On May 1, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings hosted the 10th annual Sakıp Sabancı lecture featuring former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In her remarks, Secretary Albright offered perspectives on Turkey’s political and economic development during a period of rapid global transformation. She also explored how Turkey’s evolution is shaping its partnership with…

Playful Learning Landscapes lies at the intersection of developmental science and transformative placemaking to help urban leaders and practitioners advance and scale evidence-based approaches to create vibrant public spaces that promote learning and generate a sense of community ownership and pride. On Wednesday, February 26, the Center for Universal Education and the Bass Center for…

Last year’s COP21 summit saw global economic powers and leading greenhouse gas emitters—including the United States, China, and India—commit to the most ambitious clean energy targets to date. Bolstered by sharp reductions in costs and supportive government policies, renewable power spread globally at its fastest-ever rate in 2015, accounting for more than half of the…

Our photo of the day comes from beautiful Erawan National Park in Western Thailand.

An isolated winter scene beats out the competition in the annual awards ceremony.

In a tale of intrigue and derring-do, the crafty cephalopod slipped out of his enclosure and found his way to freedom.

And in the meantime, the bodacious bovine has become a social media star and will receive a full pardon … as soon as they can get her out of the woods.

Authorities in Ohio are warning residents to remain inside their houses after dozens of exotic animals had apparently broken free of an area wildlife farm and taken to the streets and highways. Police haven't said exactly

Residents of Muskingum County in Ohio got quite a shock this week after dozens of exotic animals broke free from an area wildlife farm and took to the streets and highways.

Everything you need to know about building a proper blanket fort.

TreeHugger has been a fan of photographer Ed Burtynsky's work for a long time. We first spotted it here and have enjoyed watching him branch out into film with "Manufactured Landscapes", which was recently released in the US and the UK after debuting

Celebrated English painter David Hockney has turned to the iPad as his canvas -- embracing the latest technology despite his age.

Aiming to raise awareness about e-waste recycling, this photographer used 4,100 pounds of e-waste in these futuristic scenes.

Books aren't just for reading -- you can carve incredible works out of them too, as this artist has done with this 24-volume set.

Bourgeois / Lechasseur architects figure out how to square the circle.

One can build a house out of wood and cover it up, or one can celebrate the nature of wood, as this one in Slavonice, Czech Republic does. Designed by E - M.R.A.K. | Martin Rajniš, Kamila Amblerová, Václav Horecký, it is built out of unplaned, uncut

These pink and blue-tinted photographs suggest that our biology has a big influence on the way we perceive reality.

A Brooklyn-based design studio turns to digital animation to generate the patterns for these striking rugs made out of recycled carpet pieces.

These textile works of art are bursting with soft corals, algae and more.

In photographer Yao Lu's "View of Waterfall with Rocks and Pines," two men stand underneath the spreading branches of a gnarled pine tree, aiming their cameras off in the distance, where

Dozens of sheep and goats broke out of a slaughterhouse in upstate New York on Tuesday night, and gave police quite the runaround.

Oh, and the donut building on top is coming along nicely too.

This tasteful van home features a comfortable interior, and includes a removable bed to allow for transporting larger cargo.

Elevated above a flood-prone salt marsh on the Essex coast, this small beach house looks like a bird perched among the grasses.

The Cultural Landscape Foundation introduces a prize that rivals architecture's Pritzker or Stirling.

There are no trees in the winning shots, but it's still a stirring series of photos.

Virtual tour of 350 Fifth, a new 20-story office building in one of the top-ranked U.S. cities for sustainable buildings. Pt. 1 Pittsburgh-Gateway to the World & 350 Fifth Urban Genius.

In the coming weeks, I want to blog about a typical day on board; tell little stories of routines and big stories of adventures, in pictures; introduce you to some of the characters from my journey; familiarize you with the beautiful Antigua; and talk a little about my writing work on board.

I want to start, though, with a simple series of landscape photos, just to give a sense of atmosphere. For two weeks, with the exception of one day when we docked at the research station in Ny-Ålesund, we were alone on both land and sea. At the beginning of our trip, on October 1, we had about 10 and a half hours of daylight. As the trip progressed, we began to lose daylight steeply, as much as 40 minutes per day, such that when we returned to Longyearbyen on October 15, we had about 6 and a half hours of daylight. Can you imagine such a change, over the course of two weeks?

It made for some dramatic and moody skies.

Notice, in these pictures, how often my camera would reach for the Antigua in the distance :o). While I took these pictures, I was cold, in a remote and vast place where wind and ice were the only sounds. Often I was on land, a Zodiac-ride away from the ship, for hours. The Antigua in the distance meant warmth and home.

I'll start with the map of our route around the western and northwestern coast of Spitsbergen. I won't be identifying locations in this post -- forgive me, but it would add a couple of hours to this posting, and I don't have that tonight -- but I do want you to have a general idea of where we were. Please do click on the pictures to embiggen and also see them in higher resolution/better quality. These pictures are insufficient to express the range of what we saw -- but I will fill that out more in coming posts!

После нескольких лет разработки состоялся релиз свободного векторного графического редактора Inkscape 1.0. Редактор предоставляет гибкие инструменты для рисования и обеспечивает поддержку чтения и сохранения изображений в форматах SVG, OpenDocument Drawing, DXF, WMF, EMF, sk1, PDF, EPS, PostScript и PNG. Готовые сборки Inkscape подготовлены для Linux (AppImage, Snap, Flatpak), macOS и Windows.

• Mac OS
• Graphics
• Linux

I am old. I’m so old that, when I entered the industry, we didn’t have specializations like “frontend” and “backend” developers. You just had developers, and everybody just sort muddled about. As web...

Well, well, this quick and informative Tumblr post provides just the kind of knowledge that one would sincerely hope they never have to employ. Yes, we're talking about making an escape from a coffin, if one ever finds themselves in the predicament of being buried alive. Hopefully, it's knowledge that never needs to be used. But here it is anyways. Good old Tumblr pulling through in the weirdest of ways, yet again. 

When gas began leaking from a nearby chemical factory and drifting towards his house in southern India, there were no warnings and no alarms, welder Elamanchili Venkatesh said. Venkatesh, who staggered outside blindly, said he coughed up blood before losing consciousness.

The Escape Room

U/A: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Director: Adam Robitel
Cast: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Woll, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine
Rating: 

These so-called 'live' reality game movies occupy a sub-genre of their own and Hollywood has been churning out quite a few of them following the Young Adult's obsessive fixation with material that encompasses it in entirety. But they are not all as thrilling or compelling as the first few that made it to hit franchise levels.

'Escape Room' is basically a set-up to get rid of six nondescript lone survivors through a series of life-threatening puzzles designed to test their survival instincts. And why pray does that have to happen? There's not much explanation here for that. Just swim with the tide, is all they ask. Unfortunately, it's not that easy for the audience because the viewer has to constantly suppress the disbelief that springs up every time the participants go through haranguing moments that willy-nilly put their lives in peril.

Check out the trailer here:

This is a far more perilous version of the more recent spurt of high-risk Telly games and since we don't get to know or understand the participants' motives (other than the 10,000 dollar prize money) it's difficult to empathize or find a reason to pay attention to their trauma. The writers also use some uninteresting physics theory to justify the random six players' participation in a largely predictable schema of disjointed thrills. They are made to go from intense heat to intense cold, then to a gas chamber, a space crusher and a few more vicarious routines before the winner can be decided.

While the production design is vivid, there's not much holding it together. Nik Dodani as nerd Danny, Jason Ellis as irritating yuppie Jason, Tyler Labine as trucker Mike, Deborah Ann Wolf as the tough, capable war vet Amanda, Logan Miller as a young alcoholic Ben and Taylor Russell as a withdrawn college student Zoey put in imminently indistinct, forgettable performances. The writing is largely formulaic too and the helming lacks serious edge. There's really nothing here to hold your attention for the near 100 min runtime.

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Days after a video showing patients lying next to dead bodies in a Sion hospital ward went viral, another video showing a COVID-19 patient escaping the hospital through the window surfaced on social media.

In the latest video, a middle-aged man is seen running out of ward no. 5 on the ground floor of the hospital and jumping out of the window. A few minutes later, the man is brought back by the hospital staff. BJP leader Kirit Somaiya shared the video on social media on Friday and sent a written complaint to the civic body demanding action. "The incident took place on May 3 in front of ward no. 5 which is meant for COVID-19 patients. It is the same ward where another video had shown bodies lying on beds," Somaiya said.

Dr Pramod Ingle, acting dean of the hospital, said that the video is authentic but is being shown in a negative light. "Patients of COVID-19 are often under a lot of stress and suffer from psychosis. People react differently to stressful situations. Fortunately, the patient was brought back by a guard wearing a PPE kit," said Dr Ingle. He added that the guard had been congratulated for his good work and the video was from the security footage of the hospital.

Bodies to go to mortuary

The Sion hospital committee probing the video showing bodies kept at Sion hospital's COVID-19 ward has been given a day's extension by Dr Ingle.

The patient seen walking towards the window 

Meanwhile, IAS officer Prajakta Lavangare has been appointed to take charge of Sion and Cooper Hospital. She visited the hospitals on Friday. Dr Ingle said that while the enquiry report is still awaited, a new protocol has been decided to handle bodies of COVID-19 patients.

"The bodies will now be packed in plastic sheets on the bed and then shifted to the mortuary. We have two mortuaries and among them, the bigger one has a capacity to keep around 40 bodies. Families can collect bodies from there," he said adding that currently, there are 11 COVID-19 bodies at the hospital.

Catch up on all the latest Mumbai news, crime news, current affairs, and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates.

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A Writers Retreat session in progress

While most of us aren't as lucky as Ruskin Bond to call the hills of Uttarakhand home, a brief escape to nature can help get the creative juices flowing. If you love writing and feel you could do with some inspiration as well as insights into honing your prose, the upcoming edition of Writers Retreat might be your ideal getaway.

The sprawling open-air venue

Designed by the live storytelling event series, Tall Tales, and Grassroutes, an organisation that seeks to connect the urban dweller with the rural community, the two-day retreat will take place in Dehna. The village, located at a two-hour drive from Mumbai, is nestled in the Sahyadris. And thanks the many streams and rivulets that spring up during monsoon, it is also called the land of a thousand waterfalls.

Michael Burns

The retreat features seven workshops rolled into one along with some free time to explore and soak in the rural life. "The first day is all about the universal story structure - how to start stories, what to do in the middle, and how to end them. Irrespective of the language or genre, there is a basic structure that many writers with great ideas find difficult to adhere to," says Michael Burns, director of Tall Tales. The day will end with a film screening, where participants will watch a structured story unfold on screen.

The next day will get into the nuances of good writing, like designing unforgettable characters. "Some writing exercises will encourage participants to explore their relationship with nature; something that's difficult to achieve amidst the distractions of a busy city like Mumbai," signs off Burns.

On: October 1, 9 am onwards
Meeting point: To be decided three days prior to the trip
Log on to: instamojo.com
Email: akshay@talltales.in (seats limited)
Cost: '8,000 ('7,000 for students)

Land degradation is a critical problem around the world. Intensive rain-fed and irrigated crop and livestock systems have contributed to the degradation of land and natural resources.

Herpes simplex virus (HSV1) evades immune response in the brain by targeting STING (The stimulator of interferon genes) protein ubiquitination. HSV1

A research team led by Chiranjeevi Bodda in Sren Paludan's lab, discovered a molecular mechanism that helps herpes simplex virus infect the brain. Details are published in the iJournal of Experimental Medicine/i.

Using fiscal levers to escape the low-growth trap

The global economy continues to run at low speed and many countries, particularly in Europe, seem unable to overcome the legacies of the crisis. With high unemployment, high inequality and low trust still weighing heavily, it is imperative to swiftly implement reforms that boost demand and employment and raise potential growth.

The global economy continues to run at low speed and many countries, particularly in Europe, seem unable to overcome the legacies of the crisis. With high unemployment, high inequality and low trust still weighing heavily, it is imperative to swiftly implement reforms that boost demand and employment and raise potential growth.

The global economy continues to run at low speed and many countries, particularly in Europe, seem unable to overcome the legacies of the crisis. With high unemployment, high inequality and low trust still weighing heavily, it is imperative to swiftly implement reforms that boost demand and employment and raise potential growth.

The global economy continues to run at low speed and many countries, particularly in Europe, seem unable to overcome the legacies of the crisis. With high unemployment, high inequality and low trust still weighing heavily, it is imperative to swiftly implement reforms that boost demand and employment and raise potential growth.

Using fiscal levers to escape the low-growth trap

Expansionary fiscal initiatives and maintaining trade openness are needed to push the global economy out of today’s low-growth trap, according to the OECD’s latest Global Economic Outlook.

Markets and commentators are speculating that there may be a sustained pick-up in inflation in the United States, after years of subdued price pressures. Along with continued solid US jobs growth and low unemployment, there are tentative signs of higher wage growth and the fiscal stimulus will also boost short-term growth. Global growth is also getting stronger.

Using fiscal levers to escape the low-growth trap

For the last five years the global economy has been in a low-growth trap, with growth disappointingly low and stuck at around 3 per cent per year. Persistent growth shortfalls have weighed on future output expectations and thereby reduced current spending and potential output gains.