pas trouvé de taxi qui va à la Brêche », nous a expliqué un citoyen rencontré à l'entrée de la rue Ben-M'hidi. Nous avons croisé pas mal de piétons qui remontaient cette rue où la circulation se fait à sens unique, de la Brêche vers la gare de chemin de fer et le quartier de Bab El-Kantara, tout en pestant car la pluie tombait et le temps était froid. «Et dire que nous allons endurer ce calvaire jusqu'à la fin de l'été. Les mêmes difficultés ont été signalées ailleurs pour les résidents de Sidi-Mabrouk, de Daksi, du 4ème Kilomètre et de Boumerzoug, contraints aussi de se plier à un véritable parcours du combattant s'ils veulent arriver au centre-ville. «Malheureusement, cela ne fait que commencer !», a fait remarquer un habitant de la cité Daksi alors qu'il venait d'arriver devant le palais de la culture Al Khalifa.
A world where everyone has a robot: why 2040 could blow your mind
Technological change is accelerating today at an unprecedented speed and could create a world we can barely begin to imagine.
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In March 2001, futurist Ray Kurzweil published an essay arguing that humans found it hard to comprehend their own future. It was clear from history, he argued, that technological change is exponential — even though most of us are unable to see it — and that in a few decades, the world would be unrecognizably different. “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate),” he wrote, in ‘The Law of Accelerating Returns’.
Fifteen years on, Kurzweil is a director of engineering at Google and his essay has acquired a cult following among futurists. Some of its predictions are outlandish or over-hyped — but technology experts say that its basic tenets often hold. The evidence, they say, lies in the exponential advances in a suite of enabling technologies ranging from computing power to data storage, to the scale and performance of the Internet (see ‘Onwards and upwards’). These advances are creating tipping points — moments at which technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), biology, nanotechnology and 3D printing cross a threshold and trigger sudden and significant change. “We live in a mind-blowingly different world than our grandparents,” says Fei-Fei Li, head of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in California, and this will be all the more true for our children and grandchildren (see 'Future focus').
Kurzweil and others have argued that people find this pace of change almost impossible to grasp, because it is human nature to perceive rates of progress as linear, not exponential — much as when one zooms in on a small part of a circle and it appears as an almost straight line. People tend to focus on the past few years, but pulling back reveals a much more dramatic change. Many things that society now takes for granted would have seemed like futuristic nonsense just a few decades ago. We can search across billions of pages, images and videos on the web; mobile phones have become ubiquitous; billions of connected smart sensors monitor in real time everything from the state of the planet to our heartbeats, sleep and steps; and drones and satellites the size of shoeboxes roam the skies.
Onwards and upwards
Exponential advances in enabling technologies have reached the point at which they could trigger disruptive change in sectors from artificial intelligence to robotics to medicine. As a result, many experts argue that tomorrow’s world will be unrecognizable from that of today.
ENABLERS
1. Computing power The exponential growth in supercomputing performance is one indicator of dizzying advances across computing. Supercomputers in 2020 are likely to be 30 times more powerful than those of today.
2. Really big data The amount of data worldwide is predicted to reach a whopping 44 zettabytes (1021 bytes) by 2020 — nearly as many digital bits as there are stars in the Universe. This gives more raw material for artificial-intelligence machines to learn from.
3. Communication speed Meanwhile, the performance and scale of the Internet improves. Broadband and WiFi speeds are increasing, and Internet data traffic will exceed a zettabyte this year and double by 2019.
DRIVERS
4. Talking devices By 2020, the number of connected sensors and devices in buildings, cities and farms — the ‘Internet of Things’ — will be twice that of the human population.
5. Biology booms Conceptual and technological advances are driving progress in biology. DNA sequencing costs have fallen at an exponential rate and the number of sequences has soared since 1985. Similar advances are happening in neuroscience and biological nanotechnology.
6. Like it, print it 3D printing is becoming cheaper and quicker — one factor that could disrupt manufacturing and allow once-pricey robotics to be mass produced.
7. Rise of robots Purchases of robots are set to rocket as their capabilities increase and costs fall, a trend driven by massive investments in artificial intelligence and robotics by the military and by computing giants such as Google.
All these factors are now converging to push seemingly futuristic technologies out of the lab, and set them on the same path taken by personal computing and consumer electronics.
Illustrations by Greygouar; Design by Wes Fernandes/Nature; Sources: 1. top500; 2. IDC Digital Universe Study, 2012; 3. Cisco Visual Network Index (VNI), 2015; 4. Cisco VNI Global IP Traffic Forecast, 2014–2019; 5. NCBI; 6. EPSRC; Direct Manufacturing Research Center; Roland Berger; 7. International federation of robotics, Japan Robot Association; Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry; euRobotics; BCG
If the pace of change is exponentially speeding up, all those advances could begin to look trivial within a few years. Take ‘deep learning’, a form of artificial intelligence that uses powerful microprocessor chips and algorithms to simulate neural networks that train and learn through experience, using massive data sets. Last month, the Google-owned AI company DeepMind used deep learning to enable a computer to beat for the first time a human professional at the game of Go, long considered one of the grand challenges of AI. Researchers told Nature that they foresee a future just 20 years from now — or even sooner — in which robots with AI are as common as cars or phones and are integrated into families, offices and factories. The “disruptive exponentials” of technological change will create “a world where everybody can have a robot and robots are pervasively integrated in the fabric of life”, says Daniela Rus, head of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
After decades in development, applications of AI are moving into the real world, says Li, with the arrival of self-driving cars, virtual reality and more. Progress in AI and robotics is likely to accelerate rapidly as deep-pocketed companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft pour billions of dollars into these fields. Gill Pratt, former head of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Robotics Challenge, asked last year whether robotics is about to undergo a ‘Cambrian explosion’ — a period of rapid machine diversification (G. A. Pratt J. Econ. Perspect. 29, 51–60; 2015). Although a single robot cannot yet match the learning ability of a toddler, Pratt pointed out that robots have one huge advantage: humans can communicate with each other at only 10 bits per second — whereas robots can communicate through the Internet at speeds 100 million times faster. This could, he said, result in multitides of robots building on each other’s learning experiences at lightning speed. Pratt was hired last September to head the Toyota Research Institute, a new US$1-billion AI and robotics research venture headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
Many researchers say that it is important to prepare for this new world. “We need to become much more responsible in terms of designing and operating these robots as they become more powerful,” says Li. In January 2015, a group including Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking penned an open letter calling for extensive research to maximize the benefits of AI and avoid its potential pitfalls. The letter has now been signed by more than 8,000 people.
Yet predicting the future can be a fool’s game — and not everyone is convinced that technological change will hit humanity quite so fast. Ken Goldberg, an engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, questions the idea that technologies advance exponentially across the board, or that those that do will continue indefinitely. “The danger of overly optimistic exuberance is that it could set unrealistic expectations and trigger the next AI winter,” he says, alluding to periods in AI’s history where hype gave way to disappointment followed by steep cuts in funding. Goldberg says that recent warnings that AI and robots risk surpassing human intelligence are “greatly exaggerated”.
And Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, questions the notion that exponential advances in technology necessarily lead to transformative leaps. “If we had computers a trillion times faster we wouldn’t have human-level AI; half in jest, one might say we’d just get wrong answers a trillion times sooner,” he says. “What matters are real conceptual and algorithmic breakthroughs, which are very hard to predict.”
Russell did sign the Hawking letter — and says it is important not to ignore the ways that technologies could be taken in potentially harmful directions with profound results. “We made this mistake with fossil-fuel technologies 100 years ago — now it’s probably too late.”
Future focus
Expert predictions
“A possible ‘Cambrian explosion’ in robotics with a rapid period of incredible machine diversification. Robots communicating with each other at speeds that are 100 million times faster than humans might allow swarms of robots to build on each other’s learning experiences at lightning speed.” Gill Pratt, Head of the Toyota Research Institute, Palo Alto, California
“A full brain-activity map and connectome by 2020 and by 2040 it will be routine to read and write data to billions of neurons. By 2040,1 billion people will have their whole genome sequenced and get constant updates of their immunomes and microbiomes.” George Church, Geneticist at Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
“The promise for the future is a world where robots are as common as cars and phones, a world where everybody can have a robot and robots are pervasively integrated in the fabric of life.” Daniela Rus, Head of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
“In the next couple of generations, we will seethe first phase of true personal, assistive robots in the home and other human environments. There will be a huge opportunity to better the quality of life, for example by freeing up people from work.” Fei-Fei Li, Head of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, California
“Tomorrow’s scientists will have armies of virtual graduate students, doing lab work, statistical analysis, literature search and even paper-writing for them.” Pedro Domingos, Machine-learning researcher, University of Washington, Seattle
Illustrations by Greygouar
Filière Sciences Biologiques Licence Bioinformatique (L3) Atelier ‘’Bases de données en Biologie’’ 3 au 11 avril 2016 (24 à 26h de Cours TD/TP)
Dimanche 3 Avril (1/2 journée)
- Présentation de la semaine
- Introduction : Rappels de biologie moléculaire
Lundi 4 Avril (journée complète)
- Introduction aux bases de données en biologie
- TP1 : Application à l’étude de la famille des beta-globines
Mardi 5 Avril (journée complète)
- Alignement de séquences : Méthodes graphique et des scores
- TP2: Comparaison des séquences de la famille multigénique de l’hémoglobine
Mercredi 6 Avril (journée complète)
- Protéines : Dynamique et fonctions, base PDB - Notion de “data-mining”
- TP3 : Premier pas avec PDB
Jeudi 7 Avril (journée complète)
- Introduction à la modélisation en biologie
- TP4: Prédiction du comportement d'un système complexe
Dimanche 10 Avril (journée complète)
- Annotation des génomes
- Génomique et méta-génomique.
Lundi 11 Avril (1/2 journée)
- Synthèse et évaluation des acquits
ORGANISATEURS :
Université Joseph Fourier –Grenoble, France
- Pr. Thierry Gautier
Université des frères MENTOURI Constantine –Algérie
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