1 January 2018: The United Nations has designated 2019 as the International year of the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements. The year will coincide with the 150th anniversary of the table’s creation by Dmitry Mendeleev, the Russian chemist who created the first periodic table, in 1869. It will also mark a number of other milestones in the history of chemistry, including the discovery of phosphorus 350 years ago, Antoine Lavoisier’s categorization of 33 elements in 1789 and the formulation of the law of the triads by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner 190 years ago. The decision was announced by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), whose proposal to celebrate the periodic table in 2019 coincides with its centenary. Events will be coordinated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Link: https://iupac.org
2 January 2018: Four billion miles from the sun floats Ultima Thule, an icy celestial body that NASA scientists announced today is aptly shaped like a giant snowman. The first detailed images beamed back from the US agency's New Horizons mission allowed scientists to confidently determine the body was formed when two spheres, or 'lobes', slowly gravitated towards each other until they stuck together, a major scientific discovery. The New Horizons spacecraft flew past Ultima Thule, which was discovered via telescope in 2014 and is the farthest and potentially oldest cosmic body ever observed by a spacecraft. Before that flyby, the only image scientists had was a blurry one showing Ultima Thule's oblong shape, resembling something like a bowling pin or a peanut. The body is roughly 19 miles long and completes its own rotation in about 15 hours. NASA dubbed the larger lobe Ultima, and the other smaller one, Thule. Link: https://www.nasa.gov
3 January 2018: A Chinese spacecraft today made the first-ever landing on the far side of the moon, state media said. The lunar explorer Chang'e 4 touched down at 10:26 a.m. The far side of the moon faces away from Earth and is relatively unexplored. It is also known as the dark side of the moon. The pioneering landing demonstrates China's growing ambitions as a space power. In 2013, Chang'e 3 was the first spacecraft to land on the moon since the Soviet Union's Luna-24 in 1976. The mission of Chang'e 4, which is carrying a rover, includes carrying out low-frequency radio astronomical observations and probing the structure and mineral composition of the terrain. The Long March-3B rocket carrying Chang'e 4 blasted off on December 8, 2018 from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southern China. In May, a relay satellite Queqiao, or Magpie Bridge was launched to provide communications support between Chang'e 4 and Earth. Link: https://iupac.org
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Story : M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Bruce Willis
Music : West Dylan Thordson
Camera : Mike Gioulakis
Running: 129 minutes
Country : United States
Glass is a 2019 American superhero thriller film written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film is a sequel to Shyamalan's previous films Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016), cumulatively forming the Eastrail 177 Trilogy. It serves as the final installment in the franchise.
In the film, David Dunn becomes locked in a mental hospital alongside his archenemy Mr. Glass, as well as the multi-personality The Horde, and must contend with a psychiatrist who is out to prove the trio do not actually possess super-human abilities. While there was interest in creating a sequel to Unbreakable following its release, Touchstone Pictures opted not to finance one at that time despite the film's solid box office performance.
Shyamalan set out to write Split using a character he had written for Unbreakable but pulled from its script due to balance issues. Shyamalan realized the opportunity he had to create a trilogy of works, and used the ending of Split to establish the film as within the Unbreakable narrative. This included securing the rights to use Willis's Unbreakable character from Walt Disney Studios, with the promise of including Disney within the production and distribution of this third film alongside Universal Pictures.
The film was released on January 18, 2019, by Universal Pictures in the United States and by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, under the Buena Vista International label, in international territories. It has grossed over $113 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics, with some finding it underwhelming and lamenting the climax, although the performances (particularly McAvoy's and Jackson's) and the entertainment value of the first half were praised.
Website: https://www.glassmovie.com
Title : Anti-Science and
the Assault on Democracy:
Defending Reason in a Free Society
Editors : M. J. Thompson, G. R. Smulewicz-Zucker
Pages : 303
Price : $ 26.00
ISBN : 9781633884748
Publisher : Prometheus Books
The defense of creationism and resistance to the realities of climate change, for example, threaten both the capacity of the next generation to comprehend and employ rational arguments as well as its ability to confront the ways anti-science worldviews prevent us from dealing with environmental crises. In effect, postmodern theories on the Left and religiously influenced policy proposals on the Right have become unlikely allies with one another, even if not in intent.
For these reasons, the essays in this book, Anti-Science and the Assault on Democracy:Defending Reason in a Free Society put a particular emphasis on the political implications of anti- science thought, while the older 'science wars' were conducted around more philosophical questions of method and epistemology. The new realities of anti-science policy, the withdrawal of funding from agencies that rely on the sciences, the effort to redesign school curricula, and many related concerns, speak to a political terrain in which anti- science views are reshaping our institutions, our culture, and our sensibilities.
With these new realities in mind, the basic question and problem the essays assembled here seek to examine is the extent to which we can draw upon the relationship between science and democracy. More specifically, we want to explore the ways that science, as an attitude as well as an epistemic style of thought, is in retreat in modern societies. We therefore seek not only to polemically critique the anti-scientific cast of different features of modern culture and politics, but also to stake out a defense of rational, scientific dimensions to democratic life and a democratic society.
Excerpt of the book, Courtesy: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com
It is through language that we communicate with the world, define our identity, express our history and culture, learn, defend our human rights and participate in all aspects of society, to name but a few. Through language, people preserve their community’s history, customs and traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking, meaning and expression.
They also use it to construct their future. Language is pivotal in the areas of human rights protection, good governance, peace building, reconciliation, and sustainable development. International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019 will promote indigenous languages in these five key areas:
1. Increasing understanding, reconciliation and international cooperation.
2. Creation of favourable conditions for knowledge-sharing and dissemination of good practices with regards to indigenous languages.
3. Integration of indigenous languages into standard setting.
4. Empowerment through capacity building.
5. Growth and development through elaboration of new knowledge.
Website: https://en.iyil2019.org
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Hominini
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens
A group of Indian scientists and companies are involved with a 100k GenomeAsia project,
led out of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, to
sequence the whole genomes of 100k Asians, including 50,000 Indians.
This was among the key decisions taken at the 1st meeting of Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (STIAC). The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Department of Biotechnology would be closely associated with the project.
Ever since the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in 2009 announced that it had sequenced the genome of an Indian, then making India one of six countries to achieve such a feat, several research labs have analysed genes from Indians for disease susceptibility.
Principal Scientific Adviser and Chair of the Council, K. Vijay Raghavan, said the genome initiative will have to move at two different levels. The Council acts as a coordinator between several ministries to work on projects and missions and is scheduled to meet once a month.
Website: http://www.genomeasia100k.com
