Dense matter with eXTP

In this White Paper we present the potential of the Enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry (eXTP) mission for determining the nature of dense matter; neutron star cores host an extreme density regime which cannot be replicated in a terrestrial laboratory. The tightest statistical constraints on the dense matter equation of state will come from pulse profile modelling of accretion-powered pulsars, burst oscillation sources, and rotation-powered pulsars. Additional constraints will derive from spin measurements, burst spectra, and properties of the accretion flows in the vicinity of the neutron star. Under development by an international Consortium led by the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Science, the eXTP mission is expected to be launched in the mid 2020s.Comment: Accepted for publication on Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. (2019

Children in 2077: Designing children's technologies in the age of transhumanism

What for and how will we design children's technologies in the transhumanism age, and what stance will we take as designers? This paper aims to answer this question with 13 fictional abstracts from sixteen authors of different countries, institutions and disciplines. Transhumanist thinking envisions enhancing human body and mind by blending human biology with technological augmentations. Fundamentally, it seeks to improve the human species, yet the impacts of such movement are unknown and the implications on children's lives and technologies were not explored deeply. In an age, where technologies such as under-skin chips or brain-machine interfaces can clearly be defined as transhumanist, our aim is to reveal probable pitfalls and benefits of those technologies on children's lives by using the power of design fiction. Thus, main contribution of this paper is to create diverse presentation of provocative research ideas that will foster the discussion on the transhumanist technologies impacting the lives of children in the future