IAU Symposium No. 277 – The Context for an Astrophysics Meeting in Burkina Faso February 10, 2010
Posted by AstrOBloGs in : Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASTRO) , add a commentby Claude Carignan
On February 2nd 2010, the First Announcement for IAU Symposium No, 277 (Tracing the Ancestry of Galaxies – on the Land of our Ancestors) to be held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on December 13-17, 2010, was sent.
While enthusiastic responses were received, a message was also suggesting that we were organizing “scientific tourism” in Africa and even one department had already decided not to let their students and post-docs attend the conference. It was in fact a good thing that this person came forward since it gives us the opportunity to put this meeting in context.
As far as the science goes, I think the scientific rationale given speak for itself (see www.iaus277.org )
But the question to answer is why hold such a meeting in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, which on the Human Resources Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is classified 177/182 countries.
see: http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2009_EN_Summary.pdf
In fact, five years ago, I was asked (I didn’t get the idea, myself) by the Minister of Education and Research in Burkina Faso (who got his degree at the Université de Montréal) if I would like to come and set up an Astrophysics program at the Université de Ouagadougou that would eventually become a center of Excellence that could deserve the Western Africa sub-region. This is an approach now used in many fields. Since resources are limited, the idea is not to develop departments of everything everywhere but to develop a new research activity in one country that could then deserve the whole sub-region.
We define the program in 2006 and the Science Council of the University accepted it at the beginning of 2007. I got great support from my University in Montréal. However, one of the problems with teaching sciences in Africa is that usually the level of the courses is OK (most of the faculties get their formation in Europe) but the labs are empty. So we thought that if we were going to set up a program, we would also build a small Observatory (25cm + CCD + appropriate filters and computers) for teaching purposes such that the practical work could be done on that telescope.
The first undergraduate class was given at the end of 2007 to ~100 students and the teaching Observatory was inaugurated by the Prime Minister on November 26, 2007: http://astro.univ-ouaga.org/. The first graduate course (Msc) was given at the beginning of 2009 to ~20 students. A full graduate program with 8 courses has been set up. The idea is to provide (with the help of many colleagues from around the world) the teaching for 4-5 years while we are forming 4 Burkinabè PhD (2 have started in Montréal, 1 will be going this year to Université de Provence and hopefully another one to South Africa) that will then take over the program once their degree will be completed (they are assure to get a position at the University de Ouagadougou).
While data mining allows to get good data sets for thesis even when you don’t possess your own telescope, with the Marseille people, we submitted a project to the OAMP in order to move the Marly telescope (EROS project) from Chile to Burkina Faso. It was accepted in December 2008 and the Marly telescope was put in crates last October in La Silla. It left Valparaiso on October 31st, arrived in Tema, Ghana on December 15 and the container was unloaded last Friday in Ouagadougou. With the help of many people (especially UdeM, LAM & OHP people) we hope to have the refurbished telescope operational end of 2011. Collaborators from the LAM and the LAE (Laboratoire d’Astrophysique Expérimentale in Montréal) will provide state-of-the-art instrumentation. This will help forming the students in BF and not loosing them to northern countries, which often happens when they get their formation overseas. We are in the final stages of the drawings and are getting help from the World Bank to build the infrastructures. The only money missing is for the solar energy power and the geothermal air-cooling demanding much less power than the conventional systems (a class of engineers is working on the project in Montréal). Hopefully, we’ll soon find the money for this part.
The main reason to hold the meeting here is to mark the beginning of Astrophysics in Burkina Faso and the construction of the Research Observatory. For the people here, to receive 200-250 among the best Astrophysicists in the world is a great motivation. Parallel to the scientific meetings we are also organizing, during the week of the conference, public talks for the students, special workshops for secondary school students and Astronomical Exhibitions in a central location.
I hope this helps to put this meeting in the context of the project initiated 5 years ago.
Hurricane Season Brings Focus on Howard Univesity Researchers September 2, 2009
Posted by admin in : Earth and Planetary Systems Sciences (EPSS), Uncategorized , add a commentEach year from June 1st through November 30th, Atlantic hurricanes pose an immediate threat to residents of the Caribbean, Central America and the United States. The majority of Atlantic forming hurricanes evolve from westward propagating African Easterly Waves
(AEWs), elongated areas of relatively low atmospheric pressure that are convectively transported as an extended wave train.
AEWs have a wavelength of approximately 3000 km and a frequency of 3-5 days. In a given summer season, nearly 100 AEWs will emerge from West Africa, but only 10% will be associated with hurricanes in the US.
While AEWs are associated with some of nature’s most devastating weather to the Western Hemisphere (Hurricanes Georges, Mitch, Katrina), these disturbances bring life-giving rains to West Africa and its people. A wet season is often associated with higher than normal number of Atlantic tropical disturbances.
The processes linking AEWs in West Africa to Atlantic Hurricanes are poorly understood, in part because of a poor observing system in West Africa. There are only 3 stations – located in Dakar, Senegal, Bamako, Mali, Niamey, Niger — where daily measurements are made of the entire troposphere, and there are no comprehensive field campaigns, i.e., coordinated measurements of atmospheric and meteorological variables at a range of altitudes over many square miles over some period of time.
One of the largest and most extensive international field campaigns for examining AEWs was the GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE) field campaign with its command station in Dakar Senegal in 1974. But in 2006, for only the second time in 32 years, a large-scale field campaign, the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) took place in West Africa and the extreme eastern Atlantic.
Some of the low-pressure zones measured during this field campaign eventually developed into tropical cyclones (Debby and Helene). So this new data set is providing new insights on tropical cyclone genesis in the extreme Eastern Atlantic as well as the linkages to Saharan dust and rain processes over the continent.
After a synthesis and analysis workshop in June 2007, students from the US and Senegal presented their results at the January 2008 meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New Orleans.
Rainfall measurements will continue in Senegal, and a solar power array is being commissioned to continue long-term measurements of infrared and solar radiation, aerosols and tropospheric ozone.
Future endeavors include: increasing measurement capacity in other parts of Senegal and in Guinea.
“These improvements are critically important for capacity building and the collaborative work at Howard University and the University of Cheikh Anta Diop,” says Dr. Gregory Jenkins, leader of the US-based work and chair of the physics department at Howard.
Additional Photos
Drs. Gregory Jenkins and Amadou Gaye (Cheikh Anta Diop University) with US Ambassador Janice Jacob (top) and Sengalese Research Ministers Kene Gassama Dia During the 2006 field campaign (image)
Howard and Cheikh Anta Diop students install a ground monitoring station in Senegal (image)
Additional information
[1] Burpee, R., 1972: The Origin and Structure of Easterly
Waves in the Lower Troposphere of North Africa. J. Atmos. Sci., 29, 77–90.
[2] GATE, 1974: International and Scientific
Management Group of GATE, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 55,
711–744.
[3] Redelsperger, J-L. et al. (2006), African
Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis: An International Research Project and Field
Campaign, BAMS, 87, 1739-1746.
[4] Jenkins, G.S.
A, Pratt, A. Heymsfield, 2008: Possible linkages between Saharan dust and
Tropical Cyclone Rain Band Invigoration in Eastern Atlantic during NAMMA-06, Geophys. Res. Lett.,
35, L08815, doi:10.1029/2008GL034072
[5] Jenkins, G.
S. and A. Pratt, 2008: Saharan Dust,
Lightning and Tropical Cyclones in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic during
NAMMA-06, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35,
L12804, doi:10.1029/2008GL033979
[6] Grant, D., et al., 2008: Ozone Transport by Mesoscale Convective
Systems in Western Senegal, Atmospheric
Environment, in press.
[7] Kamga, A. F., G. S.
Jenkins, A. T. Gaye, A. Garba, A. Sarr, A. Adedoyin, 2005: Evaluating the NCAR
CSM over West Africa: Present-day and the 21st Century A1 Scenario, JGR,
110, doi:10.1029/2004JD004689.
NSBP Members Participate in SciFest Africa March 22, 2009
Posted by HPEbLogs in : Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASTRO), History, Policy and Education (HPE) , add a commentNSBP members, Charles McGruder and Hakeem Oluseyi, are participating in SciFest Africa this week as special representatives of the United States.
Held annually in late March as South Africa’s national science festival, SciFest Africa is a fun-filled event specially styled to make science, technology, engineering and mathematics accessible to and of interest to every-day people. Each year SciFest Africa offers over 550 events and activities, including exhibitions, educational theatre, lectures, hands-on workshops, excursions, a soap box derby, laser-shows, quizzes, Science Olympics,and whiz-bang science shows. It is the biggest science festival in sub-Saharan Africa. The 2008 Festival was attended by no less than 58,000 people.
Dr. McGruder, a former president of NSBP, will be giving two public lectures, one on the STARBASE project and another on the search for extra-solar planets. In a separate event Dr. Oluseyi will be lecturing on how dark matter and dark energy help explain the motion of galaxies.
Dr. McGruder is the director of NSBP’s program to build capacity in astronomy in Southern Africa. While in South Africa he will also be meeting will government officials about South Africa’s bid for the SKA telescope. Dr. Oluseyi has been a faculty member in NSBP’s program, having taught classes in astrophysics in the National Astrophysics and Space Science Program at the University of Cape Town. Their participation in SciFest Africa is sponsored by the US State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs.
Dr. Balgis Osman-Elasha to Speak at NSBP Conference February 1, 2009
Posted by International.Chair in : Earth and Planetary Systems Sciences (EPSS) , add a commentDr. Balgis Osman-Elasha will be the Thursday (February 12) dinner keynote speaker at the NSBP/NSHP conference in Nashville.
Dr. Osma-Elasha is a leading member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, and she was chosen to be part of the team to go to Stockholm to receive the prize. Considered to be at the forefront of climate change research, her work focuses on the development of climate change adaptation research strategies for drought-prone regions in Sudan and Africa.
She is seen by many as a role model for African women. She uses her knowledge and leadership skills to advance understanding of climate change and educate university students in Sudan about the impact and implications of climate change.
Dr. Osman-Elasha recommends:
IRI, 2005 Sustainable Development in Africa- Is the Climate Right? Position paper / Columbia University
Dr. Osman-Elasha has (co)authored:
Osman-Elasha et al (2006) Adaptation strategies to increase human resilience against climate variability and change: Lessons from the arid regions of Sudan -AIACC Working Paper No24 www.aiaccproject.org
Rwanda Science Minister to be Keynote Speaker at NSBP Conference February 1, 2009
Posted by International.Chair in : History, Policy and Education (HPE), Mathematical and Computational Physics (MCP) , add a commentProfessor Romain Murenzi, Minister in President’s Office in Charge of Science and Technology, Republic of Rwanda, will be the luncheon speaker at the NSBP/NSHP conference in Nashville on Thursday, February 12.
Dr. Murenzi holds a PhD in Physics from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He was appointed Chair and Professor of the Department of Physics at Clark Atlanta University, USA. His major research interests include multidimensional continuous wavelet and its applications.
In 2001, he was appointed Minister of Education, Science, Technology and Scientific Research and from March 2006 as Minister in President’s Office in Charge of Science and Technology. In 2007 he was given the responsibility of ICT. He is committed to the expansion and modernisation of the Rwanda education system and the aspiration for knowledge-based, technology-led economy by 2020. He serves on the Board of Directors of Development Gateway Foundation and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, as Vice President for Africa, TWAS and Advisory Board, Scientists Without Borders.