Climate Activist Jailed in India as Government Clamps Down on Dissent

Before anyone outside her hometown knew her name, Disha Ravi spent four years raising awareness among young people in Bangalore about the effects of climate change. Now the 21-year-old activist is jailed in New Delhi. The allegation: She distributed a “tool kit” in the form of a Google Doc containing talking points and contact information for influential groups to drum up…

Large proto-cluster of galaxies discovered in the midst of clearing the cosmic fog

When the universe was about 350 million years old it was dark: there were no stars or galaxies, only neutral gas—mainly hydrogen—the residue of the Big Bang. That foggy period began to clear as atoms clumped together to form the first stars and the first quasars, causing the gas to ionize and high-energy photons to travel freely through space. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-02-large-proto-cluster-galaxies-midst-cosmic.html…

Cryptocurrency Magnate’s Plan to Turn 67,000 Acres into Blockchain-Based ‘Smart City’

“A cryptocurrency company that owns 67,000 acres in rural northern Nevada wants state government to grant technology companies power to form local governments on land they own,” reports the Associated Press. Jeffrey Berns, CEO of Nevada-based Blockchains LLC, ultimately envisions “a city where people not only purchase goods and services with digital currency but also log their entire online footprint —…

Young galaxies grow up faster than astronomers previously thought

A young galaxy has the hallmark central bulge and spiral arms of a much older one, suggesting that galaxies may form more quickly than previously thought Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2267619-young-galaxies-grow-up-faster-than-astronomers-previously-thought/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Today in science: A spacecraft obliterated a sundog

On February 11, 2010, a solar observatory launched into space ripped apart a sundog and created a new ice halo that amazed scientists. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/video-when-a-spacecraft-destroyed-a-sundog…

Mastercard To Open Up Network To Select Cryptocurrencies

Mastercard announced on Wednesday it was planning to offer support for some cryptocurrencies on its network this year. Reuters reports: Mastercard already offers customers cards that allow people to transact using their cryptocurrencies, although without going through its network. “Doing this work will create a lot more possibilities for shoppers and merchants, allowing them to transact in an entirely new form…

3 Ways to Future-Proof Your University

By Shwetabh Mittal, Senior Director, Product Management This article was originally published in Campus Tech, January 2021. When the pandemic led to the initial shutdown of university campuses in early February, Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China, was among the first to move all its courses to an online format. By April, at the height […]
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Machines Are Inventing New Math We’ve Never Seen

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: [A] group of researchers from the Technion in Israel and Google in Tel Aviv presented an automated conjecturing system that they call the Ramanujan Machine, named after the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who developed thousands of innovative formulas in number theory with almost no formal training. The software system has already conjectured several original…