New Scientist Magazine – August 12, 2023 issue: The Four Ways to Age; Can Quantum Simulations ever be real?; Heaviest animal ever; Spotting Saturn’s Rings; Concrete batteries; Finding Homo Naledi and more…
Your body is ageing down one of four – or more – possible pathways. Figuring out your “ageotype” could help you zero in on the things you can do to stay healthier for longer
THERE is a (probably apocryphal) story about Henry Ford sending agents out to junkyards across the US in search of scrapped Model Ts. The famous industrialist wanted to know which of the car’s vital components failed first, so he could do something about it. The agents reported back that every bit of the car was susceptible to failure, but some were more susceptible than others, except for one – a component of the steering system called the kingpin, which almost never failed. They expected Ford to announce plans to extend the working lives of the weaker components. Instead, he ordered his engineers to make less resilient kingpins. No point wasting good money on a component that always outlived the others.
nature Magazine – August 10, 2023 issue: Algorithm designs 3D shapes to follow specific pathways; Why Indigenous youth need a voice in the climate debate; DNA leaks linked to inflammageing in the brains of mice; JWST spots what could be a quasar from the early Universe….
The Scopus, Dimensions and Web of Science databases are introducing conversational AI search.
The conversational AI-powered chatbots that have come to Internet search engines, such as Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing, look increasingly set to change scientific search, too. On 1 August, Dutch publishing giant Elsevier released a ChatGPT-like artificial-intelligence (AI) interface for some users of its Scopus database, and British firm Digital Science announced a closed trial of an AI large language model (LLM) assistant for its Dimensions database. Meanwhile, US firm Clarivate says it’s working on bringing LLMs to its Web of Science database.
The Guardian Weekly (August 11, 2023)– The issue features Trump playing the victim, escape from Xinjiang, a day off with Matthew Broderick and more…
Donald Trump’s appearance in court in Washington last week to plead not guilty to his third indictment on criminal charges showed how the 45th president of the United States continues to defy every law of political physics.Washington bureau chief David Smith explores how playing the political martyr only firms up support for Trump to be the Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential race and silences critics within his party as well as among Democrats. We profile Trump’s new nemesis, prosecutor Jack Smith, while reporter Chris McGreal takes the temperature among voters in Iowa where the first Republican caucus will take place in January next year.
There have been few authoritative accounts of China’s persecution of the Uyghur people and the repression of their culture in Xinjiang province.Our main feature is an extract from poet Tahir Hamut Izgil’s memoir that details how, seeing the crackdown intensify and friends arrested, he planned to escape knowing that he dare not even say goodbye to his parents.
As the Hollywood industrial action continues, actors and directors have withdrawn from promoting their work, but luckily for Culture Xan Brooks caught up with Matthew Broderick just before the strike was called.He talks about his role as Richard Sackler in the new Netflix drama about the OxyContin scandal, playing opposite his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, on stage and why escaping his legacy as Ferris Bueller is not an option.
Archaeologists have spent decades excavating the remnants of the Cossack capital of Baturyn in north-central Ukraine. Based on the excavation’s findings, the Ukrainian government has reconstructed the town’s citadel—including the wooden Church of the Resurrection, defensive walls, rampart, and moat—which was destroyed by Russian soldiers in 1708.
In 1708, Peter the Great destroyed Baturyn, a bastion of Cossack independence and culture
By DANIEL WEISS
On November 2, 1708, thousands of Russian troops acting on the orders of Czar Peter I, known as Peter the Great, stormed Baturyn, the Cossack capital in north-central Ukraine. The Cossack leader, or hetman, Ivan Mazepa—who had been a loyal vassal of the czar until not long before—had departed with much of his army several days earlier to join forces with the Swedish king Charles XII, Peter’s opponent in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). The fortified core of Baturyn consisted of a citadel on a high promontory overlooking the Seim River and a larger adjoining fortress densely packed with buildings, above which soared the brick Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. The citadel and fortress were each surrounded by defensive walls, earthen ramparts, and moats whose sides were lined with logs. Although they sustained heavy losses, the Russian forces managed to seize Baturyn, which proved to be a key victory.
Times Literary Supplement (August 11, 2023): – Race today and yesterday – The Black and Asian British experience; Orwell’s political pilgrimage; Germany via Scotland; Adam Mars-Jones trilogy and the Grenfell play…
Country Life Magazine – August 9, 2023:The art of the shell seeker; High time – the daring life of a steeplejack; Animal architects; grand rentals and Thelwell’s legacy…
The master builders of the British countryside
Exploring labyrinthine tunnels and forest skyscrapers, John Lewis-Stempel gets lost in the world of animal architecture
Grace and favour rooms
Many grand country houses are now welcoming overnight guests. Rosie Paterson checks in
Always reaching for the stars
Ben Lerwill requires a head for heights as he meets steeplejacks working at the top of their game
Art in America Magazine (August 8, 2023) – The issue features Fall 2023: Icons – Artists who have made an impact, plus The Ruscha Effect, Cave_bureau, Pippa Garner, Marfa vs. Naoshima, Françoise Gilot, and more.
Suzanne Jackson: a history drawing-cracked wall, 2016–19.PHOTO TIMOTHY DOYON/COURTESY ORTUZAR PROJECTS, NEW YORK
Suzanne Jackson, whose work a history drawing-cracked wall (2016–19) features on the cover of the Fall 2023 issue of Art in America in a detail of the larger work shown here in full, told A.i.A. the backstory of her creation from her home in Savannah, Georgia. (Jackson is also the subject of a feature profile in the same issue.)
As told to A.i.A. The “history” in history drawing is thehistory of making the drawing. Over the three years I was working on it—it’s a big drawing—the whole process just happens from day to day: you’re adding something new, building it, working through composition and how elements come into the spaces in different ways. Each time you come back to work on it, something new has happened in your life.
Literary Review of Canada – September 2023: The September issue features Michael Taube on Jason Kenney, the life of Jack Austin, the legacy of a horse racing dynasty, our tenacious statistics bureau, memories of melmac, and Vincent Lam’s latest—with a cover from Alexander MacAskill.
The question is asked all the time, usually in unpoetic moments; it’s an occupational hazard of teaching literature. There I’ll be at the clinic, sinuses on fire, when sure enough the doctor asks, “What’s your favourite book?” My practised answer, no hemming and hawing, is Moby-Dick. Everyone’s heard of it, and it sounds reassuringly substantial. (No one wants to hear a professor say Twilight.) “Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience,” I’ll mumble to myself as I walk out with my prescription.
From the start, women were at the center of the demonstrations that swept Iran last year. Schoolgirls emerged as an unexpected source of defiant energy.
One morning this past winter, the students at a girls’ high school in Tehran were told that education officials would arrive that week to inspect their classrooms and check compliance with the school’s dress code: specifically, the wearing of the maghnaeh, a hooded veil that became a requirement for schoolgirls in the years after the Iranian Revolution. During lunch, a group of students gathered in the schoolyard. A thirteen-year-old in the seventh grade, whom I’ll call Nina, pressed in to hear what was being said. At the time, mass protests against the government were raging across the country; refusing to wear the veil had become a symbol of the movement. An older girl told the others that it was time for them to join together and make a stand.
The twenty-nine-year-old musician pursues technical, rather than emotional, manipulation with her instrument. She can coax from it the sounds of an accordion, a drum, or a string orchestra.
“Do you listen to Sudan Archives?” Most of the time, but not every time, the response to this question is one of confusion. How can one listen to the archives of a country? Sudan Archives is, in fact, a twenty-nine-year-old musician—a singer, rapper, producer, arranger, lyricist, and violinist. She creates a “fiddle-punk sound,” as she describes it, that blends folk, ambient, soul, house, and whatever other tradition she feels is available for the taking. Sudan (the name that her colleagues, her fans, and, increasingly, her intimates call her) begins composing by striking a riff on one of her five violins, which she uses differently from most other American producers.
The Hunt family owns one of the largest private oil companies in the country. Leah Hunt-Hendrix funds social movements that want to end the use of fossil fuels.
Let’s say you were born into a legacy that is, you have come to believe, ruining the world. What can you do? You could be paralyzed with guilt. You could run away from your legacy, turn inward, cultivate your garden. If you have a lot of money, you could give it away a bit at a time—enough to assuage your conscience, and your annual tax burden, but not enough to hamper your life style—and only to causes (libraries, museums, one or both political parties) that would not make anyone close to you too uncomfortable. Or you could just give it all away—to a blind trust, to the first person you pass on the sidewalk—which would be admirable: a grand gesture of renunciation in exchange for moral purity. But, if you believe that the world is being ruined by structural causes, you will have done little to challenge those structures.
American Heritage Magazine (August 2023) – This World War II issue features ‘Was the Bomb Necessary?’; Struggling to End the War; What were the Japanese Thinking?; Hersey Uncovers the Horror, The Bomb’s Toxic Legacy, and more…
American bombings in Japan, such as the firebombing of Tokyo during Operation Meetinghouse on March 10, 1945, left approximately 84,000 civilians dead. Photo by Ishikawa Koyo
In the spring of 1945, American bombing raids destroyed much of Tokyo and dozens of other Japanese cities, killing at least 200,000 people, without forcing a surrender.
After the bloody battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, planners feared as many as two million American deaths if the US invaded the Japanese homeland.
By the summer of 1944, U.S. military power in the Pacific Theater had grown spectacularly. Beginning days after the D-Day invasion in France, American forces launched their largest attacks yet against the Japanese-held islands of Saipan on June 15, Guam on July 21, and Tinian on July 24. Situated 1,200 to 1,500 miles south of Japan in the crescent-shaped archipelago known as the Marianas, they were strategically important, defending the empire’s vital shipping lanes from Asia and preventing increased aerial attacks on the homeland.
Much of the debate over ending the war centered on the role of Emperor Hirohito, the “living deity,” after the conflict. Library of Congress
As defeat became inevitable in the summer of 1945, Japan’s government and the Allies could not agree on surrender terms, especially regarding the future of Emperor Hirohito and his throne.
As the Allied armies closed in on the German capital in 1945, the complications for ending the war in Europe paled, in comparison with the difficulty of forcing a Japanese surrender. For the Japanese military, the concept was unthinkable, a state of mind confirmed by the hundreds of thousands of Japanese servicemen who had already been killed, rather than giving up a hopeless contest.
For the Japanese leadership, the whole strategy of the Pacific war had been predicated on the idea that, after initial victories, a compromise would be reached with the Western enemies to avoid having to fight to a surrender. Switzerland was thought of as a possible neutral intermediary; so, too, the Vatican, for which reason a Japanese diplomatic mission was established there early in the war.
The Japanese government watched the situation in Italy closely, when General Pietro Badoglio became prime minister after the fall of Mussolini’s fascist regime, and remained in power after the Italian surrender in 1943. If Badoglio could modify unconditional surrender by retaining the government and Victor Emmanuel as king, then a “Badoglio” solution in Japan might ensure the survival of its imperial system.
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