The Centre is likely to designate the banking/financial sector strategic under the new privatisation policy, the contours of which are nearing finalisation. A top government official said discussions had also been held on privatising some state-owned banks that are not on the consolidation list so far.
According to the new privatisation policy, announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as part of the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ package, the government will come up with a list of strategic sectors. In each strategic sector, no more than four state-owned companies will exist. …
New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet has resigned effective Sunday, after the paper published a widely excoriated op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that advocated for military action against the ongoing anti-racism protests around the country in response to the police killing of George Floyd.
Bennet’s resignation is effective immediately, a spokesperson for the Times announced Sunday.
His deputy, Katie Kingsbury, will become acting editorial page editor through the November election.
After initially defending the decision to run the column, Bennet admitted on Friday that he had not read it prior to publication.Â
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost’s next chapter
Emily Bloch, Florida Times-Union
Published 2:37 p.m. ET June 7, 2020 | Updated 4:31 p.m. ET June 7, 2020
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A quiet Friday night on the couch between a now-former Naval Academy Alumni Association Board of Trustees member and his wife went awry when a private conversation was broadcast to hundreds.
While Scott Bethmann, 63, and his wife, Nancy, were watching the news, they started discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, making racist comments and using slurs in a video that was accidentally streamed on Facebook Live.
Bethmann resigned from his position with the alumni association. He had served on the board of a chapter in Jacksonville.
“Somehow I clicked onto some live event,†Bethmann says in the video, which went viral.
In video reviewed by the Florida Times-Union of the USA TODAY Network, Bethmann  talks about how large companies such as Citi Bank came out with statements denouncing racism and showing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I’ve got the emails about how we’re supporting and we need to fix this problem, [expletive] you,†he says in the video. “So all the white people have to say something nice to the black [expletive] that works in the office. But the black [expletive] don’t get fired. It’s [expletive]. Management’s going to fire the white people.â€
The pair discussed how minority groups, particularly women, in the military were going to “steal our intellectual property.â€
By the end of the 33-minute accidental stream, which mostly shows a black screen, Bethmann realized he was live and pointing the camera at his cream colored couch. He starts reading comments aloud and asks, “What are they talking about?†before muttering, “Oops†and cutting the feed.
His Facebook page has been taken down entirely.
Screen recordings of the video were taken Friday night before Bethmann’s page was scrubbed.
Naval Academy responds
“Scott has resigned as a local board member locally and nationally,†said Caleb Cronic, the USNA Alumni Association Jacksonville chapter president.
Cronic confirmed Bethmann was disenrolled as a member of the alumni association.
“These attributed statements do not represent the mission and values of the Alumni Association, the Naval Academy or the U.S. Navy,†Retired Adm. Samuel Locklear said in a statement. “As volunteer leaders in our communities, we must be inspirations and examples for all citizens. As Chairman of our Alumni Association, I have accepted the resignation of this alumnus effective today, and asked the Jacksonville, FL, chapter to take appropriate action to appoint a new Chapter Trustee.â€
Locklear said the alumni association represents “more than 65,000 individuals from diverse backgrounds and perspectives.â€
“We support the Naval Academy mission. As alumni, we seek to uphold the Naval Academy core leadership values of honor, courage and commitment,†he said. “As an alumni organization, we seek to be an inspiration for all young people who want to become future Navy and Marine Corps officers. We will continue to honor that inspirational role. We are all in this together. We must face the challenges of today and all future challenges of tomorrow … together.â€
“As individuals, as Sailors, and as a Navy, we cannot tolerate racism of any kind,†Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of Naval Operations, said in a statement emailed to the Times-Union. “We must actively speak out against it. And when it rears its ugly head, we must take decisive action.â€
After the Times-Union’s initial story was published, a spokesman with the Atlantic Beach Country Club confirmed Bethmann’s status as a member would be rescinded.
“Be assured we find these comments extremely offensive, inflammatory and antithetical to what this Club stands for and represents,†a statement from the country club said. “As such, we have voted today to immediately expel this member and his family from the Club.â€
The statement said the club’s directors “condemn any racist, bigoted and demeaning behavior†and are committed to protecting “an inclusionary staff and membership where respect and dignity are openly represented.â€
Despite multiple attempts – including one when the phone was answered and immediately hung up – Bethmann could not be reached for comment.
After the Times-Union and First Coast News published stories about the incident, Bethmann and his wife released a statement via their spokeswoman, Ryan Wiggins.
“This is the only statement that will be released from the family,†Wiggins said in an email. She provided a photo of the couple for publication.
Below is the family’s full statement:
“There are no words that can appropriately express how mortified and apologetic my wife and I are about the insensitive things we said that were captured on social media. There is never a time when it is appropriate to use derogatory terms when speaking about our fellow man. I know that an apology from us rings hollow on many ears in our community, especially in the current environment. We intend on using this experience as an opportunity to grow, listen, learn, and reflect. We are deeply sorry for the impact our actions have had on the Naval Academy, my fellow servicemen and women, our former colleagues, friends, family, and the community as a whole. We are committed to educating ourselves more on the racial inequalities in this country and being better people.â€
Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/07/naval-academy-alumni-board-member-resigns-after-airing-racial-slurs/3170843001/
I was one of 30 doctors who at NHS England’s request volunteered to certify deaths of people who had died “in the community†– at home – rather than in a care home or hospital.
We were sent the deceased’s name, location of death and brief details of their medical history, which the ambulance service person or police officer had gathered. We then spoke to their GP, or hospital doctor, or relatives, to glean more information about them and what might have led to their death.
For about 10 days at the peak of the pandemic in April, PMART doctors issued about 60 to 80 death certificates a day for people who had died at home, and in the end we had issued one for about 700 people in all. We each certified about 20, 30 or 40 deaths. Of the ones I did, everyone who died was over 40, and most were over 70. Many had other diseases like diabetes, obesity, breathing problems or high blood pressure and a few had a history of drug or alcohol misuse. It was profoundly sad work, and challenging, but at the same time not grim work.
Most of us did a few cases in which people had died at home alone and lain undiscovered for some days. The longest time someone had gone before being discovered that I had was a week. Those cases were sad, especially given someone’s body had started to decompose. That made it impossible to say definitively if someone had died of Covid or something else, like a heart attack. However, we assumed that many were due to Covid, often exacerbated by underlying health problems.
So that I could do this work I struck a balance between caring and enabling myself to function. I approached it as a duty to carry out as a medical professional, rather than as a friend or relative, to minimise me getting distressed as a result of feeling empathy for the deceased and their family, as that would inhibit your ability to do your job. And it helped that we did this work remotely, often from our own homes. We then passed on our findings to either the local coroner or local registrar of deaths. I suspect we will hear more about these tragic deaths of people alone at home when coroners’ inquests begin.
On the eve of schools reopening, Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize announced that the confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Africa have risen to 48 285. Â
This translates to an increase of 2 312 as the total number of confirmed cases stood at 45 973 on Saturday 6 June.Â
Mkhize announced an updated death toll of 998. This is an increase of 46 from Saturday’s toll of 952 with Mpumalanga reporting its first coronavirus death. This means that every single province in South Africa now has at least one fatality from the deadly respiratory illness.
A total of 920 064 tests have been conducted to date with 28 395 tests done in the last 24 hours. There have been 24 364 recoveries which translates to a recovery rate of 50.5%.
Latest COVID-19 cases by province as of Sunday 7 June
The following confirmed COVID-19 cases have been recorded in each province as of Sunday:Â
Eastern Cape – 5 974 cases
Free State – 361 cases;Â
Gauteng – 5 946 cases;Â
KwaZulu-Natal – 3 108 cases;Â
Limpopo – 227 cases;Â
Mpumalanga – 189 cases;Â
North West – 523 cases;Â
Northern Cape – 114 cases; andÂ
Western Cape – 31 824 cases
Unallocated – 19 cases.
The Western Cape is still the COVID-19 epicentre with the most positive cases in the country.Â
Need for more ‘COVID-19 beds’ in Western Cape
Mkhize was in the province with President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday 5 June to assess the progress in setting up COVID-19 interventions.
“There is a lot of integration of strategies and approaches into the issues that have been raised. We have focused on our hotspot strategy; the issue of sub-division of districts into sub-districts for more intensive interventions,†Mkhize said.
“We have already sent the team of Cuban specialists to come assist in the Western Cape. We have about 28 of them in this province. There have been other additional reinforcements.â€
Mkhize handed over 20 ventilators to the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, in Johannesburg. The ventilators form part of the first batch of 50 donated by the United States (US), which has has pledged 1 000 ventilators in total, valued at about R500 000 each.
“We have already decided to take a portion of this first batch [of ventilators] to the Western Cape,†said Mkhize.Â
Mkhize said there is still a need for more dedicated COVID-19 beds in the Western Cape.
“We need to push to up to 30 000 beds. The focus has got to be on those who have turned positive in the past two weeks; that’s where the large source of infection is coming from,†he said.
“We are not only dealing with positive cases; we are also dealing with the contacts. This is the area where we believe we are going to make a concerted effort to break the cycle of infection.â€
Eastern Cape a grave concern
The rapid increase of cases in the Eastern Cape, which has overtaken Gauteng as the province with the second-highest number of infections, has been a source of concern to the Health Department.
According to Mkhize, the proximity between the Eastern Cape and Western Cape has resulted in an COVID-19 “ecosystem†being formed.
“We note the same pattern that drove up the outbreak in Western Cape is building up in the Eastern Cape. The two provinces now consist of 78% of all positive cases,†Mkhize said.
He said “additional attention†was being directed to Eastern Cape to “ensure the province can adequately respond to limit escalation of infectionâ€.
A campaign for a new investigation into Dominic Cummings over alleged breaches of the lockdown rules has been launched by lawyers with the backing of health workers and some families of coronavirus victims.
The law firm Hodge Jones & Allen, which specialises in human rights and civil liberties, said the move was part of a “citizens’ bid†for a thorough investigation into Cummings over his lockdown trips to Durham and Barnard Castle.
One of the firm’s partners, Mike Schwarz, says a three-day investigation by Durham police last month was flawed after it found that no further action was required.
He is heading a legal team that is calling for a specialist unit from the Metropolitan police to investigate all of Cummings’ behaviour during the lockdown. It will also press for the Crown Prosecution Service to consider a public prosecution. If these routes fail the campaign is considering a private prosecution against Boris Johnson’s chief adviser.
Schwarz said: “The focus has been so heavily centred on Durham, but the Met have yet to examine properly, if at all, the original breach and all his surrounding activity, in London and beyond his journey to and stay in the north-east.â€
He added: “The broad consensus of public opinion is that he broke the law on public health, and the entire weight of the state has been deployed to prevent proper investigation and proper due process.â€
The initial three-day investigation by Durham police into Cummings’ behaviour found that he might have breached health protection regulations when he took a 52-mile round trip to the town of Barnard Castle, County Durham, with his wife and son on her birthday.
But it said Cummings’ 516-mile round trip from London to Durham and back had not broken health protection regulations. The force decided to take no further action after making no finding in relation to “stay at home†government guidance.
Schwarz argued that under the coronavirus regulations Cummings had failed to leave home for a good reason. He said the campaign would encourage Durham police to explain their investigation. “It seems clear even from what they have said that they were rushed, the wrong criteria were applied, there was an incomplete examination of evidence and actions taken.â€
He also believes other aspects of Cummings’ behaviour warrant investigation, including his decision to return to work on 27 March after tending to his wife who was showing symptoms of coronavirus
Schwarz said Durham police’s investigation had taken no account of the damage to public trust in the government’s health message caused by Cummings’ actions.
He said: “I have no desire to cast doubt on the integrity of Durham police but it is clear they were operating in a highly charged political environment, and we want to know exactly what they did to establish what Cummings did in Durham, given the many inconsistencies in his own account.â€
Those backing the campaign include: Andy Toogood, a mental health nurse from Hull; Dr Caroline Dickinson, a London GP; and Seamus McNally from Newmarket, whose family was unable to say goodbye to his father-in-law before he died of coronavirus.
The campaign includes the barrister Matthew Ryder, who is a member of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian Media Group.
Harry Potter actress Katie Leung is responding to author J.K. Rowling’s series of anti-trans tweets posted to her Twitter account on Saturday afternoon. Rowling received tremendous backlash for her comments, which were sparked over an op-ed piece that referred to “people who menstruate.â€
“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?†Rowling tweeted.
“I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth,†she continued, objecting to the idea that biological sex “isn’t real.â€
“I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them,†Rowling tweeted. “I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.â€
While Leung didn’t specifically call out Rowling’s remarks, which were accused of being transphobic and taking away focus from the Black Lives Matter movement, the actress did make her views on the matter clear by luring in fans by teasing some controversy of her own.
“So, you want my thoughts on Cho Chang?†she tweeted, referring to her character, a witch who attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. “Okay, here goes … (thread).â€
So, you want my thoughts on Cho Chang? Okay, here goes…(thread)
Leung’s tweet instead led to a series of fundraisers, petitions and articles educating readers about the black transgender community — especially timely given the ongoing protests for racial equality and the death of Tony McDade, a black trans man shot by a police officer in Florida last month. At the end of her thread, Leung added the hashtag “#AsiansForBlackLives.â€
Harry Potter actress Katie Leung is speaking out for the rights of black trans people following Rowling’s controversial remarks. (Photo: Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)
Leung wasn’t the only celebrity to use a Twitter thread to educate followers. Irish actress Nicola Coughlin, who did not appear in the Harry Potter series, also joined in with a similar attention-grabbing tactic, tweeting, “I’ve always had a Harry Potter story I thought I would never tell publicly but I guess, now’s the time (thread).â€
I’ve always had a Harry Potter story I thought I would never tell publicly but I guess, now’s the time (thread)
— Nicola Coughlan (@nicolacoughlan) June 6, 2020
Several other big names directly spoke out to condemn Rowling’s statements.
“Word. Goodnight and shut up @jk_rowling,†tweeted actress Sarah Paulson, who retweeted a post calling Rowling “complete scum.â€
Actress Jameela Jamil, known for her role on The Good Place, also condemned Rowling’s posts, and encouraged people to donate to a fundraiser for homeless black trans women. Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness also voiced his outrage,
Hey JK as you claim to support trans rights and this is a historical moment where we are globally discussing the impact of white supremacy on Black People, please share some of your $650million mega wealth with this charity. https://t.co/3WoGduRuSE
Trans women are women. Trans Black people & trans non-Black people are discriminated against every single day. They’re dying. We’re fighting for Black people & trans people and you’re doing this? https://t.co/2l5PHDCpKD
With trans issues trending, worth remembering there is an epidemic of violence against trans people of color—especially black trans women. I’ve been shocked, running stories on this going back years, how little attention it gets. The numbers show a crisis: https://t.co/56KyE4q1VA
— Mara “Get Rid of the Nazis†Wilson (@MaraWilson) June 6, 2020
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) released a statement on Saturday on their Twitter page.
“JK Rowling continues to align herself with an ideology which willfully distorts facts about gender identity and people who are trans,†they continued. “In 2020, there is no excuse for targeting trans people. We stand with trans youth, especially those Harry Potter fans hurt by her inaccurate and cruel tweets.â€
The overtures show how the pharmaceutical industry landscape could shift at a time when drugmakers are racing to find effective treatments for COVID-19. If a deal goes ahead, it would surpass Bristol-Myers Squibb’s $US74 billion takeover of Celgene last year as the biggest-ever health-care acquisition, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It would also rank among the 10 biggest M&A transactions of all time.
Shares of AstraZeneca have risen about 41 per cent over the past 12 months, making it the best performer on a Bloomberg Intelligence index of major Western pharmaceutical companies. Shares of Gilead gained about 19 per cent over the period.
Gilead has attracted investor interest as its antiviral drug for COVID-19, remdesivir, worked its way through clinical trials in recent months. The stock is still more than a third lower than its 2015 highs. The California-based company has seen a steady decline in sales in its hepatitis C franchise and is trying to reinvigorate its drug-development pipeline.
Remdesivir, which has an emergency use authorisation from the US Food and Drug Administration, has been shown in some early studies to shorten hospital stays for people with COVID-19. SVB Leerink recently forecast that sales of the drug may reach $US7.7 billion in 2022.
Tamiflu developer
Gilead has been dispensing early rounds of the drug for free, leading some investors to question how the company plans to make money from it in the future. Chief Executive Officer Daniel O’Day has said the company may spend $US1 billion on the treatment this year alone.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, a former executive at oncology specialist Roche Holding AG, has transformed the company since taking the helm nearly eight years ago.Credit:Kate Geraghty
AstraZeneca is helping to manufacture a COVID vaccine developed at the University of Oxford. The US has pledged as much as $US1.2 billion to support the efforts as part of Operation Warp Speed, a push to secure vaccines for America. The shot is expected to enter phase III clinical trials in June.
Gilead was founded in 1987 by Michael Riordan, a doctor with a Harvard MBA who aimed to discover treatments for viral infections after a bout with dengue fever acquired in southeast Asia. The company’s best-known successes include Tamiflu, the influenza treatment it helped develop.
The company also makes Truvada, a medicine that can help prevent HIV, as well as drugs for liver disease and inflammation. Gilead employs about 12,000 people, according to its website.
AstraZeneca is no stranger to large-scale, politically sensitive M&A. In 2014 it fended off a $US117 billion approach from Pfizer, a deal that attracted attention from US lawmakers as it would have allowed New York-based Pfizer to lower its tax bill by redomiciling in the U.K.
Deal slump
Health-care dealmaking has been a rare bright spot as the global pandemic and resulting lockdowns have doused the market for mergers and acquisitions. Global M&A volumes are down about 45 per cent this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, and announced deals have been falling apart at a steady pace.
Excluding minority investments, dealmaking in April and May barely topped $US100 billion in total, the data show, the lowest two-month period in at least 22 years.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, a former executive at oncology specialist Roche, has transformed the company since taking the helm nearly eight years ago. At the time, it was struggling with an aging stable of drugs and a shortage of innovation.
Shares of AstraZeneca have risen about 41 per cent over the past 12 monthsCredit:AP
He’s championed the development of Lynparza, which was initially approved for ovarian cancer but has also proved useful for treating other forms of the disease. AstraZeneca has since overtaken UK rival GlaxoSmithKline in market value.
Last year, AstraZeneca sealed its biggest transaction in more than a decade, agreeing to pay as much as $US6.9 billion to buy into a promising breast cancer treatment developed by Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo Co. The UK company reached a deal this month with Accent Therapeutics to potentially spend more than $US1.1 billion collaborating on novel oncology therapies.
AstraZeneca shares have also been boosted by positive data from trials of its blockbuster lung cancer drug Tagrisso.
The Histories by Herodotus (484BC to 425BC) offers a remarkable window into the world as it was known to the ancient Greeks in the mid-fifth century BC.
Almost as interesting as what they knew, however, is what they did not know. This sets the baseline for the remarkable advances in their understanding over the next few centuries – simply relying on what they could observe with their own eyes.
Herodotus claimed that Africa was surrounded almost entirely by sea. How did he know this? He recounts the story of Phoenician sailors who were dispatched by King Neco II of Egypt (about 600BC), to sail around continental Africa, in a clockwise fashion, starting in the Red Sea.
This story, if true, recounts the earliest known circumnavigation of Africa, but also contains an interesting insight into the astronomical knowledge of the ancient world.
The voyage took several years. Having rounded the southern tip of Africa, and following a westerly course, the sailors observed the Sun as being on their right-hand side, above the northern horizon.
This observation simply did not make sense at the time because they didn’t yet know that the Earth has a spherical shape and that there is a southern hemisphere.
1. The planets orbit the Sun
A few centuries later, there had been a lot of progress. Aristarchus of Samos (310BC to 230BC) argued that the Sun was the “central fire†of the cosmos and he placed all of the then-known planets in their correct order of distance around it. This is the earliest known heliocentric theory of the solar system.
Unfortunately, the original text in which he makes this argument has been lost to history, so we cannot know for certain how he worked it out.
Aristarchus knew the Sun was much bigger than the Earth or the Moon, and he may have surmised that it should, therefore, have the central position in the solar system.
Nevertheless, it is a jaw-dropping finding, especially when you consider that it wasn’t rediscovered until the 16th century, by Nicolaus Copernicus, who even acknowledged Aristarchus during the development of his own work.
2. The size of the Moon
One of Aristarchus’ books that did survive is about the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon. In this remarkable treatise, Aristarchus laid out the earliest known attempted calculations of the relative sizes and distances to the Sun and Moon.
It had long been observed that the Sun and Moon appeared to be of the same apparent size in the sky and that the Sun was further away. They realised this from solar eclipses, caused by the Moon passing in front of the Sun at a certain distance from Earth.
Also, at the instant when the Moon is at the first or third quarter, Aristarchus reasoned that the Sun, Earth, and Moon would form a right-angled triangle.
As Pythagoras had determined how the lengths of triangle’s sides were related a couple of centuries earlier, Aristarchus used the triangle to estimate that the distance to the Sun was between 18 and 20 times the distance to the Moon.
He also estimated that the size of the Moon was approximately one-third that of Earth, based on careful timing of lunar eclipses.
A 10th century reproduction of a diagram by Aristarchus showing some of the geometry he used in his calculations. wikipedia, CC BY-SA
While his estimated distance to the Sun was too low (the actual ratio is 390), on account of the lack of telescopic precision available at the time, the value for the ratio of the size of the Earth to the Moon is surprisingly accurate (the Moon has a diameter 0.27 times that of Earth).
Today, we know the size and distance to the moon accurately by a variety of means, including precise telescopes, radar observations and laser reflectors left on the surface by Apollo astronauts.
3. The Earth’s circumference
Eratosthenes (276BC to 195 BC) was chief librarian at the Great Library of Alexandria and a keen experimentalist. Among his many achievements was the earliest known calculation of the circumference of the Earth.
Pythagoras is generally regarded as the earliest proponent of a spherical Earth, although apparently not its size. Eratosthenes’ famous and yet simple method relied on measuring the different lengths of shadows cast by poles stuck vertically into the ground, at midday on the summer solstice, at different latitudes.
The Sun is sufficiently far away that, wherever its rays arrive at Earth, they are effectively parallel, as had previously been shown by Aristarchus. So the difference in the shadows demonstrated how much the Earth’s surface curved.
Eratosthenes used this to estimate the Earth’s circumference as approximately 40,000km. This is within a couple of percent of the actual value, as established by modern geodesy (the science of the Earth’s shape).
Later, another scientist called Posidonius (135BC to 51BC) used a slightly different method and arrived at almost exactly the same answer. Posidonius lived on the island of Rhodes for much of his life.
There he observed the bright star Canopus would lie very close to the horizon. However, when in Alexandria, in Egypt, he noted Canopus would ascend to some 7.5 degrees above the horizon.
Given that 7.5 degrees is 1/48th of a circle, he multiplied the distance from Rhodes to Alexandria by 48, and arrived at a value also of approximately 40 000km.
4. The first astronomical calculator
The world’s oldest surviving mechanical calculator is the Antikythera Mechanism. The amazing device was discovered in an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1900.
The device is now fragmented by the passage of time, but when intact it would have appeared as a box housing dozens of finely machined bronze gear wheels.
When manually rotated by a handle, the gears span dials on the exterior showing the phases of the Moon, the timing of lunar eclipses, and the positions of the five planets then known (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) at different times of the year. This even accounted for their retrograde motion – an illusionary change in the movement of planets through the sky.
We don’t know who built it, but it dates to some time between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, and may even have been the work of Archimedes. Gearing technology with the sophistication of the Antikythera mechanism was not seen again for a thousand years.
Sadly, the vast majority of these works were lost to history and our scientific awakening was delayed by millennia.
As a tool for introducing scientific measurement, the techniques of Eratosthenes are relatively easy to perform and require no special equipment, allowing those just beginning their interest in science to understand by doing, experimenting and, ultimately, following in the footsteps some of the first scientists.
One can but speculate where our civilisation might be now if this ancient science had continued unabated.
Gareth Dorrian, Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Space Science, the University of Birmingham and Ian Whittaker, Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Mikaela Mayer has tested positive for coronavirus and will not fight in her scheduled bout on Tuesday in Las Vegas.
Mayer said: “It came as a complete surprise. I am currently asymptomatic and am quarantining at an off-site location per recommended guidelines.”
Her fight against Helen Joseph was planned for the first event since lockdown began by Bob Arum’s promotional company Top Rank.
Mikaela Mayer alongside Tyson Fury
The event, behind-closed-doors at Vegas’ MGM Grand Conference Center Grand Ballroom, will be headlined by WBO featherweight champion Shakur Stevenson’s debut in the division above against Felix Caraballo.
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