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State Department Puts ‘All Direct Hire’ USAID Personnel on Administrative Leave
Wed, 05 Feb 2025 02:36:00 +0000
The US government’s primary foreign aid agency has employees stationed all over the world, many of whom are now bracing to abruptly leave their posts.
Match ID: 0 Score: 35.00 source: www.wired.com age: 0 days
qualifiers: 35.00 travel(|ing)
Bullseye!
Tue, 04 Feb 2025 20:01:02 +0000
This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, released on Feb. 4, 2025, shows the gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424, aptly nicknamed the Bullseye. A far smaller blue dwarf galaxy went through the Bullseye’s center, leaving nine star-filled rings. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed […]
Match ID: 1 Score: 35.00 source: www.nasa.gov age: 0 days
qualifiers: 35.00 travel(|ing)
NASA Demonstrates Software ‘Brains’ Shared Across Satellite Swarms
Tue, 04 Feb 2025 19:49:25 +0000
Talk amongst yourselves, get on the same page, and work together to get the job done! This “pep talk” roughly describes how new NASA technology works within satellite swarms. This technology, called Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy (DSA), allows individual spacecraft to make independent decisions while collaborating with each other to achieve common goals – all without […]
Match ID: 2 Score: 35.00 source: www.nasa.gov age: 0 days
qualifiers: 35.00 travel(|ing)
Straight Shot: Hubble Investigates Galaxy with Nine Rings
Tue, 04 Feb 2025 15:00:03 +0000
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye! The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow” — a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy — shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings, more than previously detected by any telescope in any galaxy, and confirmed a […]
Match ID: 3 Score: 35.00 source: science.nasa.gov age: 0 days
qualifiers: 35.00 travel(|ing)
My journey into the fairytale world of Maramureș – the Romania time forgot
Tue, 04 Feb 2025 07:00:14 GMT
A German couple who renovate abandoned wooden houses and rent them out offer a window onto a traditional way of life in the north of the country
Cattle are lumbering home in the twilight, horse-drawn farm carts trundle by and shepherds huddle around bonfires. We spy a woman milking her one cow in her garden and another, ancient-looking but upright, strolling back from the field, hoe over one shoulder. Traditional houses are made entirely of wood, roofs included, and many are dwarfed by ornate carved gateways, with tiled roof and massive beam across the top.
We could be in south-east Asia, but this fairytale world of time-honoured custom and lives lived close to the land is a lot nearer home – in south-eastern Europe.
Continue reading...Meteorite falls are extremely rare and offer a glimpse of the processes that formed our world billions of years ago. When a space rock came to an English market town in 2021, scientists raced to find as much out as they could
At 21.54 on 28 February 2021, 16 cameras belonging to amateur sky-watching network UKMON picked up a bright shape headed towards Earth. Pictures show a long white line, which was visible for eight seconds, a glowing globule of light against the dark sky. “For me it’s like fishing,” said Richard Kacerek, one of the founders of UKMON. “You cast your line and then you wait. There are days when you catch nothing but there are days when you catch a really, really big fish and it’s so exciting.” The fireball of February 2021 was such a fish: a lump of flaming extraterrestrial rock travelling at a speed of about 8.4 miles a second – 15 times the speed of a rifle bullet – and headed for the Cotswolds market town of Winchcombe.
Meteorites are rocks from space that have entered our atmosphere. Most were once part of asteroids – the rocky, airless remnants left over from the formation of our solar system 4.6bn years ago. Almost all of them are what collectors call “finds”, meaning that the stone has been discovered by searching the ground, having fallen earlier – in most cases several thousand years earlier. A “fall”, a meteorite that is seen in flight and then recovered, is very, very rare. Worldwide, typically only about 10 such rocks are picked up each year. Before 2021, the last reported UK fall was a rock the size of a cricket ball that landed in a hedge in Glatton in Cambridgeshire in May 1991.
Continue reading...Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Turkey and its militias have cut off the Kurdish city of Kobane from the rest of Syria.
The post Twelve Days in Kobane, Where Syrian Kurds Are Under Attack by Turkey appeared first on The Intercept.
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A group of volunteers is spending two months lying in bed—with their feet up and one shoulder always touching the mattress—even while eating, showering, and using the toilet. But why? This extreme bedrest study is helping scientists understand how space travel affects the human body and how to keep astronauts healthy on long missions.
Microgravity causes muscle and bone loss, fluid shifts, and other physiological changes similar to those experienced by bedridden patients on Earth. By studying volunteers here on Earth, researchers can develop better countermeasures for astronauts and even improve treatments for medical conditions like osteoporosis.
In this study, participants are divided into three groups: one stays in bed with no exercise, another cycles in bed to mimic astronaut workouts, and a third cycles while being spun in a centrifuge to simulate artificial gravity. Scientists hope artificial gravity could become a key tool in protecting astronauts during deep-space missions.
Whether you hiked the Atlas Mountains or enjoyed a beach or city break, share a tip on your favourite Moroccan find – the best wins £200 towards a Coolstays break
Morocco saw visitor numbers climb by an incredible 20% in 2024, making it one of the fastest-growing tourism destinations in the world. From the cultural highlights of Marrakech and Fes to the surf beaches of the Atlantic and up into the remote villages of the High Atlas mountains, the country offers extraordinary variety. We’d love to hear about your favourite spots, whether it’s a gorgeous riad hotel tucked away in the medina, a fantastic surf beach, a desert retreat or an off-the-beaten-track discovery.
If you have a relevant photo, do send it in – but it’s your words that will be judged for the competition.
Continue reading...In some of the photographs you have to squint hard to see it – sandwiched between tree trunks or cloaked in fog. In others, it’s so close up that all you see are rivets or the cross-hatching of metal beams. In his series Thirty-Six Views of the Golden Gate Bridge (the title nods to Katsushika Hokusai’s famous woodcut prints of Mount Fuji), US photographer Arthur Drooker set out to defamiliarise the great Californian landmark, asking: “Is it possible to see the most photographed bridge in the world anew?” After two years on the project, he came away with “deep admiration” for its builders who defied predictions that the mile-wide strait could never be bridged. “What I found most resonant,” says Drooker, “even more than the span’s status as an engineering and architectural icon, is its power as a symbol of possibility.”
The founder of Mothers Against College Antisemitism says her 62,000-member Facebook group is influencing NYU policy.
The post A Well-Connected NYU Parent Is Trying to Get Students Deported appeared first on The Intercept.
Asylum-seekers are being detained because they come from Russia and Central Asia, immigrants and attorneys told The Intercept.
The post They Flee Russia as Dissidents Seeking Asylum. The U.S. Locks Them Up. appeared first on The Intercept.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors. You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors.
You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
Continue reading...Less than two weeks ago, the movie was flying high, with 13 Academy Award nods. Then came a social media scandal and a serious backlash
You can generally tell when awards season is going well for a movie because its stars are everywhere, attending galas, treading red carpets, doing as many interviews as they can, and repeating the same bland sentiments about how special this movie is and everyone was a dream to work with. Conversely, you can tell things aren’t so rosy when your lead star is cancelling all their US appearances, being discreetly airbrushed out of the campaign and issuing statements such as: “I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain.”
This is where Emilia Pérez and its lead, Karla Sofía Gascón, find themselves. Less than two weeks ago the movie was riding high, with a remarkable 13 Oscar nominations, including best actress for Gascón – the most for any movie this year and one short of the all-time record. Now, though, it is looking as if the wheels have come off for Emilia Pérez’s awards campaign, or at least for Gascón herself. Many are wondering how this could have happened so quickly; was it a spectacular act of self-sabotage, or are there darker arts at work?
Continue reading...Ang Lee’s remarkable movie, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as star-crossed lovers, was controversial and lost best picture at the Oscars – but remains a beautiful film
Some films accumulate an emotional residue over time; rather than diminishing, their impact deepens and intensifies with each screening. When I first saw Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain in 2005 – a movie I’d been anticipating since a “gay cowboy” project was announced – my response was subdued. I remember telling a friend who’d asked what I thought that it was beautiful in the way a landscape painting is beautiful: lush and precisely detailed but emotionally spare. These days I can’t hear the opening strains of Gustavo Santaolalla’s poignant score without weeping.
Beautiful landscape is, of course, a central feature of the film, tantalising and talismanic. The quietly stunning Wyoming countryside is not only where our cowboys fall in love – mercurial and passionate Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and taciturn and self-loathing Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) – it represents the kind of emotional freedom and acceptance they can’t find in the prosaic interiors of their upbringing. Brokeback Mountain (a fictional location invented by the author Annie Proulx in the award-winning short story on which the film is based) releases something in the men, then mocks them for not living up to its Edenic promise.
It’s highly significant that the film opens in 1963 and spans a 20-year period of marriages, kids and divorce before ending in secrecy and heartbreak. This was a time of enormous progress for gay men in the US who’d fought for and won legal protections across the country. But for Jack and Ennis – who can’t even conceive of a world that tolerates, let alone actively celebrates, their love – this progress might as well be happening on the moon. It’s a salient reminder that what we think of as an LGBTQI+ community is largely a metropolitan, middle-class construct.
Continue reading...Smoking was having a comeback – until the director’s death after an emphysema diagnosis complicated its allure
David Lynch was a smoker. With an American Spirit perpetually locked between his teeth, he figured fire and smoke as magical textures in his films. To Lynch, cigarettes weren’t merely delicious, but sacred: they gave him the impression of breathing in the world, then blowing it back out again with fabulous grace.
Born in 1946 – 20 years before the US surgeon general pronounced for the first time that cigarettes could cause cancer – Lynch came up in a time when American glamor was buttressed by cigarettes and cinema. Actors like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis danced a beautiful and foolish waltz with death, smoke in hand, while cigarettes were considered the sine qua non of the artist’s life, an ashtray piled up with butts evidence of a good day’s work. “I always associated smoking and drinking coffee with the art life. They go hand in hand,” Lynch told the Independent in 2013.
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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most popular digital assets today, capturing the attention of cryptocurrency investors, whales and people from around the world. People find it amazing that some users spend thousands or millions of dollars on a single NFT-based image of a monkey or other token, but you can simply take a screenshot for free. So here we share some freuently asked question about NFTs.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is a cryptographic token on a blockchain with unique identification codes that distinguish it from other tokens. NFTs are unique and not interchangeable, which means no two NFTs are the same. NFTs can be a unique artwork, GIF, Images, videos, Audio album. in-game items, collectibles etc.
A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that allows for the secure storage of data. By recording any kind of information—such as bank account transactions, the ownership of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contracts—in one place, and distributing it to many different computers, blockchains ensure that data can’t be manipulated without everyone in the system being aware.
The value of an NFT comes from its ability to be traded freely and securely on the blockchain, which is not possible with other current digital ownership solutionsThe NFT points to its location on the blockchain, but doesn’t necessarily contain the digital property. For example, if you replace one bitcoin with another, you will still have the same thing. If you buy a non-fungible item, such as a movie ticket, it is impossible to replace it with any other movie ticket because each ticket is unique to a specific time and place.
One of the unique characteristics of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is that they can be tokenised to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold and traded on the blockchain.
As with crypto-currency, records of who owns what are stored on a ledger that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. These records can’t be forged because the whole system operates on an open-source network.
NFTs also contain smart contracts—small computer programs that run on the blockchain—that give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren't cryptocurrencies, but they do use blockchain technology. Many NFTs are based on Ethereum, where the blockchain serves as a ledger for all the transactions related to said NFT and the properties it represents.5) How to make an NFT?
Anyone can create an NFT. All you need is a digital wallet, some ethereum tokens and a connection to an NFT marketplace where you’ll be able to upload and sell your creations
When you purchase a stock in NFT, that purchase is recorded on the blockchain—the bitcoin ledger of transactions—and that entry acts as your proof of ownership.
The value of an NFT varies a lot based on the digital asset up for grabs. People use NFTs to trade and sell digital art, so when creating an NFT, you should consider the popularity of your digital artwork along with historical statistics.
In the year 2021, a digital artist called Pak created an artwork called The Merge. It was sold on the Nifty Gateway NFT market for $91.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens can be used in investment opportunities. One can purchase an NFT and resell it at a profit. Certain NFT marketplaces let sellers of NFTs keep a percentage of the profits from sales of the assets they create.
Many people want to buy NFTs because it lets them support the arts and own something cool from their favorite musicians, brands, and celebrities. NFTs also give artists an opportunity to program in continual royalties if someone buys their work. Galleries see this as a way to reach new buyers interested in art.
There are many places to buy digital assets, like opensea and their policies vary. On top shot, for instance, you sign up for a waitlist that can be thousands of people long. When a digital asset goes on sale, you are occasionally chosen to purchase it.
To mint an NFT token, you must pay some amount of gas fee to process the transaction on the Etherum blockchain, but you can mint your NFT on a different blockchain called Polygon to avoid paying gas fees. This option is available on OpenSea and this simply denotes that your NFT will only be able to trade using Polygon's blockchain and not Etherum's blockchain. Mintable allows you to mint NFTs for free without paying any gas fees.
The answer is no. Non-Fungible Tokens are minted on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies such as Etherum, Solana, Polygon, and so on. Once a Non-Fungible Token is minted, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain and the contract or license is awarded to whoever has that Non-Fungible Token in their wallet.
You can sell your work and creations by attaching a license to it on the blockchain, where its ownership can be transferred. This lets you get exposure without losing full ownership of your work. Some of the most successful projects include Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yatch Club NFTs, SandBox, World of Women and so on. These NFT projects have gained popularity globally and are owned by celebrities and other successful entrepreneurs. Owning one of these NFTs gives you an automatic ticket to exclusive business meetings and life-changing connections.
That’s a wrap. Hope you guys found this article enlightening. I just answer some question with my limited knowledge about NFTs. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below. Also I have a question for you, Is bitcoin an NFTs? let me know in The comment section below
School system says it has not been served with a filing and will ‘vigorously defend’ its admissions practices
A newly formed group dedicated to fighting what it calls the covert use of affirmative action in admissions decisions by colleges in the University of California system announced on Monday that it was filing a lawsuit, aiming for an injunction to prohibit any consideration of race in student admissions.
“The University of California has not been served with the filing,” a spokesperson for the UC system, Stett Holbrook, said on Tuesday. “If served, we will vigorously defend our admission practices” Holbrook added. “We believe this to be a meritless suit that seeks to distract us from our mission to provide California students with a world class education.”
Continue reading...Group concludes babies died due to natural causes or errors in medical care, saying there was no evidence of deliberate harm
A distinguished panel of paediatric specialists and neonatologists was convened by Dr Shoo Lee, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, to review the medical evidence used to convict Lucy Letby. She is serving 15 life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others.
The panel members, who rank among the most senior experts in the world, include Neena Modi, a professor of neonatal medicine at Imperial College London; Mikael Norman, a senior physician at the Karolinska Institute and founder of the International Society of Evidence-based Neonatology; and Ann Stark, professor in residence of paediatrics at Harvard medical school.
Continue reading...The founder of Mothers Against College Antisemitism says her 62,000-member Facebook group is influencing NYU policy.
The post A Well-Connected NYU Parent Is Trying to Get Students Deported appeared first on The Intercept.
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