December 27, 2022 - 14 of the most striking images of 2022

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14 of the most striking images of 2022 A man sits on a lawn chair holding a pretty pastel parasol against the blazing sun, seemingly oblivious of the apocalyptic plumes of smoke billowing up from the burning tyres, a few feet away, that are scattered across the highway on which he is surreally perched. Impeding access to Iquique, a city in north Chile near the border with Bolivia, where groups agitating against illegal immigration have organised protests, he is an implausible paragon of imperturbable calm. The incongruity of his relaxed posture (which rhymes with the idyllic beach, sparkling sea, and poetic palm tree pattern repeated on his parasol) and the chaos raging around him is reminiscent of several Surrealist paintings from the 20th Century – such as Salvador Dalí's Sewing machine with Umbrella (1941) – that portray the ostensibly innocuous object as absurdly foretokening doom. When Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, died in a Tehran hospital under suspicious circumstances on 16 September, women around the world began cutting their hair in protest against her treatment by the government of Iran. Amini had been arrested three days earlier by the Islamic Republic's Guidance Patrol – a vice squad enforcing Islamic dress code – for allegedly wearing the hijab incorrectly. While in the custody of the morality police, according to eyewitnesses, Amini suffered terrible physical abuse and fell into a coma. Photos of Nasibe Samsaei, an Iranian woman living in Turkey, cutting off her own ponytail as a display of solidarity and defiance outside the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, went viral. As a statement of intent to control one's own physical presence in this world, the act of cutting one's own hair short has proved perennially powerful. In her 1940 painting Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair, created a month after her divorce from the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo allows us to observe her almost mid-snip, with scissors still in her hand, as strands of the self she once felt she had to be lie scattered all around her. Continued here

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Virtual workspaces are the next big thing in virtual work With the hurdle of online meetings crossed many times over, startups are now looking at solving the next piece of the problem regarding virtual working, the lack of team spirit. The answer is likely to be virtual office spaces that team members log into while working, Bloomberg reported. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck and work was forced to go remote, services like Zoom and Microsoft Teams rose to the occasion to keep people connected and work ongoing. For many, work turned into a series of online meetings to be attended day after day. Continued here

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The US' 2,000-year-old mystery mounds Autumn leaves crackled under our shoes as dozens of eager tourists and I followed a guide along a grassy mound. We stopped when we reached the opening of a turf-topped circle, which was formed by another wall of mounded earth. We were at The Octagon, part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, a large network of hand-constructed hills spread throughout central and southern Ohio that were built as many as 2,000 years ago. Indigenous people would come to The Octagon from hundreds of miles away, gathering regularly for shared rituals and worship.  "There was a sweat lodge or some kind of purification place there," said our guide Brad Lepper, the senior archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection's World Heritage Program (OHC), as he pointed to the circle. I looked inside to see a perfectly manicured lawn – a putting green. A tall flag marked a hole at its centre.   Continued here

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Black Snow, a new pacy murder mystery, addresses the complicated legacy of slavery in Australia Hilary Emmett is a member of the UK Labour Party. She has collaborated previously with artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby, mentioned in this article. In 1994, the Australian federal government finally extended recognition to Australian South Sea Islander people as a distinct cultural group. This recognition was important: racism put Australian South Sea Islanders at a disadvantage, yet there was little public recognition of the unique circumstances they and their ancestors had experienced and survived. Continued here

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Sam Bankman-Fried directed to executives to hide $8 billion in liabilities Prosecutors of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that filed a lawsuit against former billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) have alleged that the crypto exchange's executives hid $8 billion in liabilities in fake customer accounts, Business Insider reported. SBF's directed FTX was the world's second-largest crypto exchange before a liquidity crunch pushed the company into bankruptcy. SBF, who had previously alleged that the company was in safe hands and was facing trouble due to conditions created by competitors, was later arrested in the Bahamas as irregularities in FTX's accounts began coming to the fore. Continued here

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Make your own fun with this 3D Printer While there is no shortage of great uses and updates for the traditional printer, for some time now, 3D printers have seemingly become all the rage. Unfortunately for many, purchasing a 3D printer can seem prohibitively expensive. If you are interested in a 3D printer but aren’t willing to spend a fortune, then you are in luck. Right now you can get the ToyBox 3D Printer Deluxe Bundle for 36 percent off its MSRP as a Christmas Day Deal. It also ships fast, so you are guaranteed to have it by Christmas. Continued here

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Homes that survived the Boulder County fire hid another disaster inside - we turned them into labs to study this urban wildfire health risk This article is part of a collaboration with Boulder Reporting Lab, The Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, KUNC public radio and The Conversation U.S. to explore the impacts of the devastating Marshall Fire one year after the blaze. The series can be found at the Boulder Reporting Lab. On Dec. 30, 2021, one of the most destructive wildfires on record in Colorado swept through neighborhoods just a few miles from our offices at the University of Colorado Boulder. The flames destroyed over 1,000 buildings, yet when we drove through the affected neighborhoods, some houses were still completely intact right next to homes where nothing was left to burn. Continued here

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The best things we bought in 2022 So you’re flush with gift cards and $5 checks from grandparents but aren’t sure what in the wild world of e-commerce is noice and what’s noise. Luckily, the PopSci staff is always searching for tech toys that live up to the hype. One of the perks of the job is we get to go hands-on with a ton of stuff every year, so when something stands out it’s either really dope or truly helps us cope. Eager to share our personal discoveries with equally passionate gadget geeks, we’ve put together this short list of our No. 1 purchases in 2022 so you can shop for the best things with confidence. Fellow’s maximized minimalism designer accessories aesthetic has become iconic in barista circles (and corners), and for good reason. This electric kettle, available in multiple finishes, sits on a minimalist base equipped with a 1200-watt quick-heating element and coin-shaped sleek LCD screen so you can quickly dial in to-the-degree temperature/set a brew stopwatch for the coffee-brewing method/tea type you’re using. And the gooseneck spout allows for precise saturation. The standard edition is a proven workhorse, but I recommend you go all-in and splurge on this newer Pro edition. For an extra $30, it adds a high-resolution color LCD, plus more scheduling options/guide modes/temperature hold time adjustments (Wi-Fi upgradeable if/when new features get released). I’ve found it invaluable as my mood swings like a jittery overcaffeinated pendulum between pour-overs and French press coffee, oolong and Earl Grey teas. — Tony Ware, associate managing editor, gear and reviews Continued here

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Why some salt marshes are more endangered than we thought On January 26, 1700, deep below the northeast Pacific, two pieces of Earth’s crust abruptly gave way, ending a centuries-long deadlock. The massive earthquake sent a wall of water rushing inland. By the time the shaking stopped and the water settled, the coastline had been transformed. In some places, the land had plummeted by more than a meter, while the flood of sediment turned coastal marshes into mudflats. For the past five years, Peck has been investigating how one of these buried salt marshes, in Netarts Bay, Oregon, recovered from the tsunami. Her work came to an unexpected conclusion: the salt marsh took way longer to rebuild atop the mudflat than expected. First, rootstalks left by the lost marsh had to resprout, then the growing plants had to gradually trap sediment, raising their successors above the reach of the tides until the land-like highest parts of the marsh again flooded only occasionally. Continued here

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A Jazz Album Made to Last I first heard the jazz singer Paula West’s début album, “Temptation,” not long after it came out, in 1997, and it gave me the conviction that adulthood might be an interesting place to live. I was barely thirteen, but the confidence with which West sang buoyed my own. Her style, precise and wistful, let in breezes from a mature world. “Temptation” turns twenty-five this year, and what strikes me at the milestone isn’t just my conviction that the album remains as dazzling as ever but the realization that, in twenty-five years, I have never once stopped listening to it, never taken it from frequent rotation. The world has changed; the album hasn’t. It can be hard to remember in these TikTok times that the power of recording is to let work live not just in its moment but across the years: to help preserve what’s good enough to last. West was in her mid-thirties when she recorded “Temptation,” and took her title from the notoriously ponderous machista torch song made famous by Bing Crosby, Billy Eckstine, and the University of Michigan marching band. She turned the ballad winning and coy, placing it alongside wisecracking female standards like “You Came a Long Way from St. Louis” and “Peel Me a Grape,” and that reconsideration set the album’s tone. West recast Sidney Clare and Jay Gorney’s clammy thirties song “You’re My Thrill” (“how my pulse increases / I just go to pieces”) as a bossa-nova seduction number. She brought in newer ballads, such as “You’ll See,” by the Bay Area songwriter Carroll Coates, in a classic form. Her vocal signature of long-held notes, straight and full, no vibrato, seemed as much a mission statement as a mark of style. The mid-nineties had brought a high-sheen renaissance in vocal jazz—it was the age of Diana Krall’s ascent, Shirley Horn’s orchestral resurgence, and Tony Bennett’s turn to MTV—but West veered away from the era’s overwrought fashion, to follow her songs’ clean, direct lines. Continued here

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Betting on female jockeys can bring greater rewards - but it's not all good news The bookmaker (nearly) always wins, as the adage goes. But if you want to tip the balance in your favour, look to female riders. But while these findings may be a revelation to punters, there is a darker side to our work. Continued here

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As Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith Hit the Road Tracy K. Smith was named Poet Laureate in 2017, at the beginning of the fierce partisan divide of the Trump era. She quickly turned to her craft to address the deep political divisions the election laid bare, putting together a collection called “American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time.” Then she hit the road, visiting community centers, senior centers, prisons, and colleges, and reading poems of her own and by others for groups small and large. “It was exhausting, and exhilarating, and it was probably the best thing I could have done as an American,” she told The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Kevin Young. © 2022 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here

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From Climate Exhortation to Climate Execution There are about a hundred and forty million homes in the United States. Two-thirds, or about eighty-five million, of them are detached single-family houses; the rest are apartment units or trailer homes. That’s what American prosperity looks like: since the end of the Second World War, our extraordinary wealth has been devoted, above all, to the project of building bigger houses farther apart from one another. The great majority of them are heated with natural gas or oil, and parked in their garages and driveways or on nearby streets are some two hundred and ninety million vehicles, an estimated ninety-nine per cent of which, as of August, run on gasoline. It took centuries to build all those homes from wood and brick and steel and concrete, but, if we’re to seriously address the climate crisis, we have only a few years to remake them. So far, the climate debate has gone on mostly in people’s heads and hearts. It took thirty years to get elected leaders to take it seriously: first, to just get them to say that the planet was warming, and then to allow that humans were causing it. But this year Congress finally passed serious legislation—the Inflation Reduction Act—that allocates hundreds of billions of dollars to the task of transforming the nation so that it burns far less fossil fuel. So now the battle moves from hearts and heads to houses. “Emissions come from physical things,” Tom Steyer, the businessman and investment-firm manager, who, after a Presidential run in 2020, is focussing on investing in climate solutions, told me. “Emissions come from buildings, from power plants, from cars, from stuff you can touch. It’s not like information technology, which is infinitely replicable. This is one object at a time.” Continued here

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5 elections to watch in 2023 - what's at stake as millions head to the ballot box around the globe Predicting the outcome of national elections can be a mug’s game. Polls are often wrong, and second-guessing how people will vote months down the line can leave even the most savvy election specialist with egg on their face. In short, there are too many unknowns – the state of the economy, late political shocks and even the weather on election day. What is known is that 2023 has its fair share on consequential races. Democracy is on the ballot in a number of nations, while common themes – such as the handling of inflation and corruption – may determine how incumbent governments and presidents fare as the ballot box. The Conversation asked five experts to provide the lowdown on what is at stake in key national votes in 2023. Continued here

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Divided loyalties and messy compromises for Ukrainian refugees in Russia's Belgorod Sky News' Diana Magnay discovers what compromises Ukrainian refugees in the Russian city of Belgorod, most of whom have pro-Russian sympathies, have to make and the effect this has on generational lines. The backrooms at the local communist party headquarters near Belgorod airport are stacked high with supplies. Continued here

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A completely preserved man statue and Greek gods' heads found in Turkey Greek gods Heracles, Eros, and Dionysus' heads have been found in the ancient city of Aizanoi in Turkey's Kütahya province. Additionally, an unknown man statue has also been unearthed. Excavations in the Aizanoi are being carried out by Kütahya Dumlupınar University (DPU) Faculty of Arts and Sciences Archeology Department with 80 people and 20 technical personnel in Penkalas River, agora and theater sections, Hürriyet Daily News reported. Continued here

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Elon Musk says Twitter no longer 'in the fast lane to bankruptcy' Elon Musk, the new owner and current CEO of Twitter, has said that the social media site is no longer 'in the fast lane to bankruptcy', Business Insider reported. This update comes a little over a month after Musk told the then-employees at his newly acquired company that it was possible that the business would go under. This is possibly the first bit of positive news from the social media company after Musk's takeover, which ran like a saga since April and nearly ended in a courtroom drama. Musk blew the bankruptcy bugle within days of taking over the company and firing its top brass. His revelation led to an exodus of more top executives at the company. Continued here

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The Ordinary Heroes of the Taj When terrorists attacked the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, employees of the Taj Mumbai hotel displayed uncommon valor. They placed the safety of guests over their own well-being, thereby risking—and, in some cases, sacrificing—their lives. Deshpandé, of Harvard Business School, and Raina, of the HBS India Research Center in Mumbai, demonstrate that this behavior was not merely a crisis response. It was instead a manifestation of the Taj Group’s deeply rooted customer-centric culture that, the authors argue, other companies can emulate, both in extreme circumstances and during periods of normalcy. Continued here

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Trojena: Saudi Arabia to build a ski resort as part of its NEOM project Saudi Arabia's ambitious project to build The Line, a city of the future, is not a stand-alone project. The Line is one of the many components of a larger project called the NEOM, which also features the unique destination of Trojena, where the first outdoor ski resort in the Gulf will be located. NEOM, a combination of the Greek word Neo, meaning new, and the first letter M from the Arabic word for the future, mustaqbal, is the brainchild of The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman. Continued here

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Scientists plan to hit an asteroid with more than 9.6 million radio waves from HAARP A 500-foot-wide asteroid called 2010 XC15 will pass by Earth on December 27. While it has no intention of hitting us, it’s us who will hit the asteroid with a radio pulse.   Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) and NASA want to examine the 2010 XC15 space rock to test their preparation against Apophis. This dangerous asteroid might hit our planet in 2029. It is believed that on April 13, 2029, Apophis will be 10 times closer to Earth than the moon.  Continued here

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4 creepy crawlies you'll see more of this wet summer - and one iconic beetle you'll probably miss For Australians, memories of childhood Christmas often include gifts, prawns and shooing uninvited buzzing guests away from the pavlova. But have you ever wondered why the air is full of bugs some years and almost empty in others? Insect populations boom and bust frequently. Continued here

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Alice in Borderland Season 3? How the Season 2 ending sets up a new chapter Alice in Borderland, the hit Japanese manga adaptation now streaming on Netflix, has always leaned hard into its loose Alice in Wonderland inspiration. The biggest motif it borrows is the concept of a classic deck of cards identifying not only the deadly games the characters play, but also the conniving game masters who Arisu, Usagi, and co. come face to face with in Season 2. The final showdown between Arisu and Mira, the Queen of Hearts, seemed like the natural end of the story — and was actually the end of the manga source material. But one final shot teased a whole new chapter of the story, and it looks to be the most dangerous one yet. Here’s everything you need to know. Continued here

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World's smallest Christmas record measures only 40 microns in diameter One of the essential things that reflect the Christmas spirit is songs and carols. How about listening to these on a 40-micrometer record? Technical University of Denmark (DTU) researchers have created the world's smallest record involving the first 25 seconds of the Christmas classic "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree." The single was cut via a new nano-sculpting machine, the Nanofrazor, recently acquired from Heidelberg Instruments. Continued here

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Scientists revealed a laser pen which writes by burning the air Chinese scientists have developed a powerful laser that can practically burn the air to produce patterns. This bizarre yet fascinating laser can write in the air has been created by researchers at the Hongtuo Joint Laboratory in Wuhan, China. This pen might possibly be a gateway to a cutting-edge hologram technology. Continued here

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Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century Back in the 1990s, computer engineer and Wall Street “quant” were the hot occupations in business. Today data scientists are the hires firms are competing to make. As companies wrestle with unprecedented volumes and types of information, demand for these experts has raced well ahead of supply. Indeed, Greylock Partners, the VC firm that backed Facebook and LinkedIn, is so worried about the shortage of data scientists that it has a recruiting team dedicated to channeling them to the businesses in its portfolio. Continued here

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7 stellar post-Christmas Walmart clearance deals Looking for some post-Christmas Walmart clearance deals? Look no further! Walmart is always offering amazing deals on everything from electronics to groceries, so you can always find the perfect item at the perfect price. Whether you're shopping for the latest technology, home décor items, or just general household goods, Walmart's clearance section is filled with unbeatable deals. You can even find deals on apparel, footwear, and accessories. With Walmart's clearance deals, you can save big and get the items you need in no time. So don't wait; check out Walmart's clearance deals now! Continued here S17 Asteroid Launcher: This website lets you destroy cities with giant space rocks If you are a fan of the website "NUKEMAP," then you'll be more than familiar with unleashing hell on your hometown or another city worldwide. But now, you can mix up the fate of a city by using a new website that simulates asteroid impacts too! Called "Asteroid Launcher," this new website will provide hours of harmless fun to anyone with time. But, there is a more series angle to the site. Continued here S23 3 reasons local climate activism is more powerful than people realize Global warming has increased the number of extreme weather events around the world by 400% since the 1980s. Countries know how to stop the damage from worsening: stop burning fossil fuels and shift to renewable energy, electrify transportation and industry, and reduce the carbon intensity of agriculture. In my new book, “The Climate Crisis,” I lay out the mechanisms and impacts of the climate crisis and the reasons behind the lack of serious effort to combat it. One powerful reason is the influence that the fossil fuel industry, electric utilities and others with a vested interest in fossil fuels have over policymakers. Continued here S29 Why rituals have been crucial for humans throughout history - and why we still need them Each December, Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, among others, take over our thoughts and our wallets as we participate in ceremonies our ancestors have practised for as long as we can remember. These are all example of traditions. And in most cases, traditions are accompanied by rituals. In scientific terms, a “tradition” refers to the passing down of customs and beliefs from one generation to the next. A “ritual”, on the other hand, is a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order, and which is often embedded in a larger symbolic system, such as religion or philosophy. Continued here S12 These stunning NASA visuals shows a wonderous winter on Mars Though dreaming of a white Christmas may not immediately conjure up images of the extraterrestrial landscapes found in the coldest regions of Mars, NASA is presenting the idea of a "winter wonderland" on the Red Planet. Its numerous missions over the past few decades have uncovered strange icy features on Mars and how much the Red planet sometimes resembles Earth. In winter, the temperatures on Mars drop to sub-zero levels. Some of the coldest temperatures occur at the poles, where it can get as cold as -190 degrees Fahrenheit (-123 degrees Celsius). However, no region of Mars receives more than a few feet of snow, most of which falls over extremely flat areas. Continued here S53 Aztecs used the Sun to help build their ancient empire, new study reveals The Aztecs were especially adept at tracking the motion of the Sun and the way it rises and sets at different points on the horizon. Pre-Columbian Mexico (or Mesoamerica) hosted one of the largest civilizations and populations in the world. The most well-known and dominant of these civilizations (prior to the arrival of the Conquistadors) were the Aztecs (or Mexica). Their empire, known as the Triple Alliance, was centered around Lake Texcoco and consisted of the major cities Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. In addition to engineering massive temples, aqueducts, canal systems, and estuaries, the Aztecs are renowned for being accomplished astronomers and agronomists. Continued here S10 A new novel antenna bringing us closer to 6G wireless communications A new antenna system leveraging space-time coding technology to enhance security for 6G wireless communications is on the horizon.  A research team led by a scientist at CityU has resulted in an innovative, game-changing antenna. This revolutionary invention allows unprecedented control of the direction, frequency, and intensity of its signal beam emission. On top of that, this antenna is invaluable for 6G wireless communications applications such as ISAC sensing and communication integration. Continued here S55 Did 4% of Americans Really Drink Bleach Last Year? One of the most challenging elements of social science research is that researchers must often rely on data that comes from humans — and humans are notoriously unreliable. When the CDC published a report in the summer of 2020 stating that 4% of respondents reported ingesting household chemicals in an attempt to ward off the coronavirus, many people were (understandably) alarmed. Researchers who replicated the study, with the addition of some basic quality control measures to eliminate inaccurate data, got very different results. In this piece, the author discusses how inattentive or mischievous respondents can accidentally or intentionally skew data, as well as what researchers, reporters, and the public at large can do to identify these issues and avoid jumping to conclusions based on misleading information. Continued here S61 What Makes a Good Salesman Despite millions of dollars spent on combating the high turnover rate among insurance agents, the rate—approximately 50% within the first year and 80% within the first three years—had remained steady for the more than 35 years preceding the publication of Mayer and Greenberg’s 1964 article. The authors devoted seven years of research to studying the problem of the ineffectiveness of large numbers of salespeople. They discovered flaws in the established methods of selection and revealed the two basic qualities that any good salesperson must have: empathy and ego drive. Continued here S32 Rethinking the big spring clean chuck-out frenzy: how keeping old things away from the landfill can 'spark joy' in its own way Driving home recently, I encountered a familiar sight: four dining chairs on the kerb waiting for some sucker to rescue them. Loading them into the car (sucker!) I wondered: how long were these chairs in shed limbo-land before finally getting kicked to the kerb? When a wooden chair goes a bit wonky, it feels counter-intuitive to throw it away when it’s mostly OK. It’s often demoted to the shed, with the optimistic thought: “The wood is still good. Maybe it could be fixed.” Continued here S6 Researchers revealed the mechanism of the obesity gene Utterly delicious but extremely harmful – high-calorie foods. Besides leading to obesity, the harm to human health is surely indisputable. Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have recently revealed that CREB-Regulated Transcription Coactivator 1 (CRTC1) is associated with obesity. Continued here S64 How Netflix Reinvented HR When Netflix executives wrote a PowerPoint deck about the organization’s talent management strategies, the document went viral—it’s been viewed more than 5 million times on the web. Now one of those executives, the company’s longtime chief talent officer, goes beyond the bullet points to paint a detailed picture of how Netflix attracts, retains, and manages stellar employees. The firm draws on five key tenets: Continued here S24 How Putin's war and small islands are accelerating the global shift to clean energy, and what to watch for in 2023 The year 2022 was a tough one for the growing number of people living in food insecurity and energy poverty around the world, and the beginning of 2023 is looking bleak. Russia’s war on Ukraine, one of the world’s largest grain and fertilizer feedstock suppliers, tightened global food and energy supplies, which in turn helped spur inflation. Continued here S50 These 50 things under $30 on Amazon are just so damn good Sometimes, the excitement of discovering that perfect product makes me click the “Buy Now” button without hesitation. I mean, when a product from Amazon is just so damn good (like the ones on this list), it’s usually hard to resist. What’s cool about most of these items is that they’re fairly affordable and can be purchased for under $30. In other words, you’ll be scoring some really awesome pieces on the cheap — and you might not have even known you needed them. For example, I used to think I had to keep a flashlight handy before going into my closet — but it turns out there is a battery-operated strip light that turns on automatically. I also thought the problem of where to keep my razor in the shower was unsolvable, but there’s a simple stick-on razor holder that easily takes care of that. And every time I got into my car, I’d be bummed that there was no place to put my stuff. But then, I discovered this organizer that cradles my belongings in the middle of the seat gap. Genius. Continued here S4 Ukraine's 100 A-10 Warthog request to defend against Russia got denied. Here's why Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov requested the U.S. for 100 of its A-10 Warthog ground attack jets just weeks after the Russian invasion in February this year, The Washington Post reported. The U.S. outright rejected this request to avoid escalating tensions between Moscow and Washington. The conflict in Ukraine which has been going on for ten months has seen the Ukrainian defense supported by the U.S. and its NATO allies. Military aid packages approved by the U.S. government have ammunition ranging from drones to the most advanced air defense system in its arsenal. However, the U.S. has refrained from providing fighter jets in combat. Continued here S37 Kari Lake Flips Out at 7-Eleven After Buying Losing Lottery Ticket PHOENIX (The Borowitz Report)—Kari Lake reportedly “flipped out” at a suburban 7-Eleven after buying a losing lottery ticket there on Christmas morning, multiple witnesses report. According to those witnesses, Lake’s failure to produce a winning result in a lottery scratcher game called Cash Craze led her to accuse the ticket machine of being rigged against her and “riddled with fraud.” Continued here S46 The best video game narrative of 2022 is out of this world My first playthrough of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist was a mess. My parents passed away, the colony was taken over by a dictator, and my partner ended up being a nationalist. I did manage to become a Botanist, which feels like a win. But I couldn't help but think, “Surely there’s a better ending than this?” Clicking the redo button was an easy decision — and the game’s endless replayability is one of its greatest narrative strengths. This time, I was besties with the depressed kid with a bowl cut and his smarty-pants lesbian sister. Things were better. More people lived. Continued here S63 A Better, Fairer Approach to Layoffs Today layoffs have become companies’ default response to the challenges created by advances in technology and global competition. Yet research shows that job cuts rarely help senior leaders achieve their goals. Too often, they’re done for short-term gain, but the cost savings are overshadowed by bad publicity, loss of knowledge, weakened engagement, higher voluntary turnover, and lower innovation, which hurt profits in the long run. Continued here S44 Can doctors cure tinnitus? An ear expert explains how to drown out the ringing More than 50 million Americans experiences tinnitus. For most people, a lot can be done to lessen the discomfort. Not a week goes by when I don’t see someone in my clinic complaining of a strange and constant phantom sound in one of their ears or in both ears. The noise is loud, distracting, and scary — and it doesn’t go away. Continued here S8 Researchers combined bacterial toxins with drugs to treat lung cancer Researchers from Columbia Engineering have developed a new preclinical evaluation pipeline to specialize bacterial therapies for lung cancer treatment, according to a press release published by Columbia University. The new approach managed to characterize bacterial medicines quickly and successfully integrate them with existing therapies for lung cancer. Lung cancer is the deadliest and one of the most common types of cancer. It's the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. On the other hand, its treatment is still quite limited since many currently available therapies have been ineffective. Continued here S57 How to Make Your Organization's Language More Inclusive Using exclusionary language isn’t just about offending others; research has made its harmful effects clear. To create a truly inclusive culture, it’s critical that you take a hard look at how people in all areas of your company are using language. The authors present four ways you as leader can encourage the use of inclusive language in your company. First, make sure your recruiters and hiring managers slow down and pay attention to the language they use when drafting job postings, with an eye toward removing non-neutral terms. Second, create a list of words that are forbidden in product development. Third, pair internal company guidance that includes practical, accessible tips that can be put into immediate action (for example, an inclusive vocabulary reference guide) with straightforward tools, such as the “inclusive language” feature available in Microsoft Office, which suggests neutral alternatives to biased language used in professional communications. Finally, choose ambassadors who are highly visible in the company to support your inclusive language initiatives. Continued here S54 Ronald grew up in a New York City library. It was as strange and wondrous as it sounds | Aeon Videos Growing up in the 1940s, Ronald Clark had an experience that sounds as if it was plucked from a children’s book – he lived in a New York City public library. And indeed, he believed that living in this ‘temple of knowledge’, where his father worked as a custodian, was a grand privilege, even as it led to feelings of difference among his peers. In this brief animation from StoryCorps, Clark recalls how growing up in a library, where he could wander the stacks and read late into the night, would later lead to his becoming a college professor – a job that made his father very proud. From violent criminal to loving parent – a son’s story of his father’s transformation Continued here S13 ChatGPT is 80% effective at identifying Alzheimer's disease, study shows ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm in the last few weeks, and its potential applications may soon extend into early diagnosis of diseases like Alzheimer's, a new study has found. According to research from Drexel University's School of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems, the GPT-3 algorithm from OpenAI can pick up on clues in a spontaneous speech that can predict the early stages of dementia 80% of the time. Continued here S16 A new wireless EV charging road is currently under construction in Germany As reported by Businesswire, Germany's first-ever public wireless road project will use technology from a top supplier of wireless and in-road wireless electric vehicle (EV) charging for commercial and passenger EVs. Electreon, the chosen supplier, is a major company that makes wireless charging solutions for electric vehicles (EVs). The company's inductive technology has won awards and is one of the most eco-friendly, scalable, and attractive ways to charge devices. Continued here S5 A $140,000 car can fly you over traffic jams in the city Stuck in a traffic jam? A simple flick of a button could unwrap a rotor assembly that can take your car airborne and land on a less busy patch of road to continue your journey again. If this sounds like a scene from a science-fiction movie, then you haven't heard about the Chinese flying car firm, Aeroht, which plans to take such a car into production by 2025, Bloomberg reported. The increase in the number of automobiles in cities has prompted traffic problems everywhere. When widening of roads did not help, we built bridges to fly over some, and Elon Musk decided to build tunnels under them. Yet, traffic issues do not appear to be going away, and so a new generation of innovators wants to build cars that can fly. Continued here S35 Five space exploration missions to look out for in 2023 It’s been an eventful year for space exploration, with successes including the completion of Nasa’s Artemis 1 mission (finally), the inauguration of the James Webb Space Telescope, and the completion of China’s Tiangong space station. 2023 is set to be another busy year. Here are five of the most exciting missions to watch out for. Continued here S39 A Year of Dominance and Defiance at the Supreme Court This was a year that was split into before and after—the dividing line being when the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade. Following the shocking leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, on May 2nd, we fully entered the era of conservative dominance, with aggressive rulings on abortion, guns, and religion. Doubts about the Court’s legitimacy reached a fever pitch, and its unpopularity hit alarming lows. Soul-searching about the Court and the rule of law has rarely been as cynical or as fundamental. Law professors asked one another, “What do we say to students now?,” with many questioning the distinction between law and politics, or even the Court’s final authority to interpret the Constitution—which the Court first claimed for itself about two hundred years ago. The Justices appeared to understand that they are presiding over a historic decline in public trust, as several of them have made public remarks insisting on the importance of the Court’s retaining its legitimacy. “Everybody in this country is free to disagree with our decisions,” Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the Dobbs majority opinion, said. But he warned that someone “crosses an important line when they say that the Court is acting in a way that is illegitimate.” When the Court returned for its new term in the fall, the Justices dove into another set of blockbuster cases, on affirmative action, voting rights, and religious liberty. But cracks have emerged in the commitment to originalism that conservatives wielded last term to tie the meaning of the Constitution to “history and traditions” from periods when women couldn’t vote and segregation was the law. Liberal Justices made us wonder whether we’re all supposed to be originalists now—or strategically pretend to be. Take, for example, this term’s debates about the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a case asking whether Alabama created enough majority-Black electoral districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act, and whether the use of race in districting violates the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson refused to cede originalism to conservatives, instead describing it as “our normal assessment of the Constitution.” Professing to have “drilled down” and looked at “the history and traditions of the Constitution, at what the Framers thought about,” Jackson, in one of her first hearings as a Justice, lectured counsel extensively on how the original meaning of equal protection was not race-neutral, since “the Framers themselves adopted the equal-protection clause . . . in a race-conscious way.” (Jackson explained that “the entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves”—which is clearly correct but likely to be ignored by conservative originalists.) Similarly, at oral arguments in the cases on affirmative action in college admissions, Justice Elena Kagan asked, “What would a committed originalist think about the kind of race-consciousness that’s at issue here?”—knowing that a “committed originalist” would reject the view that her conservative colleagues will likely adopt this term, that racial classifications are wrong. The debate—or, perhaps, liberal judicial trolling—highlighted the Justices’ waxing and waning adherence to originalism, depending on whether it produces the desired result in a given case. That only confirmed the sense of a crisis of legitimacy. Continued here S41 A Dangerous Moment in the Hollywood Economy Though many excellent movies were released in theatres in 2022, most of them hardly registered on the Hollywood economic scale. In the current environment, few good movies are likely to make money the old-fashioned way, in theatres; meanwhile, the new-fashioned way of streaming doesn’t seem to reliably channel money to producers and distributors. The practice of streaming movies at home accelerated during the pandemic, and most of the movies that have managed to lure large numbers of viewers back to theatres are big-budget franchise films, big-studio animation, and sequels. Of course, historically, many great movies have failed at the box office and many bad ones have been hits. But, in the pre-pandemic era (and, even more, in the pre-streaming era), a film’s artistic value wasn’t necessarily at odds with its commercial appeal. That has changed. Since movie theatres opened again, after the first pandemic shutdowns, box-office returns from new films by notable directors have been a fraction of their earlier films’ results. Brooks Barnes, in the Times, cites poor box-office numbers on critical hits such as “Tár,” “The Fabelmans,” “Armageddon Time,” and “She Said.” In the case of international films, such as “Both Sides of the Blade” and “The Eternal Daughter,” business has been still worse compared with pre-pandemic numbers, even with the same directors (Claire Denis and Joanna Hogg, respectively) and actors (Juliette Binoche and Tilda Swinton). Low-budget independent films have almost always been commercially marginal, as have a majority of the most original international films. But now the same is true of the majority of the most significant Hollywood and Hollywood-proximate movies. Continued here S47 Some people really do feel more hungover than others — genetics could help reveal why After a good night out, you may not be surprised when you wake up feeling rough the next morning. But what may surprise you is if your friends aren’t feeling the same way. Some may feel worse, some better, and some (if they’re lucky) may not feel any of the negative consequences at all. This is the variability of a hangover. In research, hangovers are measured on an 11-point scale (zero being no effects and ten being extremely hungover). In my own research, participants have reported hangovers on this scale anywhere between one (very mild) to eight (severe) — while other research has estimated around 5 percent of people may be hangover resistant. Continued here S30 Better sleep for kids starts with better sleep for parents - especially after holiday disruptions to routines Everyone knows that sleep is critical for growing children and their mental and physical health. Regular, high-quality sleep habits help children consolidate memory and learn better. A lack of sleep contributes to childhood depression, anxiety and even risk of suicide, along with physical health problems, including risk of injury. The challenge is making sure kids log those valuable zzz’s. There are three main components of high-quality sleep for children. First, they need enough total hours – sleep duration. Sleep quality is important, too – sleeping soundly during the night with few disruptions or awakenings. And, finally, there’s sleep timing – essentially, a consistent schedule, with bedtime and risetime about the same across the whole week. Continued here S28 The earliest humans swam 100,000 years ago, but swimming remains a privileged pastime One of my life’s aims is to swim in as many lakes, rivers, pools and oceans as I possibly can, to use my liberty and swimming skills as freely as I can. I love the feeling of being in a large, fresh body of water, its soft immersive, vast or deep buoyancy. I’ve swum in a freshwater lagoon near Acapulco in Mexico, with the guide reassuring us there were no crocodiles in the water that day. I’ve swum in a busy London indoor pool noisy with swimmers thrashing about and in Australia’s only women’s pool. I’ve swum in the Weisser See lake on the outskirts of Berlin, the same lake that my grandmother swam in, before fleeing Germany. At Jaffa’s Alma/al-Manshiyah Beach, in Tel Aviv, I’ve looked up from the sea to the Mahmoudiya Mosque’s minaret. Continued here S62 LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky: Skills, Not Degrees, Matter Most in Hiring Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, thinks the site should be a place where its members’ billions of years of collective work experience should be freed to upskill anyone, anywhere, any time. Skills, more than degrees or pedigrees, are the true measure of what makes a great new hire, he argues, especially as the workforce evolves in fast and dramatic ways. Continued here S49 The 50 cheapest, most clever home improvement products on Amazon Home improvement can be an expensive undertaking — at least if you watch those TV shows that do makeovers on people’s homes. But in my opinion, those shows are totally unrealistic. Sure, I can walk through a house and say, “If we remove that wall, replace this rug, update the counters and cupboards, and pull out this aging shower stall, we can transform this place into a beautiful open layout.” I can’t actually do any of that, though, because it’s all super expensive, and I don’t want to live in a construction zone. There are things I can do, of course. They just have to be smarter, easier, and able to stay within a realistic (i.e., small) budget. The kind of upgrades I’m currently willing to undertake start with an Amazon purchase and end with a high five and an adult beverage. There are plenty of these. In fact, these are the 50 cheapest, most clever home improvement products on Amazon. Continued here S34 Afrobeats in 2022: global mobility, election songs, placemaking albums - and Tems More than Nollywood films, Afrobeats is arguably Nigeria’s strongest cultural export since the turn of the millennium. It is a hugely dynamic music category that incorporates a range of moods, languages, styles, and existing genres. To understand its impact, a cultural connoisseur has equated good Afrobeats music with well-made, smoky Nigerian party jollof rice! As suggested, the core of Afrobeats is celebratory pop music originating from Nigeria, West Africa and beyond. In 2022, Afrobeats artists were regular names on the global stage, winning awards, featuring on Hollywood soundtracks, packing out stadiums and even getting their own music charts in the UK and US. The exhibition Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Afrobeat Rebellion opened, with a pilgrimage of the Afrobeats community to Paris – to pay homage to the Nigerian musician who helped create Afrobeat, which ultimately spawned Afrobeats. Continued here S58 The Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome When an employee fails—or even just performs poorly—managers typically do not blame themselves. The employee doesn’t understand the work, a manager might contend. Or the employee isn’t driven to succeed, can’t set priorities, or won’t take direction. Whatever the reason, the problem is assumed to be the employee’s fault—and the employee’s responsibility. Continued here S36 100 years of Stan Lee: how the comic book king challenged prejudice December 28 2022 marks 100 years since the birth of the world’s most famous comic book writer: the late Stan Lee. The 1960s were Stan Lee’s most astonishing decade, during which he came up with ideas and scripts for the first appearances of such heroes as the original X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Black Panther, Daredevil and Doctor Strange. Continued here S48 22 years ago, Final Fantasy went back "to our roots" — and changed my life forever I often keep the protagonist’s default name in RPGs, but I identified so strongly with Zidane in Final Fantasy IX at first glance that I named him after myself. All these years later, I still wonder sometimes why the short and wiry monkey boy with a choppy haircut and peppy attitude remains my favorite protagonist in the entire series. Maybe because he’s a mostly solitary character that, despite a jovial attitude, rarely opens up — and I identified with that? To be sure, I thought it best to ask FF9 director Hiroyuki Ito what makes the character so admirable. Continued here S33 Heart rate variability - what to know about this biometric most fitness trackers measure Your heart beats around 100,000 times every day. Heart rate is a key marker of cardiovascular activity and an important vital sign. But your pulse is not as steady as a precision clock – nor would you want it to be. As a cardiovascular physiologist, I measure heart rate in nearly every experiment my students and I perform. Sometimes we use an electrocardiogram, such as you’d see in a medical clinic, which uses sticky electrodes to measure electrical signals between two points of your body. Other times we use a chest strap monitor, like ones you might see on someone at the gym, which also detects heartbeats based on electrical activity. Continued here S43 The 5 most exciting EVs that could change the game in 2023 From Tesla's Cybertruck to Polestar's first SUV, 2023 is shaping up to be another big year for EVs. This year was a big one for electric cars. Sure, adoption in the U.S. is still relatively low at just 5 percent as of the end of June, but that's twice what it was in 2020 — a rate that will only accelerate from here. Continued here S31 Structured school days can keep kids healthy. How can we maintain it over school holidays? During the school term, kids get up around 7am, get into their uniforms, make their way to school, eat food from their lunchboxes or canteens, play at recess and lunch, have PE lessons, sit and get bored or excited in class, and then head home. Their day is highly structured. Read more: Richer schools' students run faster: how the inequality in sport flows through to health Continued here S52 This ecologist is on a mission to save Earth’s microbiome — and he’s closer than ever To save our planet, we need to preserve the microbial diversity hidden in Earth’s vast soil ecosystems. We tend to imagine scientific breakthroughs as dramatic events that enrapture the world in a singular moment in time. Think of the recent nuclear fusion breakthrough or the first image of a black hole that stunned millions around the world Continued here S51 The best superhero movie on HBO Max blends mythology with actual history Superheroes can provide inspiration, empowerment, and escape, but archaeological evidence is low on the priority list. But for some superheroes, close ties to history invest their stories with more power, showing that real people may be closer than we think to larger-than-life heroes. Continued here S56 How to Make Your Organization's Language More Inclusive Using exclusionary language isn’t just about offending others; research has made its harmful effects clear. To create a truly inclusive culture, it’s critical that you take a hard look at how people in all areas of your company are using language. The authors present four ways you as leader can encourage the use of inclusive language in your company. First, make sure your recruiters and hiring managers slow down and pay attention to the language they use when drafting job postings, with an eye toward removing non-neutral terms. Second, create a list of words that are forbidden in product development. Third, pair internal company guidance that includes practical, accessible tips that can be put into immediate action (for example, an inclusive vocabulary reference guide) with straightforward tools, such as the “inclusive language” feature available in Microsoft Office, which suggests neutral alternatives to biased language used in professional communications. Finally, choose ambassadors who are highly visible in the company to support your inclusive language initiatives. Continued here S59 Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century Back in the 1990s, computer engineer and Wall Street “quant” were the hot occupations in business. Today data scientists are the hires firms are competing to make. As companies wrestle with unprecedented volumes and types of information, demand for these experts has raced well ahead of supply. Indeed, Greylock Partners, the VC firm that backed Facebook and LinkedIn, is so worried about the shortage of data scientists that it has a recruiting team dedicated to channeling them to the businesses in its portfolio. Continued here S60 The Ordinary Heroes of the Taj When terrorists attacked the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, employees of the Taj Mumbai hotel displayed uncommon valor. They placed the safety of guests over their own well-being, thereby risking—and, in some cases, sacrificing—their lives. Deshpandé, of Harvard Business School, and Raina, of the HBS India Research Center in Mumbai, demonstrate that this behavior was not merely a crisis response. It was instead a manifestation of the Taj Group’s deeply rooted customer-centric culture that, the authors argue, other companies can emulate, both in extreme circumstances and during periods of normalcy. Continued here Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Followers Blog Archive ►  2024 (7) ►  August (1) ►  May (2) ►  April (3) ►  March (1) ►  2023 (432) ►  December (9) ►  November (25) ►  October (20) ►  September (33) ►  August (72) ►  July (6) ►  June (77) ►  May (12) ►  April (2) ►  March (8) ►  February (85) ►  January (83) ▼  2022 (115) ▼  December (13) December 31, 2022 - How Unpredictable Schedules Wi... December 31, 2022 - Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Ke... December 30, 2022 - Is the terrorism threat over? December 30, 2022 - 5 Things to Declutter to Prepa... December 29, 2022 - What risks could pet hamsters ... December 29, 2022 - How NFT video games crashed an... December 28, 2022 - Scientists Solve Major Mystery... 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At last, we have an ans... ►  November (10) ►  October (2) ►  September (12) ►  August (25) ►  July (1) ►  June (15) ►  May (13) ►  April (8) ►  March (12) ►  February (1) ►  January (3) ►  2021 (111) ►  December (21) ►  November (7) ►  October (17) ►  September (24) ►  August (18) ►  July (2) ►  June (20) ►  May (2) ►  2020 (388) ►  June (58) ►  May (17) ►  April (74) ►  March (89) ►  February (118) ►  January (32) ►  2016 (11) ►  August (1) ►  June (1) ►  March (2) ►  January (7) ►  2015 (6) ►  December (3) ►  November (3) ►  2013 (7) ►  May (1) ►  April (5) ►  March (1) ►  2012 (4) ►  October (1) ►  May (2) ►  March (1) ►  2011 (7) ►  August (7) About Me Rijo Stephen Cletus Bangalore, Karnataka, India BE Medical Electronics, PGD Hospital and Health Care Management, CMT and MBA Finance. Pursuing MBL from NLSIU. Experienced in Domestic and International Consulting. View my complete profile