Knowledge Wednesday: colors - where do they come from?
Colors - where do they come from?
Did you know that the color of your favorite red candies was made from little caterpillars? Accompanied by an archaeologist, your children plunge into history as they discover the different materials behind the colors used in paint. They'll be able to try out centuries-old recipes and paint their own illuminations.Fun workshops for kids Workshops with a variety of active pedagogy themes during which your children will develop their sense of observation, analysis and critical thinking through experiments, scientific games and extraordinary discoveries. In practiceWho are the workshops for? The workshops are aimed at children aged between 9 and 12. The number of children per workshop is limited to ensure optimal learning (12 children). The workshop runs if a minimum of 5 children are registered. How do the workshops work? The workshops are held one Wednesday afternoon a month from 2pm to 4pm at the University of Namur. Participation in a workshop costs €5 per child. This price includes supervision, materials and a snack. It is possible to register your children for several or all workshops and thus benefit from an advantageous rate. Reservations close 15 days before the activity date. Please note: preferential rate for children of UNamur staff (discount code: PromoUNamur).Your children are looked after and accompanied by a team of activity leaders. Who organizes the workshops? The workshops are organized by Confluent des Savoirs, UNamur's research outreach and dissemination unit. The team, experts in the transmission of knowledge, works in collaboration with university researchers to offer workshops in which your children question, reflect and experiment while having fun!
Sign up
See content
Fête de la Musique at Quai22
The Fête de la Musique à Namur , is just over twenty free concerts from June 20 to 23, all styles of music combined, inviting the public to wander, open-minded and curious, from a cultural venue to a garden, a courtyard, a café terrace or a store, in search of a variety of musical universes, sometimes festive, sometimes more hushed, even singular. It's a grassroots project that aims to recapture the original spirit of the Fête de la Musique: a warm atmosphere, great encounters and spontaneous sharing between musicians and audiences.On June 22, come and discover the Namur-based project Orphée.Freely inspired by the eponymous myth, this Namur-based project reappropriates the story to create an original musical form: halfway between techno, classical, ambient and field recording. It draws its inspiration from both primitive and contemporary electronic music. Electrodes that capture variations in the electrical potential of plants generate experimental, improvised music. Electricity ignites the electronic circuits of the modules, energy exalts the plants and love electrifies Orpheus. The result is unique music, powerfully organic and adventurous.Mix & Live analog visuals by Analog Memory aka François Gustin - Myth of Orpheus adapted by Julie Csik & Benoît VermerThe event is free!More information here.
See content
Narilis annual meeting
More info coming soon!
More info on the NARILIS website
See content
India China Workshop
Discover the program
See content
Stellar Scape
With its deep skies that hypnotize and subjugate, space exerts an unrivalled fascination on the human species. As the Anthropocene crisis shakes our balances (environmental, technological, democratic), the 'Land of Night' is by turns the last frontier to be colonized, a resource to be exploited, a tourist destination, an observatory for remote surveillance, a dumping ground for orbiting debris, and forever the infinite constellation of our original interrogations as well as our (meta)physical reveries.From the atomic fragment to the great universal whole, the Stellar Scape exhibition brings together some two dozen international artists, researchers and engineers around the imaginaries of astronomy and the revival of space adventures. Through art installations, immersive environments, scientific innovations, speculative projects, we experience this expanding starry landscape, mirroring the cosmic link that connects us in a single space to all those things that appear there not only as they are, but also as they could be.
More information on the exhibition
See content
Nuit Blanche Namur
Gray-Scott Summer School on High-Performance Computing
The school will deal with optimizing computations on different types of hardware (CPU, GPU), presenting their respective characteristics, architectures and bottlenecks. It will cover both generic optimization methods applicable to all types of hardware, and the various libraries, technologies and languages available to achieve the best possible performance. Ideally, the machine's peak performance. Hardware considered: CPU, GPU.Languages considered: C++17, C++20, CUDA, Fortran, Rust, PythonLibraries considered: SYCL, Eve, Numpy, cunumerics, legate, Jax, Thrust.Compilers considered: G++, Clang++, nvc++, gfortran, nvfortran, dpc++.Profiling tools: Valgrind, Maqao, Perf, NSight, Malt and NumaProfAll methods will be illustrated on simple examples, such as Hadamard products, reductions, barycenter calculations and matrix products in order to be applied to a single problem: the simulation of a Gray Scott reaction. This problem is simple enough to be understood quickly, yet complex enough to be difficult for compilers to optimize without help. Each method will be broken down into simple versions, using default options, and one or more advanced versions, which will allow their advantages and disadvantages to be discussed and quantified.For more information on its content, please consult the school websiteOn the University of Namur satellite site, you'll enjoy the following benefits: Interaction with official LAPP trainers; Group support and a good working atmosphere; Lunch and a drink at the end of the day on the first day; You choose what you want to follow on site. We encourage you to come on the first day, but you make up your own program on the other days.To register for the UNamur satellite site: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScxikCQTfsQl9zZfnidm4xLSuDpdJGcgyLKOfJ2wo4VMgrgRw/viewform
Read more
See content
Public defense of thesis - Louise GÉRARD
ABCB5 belongs to the ABC transporter superfamily composed of 48 members. These transporters have been extensively studied for their role in cancer multidrug resistance and, more recently, in tumorigenesis. ABCB5 has been identified as a marker of skin progenitor cells, melanoma stem cells, and limbal stem cells. Its expression has also been reported, among others, in melanoma, colorectal cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma and several hematological malignancies. The unique feature of ABCB5 is that it exists as both a full transporter (ABCB5FL) and a half-transporter (ABCB5β). Several studies have shown that the ABCB5β homodimer, in contrast to ABCB5FL, cannot confer multidrug resistance. Since these studies focused on a limited number of drugs, we cannot exclude the possibility that this homodimer may be involved in drug resistance or biological functions that have yet to be elucidated. However, it is also reasonable to hypothesize that ABCB5β could dimerize with other half transporters of the ABCB family to become functional. Using three complementary techniques: (1) nanoluciferase-based bioluminescence resonance energy transfer, (2) coimmunoprecipitation, and (3) proximity ligation assay, we identified two novel heterodimers in two melanoma cell lines: ABCB5β/B6 and ABCB5β/B9. Both heterodimers could be expressed in High-Five insect cells when both interacting partners were fused using the linker region of ABCB1, resulting in chimeric heterodimers. ATPase assays revealed that all chimeric heterodimers have a basal ATPase activity and that both functional nucleotide-binding domains in each dimer are required for their basal ATPase activity. Also, we obtained preliminary data suggesting that ABCB5β traffics from the endoplasmic reticulum to melanosomes independently of its dimerization, suggesting that its heterodimers might be located in similar organelles. However, several limitations were encountered when attempting to confirm their intracellular localization. Finally, since several anti-ABCB5 antibodies in the literature have shown a lack of specificity, we generated a mouse monoclonal anti-ABCB5 antibody in collaboration with Atlas Antibodies. The specificity of this antibody was demonstrated by immunofluorescence, making this antibody an important tool in the characterization of ABCB5β and ABCB5FL. Although further studies are needed to elucidate the physiological relevance of ABCB5β heterodimers, preliminary data support the hypothesis that ABCB5β is involved in melanogenesis. Taken together, these results represent an important step towards elucidating the functional role of ABCB5β in melanocytes and melanoma.
See content
Public defense of doctoral thesis in languages, literature and translation - Manon HOUTART
Jury members
Prof. David VRYDAGHS (President), UNamurProf. Denis SAINT-AMAND (Promoter, Secretary), FNRS - UNamurProf. Olivier BELIN, Sorbonne UniversitéProf. Anne REVERSEAU, FNRS - UCLouvainProf. Anne-Christine ROYERE, Université de ReimsYou are cordially invited to attend this defense.The proclamation will be followed by a drink at the Salle académique.
See content
NISM Annual Meeting
Public defense of doctoral thesis in computer science: Ahmed ALMANSOORI
The design of collective decision-making mechanisms for robot swarms engaged in tasks that require consensus among the robots is a challenging problem in swarm robotics. The complexity of this design problem increases with the number of options and the number of cues that robots have to consider to make a decision. The research work presented in this thesis addresses this challenge by exploring the potential of evolutionary robotics (ER) as a design tool for synthesising neural network controllers that underpin the robots' decision-making process. The main objective is to design individual mechanisms that support the emergence of robust, scalable, and effective collective decision-making strategies while avoiding common assumptions made in previous research. These assumptions include pre-defined correlations between environmental features and robot behaviour or the use of specific opinion formation mechanisms, such as the voter or majority rule, to update opinions.The thesis focuses on two fundamental collective decision-making scenarios: the collective perception scenario and the site selection scenario. The first scenario involves robots collectively identifying the most prevalent element in the environment, represented by the colour covering the largest portion of the arena floor. The second scenario requires the robots to collectively choose the best site among several options based on their quality.
The Faculty of Computer Science at UNamur invites you to Ahmed ALMANSOORI's PhD Thesis "On the Evolution of Mechanisms for Collective Decision-making in a Swarm of Robots". Directed by Prof. Elio TUCI.In front of a jury composed of:Prof. Wim VANHOOF, President, University of NamurProf. Elio TUCI, Promoter, University of NamurProf. Patrick HEYMANS, Internal Member, University of NamurProf. Muhanad HAYDER MOHAMMED MOHAMMED, Internal Member, University of NamurProf. Yara KHALUF, External Member, Wageningen University (Netherlands)You are cordially invited to a drink, which will follow the public defense.For good organization, please give your answer by Thursday, October 10 by means of this link.Contact: Notaro Amelie - amelie.notaro@unamur.be
See content
Grandes Conférences Namuroises (GCN) | Meeting with Dan Van Raemdonck
This talk, entitled "Sauvons le français... de ceux qui le veulent sauver... du déclin" proposes to walk through the evolution of the French language, deconstructing the alarmist rhetoric that claims our language is in decline. "A little manual for resisting and deconstructing the dominant discourses that are mortifying for a language that is, after all, very much alive and evolving, as long as we let it. French is doing very well, thank you. "Dan Van Raemdonck.To close this evening, a drink will be offered, allowing you to extend the discussions in a convivial atmosphere.
See content