VR Type 2 General

In these later years‚ Twain’s writings were dark. They began to focus on human greed and cruelty and questioned the humanity of the human race. His public speeches followed suit and included a harshly sarcastic public introduction of Winston Churchill in 1900. Even though Twain’s lecture tour had managed to get him out of debt‚ his anti-government writings and speeches threatened his livelihood once again. As Twain was labelled by some as a traitor‚ several of his works were never published during his lifetime, either because magazines would not accept them or because of his own personal fear that his marketable reputation would be ruined.

In 1903‚ after living in New York City for three years‚ Livy became ill, and Twain and his wife returned to Italy, where she died a year later. After her death‚ Twain lived in New York until 1908, when he moved into his last house‚ “Stormfield,” in Redding‚ Connecticut. Later, Jean‚ the youngest daughter‚ died from an epileptic seizure. Four months later, on April 21‚ 1910‚ Mark Twain died at age 74.

Like any good journalist‚ Mark Twain spent his life observing and reporting on his surroundings. In his writings he provided images of the romantic‚ the real‚ the strengths and weaknesses of a rapidly changing world. By examining his life and his works‚ we can read into the past – piecing together various events of the era and the responses to them. We can delve into the American mindset of the late nineteenth century and make our own observations of history‚ discover new connections‚ create new inferences and gain better insights into the time period and the people who lived in it. As Twain once wrote‚ “Supposing is good‚ but finding out is better.”

Submarine warfare has been around a while. Primitive subs were used with mixed results from the Revolutionary War up until World War I, when advances were made in propulsion and torpedoes. However, it was the Germans who most effectively used their submarines, called U- boats, against allied shipping during World War I. The allies took note and began to modernize their submarines. By the time the United States became involved in World War II, the advances were pivotal to the success of the country’s sea power.

“Compared with their World War I counterparts, submarines [in World War II] now exhibited greater speed, more effective weaponry, sophisticated detection technology and great versatility, and could pursue their victims rather than just lying in wait, “wrote historian Gary E. Weir.

Submarine warfare took place in both the Pacific and European theatres of war. However, U.S. Navy submarines saw their greatest success against Japanese merchant vessels and warships. Submarines also played humanitarian and special operations roles in the campaign against Japan. In many of the hardest-fought battles of the war, submarine crews rescued downed carrier pilots, including future President George H.W. Bush. 

Out of 16,000 U.S. submariners, the force lost 375 officers and 3,131 enlisted men in 52 submarines, and “although this was a tragic loss, it was still the lowest casualty rate of any combatant submarine service on either side in the 1939-1945 conflict,” Weir noted. In the final months of the war, American submarines had difficulty finding targets because the Japanese had virtually no ships left to sink.

Thousands of people have searched for a chest full of gold and gemstones hidden in the Rocky Mountains hidden by a reclusive millionaire adventurer. At least four people died in their quest for the treasure. But now,” Fenn’s Treasure” has been found. The 89-year-old adventurer named Forrest Fenn, who created the treasure hunt, announced the news on Sunday, June 7, 2020. “I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot,” Fenn wrote. He told the Santa Fe New Mexican the treasure was confirmed by a photograph the lucky finder sent him.

The treasure hunt was a modified version of an earlier idea. Fenn was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1988 and had planned to die peacefully in the woods with his treasure. But when his cancer went into remission, he put his plans on hiatus, eventually writing the poem that described his ideal resting place, where he hid the treasure. The poem appeared in a self- published memoir. He told Business Insider that the chest wouldn’t be found by accident.

Several treasure hunters went missing while attempting to find the chest, including hunter Jeff Murphy of Batavia, Illinois, who disappeared from Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 2017. Murphy had been hunting for the treasure for a few years and had been in contact with Fenn. He was reported missing when he didn’t check in with his wife, and his remains were found the same month on June 9, 2017. The death was ruled accidental — Murphy is believed to have lost his footing in the mountains, resulting in a 500-foot fall.

Research shows that nearly 70% of cancer patients and a staggering 90% of patients enrolled in an early phase clinical trial use alternative therapies. We now know that many of these therapies are unhelpful and some downright dangerous. Herbs and supplements can interact with chemotherapy and reduce its efficacy, a real drawback when therapy is given with curative intent. Genetic fingerprinting reveals that many popular supplements are filled with powdered rice and weeds. The World Health Organisation calls this a threat to consumer safety.

Electron therapy, radio waves, magnetic energy and light boxes as a cure for cancer have been consistently refuted by influential cancer organisations, including the American Cancer Society and Cancer Council Australia. Gerson therapy is promoted as “the natural treatment that activates the body’s extraordinary ability to heal itself”. The Cancer Research UK website explains that it requires an individual to consume nine (yes, nine) kilos of fruit and vegetables and use three or four coffee enemas every day. There is a discreet mention that “in certain situations Gerson therapy could be very harmful to health”.

In 10 years of being an oncologist I have witnessed some devastating consequences when practitioners recommend “alternative” therapies. The emaciated breast cancer patient who died of spinal cord compression after vigorous manipulation of her back. The man whose finances and prostate cancer had both spiralled out of control by the time he forked out $50,000 dollars on vitamin infusions. He regretted forgoing the proven benefit of chemotherapy. There was the man whose wife discovered the extent of his natural therapy
debt only after he died and was forced to sell the house. There were the children who quit studying to help pay for their father’s imported exotic herbs sourced from the wild. These stories are not unique – every oncologist tells a tale of financial and psychological ruin, experienced by the family long after the patient dies.

In 2001, nearly two decades into Dr Pereira’s accidental specialisation in addiction, Portugal became the first country to decriminalise the possession and consumption of all illicit substances. Rather than being arrested, those caught with a personal supply might be given a warning, a small fine, or told to appear before a local commission – a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker – about treatment, harm reduction, and the support services that were available to them.

The opioid crisis soon stabilised, and the ensuing years saw dramatic drops in problematic drug use, HIV and hepatitis infection rates, overdose deaths, drug-related crime and incarceration rates. HIV infection plummeted from an all-time high in 2000 of 104.2 new cases per million to 4.2 new cases per million in 2015. The data behind these changes has been studied and cited as evidence by harm-reduction movements around the globe. It’s misleading, however, to credit these positive results entirely to a change in law.

Portugal’s remarkable recovery, and the fact that it has held steady through several changes in government – including conservative leaders who would have preferred to return to the US- style war on drugs – could not have happened without an enormous cultural shift, and a change in how the country viewed drugs, addiction – and itself. In many ways, the law was merely a reflection of transformations that were already happening in clinics, in pharmacies and around kitchen tables across the country. Most importantly, an official policy of decriminalisation made it far easier for a broad range of services (health, psychiatry, employment, housing etc) that had been struggling to pool their resources and expertise, to work together more effectively to serve their communities.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and NHS bosses are pushing for a £5bn-a-year deal to treat NHS patients in private hospitals and tackle a spiralling backlog amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Guardian has learned. But the Treasury is blocking the plan, which could cover a broad range of treatments including cancer surgery, joint operations and cataract removals amid concerns that it will not offer value for money.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England want the Treasury to fund an extension of a contract that has resulted in scores of private hospitals being paid about £400m a month to perform procedures since the start of the pandemic, when the NHS suspended swathes of non-urgent treatment to prioritise Covid-19 patients. The deal, agreed in March, in effect gave the NHS control of the private sector’s 8,000 beds, 680 operating theatres and 20,000 staff, though there were concerns that many hospitals stood near-empty during the Covid-19 crisis. It has never confirmed how much the scheme costs.

Health bosses believe extra capacity is vital if the NHS is to avoid the number of people waiting for treatment in England hitting 10 million by the end of the year, as predicted by the NHS Confederation last week. NHS chiefs told the Guardian this projection was a realistic outcome, especially as the need for physical distancing means hospital bosses project they will be able to operate at only 60-70% of normal capacity.

Reservations at the Treasury are so strong, however, that it has refused to sign off the deal, which the DHSC and NHS England’s chief executive, Simon Stevens, had already agreed with representatives of big private hospital groups such as Spire Healthcare, Ramsay Health Care and HCA International. At the start of the month the Treasury stepped in at the 11th hour to stop the DHSC from announcing the deal and has told NHS England to get more detailed commitments from private firms about the numbers of patients who will be treated every month in return for the £400m payments.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and NHS bosses are pushing for a £5bn-a-year deal to treat NHS patients in private hospitals and tackle a spiralling backlog amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Guardian has learned. But the Treasury is blocking the plan, which could cover a broad range of treatments including cancer surgery, joint operations and cataract removals amid concerns that it will not offer value for money.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England want the Treasury to fund an extension of a contract that has resulted in scores of private hospitals being paid about £400m a month to perform procedures since the start of the pandemic, when the NHS suspended swathes of non-urgent treatment to prioritise Covid-19 patients. The deal, agreed in March, in effect gave the NHS control of the private sector’s 8,000 beds, 680 operating theatres and 20,000 staff, though there were concerns that many hospitals stood near-empty during the Covid-19 crisis. It has never confirmed how much the scheme costs.

Health bosses believe extra capacity is vital if the NHS is to avoid the number of people waiting for treatment in England hitting 10 million by the end of the year, as predicted by the NHS Confederation last week. NHS chiefs told the Guardian this projection was a realistic outcome, especially as the need for physical distancing means hospital bosses project they will be able to operate at only 60-70% of normal capacity.

Reservations at the Treasury are so strong, however, that it has refused to sign off the deal, which the DHSC and NHS England’s chief executive, Simon Stevens, had already agreed with representatives of big private hospital groups such as Spire Healthcare, Ramsay Health Care and HCA International. At the start of the month the Treasury stepped in at the 11th hour to stop the DHSC from announcing the deal and has told NHS England to get more detailed commitments from private firms about the numbers of patients who will be treated every month in return for the £400m payments.

A global search from the deserts of Mongolia to the highlands of Argentina has revealed the first soft-shelled dinosaur eggs ever discovered, providing a new glimpse into how dinosaurs laid their eggs and parented their young. The emerging picture is that, reproductively speaking, the earliest dinosaurs were like modern reptiles, which generally bury their eggs in nests or burrows and don’t stick around to tend them.

The revelation comes from two teams of international researchers, who have presented stunning new fossils of ancient soft-shelled eggs as old as 200 million years. One group describes the first soft eggshells ever identified among dinosaurs, while the other presents the first fossil egg ever discovered in Antarctica—possibly from a marine reptile—which also seems to have had a soft shell.

The fossils’ mere existence, let alone the quality of their preservation, has left scientists astounded. “How does the saying go: There’s more things on heaven and Earth than we’ve ever imagined?” says Julia Clarke, a palaeontologist at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of one of the two studies, both unveiled in today in the journal Nature.

Past dinosaur egg discoveries going back decades featured hard eggshells like those laid by modern birds, dinosaurs’ only living descendants. Bird eggshells contain a layer of the mineral calcite, which makes them stronger and harder, allowing birds to sit on their eggs, or brood, to incubate them. As such, palaeontologists most often imagined dinosaurs using similar parenting strategies. But these eggs almost always were dated to the Cretaceous period, late in dinosaur evolution. Now, the mystery of the missing earlier eggs may have an explanation: In all likelihood, they were soft and leathery, which made them more likely to degrade and not fossilize.

A global search from the deserts of Mongolia to the highlands of Argentina has revealed the first soft-shelled dinosaur eggs ever discovered, providing a new glimpse into how dinosaurs laid their eggs and parented their young. The emerging picture is that, reproductively speaking, the earliest dinosaurs were like modern reptiles, which generally bury their eggs in nests or burrows and don’t stick around to tend them.

The revelation comes from two teams of international researchers, who have presented stunning new fossils of ancient soft-shelled eggs as old as 200 million years. One group describes the first soft eggshells ever identified among dinosaurs, while the other presents the first fossil egg ever discovered in Antarctica—possibly from a marine reptile—which also seems to have had a soft shell.

The fossils’ mere existence, let alone the quality of their preservation, has left scientists astounded. “How does the saying go: There’s more things on heaven and Earth than we’ve ever imagined?” says Julia Clarke, a palaeontologist at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of one of the two studies, both unveiled in today in the journal Nature.

Past dinosaur egg discoveries going back decades featured hard eggshells like those laid by modern birds, dinosaurs’ only living descendants. Bird eggshells contain a layer of the mineral calcite, which makes them stronger and harder, allowing birds to sit on their eggs, or brood, to incubate them. As such, palaeontologists most often imagined dinosaurs using similar parenting strategies. But these eggs almost always were dated to the Cretaceous period, late in dinosaur evolution. Now, the mystery of the missing earlier eggs may have an explanation: In all likelihood, they were soft and leathery, which made them more likely to degrade and not fossilize.

With demand for bicycles soaring, and nations preparing to spend billions to redesign their cities with a new focus on cycling and walking, it’s worth remembering the importance of the bicycle in the late 19th century. It was a hugely disruptive technology and for a few years in the 1890s, the bicycle was the ultimate must-have—swift, affordable, stylish transportation that could whisk you anywhere you cared to go, anytime you liked, for free.

Almost anyone could learn to ride, and almost everyone did. The sultan of Zanzibar took up cycling. The amir of Kabul bought bicycles for his entire harem. But it was the middle and working classes around the globe that truly made the bicycle their own. For the first time in history, the masses were mobile. No more need for expensive horses and carriages. The “people’s nag,” as the bicycle was known, was lightweight, affordable, easy to maintain, and also the fastest thing on the roads.

Society was transformed. Women were especially enthusiastic, taking to the road in droves. “I think bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world,” Susan B. Anthony said in an interview with the New York Sunday World in 1896.

By 1898 cycling had become such a popular activity in the United States that the New York Journal of Commerce claimed it was costing restaurants and theatres more than $100 million a year in lost business. Bicycle manufacturing became one of America’s biggest and most innovative industries. A third of all patent applications were bicycle related—so many that the U.S. patent office had to build a separate annex to deal with them all.
(Adapted from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/06/how-bicycles-transformed-world/)

With demand for bicycles soaring, and nations preparing to spend billions to redesign their cities with a new focus on cycling and walking, it’s worth remembering the importance of the bicycle in the late 19th century. It was a hugely disruptive technology and for a few years in the 1890s, the bicycle was the ultimate must-have—swift, affordable, stylish transportation that could whisk you anywhere you cared to go, anytime you liked, for free.

Almost anyone could learn to ride, and almost everyone did. The sultan of Zanzibar took up cycling. The amir of Kabul bought bicycles for his entire harem. But it was the middle and working classes around the globe that truly made the bicycle their own. For the first time in history, the masses were mobile. No more need for expensive horses and carriages. The “people’s nag,” as the bicycle was known, was lightweight, affordable, easy to maintain, and also the fastest thing on the roads.

Society was transformed. Women were especially enthusiastic, taking to the road in droves. “I think bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world,” Susan B. Anthony said in an interview with the New York Sunday World in 1896.

By 1898 cycling had become such a popular activity in the United States that the New York Journal of Commerce claimed it was costing restaurants and theatres more than $100 million a year in lost business. Bicycle manufacturing became one of America’s biggest and most innovative industries. A third of all patent applications were bicycle related—so many that the U.S. patent office had to build a separate annex to deal with them all.
(Adapted from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/06/how-bicycles-transformed-world/)

Colgate-Palmolive is reviewing the brand Darlie as firms reassess race stereotypes in products.

The name of the popular Chinese brand translates as “black person toothpaste”. It is owned by Colgate and its joint venture partner Hawley & Hazel and sold widely across Asia. The toothpaste brand was originally called Darkie before it was changed to Darlie in 1989, following pressure from shareholders and other groups.

“For more than 35 years, we have been working together to evolve the brand, including substantial changes to the name, logo and packaging. We are currently working with our partner to review and further evolve all aspects of the brand, including the brand name,” a Colgate spokesman said.

Colgate paid $50m (£40m) in 1985 for 50% of Hong Kong-based Hawley & Hazel, the maker of Darlie. The brand controls 17% of the toothpaste market in China, 21% in Singapore, 28% in Malaysia and 25% in Taiwan. On Wednesday, PepsiCo said it was changing its Aunt Jemima branding, while other food brands featuring African American characters are reviewing their logos. Mars said it was even considering possible changes to the branding of its Uncle Ben’s rice.

Racial injustice is under the spotlight following the death of African American George Floyd while being detained by police. Corporate and many British firms have been under pressure, including brewer Greene King, Lloyd’s of London and banks RBS and Lloyds Banking Group.

(Adapted from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53103008)

Singing in falsetto is, by definition, a kind of false projection into the world. About a decade ago, when Justin Vernon, the principal member of Bon Iver, was recording the songs that became the band’s début album, “For Emma, Forever Ago,” he realized that ranging just above his usual register made it easier to sing about memories that were otherwise too painful to recount. His recordings gave the impression of someone forcing himself to venture far outside his comfort zone.

“For Emma,” which was released in 2007, became the type of album that fans believe has magical, healing qualities. Vernon had lived the kind of quaint, rooted existence that seems increasingly rare, given the cosmopolitan ambitions of most professional musicians. Born and raised in Eau Claire, Vernon moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, with some friends, to try to make it as a band. Within a year, about a quarter of which Vernon spent bedridden with mononucleosis and then with a liver infection, his relationships were in shambles. He retreated to his father’s cabin, in the woods of Wisconsin, where, after spending a few weeks drinking beer and watching movies, he picked up his acoustic guitar and started working.

The odd thing about Vernon’s music, which fans related to because of its folksy vulnerability, was how much he withheld. His songs felt authentic and intimate, yet they were filled with invented places and characters, private symbols, and impressionistic scraps of language. Emma wasn’t a person, he explained, but a foggy, wallowing state of mind. Do we listen to a musician’s melancholy songs because we want him to feel better, or because it’s comforting to know that people who are famous and accomplished don’t have it all figured out, either?

(Adapted from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/03/bon-ivers-new-voice)

Singing in falsetto is, by definition, a kind of false projection into the world. About a decade ago, when Justin Vernon, the principal member of Bon Iver, was recording the songs that became the band’s début album, “For Emma, Forever Ago,” he realized that ranging just above his usual register made it easier to sing about memories that were otherwise too painful to recount. His recordings gave the impression of someone forcing himself to venture far outside his comfort zone.

“For Emma,” which was released in 2007, became the type of album that fans believe has magical, healing qualities. Vernon had lived the kind of quaint, rooted existence that seems increasingly rare, given the cosmopolitan ambitions of most professional musicians. Born and raised in Eau Claire, Vernon moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, with some friends, to try to make it as a band. Within a year, about a quarter of which Vernon spent bedridden with mononucleosis and then with a liver infection, his relationships were in shambles. He retreated to his father’s cabin, in the woods of Wisconsin, where, after spending a few weeks drinking beer and watching movies, he picked up his acoustic guitar and started working.

The odd thing about Vernon’s music, which fans related to because of its folksy vulnerability, was how much he withheld. His songs felt authentic and intimate, yet they were filled with invented places and characters, private symbols, and impressionistic scraps of language. Emma wasn’t a person, he explained, but a foggy, wallowing state of mind. Do we listen to a musician’s melancholy songs because we want him to feel better, or because it’s comforting to know that people who are famous and accomplished don’t have it all figured out, either?

(Adapted from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/03/bon-ivers-new-voice)

At NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, engineers, scientists, and skilled technicians design interplanetary spacecraft and schemes to get them to their extraordinary destinations. Europa mission plans have always come in pretty expensive, because everybody figured that we’d have to land there and drill through many kilometres of solid ice, potentially contaminating any ecosystem that might already be there. But if we can analyse samples flung out into space, there’s virtually no chance of contamination, and there’s no need to build landing gear, drills, or complex anchor and tether systems. It would be much cheaper than anyone had calculated.

People everywhere know and respect NASA. It’s the best brand the United States has. But like everything else, the agency’s budget has been reduced over the years; it hasn’t kept up with inflation.

Within NASA’s budget is a line for planetary science. It’s the part of NASA that does the most amazing things. Other space agencies put spacecraft in orbit around the Earth; a few even go to Mars. But no other space agency on Earth can land anything on Mars, let alone lower a small car there from a rocket-powered crane. The expertise is here in the United States. It allows people here to solve interplanetary problems that have never been solved before. It leads to innovation that produces $3.60 for every dollar that goes in.

Just think what it would mean if we were to find a living thing in a geyser of seawater on  another world. Every one of us here on Earth would stop and ponder what it means to be a living thing. I hope it would fill each of us with reverence for the cosmos and for our place
within it. A mission to Europa would bring humankind together—and perhaps change the world.

(Adapted from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/6/140618-europa-bill-nye-
jupiter-extraterrestrial-life-nasa/)

A mission 10 years in the making, NASA is one month out from launching the Perseverance rover to Mars. This rover, launching during a pandemic, will carry a tribute to health care workers around the world. The 3-by-5-inch aluminium plate, installed on the left side of the
rover chassis, shows Earth supported by the symbol of the serpent entwined around a rod, dating back to ancient Hippocrates, to represent the global medical community. A line represents the rover’s trajectory from Central Florida to Mars, according to NASA.

“We wanted to demonstrate our appreciation for those who have put their personal well-being on the line for the good of others,” said Matt Wallace, Perseverance deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.

When Alexander Mather, a seventh-grade student in Virginia, entered his submission in a nationwide contest last year to name the rover, a pandemic wasn’t on the horizon. But his winning entry for Perseverance has proven to be the perfect name for a rover launching during unprecedented times. These last few months of preparing the rover for launch have happened during the constraints of safe operation during a pandemic. But the teams rose to the challenge, and the launch remains on schedule.

“The team never wavered in its pursuit of the launch pad,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. “It was through their dedication and the help of other NASA facilities that we have made it this far.”

(Adapted from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/20/world/nasa-mars-perseverance-rover-scn/index.html)

A mission 10 years in the making, NASA is one month out from launching the Perseverance rover to Mars. This rover, launching during a pandemic, will carry a tribute to health care workers around the world. The 3-by-5-inch aluminium plate, installed on the left side of the
rover chassis, shows Earth supported by the symbol of the serpent entwined around a rod, dating back to ancient Hippocrates, to represent the global medical community. A line represents the rover’s trajectory from Central Florida to Mars, according to NASA.

“We wanted to demonstrate our appreciation for those who have put their personal well-being on the line for the good of others,” said Matt Wallace, Perseverance deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.

When Alexander Mather, a seventh-grade student in Virginia, entered his submission in a nationwide contest last year to name the rover, a pandemic wasn’t on the horizon. But his winning entry for Perseverance has proven to be the perfect name for a rover launching during unprecedented times. These last few months of preparing the rover for launch have happened during the constraints of safe operation during a pandemic. But the teams rose to the challenge, and the launch remains on schedule.

“The team never wavered in its pursuit of the launch pad,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. “It was through their dedication and the help of other NASA facilities that we have made it this far.”

(Adapted from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/20/world/nasa-mars-perseverance-rover-scn/index.html)

A new Banksy artwork has appeared at Southampton General Hospital. The largely monochrome painting, which is one square metre, was hung in collaboration with the hospital’s managers in a foyer near the emergency department. It shows a young boy kneeling by a wastepaper basket dressed in dungarees and a T-shirt. He has discarded his Spiderman and Batman model figures in the basket in favour of a new favourite action hero – an NHS nurse. The nurse’s arm is outstretched and pointing forward in the fashion of Superman on a mission. She is wearing a facemask, a nurse’s cape, and an apron with the Red Cross emblem (the only element of colour in the picture). The artist left a note for hospital workers, which read: “Thanks for all you’re doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if it’s only black and white.”

Paula Head, CEO of the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust said: “Our hospital family has been directly impacted with the tragic loss of much loved and respected members of staff and friends to the virus. The fact that Banksy has chosen us to recognise the outstanding contribution everyone in and with the NHS is making, in unprecedented times, is a huge honour.”

She added: “It will be really valued by everyone in the hospital, as people get a moment in their busy lives to pause, reflect and appreciate this piece of art. It will no doubt also be a massive boost to morale for everyone who works and is cared for at our hospital.”

The artwork is now on view to staff and patients on Level C of the Southampton General.

(Adapted from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52556544)

A new Banksy artwork has appeared at Southampton General Hospital. The largely monochrome painting, which is one square metre, was hung in collaboration with the hospital’s managers in a foyer near the emergency department. It shows a young boy kneeling by a wastepaper basket dressed in dungarees and a T-shirt. He has discarded his Spiderman and Batman model figures in the basket in favour of a new favourite action hero – an NHS nurse. The nurse’s arm is outstretched and pointing forward in the fashion of Superman on a mission. She is wearing a facemask, a nurse’s cape, and an apron with the Red Cross emblem (the only element of colour in the picture). The artist left a note for hospital workers, which read: “Thanks for all you’re doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if it’s only black and white.”

Paula Head, CEO of the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust said: “Our hospital family has been directly impacted with the tragic loss of much loved and respected members of staff and friends to the virus. The fact that Banksy has chosen us to recognise the outstanding contribution everyone in and with the NHS is making, in unprecedented times, is a huge honour.”

She added: “It will be really valued by everyone in the hospital, as people get a moment in their busy lives to pause, reflect and appreciate this piece of art. It will no doubt also be a massive boost to morale for everyone who works and is cared for at our hospital.”

The artwork is now on view to staff and patients on Level C of the Southampton General.

(Adapted from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52556544)

The most obvious thing the Canon fp camera gets right is its basic concept: a tiny video module (that can also take nice stills) stripped back to its core functions so that it can be adapted to suit all manner of situations. To deliver on this underlying idea, a lot of work has clearly been done to provide the features that videographers will want. For a start, there is a waveform display that provides a hugely useful way to assess exposure within a scene, and one that videographers will be familiar with.

Then there’s the option to report exposure time as shutter angle, rather than shutter speed. The actual terminology can appear somewhat esoteric when you first encounter it, but even without worrying about what specific ‘angles’ might mean, it means you can easily change the frame rate you’re shooting at without having to adjust the exposure time to match. The way the zebra exposure warnings are handled will also be familiar to users of higher-end video gear: the fp gives you a choice of using zebras to indicate highlights (ie: indicate the areas exposed at 95% or brighter) or to monitor a specific exposure region (ie shot areas exposed as 70% with an adjustable tolerance level on either side). All of these are key videography tools.

But perhaps the defining feature of the camera is its ability to record CinemaDNG files to an external SSD. There are some drawbacks to this: CinemaDNG can be a bit of a handful and isn’t especially widely supported and, like the Nikon Z6, the footage is sub-sampled to keep the data sizes manageable, increasing the risk of moire. But it lets the fp output files that are more gradable than Log footage without requiring investment in any unusual card formats.

(Adapted from https://www.dpreview.com/articles/4708478348/compact-capable-and-imperfect-first-impressions-of-the-sigma-fp)

The most obvious thing the Canon fp camera gets right is its basic concept: a tiny video module (that can also take nice stills) stripped back to its core functions so that it can be adapted to suit all manner of situations. To deliver on this underlying idea, a lot of work has clearly been done to provide the features that videographers will want. For a start, there is a waveform display that provides a hugely useful way to assess exposure within a scene, and one that videographers will be familiar with.

Then there’s the option to report exposure time as shutter angle, rather than shutter speed. The actual terminology can appear somewhat esoteric when you first encounter it, but even without worrying about what specific ‘angles’ might mean, it means you can easily change the frame rate you’re shooting at without having to adjust the exposure time to match. The way the zebra exposure warnings are handled will also be familiar to users of higher-end video gear: the fp gives you a choice of using zebras to indicate highlights (ie: indicate the areas exposed at 95% or brighter) or to monitor a specific exposure region (ie shot areas exposed as 70% with an adjustable tolerance level on either side). All of these are key videography tools.

But perhaps the defining feature of the camera is its ability to record CinemaDNG files to an external SSD. There are some drawbacks to this: CinemaDNG can be a bit of a handful and isn’t especially widely supported and, like the Nikon Z6, the footage is sub-sampled to keep the data sizes manageable, increasing the risk of moire. But it lets the fp output files that are more gradable than Log footage without requiring investment in any unusual card formats.

(Adapted from https://www.dpreview.com/articles/4708478348/compact-capable-and-imperfect-first-impressions-of-the-sigma-fp)

Long-distance running times are dropping – and the first sub-two hour marathon was completed recently by Eliud Kipchoge. Some are arguing that innovations in trainer design are playing a pivotal role in these improvements.

A running shoe should protect the foot and the runner from injury. It provides stabilisation of the foot and protects skin from damage. It should also limit potentially harmful impact forces as the foot strikes the ground, while returning energy to the runner. Running shoes are designed in a way that improves running efficiency. Science suggests that if you can reduce the energy it takes to run, then in theory, you should be able to run faster and for a longer period.

To do this, a number of techniques can be adopted. First, we can reduce the mass of a shoe to make it lighter. This will allow a runner to swing their legs more efficiently. Another claim is that if there is more cushioning in the midsole, then an athlete can run with straighter legs, again making them more efficient. Adding stiff plates within the [midsole], may also help an athlete to run better by redistributing positive lower limb joint work from the knee to the joint of your toes above the ball of your foot. These stiff plates may also store and return energy to the runner.

In general, when we compress this midsole, and then release it, we want as much energy as possible to be returned. The more energy that is returned, the more efficiently an athlete should be able to run. It can, of course, be difficult to design tests that systematically explore all these factors, but they are being explored by science.

(Adapted from https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0128/1111506-science-of-running-shoes/)

A distinguishing characteristic of the biomedical model is its compartmentalized view of man. This way of seeing human beings has its origin in Ancient Greek thought; it was stated by Descartes and to this day it still considers humans as beings composed of distinct entities combined into a certain form. Because of this observation, one began to believe that the focus of a health treatment could be exclusively on the affected area of the body, without the need to pay attention to patient’s subjectivity.

By seeing pain as a merely sensory response, this model was not capable of encompassing chronic pain, since the latter is a complex process that can occur independently of tissue damage. As of the second half of the twentieth century, when it became impossible to deny the relationship between psyche and soma, the current understanding of chronic pain emerges: that of chronic pain as an individual experience, the result of a sum of biological, psychological, and social factors that, for this reason, cannot be approached separately from the individual who expresses pain.

This understanding has allowed a significant improvement in perspective, emphasizing the characteristic of pain as an individual experience. However, the understanding of chronic pain as a sum of factors corresponds to the current way of seeing the process of falling ill, for its conception holds a Cartesian duality and the positivist premise of a single reality. For phenomenology, on the other hand, the individual in their unity is more than the sum of parts. Phenomenology sees a human being as an intending entity, in which body, mind, and the world are intertwined and constitute each other mutually. Therefore, a real understanding of the chronic pain process would only be possible from a phenomenological point of view at the experience lived by the individual who expresses and communicates pain.

(Adapted from Dantas-Lima et al. The phenomenological-existential comprehension of chronic pain: going beyond the standing healthcare models. 2014.)

A distinguishing characteristic of the biomedical model is its compartmentalized view of man. This way of seeing human beings has its origin in Ancient Greek thought; it was stated by Descartes and to this day it still considers humans as beings composed of distinct entities combined into a certain form. Because of this observation, one began to believe that the focus of a health treatment could be exclusively on the affected area of the body, without the need to pay attention to patient’s subjectivity.

By seeing pain as a merely sensory response, this model was not capable of encompassing chronic pain, since the latter is a complex process that can occur independently of tissue damage. As of the second half of the twentieth century, when it became impossible to deny the relationship between psyche and soma, the current understanding of chronic pain emerges: that of chronic pain as an individual experience, the result of a sum of biological, psychological, and social factors that, for this reason, cannot be approached separately from the individual who expresses pain.

This understanding has allowed a significant improvement in perspective, emphasizing the characteristic of pain as an individual experience. However, the understanding of chronic pain as a sum of factors corresponds to the current way of seeing the process of falling ill, for its conception holds a Cartesian duality and the positivist premise of a single reality. For phenomenology, on the other hand, the individual in their unity is more than the sum of parts. Phenomenology sees a human being as an intending entity, in which body, mind, and the world are intertwined and constitute each other mutually. Therefore, a real understanding of the chronic pain process would only be possible from a phenomenological point of view at the experience lived by the individual who expresses and communicates pain.

(Adapted from Dantas-Lima et al. The phenomenological-existential comprehension of chronic pain: going beyond the standing healthcare models. 2014.)

“Doc, I know the test is positive, but how sure are you that it means I have the disease?”. This is one of the most common questions asked by patients after receiving troubling test results, and to address it you must understand the concepts of specificity and sensitivity.

Sensitivity measures how often a test correctly generates a positive result for people who have the condition that’s being tested for (also known as the “true positive” rate). A test that’s highly sensitive will flag almost everyone who has the disease and not generate many false-negative results. For example: a test with 90% sensitivity will correctly return a positive result for 90% of people who have the disease but will return a negative result — a false-negative — for 10% of the people who have the disease and should have tested positive.

Specificity measures a test’s ability to correctly generate a negative result for people who don’t have the condition that’s being tested for (also known as the “true negative” rate). A high-specificity test will correctly rule out almost everyone who doesn’t have the disease and won’t generate many false-positive results. For example: a test with 90% specificity will correctly return a negative result for 90% of people who don’t have the disease, but will return a positive result — a false-positive — for 10% of the people who don’t have the disease and should have tested negative.

(Adapted from https://www.healthnewsreview.org/toolkit/tips-for-understanding-studies/understanding-medical-tests-sensitivity-specificity-and-positive-predictive-value/)

“Doc, I know the test is positive, but how sure are you that it means I have the disease?”. This is one of the most common questions asked by patients after receiving troubling test results, and to address it you must understand the concepts of specificity and sensitivity.

Sensitivity measures how often a test correctly generates a positive result for people who have the condition that’s being tested for (also known as the “true positive” rate). A test that’s highly sensitive will flag almost everyone who has the disease and not generate many false-negative results. For example: a test with 90% sensitivity will correctly return a positive result for 90% of people who have the disease but will return a negative result — a false-negative — for 10% of the people who have the disease and should have tested positive.

Specificity measures a test’s ability to correctly generate a negative result for people who don’t have the condition that’s being tested for (also known as the “true negative” rate). A high-specificity test will correctly rule out almost everyone who doesn’t have the disease and won’t generate many false-positive results. For example: a test with 90% specificity will correctly return a negative result for 90% of people who don’t have the disease, but will return a positive result — a false-positive — for 10% of the people who don’t have the disease and should have tested negative.

(Adapted from https://www.healthnewsreview.org/toolkit/tips-for-understanding-studies/understanding-medical-tests-sensitivity-specificity-and-positive-predictive-value/)

Robert Burns’s father had come to Ayrshire from Kincardineshire in an endeavour to improve his fortunes, but, though he worked immensely hard first on the farm of Mount Oliphant, which he leased in 1766, and then on that of Lochlea, which he took in 1777, ill luck dogged him, and he died in 1784, worn out and bankrupt. It was watching his father being thus beaten down that helped to make Robert both a rebel against the social order of his day and a bitter satirist of all forms of religious and political thought that condoned or perpetuated inhumanity.

He acquired a superficial reading knowledge of French and a bare smattering of Latin, and he read most of the important 18th-century English writers as well as Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden. His knowledge of Scottish literature was confined in his childhood to orally transmitted folk songs and folk tales together with a modernization of the late 15th-century poem “Wallace.” His religion throughout his adult life seems to have been a humanitarian Deism.

Proud, restless, and full of a nameless ambition, the young Burns did his share of hard work on the farm. His father’s death made him tenant of the farm of Mossgiel to which the family moved and freed him to seek male and female companionship where he would. He had an affair with a servant girl at the farm, Elizabeth Paton, who in 1785 bore his first child, and on the child’s birth he welcomed it with a lively poem.

(Adapted from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Burns#:~:text=Burns’s%20father%20had%20come%20to,1784%2C%20worn%20out%20and%20bankrupt.)

Robert Burns’s father had come to Ayrshire from Kincardineshire in an endeavour to improve his fortunes, but, though he worked immensely hard first on the farm of Mount Oliphant, which he leased in 1766, and then on that of Lochlea, which he took in 1777, ill luck dogged him, and he died in 1784, worn out and bankrupt. It was watching his father being thus beaten down that helped to make Robert both a rebel against the social order of his day and a bitter satirist of all forms of religious and political thought that condoned or perpetuated inhumanity.

He acquired a superficial reading knowledge of French and a bare smattering of Latin, and he read most of the important 18th-century English writers as well as Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden. His knowledge of Scottish literature was confined in his childhood to orally transmitted folk songs and folk tales together with a modernization of the late 15th-century poem “Wallace.” His religion throughout his adult life seems to have been a humanitarian Deism.

Proud, restless, and full of a nameless ambition, the young Burns did his share of hard work on the farm. His father’s death made him tenant of the farm of Mossgiel to which the family moved and freed him to seek male and female companionship where he would. He had an affair with a servant girl at the farm, Elizabeth Paton, who in 1785 bore his first child, and on the child’s birth he welcomed it with a lively poem.

(Adapted from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Burns#:~:text=Burns’s%20father%20had%20come%20to,1784%2C%20worn%20out%20and%20bankrupt.)

At the end of March, video chat app Houseparty, owned by Epic Games, responded to unsubstantiated reports that user accounts had been hacked – by offering a $1m bounty to anyone able to prove the rumours were part of a coordinated campaign to smear the company.

The developer said at the time it had no evidence of any link between Houseparty and claimed compromises of accounts at other services like Spotify, Netflix, and PayPal. And it insisted Houseparty accounts were secure. While some tweets taking aim at Houseparty appear to be dubious, evidence of any smear campaign has yet to surface, and it appears the $1m bounty has not been awarded. The Register twice asked Houseparty to confirm this. Though we received a statement, no answer was provided to that particular question.

Nor was any bug bounty paid to security researcher Zach Edwards after he found that Houseparty’s domain infrastructure had been hijacked and abused to distribute malicious content. On March 31, Edwards, co-founder of web analytics biz Victory Medium, criticized the chat app maker via Twitter for the lack of Content Security Policy headers on a password reset page. He suspected there may be further security issues, and a week later he submitted a bug report detailing over a dozen subdomains of the app that were serving malicious PDFs.

Edwards said: “The facts are clear that an organized hacker and credit card fraud network used Epic Games subdomains to launch attacks on users, and this group continues to orchestrate these attacks across the internet and has for years.” He refers to the hacking group as the Pickaflick.com Crew and plans to publish further details on Wednesday.

(Adapted from The Register, https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/20/houseparty_subdomain_hijack/)

At the end of March, video chat app Houseparty, owned by Epic Games, responded to unsubstantiated reports that user accounts had been hacked – by offering a $1m bounty to anyone able to prove the rumours were part of a coordinated campaign to smear the company.

The developer said at the time it had no evidence of any link between Houseparty and claimed compromises of accounts at other services like Spotify, Netflix, and PayPal. And it insisted Houseparty accounts were secure. While some tweets taking aim at Houseparty appear to be dubious, evidence of any smear campaign has yet to surface, and it appears the $1m bounty has not been awarded. The Register twice asked Houseparty to confirm this. Though we received a statement, no answer was provided to that particular question.

Nor was any bug bounty paid to security researcher Zach Edwards after he found that Houseparty’s domain infrastructure had been hijacked and abused to distribute malicious content. On March 31, Edwards, co-founder of web analytics biz Victory Medium, criticized the chat app maker via Twitter for the lack of Content Security Policy headers on a password reset page. He suspected there may be further security issues, and a week later he submitted a bug report detailing over a dozen subdomains of the app that were serving malicious PDFs.

Edwards said: “The facts are clear that an organized hacker and credit card fraud network used Epic Games subdomains to launch attacks on users, and this group continues to orchestrate these attacks across the internet and has for years.” He refers to the hacking group as the Pickaflick.com Crew and plans to publish further details on Wednesday.

(Adapted from The Register, https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/20/houseparty_subdomain_hijack/)

The French artist JR is a magician who conjures people onto walls. His method is simple: he travels in his photo-booth truck, taking people’s portraits, which he pastes onto the sides of buildings. The effect is astounding, sublime. JR has sent a seventy-five-foot-tall ballerina soaring over Tribeca in her tutu, and inscribed the wrinkled faces of two dozen elderly Cubans onto the flaking, cracked walls of Havana. Raffi Khatchadourian noted in his Profile of the artist that JR is often drawn to places whose residents’ humanity and individuality are habitually ignored or subsumed in political rhetoric: Tunisia, Iran, Palestine, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The work is temporary by design; most of the walls on which he pastes his images will long outlast them, just as they will outlast the people who live within and walk by. The point is to bear witness, to mark the spot of a life.

Last week, JR installed a new work in the Mexican city of Tecate, an hour southeast of San Diego: a monumental photograph of Kikito, a smiling toddler, pasted onto a special scaffolding placed just behind the border fence with California. Seen from the American side, the child seems to be peering over the slatted fence as if from inside a crib, getting ready to crawl toward something that’s caught his interest. JR announced the work, last Wednesday, by posting a picture to his Instagram account of a million followers, showing two uniformed Border Patrol officers looking up at the image of Kikito as the installation was taking place. He has since updated his Instagram profile to include a Google Maps pin to the work’s exact location, so that people can visit it.

(Adapted from The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/the-artist-jr-lifts-a-mexican-child-over-the-border-wall)

The French artist JR is a magician who conjures people onto walls. His method is simple: he travels in his photo-booth truck, taking people’s portraits, which he pastes onto the sides of buildings. The effect is astounding, sublime. JR has sent a seventy-five-foot-tall ballerina soaring over Tribeca in her tutu, and inscribed the wrinkled faces of two dozen elderly Cubans onto the flaking, cracked walls of Havana. Raffi Khatchadourian noted in his Profile of the artist that JR is often drawn to places whose residents’ humanity and individuality are habitually ignored or subsumed in political rhetoric: Tunisia, Iran, Palestine, the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The work is temporary by design; most of the walls on which he pastes his images will long outlast them, just as they will outlast the people who live within and walk by. The point is to bear witness, to mark the spot of a life.

Last week, JR installed a new work in the Mexican city of Tecate, an hour southeast of San Diego: a monumental photograph of Kikito, a smiling toddler, pasted onto a special scaffolding placed just behind the border fence with California. Seen from the American side, the child seems to be peering over the slatted fence as if from inside a crib, getting ready to crawl toward something that’s caught his interest. JR announced the work, last Wednesday, by posting a picture to his Instagram account of a million followers, showing two uniformed Border Patrol officers looking up at the image of Kikito as the installation was taking place. He has since updated his Instagram profile to include a Google Maps pin to the work’s exact location, so that people can visit it.

(Adapted from The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/the-artist-jr-lifts-a-mexican-child-over-the-border-wall)

A recent study suggested that schoolteachers in North America could be contributing to the invasive species problem by releasing the live animals they use as teaching tools. “As many as 1,000 different non-native organisms used in the classroom are being released into the wild by school-teachers,” Oregon State’s Sam Chan said. As such, the study is being used by some as an argument against the use of animals in the classroom. To me, the release of a handful of classroom animals won’t have any major repercussions on the local ecosystem. Rather, I think, this supposed environmental concern is merely a scare story driven by people who oppose vivisection. But there is no doubt that this is in itself useful for teaching.

What are we talking about here? “Oregon teachers who have ordered crayfish that originate in the Pacific Northwest have found that their mortality is extremely high, so many have taken to ordering crayfish from distributors who get their supply from Louisiana,” Chan explained in the release. “The problem is that we have no idea whether those crayfish may carry diseases or parasites that may be problematic if those animals are released into the wild here.”

It may of course be true that Louisiana crayfish carry disease, but how many animals are actually released into the wild by this particular route? Chan is pretty vague about the numerical extent of this grave problem. What about the thousands of live animals indiscriminately thrown away by restaurants, fish markets and lobster pounds, who find they have a surplus of animals and decide to dispose of them into the environment? These animals may also carry disease, and outnumber those animals released from the classroom by several orders of magnitude.

(Adapted from a piece by Richard J Naftalin in The Scientist, https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion/opinion-keep-animals-in-the-classroom-39972)

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to William Kaelin , Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability,” the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute announced today (October 7).

In 1995, Semenza’s lab was the first to identify the genes that encode hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), a transcription factor that alters cellular responses to low oxygen. His group found that HIF-1 responds to low oxygen levels by controlling which genes are used in a cell. The protein enables cancer cells to live in the low-oxygen conditions found within tumours, and helps the body respond to cardiovascular events that limit oxygen flow to parts of the body.

Kaelin and Ratcliffe then uncovered the cellular mechanisms behind the regulation of HIF-1. Kaelin’s 1999 study of the tumour-suppressor gene VHL, which helps control HIF, has been crucial for understanding cellular responses to changes in oxygen levels, according to a Harvard Medical School press release. Mutations in VHL cause von Hippel–Lindau disease, a disorder that results in cysts and benign tumours. Following the discovery of VHL’s link to HIF, Kaelin and Ratcliffe independently published papers in Science in 2001 on how the VHL protein recognizes and binds to HIF.

“It’s fantastic research that they’ve done,” Eamonn Maher tells The Scientist. “It’s great that the research on a very rare disorder such as von Hippel–Lindau disease was instrumental in providing the insights into something as fundamental as oxygen sensing . . . the observations that they’ve made are wonderful,” he says.

(Adapted from The Scientist. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/cells-oxygen-sensing-discovery-earns-nobel-prize-66538)

Top tip for scientific articles!
These types of passages tend to have excellent keywords with a lot of acronyms and keywords, focus on these particularly.

Much research on human behaviour and psychology assumes that everyone shares most fundamental cognitive and affective processes, and that findings are generalisable. A growing body of evidence suggests that this is not the case.

Experimental findings from several disciplines indicate considerable variation among human populations in diverse domains, such as visual perception, analytic reasoning, fairness, cooperation, memory and the heritability of IQ. This is in line with what anthropologists have long suggested: that people from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies are some of the most psychologically unusual people on Earth.

So, the fact that the vast majority of studies use WEIRD participants presents a challenge to the understanding of human psychology and behaviour. A 2008 survey of the top psychology journals found that 96% of subjects were from Western industrialized countries — which house just 12% of the world’s population. Strange, then, that research articles routinely assume that their results are broadly representative, rarely adding even a cautionary footnote on how far their findings can be generalized.

We offer four suggestions to help put theories of human behaviour and psychology on a firmer empirical footing. First, editors and reviewers should push researchers to support any generalizations with evidence. Second, granting agencies, reviewers and editors should give researchers credit for comparing diverse and inconvenient subject pools. Third, granting agencies should prioritize cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural research. Fourth, researchers must strive to evaluate how their findings apply to other populations. There are several low-cost ways to approach this in the short term: one is to select a few judiciously chosen populations that provide a ‘tough test’ of universality in some domain, such as societies with limited counting systems for testing theories about numerical cognition.

(Adapted from Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/466029a)

Ever since it was announced last February that Harper Lee was to publish a sequel to her famed and much-loved To Kill a Mockingbird, fans reacted with a mixture of delight, confusion and no little anxiety. The concern was not simply about what would become in the “new” work of the celebrated lawyer Atticus Finch and his beloved daughter, Scout, but about the circumstances in which the famously reclusive Ms Lee had been persuaded to publish a work written more than 50 years earlier and apparently consigned to a cobwebbed drawer.

Indeed, such was the furore created when lawyer Tonja Carter claimed she had discovered the manuscript in the summer of 2014 while doing some work for Lee, that health department officials in Alabama were obliged to carry out an inquiry into whether the elderly writer, living in an assisted-living facility in the town of Monroeville since 2007, was unfairly forced or manipulated into publishing a second novel. They concluded she had not been. But some scholars and people who knew her in Monroeville remained suspicious about the circumstances of the book’s publication. Lee, who had a stroke in 2007, had trouble seeing and was largely deaf.

Karen Hare, the owner of David’s Catfish House on the edge of Monroeville, told the newspaper that Lee had commented several times during her visits that were she ever to publish another book, she would want it done posthumously.

(Adapted from The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/harper-lee-the-controversy-that-still-surrounds-authors-lost-novel-a6884671.html)

J. D. Salinger, at one time thought to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, famous for not wanting to be famous, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived reclusively for more than 50 years. He was 91.

Though not everyone, teachers and librarians especially, was sure what to make of it, his work “Catcher in the Rye” became an almost immediate best seller, and its narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, a teenager newly expelled from prep school, became America’s best-known literary truant since Huckleberry Finn.

With its cynical, vernacular voice, its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Reading “Catcher” used to be an essential rite of passage.

The novel’s allure persists to this day, even if some of Holden’s preoccupations now seem a bit dated, and it continues to sell more than 250,000 copies a year. Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon in 1980, even said the explanation for his act could be found in the pages of “The Catcher in the Rye.” In 1974 Philip Roth wrote, “The response of college students to the work of J. D. Salinger indicates that he, more than anyone else, has not turned his back on the times but, instead, has managed to put his finger on whatever struggle of significance is going on today between self and culture.”

(Adapted from The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/books/29salinger.html)

J. D. Salinger, at one time thought to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, famous for not wanting to be famous, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived reclusively for more than 50 years. He was 91.

Though not everyone, teachers and librarians especially, was sure what to make of it, his work “Catcher in the Rye” became an almost immediate best seller, and its narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, a teenager newly expelled from prep school, became America’s best-known literary truant since Huckleberry Finn.

With its cynical, vernacular voice, its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Reading “Catcher” used to be an essential rite of passage.

The novel’s allure persists to this day, even if some of Holden’s preoccupations now seem a bit dated, and it continues to sell more than 250,000 copies a year. Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon in 1980, even said the explanation for his act could be found in the pages of “The Catcher in the Rye.” In 1974 Philip Roth wrote, “The response of college students to the work of J. D. Salinger indicates that he, more than anyone else, has not turned his back on the times but, instead, has managed to put his finger on whatever struggle of significance is going on today between self and culture.”

(Adapted from The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/books/29salinger.html)

With surfing coming to the Olympics in 2020, and the Olympics heading to Paris in 2024, French organizers had to look elsewhere to hold a world-class surf competition in the summer months. They found a spot. The drawback? It’s almost 10,000 miles away: Teahupo’o, Tahiti, home to one of the most iconic and dangerous waves in the world. Just how dangerous? Teahupo’o roughly translates to “wall of skulls.”

Tahiti, which is part of French Polynesia, beat out four other possible locations for the competition: Biarritz, Lacanau, Les Landes, and La Torche. All of those are in France, where the rest of the Olympics is taking place. Organizers of the 2024 Games confirmed the decision this week, and it will be the first time since the women’s championship tour in 2000 that both men and women will compete at Teahupo’o.

Surfers that come through the barrel of a powerful wave, like those at Teahupo’o, can experience one of the greatest highs, and high scores, of their lives. But one wrong move and they could quickly find themselves in serious danger of banging into the sharp corral reef that looms just below the water’s surface.

Keala Kennelly is deeply familiar with that concept. A professional surfer from Hawaii, Kennelly has been called the Queen of Teahupo’o, and she is considered one of the hardest charging athletes to surf the wave. In 2011, she needed 40 stitches in her face and skull after enduring a wipe-out there. When she returned two years later, she said, she caught what she called one of the best barrels of her life.

(Adapted from The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/sports/olympics/surfing-olympics-teahupoo-tahiti.html)

Australia’s first people—known as Aboriginal Australians—have lived on the continent for over 50,000 years. Today, there are 250 distinct language groups spread throughout Australia. Aboriginal Australians are split into two groups: Aboriginal peoples, who are related to those who already inhabited Australia when Britain began colonizing the island in 1788, and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who descend from residents of the Torres Strait Islands, a group of islands that is part of modern-day Queensland, Australia.

All Aboriginal Australians are related to groups indigenous to Australia. However, the use of the term indigenous is controversial, since it can be claimed by people who descend from people who weren’t the original inhabitants of the island. Legally, “Aboriginal Australian” is recognized as “a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and is accepted as such by the community in which he [or she] lives.”

Today, about three percent of Australia’s population has Aboriginal heritage. Aboriginal Australians still struggle to retain their ancient culture and fight for recognition—and restitution—from the Australian government. The state of Victoria is currently working toward a first-of-its-kind treaty with its Aboriginal population that would recognize Aboriginal Australians’ sovereignty and include compensation. However, Australia itself has never made such a treaty, making it the only country in the British Commonwealth not to have ratified a treaty with its First Nations peoples.

(Adapted from National Geographic, https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/2019/02/aboriginal-australians)

Cystic fibrosis (CF) causes passageways in the lungs and digestive system to become blocked with thick, sticky secretions, causing irreversible fatal lung damage. The average life expectancy is about 47 years for half of those born with cystic fibrosis. But a price deal between the US drug manufacturer, Vertex, and the NHS means that about 5,000 adults and children such as me can look forward to a longer life. One drug, Orkambi, increases a patient’s lung function by up to 20%.

A few months before the deal, my consultant told me I had the correct CF mutations to take Orkambi which has been made available. At the time, access to these medications carried the unaffordable price tag of £100,000 per patient per year, so my doctor warned me that it could be a long wait.

But will Britain’s proposed exit from the EU hinder access to these medications? Vertex has assured me that: “When the UK leaves the European Union, all eligible patients across the UK will continue to have access to Vertex licensed CF medicines, as contractually agreed.” 

Yet recent reports suggest that a post-Brexit US-UK trade deal could see US drug companies drive up the costs of the drugs they currently sell to the NHS. Considering how hard we had to fight to get these medications, it is terrifying to know that if political circumstances change, our lives may once again hang in the balance. These decisions are in the hands of people unaffected by this debilitating illness, who will not value Orkambi in the same way those with CF do. We have to hope that the fight for our lives wasn’t in vain.

(Adapted from The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/20/cystic-fibrosis-orkambi-brexit-trade-deal)

Every weekend in countries around the world, grown men and women don elaborate costumes, adopt assumed identities, and meet up to enact fantastical scenes set in alternate realities. Although many still consider it a fringe activity, Live Action Role Playing ( LARP) has exploded in popularity over the past decade, with chapters springing up from Minneapolis to Moscow.

German photographer Boris Leist has spent the past four years documenting some of the world’s most dedicated LARPers. He first learned about the activity while shooting a Renaissance Fair in Norway, where he met a man dressed as a Tolkien-esque dwarf, complete with body armour and weapons. The man was an IT professional by day but was so dedicated to LARPing that he had enrolled in an evening welding class to learn how to make his armor.

“I was very impressed by how high-quality his costume was,” Leist remembers. “I told myself, I have to learn more about this”
Leist began attending LARP events around Germany, where the activity is particularly popular. Many of the LARPers were wary of him at first, having been burned before by journalists only interested in mocking them. Leist eventually earned their trust by himself dressing up as a mendicant monk named Boris the Reader, with a full backstory.

Although LARPers are sometimes mocked as people who refuse to grow up, Leist respects their artistry and devotion to their craft. “They’re really creating a whole world,” he said. “I like that these are people creating things in their free time, and not for money. They’re living out their creativity.”

(Adapted from Wired, https://www.wired.com/story/photo-gallery-larping/)

The cod wars were a series of disputes between Britain and Iceland running from the 1950s to the 1970s over the rights to fish in Icelandic waters. Although it was never a war in the conventional sense of the word (the massive and well-equipped Royal Navy would have easily defeated the tiny Icelandic Navy), the peak of the Cod Wars saw thirty-seven Royal Navy warships mobilised to protect British trawlers fishing in the disputed territory. While the wars were eventually settled through diplomatic means there was conflict between British naval vessels and Icelandic ships out at sea. The Cod Wars showed how seriously nations took their fishing rights.

The first Cod War took place in autumn 1958 and was caused by a dispute over who could fish in the seas surrounding Iceland. In the late 1950s a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – the area of sea that a country controlled and could fish in exclusively – only extended four miles out to sea from a country’s coastline. British trawlers could therefore fish very close to Iceland. Iceland – worried that foreign vessels were overexploiting their fisheries – brought in a new law that extended their EEZ to twelve miles. Britain was not happy and chose to ignore this new limit and continued to fish up to the original four-mile limit. The situation escalated when Britain sent warships to protect its trawlers fishing in the disputed areas.

A number of incidents took place including Icelandic patrol boats firing across the bows of British trawlers in an effort to force them to leave the new zone, and Britain threatening to sink any Icelandic vessels that attacked British trawlers. Eventually, Britain accepted that it had no right to stop Iceland extending the EEZ to twelve miles and backed down.

(Adapted from https://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-cod-wars/)

The cod wars were a series of disputes between Britain and Iceland running from the 1950s to the 1970s over the rights to fish in Icelandic waters. Although it was never a war in the conventional sense of the word (the massive and well-equipped Royal Navy would have easily defeated the tiny Icelandic Navy), the peak of the Cod Wars saw thirty-seven Royal Navy warships mobilised to protect British trawlers fishing in the disputed territory. While the wars were eventually settled through diplomatic means there was conflict between British naval vessels and Icelandic ships out at sea. The Cod Wars showed how seriously nations took their fishing rights.

The first Cod War took place in autumn 1958 and was caused by a dispute over who could fish in the seas surrounding Iceland. In the late 1950s a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – the area of sea that a country controlled and could fish in exclusively – only extended four miles out to sea from a country’s coastline. British trawlers could therefore fish very close to Iceland. Iceland – worried that foreign vessels were overexploiting their fisheries – brought in a new law that extended their EEZ to twelve miles. Britain was not happy and chose to ignore this new limit and continued to fish up to the original four-mile limit. The situation escalated when Britain sent warships to protect its trawlers fishing in the disputed areas.

A number of incidents took place including Icelandic patrol boats firing across the bows of British trawlers in an effort to force them to leave the new zone, and Britain threatening to sink any Icelandic vessels that attacked British trawlers. Eventually, Britain accepted that it had no right to stop Iceland extending the EEZ to twelve miles and backed down.

(Adapted from https://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-cod-wars/)