Number 19 - March 2013 - SKA

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S K A N E W S M A R C H 2 0 1 3A F R I CA / E U R O P E PA RT N E R S H I PRADIO ASTRONOMYPARTNERSHIPSBETWEEN AFRICAAND EUROPEAERAP (African-European Radio Astronomy Platform)invests in ongoing workshops, and participates in majorscience conferences, to promote investments in infrastructureand capacity building in radio astronomy in Africa andEurope.Workshop participants: The Square Kilometre Array: a large ScaleESFRI Infrastructure – From the Cosmos to the Cities of the futureA workshop on the Square Kilometre Array and African-European radio astronomy cooperation took place inLisbon, Portugal on 30 November 2012. The workshopbrought together scientists, engineers and industry todiscuss the SKA and how it can become a precursor tofuture internet technologies powered by green energies,and offering a great societal change promise.On 15 November 2012 Members of the European Parliamentlaunched the AERAP Group at an event hosted byBritta Thomsen MEP. She said in her keynote address thatthe launch of the AERAP group in the European Parliamentwas an important step in supporting policies whichcan be beneficial to the scientist, and which will bring thebenefits of science to the citizens in both Europe andAfrica.Maria Da Graça Caravalho MEP, who has been involvedin the preparation for the Horizon 2020 package as arapporteur on the Specific Programme, took part in thebilateral stakeholder meetings: “The launch of theAfrican-European Radio Astronomy Platform Group inthe European Parliament is a very important moment dueto the relevance of this project. This project is relevant toboth European and African counterparts for the advancementof science and capacity building in Africa. Especiallycapacity building in the area of research that will havea real impact in people’s life - from energy, space andmedicine. This is the proper way to cooperate with Africain a partnership- to not only focus on the basic needs ofthe African people, but going a step further, to creating anew generation of aid to developing countries.”Find out more at http://ska-ptafrica.org/Britta Thomsen MEPAbout AERAPMaria Da Graça Caravalho MEPThe African-European Radio Astronomy Platform(AERAP) is a response to the calls of the EuropeanParliament, through the adoption of the WrittenDeclaration 45/2011. The launch of the AREAPGroup in the Parliament comes after threesuccessful workshops exploring cooperation withregard to Infrastructure Investment and TechnologyDevelopment, Renewable Energy Solutionsfor Radio Astronomy and Human Capital Development.AERAP is a new stakeholder forum ofindustry, academia, and the public sector,established to define and implement prioritiesfor radio astronomy cooperation between Africaand Europe. The overall goals of the platform areto leverage radio astronomy to advance scientificdiscovery, improve knowledge transfer, andstimulate competitiveness across both continents.Find out more and subscribe to AERAP updates atwww.aerap.org
S K A N E W S M A R C H 2 0 1 3FOCUS ON CALIBRATIONAND IMAGING FOR THE SKACreating the best possible images from the information gathered by the SKAtelescope will be a major challenge, which can only be solved by combininghigh quality hardware and software.This was the focus of the 7th Workshop on Calibration and Imaging (CALIM), hosted in Cape Town atthe end of 2012. “Hosting the workshop in South Africa strengthens local participation, and research,”says Ludwig Schwardt, research developer at SKA South Africa and one of the event organisers.The main topics discussed were “antenna sensitivity” and “deconvolution algorithms”. Antennas mustbe sensitive enough to detect radiation from different directions in high-fidelity, and the ‘deconvolutionalgorithms’ are required to reconstruct the radiation data into images. “These kinds of workshops areexcellent as they ensure that our local research community can access the results of a much largergroup, even though our methods predated some of their current ideas by several decades!” saidSchwardt.Schwardt points out that the skills obtained through this kind of research - software development,modelling and high-performance computing - can be widely applied to other fields outside radioastronomy, for example in medical imaging.For more info and CALIM 2012 photos, go to http://calim2012.ska.ac.za/
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Number 19 - March 2013 - SKA

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