2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Eldrick
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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MarkBarrett wrote: Sun Sep 23, 2018 5:57 pmEldrick
Go on...
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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dinghammer wrote: Sun Sep 23, 2018 7:17 pm
MarkBarrett wrote: Sun Sep 23, 2018 5:57 pmEldrick
Go on...
https://deadspin.com/tiger-woods-wins-f ... 1829258292
With a score of -11 after the final day of play on Sunday, Tiger Woods earned himself a two-stroke win in the Tour Championship, the final individual tournament of this season’s PGA calendar. It was his first tournament win since the 2013 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, with a lifetime’s worth of health problems and grim news in between.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Weight Watchers is changing its name to WW (Does that make its website www.ww.com?) and broadening its line of products and services to emphasize wellness in general: https://www.freep.com/story/money/2018/ ... 1408238002

In golf, Justin Rose won the PGA FedEx Cup playoff. Tiger Woods finished second: https://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02395.html

And in a sure sign of the approaching apocalypse, the Detroit Lions upset the New England Patriots last night.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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The best thing that Neil Armstrong ever did, was to let us all imagine we were him.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Blue Lion wrote: Mon Sep 24, 2018 10:43 am
In golf, Justin Rose won the PGA FedEx Cup playoff. Tiger Woods finished second: https://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02395.html
Tiger also got his 80th tour win, first one in 5 years, and it now just 2 wins behind Sam Snead.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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https://lifehacker.com/the-new-dick-mov ... 1829271408
Merriam-Webster just updated the official Scrabble dictionary for the first time in four years...adding some new words like bizjet (opening with the plural bizjets gets you 120 points)—plus some old words that are finally deemed playable, including OK, ew, zen, and qapik.
...
OK and ew are the 102nd and 103rd two-letter words to join the Scrabble dictionary.
...
Qapik and qapiks are only the 35th and 36th Scrabble words with a Q and no U
Wait... 'zen' wasn't acceptable before?! (Was it a proper noun thing?)
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Volante wrote: Mon Sep 24, 2018 1:30 pm https://lifehacker.com/the-new-dick-mov ... 1829271408
Merriam-Webster just updated the official Scrabble dictionary for the first time in four years...adding some new words like bizjet (opening with the plural bizjets gets you 120 points)—plus some old words that are finally deemed playable, including OK, ew, zen, and qapik.
...
OK and ew are the 102nd and 103rd two-letter words to join the Scrabble dictionary.
...
Qapik and qapiks are only the 35th and 36th Scrabble words with a Q and no U
Wait... 'zen' wasn't acceptable before?! (Was it a proper noun thing?)
It was a proper noun thing. Apparently it almost made it into the Scrabble dictionary 4 years ago when Hasbro let Facebook voters decide on one new word to be added, but it lost in the final round to GEOCACHE. (Apparently ardent geocachers were encouraged to vote early and often.)
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Arby's, because your stomach knows what it did, (but actually Roark Capital, the parent company) is buying Sonic

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-soni ... SKCN1M51TG
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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https://thetakeout.com/chocolate-cottag ... 1829329205
There is s cottage made entirely out of chocolate in France that rents for only $59 a night.
...
Everything in the cottage is chocolate, right down to the delightful knickknacks and bric-a-brac (except for an outdoor table, the bed, and floors, for somewhat obvious reasons).
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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https://earther.gizmodo.com/hurricane-w ... 1829437385
Hurricane Walaka spun up over the weekend in the central Pacific Ocean. It’s turning into a powerful storm, though it will likely miss Hawaii and shuffle off into the ocean. But it will occupy a special place in history.

Wakala is the last name on a set of lists created in 1982 for Central Pacific hurricanes. It took 36 years to get to the end of the 48 names. But we made it, folks. The basin’s next named storm will be Akoni, going back to the start of the very first list.

The names in the Central Pacific operate a bit different than the more familiar Atlantic hurricane names. The Atlantic has six lists of 26 names that run from A to Z that are swapped out year after year. The Central Pacific has four lists of names that are alphabetical, but don’t include every letter of the alphabet. And rather than starting a new list for every calendar year like the Atlantic, the Central Pacific has just let the four lists run their course.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Gah! It's Nobel week! I should've remembered, the ig nobels weren't that long ago and I still forgot to put up decorations...

First up: Physiology or Medicine
https://gizmodo.com/nobel-prize-for-med ... 1829436863

James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo shared the prize for advancing cancer treatments that use the body's own immune system or ‘immune checkpoint therapy.’
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Volante wrote: Mon Oct 01, 2018 12:36 pm https://earther.gizmodo.com/hurricane-w ... 1829437385
Hurricane Walaka spun up over the weekend in the central Pacific Ocean. It’s turning into a powerful storm, though it will likely miss Hawaii and shuffle off into the ocean. But it will occupy a special place in history.

Wakala is the last name on a set of lists created in 1982 for Central Pacific hurricanes. It took 36 years to get to the end of the 48 names. But we made it, folks. The basin’s next named storm will be Akoni, going back to the start of the very first list.

The names in the Central Pacific operate a bit different than the more familiar Atlantic hurricane names. The Atlantic has six lists of 26 names that run from A to Z that are swapped out year after year. The Central Pacific has four lists of names that are alphabetical, but don’t include every letter of the alphabet. And rather than starting a new list for every calendar year like the Atlantic, the Central Pacific has just let the four lists run their course.
there's no Q, U, X, Y, or Z on the Atlantic lists
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Nobel Week, Day 2: Physics

https://gizmodo.com/donna-strickland-th ... 1829450105
Scientists Arthur Ashkin from the U.S.-based Bell Labs, Gérard Mourou from École Polytechnique in France, and Donna Strickland from the University of Waterloo in Canada shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work in laser physics. Strickland is the third female physics laureate ever, after Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963, and the third including Marie Curie in 1903.

Ashikin wins half of the 9 million Swedish krona prize for inventing optical tweezers, while Mourou and Strickland split the other half for devising a new procedure called chirped-pulse amplification that allowed for high-intensity laser pulses.
Short answer: Laaaasers.
Slightly longer: Optical tweezers and LASIK.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Volante wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2018 12:23 pm Nobel Week, Day 2: Physics

https://gizmodo.com/donna-strickland-th ... 1829450105
Scientists Arthur Ashkin from the U.S.-based Bell Labs, Gérard Mourou from École Polytechnique in France, and Donna Strickland from the University of Waterloo in Canada shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work in laser physics. Strickland is the third female physics laureate ever, after Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963, and the third including Marie Curie in 1903.

Ashikin wins half of the 9 million Swedish krona prize for inventing optical tweezers, while Mourou and Strickland split the other half for devising a new procedure called chirped-pulse amplification that allowed for high-intensity laser pulses.
Short answer: Laaaasers.
Slightly longer: Optical tweezers and LASIK.
Donna Strickland is only the third woman ever to win the Nobel in physics (after some notable people were snubbed, see Jocelyn Bell and Lise Meitner, for instance). She won the award largely for her first-ever published paper, the basis of her PhD thesis (supervised by Mourou). The other women Nobelists in Physics are Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert Mayer. Thus also, and trivially, the first woman physics Nobel laureate not named Marie/Maria.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Nobel Week, penultimate award: Chemistry

https://gizmodo.com/the-nobel-prize-in- ... 1829490656
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobe ... SKCN1MD10S

The prize was awarded to Francis Arnold for her work in enzymes and George Smith & Gregory P. Winter for their work with bacteriophages.
[Arnold] created random mutations in a certain enzyme’s genetic code, producing new variations of the enzyme, then selected the variations that produced the effects she most wanted—such as breaking down a milk protein. Her process has since been refined and used by herself and others to create more environmentally safe chemicals and renewable fuels.
In 1985, Smith was the first to show that phages could be used to manipulate the evolution of new proteins, a method known as phage display. Winter then used phage display to evolve new types of antibodies that could act as drugs [including Humira].
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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Volante wrote: Wed Oct 03, 2018 1:45 pm Nobel Week, penultimate award: Chemistry

https://gizmodo.com/the-nobel-prize-in- ... 1829490656
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobe ... SKCN1MD10S

The prize was awarded to Francis Arnold for her work in enzymes and George Smith & Gregory P. Winter for their work with bacteriophages.
[Arnold] created random mutations in a certain enzyme’s genetic code, producing new variations of the enzyme, then selected the variations that produced the effects she most wanted—such as breaking down a milk protein. Her process has since been refined and used by herself and others to create more environmentally safe chemicals and renewable fuels.
In 1985, Smith was the first to show that phages could be used to manipulate the evolution of new proteins, a method known as phage display. Winter then used phage display to evolve new types of antibodies that could act as drugs [including Humira].
Speaking as someone intimately familiar with their work, I'd say that both are well-deserved. Smith's technology casts a larger shadow at the moment, but Prof. Arnold's work is newer and may very well achieve as much or more. We actually interviewed a faculty candidate from her group last year -- impressive stuff.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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I was checking to see if they'd announced the Nobel winner for Literature yet, and I discovered that I had no memory of last year's winner. Like a vague, oh yeah that happened I guess, but Dylan 2 years ago overshadowed it.
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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MinnesotaMyron wrote: Thu Oct 04, 2018 11:50 am I was checking to see if they'd announced the Nobel winner for Literature yet, and I discovered that I had no memory of last year's winner. Like a vague, oh yeah that happened I guess, but Dylan 2 years ago overshadowed it.
There will be no Nobel Prize for Literature this year, a fact that may itself work its way into a J! clue...next time they have the #metoo category... ;)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/worl ... ademy.html
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Re: 2018 Current Events Study Guide

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davey wrote: Thu Oct 04, 2018 12:11 pm
MinnesotaMyron wrote: Thu Oct 04, 2018 11:50 am I was checking to see if they'd announced the Nobel winner for Literature yet, and I discovered that I had no memory of last year's winner. Like a vague, oh yeah that happened I guess, but Dylan 2 years ago overshadowed it.
There will be no Nobel Prize for Literature this year, a fact that may itself work its way into a J! clue...next time they have the #metoo category... ;)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/worl ... ademy.html
Eh, who cares when the Nobel Prize for Literature is not awarded?
Oh, wait. :)
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=532
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