Review of 2014

January 3 - Raise of Islamic militants belonging to a group called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) take control of Falluja, Iraq.

February 10-15 - Talks aimed at ending the three-year-old civil war in Syria take place in Geneva, Switzerland. No agreement is reached between President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups.


February 18-20 - After months of protests in Ukraine, a gun fight breaks out between protesters and security forces, leaving around 100 people dead.  Split in Ukraine regions and New Prime Minster was elected for the major part.

March 1 - In Kungming, China, attackers with long knives storm the train station, killing at least 28 people and wounding 113. Blooms in Ugurs rebellion.

March 16 - In Crimea, 96.7% vote in favor of leaving Ukraine and being annexed by Russia. Confirms Russian dominance in SE Asia.

March 8 - Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappears from radar in airspace over the Gulf of Thailand. Foul play by global leaders.

April 14 - Boko Haram militants kidnap more than 270 teenage girls from a boarding school in Chibok in Northeastern Nigeria. Officials there say some of the girls were able to escape. No unity in African leaders in tackling terrorism.

April 16 - The South Korean ferry Sewol capsizes, killing approximately 294 people. Hundreds of high school students on a field trip are among the dead. Disciplined pupils.

May 7 - In Thailand, the Constitutional Court removes Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra from office, on charges of abuse of power. 

May 20 - The president of India names Narendra Modi as the country's new prime minister.  New era for rights group.

 
July 17 - Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashes in eastern Ukraine after being shot down by a surface-to-air missile, according to the United States. All 298 people aboard are killed. EUS and Russia cold war begins.

July 24 - Air Algerie Flight 5017 crashes in Mali, killing 116 people.  Poor maintenance.

September 21 - Houthi rebels take control of large parts of Yemen's capital Sana. Upper hand for Shia's.

October 6 -.The Ebola outbreak began in Guinea and spread to neighboring countries, with isolated cases in Spain and the US. Blame on Bats.

November 12 - The European Space Agency successfully lands a probe named Philae on a comet 310 million miles from Earth. Long hand shake.

December 16 - Taliban gunmen attack the Army Public School and Degree College in Peshawar, Pakistan. 145 people are killed, most of them children. Always fear about extremists.

December 28 - Air Asia Flight 8501, with 162 people aboard, crashes while flying from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore. Bad year for air travelers.

Technology:
 

Agricultural Drones - Relatively cheap drones with advanced sensors and imaging capabilities are giving farmers new ways to increase yields and reduce crop damage.
  

 Brain Mapping -  A new map, a decade in the works, shows structures of the brain in far greater detail than ever before, providing neuroscientists with a guide to its immense complexity.

 

Neuromorphic Chips - Microprocessors configured more like brains than traditional chips could soon make computers far more astute about what’s going on around them.
       

Genome Editing - The ability to create primates with intentional mutations could provide powerful new ways to study complex and genetically baffling brain disorders

 Microscale 3-D Printing - Inks made from different types of materials, precisely applied, are greatly expanding the kinds of things that can be printed.

 Mobile Collaboration - The smartphone era is finally getting the productivity software it needs.

  Agile Robots - Computer scientists have created machines that have the balance and agility to walk and run across rough and uneven terrain, making them far more useful in navigating human environments.

   Smart Wind and Solar Power - Big data and artificial intelligence are producing ultra-accurate forecasts that will make it feasible to integrate much more renewable energy into the grid.

   
Sports:

 
February 7-23 - The XXII Winter Olympics take place in Sochi, Russia.

June 12-July 13 - The World Cup takes place in Brazil. Germany is the winner.

Ig Nobel: Laugh and Think

Wat is Ig Nobel?

    The Ig Nobel Prizes is to honor achievements that, "first make people Laugh, and thenmake them Think". The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative - the people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. It is given out in early October each year for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research.


When and How many prizes given?

    The first Ig Nobels were created in 1991 by Marc Abrahams, editor and co-founder of the Annals of Improbable Research. Every September, in a gala ceremony in Harvard's Sanders Theatre, 1100 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the new winners step forward to accept their Prizes. Ten prizes are awarded each year in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, but also other
categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research.


Any Tradition at the Ig Nobels?

    Throwing paper planes onto the stage is a long-standing tradition at the Ig Nobels. The physics professor Roy J. Glauber swept the stage clean of the airplanes as the official "Keeper of the Broom" for years. The "Parade of Ignitaries" brings various supporting groups into the hall. Now, list below follow the 2015 winners.


The 2015 Ig Nobel Prize Winners:
Category:Chemistry 
Awardees:Callum Ormonde and Colin Raston (Aus),
                    Tom Yuan, Stephan Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith,
                    William A. Brown, Kaitlin Pugliese, Tivoli Olsen,
                    Mariam Iftikhar, Gregory Weiss (USA). 
Title:  
For inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg.

Category:Physics 
Awardees:Patricia Yang, David Hu (USA and TAIWAN),
                   and Jonathan Pham, Jerome Choo (USA).  
Title:         
For testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their  bladders   in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds).
 
Category:Literature 
Awardees:Mark Dingemanse (NET, USA),
                  Francisco Torreira (NET, BELGIUM, USA),
                  and Nick J. Enfield (AUS, NETHERLAND).Title:
For discovering that the word "huh?" (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language—and for not being quite sure why.
Category:Management
 Awardees:Gennaro Bernile (ITALY, SING, USA),
                   Vineet Bhagwat (USA, INDIA),
                   and P. Raghavendra Rau (UK, IND, FRA, LUX, GER, JAPAN).Title:
For discovering that many business leaders developed in childhood a fondness for risk-taking, when they experienced natural disaster (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and wildfires) that-for them-had no dire personal consequences.

Category:  Economics
 Awardees:The Bangkok Metropolitan Police (THAI). 
Title:
For offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes.
Category:Medcine 
Awardees:Hajime Kimata (JAPAN, CHINA)
                  Jaroslava Durdiaková (SLOVAKIA, US, UK)
                  Peter Celec (SLOVAKIA, GERMANY)
                  Natália Kamodyová, Tatiana Sedlácková, Gabriela Repiská,
                  Barbara Sviežená, and Gabriel Minárik (SLOVAKIA).
Title :
For experiments to study the biomedical benefits or biomedical consequences of intense kissing (and other intimate, interpersonal activities).
Category:Mathematics
Awardees:Elisabeth Oberzaucher (AUSTRIA, GERMANY, UK)
                  and Karl Grammer (AUSTRIA, GERMANY).
Title :
For trying to use mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of  Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children.
Category:Biology
Awardees:Bruno Grossi, Omar Larach, Mauricio Canals, Rodrigo A. Vásquez (CHILE)
                 and José Iriarte-Díaz (CHILE, USA).
 Title:
For observing that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked.
Category:Diagnostic Medcine
Awardees:Diallah Karim (CANADA, UK)
                  Anthony Harnden (NZL, UK, USA)
                  Nigel D'Souza (BAHRAIN, BEL, DUBAI, IND, S.AFRICA, US, UK)
                  Andrew Huang (CHINA, UK)
                  Abdel Kader Allouni (SYRIA, UK)
                  Helen Ashdown, Richard J. Stevens and Simon Kreckler [UK],
Title:
For determining that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps.
Category:Physiology and Entomology
Awardees:Justin Schmidt (USA, CANADA)
Title:
For painstakingly creating the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which rates the relative pain people feel when stung by various insects;
Awardees:Michael L. Smith (USA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS)
Title:
For carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm) and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft).  

Courtesy:Ig Nobel 

The Silk of the Sea or Byssus

Silk is usually made from the cocoons spun by silkworms - but there is another, much rarer, cloth known as sea silk or byssus, which comes from a clam. Chiara Vigo is thought to be the only person left who can harvest it, spin it and make it shine like gold.

What is Byssus?

The bracelet is made of an ancient thread, known as byssus, which is mentioned on the Rosetta stone* and said to have been found in the tombs of pharaohs. One of its remarkable properties is the way it shines when exposed to the sun, once it has been treated with lemon juice and spices.  Some believe it was the cloth God told Moses to lay on the first altar. It was the finest fabric known to ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.  Actually it is a raw material comes from the glistening aquamarine waters that surround the Sardinian island of Sant'Antioco.

 
Who is Chiara Vigo?

Vigo is the only person in Italy who still harvests it. It was her grandmother who taught her the art of working and embroidering with byssus. She in turn had learned it from her own mother, and so on, back through the generations. "Weaving the sea silk is what my family has been doing for centuries," ,  "The most important thread, for my family, was the thread of their history, their tradition."  Vigo says They have never made a penny from it, she points out. She herself married a coal miner, and they live on his pension and the occasional donation.

She does it early in the morning, to avoid attracting too much attention, and is accompanied by members of the Italian coastguard - this is a protected species. It takes 300 or 400 dives to gather 200g of material. Then she starts weaving it, but as the sign on the door says, it is not for sale. She gives the fabric to people who come to her for help. It may be a couple who have decided to marry or who have married, a woman who wants a child, or one who has recently become pregnant. Byssus is believed to bring good fortune and fertility. 

In the evening, Vigo spends a couple of hours teaching people how to weave with byssus.  After that, at sunset, I go with her to a deserted cove where she prays twice a day. Her chant, which mixes ancient Sardinian dialect and Hebrew, echoes off the rocks.

One thing that will be is that Vigo's daughter - currently a student in northern Italy - will one day tread in her mother's footsteps. "My daughter, although I will leave very little to her, will have to continue this tradition," she says, "so humankind can benefit from it."

Gabriel Hagai, professor of Hebrew Codicology, Paris.

Vigo is "the last remnant" of a combination of Jewish and Phoenician religious practices that was once far more widespread in the Mediterranean. This craft combined folklore and religion [but] she has allowed us to reconstruct a forgotten and missing part of our history."  Even now, there are still a few elderly women in Apulia (the heel of Italy) who can weave it,  She says, but none who can make it shine, or dye it with traditional colors, in the way that Vigo can. And Vigo is the only person in Italy who still harvests it.




*The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences among them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Courtesy: BBC's Magazine

First Female-Maryam Mirzakhani

This year, A woman has won the maths world's "Nobel prize" for the first time.Yes, it is Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford University, California, will receive the Fields medal.
Mirzakhani, who is Iranian, studies the geometry of moduli space, a complex geometric and algebraic entity that might be described as a universe in which every point is itself a universe. Mirzakhani described the number of ways a beam of light can travel a closed loop in a two-dimensional universe. To answer the question, it turns out, you cannot just stay in your "home" universe – you have to understand how to navigate the entire multiverse. Mirzakhani has shown mathematicians new ways to navigate these spaces.

The medal is awarded once every four years to at most four recipients, who must be aged under 40 at the start of that year. All the previous 52 Fields medallists, dating back to 1936, have been male.