Category Archives: Singularity

If you are what you eat, Gervon Dexter would have been a Twinkie. A 313-pound one, at that.

He liked to snack away, comforted by the knowledge that the calories likely would melt away at football practice. And when youre 6-foot-6, you can carry a few more Twinkies than the average guy.

But after two seasons, Dexter knew he needed more than bulk to play defensive tackle at an NFL-prospect level. He needed to get quicker.

Enter Kelsee Gomes, the new queen of Floridas Kitchen.

David Whitley: Brenton Cox Jr. back on Florida Gators defense ready to work and with sack record in mind

More Whitley: For Billy Napier, building new culture for Florida football begins with strength coach Mark Hocke | Whitley

Listen in to latest podcast: GatorSports: For Florida Gators football there is no time to waste in spring

Her title is actually director of sports nutrition football. When Billy Napier was introduced as head coach, he said hed bring in an army to help revive the Gators program. And you know what they say about that?

An army marches on its stomach.

Napoleon supposedly coined the phrase 200 years ago, long before Nick Saban started hiring individual chefs for offense, defense and special teams. Whether its the French Imperial Army trying to take over Europe or Napiers army trying to capture the SEC, it all begins with happy bellies.

Based on early reviews, the Gators' bellies are very happy with Gomes.

Shes a rock star, strength coach Mark Hocke said.

She like oil for a car, Demarkcus Bowman tweeted, so without that oil that car aint gonna crank.

David Whitley: For Billy Napier, building new culture for Florida football begins with strength coach Mark Hocke | Whitley

Gomes was hired from North Carolina, where she was in charge of 28 sports. Shed worked as an assistant nutritionist here during Will Muschamps days, but what really attracted her back was the singularity of her mission.

Its all football, though Florida has five nutritionists for other sports. Gomes could also hire two full-time assistants just for football.

The whole sports nutrition business has exploded in the past decade. Part of it is advances in science and technology, and better understanding of how a good diet leads to better performance.

And part of it is the insatiable SEC desire to seek even the slightest advantage over the next guy. Thats why Georgia has a director of nutrition, a performance chef for football and a culinary services manager for football.

For all we know, Saban really might have 14 quality-control nutritionists. Whatever the case, weve certainly come a long way from the days when a guy in an apron slung mashed potatoes onto trays at the mess hall.

Latest from practice: Quick takeaways from Florida Gators' ninth of 15 spring practices under Billy Napier

Gomes conducted a body-mass scan on each player to find their fat vs. lean mass ratios, consulted with the strength coaches, position coaches and training staffs and came up with individual meal plans.

She prefers that term instead of diet, which conjures visions of Jenny Craig and pretending your stomach isnt grumbling at 110 decibels for a slice of pizza.

Ive always had this approach that all foods fit, Gomes said.

She told players shes not here to send them into Twinkie detox. Its all about eating a well-balanced meal plan with the right combination of fiber, proteins, antioxidants and all that other stuff you can read on the labels of vitamin bottles.

I dont want them to feel guilt or shame about eating a certain type of food, Gomes said.

She does emphasize the benefits of eating certain types of food. That way, a player understands how eating a bowl of blueberries will help alleviate aching muscles after a three-hour practice.

She came in and she got it instantly, Dexter said. She didnt waste any time.

D-line: Florida Gators defensive line in development, with new players and a new leader in Sean Spencer

He told Gomes what his goals were. She had a meal plan ready the next day. Dexter said hes leaner and meaner this spring than hes been since arriving in Gainesville.

Its all Miss Kelsee, he said. I cant give no credit to myself.

Gomes doesnt do the actual cooking. She designs the menus for the football chefs to whip up, then she makes sure everybody follows their orders.

Our team really likes vegetables, Gomes said. And we have a lot of fruit guys, too.

Napier has made breakfast mandatory, so two of Gomes assistants check attendance every morning. Napiers also into visual reminders, so Gomes has put individualized signs in every locker.

They say things like, More Muscle Mass or Maintain Muscle Mass.

Its all just another component in Napiers grand plan. Every school has stepped up its nutrition game, so Florida really had no choice.

But if an army marches only as well as their stomachs feel, the Gators should eventually gopretty far.

David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. And follow him on Twitter: @DavidEWhitley

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Florida football nutritionist getting rave reviews: What's she got cooking for the Gators? - Gatorsports.com

04/04/2022 - Nataa Urban's CPH:DOX-winning film is a multi-layered exploration of collective and personal memory and responsibility with a remarkable stylistic approach

Serbian-born, Oslo-based director Nataa Urban's documentary The Eclipse, which has just won the main award at CPH:DOX, is a remarkable exploration of collective and personal memory and responsibility. Combining 16mm and manipulated Super 8 footage with an exquisite analogue, tape modulation-dominated soundtrack, the director has created a multi-layered work that resonates on several distinctive levels.

Urban hails from the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, which is populated by a dozen ethnic groups, with her own grandmother being Romanian. It has a very different atmosphere than that of Belgrade or central Serbia, with its flatlands and low hills and focus on agriculture: pets and farm animals feature prominently in the film, with a special accent on pig slaughter as a symbol of violence, one of its main themes.

As the documentary opens with images of landscapes in the soft morning light, the viewer experiences a stillness that will soon be contrasted with an exploration of painful memories. The whole film relies on this often unnerving dichotomy, but the viewing experience is surprisingly smooth, much to the credit of DoP Ivan Markovi and editor Jelena Maksimovi.

Urban left Serbia decades ago, and as she says in the voice-over, never looked back. But she came upon her father's hiking journal, and started connecting the dates and entries with key events from the 1990s. She gets her father to retrace his steps, and we watch the slender, grey-bearded man as he walks through forests, villages and hills, and listen to him reading out those old sentences.

The first date is 24 November 1990. While Dad was visiting the village of erevi, a narrative title informs us that the Golubinka pit in Croatia was opened, revealing the remains of 600 Serbian victims killed by the Ustae in the Second World War. The TV footage shows Orthodox priests saying prayers over skulls and bones, which came to be heavily used in the Serbian propaganda of the 1990s.

Similarly, Urban counterpoints the beginning of the war in Croatia and the bloody siege of Vukovar, the first democratic protests in Serbia, the siege of Sarajevo, Srebrenica, and the NATO bombing of Serbia, with her father's diary entries that seem to come from another world. Yet despite his self-imposed isolation from these events, the war is gradually closing in on him as well.The story of the family climbing Caucasus in 1995, when Sarajevo was still under siege, or a their photo on the mountain top of Magli in Bosnia with a Yugoslav flag in 1991, when the war in Croatia was raging, are jarringly ambivalent.

Interviews with the director's family and friends make a trajectory from happy memories of the pre-war days to those of the strikingly sad and brutal events of the 1990s. To reflect those times, Urban filmed on Super 8, which was then processed to get the texture of a particular era. This simulated archive footage has a profound effect when coupled with Svenn Jakobsen's atmospheric sound design and the haunting score by Bill Gould and Jared Blum which appropriately nods to William Basinski's "Disintegration Loops," one of music's most potent explorations of memory.

Underlining the nature of memory makes Urban's confrontational approach to the issue of collective responsibility non-judgmental. When she reminds her mother of the times that she prefers to forget, she is not pointing a finger, rather, she is asking her to look deep inside herself. The solar eclipse in the title is similarly a symbolic framing device which reflects this same duality, which is in fact a singularity: it is possible to simultaneously love a person - or a country - and hold them responsible.

The Eclipse was produced by Norway's Medieoperatrene and the UK's Taskovski Films has the international rights.

Read the original:

Review: The Eclipse - Cineuropa

Image via Ubisoft/@kirill_vision

This week has seen surprise showings in all four regions as the league portion of Stage 1 began in Europe and North America. During these games, we saw some remarkable plays and standout flops, so lets take a look at some of the numbers that drove this weeks results.

A few playdays into the season, theres been a number of standout players across all four regions.

The biggest surprise of the 2022 season so far has been the performance of w7m esports which currently sits on top of the BR6 table. In two weeks they've already scored more points than stage three. This success can be attributed largely to their two new rookies, Gabriel "volpz" Fernandes and Joo "Jv92" Vitor, with the former player being the third-highest rated player in BR6 so far.

Volpz, who turned 18 last August, spent last year on Team Singularity with whom he finished the Challenger League in sixth place. Now in the BR6, he got six kills to just one death in w7ms 7-0 victory over MIBR, got 10 kills to five deaths in his 7-3 debut against FaZe, and was instrumental in their 8-7 win over FURIA. He secured a 1.54 rating compared to his nearest teammate on 0.84 during the FURIA win. His lone weak game came during yesterdays 7-3 victory over Liquid where he sat on a 0.88 rating.

While they still have notable games against NiP and 00 Nation yet to go, w7m now looks set to qualify for the Six Major on the back of their rookies, a remarkable accomplishment for an organization whos best prior result in the BR6 was seventh place during the 2020 season.

Also of note in Latin America is Black Dragons sole pickup during the transfer window, Felipe "nade" S. Despite having extremely limited prior experience he currently sits as the best player in BR6 after four games with a rating of 1.39, 0.01 ahead of the back-to-back player of the year, Luccas Paluh Molina.

He notched a 1.52 rating in Black Dragons 7-4 victory over FaZe Clan, 1.27 against INTZ, 1.34 against MIBR, and a 1.40 rating against Liquid in which his closest teammate was at 0.74.

Onto in North America, Oxygens Ethan "Nuers" James achieved a 1.54 SiegeGG Rating in his very first professional game against the newly crowned world champions, TSM FTX. He then dropped down to a 0.91 rating against Astralis, however, he kept an even kill, death ratio.

Jameson "KoolAid" Lancaster, meanwhile, secured a 1.26 rating across his two games, just 0.01 over Nuers. This came from a 1.42 rating during Parabellums victory over Soniqs and 1.13 rating during their 5-7 loss to beastcoast. KoolAid was also the teams main planter and primarily played Castle on defense.

Over in Europe, it was the recent Challenger League victors and Six Invitational attendees, Fatih "Solotov" Trker and Josh "Yuzus" Pritchard, from MNM Gaming who attracted the most attention. They averaged ratings of 1.35 and 1.31 respectively.

Despite MNM losing both of their games 4-7 against G2 Esports and HEROIC, these two players performing significantly better than the rest of the MNM roster. Regionally, their closest counterparts have been Ben "CTZN" McMillan from G2 who has averaged a rating of 1.32, and HEROICs Jake "Sloth" Brown whos at 1.65, both of which theyve already played.

Finally, APAC North and South have had one rookie of note each, Juwan "Mephi" Park from T1 and Kyro from Wildcard.

Starting with Mephi, the player joined T1 to replace the teams stand-in coach after turning 18 years old just last October. Since then, despite having no competitive experience at any tier, hes helped T1 to currently reach third place in the APAC North standings following three wins in a row over SANDBOX, CYCLOPS, and Fnatic.

Kyro joined Wildcard Gaming after a year in various national-tier tournaments. He currently leads the team by rating after five games which include two wins over Knights and FURY. His best performance so far came against Elevate in which a 1.6 rating and 2.0 kill death ratio werent enough to stop a 4-7 defeat.

While both of these players' respective ratings arent as high as the other rookies, they both sit within the top five players by rating in their division as they lead their team closer to an APAC Playoff appearance after fighting off relegation in January.

While Europe, North America, and Brazil all have an attack win rate between 47% and 50%, both APAC North and South sit well below, at 40.09% and 39.71% respectively.

For comparison, during Stage 3, APAC had a combined attack win rate of 48.38%. Furthermore, even if you exclude the three new maps as well as Coastline, the drop is still from 47.52% to 40.43%.

Fairing the worst is Fnatic with a win rate of just 19.35% with six wins in 31 rounds while FURY and Renatus in APAC South are tied on 22.22%, both with six wins in 27 rounds. Fnatic is particularly odd as they sit with a very high 73.08% defensive win rate which has kept their APAC League hopes alive for this stage. This shows they can perform, but are stumbling on attack.

If you exclude these three teams from the total count the regions win rate does rise to 44.64%, however, this is still much lower than seen in the three other regions.

While it took some time for teams to take a liking to Osa, the newest operator added to the competitive Rainbow Six Siege, Thorn, has had more success. Already shes become the go-to defensive operator for Astralis David "iconic" Ifidon, FURIAs Thiago "Handyy" Ferreira, and T1s Wonil "iLeven" Cha, peaking with a 13% pick rate in APAC North.

While its still too early to make any concrete conclusions about the operator's competitive viability, it is very clear that she fits into a roaming roam. This is as iconic and handyy previously played Melusi and Jager over the last two stages while iLeven played Mozzie and Alibi, all of which fit into this role type.

Looking into her success rate, Thorn was brought five times by Iconic on Skyscraper, winning all five attempts with 11 kills to three deaths. T1 meanwhile brought her 11 times, winning eight of them, with four of five wins on Oregon, one out of three on Villa, and two out of two wins on Skyscraper. Finally, handyy brought Thorn 10 times winning six of them, half of which came on Skyscraper.

This is a really good success rate for the new operator so early on, meaning by the time we reach Stage 2 she may become a much more common sight.

While Theme Parks removal from the competitive map pool at the beginning of year six led to some vocal complaints by professional players, its reintroduction at this stage has not led to teams picking it back up.

So far across all five main leagues it has been played just twice -- TALON vs DWG during playday three of APAC North and Oxygen vs TSM during playday one of the NAL -- out of 80 matches so far this stage.

In comparison, the two other new maps to the pool, Border, and Skyscraper, have both been played in all five leagues with Border being the joint-most played in the BR6 while Skyscraper is the joint-most played in APAC North.

Somewhat interestingly, Kafe has just a single extra pick than Theme Park with just three plays despite it being the most played map at the 2022 Six Invitational.

While it is unclear why teams around the world are choosing to avoid the map for now, teams should be familiar with how the map works as it has been unchanged since it was last in the pool. This means its likely that well see it a lot more at the Six Major as it would take less preparation for teams to learn the map andwould be a good surprise pick in best of threes.

Kafe meanwhile has been so played out so much in recent seasons that, similar to Oregon before its rework, teams have likely stopped playing it due to its repetitive nature.

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Stats of the Week: Debuts impress in all regions as nade, volpz, and Solotov give top performances - SiegeGG

In 2019, my colleagues and I discovered spooky glowing rings in the sky using CSIROs ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia. The rings were unlike anything seen before, and we had no idea what they were.

We dubbed them odd radio circles, or ORCs. They continue to puzzle us, but new data from South Africas MeerKAT telescope are helping us solve the mystery.

We can now see each ORC is centered on a galaxy too faint to be detected earlier. The circles are most likely enormous explosions of hot gas, about a million light years across, emanating from the central galaxy.

Our paper showing these results has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

We now have beautiful images of one of these rings taken with South Africas MeerKAT radio telescope, which shows the ORC in stunning detail. MeerKAT sees a small blob of radio emission in the center of the ring, which is coincident with a distant galaxy. We are now fairly certain this galaxy generated the ORC.

We see these central galaxies in other ORCs too, all at vast distances from Earth. We now think that these rings surround distant galaxies about a billion light years away, which means the rings are enormousaround a million light years across.

From modeling the faint cloudy radio emission that MeerKAT detects within the rings, it seems the rings are the edges of a spherical shell surrounding the galaxy, like a blast wave from a giant explosion in the galaxy. They look like rings instead of orbs only because the sphere appears brighter at the edges where there is more material along the line of sight, much like a soap bubble.

MeerKAT has also mapped the polarization of the radio waves, which tells us about the magnetic field in the ring. Our polarization image shows a magnetic field running along the edge of the sphere.

This suggests that an explosion in the central galaxy caused a hot blast to collide with the tenuous gas outside the galaxy. The resulting shock wave then energized electrons in the gas, making them spiral around the magnetic field, generating radio waves.

Lines around the edge of the ORC show the direction of the magnetic field. A circular magnetic field like this indicates it has been compressed by a shock wave from the central galaxy. Created by Larry Rudnick from MeerKAT data.

One big surprise from the MeerKAT result is that within the ring we see several curved filaments of radio emission. We still dont know what these are.

But we do know that the sphere is so huge that it has swallowed up other galaxies as it blasted out from the central galaxy. Perhaps the filaments are trails of gas ripped off the galaxies by the passing shock wave?

The big question, of course, is what caused the explosion. We are exploring two possibilities.

One is that they were caused by the merging of two supermassive black holes. Such a merger event releases an enormous amount of energy, enough to generate the ORC.

Another possibility is that the central galaxy went through a starburst event, in which millions of stars were suddenly born from the gas in the galaxy. Such a starburst causes hot gas to blast out from the galaxy, causing a spherical shock wave.

Both black hole mergers and starburst events are rare, which accounts for why ORCs are so rare (only five have so far been reported).

The puzzle of ORCs is not solved yet, and we still have much to learn about these mysterious rings in the sky. So far, we have only detected them with radio telescopeswe see nothing from the rings at optical, infrared, or X-ray wavelengths.

To find out more, we need a tool even more sensitive than MeerKAT and ASKAP. Fortunately, the global astronomical community is building just such an observatorythe Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an international effort with telescopes in South Africa and Australia.

ASKAP and MeerKAT were built to test the sites and technology for the SKA. Quite apart from their role as precursors for the SKA, both telescopes have been hugely successful in their own right, making major discoveries in their first years of operation.

Their success in discovering and studying ORCs therefore bodes well for the SKA.

The two telescopes are also beautifully complementaryASKAP is superb at surveying large areas of sky and finding new objects, while MeerKAT is unrivalled for zooming in on those objects and studying them with higher sensitivity and resolution.

The SKA promises to surpass both. No doubt the SKA will find many more ORCs, and will also be able to probe them to find out what they are telling us about the lifecycle of galaxies.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Jayanne English, using data from MeerKAT and the Dark Energy Survey

Originally posted here:

'Odd Radio Circles' That Baffled Astronomers Are Likely Explosions From Distant Galaxies - Singularity Hub

ErikMandre/iStock via Getty Images

You've probably heard the idiom "don't fly too close to the sun", which comes from the story about Icarus and his father Daedalus in Greek mythology. I'm saying this because I think that the list of public companies trading above 400% of their 52-week lows is a good place to find short-selling ideas as the fundamentals of some of them aren't good and there are red flags. Today, I'm taking a look at a company that I think fits these criteria - Singularity Future Technology (NASDAQ:SGLY). Let's review.

Singularity Future Technology was founded in 2001 and is a logistics and ship management services company with offices in the USA, China, Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong. It was called Sino-Global Shipping America until the beginning of January 2022 and the reason the firm changed its name was to reflect its pivot to the cryptocurrency business. In February 2021, Singularity announced that it's accepting Bitcoin (BTC-USD) as a form of payment for its global shipping, freight, and logistics services. In October 2021, it inked an agreement with Chinese chip developer Highsharp for the creation of a joint venture company that will develop and sell bitcoin mining machines under the name Thor. Singularity will initially invest $10 million in the JV company and plans to put about $50 million in it over the next few years. Highsharp, in turn, will exclusively supply high-performance computing chips.

According to Singularity's Q4 2021 financial report, the JV company is named Thor Miner and is based in Delaware. Singularity has a 51% stake in Thor and the latter has entered into an agreement for the sale of certain cryptocurrency mining hardware and other equipment to a company named SOS Information Technology New York. The deal was for $200 million and Thor had already received a $40 million payment as of February 14, which is the date of the Q4 2021 financial report of Singularity. In my view, there are a couple of red flags here. First, several media sources revealed in November 2021 that Chinese crypto mining hardware maker Canaan Creative (CAN) is suing Highsharp over patent infringement for $14 million. Canaan alleges that Singularity's partner Highsharp and Sichuan Yinbimei Technology ripped off its designs. Second, SOS Information Technology New York was founded in July 2021 and is owned by Chinese cryptocurrency miner SOS (SOS).

SOS

In February 2021, short-sellers Hindenburg Research and Culper Research took a shot at SOS by raising concerns ranging from regulatory risk to alleged false claims by the company about its business. In February 2022, the company revealed that it received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission resulting from the Hindenburg Research report.

Turning our attention to the financial results of Singularity, we can see that the company's quarterly revenues barely top $1 million at the moment. General and administrative expenses are two times higher and in Q4 2021, Singularity also booked a $6.1 million loss from write-offs from the non-controlling interest of SinoChina, which was a Variable Interest Entity ("VIE") that had no operations. Overall, I think the logistics business of Singularity shouldn't be worth much at the moment.

Singularity Future Technology

The balance sheet looks strong though as Singularity had $51.4 million in cash and its only debt included $10 million in convertible notes.

Singularity Future Technology

Those notes bear interest at 5% per year and can be converted into common shares at $3.76 per share. They can be converted at any time starting June 2022, which means that the share count is likely to increase by 2,659,574 unless the share price of Singularity declines significantly over the next three months.

Seeking Alpha

As you can see from the chart above, the market valuation of Singularity has soared by almost 80% since the news about Thor's $200 million order from SOS came out and it stands at $253.4 million as of the time of writing. In my view, Singularity looks overvalued at the moment as its cash stockpile is earmarked for investment in Thor, whose future is likely to be turbulent considering its chip supplier is being sued for patent infringement while its main customer recently received a subpoena from the SEC. I'm not sure why SOS is still betting on the crypto mining business considering China banned all domestic crypto mining in June 2021, and then outlawed cryptocurrencies outright in September 2021.

In any case, I view Singularity as expensive at the moment and I expect there to be significant issues for that $200 million order in the near future. It seems likely that the share price could come back below $3.00 per share, just like it did in February 2021 and I think this could be a good moment to open a small short position. According to data from Fintel, the short borrow interest rate stands at 12.46% as of the time of writing.

Looking at the risks for the bear case, the main one is that Highsharp wins or settles its Canaan lawsuit and SOS follows through on its $200 million order. It's impossible to estimate how high the probability of this taking place is. We also don't know what are the margins of Thor are at the moment or how much investment the company will need in the next few years. In view of all of these uncertainties, I think that a short position should be paired with call options expiring in 2023 to hedge against the risk.

Seeking Alpha

I find Singularity Future Technology to be an interesting company as it's pivoting from logistics to Bitcoin mining machines. The revenues of its logistics business are small but the balance sheet is strong as Singularity had over $50 million in cash as of December.

Thor has received a $200 million order from SOS but we don't know what the margins are and I have serious doubts whether the order will be completed considering Highsharp and SOS are shrouded in controversy. Overall, I think the share price of Singularity could decline below $3.00 per share if things don't go smoothly and this seems like a good opportunity to open a small short position. There are a lot of uncertainties, so I think it's a good idea to hedge against risks through put options.

For risk-averse investors, I think it could be best to avoid Singularity as I perceive this as a high-risk, high-reward type of opportunity.

See the original post:

Singularity Looks Overvalued Based On Fundamentals And Its Partners Are In Trouble - Seeking Alpha

So youve signed up for a course in astronomy. Conscious of your responsibilities as a student, and sort of interested in the sky, you read the syllabus. Under Day 4, you spot the phrase The Life Cycle of Stars.

Life cycle? Are stars alive?

Wary of the instructor possibly chortling at such a question, you keep quiet, but vigilant for an answer.

At every turn, the instructor talks as if stars are alive. She speaks of stellar evolution, as if whole species of stars were living up there. She speaks of star birth, which occurs in stellar nurseries where gas and dust twine together, accumulate more gas and dust, and grow to a mass that starts to create heat.

She speaks of the lifetimes of stars, because it turns out most stars mature into certain kinds of stability lasting a few million or billion years, depending on their size. Then in their old age (according to the prof) their bodies go through changes that for some include enormous expansion; these stars are called red giants. The death of some stars occurs in a spectacular explosion called a supernova, and the death of others amounts to a process of burning out and fading away. Sounds familiar.

Other weird things apparently happen to large stars, where they collapse and disappear from sight as black holes and singularities. A black hole is a region of space where a large mass, probably left over from a star explosion, has contracted to a few miles or less in diameter and its gravity is so concentrated that even photons of light cant escape from it. Physics predicts a point, called a singularity, at which the star material has contracted so much that the contracting cant stop the star has shed its natural physical form and seems to disappear into itself. This does not sound very familiar unless you think about it too much, or read Buddhist sutras.

Smaller stars in their old age also shrink, and different metals, such as iron or lead, are about all thats produced during the burnout. In some cases, though, carbon can be supercompressed in the contraction until the interior of the star becomes, essentially, a diamond. It takes billions of years to make a star a diamond.

This was just a theory born from physics equations until some years ago when astronomers found a star, BPM 37093 in the constellation Centaurus, which gives off most of the readings predicted in the equations indicating carbon compression. The core of BPM 37093 apparently is a massive diamond weighing about 10 billion trillion trillion carats. Nayutas of kotis of carats, the sutras might say.

Despite its achievement, however, BPM 37093 will not live forever. It will go the way of all the other dwarf stars before it and all those after it, and fade into the vastness of space.

The instructor stops short of using the word achievement. Somehow that got into your head by itself. Just like people, stars are born, live, and die, and just like stars, people shine, burn out, and disappear. Can a person become so crystalline she is essentially a diamond? (Or lead?)

Not really, right? The astronomy prof is just using metaphors. Stars dont actually have life cycles, right? And human minds cannot, through the stress of prodigious energies, become diamonds. Right?

Dana Wilde lives in Troy. You can contact him at [emailprotected] His book Winter: Notes and Numina from the Maine Woods is available from North Country Press. Backyard Naturalist appears the second and fourth Thursdays each month.

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Dana Wilde: Lives of the stars - Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel

Produced and directed by Corey Eisenstein. Click here for transcript.

Of all the amazing and varied phenomena in the cosmological zoo, black holes are among the most mysterious. They are zombiesthe all-devouring corpses of dead stars, made of trillions of tons of stellar ash compressed into an infinitely dense point called a "singularity." The gravity exerted by the singularity is so intense that it warps space-time, preventing even light from escaping.

In many ways, to look at a black hole is to look at the future of our Universe because there will come a timemany trillions of trillions of years from now, but inevitable nonethelesswhere all the sky's stars will have gone out, and black holes will be the Universe's main attraction, still gobbling down any remaining free clumps of matter and acting as the only sources of light left. And perhaps most creepily of all, if proton decay turns out to be a thing, this future black hole era will be how our cosmos spends the majority of its lifedark, silent, and forbiddingly empty.

But before we all descend into a pit of existential dread, we've invited our astrophysicist pal Dr. Paul Sutter to shed some light on these visions of darkness. Because in addition to being harbingers of the state of the Universe to come, black holes are fascinating, and as we understand more about them, we understand more about the fundamental laws that make the Universe work.

Black holes are scary enough if you just consider them to be shambling star-zombies that eat anything that gets close to them. But they're also freaky in an entirely more fundamental way, because at first glance, black holes appear to be capable of actually destroying information itselfsomething that our current understanding of quantum mechanics says should be impossible. Any object that falls into a black hole's singularity appears to be fundamentally erased and ends up becoming part of the black hole in ways that don't appear to retain any hint of the object's previous state of existence.

This area of research is where theoretical physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking made some of his most important contributions by first defining and then attacking the information paradox problem (and also predicting the way by which even seemingly immortal black holes eventually bleed to death). As it turns out, things aren't necessarily that simple, and it's possible that black holes do retain information about the things they consumejust not in the manner that normal three-dimensional beings like you or I might expect.

And here's about where I reach the limit of my (mostly pop-sci and fiction-based) black hole knowledge and turn the reins over to Paul for a journey into weirdness. Black holes are awesome, and I hope you enjoy this video on what they might be and how they might work.

But if black holes aren't your thing, fear notwe have a lot more episodes of "Edge of Knowledge" still on tap!

Read more here:

Exploring the counterintuitive mysteries of black holes with Paul Sutter - Ars Technica

Originally posted here.By: Reynaldo Marquez

Cardano was pushed down in the crypto top 10 by market cap as LUNA and XRP took over its former place. However, ADAs price has been surging in the last month and could reclaim previous highs as the general sentiment turns bullish. Related Reading | Cardano Soars 13% On Rumors Of Burn Mechanism Rollout, Charles Hoskinson Reacts At the time of writing, Cardano (ADA) trades at $1.20 with a 30% rally over this period. This makes ADA the best-performing cryptocurrency by market cap. ADAs price has been recovering from a multi-month downside that saw its price drop from an all-time high at around $3 to under $1 in 2022. There are several factors contributing to the current rally. This includes the full implementation of smart contract capabilities, the increase in developer activity recorded by the network, the improvement of Cardano to make it more decentralized and scalable, according to its main developer IOG. Most importantly, the above factors have translated into an ecosystem explosion. There are hundreds of projects building on Cardano which could be re-fueling the Ethereum Killer narrative. IOG recently highlighted some of these projects. Via their official Twitter handle, the company said: The Cardano ecosystem is growing by leaps and bounds, with new players entering the ecosystem every day. Lets start this week with a recap of the latest news & announcements from projects Building On Cardano and contributing to its growth. Among these projects is Milkomeda. Created as a scalability solution for Cardano, this project is set to integrate the network with Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM) capabilities. The project was launched on March 28 on Cardano. In the future, this network will be able to integrate with other blockchains, such as Avalanche, and Algorand. IOG also mentioned Ergo, a decentralized exchange that will be deployed in the Cardano testnet on April 4. In addition, this network will see more use cases with the future launch of a converter bridge solution, created by Singularity, and real asset tokenization with the Indigo Protocol. Announcement for Indigo x Cornucopias! Weve officially partnered with @CornucopiasGame to bring Indigo 3D Assets to the Metaverse. It is exciting to work alongside leading #Metaverse projects to offer a unique user experience for the future! Follow @Indigo_protocol pic.twitter.com/yKkGa6TWGM Indigo | Synthetic Assets on Cardano (@Indigo_protocol) March 18, 2022 Cardano Growth Beyond Expectations, Institutions Want More ADA The inventor of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, celebrated the growth of the project. In 2021, Hoskinson predicted a boom in the number of projects building on this network, and the number of assets launched on Cardano. Via Twitter, he posted that there are millions of both surpassing his expectations. In the coming months, this number seems poised to climb as the network prepares for another Hard Fork Combinator (HFC) event. Dubbed Vasil, Hoskinson believes it will trigger another surge in network activity, and potential total value locked (TVL). What most also dont understand is that many Cardano DApps are waiting for the Vasil hardfork in June to launch to benefit from pipelining. So it seems we aint seen nothing yet on TVL https://t.co/mMHxwRrF96 Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 12, 2022 Related Reading | Despite Rocky Beginnings with Hoskinson, Cardano Is Shaping Up to Have an Interesting Year Thus, ADAs price could have fuel for the mid to long term to sustain its rally. Data from IntoTheBlock suggest institutional investors might have caught on to this future trend as the number of addresses moving large sum in ADA trend upwards. @Cardano is experiencing increasing institutional demand The volume of on-chain transactions >$100k has increased by 50x just in 2022 Yesterday, a total of 69.09b $ADA were moved in these large transactions, representing 99% of the total on-chain volumehttps://t.co/8ME8STvRSF pic.twitter.com/aqH7hYIPiV IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) March 29, 2022

Cardano was pushed down in the crypto top 10 by market cap as LUNA and XRP took over its former place. However, ADAs price has been surging in the last month and could reclaim previous highs as the general sentiment turns bullish.

Related Reading | Cardano Soars 13% On Rumors Of Burn Mechanism Rollout, Charles Hoskinson Reacts

At the time of writing, Cardano (ADA) trades at $1.20 with a 30% rally over this period. This makes ADA the best-performing cryptocurrency by market cap.

ADA with bullish momemtum on the 4-hour chart. Source: ADAUSDT Tradingview

ADAs price has been recovering from a multi-month downside that saw its price drop from an all-time high at around $3 to under $1 in 2022. There are several factors contributing to the current rally.

This includes the full implementation of smart contract capabilities, the increase in developer activity recorded by the network, the improvement of Cardano to make it more decentralized and scalable, according to its main developer IOG.

Most importantly, the above factors have translated into an ecosystem explosion. There are hundreds of projects building on Cardano which could be re-fueling the Ethereum Killer narrative.

IOG recently highlighted some of these projects. Via their official Twitter handle, the company said:

The Cardano ecosystem is growing by leaps and bounds, with new players entering the ecosystem every day. Lets start this week with a recap of the latest news & announcements from projects Building On Cardano and contributing to its growth.

Among these projects is Milkomeda. Created as a scalability solution for Cardano, this project is set to integrate the network with Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM) capabilities.

The project was launched on March 28 on Cardano. In the future, this network will be able to integrate with other blockchains, such as Avalanche, and Algorand.

IOG also mentioned Ergo, a decentralized exchange that will be deployed in the Cardano testnet on April 4. In addition, this network will see more use cases with the future launch of a converter bridge solution, created by Singularity, and real asset tokenization with the Indigo Protocol.

Announcement for Indigo x Cornucopias!

Weve officially partnered with @CornucopiasGame to bring Indigo 3D Assets to the Metaverse.

It is exciting to work alongside leading #Metaverse projects to offer a unique user experience for the future!

Follow @Indigo_protocol pic.twitter.com/yKkGa6TWGM

Indigo | Synthetic Assets on Cardano (@Indigo_protocol) March 18, 2022

Cardano Growth Beyond Expectations, Institutions Want More ADA

The inventor of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, celebrated the growth of the project. In 2021, Hoskinson predicted a boom in the number of projects building on this network, and the number of assets launched on Cardano. Via Twitter, he posted that there are millions of both surpassing his expectations.

In the coming months, this number seems poised to climb as the network prepares for another Hard Fork Combinator (HFC) event. Dubbed Vasil, Hoskinson believes it will trigger another surge in network activity, and potential total value locked (TVL).

What most also dont understand is that many Cardano DApps are waiting for the Vasil hardfork in June to launch to benefit from pipelining. So it seems we aint seen nothing yet on TVL https://t.co/mMHxwRrF96

Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) March 12, 2022

Related Reading | Despite Rocky Beginnings with Hoskinson, Cardano Is Shaping Up to Have an Interesting Year

Thus, ADAs price could have fuel for the mid to long term to sustain its rally. Data from IntoTheBlock suggest institutional investors might have caught on to this future trend as the number of addresses moving large sum in ADA trend upwards.

@Cardano is experiencing increasing institutional demand

The volume of on-chain transactions >$100k has increased by 50x just in 2022

Yesterday, a total of 69.09b $ADA were moved in these large transactions, representing 99% of the total on-chain volumehttps://t.co/8ME8STvRSF pic.twitter.com/aqH7hYIPiV

IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) March 29, 2022

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Here Are The Projects Pushing Cardano's Price To The Upside - Geeks World Wide

New Delhi [India], March 30 (ANI/TPT): International Tech Education Company, BeSingular, is organizing a 3 Week Global Residential Summer Program starting from Wednesday, May 23 2022 till June 12, 2022. It is an immersive summer school program where the students build a mindset to evolve, adapt, and learn to solve problems. The program involves a rigorous project-based learning approach, learning to see future technology trends and how they can start making an impact on the planet from an early age. The program's objective is to provide students with exposure to technology, culture, and collaboration and build their confidence to see Global Great Challenges as Global Great Opportunities.

While the first two weeks will be in Mumbai and present its unique offerings, focusing on Sustainability, AR, Entrepreneurship, 3D printing & Robotics, the 3rd week is the program's highlight. Participants will be interacting with premium academic and industry mentors at the University of Dresden, Germany, in the final week of the Global Summer School Program. Some of the notable and renowned speakers at the program include the man himself, Nitesh Jain (Founder & CEO at BeSingular), along with Prof Rajan Nair (International award winner in Communication at Vijay Bhoomi University), Dr Venkatesh Sunkad, Kyle Nel (President at Singularity Labs), Carsten Fuchs (Managing Director at BEAS Technologies), Navyug Mohnot, Prof. Dr Thomas Kohler and many others.

"We are looking forward to having incredible young minds attend our summer school program, to meet our team of experts, navigate through new-age technologies, embrace the shifting mindset, and find their way to their dream universities", said Jain. This is one of a kind experience for children between Classes 9 and 12 to learn techpreneur skills, the concepts of entrepreneurship, critical technology skills and develop a solutioningmindset. The summer school will be a game-changer as it is a combination of education, experience, and exposure, all packed in a delightful program.

Students will also have an opportunity to go on adventurous treks & camping, play tech-enabled games, visit museums and do factory visits in Germany. This story is provided by TPT. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/TPT)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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BeSingular to host the mind shift program this summer - Devdiscourse

Yet another A370M benchmark has been released to the public to see. Twitter user @BenchLeaks has shared a new Ashes of the Singularity benchmark featuring a notebook powered by an Alder Lake i7 mobile CPU and the new Arc A370M GPU. Performance appears to be in the ballpark of a GTX 750 Ti or mobile GTX 1060 which means that this card my not make it to our list of best graphics cards.

The Arc A370M GPU will be Intel's first mobile discrete GPU being released to the masses and is built on Intel's brand new Arc Alchemist GPU microarchitecture. Intel has promised a March 30th release date for the new GPU, so expect new notebooks to arrive sometime next week with this new discrete mobile graphics engine.

The Arc A370M managed a 38.3 FPS average in the Ashes of the Singularity run, using the minimum quality preset with a 1920 x 1080 resolution. This is effectively the lowest quality preset the game is capable of running at. As ever with leaks, take the news with a pinch of salt.

The total specs of the system include a Core i7-12700H with 20 cores, packing 32GB of memory, so the GPU shouldn't be starved for resources from the CPU. According to Ashes of the Singularity's benchmark browser, the 38.3 FPS average coincides with other benchmark results from users packing a mobile GTX 1060 with an older hexa-core i7-8750H, and a GTX 750 Ti result paired to an i7-7400 quad-core CPU.

Keep in mind that Ashes of the Singularity is heavily dependent on the CPU more so than other games, so comparing the frame rates against the GPU models alone might not be accurate. Plus, Ashes isn't a great benchmark for perfectly comparing GPUs against each other in the first place, so take these results with a grain of salt.

Still, the A370M's rather weak performance is backed up by previous evidence that it will be an entry-level competitor to the likes of Nvidia's GTX 1650 Super. Rumored specifications for the A370M also back this up with the GPU packing just 128 EUs -- a smidge higher than Intel's own flagship Xe integrated graphics featuring 96 EUs.

We will know more about the A370M once it finally arrives later next week, but for now, all leaked evidence points to this GPU being one of Intel's weakest discrete GPUs in its new line-up.

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Intel Arc A370M GPU Gets Benchmarked in Ashes of the Singularity - Tom's Hardware