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Bengaluru CEO asks ChatGPT to analyse his MRI, shares ‘very interesting’ insight from AI chatbot

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A Bengaluru founder shared how ChatGPT’s MRI analysis suggested stopping deep squats due to a knee issue.

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LP: Learners are responsible, caring, compassionate, empathetic balanced, principled self-regulated agents of the planet

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Malala Yousafzai - The Girl Who Stood Up for Education

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For its efforts in improving conditions for peace in conflict and hunger inflicted zones

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World Food Programme awarded 2020 Nobel Peace Prize

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TD theme: Where are we in time and place?

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TD theme: Where are we in time and place?

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LP: Learners are communicators and risk takers

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TD theme: Sharing the planet-Nature and nurture

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TD theme: Sharing the planet-Nature and nurture

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LP: Learners are curious explorers to know their planet

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TD themes: Who we are? How does the world work? 

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TD themes: Who we are? How does the world work? 

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LP: Learners are compassionate, open-minded, and reflective knowers to identify themselves and their surroundings

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TD themes are: How does the world work? Where are we in time and place? Tech-engine optimization (TEO)

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TD themes are: How does the world work? Where are we in time and place? Tech-engine optimization (TEO)

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LP: Learners are creative explorers

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- Transdisciplinary (TD) theme :Who we are?

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- Transdisciplinary (TD) theme :Who we are?

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-Learner Profile (LP): Knowledgeable and creative inquirers and explorers with a mission statement of responsibly leaving their footprints on this planet in a balanced ethical manner

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Some inventions happen through trial and error-by chance! So, take up the fore seat and experiment with NEW

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Did you know Chocolate Chip Cookies were made by mistake?

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It's charming to see the flamboyance-a great team work and team spirit!

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It's charming to see the flamboyance-a great team work and team spirit!

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Look at the dainty legs-are they fragile or sturdy? Well, as sturdy, tough, and flexible as reptile skin. This adaptation is to wade through the toxic waterways of Lake Norton loaded with corrosive chemicals. The scales on the legs and feet regulate their temperature with the ambient temperature.
Want to know about their teamwork? Like us, they have babysitters to take care of the new hatches when parents are working hard to feed them.
Oh, what a team spirit! They are clustered as a 'stand' away from their nests. Stand of adults and juveniles glued together like a wide chunk of 'PINK'-truly impossible for predators to spot their prey!

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The only bird which can fly backward

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Folded Wing Anatomy: 3 Unique Aspects Of The Hummingbird’s Flight - Hummingbirds Info

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Hummingbirds are unique flyers, but their folded wing anatomy allows them to perform impressive acrobatic movements, unlike other birds. The hummingbird’s wing moves in non-standard ways, allowing the bird to hover easily from one point to another and even perform somersaults. The hummer’s body has…

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Quarantine zone set up to stop giant African land snails | USA TODAY

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If you are on Jupiter!

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If you are worried about your weight, do not go to Jupiter. The Jovian gravity is much more intense than Earth's. 2.528 times more intense to be exact. That means if you weigh 100 kg on Earth, your weight on Jupiter would be 252.8 kg.

Of course, you can not stand on the surface of Jupiter. Jupiter is composed of about 90% hydrogen and 9.99% helium. The gaseous nature of the planet makes a solid surface impossible. Scientists have devised a way to define the surface of Jupiter, though. The surface of the planet is defined as the point where the pressure of the atmosphere is 1 bar, which is equal to the atmospheric pressure at Earth's surface. That point is at the tops of Jupiter's clouds.

Now that we have defined your weight on Jupiter, let's move to on some other interesting facts about the planet. To start off, even though it is the largest planet in our Solar System, it is not the largest planet that we know of. While there are several planets larger than Jupiter, the largest known to man is TrES-4. TrES-4 is 70% larger than Jupiter, but is quite a bit less massive. Scientists think that it has a structure similar to cotton candy for lack of a better analogy.

Since Jupiter's gravity is so intense, it has trapped quite a few moons. The are 63 acknowledged Jovian moons and there are a few others being studied, so that number could go up at any time.

Jupiter has a system of rings. Many people are surprised to find out that Saturn is not the only ringed planet in our Solar System. In addition to Saturn; Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have rings. Rings are generally formed by dust and debris left orbiting after a meteorite impact on a moon. With so many moons, you would think that Jupiter would have a bunch of rings. It only has four defined rings, though.

A day on Jupiter is just under 10 Earth hours long, but a single years lasts 11.86 Earth years.

Some scientists think that Jupiter's gravity is intense enough to affect the Sun. They believe that when Jupiter is at its closest approach to the Sun, solar flare activity increases. Others believe that Jupiter's gravity may eventually push Mercury our of our Solar System.

Now that you know what your weight on Jupiter would be, we hope that you will want to research more Jovian facts.

We've written several articles about your weight on other planets. Here's an article about your weight on the Moon, and here's a link about your weight on Mercury.

If you'd like more information on Jupiter, check out Hubblesite's News Releases about Jupiter, and here's a link to NASA's Solar System Exploration Guide to Jupiter.

We've also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast just about Jupiter. Listen here, Episode 56: Jupiter.

Source: NASA

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caption] If you are worried about your weight, do not go to Jupiter. The Jovian gravity is much more intense than Earth's. 2.528 times more intense to be exact. That means if you weigh 100 kg on Earth, your weight on Jupiter would be 252.8 kg.

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EarthSky | Updates on your cosmos and world

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Rain that doesn't reach the ground

Virga often appears in streaks or shafts extending from the bottoms of clouds. You often see virga over a desert, where low humidity and high temperatures can cause rain to evaporate shortly after being released by clouds. Or you might see virga at high altitudes; in fact, the precipitation often starts out in the form of ice crystals. Virga is commonly seen in the U.S. West and above the Canadian prairies, in the Middle East, Australia and North Africa. At some northerly latitudes, too - as in the photos from Sweden on this page - virga sometimes paints the sky above.

The word virga is derived from Latin meaning "twig" or "branch".

It's an especially dramatic sight at sunrise or sunset.

The photos on this page are from EarthSky friends. Enjoy, and share your pics with us on Facebook or at EarthSky Community Photos, where you can submit here.

Photos of virga from EarthSky's community

Bottom line: Photos of virga, rain that evaporates before it reaches the ground.

Share your photos of the Earth and sky!
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EarthSky | Virga is rain that doesn't reach the ground

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We've all seen virga, but maybe not known what it's called. Virga is rain that evaporates before it hits the ground. Enjoy these photos!

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Cupriavidus Metallidurans that can ingest toxic metal compounds, survive the negative effects and produce small nuggets of gold

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No other life form on our planet has infiltrated every environment as successfully as the minuscule single cells of bacteria. Amongst their many roles in life on Earth, it turns out some of these microbes are also experts at purifying precious metals.

An international team of researchers has figured out how one metal-gobbling bacterium, Cupriavidus metallidurans, manages to ingest toxic metallic compounds and still thrive, producing tiny gold nuggets as a side-effect.

Just like many other elements, gold can move through what's known as a biogeochemical cycle - being dissolved, shifted around, and eventually re-concentrated in Earth's sediment.

Microbes are involved in every step of this process, which has led scientists to wonder how they don't get poisoned by the highly toxic compounds that gold ions usually form in the soil.

The rod-shaped C. metallidurans was first found to poop gold nuggets back in 2009, when scientists discovered that it somehow manages to ingest toxic gold compounds and convert them into the element's metallic form without any apparent danger to the organism itself.

"The results of this study point to their involvement in the active detoxification of gold complexes leading to formation of gold biominerals," lead researcher, geomicrobiologist Frank Reith said in 2009.

Now, after years of investigation, Reith and his colleagues finally know the precise mechanism of how the bacterium achieves this amazing feat.

C. metallidurans thrives in soils which contain both hydrogen and a range of toxic heavy metals. This means the bacterium doesn't have much competition from other organisms that can be easily poisoned in such an environment.

"If an organism chooses to survive here, it has to find a way to protect itself from these toxic substances," says co-author of the latest study, microbiologist Dietrich H. Nies from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany.

As it turns out, the bacterium has a pretty ingenious protective mechanism, which involves not just gold, but also copper.

Compounds containing both of these elements can easily get into C. metallidurans cells. Once inside, they interact in such a way that copper ions and gold complexes get transported deep inside the bacterium, where they could potentially wreak havoc.

To deal with this problem, bacteria employ enzymes to shift the offending metals out of their cells - for copper, there's an enzyme called CupA. But the presence of gold causes a new problem.

"When gold compounds are also present, the enzyme is suppressed and the toxic copper and gold compounds remain inside the cell," says Nies.

At this point other bacteria might just give up and go live somewhere less toxic, but not C. metallidurans. This organism has another enzyme up its sleeve, which scientists have labelled CopA.

With this molecule, the bacterium can convert the copper and gold compounds into forms that are less easily absorbed by the cell.

"This assures that fewer copper and gold compounds enter the cellular interior," explains Nies.

"The bacterium is poisoned less and the enzyme that pumps out the copper can dispose of the excess copper unimpeded."

But not only does this process let the microbe shed all that unwanted copper, it also results in teeny tiny gold nugget nanoparticles on the bacterial surface.

The results of this research, which builds on previous work by the same team, are a fascinating insight into the workings of a strange microbe. But on top of that, the bacterium's weird talent could actually be put to a good use.

Understanding how C. metallidurans can poop out gold nuggets means scientists just got a huge step closer to unlocking the biogeochemical cycle of gold.

In the future these insights could be used to refine the precious metal from ores that only contain small amounts of metal - something that's currently a very tricky prospect.

The research has been published in Metallomics.

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These Bacteria Digest Toxic Metals And Poop Out Tiny Gold Nuggets

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No other life form on our planet has infiltrated every environment as successfully as the minuscule single cells of bacteria.

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Tracking the endangered red pandas with tech

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A red panda totters along the branch of an evergreen tree, placing one paw in front of the other like a gymnast on a balance beam. But then ... whoops! The panda loses its footing. A fall from this height-about a hundred feet-could be deadly. But the panda quickly grips the branch with all four paws and some seriously sharp claws, steadies itself, and keeps moving.

FOREST ACROBATS

Red pandas and giant pandas share a similar name-and a love for bamboo-but they aren't closely related. Scientists think that red pandas are more closely related to weasels, raccoons, and skunks. And while giant pandas spend most of their time plodding around on the ground looking for food, red pandas spend about 90 percent of their time in the trees in the misty mountains of Nepal, Myanmar, and central China where they live.

In fact, red pandas have adapted so well to life in the trees that they're famous for their incredible acrobatic skills. They even have a special thumb-like wrist bone that helps them get an extra grip when climbing. While they can't exactly extend their arms like an acrobat to keep their balance, they can use their tails. If a red panda starts to lean in one direction, it can swing its tail the opposite way to steady itself.

Spending time in trees is how these animals avoid predators, such as snow leopards. Their reddish coats and white face markings provide camouflage in the red-brown moss and white lichen of trees where they live. About the only time red pandas go to the ground is to, um, go. And they scamper down tree trunks headfirst. How? They rotate their ankles 180 degrees-that's like being able to turn your foot backward. The move gives their curved claws a better angle to hang on to the bark.

SAVING RED PANDAS

Red pandas are endangered. Their forest homes are being cut down, and poachers hunt them for their fur. And their adorableness might put them in more danger, since they're ideal targets for the illegal pet trade.

Luckily people are trying to help. For instance, the Red Panda Network hires local people to be forest guardians. These panda pals keep watch over the red pandas in Nepal, replant bamboo, and help paying tourists observe them without disturbing the creatures. Other organizations are using high-tech methods to track poachers. By taking a DNA sample from a red panda rescued from the black market, conservationists can learn where the animals are being taken from.

RED PANDA FAST FACTS

* Red pandas lick themselves clean, just like house cats do.

* Newborns hardly have any fur on the bottoms of their feet. The fur grows as they get older.

* Red pandas wrap their tails around themselves to keep warm in their chilly habitat.

* They eat about 20,000 bamboo leaves every day.

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These mammals spend most of their time in trees and are famous for their incredible acrobatic skills.

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Is awarding artists defying socio-cultural ethos and pathos?

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Is awarding artists defying socio-cultural ethos and pathos?

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The Weeknd has accused the Grammys of being corrupt, after failing to receive any nominations for the 2021 awards.

The Canadian star had been expected to perform strongly, thanks to his number one album After Hours and the hit single Blinding Lights.

"The Grammys remain corrupt," he wrote on Twitter. "You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency."

The Grammys said they "empathised" with his disappointment but that some "deserving" acts missed out every year.

After Hours is the biggest-selling album of the year so far in the US, while Blinding Lights is the longest-running top 10 hit in US chart history.

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The Weeknd, whose real name is Abel Tesfaye, recently won major prizes at the MTV VMAs and the American Music Awards, and will perform at the Super Bowl half-time show next February.

Several US media reports suggested he was locked out of the Grammys after weeks of discussions over a possible appearance at next January's ceremony.

"There was an ultimatum given, resulting in a struggle over him also playing the Super Bowl, that went on for some time," an unnamed source told Rolling Stone magazine. "[It] was eventually agreed upon that he would perform at both events."

The head of the Recording Academy, which organises the awards, dismissed any suggestion that the star's award nominations had been cancelled as a result of these negotiations.

"We understand that The Weeknd is disappointed at not being nominated. I was surprised and can empathise with what he's feeling," said Harvey Mason Jr.

"Unfortunately, every year, there are fewer nominations than the number of deserving artists. To be clear, voting in all categories ended well before The Weeknd's performance at the Super Bowl was announced, so in no way could it have affected the nomination process."

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Several artists sided with The Weeknd, including Sir Elton John, who wrote on Instagram: "In my humble opinion, Blinding Lights [is] song of the year."

The musician, whose 1970 classic Your Song is sampled on After Hours, tagged his post #GrammySnub.

"Abel was robbed," agreed rapper Kid Cudi, while R&B singer Tinashe simply responded to the nominations with a series of dustbin emojis.

Bieber's beef

Beyoncé led the nominations at this year's Grammys - with nine in total. Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift and Roddy Ricch were close behind, with six each.

But The Weeknd wasn't the only artist to complain about the longlist.

Justin Bieber, whose album Changes picked up three nominations in the pop field, complained that he had been miscategorised.

"Changes was and is an R&B album," he wrote in a lengthy Instagram post. "It is not being acknowledged as an R&B album, which is very strange to me.

"I grew up admiring R&B music and wished to make a project that would embody that sound. For this not to be put into that category feels weird, considering from the chords to the melodies to the vocal style, all the way down to the hip-hop drums that were chosen, it is undeniably, unmistakably an R&B album!"

Grammy nominations are selected by experts in their respective genres - including singers, songwriters, producers and record label staff.

A screening committee considers thousands of applications to produce a shortlist, which is whittled down further by a nominations board.

This can result in some artists falling through the cracks. It is possible that The Weeknd's album was considered a pop record by the R&B committee and vice versa, locking him out of both categories.

Although the musician was the highest-profile snub at this year's awards, plenty of other artists walked away empty-handed, including this year's Grammy host Alicia Keys, R&B musicians Summer Walker and Kehlani, and pop star Selena Gomez - whose ballad Lose You To Love Me was considered a likely contender for the song of the year category.

Earlier this year, former Recording Academy president Deborah Dugan claimed the voting process was "a boys' club" that was "ripe with corruption".

The body announced several changes to its procedures after her accusations were made public.

'Black music has never been respected'

However, it is the treatment of black artists that has raised the most controversy in recent years.

No rap album has won album of the year since Outkast's Speakerboxxx / The Love Below in 2004, despite hip-hop being the predominant genre in contemporary music.

Addressing a pre-Grammys gala in January, Diddy challenged the Academy to change its practices.

"Black music has never been respected by the Grammys," said the rapper, who was receiving a lifetime achievement award.

Adding that the lack of diversity was a problem across the entire entertainment industry, he added: "For years we've allowed institutions that have never had our best interests at heart to judge us. And that stops right now."

A night later, after winning best rap album at the Grammys ceremony, Tyler, the Creator accused the awards of relegating "guys that look like me" to the rap and urban categories.

"I don't like that 'urban' word," he added, "it's just a politically correct way to say the n-word to me."

In response, the Grammys changed the name of the best urban category to best progressive R&B.

Follow us on Facebook, or on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

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The Weeknd calls Grammy Awards 'corrupt' after nominations snub

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The Blinding Lights singer was expected to perform strongly, but didn't get any nominations.

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Is Humanity A Virus? Retroviruses Explained

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Canada: wildfires rage across British Columbia

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Elon Musk is developing and launching satellites into space to provide cost effective internet services

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Big US Push for universal internet | World Business Watch

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AI and connectivity enabled rollable chess board

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@AnnaRudolfChess  Reviews Square Off Pro | The World's first Rollable E-chessboard

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Apple Air Tags used for 'lost and found'

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Apple Air Tags used for 'lost and found'

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Small discs connected with your utmost necessities

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Apple AirTags: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Navigating the Boon and Bane of Modern Tech

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AI creates breakthrough with retinomorphic sensors used in navigation systems and robotics, with the art of capturing and interpreting visual stimuli like colours and visuals just like the human eye

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Researchers Develop Optical Sensor to Mimic Human Eye

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Researchers at Oregon State University have demonstrated the potential of artificial intelligence to mimic humans with a new optical sensor. This optical sensor is better at mimicking the human eye’s ability to perceive changes in its visual field. The development has big implications for fields lik…

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The vulture with prosthetic foot gifted by the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna through the process of osseointegration

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With Oskar Aszmann and his team at the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, MedUni Vienna has long been regarded as a world leader in bionic limb reconstruction. It was only last year that the world's first fully integrated bionic arm prosthesis was developed at MedUni Vienna. This is ready-to-use and is described as "Plug and Play". Although all bionic aids have so far been used in humans, the technique known as osseointegration (direct skeletal attachment) has now been used for the very first time in a bearded vulture - the creature was given a new foot. A paper on this ground-breaking procedure has been published in the prestigious journal Scientific Reports .

In large birds such as vultures, the loss of limbs results in the loss of the ability to walk and ultimately to death from malnutrition. The limb can be replaced by a prosthesis but, so far, it has not been possible to use conventional prosthesis shafts in avian limbs, given the extreme loads they have to withstand in daily use.

Life-saving bionic reconstruction

In the case of "Mia" the bearded vulture from the Owl and Bird of Prey Sanctuary in Haringsee (Lower Austria) run by Dr. Hans Frey, Sarah Hochgeschurz from Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine turned to Oskar Aszmann's team for help. Bearded vultures are the largest flying birds in Europe with a wingspan of up to 2.6 m and this particular bird had injured its foot so badly that it had to be amputated. "However, feet are vital tools for a vulture, not only for landing and walking but also for holding their prey, so that their feet have to withstand various loads," explains the researcher from Vetmeduni Vienna.

Aszmann adds: "Following a clinical visit to Haringsee, it was clear that the rare bird could not survive long in its current condition. We designed and fabricated a special bone implant that could be surgically attached to the stump."

This new technique is known as osseointegration and Aszmann's working group recently used it for the first time in Austria on a patient who had lost an arm - however, it had never previously been attempted on a bird. In osseointegration, external parts of the prosthesis are directly connected to a bone anchor to guarantee a solid skeletal attachment. Aszmann explains: "This concept offers a high degree of embodiment, since osseoperception provides direct intuitive feedback, thereby allowing natural use of the extremity for walking and feeding. For the first time we have now successfully bionically reconstructed the limb of a vulture."

The operation on the bearded vulture was successfully carried out, together with Rickard Branemark from the Center for Osseointegration Research (San Francisco), at the Center for Biomechanical Research at MedUni Vienna (Director: Bruno Podesser). Rehabilitation and prosthetic treatment took place back in Haringsee. "The bird made the first attempts to walk after just three weeks and the prosthesis was under full load after six weeks. Today the bearded vulture can once again land and walk using both feet, making it the first 'bionic bird'," says Aszmann, who is famous throughout the world for his ground-breaking work on bionic hands.

In particular, the case of Patrick Mayrhofer created a sensation in the world media in 2011: the young electrician touched a live circuit at work in 2008 and suffered very severe injuries, losing the use of his left hand. He then decided to have his hand amputated and replaced a few weeks later by a bionic prosthesis at MedUni Vienna - a world first.

Reference: "Avian extremity reconstruction via osseointegrated leg-prosthesis for intuitive embodiment" by Sarah Hochgeschurz, Konstantin D. Bergmeister, Rickard Brånemark, Martin Aman, Attillio Rocchi, Flavia Restitutti, Michaela Gumpenberger, Matthias E. Sporer, Clemens Gstoettner, Anne-Margarete Kramer, Susanna Lang, Bruno K. Podesser and Oskar C. Aszmann, 11 June 2021, Scientific Reports.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-90048-2

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The First "Bionic Bird" - New Foot for "Mia" the Bearded Vulture

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Bird of prey can land and walk again with two feet and as the first "bionic bird." With Oskar Aszmann and his team at the Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, MedUni Vienna has long been regarded as a world leader in bionic limb reconstruction.

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The story behind Mesobot in the Mesopelagic Zone

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The underwater self guiding robot brings info from the Twilight Zone

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The underwater self guiding robot brings info from the Twilight Zone

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Container ship blocks the canal which routes 12% of the world trade

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Container ship blocks the canal which routes 12% of the world trade

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A huge container ship that blocked the Suez Canal in March - disrupting global trade - is finally leaving the waterway after Egypt signed a compensation deal with its owners and insurers.

The Ever Given weighed anchor shortly after 11:30 local time (09:30 GMT) and headed north towards the Mediterranean escorted by tugs.

The ship has been impounded for three months near the canal city of Ismailia.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed but Egypt had demanded $550m (£397m).

As it got under way, Egyptian TV showed footage of the captain and a crew member being presented with flowers and a plaque on board the ship.

The 193km (120-mile) Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea at the canal's northern end to the Red Sea in the south and provides the shortest sea link between Asia and Europe.

But the vital waterway was blocked when the 400m-long (1,312ft) Ever Given became wedged across it after running aground amid high winds. Global trade was disrupted as hundreds of ships were stuck in the traffic jam.

The container ship was refloated following a six-day salvage operation that involved a flotilla of tug boats and dredging vessels. One person was killed during the operation.

Since then, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) has been seeking compensation from the Ever Given's Japanese owner Shoei Kisen for the cost of the salvage operation, damage to the canal's banks and other losses.

The SCA initially asked for $916m compensation, including $300m for a salvage bonus and $300m for loss of reputation. But UK Club - which insured Shoei Kisen for third-party liabilities - rejected the claim, describing it as "extraordinarily large" and "largely unsupported".

The SCA later lowered its demand to $550m. The final settlement, which has not been revealed, was agreed a few days ago and signed on Wednesday to coincide with the ship's release.

Relief as saga ends

By Sally Nabil, BBC News, Suez Canal

Journalists were taken on a tugboat to film the Ever Given finally resuming its voyage along the Suez Canal. As we watched the giant vessel sail past, everybody felt relieved. After more than three months, the story was coming to an end.

I remembered the scene back in March, when the ship was wedged across the waterway, bringing navigation to a stand-still for six days and disrupting global trade. Those days were quite tense and full of uncertainty. On Wednesday, the atmosphere was one of cheerfulness.

However, so far no-one knows what caused this whole saga. Investigations were carried out, but the findings have not been announced. At a news conference, Suez Canal Authority chairman Osama Rabie said the ship was the sole responsibility of its master.

The details of the financial settlement between the SCA and the ship's owners and insurers have also not been revealed. Mr Rabie refused to even give a rough estimate of how much of a compensation the SCA received.

SCA head Osama Rabie told a news conference that the authority would not change its rules about the passage of ships in bad weather. However, he said the grounding had accelerated plans for the canal's expansion.

The UK Club paid tribute to "the work and expertise of the SCA and others whose professionalism and dedication resulted in the ship being refloated".

"Over the last three months we, along with the ship's owners and other interests, have worked closely with the SCA's negotiations team to achieve today's results," a statement said.

Yukito Higaki of Imabari shipbuilding, of which Shoei Kisen is a subsidiary, said the company would continue to be "a regular and loyal customer" of the Suez Canal Authority.

The vessel, with an Indian crew, is still loaded with about 18,300 containers. It is due to undergo an inspection by divers at Port Said before sailing to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and then to the UK port of Felixstowe where it will offload its containers, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Ever Given: Ship that blocked Suez Canal sets sail after deal signed

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The megaship Ever Given is finally leaving the Suez Canal after a deal is struck with Egypt.

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Best Pop Duo

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Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande - Rain On Me (Lyrics)

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Song of the Year

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Salute the Soldier - I Can't Breathe (Official Music Video)

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Oscars 2021, Soul for the best animated feature

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Dared to fight and think beyond the cliche self-interest

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Ashok Chakra Awardee Babu Ram's Children Too Want To Join Belt Forces

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Innovators of the gene editing tool CRISPR-debunking the mystery of uncontrolled inherited units

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Louise Glück: "It's too new … it's too early here"

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For her unmistakable poetic voice with beauty making individual existence universal

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Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up on Long Island. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. Considered by many to be one of America's most talented contemporary poets, Glück was known for her poetry's technical precision, sensitivity, and insight into loneliness, family relationships, divorce, and death. The poet Robert Hass called her "one of the purest and most accomplished lyric poets now writing." In 2020, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal."

Glück authored 13 books of poetry, including the collections Winter Recipes from the Collective (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), Faithful and Virtuous Night (FSG, 2014), winner of the National Book Award, and Poems 1962-2012 (FSG, 2013), which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, as well as American Originality: Essays on Poetry (FSG, 2017).

Glück's early books feature personae grappling with the aftermaths of failed love affairs, disastrous family encounters, and existential despair. In her later work, she continued to explore the agony of the self. Her first book of poetry, Firstborn (New American Library, 1968), was recognized for its technical control as well as its collection of disaffected, isolated narratives. Helen Vendler commented on the use of story in Glück's second collection, The House on Marshland (The Ecco Press, 1975) in her New Republic review. "Glück's cryptic narratives invited our participation: we must, according to the case, fill out the story, substitute ourselves for the fictive personages, invent a scenario from which the speaker can utter her lines, decode the import, 'solve' the allegory," Vendler maintained. She added that "later, I think ... we read the poem, instead, as a truth complete within its own terms, reflecting some one of the innumerable configurations into which experience falls." According to poet-critic Rosanna Warren, Glück's "power [was] to distance the lyric 'I' as subject and object of attention" and to "impose a discipline of detachment upon urgently subjective material."

Glück's poems in books such as Firstborn, The House on Marshland, The Garden (Antaeus Editions, 1976), Descending Figure (The Ecco Press, 1980), The Triumph of Achilles (The Ecco Press, 1985), Ararat (The Ecco Press, 1990), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Wild Iris (The Ecco Press, 1992) invite readers to explore their deepest, most intimate feelings. Her ability to write poetry many people can understand, relate to, and experience intensely and completely stems from her deceptively straightforward language and poetic voice.

In a Washington Post Book World review of Glück's The Triumph of Achilles, Wendy Lesser noted that "'direct' is the operative word here: Glück's language is staunchly straightforward, remarkably close to the diction of ordinary speech. Yet her careful selection for rhythm and repetition, and the specificity of even her idiomatically vague phrases, give her poems a weight that was far from colloquial." Lesser went on to remark that "the strength of that voice derives in large part from its self-centeredness-literally, for the words in Glück's poems seem to come directly from the center of herself."

As Glück wrote so effectively about disappointment, rejection, loss, and isolation, reviewers frequently referred to her poetry as "bleak" or "dark." The Nation's Don Bogen felt that Glück's "basic concerns" were "betrayal, mortality, love and the sense of loss that accompanies it... She is at heart the poet of a fallen world." Readers and reviewers have also marveled at Glück's gift for writing poetry with a dreamlike quality that at the same time deals with the realities of passionate and emotional subjects. Holly Prado declared in a Los Angeles Times Book Review piece on The Triumph of Achilles that Glück's poetry works "because she has an unmistakable voice that resonates and brings into our contemporary world the old notion that poetry and the visionary are intertwined."

Glück's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, The Wild Iris, clearly demonstrates her visionary poetics. Written in three segments, the book is set in a garden and imagines three voices: the gardener-poet, flowers speaking to the gardener-poet, and an omniscient god-like figure. In the New Republic, Helen Vendler described how "Glück's language revived the possibilities of high assertion, assertion as from the Delphic tripod. The words of the assertions, though, were often humble, plain, usual; it was their hierarchic and unearthly tone that distinguished them. It was not a voice of social prophecy but of spiritual prophecy-a tone that not many women had the courage to claim."

Meadowlands (The Ecco Press, 1996), Glück's first new work after The Wild Iris, takes its impetus from Greek and Roman mythology. Through the voices of Odysseus and Penelope, Glück creates "a kind of high-low rhetorical experiment in marriage studies," according to Deborah Garrison in the New York Times Book Review. Garrison added that, through the "suburban banter" between the ancient wanderer and his wife, Meadowlands "captures the way that a marriage itself has a tone, a set of shared vocal grooves inseparable from the particular personalities involved and the partial truces they've made along the way."

Vita Nova (HarperCollins Publishers, 1999) earned Glück the prestigious Bollingen Prize from Yale University. In an interview with Brian Phillips of the Harvard Advocate, Glück said: "This book was written very, very rapidly... Once it started, I thought, this is a roll, and if it means you're not going to sleep, okay, you're not going to sleep." Although the ostensible subject matter of the collection is the examination of the aftermath of a broken marriage, Vita Nova is suffused with symbols drawn from both personal dreams and classic mythological archetypes. Glück's next collection, The Seven Ages (The Ecco Press, 2001), similarly takes up both myth and the personal in forty-four poems with subject matter ranging from her earliest memories to the contemplation of death. In her next book, Averno, the myth of Persephone is the touchstone: the poems circle the bonds between mothers and daughters, Glück's own fears of aging, and a narrative concerning a modern-day Persephone.

In the New York Times, Nicholas Christopher wrote of Glück's unique interest in "tapping the wellsprings of myth, collective and personal, to fuel [her] imaginations and, with hard-earned clarity and subtle music, to struggle with some of our oldest, most intractable fears-isolation and oblivion, the dissolution of love, the failure of memory, the breakdown of the body and destruction of the spirit."

William Logan called Glück's A Village Life (FSG, 2009), "a subversive departure for a poet used to meaning more than she can say." The poems rely on long lines to achieve novelistic or short story-like effects. Logan compared A Village Life to a latter-day Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Mastersin its use of "the village as a convenient lens to examine the lives within, which counterpoint the memories of her [Glück's] life without." Dana Goodyear, reviewing the book for the Los Angeles Times found A Village Life "electrifying," even as it presumes to tell its "polite" story of a "dying agricultural community, probably in Italy, probably some time between the 1950s and today." Goodyear added: "Ordinariness is part of the risk of these poems; in them, Glück hazards, and dodges, sentimentality. The near miss makes us shiver."

Glück's selected Poems 1962-2012 was published to great acclaim. While it highlights her fierceness and "raking moral intensity," New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner noted the collection also allowed readers to see the arc of Glück's formal and thematic development. Adam Plunkett also reviewed the book in the New Republic:"Very few writers share her talent for turning water into blood. But what emerges from this new, comprehensive collection-spanning the entirety of her career-is a portrait of a poet who has issued forth a good deal of venom but is now writing, excellently, in a softer vein."

In 2003, Glück was named the 12th US Poet Laureate. That same year, she was named the judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, a position she held until 2010. Her book of essays Proofs & Theories (HarperCollins, 1994) was awarded the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Nonfiction.

In addition to the Pulitzer and Bollingen Prizes, Glück received many awards and honors for her work, including the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, a Sara Teasdale Memorial Prize, the MIT Anniversary Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award, a National Humanities Medal, and a Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations as well as the National Endowment for the Arts. She died in 2023.

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Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943 and grew up on Long Island. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. Considered by many to be one of America's most talented contemporary poets, Glück was known for her poetry's technical precision, sensitivity, and insight into...

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Kid of the Year-Gitanjali Rao for her innovative tech use to address issues like contaminated drinking water, opioid addiction, cyberbullying

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The world belongs to those who shape it. And however uncertain that world may feel at a given moment, the reassuring reality seems to be that each new generation produces more of what these kids-five Kid of the Year finalists selected from a field of more than 5,000 Americans, ages 8 to 16-have already achieved: positive impact, in all sizes.

Read about how we picked the Kid of the Year here. And watch TIME's Kid of the Year broadcast special on Dec. 4 at 7:30 p.m. ET on Nickelodeon.

Kid of the Year: Gitanjali Rao, 15
Lone Tree, Colo.
"Observe, brainstorm, research, build and communicate." That is what the brilliant young scientist and inventor Gitanjali Rao told actor and activist Angelina Jolie about her process, over Zoom, from her home in Colorado, during a break in her virtual schooling. Just 15 years old, Rao has been selected from a field of more than 5,000 nominees as TIME's first ever Kid of the Year. She spoke about her astonishing work using technology to tackle issues ranging from contaminated drinking water to opioid addiction and cyberbullying, and about her mission to create a global community of young innovators to solve problems the world over. Even over video chat, her brilliant mind and generous spirit shone through, along with her inspiring message to other young people: don't try to fix every problem, just focus on one that excites you. "If I can do it," she said, "anybody can do it."
Jolie, a TIME contributing editor, is an Academy Award-winning actor and special envoy of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
ANGELINA JOLIE: When did you know that science was a passion of yours?

GITANJALI RAO: I feel like there wasn't really one specific aha moment. I was always someone who wanted to put a smile on someone's face. That was my everyday goal, just to make someone happy. And it soon turned into, How can we bring positivity and community to the place we live? And then when I was in second or third grade, I started thinking about how can we use science and technology to create social change. I was like 10 when I told my parents that I wanted to research carbon nanotube sensor technology at the Denver Water quality research lab, and my mom was like, "A what?" [Editor's note: they are cylindrical molecules made of carbon atoms that are very sensitive to chemical changes, and thus are good for detecting chemicals in water, among other uses.] It was just that changing factor of, you know this work is going to be in our generation's hands pretty soon. So if no one else is gonna do it, I'm gonna do it.

AJ: I love that. So much of what my generation should be doing is just making sure we do as little damage as possible to ensure that the next generation can take the lead.

I know one of your latest innovations helps prevent cyberbullying. Could you tell me about that?

GR: It's a service called Kindly -there's an app and a Chrome extension-which is able to detect cyberbullying at an early stage, based on artificial-intelligence technology. I started to hard-code in some words that could be considered bullying, and then my engine took those words and identified words that are similar. You type in a word or phrase, and it's able to pick it up if it's bullying, and it gives you the option to edit it or send it the way it is. The goal is not to punish. As a teenager, I know teenagers tend to lash out sometimes. Instead, it gives you the chance to rethink what you're saying so that you know what to do next time around.

AJ: So you just put it on your kids' phones?

GR: Yeah. I put out a survey to parents, teachers and students, and I honestly expected that students don't want to be micromanaged.

AJ: Right. My kids would be like, "Don't touch my phone, I'll do it myself."

GR: No, exactly, that's what I would be like. But a lot of the teenagers were telling me that, you know, it doesn't seem like I'm being micromanaged; it seems like I'm being given an opportunity to learn from my mistakes. So that's what I was superexcited about, that they understood what the goal of it was.

AJ: The way you're talking about technology as a tool to remind people and help them to grow seems like a very new and different thing. It's so exciting to have such a forward-thinking young, and female, inventor.

Does that affect you in any way? It's surprising because I think of women as being brilliant, but there are so few women in the science and tech fields.

GR: I don't look like your typical scientist. Everything I see on TV is that it's an older, usually white man as a scientist. It's weird to me that it was almost like people had assigned roles, regarding like their gender, their age, the color of their skin. My goal has really shifted not only from creating my own devices to solve the world's problems, but inspiring others to do the same as well. Because, from personal experience, it's not easy when you don't see anyone else like you. So I really want to put out that message: If I can do it, you can do it, and anyone can do it.

AJ: I know you have these "innovation sessions." Tell me about those.

GR: I just looked at what worked for me and decided to share it with everyone else. So I made this process that I use for everything now: it's observe, brainstorm, research, build, communicate. It started with a simple presentation and lesson plans, and then I started adding labs and contests that students could do. Now I've partnered with rural schools, girls in STEM organizations, museums all across the world, and bigger organizations like Shanghai International Youth Science and Technology group and the Royal Academy of Engineering in London to run innovation workshops.

The students that I work with, they just don't know where to start. I think that if you give them that spark that they can then build off of, then that changes everything. That means one more person in this world wants to come up with ideas to solve problems.

At the end of every workshop, everyone has something that they can start working on. If you can do this in 45 minutes to an hour, imagine what you can do if you spend months and months working on it. I'm so excited when I get an email like, "Hey, I attended your workshop four months ago and here's my finished product, I really love it, it's a shoe that calls 911."

AJ: That is insanely impressive. For so many young people, it takes a lot to find the confidence to be able to put an idea forward. You have a brilliant mind, clearly, but you are very, very generous with that mind, and that's just really wonderful. What are you working on now?

GR: I'm currently working on an easy way to help detect bio-contaminants in water -things like parasites. I'm hoping for this to be something that's inexpensive and accurate so that people in third-world countries can identify what's in their water.

And I recently hit my goal of 30,000 students who I have mentored, which is superexciting. It's like creating a community of innovators. I really hope the work that all of these kids are doing identifies innovation as a necessity and not something that's a choice anymore. I hope I can be a small part of that.

AJ: I think you are. Your generation is unique. You don't just accept what's being put forward, but really question it, and that's so important. I know there are many, many issues we're facing today. With your work on water contamination, is the environment something that's very much on your radar?

GR: Yeah. Our generation is facing so many problems that we've never seen before. But then at the same time we're facing old problems that still exist. Like, we're sitting here in the middle of a new global pandemic, and we're also like still facing human-rights issues. There are problems that we did not create but that we now have to solve, like climate change and cyberbullying with the introduction of technology.

I think more than anything right now, we just need to find that one thing we're passionate about and solve it. Even if it's something as small as, I want to find an easy way to pick up litter. Everything makes a difference. Don't feel pressured to come up with something big.

Most of my work with the bio-contaminants is based on a gene-based therapy solution which I'm still trying to figure out. I'm also working on a product that helps to diagnose prescription-opioid addiction at an early stage based on protein production of the mu opioid receptor gene. I've been really, really interested in genetics. That's what I like, so that's what I'm deciding to work on.

AJ: You know, one of the things you pointed out which is so important is that there is so much, you can get overwhelmed. When I started working in refugee camps, there are so many different issues to deal with within a displaced situation. You get overwhelmed, and you don't really move. I love what you're saying: find what you're passionate about, and don't try to solve everything. Every solution is a part of the bigger picture of what we have to do. I really hear that and appreciate you saying that.

Where do you get your news or do your research?

GR: My pop-culture news is actually MIT Tech Review. I read it constantly. I think that's really where inspiration strikes: hearing about all these amazing people at schools like MIT and Harvard who are doing such amazing work with technology. And I try to connect it back to what I see out there and put it together in a way that no one's seen before.

AJ: When you're not doing all of these amazing things-because I feel like I'm speaking to a 60-year-old scientist in Geneva-what do you do that's just a 15-year-old thing?

GR: Actually I spend more time doing 15-year-old things during quarantine. I bake an ungodly amount. It's not good, but it's baking. And, like, it's science too.

AJ: So the science of the kitchen is not your specialty?

GR: I guess not, no. To be fair, most of the time we don't have eggs at home, or like flour, so I have to like go online and search eggless, flourless, sugarless cookies, and then I try to make that. I made bread recently and it was good, so I'm proud of myself.

AJ: Well, I'm just so happy to get to know you a little bit. I'm sure I'll be using your inventions in years to come and just being in awe of you as I watch you do more and more in your life, and I can say, "I met her once."

Tyler Gordon, 14
San Jose, Calif.
High school freshman Tyler Gordon has faced more challenges than some people experience in a lifetime. He used a wheelchair for nearly two years after breaking bones in his legs and hips because of a vitamin D deficiency. He was born deaf and underwent a surgery at age 5 that gave him some hearing, but he still speaks with a stutter. In elementary school, he got bullied so much that he barely spoke.

"His escape was to not speak at all; he'd nod his head or point, he was so afraid," says Gordon's mother Nicole Kindle.

But at 10, Gordon found his artistic voice. After watching his mom paint, he decided to try it himself and won first place in a school art contest with a portrait he'd made of the principal. In the four years since, he's painted more than 500 portraits of Black icons who inspire him, most recently Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who called him right before Thanksgiving to tell him he's "amazing" and has a "gift."

"Sometimes I can't talk and get words out, so I speak through my art," Gordon says. Painting helps him move past the bullying, which he still experiences; he lost a front tooth in one incident earlier this year. "It helps me take my mind somewhere else. I don't want to keep thinking about that same moment for the rest of my life."

His big break came in 2018, when his portrait of NBA star Kevin Durant went viral and caught the eye of the player's mother, who bought it for $300. Celebrities started calling for commissions. Among the stars he's painted and met are Janet Jackson, Kevin Hart, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez. In 2019, a portrait of the Central Park Five fetched more than $100,000 at auction, and he won a 2020 Global Child Prodigy Award. This past summer, in the wake of George Floyd's death, Gordon used his canvas to raise awareness about victims of police brutality, feeling a particular affinity to 23-year-old Elijah McClain, who also had special needs and an artistic side.

Media interviews and speaking engagements have helped Gordon combat his fear of public speaking, and he hosts virtual painting classes every Wednesday on Instagram, where he boasts nearly 50,000 followers.

"Since he started painting, I can't get the kid to be quiet," says Kindle. "He's not afraid of the stutter anymore." Now, by starting his own online platform for video tutorials called Tongue Tye'd, he hopes he can show other kids how to overcome their challenges with art as well. - Olivia B. Waxman

Jordan Reeves, 14
Columbia, Mo.
For Jordan Reeves, having a limb difference has helped her envision a more accessible world. The 14-year-old designer and activist was born with a left arm that stopped growing beneath her elbow, a physical difference that helped ignite her passion for design. In the past four years, Reeves has created a 3-D-printable prosthesis for kids that shoots out biodegradable sparkles, consulted for companies like Mattel to create toys that affirm limb difference and even co-written a memoir about what she's learned from growing up with a disability.

Reeves sees good design as an avenue to empower those with disabilities, which is why she and her mother co-founded Born Just Right, a nonprofit that celebrates kids with physical differences and gives them design and STEM resources so they can come up with their own solutions.

"A lot of kids with disabilities have a different point of view on the world, because the world isn't made for us really," she says. "We have this great design mindset because we grow up problem-solving. It's a pretty cool thing." But one of the biggest barriers she sees kids facing is finding the confidence to innovate. "It's so important to believe in yourself," she says. She found her confidence with the help of her mother, and by seeing the positive results of some of her early work. "[When I started,] I was just 10 and I was able to make an impact, which is so cool," she says. "Go for it, don't doubt yourself, don't think about what other people think-you can make change no matter how big or how small."

Although 2020 has brought new challenges, it hasn't slowed Reeves down. She's been hosting digital-design workshops for Born Just Right, appeared at the United State of Women conference to advocate for gender equity, and was the youngest of 30 global leaders recognized this summer at a 30th-anniversary commemoration of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. She also co-founded the Steam Squad, an online organization that gets kids involved in science, technology, engineering, math and the arts. Up next: working with Microsoft to design a guitar that anyone with mobility challenges can play.

She's inspired, she says, by the tenacity of her generation. "It's so sick knowing that I'm a part of a group of people who are working toward the future," Reeves says. "The world needs a lot of work at times, and it's important to be there to do as much as you can." - Cady Lang

Bellen Woodard, 10
Leesburg, Va.
Bellen Woodard is only 10 years old, but she's on a mission for inclusion. She has created her own line of crayons in tones that reflect the wide spectrum of skin colors she sees in the world, claiming the title of world's first crayon activist.

The idea came when one of Woodard's classmates asked her for a "skin color" crayon. Woodard, who was the only Black student in her grade, says she knew the classmate meant the peach-color crayon. When she told her mother Tosha Woodard about what had happened, Tosha suggested that she pass her classmate a brown crayon instead next time. "But I didn't want to do that," Woodard says. "I told her next time I was actually going to ask what color they want because it could be lots of different colors." Then she got to work making a set of 12 "skin color" crayons.

Although research shows that children can begin to understand and believe racial stereotypes by age 4, an August study by researchers at Skidmore College and Boston University found that parents often delay conversations about race with children because they under-estimate children's ability to understand the concept. Tosha says her daughter's crayons have proved a great age-appropriate tool to spread a message of inclusion.

In spring 2019, Woodard launched More Than Peach, a nonprofit that has donated more than $40,000 worth of multicultural crayons and sketchbooks to schoolchildren across the country. Her packet of crayons has been added to the permanent collection at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Woodard says she was surprised by how quickly her message spread. She started by simply talking to her teacher about the crayons, then they were picked up by the rest of her school, and now she gets calls to speak-and distribute her crayons-at schools across the country. In March, she received a special recognition from the Virginia state legislature for her work.

Woodard's crayons are named for things found in nature-there's "Sahara" and "Reef," "Koko" and "Serengeti"-but each is also clearly labeled "skin color."

"I wanted to have crayons for a purpose," she says. "The peach crayon is a skin color ... but is it the only one? No, it isn't. My different shades of peaches and browns can hopefully match everyone including me and my friends and my classmates. Just everyone." - Jasmine Aguilera

Ian McKenna, 16
Austin, Texas
Ian McKenna was in third grade when he learned that nearly a quarter of the kids at his Austin school weren't getting enough to eat at home. He wanted to help, but local volunteer organizations turned him away, saying he was too young. So he decided to find his own solution. For years, he had been gardening with his mother, and they often distributed their extra vegetables to the neighbors. Why not give the produce to a soup kitchen? "Then I thought, I'm good at gardening," says McKenna, now 16. "Maybe I could try to start a garden that's meant solely to help feed these people who are in need." Better yet, he thought, why not plant a garden at school, so that kids in need could take food home?

McKenna persuaded his school to set aside space for a garden, then he asked the community for donations of seeds and equipment. Other students donated their time. Within months, McKenna's garden was producing lettuces, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash for students and their families. Now, seven years later, McKenna's Giving Garden project has expanded to five area schools in addition to his own backyard garden, and he has provided more than 20,000 lb. of organic produce (enough for 25,000 meals) to Austin families and food pantries.

For most of his gardening activities, McKenna wears the same T-shirt in different colors, emblazoned with what has become a personal motto: BE A GOOD HUMAN. To him, that means helping in any way you can, no matter your age. Even a smile can make a difference in someone's life, he says. "It lets them know that they are important. It can change their day."

When COVID-19 hit the U.S., McKenna redoubled his efforts, cooking up to 100 meals out of his home to distribute to the hungry on the weekends, so that he could give them one less thing to worry about. When social distancing meant that volunteers couldn't work on community garden plots, he started offering online tutorials and a gardening hotline so families could grow at home. Once he realized that some people didn't know how to prepare the more unusual vegetables in his gardens, like the 100-lb. bullet head wax melons he distributes by the slice, he started offering virtual cooking classes (the melons cook, and taste, like zucchini). While gardening is his core focus, McKenna says he is always looking for new ways to help the hungry. "Hunger doesn't stop," he says. "So I won't stop until it does." - Aryn Baker
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Contact us at letters@time.com.

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The world belongs to those who shape it. And however uncertain that world may feel at a given moment, the reassuring reality seems to be that each new generation produces more of what these kids-five Kid of the Year finalists selected from a field of more than 5,000 Americans, ages 8 to 16-have already achieved: positive impact, in all sizes.

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Wow-by chance! Ernest Hamwi, the seller of waffle-like pastries- was observant enough to look around the surrounding as a silent observer and capitalize his communication skill (observational skill) in realizing that the next-door ice cream shop ran out of their paper cups. Hamwi utilized and allocated his resource-'thin waffle' by making a funnel out of it to serve the customers ice cream. His gesture to his fellow mate was caring and helpful in not allowing the ice cream shop to lose its customers- AND, trust me, empathy and communication had begotten INVENTION!