LAST UPDATE May 9, 2023
News and information culled from the internet
ARMED ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
US Air Force experimenting with AI fighter plane pilots
Story at Sandboxx
PLACES
Times Square Live Stream on You Tube
DEMENTIA
Eli Lilly announces study of drug Donanemab slowed the progression of symptoms by 35% over 18 months in participants – MSN UPI Press
BRAINS
Study sees important link of Lipid Omega-3 to health of myelin sheaths which happen to protect nervous systems in body – Technology Networks
This opens up potential avenues to develop therapies and dietary supplements based on LPC omega-3 lipids that might help retain myelin in the ageing brain—and possibly to treat patients with neurological disorders stemming from reduced myelination."
PLACES
White House Live Stream on You Tube
REAL ESTATE
Private Scottish island for sale: $188K
Address: Kirkcudbright DG6 4UD, United Kingdom
Details at United Press Int'l
Downside: electrical power is a bit iffy, to say the least.
Upside: 25 acre island.
RECORDINGS
385K 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings at Archive.org – Archive.org
BUT IS THAT PARTIALLY DIGITAL ONLY?
Public domain collection of the Smithsonian now at 4.5 Million Objects – Kottke
PEOPLE
James Smithson
Origin of the Smithsonian
James Smithson, the English chemist and mineralogist who bequeathed the funds to establish the Smithsonian Institution, was born in 1765 and died on June 27, 1829.
Smithson's reasons for leaving his wealth for this purpose in a land he had never visited has been explained as a reaction by the man to his life experience. A "natural" son to the Duke of Northumberland, he petitioned the Royal Court for the use of his father's name, and it took some time before that was granted. Though Smithson was a respected scientist (and gambler) in Britain, his own career reached it's peak fame only as vice president of the Royal Society. These two events, to bring fame to his name (he is quoted to have stated "My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and Percys are extinct and forgotten"), and to enlarge scientific work in a place not governed by the institutional powers that he found to be inhibiting, are thought to be his rationale for funding a scientific institute in the United States
COSMOLOGY
The New (and Old) Astronautical suits – Business Insider
There's new suits designed for the moon-return project at NASA
The Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit suits, or AxEMUs, will be delivered to NASA by the summer. The dark gray and orange version unveiled in March 2023 is a prototype, and the final version will be white.
LANGUAGES
It is estimated there are 7,000 languages spoken around the globe, though it is considered by experts that there are many languages that are undocumented and some on the brink of extinction.
The Ethnologue database of world languages lists 7,117 living languages in the world. How many people actually speak each language varies from millions of users to just a hundred, or even less: Ainu, an indigenous language spoken primarily by the Ainu people on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido with an estimate of only a handful of speakers. (Efforts are being made to preserve and revitalize the Ainu language).
In counting the number of languages spoken one must also consider languages that are spoken in multiple dialects. Linguists estimate that between 50 and 90 percent of the world's languages are expected to become extinct in the coming century due to the phenomenon of globalization, with dominant languages (such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, etc) spreading by being necessary for commercial enterprise, but lesser used languages falling into disuse from those same conditions.
Writing Language
The majority of languages in the world are written from left to right, with the characters or letters appearing in sequence from left to right. This is the case for many of the world's most widely spoken languages, such as English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Russian, etc.
However, there are also several languages that are traditionally written from right to left, with the characters or letters appearing in sequence from right to left. These languages include Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu, etc.
And there are languages that are written vertically, with characters or letters appearing in columns from top to bottom, such as traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
In recent times, many vertical-writing languages have also adopted horizontal writing systems for digital communication or print media. For example, modern Japanese is often written horizontally in electronic media, while traditional vertical writing is still used for many formal documents and publications.
