Replacement for Alex Ferguson

The retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson was confirmed officially on  8 May 2013; his last game will be against West Bromwich Albion and it will be his 1500th game in charge of Manchester United.

The pertinent question is who will replace Sir Alex Ferguson?

José Mourinho is definitely not available for this job. Given the indication that he is on his back to Chelsea and his contract with Real Madrid is yet to expire; getting JM to wear the shoes of SAF is a long short.

Antonio Conte is definitely a coach to have ; however, he has an ongoing project with Juventus and possibly his Italian style might not suit the English football.

Pep Guardiola has being on sabbatical for the past one year and has already penned down a contract with Bayern Munich to begin in the summer. Inheriting the best team in World of Football at the moment, he will definitely prefer to remain with Bayern Munich.

Arsène Wenger has being a rival to SAF since the beginning of time. With both coaches being the ones with longest careers in the English Premier league. Sure AW lacks a lot in the trophy cabinet in the past seven years; nevertheless, we should note that he has being on the tightest budgets.

Michael Laudrup had a fantastic career as a player and recently won his first trophy as a coach with Swansea FC. Just a beginner in the coaching world but with lots of potential.

Ryan Giggs is currently the most decorated player in the English premiere league like his boss SAF. Yet to go into coaching but he is a great candidate if continuity is considered.

Ole Gunnar Solskjær has the potential for the job. Having played for MUFC and coached the youth team; he will surely carry on the legacy of SAF.

Jürgen Klopp, the question here is will JK want to move on from Borussia Dortmond? Will he he be interested in taking another challenge outside Germany or will want to cement his name in the Bundesliga. JK is absolutely phenomenal, a coach to have.

Who will be the next coach of Manchester United?

Rangers drop to Confederation Cup - News - Kick Off

Enugu Rangers have dropped to the CAF Confederation Cup following their 3-1 loss in the CAF Champions League at the hands of Clube Recreativo Libolo of Angola on Saturday.

The Angolans ran riot in yesterday's game taking a two goal lead into the break after Camara and Dario had found the back of the net.

Rangers fought back in the second half with debutant Sunday Mba pulling a goal back for Rangers in the 56th minute. But hopes of a comeback by the Flying Antelopes were however dashed when Libolo were awarded a penalty which was converted by Dario in the 74th minute.

Rangers who have never made it to the group stage of the Champions League since the inception of the current format of the competition have now dropped to CAF's second-tier competition, the Confederations Cup, to keep the Nigerian flag flying high on the continent.

Rangers will know their opponents in the Confederation Cup when CAF hold the draws for the third-round of qualifiers on May 7.

Article by: Uche George Egbe of kickoff.com

Rangers drop to Confederation Cup - News - Kick Off

Mba cleared for Rangers - News - Kick Off

Mba cleared for Rangers - News - Kick Off

Atoms star in world's smallest movie from IBM

Researchers at IBM have created the world's smallest movie by manipulating single atoms on a copper surface.

The stop-motion animation uses a few dozen carbon atoms, moved around with the tiny tip of what is called a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM).

It would take about 1,000 of the frames of the film laid side by side to span a single human hair.

The extraordinary feat of atomic precision has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records.

It is a showpiece for IBM's efforts to design next-generation data storage solutions based on single atoms.

IBM's scientists have been behind a number of technologies that can peer into atomic and molecular systems - their recent efforts using a related machine called an atomic force microscope have yielded pictures of single molecules and even images that detail the atomic bonds within molecules.

The new movie, titled A Boy and His Atom, instead uses the STM, an IBM invention which garnered the scientists behind it the 1986 Nobel prize in physics.

The device works by passing an electrically charged, phenomenally sharp metal needle across the surface of a sample. As the tip nears features on the surface, the charge can "jump the gap" in a quantum physics effect called tunnelling.

The 242 frames of the 90-second movie are essentially maps of this "tunnelling current" with a given arrangement of atoms. It depicts a boy playing with a "ball" made of a single atom, dancing, and jumping on a trampoline.

"The tip of the needle is both our eyes and our hands: it senses the atoms to make images of where the atoms are, and then it is moved closer to the atoms to tug them along the surface to new positions," explained Andreas Heinrich, principal investigator at IBM Research in California, US.

"The atoms hold still at their new positions because they form chemical bonds to the copper atoms in the surface underneath, and that lets us take an image of the whole arrangement of atoms in each frame of the film.

"Between frames we carefully move around the atoms to their new positions, and take another image," he told BBC News.

The effort, detailed in a number of YouTube videos, took four scientists two weeks of 18-hour days to pull off.

It underlines the growing ability of scientists to manipulate matter on the atomic level, which IBM scientists hope to use to create future data storage solutions.

In early 2012, they demonstrated a means to store a digital "bit" - the smallest unit of information - using just 12 atoms, in contrast to the million or so atoms required by the device you are reading this on.

But A Boy and His Atom is, Dr Heinrich concedes, a bit of fun.

"This isn't really about a particular scientific breakthrough. The movie is really a conversation-starter to get kids and other people talking about - and excited about - math, science and technology."

By Jason PalmerScience and technology reporter, BBC News

Quote of the day

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

― Winston Churchill