Fans of nonfiction enjoy diving into the infinite, intricate worlds that exist on our planet and beyond.A good science book, in particular, can provide a new framework to better understand life—not to mention bring you ample conversation topics for your next party. Below, five science book recommendations for smart people with a range of interests.
SEPTEMBER 17, 2017, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: ROBERT FIKES Four-star general and precision flier Lloyd W. Newton was born December 24, 1942 in Ridgeland, South Carolina, the fourth of seven children of John H. Newton, a farmer, and Annie Newton. Finishing Jasper High School in Ridgeland, he majored in mechanical engineering at Tennessee State University. He completed the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program there […]
With more than 9 billion gigabytes of information traveling the internet every day, researchers are constantly looking for new ways to compress data into smaller packages. Cutting-edge techniques focus on lossy approaches, which achieve compression by intentionally “losing” information from a transmission. Google, for instance, recently unveiled a lossy strategy where the sending computer drops details from an image and the receiving computer uses artificial intelligence to guess the missing parts. Even Netflix uses a lossy approach, downgrading video quality whenever the company detects that a user is watching on a low-resolution device.
Very little research, by contrast, is currently being pursued on lossless strategies, where transmissions are made smaller, but no substance is sacrificed. The reason? Lossless approaches are already remarkably efficient. They power everything from the PNG image standard to the ubiquitous software utility PKZip. And it’s all because of a graduate student who was simply looking for a way out of a tough final exam.
Seventy years ago, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor named Robert Fano offered the students in his information theory class a choice: Take a traditional final exam, or improve a leading algorithm for data compression. Fano may or may not have informed his students that he was an author of that existing algorithm, or that he’d been hunting for an improvement for years. What we do know is that Fano offered his students the following challenge.
Consider a message made up of letters, numbers, and punctuation. A straightforward way to encode such a message would be to assign each character a unique binary number. For instance, a computer might represent the letter A as 01000001 and an exclamation point as 00100001. This results in codes that are easy to parse — every eight digits, or bits, correspond to one unique character — but horribly inefficient, because the same number of binary digits is used for both common and uncommon entries. A better approach would be something like Morse code, where the frequent letter E is represented by just a single dot, whereas the less common Q requires the longer and more laborious dash-dash-dot-dash.
Hundreds of journalists for Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper chain, walked off the job on Monday, accusing the company’s chief executive of decimating its local newsrooms.
The walkout was the biggest labor action in Gannett’s century-old history, the union representing the journalists said. It included workers from about two dozen newsrooms, including The Palm Beach Post, The Arizona Republic, and The Austin American-Statesman. The demonstrations were expected to continue on Tuesday for some newsrooms.
The collective action was timed to coincide with Gannett’s annual shareholder meeting on Monday morning. The NewsGuild, which represents more than 1,000 journalists from Gannett, sent a letter to Gannett shareholders in May urging a vote of no confidence against Mike Reed, the chief executive, and chairman.
In the letter, the NewsGuild criticized the company’s merger with GateHouse Media in 2019, saying it “mortgaged the future of our company” by loading it up with debt.
The letter also criticized Mr. Reed, who was previously the chief executive of GateHouse Media and took over Gannett after the merger. The union said his compensation — $7.7 million in 2021 and $3.4 million in 2022 — was far too high for a company shedding jobs and paying what the letter said were “depressed wages” to the remaining journalists. Gannett’s share price has fallen about 70 percent since the GateHouse merger.
“Gannett has created news deserts everywhere you look,” said Peter D. Kramer, a reporter for the USA Today Network. “That’s Mike Reed’s Gannett.”
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Peter Kramer, a reporter at the USA Today Network, joined Gannett colleagues on Renaissance Plaza in White Plains, N.Y., to voice grievances on Monday. Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times
FEBRUARY 6, 2018, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: SOPHIA GILLMER Michael D. Rochelle is a retired Lieutenant General in the United States Army who served in the military for more than thirty years. Born in 1950, he graduated from Norfolk State University with a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Language Education in 1972. At Norfolk State, Rochelle participated in ROTC, and after […]
AUGUST 21, 2015, BY CONTRIBUTED BY: CARLTON MCLELLAN Francis Xavier Taylor is a senior military leader, intelligence and security expert, and American diplomat. Born in Washington, D.C., on October 22, 1948, Taylor was raised by his mother Virginia Taylor, who worked as an administrator in the Department of the Army. When he later enrolled at the University of Notre Dame in South […]
I’m going to admit upfront that I’m a big Windex girl. It’s cheap, it’s always available, and it’s easy to spray on everything from mirrors (normal!) to tabletops (nor normal!) for a quick rubdown. It turns out, though, that you’re really not supposed to use the specialty glass cleaner for everything, as it can cause real damage to certain surfaces. Here’s what you should really avoid spraying.
Plexiglass
This is a surprising one, but you can’t use Windex on Plexiglass, so if you have any art framed in some or any other decor made from it, put the bottle down. Per Reader’s Digest, some Windex products contain ammonia, which will ruin the material. You can use the ammonia-free version, but you have to make sure that’s what you have. Buy it here for about $4.
Scummy shower doors
Reader’s Digest also cautions against using Windex on shower doors, of all things, if the doors are full of soap scum. Windex just doesn’t break that down well. The good news is you can just use regular old dish soap or a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to get the scum off. Prevent scum altogether by keeping a dish wand filled with dish soap in the shower and using it to clean the interior every time you take a rinse yourself. Once your shower doors are free of gunk, you can use Windex, but you probably won’t even have to.
Last Friday, NASA awarded a $3.4 billion contract to a team led by Blue Origin for the design and construction of a second Human Landing System to fly astronauts down to the Moon.
The announcement capped a furious two-year lobbying campaign by Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos to obtain a coveted piece of NASA’s Artemis program. NASA also notched a big win, gaining the competition with SpaceX it sought for landing services. But there is a more profound takeaway from this.
After losing the initial lander contract to SpaceX two years ago, Blue Origin did not just bid a lower price this time around. Instead, it radically transformed the means by which it would put humans on the Moon. The Blue Moon lander is now completely reusable; it will remain in lunar orbit, going up and down to the surface. It will be serviced by a transport vehicle that will be fueled in low-Earth orbit and then deliver propellant to the Moon. This transporter, in turn, will be refilled by multiple launches of the reusable New Glenn rocket.
To be sure, that is a lot of hardware that has yet to be built and tested. But when we step back, there is one inescapable fact. With SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship, and now Blue Moon, NASA has selected two vehicles based around the concept of many launches and the capability to store and transfer propellant in space.
This is a remarkable transformation in the way humans will explore outer space—potentially the biggest change in spaceflight since the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957. It has been a long time coming.
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In this illustration, SpaceX’s Starship vehicle is seen landing on the Moon.
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.