1. Astronomers Identify Closest Black Hole to Earth  VOA Learning English
2. Astronomers find closest black hole to Earth yet to be discovered  9News
3. New black hole discovered - and it's the closest to Earth ever found, say scientists  Mirror Online
4. View Full coverage on Google News

Anyone interested in architecture should read this book by Stewart Brand. Brand won a National Book Award for the Whole Earth Catalog, and is a co-founder of Global Business Network, a futurist research organization fostering "the art of the long view." How Buildings Learn features a lot of illustrations and insights about building and buildings. I especially enjoy the comparison of two structures on the campus of MIT:

The legendary Building 20 (1943) was an artifact of wartime haste. Designed in an afternoon by MIT grad Don Whiston, it was ready for occupancy by radar researchers six months later... In an undertaking similar in scope to the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb, the emergency development of radar employed the nation's best physicists in an intense collaboration that changed the nature of science. Unlike Los Alamos, the MIT radar project was not run by the military, and unlike Los Alamos, no secrets got out. The verdict of scientists afterward was, "The atom bomb only ended the war. Radar won it." ... Author Fred Hapgood wrote in 1993 of Building 20, "The edifice is so ugly that it is impossible not to admire it, if that makes sense; it has ten times the righteous nerdly swagger of any other building on campus... Although Building 20 was built with the intention to tear it down after... World War II, it has remained... providing a special function... Not assigned to any one school, department, or center, it seems to always have had space for the beginning project, the graduate student's experiment, the interdisciplinary research center.

In a later chapter, Brand describes famous architect I.M. Pei's third MIT building, known informally as the Media Lab and formally as the Wiesner Building:

It may have been my familiarity with MIT's homely, accommodating Building 20 just across the street that made the $45 million pretentiousness, ill-functionality, and non-adaptability of the Media Lab building so shocking to me... Nowhere in the whole building is there a place for casual meetings, except for a tiny, overused kitchen. Corridors are narrow and barren. Getting new cabling through the interior concrete walls - a necessity in such a laboratory - requires bringing in jackhammers. You can't even move office walls around, thanks to the overhead fluorescent lights being at a Pei-signature 45-degree angle to everything else.

The Media Lab building, I discovered, is not unusually bad. Its badness is the norm in new buildings overdesigned by architects...

Brand finishes How Buildings Learn with a list of good books, writing, "They are the texts I would reach for if I was going to work on a building..."

No need to be embarrassed, you'll perfect that wheelie technique eventually.

~NSHA

Environmental News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Environmental News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DENVER (April 23, 2020)) - Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized Sprouts Farmers Market Store #305 in Aurora, CO and Sprouts Farmers Market Store #325 in Englewood, CO, with 2019 Food Recovery Challenge Regional Awards.

Environmental News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(PHILADELPHIA, April 28, 2020) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized Towson University in Maryland today with a 2019 Food Recovery Challenge Regional Award.

Environmental News  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Many companies use the term artificial intelligence, or AI, as a way to generate excitement for their products and to present themselves as on the cutting edge of tech development.

But what exactly is artificial intelligence? What does it involve? And how will it help the development of future generations?

Find out the answers to these questions and more in AI 101, a brand new FREE report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, that describes how AI works and looks at its present and potential future applications.

To get your copy of the FREE slide deck, simply click here.

Join the conversation about this story »

Fear is ripe soil for the unscrupulous. With so much uncertainty and concern over our health and the broader world economy, cybercriminals have been playing on that fear to steal a few extra dollars out of the most scared and vulnerable. The U.S. Secret Service warned that phishing attacks were up significantly and scams over fake COVID-19 treatments have led to seizures and arrests.

From companies and organizations to individuals, it’s never been more important for everyone to have their cybersecurity measures on high alert. And whether you’re looking to protect your own assets or you’ve been tasked with safeguarding a company and all its workers, the vital work of white hat hackers is absolutely essential these days.

The training in The Ultimate 2020 White Hat Hacker Certification Bundle can put you in a position to understand all aspects of maintaining cybersecurity for a communication system of virtually any size, a lucrative career that can earn you a six-figure income.

The four-part Complete Cyber Security Course (taught by cybersecurity expert and noted consultant Nathan House) is a 360-degree starting point for any cybersecurity career. Starting at the beginning, each part of this multi-pronged introduction will help guide you through vital knowledge, from network hacking techniques and vulnerability scanning to all the defense methods that assure every laptop, desktop, smartphone and tablet in your network remain secure.

The hacker training continues with the rest of the courses in the collection, including building security analysis tools using Python and learning how to analyze web app security vulnerabilities and solutions using frameworks like Ruby on Rails and PHP. Read the rest

Migration and development have emerged as a pressing policy priority on the global agenda. This report identifies critical lessons from the past decade of policy experimentation and offers recommendations for migration and development policy.

When siblings Norma and Warren Williams left Jamaica to attend the funeral of a relative in Margate, South Florida, in February, they had no idea that a rapidly developing COVID-19 outbreak would have crippled global travel, leaving them stranded...

A webinar examining aspects of the implementation at state and local levels of the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that may limit immigrant integration, along with a discussion on strategies that may help ensure more equitable access for immigrants and refugees to services provided under the law.  

This Indian life by Shoba Narayan: Learning life lessons at the local bazaar  Hindustan Times

One sister was formally trained in France. The other learned how to bake off the internet and shows how you don't need to go abroad to know about bread.

Students of OM Russia's Discipleship Centre learn not only through theory but by hands-on practical experience.

OM Hope for Zurich’s kids’ club brings together immigrant children from a local neighbourhood in hopes of sharing God’s love with them and their families.

Carrie from Hong Kong was challenged and blessed at the same time as a participant in the Out of the Comfort Zone training in Malaysia.

The varied teaching styles at Teenstreet Malaysia 2016 helped teens to connect with the theme of discovering their identity.

TeenStreet Malaysia 2017 participants learned about hope and suffering from 9-13 December.

Yande learns to walk with the aid of crutches and splints provided by Bethesda Mercy Ministries.

One worker shares how leading a short-term summer outreach changed her perspective about her country and capabilities.

Source: www.justjared.com - Saturday, May 09, 2020
Looking for something fun to do while in quarantine? How about take classes from some of the world’s greatest teachers?! MasterClass makes it possible for anyone to learn from the best and the company is offering lessons from 80+ world-class instructors. The popular service was just spoofed on SNL with a hilarious sketch in which the comedians spoofed Britney Spears , Phoebe Waller-Bridge , and John Mulaney . You actually can learn acting from Oscar winners like Natalie Portman and Samuel L. Jackson , filmmaking from Martin Scorsese , singing from Christina Aguilera , tennis from Serena Williams , cooking from Gordon Ramsay , creativity and leadership from Anna Wintour , ballet technique from Misty Copeland , and business strategy from Disney’s Bob Iger . Each class includes around 20 video lessons that are 10 minutes long on average, along with an in-depth workbook. Right now, you can buy an annual membership to MasterClass that gives you access to every teacher’s lessons. For $180, you’ll get a membership, and you’ll also get to gift a membership to someone for free. This could be a perfect Mother’s Day present! Go to MasterClass.com right now to check it out and start learning. Disclosure: Some products on this site use affiliate links and we may earn commission for any purchase made through the links.

Spending the weekend with friends, Mark and Beth quickly learn that their friends’ background does not necessarily mean they follow the practices of that religion.

ESTABLISHING a consensus to maintain the peace has never been trickier. Being stuck at home for 23 hours a day has taken the already onerous challenge of preserving civil relations and lifted to it a new level altogether.

Quiz Yourself! How can Response to Intervention help struggling learners, what factors are important in raising student achievement, and what impact does the Every Student Succeeds Act have on students with disabilities who are lagging behind their peers?

The funding will establish a center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. that will focus on instructional strategies in reading and math for students with persistent learning struggles.

NIIT Technologies share price surged 15% on the stock market after the company posted a strong January-March quarter result on Tuesday.

A proxy advisory firm has raised objections to the corporate governance structure at Zee Learn, part of the Essel group, expressing concerns over the company’s capital allocation decision, related-party transactions and acquisition of MT Educare.

Shashwati, a news analyst, is able to do research at home, but her effectiveness has dropped in the absence of the right infrastructure.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has allowed resuming operations in the gardens of Darjeeling, Doars and Terai with a workforce of 25%.

The investors sentiment was also dented by the weak results reported by some of the heavyweights; the Street chose to stay cautious ahead of results from other blue chips given the trend so far has been somewhat mixed.

Today, when the US, China, UK, France, etc, which spend much more on healthcare than other nations are facing a crisis, one can very well understand how bad the situation could have been if the outbreak was in the third world, where a majority of global poor live with very little or no access to public health care. The situation would have been much worse.

The forced lockdown period is a good opportunity for everyone to learn basics such as making online fund transfers via the payment gateways, pay renewals, and check balances, etc from the comfort of home.

Zoetis recently won two awards for industry-leading innovation in the 2016 Animal Pharm Awards competition. Animal Pharm, the most widely read newsletter reporting on the animal health industry, announced the award winners on January 17.

Earning calls sure are interesting! Below is an excerpt from the TSMC Q209 call (transcript from seekingalpha). The discussion revolves around the 40nm yield issues and TSMC's ramp to improving the yield. Dr. Liu really hits on a key element of DFM...(read more)

Cadence offers a new Rapid Adoption Kit for logic built in self test tasks.(read more)

The third quarter earnings season has been quite eventful for my Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2013 and six alternative picks model portfolios, so much so that writing about them has taken a back seat to keeping up with the announcements. There were a number of earnings disappointments and earnings announcements which were in line with my expectations but the market treated like disappointments. These resulted in an overall decline of 2.5 percent for the portfolio since the last update, even as my industry benchmarks, the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy (PBW) and my small cap benchmark (IWM) were up 1.0 percent and 3.9 percent over the months since October 15th.

As we come into the final stretch of 2013, my annual model portfolio of Ten Clean Energy Stocks for 2013 looks certain to break its five year winning streak of beating its industry benchmark. As of December 6th, the model portfolio's total return has been 19.0 percent, compared to a sunny 56.1 percent for my benchmark, the Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy (PBW). The broad market, as represented by the Russell 2000, also resoundingly beat my model portfolio, and is up 37.5 percent. My six alternative picks fared even worse than my top ten.