Green credentials: the UN Climate Change Conference, COP28, took place between 30 November and 12 December in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (courtesy: Ministry of Environment – Rwanda) The UN’s COP28 conference in Dubai is over. Government delegations have shaken hands, packed up and flown home. Journalists, lobbyists and campaigners have filed their last report, eaten their last canapé and filmed their final despairing or cautiously hopeful videos for social media. For the rest of us with an interest in the future of the planet, the question now is, did the meeting make a difference? And for physicists, the question is…
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Careful selection: removing 10% of the oranges on the surface of this display could cause an citrus avalanche. (Courtesy: Sir James/CC BY 3.0) Over the past few years I have spent more time in my native Canada, where I do enjoy a visit to the supermarket (Fortinos is my favourite). Like in many countries outside of the UK, Canadian supermarkets display apples and oranges in mounds with steep slopes. Indeed, I am often worried that picking the wrong apple from a display will start an avalanche that could engulf me in fruit. It turns out that I am not the…
Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover for the memoir Pretty by KB Brookins, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf on May 28, 2024. Preorder the book here. By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race.Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective—the tropes, the presumptions—Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change. “I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body,” KB…
From classics like The Godfather and Jaws to modern marvels like The Notebook, Game of Thrones, and Crazy Rich Asians, many of history’s greatest films and TV shows began as novels. A well-written book provides the ultimate Hollywood source material, with complex characters and an engrossing plot that, when read, already plays like a movie in your head. Here are some much-anticipated book-to-screen adaptations slated for 2024. Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben When Maya tunes into her toddler’s nanny cam, she sees her 2-year-old playing with her husband. There’s just one problem: her husband was murdered just weeks earlier.…
Stable skyrmions: First-principles calculations of the skyrmion-stabilizing Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction in pristine (bottom) and oxidized (top) Fe3GaTe2-x enabled the team to understand why the skyrmions that form (right) are so robust. (Courtesy: H Chang) Researchers in China have produced a phenomenon known as the giant skyrmion topological Hall effect in a two-dimensional material using only a small amount of current to manipulate the skyrmions responsible for it. The finding, which a team at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Hubei observed in a ferromagnetic crystal discovered in 2022, comes about thanks to an electronic spin interaction known to stabilize skyrmions.…
As a Palestinian in diaspora, nothing builds my connection to the land more than literature. It is not just the scenes detailed by our great poets that makes the ground feel realer under my feet, but the gravitational pull towards each other that gives me belief in that liberated homeland. In my work as a critic, I’ve often played it safe; devoted my time to works I loved or could situate as a positive contribution to the culture, shying away from being public in my negative critiques. As I read and re-read Ghassan Kanafani’s On Zionist Literature, I am reminded…
I am a memoirist, a writer who juices the moments and characters in my life as a way to make sense of it all. This proves challenging, however, when I consider that I have very few memories from before I turned twelve. There’s a deep blackness in that part of my hippocampus, where the brain stores memory. I often imagine that place within my mind like a never-ending storage unit filled with innumerable servers or cabinets, each accounting for various moments in my life. In the way way back, if you can reach that place, you’ll find just a single…
Researchers from MIT and Northeastern University developed a liquid crystal elastomer fibre that can change its shape in response to thermal stimuli. The fibre, which is fully compatible with existing textile manufacturing machinery, could be used to make morphing textiles, like a jacket that becomes more insulating to keep the wearer warm when temperatures drop. (Courtesy: J Forman et al) A new type of fibre reversibly changes its shape in response to temperature and can be spun into threads to make entire morphing garments. Potential applications for the technology include compression garments for post-surgical recovery, adaptive architectural interiors and even…
As an immigrant, I initially binged Norwegian literature to learn more of the language and the culture of my new home, but it soon felt more like an escapist pastime. Racism clouded most of my off-the-page interactions until I forged relationships with BIPOC Norwegians who empathized and shared their strategies. In my novella Sita in Exile, set in the contemporary Norwegian Arctic, the protagonist’s preferred escape route isn’t fiction, but Hindu mythology. Sita, a newlywed desi copywriter from the Chicago suburbs, has followed in her mother’s footsteps in a way neither of them would have expected: just as her then-newlywed…
I Turned My Lover Into a McRib The McDonald’s Boyfriend When I wake up, Kai has a hump jutting out of his back. Except, when I wipe the sleep from my face, I see the hump is a McDonald’s restaurant about the size of a backpack. He’s bent over in the snail position, naked except for a pair of boxers, inspecting himself in the mirror door, his face creased with concentration. I love McDonald’s. I love it so much, in fact, I use it as an emotional measuring stick. For example, I do this thing where I say I’d rather…
(a) Droplets sliding down (l-r) a single fibre, a bundle of two fibres and a bundle of three fibres. A liquid film appears behind each droplet. (b) Horizontal cuts of each system, showing dry fibres in front of the droplet (orange), the droplet cross section (light blue), and the liquid film of thickness δ left behind after the passage of the droplet (dark blue). (Courtesy: Physical Review Fluids (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevFluids.8.103601) Water droplets move faster down bundles of fibres than down individual fibres – even when the total perimeter of the two structures is identical. This discovery, from researchers at…
In this articleWFCFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTPeople pass by a Wells Fargo bank on May 17, 2023 in New York City.Spencer Platt | Getty ImagesWells Fargo was snared in an industrywide probe into mortgage bankers’ use of loan discounts last year, CNBC has learned.The discounts, known as pricing exceptions, are used by mortgage personnel to help secure deals in competitive markets. At Wells Fargo, for instance, bankers could request pricing exceptions that typically lowered a customer’s APR by between 25 to 75 basis points.The practice, used for decades across the home loan industry, has triggered regulators’ interest in recent…
In this articleHPQBRK.AFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTWarren Buffett tours the floor ahead of the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder’s Meeting in Omaha, Nebraska.David A. Grogan | CNBCWarren Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway has reduced its stake in HP to 5.2%, according to a regulatory filing released Monday night.The conglomerate previously had a nine-day selling streak in mid-September through early October, bringing down the bet on the printer and PC maker to about 10%.Shares of HP dipped more than 1% in after-hours trading Monday following the news.Berkshire still owns 51.5 million shares of HP, worth about $1.6 billion based on Monday’s close of $30.37. The Omaha-based…
In this article.HSI.NSEIFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTPedestrians walk towards the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station at dusk in Mumbai, India, on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023.Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesIndia’s stock market value has overtaken Hong Kong’s to become the seventh largest in the world as optimism about the country’s economic prospects grows.As of the end of November, the total market capitalization of the National Stock Exchange of India was $3.989 trillion versus Hong Kong’s $3.984 trillion, according to data from the World Federation of Exchanges.India’s Nifty 50 index reached another record high on Tuesday. It has jumped 16%…
Michael Milken attends Prostate Cancer Foundation’s Dinner At Daniel on November 19, 2019 at Daniel in New York City.Paul Bruinooge | Patrick McMullan | Getty ImagesFamed investor Michael Milken expects the Federal Reserve will move slowly on monetary policy — if history is any guide.In fact, the Milken Institute founder expects the central bank will be sure to tamp out inflation before starting to cut rates so as to avoid a repeat of the 1970s, when inflation ran high in the double digits, Milken said on CNBC’s “Last Call” on Monday. He was speaking from the Hope Global Forum in…
A logo for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesBritish investment platforms Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell saw their shares plunge on Tuesday after a U.K. regulator warned 42 firms that it may intervene on fees and interest charges.Hargreaves Lansdown shares were down more than 7% by late morning trade, while AJ Bell fell more than 8% after the Financial Conduct Authority announced it had written to investment platforms with concerns over the way they deal with interest earned on customers’ cash balances.The FCA recently surveyed the 42 companies and found that the majority retained some…
Kentaroo Tryman | Maskot | Getty ImagesInflation declined slightly last month on the back of weaker prices at the gasoline pump and a broader easing of price pressures throughout the U.S. economy, experts said.The consumer price index in November increased 3.1% from 12 months earlier, down from 3.2% in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday.”There is still a lot of disinflationary pressure in the system,” which will likely drive inflation even lower heading into 2024, said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo Economics.The CPI is a key barometer of inflation, measuring how quickly the prices of…
The Pleo app pictured on a smartphone next to one of the fintech firm’s corporate cards.PleoDanish fintech firm Pleo has appointed a new chief financial officer, the company told CNBC exclusively, beefing up its executive team — a sign the company is readying itself for an eventual initial public offering.The company hired Soren Westh Lonning, a financial services executive with more than 20 years at companies such as Danish bioscience firm Chr Hansen, hearing aid company WS Audiology, and Danish Endurance, a sports and outdoor clothing startup.Most notably, Lonning had experience as CFO at Danish food enzyme maker Chr Hansen.…