Massive Black Holes Common In Early Universe

SPACE WATCH
NASA – Using the deepest X-ray image ever taken, astronomers found the first direct evidence that massive black holes were common in the early universe. This discovery from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows that very young black holes grew more aggressively than previously thought, in tandem with the growth of their host galaxies.

Chandra Deep Field South
By pointing Chandra at a patch of sky for more than six weeks, astronomers obtained what is known as the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS). When combined with very deep optical and infrared images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the new Chandra data allowed astronomers to search for black holes in 200 distant galaxies, from when the universe was between about 800 million to 950 million years old.

“Until now, we had no idea what the black holes in these early galaxies were doing, or if they even existed,” said Ezequiel Treister of the University of Hawaii, lead author of the study appearing in the June 16 issue of the journal Nature. “Now we know they are there, and they are growing like gangbusters.”

Baby Black Hole
This is an artist’s impression of a growing supermassive black hole located in the early Universe, showing a disk of gas rotating around the central object that generates copious amounts of radiation. This gas is destined to be consumed by the black hole. The black hole’s mass is less than one hundredth of the mass it will have when the Universe reaches its present day age of about 13.7 billion years. Image credit: NASA/CXC/A.Hobart

Baby Galaxy Core
This artist’s impression shows a very young galaxy located in the early Universe less than one billion years after the Big Bang. The distorted appearance of the galaxy is caused by the large number of mergers occurring at this early epoch, and the blue regions mark where star formation is occurring at a high rate. The core of the galaxy is embedded within heavy veils of dust and gas. A cut-out from the core shows that this dust and gas is hiding very bright radiation from the very center of the galaxy, produced by a rapidly growing supermassive black hole. Image credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

more> http://is.gd/VmbsXu

Building a Long-Term Strategy for Growth through Innovation

By Martin Neil Baily, Bruce Katz and Darrell M. West – Priorities for action start with turning three deficits—budget, investment/savings and trade—into surpluses.

This will require action by the public sector—to provide tax credits for innovation and more forward-thinking trade policies, for example – and the private sector, including businesses, universities and private research firms that reward education and job skills.

• Put the Federal Budget on a sound footing
• Prioritize economic drivers
• Emphasize effective government

more> http://is.gd/Dv28IF

IMF cuts U.S. growth forecast, warns of crisis

By Luciana Lopez – The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth on Friday and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are “playing with fire” unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits.

“We have now entered very clearly into a new phase of the (global) crisis, which is, I would say, the political phase of the crisis,” Jose Vinals, director of the IMF’s monetary and capital markets department said in an interview in Sao Paulo, where the updates to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook and Global Financial Stability Report were published. more> http://is.gd/RXf0n2

The data center needs an operating system?

By Jon Brodkin – Personal computers have operating systems. Even phones have operating systems. So why doesn’t the data center have one?

Zaharia and colleagues described their thoughts in a paper titled, aptly, “The Datacenter Needs an Operating System,” which can be read on the Usenix website (pdf).

“Datacenters already host a diverse array of applications (storage systems, web applications, long-running services, and batch analytics), and as new cluster programming frameworks are developed, we expect the number of applications to grow,” the paper states. “For example, Google has augmented its MapReduce framework with Pregel (a specialized framework for graph applications), Dremel (a low-latency system for interactive data mining), and Percolator (an incremental indexing system). At the same time, the number of cluster users is growing: for example, Facebook‘s Hadoop data warehouse runs near-interactive SQL queries from hundreds of users. Consequently, it is crucial for datacenter operators to be able to multiplex resources efficiently both between users of an application and across applications.” more> http://is.gd/4Np3Us

related>

• Data Center, StrategyGroup
• Does an operating system for data centers makes sense? LinkedIn Discussion

NZ Telecom admits broadband blunder

By Chris Barton – (New Zealand) Telecom has admitted a software error has caused over-counting of broadband usage since November – affecting 35,000 customers who will be now be offered compensation.

“Initially it was a fault in one box and it moved on to other boxes.” The radius access servers manage the data flow through the network and serve clusters of customers. The software fault developed in the servers’ line cards and has occurred nationwide.

“Because these boxes are throughout the country, when a certain condition was met in the network – effectively let’s call it a reset – that’s when the software fault emerged and that wasn’t geographically specific,” said Telecom retail chief executive Alan Gourdie. more> http://is.gd/oOaFzc

related>

• New Zealand government reveals cybersecurity strategy, Hamish Barwick, Computerworld/TechWorld