Donna Strickland was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Arthur Ashkin and Gerard Mourou. It was the first time in 55 years that a woman had won this famous prize, but why did it take so long? We look at five other pioneering female physicists—past and present—who actually deserve the prize.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Perhaps the most famous snub (冷落): then—student Bell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, when she was a PhD student at Cambridge. The Nobel Prize that recognized this landmark discovery in 1974, however, went to her male supervisor, Antony Hewish. Recently awarded a £2.3 million Breakthrough Prize, which she gave away to help under-represented students, she joked to The Guardian, "I feel I've done very well out of not getting a Nobel Prize."
Lene Hau
Hau is best-known for leading the research team at Harvard University in 1999 that managed to slow a beam of light, before managing to stop it completely in 2001. Often topping Nobel Prize prediction lists, could 2023 be Hau's year?
Vera Rubin
Rubin discovered dark matter in the 1980s, opening up a new field of astronomy. She died in 2016, without recognition from the committee.
Chien-Shiung Wu
Wu's "Wu experiment" helped disprove the "law of conservation of parity". Her experimental work was helpful but never honored, and instead, her male colleagues won the 1957 Nobel Prize behind the study.
Lise Meitner
Meitner led groundbreaking work on the discovery of nuclear fission. However, the discovery was acknowledged by the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was won by her male co-worker, Otto Hahn.
There is a famous story about how Walt Disney was inspired to build Disneyland. The story goes that during an afternoon visit to Griffith Park located near the Burbank Studios, Walt took a seat while his two young daughters rode the merry-go-round (旋转木马). Walt thought there should be a place where both children and their parents could enjoy spending some time together in an environment that would be both entertaining and pleasing to the eye, so with this thought came the idea for Disneyland.
Walt's original plan was to build an eight-acre park located near the Burbank Studios that would be a place for his employees and their families. Those plans were put on hold because of the start of World War II. By 1952, Walt had created a special department that was devoted to planning his dream.
Finally in 1953, the first steps in building the park happened when Walt employed the Stanford Research Institute to make a survey to determine the best possible location of the future park. Considering population growth and the future freeway construction, they finally found a location in Anaheim and 160 acres of land was bought for the site of the new park.
The building of the park was very expensive and to collect money for the project, Walt developed the idea of the "WaltDisney's Disneyland" television show. It turned out to be a wonderful idea—not only gaining the money to build the park but also presenting the park to the American public.
Construction officially began on July 21, 1954, and it was an ambitious (有雄心的) building schedule of less than one year to complete the new park for the projected opening day. Walt watched over the park's construction and progress continued with just a few minor hold-ups. Finally, the park was ready for the opening day on July 17, 1955.
A simple gesture can be formed into a child's memory so quickly that it will cause the child to give a false answer to a question along with that gesture. A new finding suggests that parents, social workers, psychologists and lawyers should be careful with their hands as well as their words.
While memories of both adults and children are easy to react to suggestion, those of children are known to be particularly influenced, said lead researcher Sara Broaders of Northwestern University. Kids are used to looking to adults to tell events for them and can be misled even if not intentionally.
Previous research, for example, has shown that detail-loaded questions often cause false answers; when asked, say "Did you drink juice at the picnic?" the child is likely to say "yes" even if no juice had been available. It is not that the child is consciously lying, but rather the detail is quickly formed into his or her memory.
To avoid this problem, social workers have long been advised to ask children only open-ended questions, such as "What did you have at the picnic?" But an open-ended question paired with a gesture, briefly meaning a juice box, is treated like a detailed question. That is, children become likely to answer falsely.
And it isn't just a few kids: 77% of children gave at least one piece of false information when a detail was suggested by an ordinary gesture. Gestures may also become more popular when talking with non-fluent language users, such as little kids, Broaders said as hand movements can impart meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases. "It certainly seems reasonable that adults would gesture more with children."
In general, Broaders advises parents and other adults to "try to be aware of your hands when questioning a child about an event. Otherwise, you might be getting answers that don't reflect what actually happened."
Cars could soon be communicating with each other using 5G to make drivers aware of upcoming hazards (危险), scientists say. The extremely fast mobile internet would allow for rapid information transmission and could make drivers aware of black ice, pot holes or other dangers up ahead.
Several car manufacturers (制造商) are already using 5G in their vehicles, including as a tool to help serve in the generation of self-driving vehicles.
Experts at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) believe the high-speed connection will also improve the reliability and capability of automated vehicles to the point where they will be safer than the manual cars being driven today. They predict the number of road traffic accidents, which according to the World Health Organization account for more than 1.3 million deaths and up to 50 million people injured worldwide every year, will drop really as a result.
Dr Dimitrios Liarokapis, a member of the research group, said, "To have a better idea of what the future will look like, think of having such cars that not only use sensors to scan what's around them, they can also talk to each other and exchange safety-related information about their surroundings over an area that covers several square miles. With the help of 5G, a vehicle-generated early warning system that reminds drivers is possible within the next few years. Cars that are close enough to the danger area will transmit warning messages to other cars around them using short-range communication technologies, but also to cars further away using 5G, fast and reliably."
A few manufacturers are already working on connected cars. Of them, Ford told its intention to fit 80 percent of its future vehicles with technology that warns drivers about upcoming road accidents, bad weather and traffic jams.
How to Be Creative
Most of us think that creativity is a quality belonging only to artists, writers, or dancers, rather than ourselves. . The following tips are a great beginning for developing our creativity.
Get out of your comfort zone
We eagerly accept the familiar and fear the unknown. Break out of your usual patterns and welcome creativity into your life. As stated earlier, the human brain was designed to recognize patterns. . In fact, our comfort zone is nothing more than a collection of patterns. As we become more efficient at recognizing and using patterns, we rely less on creativity to find new paths. We should force ourselves out of our comfort zone and open up new possibilities.
Try different things
We are used to habits and routines, and creativity hates routines. If you usually drive to work, take the subway for a few days. . Interrupt your routine, experiment and try something new. New things are often creative, but the same old thing never is.
Having a great idea is not enough; you must work to make it a reality. Have you ever seen a new product and realized that you thought of the same thing long ago? Yet someone else is making money with "your" idea. . The difference between a dreamer and a doer is action. Do whatever it takes to bring your ideas to life. If you can put them into practice, you are well on your way to improving your creativity in all areas of your life.
A. Take action
B. Seek several choices
C. Think from the other person's point of view
D. So we can create patterns for almost everything we do
E. If you usually eat in the office, have lunch under a tree
F. The truth is that we are all born with the ability to be creative
G. We all have great ideas sometimes, but only a few people turn their ideas into realities
"I hate New Orleans! I wanna go home!" I 1 to my mother as we moved boxes.2 , going home was not easy because my home was 1,100 miles away.
I was born and 3 in Virginia. Virginia was my home, and I never expected that to 4 . Last year, my parents decided to move to my mom's hometown, New Orleans.
Only three months after my parents made the 5 to move, I found myself moving boxes into our new house. My announcement to my mother that I 6 the new environment was mostly due to the fact that I felt like my entire life had been turned upside down. Far away from almost everyone and everything I had ever known, I was 7 . To make matters worse, I was starting high school in two weeks. Starting high school is a scary 8 on its own.
I spent my first few months in New Orleans, 9 wanting to go back to Virginia. But after that, I 10 that I had a choice. I could continue missing my old home, or I could start trying to build a new home right here. I 11 the latter.
As soon as I stopped giving all my 12 to how much I missed Virginia, I was able to begin accepting the love that local people were giving me. I joined some clubs at school, which gave me the chance to make friends. My neighbors taught me how to cook some local food, and I found a wonderful 13 of neighbors. Overall, I seized every possible opportunity to 14 myself and to rebuild my life.
Because of my resilience (适应力) in creating a new home for myself and the 15 that local people have shown to me, home is right here.
Located in Ordos, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Kubuqi Desert (库布齐沙漠) is the closest desert to China's capital Beijing. It was once known as the "sea of death". However, in the past 30 years, the government, social organizations and local farmers (work) together to control desertification (沙漠化) in Kubuqi Desert.
Historically, Kubuqi was a rich city filled with water and grass. But due climate change and over-exploitation from humans, the farmlands gradually turned to desert. Controlling desertification was the only way out for people still living in Kubuqi. With the first highway going through the desert (build) here, people started planting trees in whole desert. It was common for planted trees to die. But the next year, people just continued to plant more trees. (ultimate), their hard work inspired the term "Kubuqi spirit", encouraging local people (devote) themselves to the desert greatly. Over three decades, tree planting technology saw further (improve) in Kubuqi. Now workers can plant a tree in just ten (second), and the survival rate of trees is over 80 percent.
The 102,000 residents in the desert have enjoyed the benefits of managing with desertification. Meng Keda, family has lived deep in Kubuqi Desert for generations, began a tourism business in 2006 earned about 300,000 yuan last year.
