Final preparations for tomorrow's inauguration. An arrest in alleged plot to sell Nancy Pelosi's laptop to Russia. President Trump's long pardon list. CBS News Correspondent Steve Kathan has today's World News Roundup.
Davit Buniatyan is originally from Armenia. He completed his high school years there, until he was 17, when he started to pursue his undergrad in the UK at UCL. He entered into his college years, excited about animation from seeing Pixar movies. He learned all about 3d models, graphics and rendering - but then found out there was no course or curriculum specially for animation. So he switched to comp sci, which ended up being perfect.
He is into swimming, tennis and shotokan - which is traditional Japanese karate. Along with these, he's been playing chess since he was 5 years old, and is an avid fan of the show Queen's Gambit on Netflix.
When he started in on his PHD at Princeton, he started working with large data sets to recreate neural networks. In doing so, he realized how much computational power was required to learn from even a small - large scale data set. With this, he set out to build a tool to make companies more efficient at learning from their data.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers have participated in protests around Delhi, demonstrating against laws that they say threaten their livelihoods. We ask how the standoff will end. Today America will designate Yemen’s Houthi militants as terrorists, but that is likely only to harm a population already facing starvation. And what’s behind a boom in African comics. For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer
In which a series of traumatic train accidents and a broke astronomer conspire to re-invent time as a flat circle, and John accidentally attends a clock unveiling. Certificate #13818.
Bumble’s New Year’s resolution was to go public, so we just jumped into its IPO paperwork. Spotify’s “Car Thing” is the secret gadget to know about. And we’re whipping up the most important numbers from Biden’s $1.9T stimulus plan.
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Almost two weeks after the siege on the Capitol, Rep. Tim Ryan still has questions about why Congress was left with such meager defenses. How is Congress dealing with the fallout from the attack? And with one day left before Joe Biden’s inauguration, is the nation’s capital safe?
A LOST EPISODE! Three years in the making, this interview features vials of vile creatures, worm drama, febrile hallucinations, spooning, and unfortunate snacks. It has waited a long time to meet you, so let’s get weird, take a trip back to summer of 2017 -- before Ologies existed -- and unearth one of the very first, never-before-heard interviews. Alie absolutely bungles her way through a chat with Dr. Anouk Gouvras, a London-based parasitologist studying the flatworms that cause schistosomiasis. Consider this an awkward baby photo of Ologies: before the show had any format or structure, and before your host learned how to properly use sound equipment. Stay tuned for a surprise ending to the conversation, and then follow Dr. Gouvras on Twitter and tell her you’re glad to finally get an introduction.
In 1962, the first spacecraft humans ever sent to another planet — Mariner 2 — went to Venus. The first planet on which humans ever landed a probe — also Venus! But since then, Mars has been the focus of planetary missions. NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel makes the case for why humans should reconsider visiting to Venus.
For more science reporting and stories, follow Geoff on twitter @gbrumfiel. And, as always, email us at shortwave@npr.org.
Americans today are often skeptical of scientific authority. Many conservatives dismiss climate change and Darwinism as liberal fictions, arguing that "tenured radicals" have coopted the sciences and other disciplines. Some progressives, especially in the universities, worry that science's celebration of objectivity and neutrality masks its attachment to Eurocentric and patriarchal values. As we grapple with the implications of climate change and revolutions in fields from biotechnology to robotics to computing, it is crucial to understand how scientific authority functions--and where it has run up against political and cultural barriers.
Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America(Harvard UP, 2020) reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States. Andrew Jewett reveals a persistent current of criticism which maintains that scientists have injected faulty social philosophies into the nation's bloodstream under the cover of neutrality. This charge of corruption has taken many forms and appeared among critics with a wide range of social, political, and theological views, but common to all is the argument that an ideologically compromised science has produced an array of social ills. Jewett shows that this suspicion of science has been a major force in American politics and culture by tracking its development, varied expressions, and potent consequences since the 1920s.
Looking at today's battles over science, Jewett argues that citizens and leaders must steer a course between, on the one hand, the naïve image of science as a pristine, value-neutral form of knowledge, and, on the other, the assumption that scientists' claims are merely ideologies masquerading as truths.
Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context.