Biden-Kamala named Time’s Person of the Year

Newly elected United States President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris have been named 2020’s Person of the Year in the influential US magazine Time.

According to the US media CNN, Time magazine jointly announced the names of the two as the best personalities of 2020 on Thursday evening local time.

Front fighters in the Covid-19 fight include doctors, nurses, delivery boys, store workers, emergency services personnel and others who have worked at risk during the epidemic, as well as immunologist Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, were in the possible discussion for the recognition of the Time magazine this year.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement across the United States and President Donald Trump were also shortlisted. Biden and Kamala were also on the list. 

However, Biden was elected the Person of the Year after defeating incumbent President Donald Trump in the US election. Kamala has also been given this honor along with him. She is the first woman in US history and the first vice president of African descent.

The COVID Fighters was ahead as the best of the year in the readers’ vote. However, in the eyes of Time, the names of Biden and Kamala came up for this recognition.

Time magazine published a list of the most discussed and important persons of the year in their final edition. In that edition, reports or biographies of one or more individuals, groups, organizations, doctrines or events are presented. The US magazine has been promoting Person of the Year since 1927. Charles Lindbergh of the United States was the first to receive this recognition. He was a pilot, engineer and Pulitzer Prize winner. Source: https://www.daily-bangladesh.com

Read More........ → December 12, 2020

WFP wins 2020 Nobel Peace Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize to the World Food Programme (WFP) for helping the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger.

“WFP has awarded the Peace Prize its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, after revealing the names of Nobel Peace Prize on Friday around 3:00 pm at the Nobel Institute in Oslo.

According to the statement of The Nobel Prize, World Food Programme contributes daily to advancing the fraternity of nations referred to in Alfred Nobel’s will. As the UN’s largest specialized agency, WFP is a modern version of the peace congresses that intended to promote the Nobel Peace Prize.

WFP plays a key role in multilateral cooperation on making food security an instrument of peace and has made a strong contribution towards mobilizing the UN Member States to combat the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.

In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, WFP has demonstrated an impressive ability to intensify its efforts that contributed to a strong upsurge in the number of victims of hunger in the world, The Nobel Prize further said. 

This year, 318 nominees were known to be under consideration, including 211 individuals and 107 organizations. However, the names on the list are kept secret for 50 years – making predictions difficult. 

The four women crowned so far this year with a Nobel is more than usual, closing in on 2009’s record of five female winners.

On Thursday, American poet Louise Gluck won the literature prize, Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer Doudna of the US shared the chemistry prize for developing a genome editing method on Wednesday, and Andrea Ghez of the US shared the physics prize with two male colleagues on Tuesday.

Besides, The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2020 was awarded jointly to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice “for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus”. They made a decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world. Source: https://www.daily-bangladesh.com/

Read More........ → October 11, 2020

AMU students win NASA Space App Challenge award

An unintended but welcome consequence of the lockdown to contain the coronavirus has been improved air quality, according to a presentation of ALTAIR, a team of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) students led by first-year MBBS student Ayesha Samdani, which won the the Judges Choice Award in the International NASA Space App Challenge-2020 for presenting a solution in response to NASA's challenge, 'One Health Approach'.

Ayesha and her team members, Mohd Zakir Husain (MBBS), Aman Ahmad Khan (MBBS), Faisal Jamil (BTech) and Abdullah Samdani (BA LLB) gave an analysis on air quality of the pre and post lockdown periods in the Indo Gangetic region of northern India. Their study gave details about how an improvement in the air quality benefited the health of the people.

For the presentation, the ALTAIR members also coded an Air Quality Index (AQI) calculator to measure AQI of a certain region, which is helpful in giving health and cautionary statements and providing guidance to common people on pollution-related health issues.

Congratulating the students on the achievement, Shahid Ali Siddiqui, Principal, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College (JNMC) of the university, and Shakeel Samdani, Dean, Faculty of Law, said that the work of the students is formative as it provides a clear comparison of average concentration levels during the months before the lockdown and the time period during the lockdown restrictions, showing a reduction in SO2 level. The event was judged by ISRO and NASA scientists, Source:https://southasiamonitor.org/

Read More........ → October 06, 2020