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Arctic meltdown is the new normal: Sea ice sets 3rd straight winter record low

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Arctic meltdown is the new normal: Sea ice sets 3rd straight winter record low

Image: Mint Images/REX/Shutterstock

Thanks for visiting the brand new normal: For that third straight year, Arctic ocean ice peaked in a record low-level throughout the winter months, scientists stated Wednesday.

Arctic ocean ice cover arrived at its annual peak extent on March 7, the nation’s Ice and snow Data Center (NSIDC) stated, at 5.57 million square miles. This is actually the cheapest within the 38-year satellite record, and incredibly likely far more than that according to other data. The 2010 peak involved 37,000 miles under the 2015 record.

In comparison to the 1981-2010 lengthy-term average, ocean ice extent this season would be a staggering 471,000 square miles underneath the average annual maximum. What this means is a piece of ice about how big Texas, California and Kentucky combined didn’t have from the top world.

SEE ALSO: There are 11 newly-classified clouds, and all of them are breathtaking

The record came in the finish of among the strangest winters that Arctic climate scientific study has observed in modern occasions, with four or five instances by which abnormally mild air taken over the entire Arctic in the North Atlantic or Off-shore Oceans, getting its northern border Pole to close or simply over the melting point.

See individuals oranges and reds? That shows much excellent temperatures for that March-February 2016-17 period.

Image: nsidc

NSIDC scientists stated air temperatures over the Arctic Sea averaged greater than 4.5 levels F excellent for that five several weeks from October through Feb, with a number of “extreme winter prolonged high temperaturesInch observed too. Temperatures were even greater, averaging 9 levels F warmer than usual over large parts of the Chukchi and Barents Seas, the NSIDC found.

Arctic ocean ice also hit an archive low periodic peak for ocean ice volume, that is a way of measuring the thickness from the ice. This record signifies the ice cover contained in the Arctic is youthful and thin, and for that reason weaker to melting throughout the approaching spring and summer time, possibly resulting in another record low ocean ice extent in September.

The final three several weeks were the warmest winter (12 ,-February) within the #Arctic since documentation started. pic.twitter.com/LyDPqZhTUl

Robert Rohde (@rarohde) March 11, 2017

For that season, the Arctic region had the warmest winter on record, based on Berkeley Earth, a completely independent group that assesses global surface temperature data.

The record warmth over the Arctic, combined with the low ocean ice extent and volume, is surprising the most seasoned Arctic researchers.

“All I’m able to say here’s that I have been studying Arctic weather patterns for 35 many haven’t seen anything like what we have experienced in the last two winters,” stated National Ice and snow Data Center (NSIDC) director Mark Serreze, within an email.

“Maybe case natural variability, but when so,it is a kind of natural variability that i’m not really acquainted with.Inch

The record-warm Arctic temperatures and anemic ocean ice cover came throughout the warmest year on record for that Earth in general. The Arctic continues to be warming at approximately two times the speed of all of those other world.

Arctic temperature spikes seen on the chart showing Arctic average temperatures in 2017 when compared with previous years. Arrows indicate 2 from the spikes.

Image: zack labe/mashable

As ocean ice melts it exposes more dark sea waters beneath it to incoming solar radiation, resulting in the water temperatures to increase. These milder sea waters then melt more ice while growing air temperatures too, which procedes to melt more snow and ice, exposing more more dark surfaces, and so forth.

This phenomenon is called Arctic amplification, which is getting repercussions both through the Arctic and beyond.

Less than Vegas

The brand new adage among Arctic specialists is really a twist around the Vegas slogan: “What goes on in Arctic doesn’t remain in the Arctic.”

#Arctic ocean ice maximum and #Antarctic minimum both at record low this season. https://t.co/RnAmDjJUqk pic.twitter.com/4P5QzYDF3S

NSIDC News (@NSIDC) March 22, 2017

Studies have proven that Arctic ocean ice loss might be altering weather patterns across large servings of The United States, Asia and europe. A study published on March 15 discovered that ocean ice loss is related to worsening “airpocalypse” occasions in China, where smog smothers major metropolitan areas for several days, sickening millions.

The lack of fall ocean ice cover just north of Russia favors more fall snowfall in areas of Siberia, which influences the position of everywhere pressure areas with techniques that includes to air stagnation across eastern China, the research found.

Until lately, the steepest losses of Arctic ocean ice were observed in the summer time and fall. But scientists state that winter trends indicate the sweeping changes happening within the Arctic are rattling winters in the room.

“That is certainly unusual to possess 3 winters consecutively with very warm Arctic temperatures and record low ocean ice conditions,” Julienne Stroeve, a senior research researcher in the NSIDC, stated via email. “As the winter ice cover continues to be altering more gradually, these last 3 winters suggest possibly the fall/winter can also be beginning to reply more.”

Temperature trends since 1950, showing the quickest warming within the Arctic.

Image: berkeley earth

The record low winter peak in Arctic ocean ice does not necessarily mean the approaching summer time melt season sets an archive too. For instance, 2016 set an identical record during March but fell lacking an archive lower in September because of climate conditions that favored the retention of ocean ice cover in areas of the Arctic.

“The 2017 melt months are beginning off inside a deep hole,” Serreze stated. “Can we hence visit a new record low ice extent this September? Possibly, however a lot depends upon the elements patterns next summer time, which we can not predict.”

Arctic ocean ice is declining in most several weeks of the season, using the steepest stop by the summer time and fall. Projections reveal that by the center of a lifetime the Arctic Sea might be seasonally ice-free, opening up to more shipping activity, transits of military vessels in addition to fishing and gas and oil drilling activities.

Record low periodic peak ocean ice volume continues to be occur 2017.

Image: piomas/college of washington

“I believe getting three consecutive many years of low wintertime max records is significant. Furthermore, observing lengthy-term ocean ice losses in most several weeks is a vital element in a warming Arctic,” stated Zack Labe, a graduate student in the College of California at Irvine.

Wally Meier, a NASA research researcher, described the problem more candidly.

“Were ending the wintertime growth season using the ocean ice within the worst shape you’ve seen it within our satellite record,” he stated within an email. “… Id repeat the Arctic ocean ice is much more fragile than it’s have you been at the moment of the year. When we get any type of extreme summer time climate conditions favorable to ice loss, we may be searching in a record low this summer time.”

Record lower in Antarctica, too

Meanwhile, within the Antarctic, ocean ice also set an archive low. On March 3, Antarctic ocean ice extent hit just 815,000 square miles, the NSIDC found, that was the cheapest within the satellite era.

Unlike the Arctic, though, where ocean ice loss is due to a mixture of human-caused climatic change and natural variability, the influences on Antarctic ocean ice tend to be more poorly understood.

The geography of the regions are, actually, polar opposites, using the Far North situated being an sea encircled by land, whereas Antarctica is really a continent ringed by ocean ice cover at its edges.

“The record lows aren’t surprising, given Antarctic ocean ice extents high variability,” the NSIDC stated in an announcement. “Only a couple of in the past, extent in the area set record highs.”

Both in the Arctic and Antarctic, ocean ice melt doesn’t raise ocean levels since the ice has already been floating. However, losing ocean ice cover has increased warming within the Arctic, that has faster the melting of glaciers in Greenland along with other areas.

WATCH: NASA timelapse shows just how quickly our Arctic sea ice is disappearing

Find out more: http://mashable.com/2017/03/22/arctic-sea-ice-melt-record-low-winter/

#airpocalypse #arctic #arctic-amplification #climate #climate-change #extreme-weather #global-warming #hottest-year #ice-melt #Science

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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Mythic launches a chip to enable computer vision and voice control on any device

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Mythic launches a chip to enable computer vision and voice control on any device

Hardware that reacts to voice instructions has already been available and most likely inside your hands or house at this time. Be it a smartphone, smart speaker or wearable, it must connect with the cloud to provide solutions. Now, a startup known as Mythic (formerly referred to as Isocline) is launching a nick and software which will change everything, putting voice control, computer vision and other sorts of AI into our devices in your area, no cloud needed.

Headquartered in Austin, with offices in Redwood City, Calif., Mythic has elevated $9.3 million in venture funding, including angel capital along with a Series A round, based on Chief executive officer and co-founder Mike Henry. Mythics Series A round was brought by Draper Fisher Jurvetson became a member of by Lux Capital, Data Collective, and AME Cloud Ventures. DFJs Steve Jurvetson and Lux Capitals Shahin Farshchi have became a member of the startups board of company directors.

Just before their Series A, Mythic had elevated about $2.5 million in federal government grants. The brand new funding will helpthe startupbegin to commercialize its chips, that are about how big a little shirt button, and proprietary software which make them work alongside other processors and memory.

Mythics nick enables AI features to operate in your area on any device.

DFJ PartnerSteve Jurvetson, who was an earlier backer of SpaceX, Tesla and Nervana Systems (now of Apple) stated:

What Mythic has generated is really a deep learning or neural network nick that implements learning algorithms in a significantly lower cost point, nick size and power consumption level than anything we’ve today.

With this particular, you can put machine intelligence right into a toaster, or perhaps a Roomba, a burglar camera, or all sorts of devices where it wouldnt seem sensible before because youd require a persistent web connection to really make it helpful.

The influential and self-proclaimedVC geek views Mythics market chance as wide-varying. He predicted,The commercial internet of products has become the physical cortex from the planet. Industrial and enterprise customers will wantto make use of this to complete inspection and qc wherever there is a kind of sensor node, be it a video camera, a microphone, a temperature sensor or anything else.

The muse for Mythics technology goes back to 2012, when Henry and co-founder and CTO Dave Fick were both graduating from various labs with doctorates in information technology. The buddies made an earlier bet that deep neural systems and machine learning methods to software development would eventually want more effective compute sources within the devices and machines we use daily. Nobody was calling it AI yet, but insiders were speaking about deep learning because the answer to making devices that see, hear and communicate with the planet with human-like characteristics.

Mythic Chief executive officer and cofounder Mike Henry.

Today, the Chief executive officer stated, that bet is beginning to repay.A great deal of devices and applications take in an excessive amount of data to transmit towards the cloud. Like consider drones with multiple, high-res images coming with the cameras. All they have to find may be the crack on the turbine or dry patches of farm land. When they process everything data with the cloud, and run analytics with complex algorithms, theyll drain their batteries and also have to land. We had chance to complete processing in your area in the device.

Henry stated that the organization continues to be hiring strongly since closing its Series A round in the finish of 2016. Itwill continue doing that although contacting potential pilot customers. Lengthy-term, Mythics cofounders aspire to bring their technology toautomakers building autonomous vehicles.However, the Chief executive officer stated,electronic devices, drone and robotics companies, which have a tendency to change from design to production more rapidly, will likely be among Mythics earliestusers.

Find out more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/22/mythic-launches-a-chip-to-enable-computer-vision-and-voice-control-on-any-device/

#AI #ame cloud ventures #Computer Vision #data collective #Dave Fick #deep neural networks #dfj #lux capital #Mike Henry #Mythic #semiconductors #steve jurvetson #voice control

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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Melissa George Speaks About Alleged Domestic Abuse In Harrowing Interview

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Melissa George Speaks About Alleged Domestic Abuse In Harrowing Interview

Six months ago, Australian-American actress Melissa George was hospitalized after an alleged violent assault by her partner,Jean-David Blanc. According to George, she was the victim of emotional and physical abuse throughout their five-year relationship, and now shes speaking out for the sake of her children.

During an emotional interview with the Australian TV program Sunday Night, the Alias actress opened up about the incident that she said left her bleeding and vomiting with a swollen face.

George and Blanc are currently in the midst of a custody battle over their two sons,Raphal, 3, and Solal, 16 months. The actress is publicly addressing the incident in hopes of convincing authorities to allow her to return home to Australia with her children.

It started with him on top of me, with my arms locked above my head, she said. I just tried to fight for myself, which made him more angry, which made me more angry and he pushed me into the door and then struck my face and I hit the wall and fell on the floor and I was out. Just out. He stood over me and said, Now youre a real actress.

George says she tried to call the police, but claims Blanc continued to attack her.

He grabbed the back of my head and smashed it on the metal thing where you hang your coats and thats when I scratched him and I tried to fight for my life, she added.

Then, the Australian star managed to call an Uber to take her to a police station, where officers immediately called an ambulance after finding her in distress.

Blanc, a French entrepreneur and film producer, denies his involvement in the incident. Both he and George were convicted of assault at the time after a judge ruled that they attacked each other. The two are currently in the midst of appeals.

Regarding the supposed violence against Melissa George, I strongly contest it and have thus filed an appeal against the judgment, which is not final, I have always maintained that I had been attacked first and was only trying to protect myself. Melissa George was found guilty and charged for these offenses, Blanc said in a statement to The Daily Mail.

Now, Georges focus is on her sons, whom she wishes to raise in her home country of Australia. A week after the incident, a plane carrying George and her children was stopped on the runway by authorities over claims by Blanc that she was kidnapping them. Now, the former couple shares custody of their sons, as the battle rages on.

A happy ending would be to go home with my kids and the father can have his kids as often as he wants and see them, but to be able to show my kids my country and where they are from, she said.

Watch her full interview below.

youtube

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline .

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/melissa-george-breaks-silence-on-alleged-violent-assault_us_58cfe82ce4b0be71dcf638d2?c25f0s2dzkah1cq5mi&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

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Wright Electric unveils its commercial electric plane business

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Wright Electric unveils its commercial electric plane business

Gas may be the greatest cost for airlines. The simplest way to lessen these costs? Dont use gas whatsoever. Which was the pitch from Wright Electric, a startup building an commercial passenger plane that operates on batteries and may handle flights under 300 miles. These short-haul journeys constitute 30 % of flights along with a $26 billion market.

Today Wright Electric gave its first preview around the world at Y Combinator Demo Day, where Plastic Valleys most esteemed startup accelerator puts its new companies before investors. Wright Electric announced its building an 150-seat plane to disrupt the 737 market. Its struck apartnership with budget British air travel EasyJet, that could put its design in mid-air. Also it even demonstrated off its very own electric plane within the parking area.

This is among best hard tech teams Ive seen stated Michael Seibel, the mind of Y Combinators accelerator program. Wright Electric hired a group that were formerly funded by NASA to research the opportunity of electric planes, which its co-founder Shaun Engler states puts the startup years in front of the competition.

Wright Electricco-founder Shaun Engler presents at Y Combinator Demo Day.

The plan for how the planes works depends upon the advances in battery technology. If batteries get much better within the next decade it’ll go all-electric, and when it normally won’t it’ll make use of a hybrid system much like a Chevrolet Volt. This past year Boeing and Airbus offered 967 planes within the 737 style at approximately $90 million each. Even replacing a small fraction of that market might be a big chance.

For the time being, gas it’s still essential for lengthy-haul flights across the nation or even the world. But Wright Electrics technology might make jumps new You are able to City to Washington, D.C. less expensive, and potentially more eco-friendly based on in which the electricity to charge the batteries originate from.

Wright Electric is just a years old and it has a lengthy approach to take before its planes are operational. The look above is simply a mockup. However with every air travel eager to keep costs down and undercut your competition, it might fly high once its off the floor.

Additional reporting by Ryan Lawler.

Find out more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/21/wright-electric-planes/

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NASAs pop-up robot can tackle tight spots where rovers cant reach

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NASAs pop-up robot can tackle tight spots where rovers cant reach

youtube

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is really a non-stop supply of wonderful things, and also the latest is the PUFFER, or Pop-Up Flat Folding Robot. The style of the robot is inspired by origami, and folding is its niche. The robot can tuck in the wheels and flatten to fit under overhead limits that may prevent an average rover from gaining entry, meaning it may explore the surfaces of distant moons and planets a lot more completely.

The way the robot works is fairly simple to grasp should you see the video above, or even the GIF below. Essentially, the wheels flatten lower almost parallel using the ground, still supplying some traction however , maximizing overhead clearance. It’s solar power panels on its bottom for charging up, and also the wheels possess a tread meant allow it purchase on steeper climbs as high as 45 levels in incline. There is a tail, too, which stabilizes the bot because it makes its way around.

IMG 1 TT

PUFFER isnt only helpful wide on the planet, it might help scientists achieve volcanic crevasses along with other places where its difficult for traditional robots to visit, and impossible for humans to achieve. The next phase in the development is adding sensors along with other instruments for study abilities, as well as passing on some autonomous smarts (its presently remote-controlled via Bluetooth) in order that it can act not just by itself, but additionally in coordinated swarms.

Imaginable a bigger rover transporting a belly filled with PUFFERs flat-packed for optimum storage capacity. It can deploy the origami bots for additional detailed search for its immediate surroundings if this finds a appropriate place for study. Also, I would like these as pets, so lets focus on that, too.

Find out more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/21/nasas-pop-up-robot-can-tackle-tight-spots-where-rovers-cant-reach/

#jpl #Nasa #rover

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The mystery of missing Richard Simmons and how it spawned a hit podcast

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The mystery of missing Richard Simmons and how it spawned a hit podcast

Richard Simmons continues to be &quotmissing&quot for any couple of many all of a sudden everybody cares.

Image: Jason Kempin/Getty Images for EGPAFGetty Images for EGPAF

Previously couple of days Missing Richard Simmons has increased the charts the podcast charts. It’s turning out to be a Serial-level obsession, however this time everyone’s speaking a good aging fitness guru.

The show follows an easy premise: a filmmaker, who states they know the ’80s fitness video star Richard Simmons, is trying to puzzle out why Simmons has disappeared in the public eye and retreated deep into his private existence.

SEE ALSO: This new podcast from the ‘Serial’ team is going to be your next obsession

Spoiler alert, Simmons is not actually missing within the “call 911 and set up posters together with his picture” sense. It’s more that his presence is missing from charitable organization occasions, TV appearances, workout routines, social occasions, videos, social networking, the web everywhere.

Because the show details, he’s alive but it is not obvious if he’s well. Dan Taberski, the filmmaker-switched-podcast narrator, accumulates where Simmons’ public existence ended. The mystery starts with the final public sighting of Simmons in 2014, as he unsuccessful to appear to educate a category at his beloved La fitness studio, Slimmons (that has since shuttered).

After that it continues, checking along with Simmons group of friends (Taberski tracks lower his masseuse, housekeeper and publicist), longtime buddies and individuals he’s mentored and coached. The show visits Simmons childhood home in New Orleans, foretells his older brother and essentially finds anybody with any link with Simmons. Within the final episode expect when they examine Simmons trash.

An in-depth analysis into Simmons’ disappearance, like the podcast, arrived on the scene this past year in the New York Daily News and uncovered similar styles, theories and research findings. Now annually later, Taberski continues to be going to uncover what’s happening using the workout fiend and actor, whom he states is uncle, no matter what.

Listen fully episode here =&gt https://t.co/b12kZWGyjS pic.twitter.com/cvfop3gjzG

Missing R Simmons (@MissingRSimmons) March 16, 2017

The podcast has remained at No. one in the U.S., Canada, Australia and also the United kingdom within the last couple of days. Now it dropped, but just a little, to No. 2 (because of, naturally, a Serial spinoff series that simply dropped). In a few days is going to be its sixth and final episode.

So, exactly why is everybody obsessive about this show? We found some reasons.

Richard Simmons in 2013 as he was making public appearances.

Image: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images

It’s like Serial

Such as the podcast hit Serial’s first season, which examined a 1999 cold situation murder of the senior high school senior, Missing Richard Simmons follows a good narrative structure and unpacks the mystery week-by-week. You’ll quickly get addicted to following the narrative along so that they can determine this for good. What’s really happening with Simmons? Did Adnan kill Hae Min?

Each episode we obtain just a little nearer to solving the mystery or will we? Is that this solvable? What is the cope with Jay? What is a Best To Buy?

Conspiracy theories in abundance

Because the Washington Post listed out earlier this year there are plenty of possible causes of Simmons withdrawal into their own private world.

Some theories going swimming available include he’s being held hostage by his longtime housekeeper he’s seriously depressed and unhinged after his dog died he’s physically deteriorated and too embarrassed to show his face and aging body he’s transitioning right into a lady he’s been absorbed by witchcraft and black magic or he’s really just completed with everything and wishes to remain alone.

It feeds into our nosiness also known as it’s none in our business

Amanda Hess argues very well within this New York Times piece that we have to butt from Simmons’ existence. Who’re we to pry our distance to someone’s decision to leave the spotlight? Others have contended the show is exploitative and Taberski is applying his tenuous connection like a “friend” of Simmons to produce a hit show.

Simmons has declined to participate the podcast, that is a very good indicator to back away. Serial had the stamp of approval from Adnan themself to produce Adnan’s personal ideas and musings as they spoken to podcast host Sarah Koenig from jail.

This really is nothing beats that.

Celebrity gossip, duh

The show tries to unearth the best celebrity dirt by delving into what goes on behind closed doorways even doorways which have been slammed shut within our face. At this time, Simmons is much more of the character than someone to a lot of his fans and also the show treats him like something to experience with.

For example take when Taberski states about a minute that he isn’t going to enter Simmons’ sexuality, as the next he drops details about Simmons relationship together with his masseuse/assistant that may simply be read one of the ways.

So while trying to puzzle out why he’s staying away from the spotlight, superfans, buddies, mentees and those that may tangentially know him reach get rid of theories and absurd ideas and find out what sticks. Add his fame and large-name status and everybody wants to obtain the speculation game. It is a supermarket tabloid story in audio form with better production skills.

It is a mystery

Ultimately we do not fully realize what’s happening with Simmons and most likely won’t regardless of the number of occasions he calls in to the Today show assuring everybody he’s fine, like he did this past year following a NY Daily News story.

Much like we do not know whether Adnan Sayed is guilty or innocent or maybe Steven Avery in the Netflix docu-series Making a Murdererkilled Teresa Halbach, Simmons situation will probably remain unsolved. One factor we all do know: the unknown is really alluring.

We can not stop, will not stop searching. And that is the way a hit podcast comes into the world.

WATCH: Finally, there’s a thighmaster for your arms

Find out more: http://mashable.com/2017/03/20/missing-richard-simmons-podcast-popular-addictive/

#business #Media #podcasts #richard-simmons

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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Russia opens investigation into murder of space agency official in prison

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Russia opens investigation into murder of space agency official in prison

Vladimir Yevdokimov, a professional at Roscosmos charged in embezzlement situation, died from gaping stab wound towards the neck, reports stated on Monday

Russian government bodies are investigating the murder of the senior space official inside a Moscow prison cell as reports emerged he died from the deep stab wound towards the throat.

Vladimir Yevdokimov, a 55-year-old executive director in the Russian condition space agency, died during detention on fraud charges over his previous role in the MiG aircraft company, making fighter jets.

Legislation enforcement source told Tass condition news agency on Monday that investigators preliminary finding was he died from the gaping stab wound towards the neck which caused great lack of bloodstream.

Yevdokimov was arrested in December more than a 200m ruble ($3.5m in the current exchange rate) embezzlement situation dating back 2007. He was adamant he wasn’t guilty.

His body was based in the early hrs of Saturday and Moscows investigative committee, which checks serious crimes, opened up a murder situation. It stated that Yevdokimov endured stab wounds towards the chest and throat.

The situation has shocked Russians because of Yevdokimovs high-profile role and also the strange conditions of his dying, with speculation that could happen to be a premeditated killing.

Since 2015 Yevdokimov have been responsible for qc at Roscosmos, which runs Russias space programme.

The agencys director general, Igor Komarov, stated inside a brief statement: We’ll unquestionably press for that clarification of all of the conditions of his dying as well as an exhaustive analysis of his dying.

Yevdokimov was discovered by pads within the cells toilet, what the law states enforcement source told Tass. His cellmates stated they didn’t hear or see anything.

He’d been transferred per month earlier to some cell with 11 other inmates with no video security cameras, stated Vadim Gorshenin, the mind from the Public Observation Commission of Moscow, which monitors conditions within the citys jails, in comments to Interfax.

To tell the truth I do not comprehend the motive of the transfer, Gorshenin stated, indicating that Yevdokimov was moved from the smaller sized cell for six to 1 with 11 youthful prisoners.

There have been no video security cameras there, Gorshenin stated.

Another police force source told Interfax news agency that Yevdokimov had attempted to battle his attacker or attackers.

According to changes towards the body, you’ll be able to initially surmise the dead man before his dying attempted to place up resistance but wasn’t sufficiently strong, the origin stated.

Find out more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/20/russia-murder-space-agency-roscosmos

#russia #Space #World news

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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The Gorsuch Nomination Is A Setback For Human Rights

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The Gorsuch Nomination Is A Setback For Human Rights

[This piece is jointly authored by Mischa Haider and Bruce Hay.]

The relative quiet surrounding Neil Gorsuchs confirmation hearings reveals a deep lack of strategic thinking and effective coordination on the part of Democrats and progressive groups. There are compelling reasons to have drummed up loud opposition to Gorsuch, notably the theft of this Supreme Court seat by unscrupulous Republicans and the fact that Gorsuchs views are far out of the judicial mainstream, his deceptively soft-spoken manner notwithstanding. Democratic politicians have done a great disservice to our democracy by attaching insufficient importance to the composition of the judiciary, which has resulted in disastrous rulings gutting voting rights and allowing for the injection of vast amounts of money into elections. Crucial challenges to gerrymandering may be undermined by a right-wing ideological Supreme Court in the coming years, further entrenching minority rule by a Republican party increasingly marked by open misogyny, racism, and hostility to LGBTQ citizens.

The consequences for human rights and civil liberties of Democratic neglect of the judiciary which includes not only allowing the GOP to steal Merrick Garlands seat, but also leaving 25 percent of lower court seats unfilled at the expiration of the Obama presidency have been dire. The nascent movement for transgender equality is a key civil rights battle of our times, and Gorsuchs seating on the Supreme Court will be a victory for reactionary forces who are exploiting Trumps presidency to make the struggle more painful, bloody, and bruising for transgender people.

The religious right Trumps most reliable source of support has shifted its focus to trans rights.

Within weeks of his inauguration, the Trump administration withdrew executive guidelines issued by President Obama interpreting Title IX protections against sex discrimination in educational institutions as applicable to transgender students. The Obama guidelines meant that schools were required to allow trans students to use the facilities in accordance with their gender identity, and set a clear expectation for providing safe educational environments across the country. To make matters worse, the Trump administration withdrew the Obama guidelines in the midst of Gavin Grimms case before the Supreme Court, which has subsequently backed away from hearing the case.

Grimm, a seventeen-year-old transgender boy, is fighting for his right to use the boys restroom, to which his school denies him access because other childrens parents do not want him there on account of his genital makeup. By refusing to forthrightly hold that this is unlawful sex discrimination, the Court exposes our societys most vulnerable members to further humiliation and ostracism on the basis of simple prejudice, damaging their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone as a more courageous Court once warned against in Brown v. Board of Education. The addition of an ideological extremist such as Gorsuch threatens the safety of transgender children like Gavin Grimm as they seek protection against tyranny through judicial avenues.

Having lost the battle on same-sex marriage, the religious right Trumps most reliable source of support – has shifted its focus to trans rights. Trans people are facing increased threats to their individual autonomy and freedom due to right-wing attempts to legally define sex as an immutable characteristic determined at birth by genital anatomy and chromosomes. Not only is this medically inaccurate, it effectively eradicates transgender people in the eyes of the law. Legislatures across the country are being flooded with threats of anti-trans bills that would essentially force trans individuals to live in the prison of their birth certificates. Texas has recently advanced a bill in the legislature that targets transgender women while the states Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is orchestrating an ugly campaign that many advocates fear will lead to further anti-trans violence. Legal action against states that pass bills discriminating against transgender individuals is often the only recourse for civil rights groups, as we have seen with North Carolinas HB2. The ideologically rightwing composition of federal courts, and especially the Supreme Court may come to endangering the basic rights of transgender Americans.

Nullifying federal civil rights protections for transgender people is part of a broader war of attrition against LGBT equality. Its central strategy is to portray the opponents of equality as victims their physical safety supposedly threatened by trans children in bathrooms, their religious liberty supposedly threatened by laws granting rights to LGBT people. These tactics appear to be working, and South Dakotas governor just signed the first anti-LGBT bill of 2017 into law, and it is framed as a religious freedom law. To thwart these attempts, progressives must expose the proposed religious freedom exemptions for what they are, no different in principle from the old claims for divinely ordained racial segregation.

A key part of the religious rights agenda is to stack the courts with judges who will uphold religious freedom exemptions to state and federal law, leaving LGBT people vulnerable to discrimination, conversion therapy, bullying, and violence. Furthermore, sanctioning discrimination under the guise of religious freedom will literally tear our schools, workplaces, and society apart at the seams and wreak legal havoc as theocrats of various stripes justify increasingly outrageous behaviors through fundamentalist interpretations of scripture. Therefore, it is essential that any judicial appointments be thoroughly vetted to ensure only candidates who are committed to civil rights for all citizens are confirmed. After the remand of Gavin Grimms case and the passage of South Dakotas unconstitutional religious freedom law, blocking the confirmation of extremists such as Neil Gorsuch has taken on an even greater urgency.

Supporters of human rights and civil liberties need to openly affirm transgender rights

Supporters of human rights and civil liberties need to openly affirm transgender rights, and push back against lies with the medical and psychological consensus on trans issues as well as point to recent survey evidence of broad public support for laws against anti-LGBT discrimination and opposition to anti-trans bathroom bills. In fact, the legislatures across the country lag far behind public opinion on LGBTQ rights including transgender rights, and disproportionately pander to the whims of a loud and radicalized base of religious zealots.

It has sadly become an all too common staple among the left to dismiss trans rights as “boutique” or suggest that progressives would be best served not to be “obsessive” about gender identity as recently stated by Tony Blair. These harmful and ignorant statements must be challenged and those who make such claims should be reminded of the deadly realities of transgender life today. Our nations judges have an obligation to protect all citizens, and fully understand that there is no “optional” box next to the humanity of transgender people because these are matters of life and death.

The deadly consequences of transphobia were clearly there for the world to see when Dandara dos Santos, a Brazilian trans woman, was brutally tortured to death in public by several men, with cheering onlookers. One of those involved in her murder filmed her ordeal, and that film has been circulating online, showing the world in gruesome detail what trans people endure across the globe. In America, the already staggering level of transphobic violence shows no sign of abating, and at least seven transgender women have already been murdered here this year. Beneath these atrocities, there is a dire crisis of discrimination, unemployment and poverty that transgender people confront on a daily basis.

Representative Joe Kennedy III read out the names of transgender women murdered in America as he pledged to fight for LGBT rights. We hope he keeps this promise, and that many others join him in blocking not only discriminatory bills but also judicial nominations such as that of Neil Gorsuch that will harm millions of Americans.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-gorsuch-nomination-a-setback-for-human-rights_us_58d003dee4b0537abd95732d?2llhm2t9&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

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Yuval Noah Harari: Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so

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Yuval Noah Harari: Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so

The visionary historian, author of two dazzling bestsellers around the condition of mankind, takes questions from Lucy Prebble, Arianna Huffington, Esther Rantzen and an array of our readers

Last week, on his Radio 2 breakfast show, Chris Evans read out page one of Sapiens, it through the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. Considering that radio audiences in those days each morning aren’t recognized for their appetite for intellectual engagement the prior segment had worked with Gary Barlows new tour it had been a unique gesture. But because Evans stated, page one is easily the most stunning first page associated with a book.

If DJs are vulnerable to mindless hyperbole, this was a honourable exception. The subtitle of Sapiens, within an echo of Stephen Hawkings great work, is A Short History of Humankind. In grippingly lucid prose, Harari sets on that first page a condensed good reputation for the world, adopted by a listing of the books thesis: the way the cognitive revolution, the farming revolution and also the scientific revolution have affected humans as well as their fellow microorganisms.

It’s a dazzlingly bold introduction, which the rest of the book meets on nearly every page. Although Sapiens continues to be broadly and noisally recognized, some critics have recommended that it’s too sweeping. Possibly, but it’s an intellectual pleasure to become taken along.

Its certainly one of individuals books that cant help but cause you to feel smarter for getting see clearly. Obama and Bill Gates have gone through that have, as have numerous others within the Davos crowd and Plastic Valley. The irony, possibly, is the fact that among the books warnings is that we’re at risk of just as one elite-dominated global society.

In the center from the book may be the contention that what made Homo sapiens probably the most effective individual, supplanting rivals for example Neanderthals, was our capability to have confidence in shared fictions. Religions, nations and cash, Harari argues, are human fictions which have enabled collaboration and organisation on the massive scale.

Initially printed in Hebrew this year, it was converted into British 3 years later and grew to become an worldwide bestseller. It ranges across numerous disciplines with apparently easy scholarship, getting together an enthusiastic knowledge of history, anthropology, zoology, linguistics, philosophy, theology, financial aspects, psychology, neuroscience and far else besides.

The author of the accomplished and-reaching book is really a youthful Israeli historian whose career, up to that time, have been dedicated to the relative academic backwater of medieval military history. Apparently, Sapiens is dependant on an opening course to world history that Harari needed to educate, after senior colleagues dodged the job. The storyline goes the major Israeli publishers werent interested. Nobody saw worldwide stardom beckoning.

This past year, Hararis follow-up, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, was printed within the United kingdom, becoming another bestseller. It develops most of the styles explored in Sapiens, especially examines the potential impact of biotechnological and artificial intelligence innovation on Homo sapiens, heralding possibly the start of a brand new bionic or semi-computerised type of human.

Again, its an exciting book that can take the readers deep into questions of identity, awareness and intelligence, grappling with what types of choices and dilemmas a completely automated world will show us with.

Now 41, Harari increased in a secular Jewish family in Haifa. He studied history in the Hebrew College of Jerusalem and completed his doctoral at Oxford. He’s a vegan and that he meditates for 2 hrs each day, frequently happening extended retreats. He states it will help him concentrate on the problems that really matter. He lives together with his husband on the moshav, an farming co-operative, outdoors Jerusalem. Being gay, he states, helped him to question received opinions. Nothing ought to be overlooked, he’s stated, even when everyone believes it.

Among the pleasures of studying his books is the fact that he constantly calls on readers, both clearly and unconditionally, to consider what we should know and our opinion we all know. And that he has very little time for fashionable stances.

He writes and speaks just like a man who isn’t excessively troubled by doubt. In the event that makes him seem arrogant, allow me to clarify: he gets to his conclusions after a lot of research and contemplation. However, once hes convinced themself and that he states he always leaves it towards the evidence to determine his thinking he doesnt restrain in the efforts to influence the readers. It can make for which Jared Gemstone known as unforgettably vivid language.

Harari is really a naturally gifted explainer, almost always ready using the telling anecdote or memorable example. Consequently, its tempting to determine him less like a historian than as some type of all-purpose sage. We requested politicians and readers to pose questions for Harari, and a number of these ( below) were of the moral or ethical nature, seeking solutions by what ought to be done, instead of about what is happening. However the Israeli appears accustomed to the function, and perfectly pleased to give his best shot at replying. A historian of a time long ago and the long run, he’s created out another discipline of their own. Its one achievement by an impressively multiple-minded man.

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Photograph: Sonja Horsman for the Observer

We are living through a fantastically rapid globalisation. Will there be one global culture in the future or will we maintain some sort of deliberate artificial tribal groupings? Helen Czerski, physicist Im not sure if it will be deliberate but I do think well probably have just one system, and in this sense well have just one civilisation. In a way this is already the case. All over the world the political system of the state is roughly identical. All over the world capitalism is the dominant economic system, and all over the world the scientific method or worldview is the basic worldview through which people understand nature, disease, biology, physics and so forth. There are no longer any fundamental civilisational differences.

Andrew Anthony: Are you saying that the much-maligned Francis Fukuyama was correct in his analysis of the end of history? It depends how you understand the end of history. If you mean the end of ideological clashes, then no, but if you mean the creation of a single civilisation which encompasses the whole world, then I think he was largely correct.

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Photograph: Dan Wooller/Rex Shutterstock

What is the biggest misconception humanity has about itself? Lucy Prebble, playwright Maybe it is that by gaining more power over the world, over the environment, we will be able to make ourselves happier and more satisfied with life. Looking again from a perspective of thousands of years, we have gained enormous power over the world and it doesnt seem to make people significantly more satisfied than in the stone age.

Is there a real possibility that environmental degradation will halt technological progress? TheWatchingPlace, posted online I think it will be just the opposite that, as the ecological crisis intensifies, the pressure for technological development will increase, not decrease. I think that the ecological crisis in the 21st century will be analogous to the two world wars in the 20th century in serving to accelerate technological progress.

As long as things are OK, people would be very careful in developing or experimenting in genetic engineering on humans or giving artificial intelligence control of weapon systems. But if you have a serious crisis, caused for example by ecological degradation, then people will be tempted to try all kinds of high-risk, high-gain technologies in the hope of solving the problem, and youll have something like the Manhattan Project in the second world war.

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Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

What role does morality play in a future world of artificial intelligence, artificial life and immortality? Will an aspiration to do what is good and right still motivate much of the race? Andrew Solomon, writer I think morality is more important than ever before. As we gain more power, the question of what we do with it becomes more and more crucial, and we are very close to really having divine powers of creation and destruction. The future of the entire ecological system and the future of the whole of life is really now in our hands. And what to do with it is an ethical question and also a scientific question.

So to give just a simple example: what happens if several pedestrians jump in front of a self-driving car and it has to choose between killing, say, five pedestrians or swerving to the side and killing its owner? Now you have engineers producing the self-driving cars and they need to get an answer to this question. So I dont see any reason to think that AI or bioengineering will make morality any less relevant than before.

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Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

After reading Homo Deus I began to wonder why we are so wilfully ushering in a future that will slowly make us redundant. We are the only animal obsessed with progress. Should we try to resist the idea of the future as one of inevitable technological advancement and create a different kind of futurism? Matt Haig, author You cant just stop technological progress. Even if one country stops researching artificial intelligence, some other countries will continue to do it. The real question is what to do with the technology. You can use exactly the same technology for very different social and political purposes. If you look at the 20th century, we see that with the same technology of electricity and trains, you could create a communist dictatorship or a liberal democracy. And its the same with artificial intelligence and bioengineering. So I think people shouldnt be focused on the question of how to stop technological progress because this is impossible. Instead the question should be what kind of usage to make of the new technology. And here we still have quite a lot of power to influence the direction its taking.

Will humans always find ways to hate each other, or do you lean more towards Steven Pinkers view that society far less violent than it was once, which this trend is placed to carry on? Sarah Shubinsky, readers I am inclined to accept Steven Pinker. We currently reside in probably the most peaceful era ever. There’s certainly still violence My home is the center East and so i know this perfectly well. But, comparatively, there’s less violence than in the past ever. Today more and more people die from overeating than from human violence, which is actually an amazing achievement. We cant be sure concerning the future however, many changes get this to trend appear robust. To begin with, there’s the specter of nuclear war that was possibly the main reason behind the decline of war since 1945, which threat remains. And next, you will find the alternation in the character from the economy the economy switched from as being a material-based economy towards the understanding-based economy.

Previously, the primary economic assets were material such things as wheat fields and gold mines and slaves. So war made sense since you could enrich yourself by waging war upon your neighbours. The primary economic asset is understanding, and it is tough to conquer understanding through violence. The majority of the large conflicts these days continue to be in individuals areas such as the Middle East, in which the primary supply of wealth is material its gas and oil.

Photograph: SilverHub/Rex/Shutterstock

You stated our predilection to produce abstract concepts for example religion, nationality etc may be the quality which designated sapiens using their company hominids. Considering that can also be the muse for wars that could produce our destruction, could it be a strength or perhaps a weakness? Esther Rantzen, broadcaster When it comes to power, its apparent this ability made Homo sapiens probably the most effective animal on the planet, and today provides for us charge of the whole planet. From your ethical perspective, whether or not this was bad or good, thats an even more complicated question. The important thing concern is that because our power depends upon collective fictions, we’re not good in distinguishing between fiction and reality. Humans think it is tough to understand what is real and what’s only a imaginary story in their own individual minds, which causes lots of disasters, wars and problems.

The very best test to understand whether a business is real or imaginary may be the test of suffering. A nation cannot suffer, it can’t feel discomfort, it can’t feel fear, it’s no awareness. Even when it loses a war, the soldier suffers, the civilians suffer, however the nation cannot suffer. Similarly, an organization cannot suffer, the pound sterling, if this loses its value, it doesnt suffer. Each one of these things, theyre fictions. If people keep in mind this distinction, it might improve the way you treat each other and yet another creatures. It is not such smart to cause suffering to real entities within the service of imaginary tales.

AA: However these fictions frequently inspire us to complete excellent achievements. Would an unblinking look at reality produce the same motivation? We certainly take some fictions to be able to have large-scale societies. Thats true. But we have to begin using these fictions for everyone us rather to be enslaved by them. A great example is probably a football game. The laws and regulations from the game are imaginary, theyre a development of humans, there’s nothing anyway that mandates the laws and regulations from the football game. As lengthy while you the reason is that are simply laws and regulations that individuals invented for everyone your goal, you’ll be able to take part in the game. Should you completely quit these laws and regulations since they’re imaginary, then you definitely cant play football.

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The future of human food? Professor Mark Post shows the worlds first lab-grown beefburger in London, August 2013. Photograph: Alamy

So Im certainly not recommending that people stop using all these fictional entities. You cannot have a large-scale economy if you dont use money. But you can use money in the same way you use the football laws, and still remember that this is just our creation. And similarly with the nation. There is nothing wrong in principle in having feelings of loyalty towards the group. But when you forget that this is a human creation, then you can end up sacrificing millions of people for the interests of the nation, forgetting that its the people who invented it.

Is being compassionate and empathetic a major flaw in human evolution? Is psychopathy the future for our species? Dominic Currie, reader No, I dont think so. First of all, if it is, then its going to be quite a terrible future. But even if we leave aside the moral aspect and just look at it from a practical aspect, then human power comes from cooperation, and psychopaths are not very good at cooperation. You need empathy and compassion, you need the ability to understand and to sympathise with other people in order to cooperate with them effectively. So even if we leave aside all moral issues, still I dont think that empathy is bad for us or that psychopaths are the future of humankind.

AA: You argue that humanism is a product of capitalism. Is it inseparable from capitalism? There are close connections between them but I dont think they are inseparable. They can certainly go along different ways in the 21st century. One of the big dangers we face is exactly the separation of capitalism from humanism, especially from liberal humanism. In the last decades the main reason why governments all over the world liberalised their politics and economics is not because they were convinced of the ethical arguments of humanism, but rather because they thought it will be good for the capitalist economy.

Now the fear is that in the 21st century capitalism and humanism will be separated, and you could have very sophisticated and advanced economies without any need to liberalise your political system or to give freedom to invest in the education and welfare of the masses.

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Photograph: Fiona Shaw for the Guardian

Was the move from hunter-gathering to farming a mistake? If so, how can we make the best of it now? Philippa Perry, writer and psychotherapist It depends on your perspective. If youre talking from the perspective of a pharaoh or some ancient Chinese emperor, then it was a very good idea. If you look at it from the perspective of a simple peasant woman in ancient Egypt, then it looks like a pretty bad idea. If you look at it from the perspective of the middle classes in the affluent societies of today, then again it looks like a very good idea. If you look at it from the perspective of somebody in Bangladesh who works 12 hours a day in a sweatshop, again it looks like a bad idea.

There is absolutely no way to turn back the clock, with 8 billion people returning to living as hunter-gatherers. So the question is really how to make the best of our current situation, and how not to repeat the mistakes of the agricultural revolution. With the new revolution in artificial intelligence and biotechnology, there is a danger that again all the power and benefits will be monopolised by a very small elite, and most people will end up worse off than before.

You said animal farming might be the worst crime in history. What advice do you have for helping society end it? Jacy Reese, reader Our best chance is with what is known as cellular agriculture or clean meat, which is the idea of creating meat from cells and not from animals. If you want a steak, you just grow a steak from cells you dont need to raise a cow and then slaughter the cow for the steak. This may sound like science fiction but its already a reality. Three years ago they created the first hamburger they made from cells. It is true it cost $300,000 nevertheless its always like this with a brand new technology. Right now, 2017, the cost, so far as I understand, is lower to $11 per hamburger. And also the developers expect, that, given enough investment and also the proper research, they might bring lower the cost to under a slaughtered meat hamburger within, I do not know, ten years approximately.

Its still a way before you decide to view it within the supermarket as well as in McDonalds, however i think thats the only real viable solution. Im vegan, and that i avoid meat along with other animal products, but Im under no illusion will be able to convince vast amounts of others to stop completely meat and milk and so on. But when we are able to produce them from cells, then great. It will likewise have lots of environmental benefits since it will lessen the enormous quantity of pollution which is because high animal farming today.

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Bettany Hughes Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Does the phrase the modern mind mean anything to you, and if so when was the modern mind born and what does it look like? Bettany Hughes, historian We know very little about the mind. We dont understand what it is, what are its functions and how it emerged. When billions of neurons in the brain fire electrical charges in a particular pattern, how does this create the mental experience, the subjective experience of love or anger or pain or pleasure? We have absolutely no idea. And because we understand so little about the mind, we also dont know how and why it emerged in the first place. We assume that the people in the late stone age who drew the cave art of Lascaux and Altamira had fundamentally the same minds as we have today. And we also assume that Neanderthals had a different kind of mind, even though they had bigger brains than ours. But the details at present are far beyond our understanding.

AA: You live in a part of the world that has been shaped by religious fictions. Which do you think will happen first that Homo sapiens leave behind religious fiction or the Israel-Palestine conflict will be resolved? As things look at present, it seems that Homo sapiens will disappear before the Israeli political conflict will be resolved. I think that Homo sapiens as we know them will probably disappear within a century or so, not destroyed by killer robots or things like that, but changed and upgraded with biotechnology and artificial intelligence into something else, into something different. The timescale for that kind of change is maybe a century. And its quite likely that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will not be resolved by that time. But it will definitely be influenced by it.

Would we and all the other species on this planet have been better off without the cognitive revolution? Would we then still be living in harmony with all the other forms of life instead of dominating them and making ourselves unhappy in the process? NassauOrange, posted online Im not sure about harmony because there is also a lot of violence and disharmony between other species. But we definitely would not have dominated the planet if we did not undergo the cognitive revolution. And then, also, you would not have the ecological crisis that the planet now faces. So yes, without a cognitive revolution, I guess most other organisms, most other big animals, would be much better off.

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Were the Lascaux cave paintings in France created by minds like ours? Photograph: D Nidos/ Departement 24

What concerns you most about the world, and what are you doing about your concerns? LeaActforChange, posted online There are so many different concerns that Im not sure which is the biggest one. At present, because of the enormous power of humankind, maybe the biggest concern of all is human blindness and stupidity. Were an extremely wise species in so many ways but when it comes to making important decisions we have this tendency sometimes to make these terrible mistakes, and we are now in a situation when we just dont have much room for error. As we gain more and more power, the consequences of making a stupid choice are catastrophic for us and for the entire ecological system. So this is a great cause for concern.

Is anti-intellectualism is rising in the west? If so, is there a relation between the rise of anti-intellectualism and the decline of liberalism? guneydas, posted online Im not sure that its rising. Its definitely there but it was always there, and Im not sure if the situation now is worse than in the 1950s or 1930s or the 19th century or the middle ages. So yeah, its definitely a concern. And I would say its not so much anti-intellectualism as much as anti-science. Because even the most fundamentalist religious fanatics, they are intellectuals. They give far too much importance to the human intellect. One of the problems with a lot of religious fanaticism is that it gives far too much importance to the creations of the human intellect and far too little to empirical evidence from the world outside us.

AA: Are you confident that radical Islam is nothing more than the death rattle of the pre-modern era? In the 21st century, humanity is facing some very difficult problems, whether its global warming or global inequality or the rise of disruptive technology, such as bioengineering and artificial intelligence. And wWe need answers to these challenges, and at least as of March 2017 I havent heard anything relevant being offered by radical Islam. So this is why I dont think that radical Islam will shape the society of the 21st century. It could still be there, it could still cause a lot of trouble and violence and so forth, but I dont see it creating or shaping the road ahead of humankind.

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Photograph: Mike McGregor/Observer Magazine

Youre clearly a big-picture guy, so what do you do to recharge and get the perspective that you need for your work? Arianna Huffington, entrepreneur I read a very large number of books from all fields, all disciplines. I usually start with a big question, such as whether people today are happier than in the past, or why men have dominated women in most human societies. And then I follow the question instead of trying to follow my own answer, even if it means I cant formulate any clear theory.

AA: What does meditation do for you? Above all it enables me to try and see reality as it is. When we try to observe the world, and when we try to observe ourselves, the mind constantly generates stories and fictions and explanations and imposes them on reality, and we cannot see what is really happening because we are blinded by the fictions and stories that we create or other people create and we believe. Meditation for me is just to see reality as it is dont get entangled in any story, in any fiction.

How would you advise the individual who wants to live a good life and contribute to the wellbeing of those not yet born as well as those already here? Paul Baker, reader Get to know yourself better, and especially what you really want from life, because otherwise technology tends to dictate to people their aims in life, and instead of technology serving us to realise our aims, we become enslaved to its agenda. And its very difficult to know what you really want from life. Im not saying its an easy task.

AA: If we can indefinitely prevent death, would it still be possible to create meaning without what Saul Bellow called the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything? I think so, yes. You have other problems with what happens when you overcome old age, but I dont think lack of meaning will be a serious problem. Over the past three centuries, almost all the new ideologies of the modern world dont care about death, or at least they dont see death as a source of meaning. Previous cultures, especially traditional religions, usually needed death in order to explain the meaning of life. Like in Christianity without death, life has no meaning. The whole meaning of life comes from what happens to you after you die. There is no death, no heaven, no hell there is no meaning to Christianity. But over the past three centuries we have seen the emergence of a lot of modern ideologies such as socialism, liberalism, feminism, communism that dont need death at all in order to provide life with meaning.

Sapiens and Homo Deus are published by Vintage at 9.99 and 8.99. To order copies for 8.49 and 7.64 respectively go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.Free United kingdom p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of just one.99

Find out more: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/mar/19/yuval-harari-sapiens-readers-questions-lucy-prebble-arianna-huffington-future-of-humanity

#Andrew Solomon #Arianna Huffington #Books #Culture #Esther Rantzen #Helen Czerski #History #Israel #Lucy Prebble #Science and nature #Yuval Noah Harari

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Early Giant Galaxy Seen Gorging On Intergalactic Gas

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Early Giant Galaxy Seen Gorging On Intergalactic Gas

The biggest galaxies within the world reached their size by cannibalizing other galaxies over many vast amounts of years, but in early world, the biggest galaxies have lengthy been considered to have created by devouring intergalactic gas.

Evidence for that different behavior continues to be limited however an worldwide group of astronomers has discovered an old protocluster feeding from the giant, dense cloud of cold gas. The brand new object, known as the Spiderweb Universe, is situated 10 billion light-years away and it is really made from several protogalaxies encircled by 100 billion solar masses’ price of gas.

The study by an worldwide group of astronomers was printed in Science and combined the observations from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), which studied the level from the gas, and also the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Large Array (VLA), which learned that two-thirds from the gas is between your protogalaxies.

“This can be a huge system, with this particular molecular gas spanning three occasions how big our very own Milky Way Universe,” stated co-author Preshanth Jagannathan from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), inside a statement. “It seems this whole system eventually will collapse right into a single, gigantic universe.”

Radio stations telescopes checked out deadly carbon monoxide contained in the cloud determined it had an very winter of approximately -200C (-328F). Both of these details are very important for the knowledge of universe evolution.

Carbon and oxygen werent created within the Big Bang, so that they should have been created by stars in these kinds of galaxies after which ejected from their store. However the ejection mechanism usually gets warm the gas to some high temperature, although this gas is actually cold.

The gas falls to the central protogalaxy, which increases in dimensions and can eventually merge using the other protogalaxies.

“This differs from what we should see within the nearby World, where galaxies in clusters grow by cannibalizing other galaxies. Within this cluster, a huge universe keeps growing by feeding around the soup of cold gas that is submerged,” stated Bjorn Emonts from the Center for Astrobiology in The country, who brought they.

This discovery of protogalaxy behavior confirms what simulations have indicated already, that theres much more happening in early world than we know.

These studies supplies a new tantalizing new consider the lives of galaxies once they started to create.

Find out more: http://www.iflscience.com/space/early-giant-galaxy-seen-gorging-on-intergalactic-gas/

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Stephen Hawking is going to space

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Stephen Hawking is going to space

Stephen Hawking, among the world&#8217s foremost theoretical physicists and cosmologists, gets to attain certainly one of his dreams. Hawking will mind into spacealthough by yet, the launch date continues to be TBD.

&#8220I thought nobody would take me, but Richard Branson has proposed a seat on Virgin Galactic, and that i stated yes immediately,&#8221 Hawking said in an interview withGood Morning Britain. Hawking is affected with the degenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and it is largely paralyzed.Within the interview, Hawking also shared he has formerly been in a zero-gravity flight, which gave him the chance to drift. True space flight, however, may be the researcher&#8217sultimate ambition.

Branson&#8217s Virgin Group presently includesthree companies with space bound ambitions. The Spaceship Company designs, manufactures, and tests aerospace vehicles. Virgin Galactic may be the arm that concentrates on human space flight. Lately, Virgin Orbitbroke from underneath the Virgin Galactic umbrella into its very own company. Virgin Orbit isprimarily for launching small satellites into orbit.

Virgin Galactic initially aimed to produce an industrial space flight in ’09, however it has already established to manage witha variety of delays and problems.

If Virgin retains difficulties with making its commercial space program viable, possibly Hawking can rather hop on a SpaceX mission. Elon Musk&#8217s SpaceX intends to send two tourists around the moon the coming year inside a weeklong &#8220vacation.&#8221 SpaceX, like Virgin Galactic, has already established its very own great amount of mishaps and catastrophesas it really works toward delivering humans securely into space.

If everything else fails, there&#8217s still the spacecraft that Hawking developedhimself. As they wouldn&#8217t be aboard, the &#8220Breakthrough Starshot&#8221 project would rocket towards our nearest star neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Its20-year journey would concentrate on searching forsigns of existence within the universe.

H/T The Independent

Find out more: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/stephen-hawking-going-space/

#richard branson

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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NASA Wants To Transform The Sun Into A Insanely Powerful Telescope

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/nasa-wants-to-transform-the-sun-into-a-insanely-powerful-telescope/

NASA Wants To Transform The Sun Into A Insanely Powerful Telescope

NASA, throughout the Planetary Science Vision 2050 workshop in Washington D.C. recently, outlined their intends to make use of the Sun like a gigantic telescope to search for alien worlds hiding available within the cosmos. A telescope, not built, is going to be positioned in a way that it’ll make use of the Sun like a gravitational lens to determine distant planets 1,000 occasions more clearly than we all do right now.

Gravitational lensing is really a rather peculiar physical phenomenon, one which is one of the Einsteinian school of General Relativity. While you most likely know, spacetime may be treatable like a fabric, so when something with considerable mass exists with that fabric, it depresses and stretches it.

Which means that light originating from close to the object or behind it’s warped, and often this light literally bends round the object and passes along to another side from it.

Although Einstein only formally described the procedure throughout the publication of his seminal 1936 article, its testing technically spanned a couple of decades before this, most particularly throughout a 1919 experiment in the center of the sea by one Mister Arthur Eddington, an British astronomer and polymath.

With what demonstrated is the first physical experiment to ensure Einsteins Theory of General Relativity which posited that light doesn’t necessarily travel inside a straight line Eddington visited an online island from the west coast of Africa to look at a complete solar eclipse. A series of images taken from the eclipse also contained an inquisitive number of vibrant sparks which were recognized as the Hyades star cluster.

Because these were positioned directly behind the sun’s rays at that time, this experiment demonstrated the immense mass from the Sun had warped spacetime a lot the light from the Hyades cluster was bending around it and making its method to Earth.

A complete solar eclipse was utilized to check Einstein’s theory the very first time. Luc Viatour/Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.

Now, nearly a hundred years later, this exact principle has been considered by NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an effort to see exoplanets and stars many light-years away. Can be if the proposal will be realized, but simply the thought of using our very own Sun like a magnifier around the world is ludicrously awesome.

Youd believe that, in line with the 1919 experiment, scientists might have built this type of Sun-utilizing telescope before. Well, because of the gravitational interference of all of those other Solar System, the gravitational lensing effect for this type of telescope would only work whether it was positioned 14 occasions even further away than Pluto reaches present.

Presently, no man-made object has travelled anywhere near so far as that distance. So don’t expect the special telescope to look in the near future we have to improve our propulsion technology a good amount first.

[H/T: Popular Mechanics]

Find out more: http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-transform-sun-insanely-powerful-telescope/

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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The biggest killer you may not know - BBC News

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/the-biggest-killer-you-may-not-know-bbc-news/

The biggest killer you may not know - BBC News

Image copyright PAtrick Kane

“I flat-lined seven occasions, it had been very uncertain for any lengthy time whether I’d allow it to be,Inch states Patrick Kane.

He nearly died from a disorder that kills more and more people within the United kingdom every year than bowel, breast and cancer of the prostate combined.

Patrick only agreed to be nine several weeks old when one morning he grew to become poorly, floppy and “generally unresponsive”.

The household GP stated he just needed Calpol, but Patrick’s mother was still being concerned and required him to hospital.

But around the journey things got quickly worse.

“It truly would be a sudden factor… upon arrival I’d multiple organ failure,” he states.

Patrick spent 3 . 5 several weeks in St Mary’s hospital working in london, lost his right leg underneath the knee, his left arm and fingers on his right hands.

Image copyright PAtrick Kane

The 19-year-old has become studying biochemistry at college in Edinburgh.

What he’d was sepsis.

“Either you realize someone who’s had sepsis, or you haven’t heard about it,” Patrick informs the BBC.

What’s sepsis?

Sepsis is triggered by infections, but is really an issue with our very own defense mechanisms entering overdrive.

It comes down to contamination that come everywhere – a contaminated cut or insect bite.

Normally, your defense mechanisms takes over to battle the problem and prevent it distributing.

However, if the infection seems to spread rapidly across the body, then your defense mechanisms will launch an enormous immune reaction to fight it.

This is yet another problem because the immune response might have catastrophic effects on our bodies, resulting in septic shock, organ failure as well as dying.

Within the United kingdom, you will find 44,000 deaths in the condition every year.

Do you know the signs and symptoms?

The UK Sepsis Trust lists six signs and symptoms to understand:

slurred speech

extreme shivering or muscle discomfort

passing no urine per day

severe breathlessness

“Personally i think like I would die”

skin mottled or discoloured

Signs and symptoms in young children include:

looks mottled, bluish or pale

very lethargic or hard to wake

abnormally cold to the touch

breathing extremely fast

a rash that doesn’t fade whenever you press it

a seizure or convulsion

Patrick states “there is no magic symptom” but people have to be asking “could this be sepsis?”

Is anything being carried out about sepsis?

The NHS does greater than previously, but nonetheless insufficient.

A report in 2015 stated four in 10 patients being accepted to accident and emergency units weren’t being reviewed rapidly enough and uncovered delays in giving antibiotics in nearly another of cases.

The Nation’s Institute for Health insurance and Care Excellence – which advises doctors on best practice – is on its way with new rules.

Prof Gillian Leng, the organisation’s deputy leader, states: “We all know from recent situation reviews there are inconsistencies in how people’s signs and symptoms are assessed in various settings.

“More can be achieved to supply rapid treatment.”

The organisation states patients ought to be assessed quickly and individuals with existence-threatening sepsis ought to be treated after just one hour.

Previous guidance stated doctors along with other healthcare staff must treat sepsis with similar emergency like a suspected cardiac arrest.

Health Secretary Jeremy Search stated there is a “relentless drive” to boost awareness.

View comments

Find out more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39219765

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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Alternative Facts: A Psychiatrists Guide To Twisted Relationships To Truth

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/alternative-facts-a-psychiatrists-guide-to-twisted-relationships-to-truth/

Alternative Facts: A Psychiatrists Guide To Twisted Relationships To Truth

The saying alternative facts has lately made this news inside a political context, but psychiatrists much like me happen to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the idea indeed, we hear many forms of alternate reality expressed nearly every day.

Many of us have to parse perceived from actual reality every single day, in nearly every facet of our way of life. So exactly how should we straighten out claims and beliefs that strike many people as odd, unfounded, fantastical or simply plain delusional?

Untruths arent always lies

First, we have to create a distinction frequently emphasized by ethicists and philosophers: that from a lie along with a falsehood. Thus, somebody that deliberately misrepresents what he or she knows to be true is laying typically, to secure some personal advantage. In comparison, somebody that voices a mistaken claim with no intent to trick isn’t laying. That individual should be not aware from the details, or may won’t believe the very best available evidence. Instead of laying, hes stating a falsehood.

Many people who voice falsehoods appear not capable of distinguishing real from unreal, or truth from fiction, yet are sincerely convinced their worldview is completely correct. Which is our entree in to the psychological literature.

In clinical psychiatry, we have seen patients having a broad spectrum of ideas that lots of people would find eccentric, exaggerated or blatantly at odds with reality. The clinicians job is, first, to pay attention empathically and then try to understand these beliefs in the patients perspective, carefully considering the individuals cultural, ethnic and non secular background.

Sometimes, clinicians could be extremely mistaken within their first impressions. A friend of mine once described a seriously irritated patient who had been hospitalized while he was adamant he had been stalked and harassed through the FBI. A couple of days into his hospitalization, FBI agents demonstrated on the system to arrest the individual. Because the old joke goes, simply because youre paranoid doesnt mean they arent once you!

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As strongly as she believes, it doesnt allow it to be true. Talking image via www.shutterstock.com.

When what you consider is wrong

We are able to consider distortions of reality as falling along a continuum, varying from mild to severe, depending on how rigidly the idea takes place and just how impervious it’s to factual information. Around the milder finish, we’ve what psychiatrists call over-valued ideas. They are very strongly held convictions which are at odds using what many people within the persons culture believe, but which aren’t bizarre, incomprehensive or patently impossible. A amorously held thought that vaccinations cause autism might become qualified as an over-valued idea: it is not scientifically correct, nevertheless its not absolutely past the arena of possibility.

Around the severe end of the continuum are delusions. They are strongly held, completely inflexible beliefs that aren’t altered whatsoever by factual information, and that are clearly false or impossible. Importantly, delusions aren’t described through the persons culture, faith or ethnicity. Someone who inflexibly believes that Vladimir Putin has personally implanted an electrode in the brain to be able to control his ideas would become qualified as delusional. Once the patient expresses this belief, they’re not laying or attempting to trick the listener. It’s a sincerely held belief, but nonetheless a falsehood.

Falsehoods of numerous kinds could be voiced by individuals with assorted neuropsychiatric disorders, but additionally by individuals who’re perfectly normal. Within the plethora of normal falsehood are extremely-known as false memories, which a lot of us experience quite frequently. For instance, you’re very sure you sent that check towards the electric company, however, you won’t ever did.

As social researcher Julia Shaw observes, false recollections have the same properties as any other memories, and therefore are indistinguishable from recollections of occasions that really happened. Then when you insist for your spouse, Obviously I compensated that utility bill! you aren’t laying you’re just fooled from your own brain.

An infinitely more serious kind of false memory involves a process called confabulation: the spontaneous manufacture of false recollections, frequently of the very detailed nature. Some confabulated recollections are mundane others, quite bizarre. For instance, the individual may insist and sincerely believe he had eggs Benedict in the Ritz in the morning, even if this clearly wasnt the situation. Or, the individual may insist she was kidnapped by terrorists and offer a reasonably elaborate account from the (imaginary) ordeal. Confabulation is generally seen poor severe brain damage, for example may consume a stroke or even the rupture of the circulation system within the brain.

Laying like a default

Finally, there’s falsification that lots of people would call pathological laying, and which matches through the extravagant scientific name of pseudologia fantastica (PF). Writing within the Psychological Annals, Drs. Rama Rao Gogeneni and Thomas Newmark list the following features of PF:

Reasonable inclination to lie, frequently like a defensive make an effort to avoid effects. The individual can experience a higher out of this imaginative story-telling.

The lies are very dazzling or fantastical, though they might contain truthful elements. Frequently, the lies may capture considerable public attention.

The lies have a tendency to present the individual inside a positive light, and could be a manifestation of the underlying character trait, for example pathological narcissism. However, the is based on PF usually exceed the greater believable tales of persons with narcissistic traits.

Even though the precise cause or reasons for PF aren’t known, some data suggest abnormalities in the white matter of the brain bundles of nerve fibers encircled by an insulating sheath known as myelin. However, the psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch contended that PF stems from psychological factors, like the have to enhance yourself-esteem, secure the admiration of others in order to portray yourself as whether hero or perhaps a victim.

So what about details anyway?

Obviously, all this presumes something similar to a consensus on which constitutes reality and details which almost everyone has a desire for creating the reality. However this presumption is searching more and more doubtful, in the middle of what’s become referred to as post-truth era. Charles Lewis, the founding father of the middle for Public Integrity, described ours like a period by which up is lower and lower expires and things are under consideration and nothing is real.

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Are lies becoming our rose-colored glasses? Christian Bucad, CC BY-NC-ND

Much more worrisome, everyone appears with an appetite for falsehood. As author Adam Kirsch lately contended, more and more, people seem to want to be lied to. The lie, Kirsch argues, is seductive: It enables the liar and the audience to cooperate in altering the character of reality itself, in a manner that can be displayed almost magical.

So when this magical transformation of reality occurs, whether inside a political or scientific context, it might be very difficult to reverse. Because the author Jonathan Quick place it, Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.

Psychiatrists aren’t capable of discuss the mental health of politicians they haven’t yet personally evaluated or around the nature of falsehoods sometimes voiced by our political leaders. Indeed, the Goldwater Rule prohibits us from doing this. Nonetheless, psychiatrists are acutely conscious of the all-too-human have to avoid or distort uncomfortable facts. Many may likely nod in complete agreement by having an observation frequently related to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung: People cannot stand too much reality.

Ronald W. Pies, Professor of Psychiatry, Lecturer on Bioethics &amp Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical College and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts College Med school, Tufts University

This short article was initially printed on The Conversation. Browse the original article.

Find out more: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/alternative-facts-a-psychiatrists-guide-to-twisted-relationships-to-truth/

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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Stephen Hawking: I fear I may not be welcome in Donald Trump's US

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/stephen-hawking-i-fear-i-may-not-be-welcome-in-donald-trumps-us/

Stephen Hawking: I fear I may not be welcome in Donald Trump's US

Leading British physicist and cosmologist informs Hello Britain he’s worried about US presidents ecological policy

Stephen Hawking, the key British physicist and cosmologist, has stated he no more feels welcome in america under Jesse Trump.

Prof Hawking is really a person receiving the esteemed US Franklin medal for science and received the presidential medal of freedom from Obama in ’09. Now he’s spoken out about his fears for that countrys definite swing to some rightwing, more authoritarian approach.

I must visit again and to speak to other scientists, however i fear which i might not be welcome, he stated within an interview with higher Morning Britain on Monday.

The 75-year-old Cambridge researcher stated he was particularly worried about Trumps atmosphere policy.

He should replace Scott Pruitt in the Atmosphere Protection Agency, he stated. Global warming is among the great dangers we face, and it is one we are able to prevent. It impacts America badly, so tackling it ought to win votes for his second term. God forbid.

Hawking has previously described Trump as a demagogue.

Trump was elected by individuals who felt disenfranchised through the governing elite inside a revolt against globalisation, he told ITV1s breakfast programme. His priority is to satisfy his electorate, who’re neither liberal nor that knowledgeable.

Hawking stated, however, he saw indications of expect the planet within the rise of ladies to effective positions in public places existence, and that he revealed his excitement at the potential of delivering small robots into space to research earth-like planets trillions of miles away.

Requested concerning the ascent of Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon and Cressida Dick, the brand new Met police commissioner, he stated: When we element in high-powered women in Europe too, for example Angela Merkel, it appears we’re witnessing a seismic shift for ladies to accede to high-level positions in politics and society.

But there might be a niche between individuals women achieving high public status and individuals within the private sector. I welcome these indications of womens liberation.

When requested whether he thought the Nasa space programme ought to be restarted following a discovery of recent planets, Hawking stated: The lately discovered system of seven Earth-sized planets is 39 many years away. With current technology there’s not a way we are able to travel that far.

The very best we are able to envisage is automatic nanocraft pressed by giant lasers to twentyPercent from the speed of sunshine. These nanocraft weigh a couple of grams and would take about 240 many years to achieve their destination and send pictures back. It’s achievable and it is something that i’m very looking forward to.

On British politics, Hawking stated he felt a tough Brexit ought to be opposed, using the United kingdom retaining strong links using the EU and China. Also, he stated that Work, that they backed in the 2015 general election, wouldn’t win the following election under Jeremy Corbyn.

He doesnt seem a powerful leader, and that he permitted the press to portray him like a leftwing extremist, which he is not, he stated. Its not good getting the best concepts should you never enter power.

Find out more: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/mar/20/stephen-hawking-trump-good-morning-britain-interview

#donald trump #EU referendum and Brexit #ITV channel #Media #Science #Stephen Hawking

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tuthillscopes-blog · 8 years ago

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Crazy dream: the former Delhi IT worker in the race to land on the moon

check it out @ https://tuthillscopes.com/crazy-dream-the-former-delhi-it-worker-in-the-race-to-land-on-the-moon/

Crazy dream: the former Delhi IT worker in the race to land on the moon

TeamIndus is among four teams competing to win Googles Lunar XPrize for that first private moon landing, worth $20m

To this very day, Rahul Narayan doesnt know why he stated yes, except it had become the last day to register, and when he didnt accept it, there could be no Indian teams within the running. He put together an offer and clicked submit.

Possibly it had been the dullness of his regular job inside it services, or perhaps a last-ditch effort to recapture some adolescent Star Wars-themed fantasy but when the concept experienced his mind, it stuck.

So it was made the decision Rahul Narayan would send a spacecraft towards the moon.

Relaxing in his office now, 3 years since his moon mission began, Narayan talks with the complexities of lunar expeditions. Sometimes, people question why he, an application engineer from Delhi, along with a complete outsider towards the space industry would chance a lunar landing, a task that just three countries have effectively achieved to date.

The actual response to that, Narayan states, is when you had been an insider youd never attempt something similar to this.

If he succeeds, Narayan and the company TeamIndus would be the first private company ever to find the moon.

But levels of competition are stiff. Three other teams are competing to win Googles Lunar XPrize for that first private moon landing, worth $20m. When Narayan registered, in the finish of 2011, there have been 30 teams within the running. The competitions elimination models have whittled it lower to four.

TeamIndus has become racing against MoonExpress, brought by Indian-American us dot-com millionaire Naveen Jain SpaceIL, setup by three Israeli engineers, as well as an worldwide team known as Synergy Moon, all intending to launch their spacecrafts in December this season. A fifth team, Japan-based Hakuto will be sending a rover on TeamIndus spacecraft which is launched on the government-owned rocket in Chennai, and achieve a high speed of 10.3km another.

After landing at Mare Imbrium, the Ocean of Showers, a four-wheeled, solar-powered, aluminium rover, among the lightest ever to roam the moons surface will beam HD images to earth because it constitutes a 500m journey.

Whether it completes all of this effectively and prior to the other teams, TeamIndus may have done enough to win the Xprize. Money however, is tight. The work has elevated only $16m from the $70m it’ll need. Private investment from buddies, family people and Indian entrepreneurs constitute area of the pot, selling payload around the spacecraft, corporate sponsorship and crowdfunding, the organization hopes, will from the remainder of it.

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A model of the moon lander to be used by Indian company TeamIndus.

Narayan started working on the moon mission in 2012, mostly in the evenings and on weekends in Delhi. After a year of juggling between his IT company and his new obsession with the moon, he decided it had to be one or the other, and so left the company, and moved his family to Bangalore, Indias tech capital, and the headquarters of Indias space industry. His wife didnt object. She knows what Im like, he says.

TeamIndus is the only company from a developing country to attempt the moon landing. If we could pick this as a problem statement and solve it, I think we could solve any complex engineering problem, says Narayan.

The company has vague plans to start a satellite programme or develop solar powered drones after the moon mission. But the real ambition, says Narayan was to prove the impossible can be done. I dont think anybody starts something to inspire people, but because what were doing is exceptionally difficult, I think the impact is very clearly cultural and social, he says.

The new space race

Narayans mission appears a long way from the heady days of the 60s and 70s when the US and then USSR spared no expense to explore space. The last few decades have seen some of those dreams die amid severe cuts.

But now, with the rise of China and India in the past two decades a new race for technological ascendancy began. The 37-year hiatus in lunar landings was broken by the China National Space Administration in 2013, once the Change 3 delivered back soil samples to earth after effectively performing the very first soft landing around the moon in decades.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) plans its very own first lunar landing using the launch of Chandarayaan II planned in the next few years. The Indian companys landing however, if effective, could beat its very own government towards the punch, making India the 4th nation ever to find the moon.

Vishesh Vatsal, an aerospace engineering graduate became a member of TeamIndus when the organization only had a number of employees. He was hired being an intern by Narayan, despite failing technical interviews, and it is now accountable for they focusing on the spacecrafts lunar descent system, among the trickiest areas of the whole journey.

Weren’t probably the most elite number of Indian engineers which have get together. Many people accustomed to laugh at us, he states, recalling certainly one of his first days at work, when Narayan pressed him before some executives throughout a company review. I gave the silliest solutions possible. We’ve got ridiculed in subtle ways, he states.

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A diagram of the moon lander to be used by Indian company TeamIndus Photograph: TeamIndus

The criticism didnt deter them. In January 2015, TeamIndus became the last of four teams to qualify for the XPrize award.

After that, Indias space scientists started taking them seriously. A number of veteran Isro engineers signed up to help the moon landing. Some like 72-year old PS Nair had even worked on Isros first satellite launch in 1975, and shaped the national space mission from its infancy.

[The] goal is not going to the moon, he says. The goal is to empower industry and the country to do what big, giant organisations have done earlier, and thats the goal of the XPrize too, to popularise hi-tech activity and take it out of the control of big organisations like Nasa or Isro. Thats the real motivation for many of us.

Indias space programme is hugely controversial, especially in the west, with some campaigners arguing millions of pounds of British aid money was being misspent in India.For a lot of, the area mission is symbolic of neglect towards Indias most impoverished citizens, while its delusional elites achieve for superpower status.

Sheelika Ravishankar, mind of promoting and outreach, argues the countrys ventures really are a huge supply of national pride. Various areas of India worry about what used to do diversely, she states, recalling a car rickshaw driver who donated part of his salary to TeamIndus after among the companys employees told him concerning the moon mission on his method to work, or perhaps a man who created a board meeting to give 2m rupees (23,800) once the cash-strapped company urgently required to test its spacecraft.

People are coming toward say this really is architecting a brand new India, that is technologically advanced, that is vibrant, which isn’t the final stop from it services in which you backend towards the least expensive country. This is actually the front of technology.

Because the launch deadline draws closer, teams will work quicker than ever to check and boost their models. A misplaced particle of dust or perhaps a simple electronic malfunction could derail the entire mission.

Many see TeamIndus as underdogs within the moon race, facing teams with vast sources.

But Ravishankarsays finding yourself in the race, as well as in it to win, puts India into the spotlight.

This proves that exist condition from the art technology appearing out of India. It’s proof, that you do not have you be considered a huge group of rocket scientists using the greatest pockets to complete research. It is also throughout the planet to determine that anyone can come up with a wild dream. I am talking about, just how much crazier are you able to be than to check out the moon and say, hey, Im going there?

Find out more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/20/lunar-xprize-moon-landing-former-delhi-it-worker-crazy-dream

#india #Science #South and Central Asia #Space #World news

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