1.
University of Geneva
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The University of Geneva is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin as a theological seminary and it remained focused on theology until the 17th century, when it became a center for Enlightenment scholarship. In 1873, it dropped its religious affiliations and became officially secular, today, the university is the second-largest university in Switzerland by number of students. In 2009, the University of Geneva celebrated the 450th anniversary of its founding, at least 40% of the students come from foreign countries. In 2015, it was ranked 58th worldwide by the Shanghai ranking, in 2011, it was ranked 73rd worldwide by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, and 69th in the QS World University Rankings. UNIGE is a member of the League of European Research Universities the Coimbra Group, the University of Geneva is located in several districts in the eastern part of the city and in the nearby city of Carouge, and the different buildings are sometimes very distant from each other. The oldest building is the Collège Calvin, and is not anymore a university building, built between 1868 and 1871, Uni Bastions is the symbol of Genevas academic life. It is located in the middle of a park and is host to the faculty of Protestant Theology and its architecture was inspired by Le Corbusier. It hosts the Rectorat and the administration of the University and it is Switzerlands biggest building dedicated to social sciences. It currently hosts the Faculty of Law, of Economics and Social Sciences, of Psychology and Education, the University of Geneva is structured in various faculties which are representing teaching, research and service to society in the various disciplines. Founded in 1876, ranked one of the top 100 medical schools in the world and it is one of the larger faculties of the University of Geneva in terms of budget and number of employees. Notable research areas include neuroscience, genetics, and transplantation and it is closely associated with Switzerlands largest hospital complex, the University Hospitals of Geneva. Since 1981, the Faculty of Medicine is located in the buildings of CMU in Champel, the faculty of Humanities and Arts has various departments and research centers. GSEM is a new faculty and exists since January 2014, the creation of the GSEM faculty is a result of a merger between two former departments, Economics and HEC. Students of the GSEM Faculty benefit from a degree in English. This new curriculum is in place since fall 2015, the GSEM counts more than 1.700 students and 200 lecturers. The Executive Education counts more than 1.500 participants and over 45 programs (including an Executive MBA, a number of research institutes provide avenues for graduate studies at Master’s and Doctoral levels. The Faculty Geneva School of Social Sciences, was founded on 1 January 2014, the faculty was created in 1890
2.
Versoix
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Versoix is a municipality in the Canton of Geneva, Switzerland, which sits on the right bank of Lac Léman. It is the last town of the Canton of Geneva on the road northeast towards Lausanne and it is a train stop on the Swiss Federal Railways line running between Coppet and Geneva. On the Vaud side, the village is called Mies. The distance from the centre of Geneva is about 10 km, Versoix has an area, as of 2009, of 10.51 square kilometers. Of this area,3.06 km2 or 29. 1% is used for agricultural purposes, while 4 km2 or 38. 1% is forested. Of the rest of the land,3.4 km2 or 32. 4% is settled,0.08 km2 or 0. 8% is either rivers or lakes and 0.01 km2 or 0. 1% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 19. 4%, while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 2. 8%. Out of the land,36. 1% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2. 0% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land,23. 1% is used for growing crops and 3. 5% is pastures, of the water in the municipality,0. 4% is in lakes and 0. 4% is in rivers and streams. Versoix has a population of 13,263, as of 2008,41. 7% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years the population has changed at a rate of 23. 3% and it has changed at a rate of 19% due to migration and at a rate of 5. 8% due to births and deaths. Most of the population speaks French, with English being second most common, There are 281 people who speak Italian and 3 people who speak Romansh. As of 2008, the distribution of the population was 48. 3% male and 51. 7% female. The population was made up of 3,465 Swiss men and 2,831 non-Swiss men, There were 4,013 Swiss women and 2,713 non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 1,979 or about 19. 2% were born in Versoix and lived there in 2000. There were 1,978 or 19. 2% who were born in the canton, while 1,603 or 15. 5% were born somewhere else in Switzerland. In 2008 there were 75 live births to Swiss citizens and 54 births to non-Swiss citizens, ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens increased by 18 while the foreign population increased by 44. There were 39 Swiss men and 40 Swiss women who emigrated from Switzerland, at the same time, there were 124 non-Swiss men and 94 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland
3.
Canton of Geneva
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The Republic and Canton of Geneva is the French-speaking westernmost canton or state of Switzerland, surrounded on almost all sides by France. As is the case in several other Swiss cantons, this canton is referred to as a republic within the Swiss Confederation, the canton of Geneva is located in the southwestern corner of Switzerland, and is considered one of the most cosmopolitan areas of the country. As a center of the Calvinist Reformation, the city of Geneva has had a influence on the canton. The Republic of Geneva was proclaimed in 1541, under John Calvin, the Republic of Geneva reinforced its alliance to the Protestant cantons of the Swiss Confederacy, becoming an everlasting ally in 1584. The French Revolution reached Geneva in 1792, and in February 1794, after the death of Robespierre in July of the same year, there was a counter-revolution, which gained the upper hand by 1796. This prompted the French invasion of 1798, and the annexation of Geneva as part of the French département du Léman, Geneva finally joined the Swiss Confederation in 1815 as the 22nd canton, having been enlarged by French and Savoyard territories at the Vienna Congress. The area of the canton of Geneva is 282 square kilometers, the canton is surrounded on almost all sides by France and bordered by the Swiss canton of Vaud on northeast. The adjoining French départements are Ain and Haute-Savoie, the current boundaries of the canton were established in 1815. There are 45 municipalities in the canton, Geneva does not have any administrative districts. There are 10 cities with a population of over 10,000 as of 2007, Genève, Vernier, Lancy, Meyrin, Carouge, Onex, Thônex, Versoix, Grand-Saconnex, Chêne-Bougeries. The constitution of the canton was established in 1847, and has, the cantonal government has seven members who are elected for four years. The legislature, the Grand Council, has 100 seats, with deputies elected for four years at a time, the last elecation was held on 7 October 2013. In a similar way to what happens at the Federal level, in addition, any law can be subject to a referendum if it is demanded by 7,000 persons entitled to vote, and 10,000 persons may also propose a new law. The republique and canton of Geneva has 11 seats in the National Council, on 18 October 2015, in the federal election the most popular party was the The Liberals which received three seats with 20. 5% of the votes. In the federal election, a total of 106,852 votes were cast, and she is part of the Council of States since 2007. Councilor Robert Cramer, member of the Green Party, was re-elected in the round with a majority of 42,075 votes. He is part of the Council of States since 2007, ^a FDP before 2009, FDP. The Liberals after 2009 ^b * indicates that the party was not on the ballot in this canton. ^c Part of the FDP for this election ^d Part of the SD for this election The population of the canton is 484,736, as of 2013, the population included 194,623 foreigners from 187 different nations, or about 40. 1% of the total population
4.
Switzerland
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Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. The establishment of the Old Swiss Confederacy dates to the medieval period, resulting from a series of military successes against Austria. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The country has a history of armed neutrality going back to the Reformation, it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815, nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to international organisations. On the European level, it is a member of the European Free Trade Association. However, it participates in the Schengen Area and the European Single Market through bilateral treaties, spanning the intersection of Germanic and Romance Europe, Switzerland comprises four main linguistic and cultural regions, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Due to its diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera. On coins and stamps, Latin is used instead of the four living languages, Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF. Zürich and Geneva have each been ranked among the top cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the former ranked second globally, according to Mercer. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, a term for the Swiss. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century. The name Switzer is from the Alemannic Schwiizer, in origin an inhabitant of Schwyz and its associated territory, the Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for Confederates, Eidgenossen, used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica. The toponym Schwyz itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German Suittes, ultimately related to swedan ‘to burn’
5.
Observatory
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An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed, historically, observatories were as simple as containing an astronomical sextant or Stonehenge. Astronomical observatories are mainly divided into four categories, space based, airborne, ground based, ground-based observatories, located on the surface of Earth, are used to make observations in the radio and visible light portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Most optical telescopes are housed within a dome or similar structure, Telescope domes have a slit or other opening in the roof that can be opened during observing, and closed when the telescope is not in use. In most cases, the upper portion of the telescope dome can be rotated to allow the instrument to observe different sections of the night sky. Radio telescopes usually do not have domes, for optical telescopes, most ground-based observatories are located far from major centers of population, to avoid the effects of light pollution. The ideal locations for modern observatories are sites that have dark skies, a percentage of clear nights per year, dry air. At high elevations, the Earths atmosphere is thinner, thereby minimizing the effects of atmospheric turbulence, sites that meet the above criteria for modern observatories include the southwestern United States, Hawaii, Canary Islands, the Andes, and high mountains in Mexico such as Sierra Negra. Major optical observatories include Mauna Kea Observatory and Kitt Peak National Observatory in the USA, Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in Spain, and Paranal Observatory in Chile. Specific research study performed in 2009 shows that the best possible location for ground-based observatory on Earth is Ridge A — a place in the part of Eastern Antarctica. This location provides the least atmospheric disturbances and best visibility, beginning in 1930s, radio telescopes have been built for use in the field of radio astronomy to observe the Universe in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Since the mid-20th century, a number of observatories have been constructed at very high altitudes, above 4. The largest and most notable of these is the Mauna Kea Observatory, the Chacaltaya Astrophysical Observatory in Bolivia, at 5,230 m, was the worlds highest permanent astronomical observatory from the time of its construction during the 1940s until 2009. It has now surpassed by the new University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory. As a result, the resolution of space telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope is often much smaller than a ground-based telescope with a similar aperture. However, all these advantages do come with a price, Space telescopes are much more expensive to build than ground-based telescopes. Due to their location, space telescopes are also difficult to maintain. The Hubble Space Telescope was serviced by the Space Shuttle while many other space telescopes cannot be serviced at all, Airborne observatories have the advantage of height over ground installations, putting them above most of the Earths atmosphere
6.
Exoplanet
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An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet that orbits a star other than the Sun. The first scientific detection of an exoplanet was in 1988, HARPS has discovered about a hundred exoplanets while the Kepler space telescope has found more than two thousand. Kepler has also detected a few thousand candidate planets, of which about 11% may be false positives, on average, there is at least one planet per star, with a percentage having multiple planets. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone, the least massive planet known is Draugr, which is about twice the mass of the Moon. There are planets that are so near to their star that they take only a few hours to orbit, some are so far out that it is difficult to tell whether they are gravitationally bound to the star. Almost all of the planets detected so far are within the Milky Way, the nearest exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, located 4.2 light-years from Earth and orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun. The discovery of exoplanets has intensified interest in the search for extraterrestrial life, there is special interest in planets that orbit in a stars habitable zone, where it is possible for liquid water, a prerequisite for life on Earth, to exist on the surface. The study of planetary habitability also considers a range of other factors in determining the suitability of a planet for hosting life. The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the billions, the convention for designating exoplanets is an extension of the system used for designating multiple-star systems as adopted by the International Astronomical Union. For exoplanets orbiting a star, the designation is normally formed by taking the name or, more commonly, designation of its parent star. The first planet discovered in a system is given the designation b, if several planets in the same system are discovered at the same time, the closest one to the star gets the next letter, followed by the other planets in order of orbital size. A provisional IAU-sanctioned standard exists to accommodate the designation of circumbinary planets, a limited number of exoplanets have IAU-sanctioned proper names. Various detection claims made in the century were rejected by astronomers. The first scientific detection of an exoplanet began in 1988, However, the first confirmed detection came in 1992, with the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. The first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a star was made in 1995. Some exoplanets have been imaged directly by telescopes, but the vast majority have been detected through indirect methods, such as the transit method, in the eighteenth century the same possibility was mentioned by Isaac Newton in the General Scholium that concludes his Principia. Claims of exoplanet detections have been made since the nineteenth century, some of the earliest involve the binary star 70 Ophiuchi. In 1855 William Stephen Jacob at the East India Companys Madras Observatory reported that orbital anomalies made it highly probable that there was a body in this system
7.
Stellar evolution
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Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes over the course of time. The table shows the lifetimes of stars as a function of their masses, all stars are born from collapsing clouds of gas and dust, often called nebulae or molecular clouds. Over the course of millions of years, these protostars settle down into a state of equilibrium, nuclear fusion powers a star for most of its life. Initially the energy is generated by the fusion of hydrogen atoms at the core of the main-sequence star, later, as the preponderance of atoms at the core becomes helium, stars like the Sun begin to fuse hydrogen along a spherical shell surrounding the core. This process causes the star to gradually grow in size, passing through the subgiant stage until it reaches the red giant phase. Once a star like the Sun has exhausted its fuel, its core collapses into a dense white dwarf. Stars with around ten or more times the mass of the Sun can explode in a supernova as their inert iron cores collapse into a dense neutron star or black hole. Stellar evolution is not studied by observing the life of a star, as most stellar changes occur too slowly to be detected. Instead, astrophysicists come to understand how stars evolve by observing numerous stars at various points in their lifetime, in June 2015, astronomers reported evidence for Population III stars in the Cosmos Redshift 7 galaxy at z =6.60. Stellar evolution starts with the collapse of a giant molecular cloud. Typical giant molecular clouds are roughly 100 light-years across and contain up to 6,000,000 solar masses, as it collapses, a giant molecular cloud breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. In each of these fragments, the collapsing gas releases gravitational potential energy as heat, as its temperature and pressure increase, a fragment condenses into a rotating sphere of superhot gas known as a protostar. A protostar continues to grow by accretion of gas and dust from the molecular cloud, further development is determined by its mass. Protostars are encompassed in dust, and are more readily visible at infrared wavelengths. Observations from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer have been important for unveiling numerous Galactic protostars. Protostars with masses less than roughly 0.08 M☉ never reach high enough for nuclear fusion of hydrogen to begin. These are known as brown dwarfs, the International Astronomical Union defines brown dwarfs as stars massive enough to fuse deuterium at some point in their lives. Objects smaller than 13 MJ are classified as sub-brown dwarfs, both types, deuterium-burning and not, shine dimly and die away slowly, cooling gradually over hundreds of millions of years
8.
European Space Agency
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The European Space Agency is an intergovernmental organisation of 22 member states, dedicated to the exploration of space. Established in 1975 and headquartered in Paris, France, ESA has a staff of about 2,000. The main European launch vehicle Ariane 5 is operated through Arianespace with ESA sharing in the costs of launching, after World War II, many European scientists left Western Europe in order to work with the United States. The meeting was attended by representatives from eight countries, including Harrie Massey. The Western European nations decided to have two different agencies, one concerned with developing a system, ELDO, and the precursor of the European Space Agency. The latter was established on 20 March 1964 by an agreement signed on 14 June 1962, from 1968 to 1972, ESRO launched seven research satellites. ESA in its current form was founded with the ESA Convention in 1975, ESA has 10 founding member states, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. These signed the ESA Convention in 1975 and deposited the instruments of ratification by 1980, during this interval the agency functioned in a de facto fashion. ESA launched its first major scientific mission in 1975, Cos-B, ESA joined NASA in the IUE, the worlds first high-orbit telescope, which was launched in 1978 and operated very successfully for 18 years. A number of successful Earth-orbit projects followed, and in 1986 ESA began Giotto, its first deep-space mission, to study the comets Halley and Grigg–Skjellerup. Hipparcos, a mission, was launched in 1989 and in the 1990s SOHO, Ulysses. Recent scientific missions in co-operation with NASA include the Cassini–Huygens space probe, as the successor of ELDO, ESA has also constructed rockets for scientific and commercial payloads. Ariane 1, launched in 1979, brought mostly commercial payloads into orbit from 1984 onward, the successor launch vehicle of Ariane 5, the Ariane 6 is already in the definition stage and is envisioned to enter service in the 2020s. The beginning of the new millennium saw ESA become, along with agencies like NASA, JAXA, ISRO, CSA and Roscosmos, one of the major participants in scientific space research. Although ESA had relied on co-operation with NASA in previous decades, especially the 1990s, changed circumstances led to decisions to rely more on itself, a 2011 press issue thus stated, Russia is ESAs first partner in its efforts to ensure long-term access to space. ESA maintains its scientific and research projects mainly for astronomy-space missions such as Corot, launched on 27 December 2006 and this is the reason space exploration is an integral part of overall space activities. It has always been so, and it will be more important in the future. ESA describes its work in two overlapping ways, For the general public the various fields of work are described as Activities, Member states participate to varying degrees in the mandatory and optional space programmes
9.
Planck (spacecraft)
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The mission substantially improved upon observations made by the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. The project was started around 1996 and was initially called COBRAS/SAMBA and it was later renamed in honour of the German physicist Max Planck, who derived the formula for black-body radiation. On 21 March 2013, the missions first all-sky map of the microwave background was released. At the end of its mission Planck was put into a heliocentric orbit, the final deactivation command was sent to Planck in October 2013. Planck has a resolution and sensitivity than WMAP, allowing it to probe the power spectrum of the CMB to much smaller scales. It also observes in 9 frequency bands rather than WMAPs 5, the dominant foreground radiation depends on frequency, but could include synchrotron radiation from the Milky Way at low frequencies, and dust at high frequencies. The spacecraft carries two instruments, the Low Frequency Instrument and the High Frequency Instrument, both instruments can detect both the total intensity and polarization of photons, and together cover a frequency range of nearly 830 GHz. The cosmic microwave background spectrum peaks at a frequency of 160.2 GHz, Plancks passive and active cooling systems allow its instruments to maintain a temperature of −273.05 °C, or 0.1 °C above absolute zero. From August 2009, Planck was the coldest known object in space, NASA played a role in the development of the mission and contributes to the analysis of scientific data. The LFI has three bands, covering the range of 30–70 GHz, covering the microwave to infra-red regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. These detection assemblies are divided into 6 frequency bands, each with a bandwidth of 33%, of these six bands, only the lower four have the capability to measure the polarisation of incoming radiation, the two higher bands do not. On 13 January 2012, it was reported that the supply of helium-3 used in Plancks dilution refrigerator had been exhausted. By this date, Planck had completed five full scans of the CMB, the LFI was expected to remain operational for another six to nine months. A common service module was designed and built by Thales Alenia Space in its Turin plant, the overall cost is estimated to be 700 million € for the Planck and 1,100 million € for the Herschel mission. Both figures include their missions spacecraft and payload, launch and mission expenses, structurally, the Herschel and Planck SVMs are very similar. On both spacecraft, a design was used for the avionics, attitude control and measurement, command and data management, power. All units on the SVM are redundant, on each spacecraft, the power subsystem consists of a solar array, employing triple-junction solar cells, a battery and the power control unit. For Planck, the solar array is fixed on the bottom of the satellite
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