Short Wave - The Science Is Simple, So Why Is Opening Schools So Complicated?
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On the first day of the virtual Democratic National Convention, Andy talks to Kavita Patel, a policy advisor for Senator Kamala Harris, about what a Biden-Harris pandemic response would be and how it would change from the Trump administration. Then Andy chats with Neera Tanden, the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress, about what to expect this week from the convention.
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array(3) { [0]=> string(184) "https://www.omnycontent.com/d/clips/796469f9-ea34-46a2-8776-ad0f015d6beb/202f895c-880d-413b-94ba-ad11012c73e7/47f47609-0033-4933-9557-ad110131a16e/image.jpg?t=1619029970&size=Large" [1]=> string(10) "image/jpeg" [2]=> int(0) }Kimberly Ells arrived at the United Nations excited to engage in work to strengthen families around the world. What she found was an agenda to dismantle the traditional family, promote sexuality to children, and reduce parenthood to a burdensome civil construct.
Kimberly Ells, a policy adviser for Family Watch International and author of the new book, “The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can't Win,” joins the podcast to explain the anti-family agenda being promoted by the United Nations.
Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about peaceful gatherings of prayer and worship taking place in cities that have been most hurt by riots.
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Sara Seager is a planetary scientist at MIT, known for her work on the search for exoplanets.
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Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
05:32 – Falling in love with the stars
09:55 – Are we alone in the universe?
15:27 – Seager equation for number of habitable planets
27:48 – Exoplanets
34:44 – Earth-like exoplanets
40:43 – Intelligent life
52:34 – Number of planets per star
55:09 – Space exploration
57:36 – Traveling to Proxima Centauri
1:00:52 – Starshade
1:07:34 – Using the sun as a gravitational lens
1:09:44 – Starshot
1:12:45 – Rogue planets
1:15:44 – The Smallest Lights in the Universe
1:30:15 – Book recommendations
1:37:48 – Advice for a young person
1:39:29 – Meaning of life
In this audio interview, CoinDesk’s Leigh Cuen and Fodé Diop, founder of the Dakar Bitcoin Developers meetup in Senegal, talk about bitcoin in Africa.
This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.
From how mobile devices offer the primary point of access and social media groups offer local liquidity, Cuen and Diop explore what cryptocurrency adoption actually looks like in emerging markets like Senegal.
Like many bitcoiners, Diop got his start in the crypto industry working for token projects in 2017. From there, he got involved with the Oakland Blockchain Developers Meetup, and eventually took that experience back to Senegal when he moved back to his hometown to be with family during the COVID-19 crisis.
“I started with Ethereum because it was easier to have access to...Philosophically, I no longer align with the Ethereum ethos,” Diop said. “The first thing I did when I started here [Dakar] with the meetups was I gave away about $1,000 in bitcoin.”
As a dual citizen of the U.S. and Senegal, with an American bank account, Diop can use mainstream bitcoin wallets like Cash App to use bitcoin as a currency anywhere in the world. This came in handy when Diop unexpectedly needed to stay in Senegal throughout 2020. For people with only Senegalese accounts, he recommends the Lightning-friendly Wallet of Satoshi.
Now, with the support of organizations like Chaincode Labs, he freelances from Senegal teaches aspiring bitcoiners like Bineta Ngom, who have a high level of technical understanding yet aren’t fluent in English. As such, she struggled to find the right materials to learn about bitcoin.
“I’m super happy to find out there was a bitcoin community here in Senegal. I never heard of it spoken of before here. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, exchange (ideas) on the subject. This was a chance for me to meet enthusiasts,” Ngom said.
Ngom, who studied computer science and now works at a local university, said she hopes to use bitcoin to buy something someday. In the meantime, Diop is focused on translating information from English into local languages like French and Wolof. Plus, he said most people in Senegal only access the internet through their Android mobile devices. So they need information about how to use mobile apps and understand whether something is a scam.
“We also have peer-to-peer trading through WhatsApp and Telegram,” Diop said.
Until Diop started the local bitcoin meetup, Ngom said the only other sources she knew for cryptocurrency projects were a few “scams” her friends invested in during the 2017 token boom.
“Places that are English-speaking are moving way faster than their French counterparts,” Diop said, comparing English-speaking Ghana and Nigeria to French-speaking countries in West Africa. “I don’t understand how the bitcoin community doesn’t target more (African) universities and do more hackathons.”
He added the small yet highly curious community in Senegal now uses bitcoin for speculative trading and remittances.
“I have people who are highly, highly technical when it comes to cryptography, per say, but they don’t understand how bitcoin works,” Diop said. “I believe this technology is groundbreaking. It could help a lot of people.”
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Russia’s President Putin announced the registration of a vaccine for coronavirus. This was reported with widespread alarm amid concerns over safety, but as BBC Russian Service’s Sergei Goryashko, tells us the announcement was a political move to capture the headlines.
Investigations by Alexandra Reynolds and Hooman Poor at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Centre have revealed why some Covid 19 patients have low oxygen levels, but don’t have breathing difficulties. The answer came when looking for signs of stroke in the brain.
Nisreen Alwan, a specialist in public health at Southampton University is concerned about the quality of life of people who have had a Covid -19 infection. Being classed as recovered is not enough she says and we need to look more at recurring health problems associated with the disease.
And Cardiff University’s Haley Gomez has news of a tantalising discovery. The detection of a neutron star hidden in a dust cloud for more than 30 years.
Squelching into the science of slime, Chhavi Sachdev seeks to find out why it took so long for listener Helen Tyson to remove slime from her fingers, after she picked up a tiny slug while gardening.
This unfortunate and hugely repulsive experience set Helen to wonder what it is about the structure of slug slime that makes it gloopy, so she sent Chhavi to meet with slug slime expert Professor Andrew Smith who reveals how the complex molecular structure of this pervasive fluid makes it so difficult to scrub off.
Slime is used by all sorts of creatures including the Giant African Land snail, which invaded India by hitching a ride on imported timber. But invasive species biologist Dr TV Sajeev reveals that these snails are themselves giving a lift to another meningitis-causing parasite that can infect people. Chhavi looks for these massive molluscs in her own garden in Mumbai.
Marine biologist Helen Scales describes how animals can use slime for catching food, mating, defence, or even transportation, and Chhavi speaks with Dr Adam Celiz who has been inspired by this slimy adaptability to create a tool that can provide new cells to replace damaged heart cells after a cardiac arrest.
Slugs, snails and even fish keep a variety of useful chemicals in their slime. Some make them taste bitter, and others numb the mouth of predators, but they may also prevent the animals from contracting infections. Dr Sarah Pitt has investigated these compounds in the slimy mucus of a garden snail and discovered an antibiotic that is brand new to science. Slime is pretty disgusting, but it’s also completely fascinating.
(Image:President Putin. Credit: Reuters)
After a Winklevoss encounter highlights Elon Musk’s space mining dreams, maybe we should remind ourselves of the right-here-at-home benefits bitcoin brings.
This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com, Bitstamp and Nexo.io.
Earlier this week, the Winklevoss brothers introduced Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy to bitcoin.
One of the notable parts of the recap video was a discussion of how Elon Musk was set to destroy the value of gold on Earth by mining gold from asteroids.
While much meme fun was had, on this week’s Long Reads Sunday NLW has chosen a selection that looks at how fiat beat out gold and how gold beat out silver to provide some – ahem – more immediately relevant lessons on how to explain the benefits of bitcoin.
Read:
Part III — Bitcoin’s 10x Advantage Over Gold Might Not Lie Where You Think
By David Lawant
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With the “Curious City Scavenger Hunt: Chicago Eats Edition” now underway, we’re revisiting a story about foods created right here in Chicago.
Autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko claims to have won a landslide in the country?s presidential elections. But how can we know what really happened? Tim Harford delves into the numbers behind the widely-questioned election result, with Dr Brian Klaas and political analyst Artyom Shraibman.