News Bite
Written by Jack Douglas
There are a lot of small events going on right now that you might not have been made aware. One of them is the Breakthrough Prize. It is not popular among all people although, for a guy like me, it means the world. Just maybe not for you. I’ll talk about it nevertheless, though. The Breakthrough Prize is a set of international awards bestowed in three categories (life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics) in recognition of scientific advance. The winners will receive $3 million each in US dollars. Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and Ronald Drever won special prizes in fundamental physics. Edward S. Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, John Hardy, Helen Hobbs, and Svante Pääbo all won Breakthrough Prizes in life science. Ian Agol won the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics. Those are a lot of people. In fact, there are even more. Those were just the winners of the most sought-after prizes in those divisions. For the sake of this publication (and possibly for you), I won’t list any more.
Continuing, most emergencies are resolved in the first 72 hours. However, a lot can happen in those three days. That’s why engineers created a backpack titled the SEVENTY2 — a pack system that is certified as the smartest survival kit in the world. All equipment, tools, supplies — everything — has been designed and curated to withstand any survival situation. The backpack contains over 30 tools that are waterproof, reflective, and most importantly, easy to understand. The backpack itself has been designed to distribute weight evenly to the user and also act as a flotation device. The tools include everything from a magnesium fire starter to a safety whistle, survival knife, reflective duct tape, thermal blanket, and convertible snow shovel as well as a pick-ax. If you are ever in trouble, this is the backpack to have.
Last up, kids are teaching adults about kindness and other friendly virtues. Now isn’t that something? Educators from across the U.S. gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts for ‘Making Caring Common: Cultivating Kindness and Preventing Bullies in Schools’ a two-day programme at the Harvard School of Education. Based on 2014 Harvard Research, 80 percent of youth claim that their parents care much more about their achievements and personal benefit rather than being kind to other individuals. The programme’s goal was to share strategies for promoting school cultures of caring and for preventing challenging student behaviours such as bullying. There is a global concern regarding kids pervasive use of smartphones. It is believed that such overuse in the digital age is making the youth less empathetic and unpracticed in conversational skills necessary for accurate communication. On the contrary, there’s an encouraging and contradictory trend that shows that more and more kids are ‘giving back’ and embracing new technologies to show their charity. Stories of such kids that are using these technologies to achieve great things and perform immense acts of kindness are inspiring adults to do well and emulate their model of generosity.
That just about wraps up this month’s News Bite. I’ll see you next time, and thank you for reading.
