Kategori: News in English

Columbia University has become the epicenter of student protests over the war in Gaza. In the following Q&A, Stefan Bradley, a history professor at Amherst College and author of the 2009 book “Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s,” touches on the similarities and differences between the protests of the 1960s and now.

How do protests now differ from those of 1968?

Similarities lie in students’ opposition to war, racism and prejudice.

A key difference is social media, which has contributed greatly to the ability of students to mobilize. News of various actions and protests spreads quickly.

Violence or the threat thereof is another difference. Initial demonstrations at Columbia University in April 1968 started with the threat of violence between radical students who wanted to end the university’s ties to war research during the Vietnam War and terminate a university gymnasium construction project and mostly white athletes who wanted to push forward with it. The gym had been designed for mostly Black and brown Harlem residents to enter one door and Columbia affiliates in another. Columbia affiliates also had greater access to various parts of the gym, leading residents to refer to the situation as “Gym Crow.”

Considering the institution’s history of expansion and the uprisings surrounding the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that took place just weeks earlier, tension was in the air. Taking the demonstration to the gym site, student activists then clashed with police in the park before returning to campus to take over Hamilton Hall, the same building where dozens of Columbia student activists in this year’s protests over Gaza were arrested on the night of April 30, 2024.

Until April 30, students were less disruptive than they’d been in the past. The encampments on the South Lawn did not prevent major functions of the university.

But after students took over Hamilton Hall, the calculus has changed. By breaking into the building and barricading themselves in, the campus activists provided administrators with even more justification to call on the police to remove them.

How so?

Officials in 1968 called city police to forcibly remove students, who had subsequently taken over four more buildings, and to make arrests. It quickly turned violent. Police charged into buildings and around campus to make arrests. In a building called Math Hall, activists, including Tom Hayden – author of the Port Huron Statement, a leftist manifesto that called on students to work against racism, imperialism and poverty – fought back. Police struck observers and activists alike with batons.

With long-standing critiques of the university in their minds, and the death of King in their hearts, Harlem residents were ready to support protesting students.

NYPD officers run to head off striking students during the series of protests on the campus of Columbia University in New York City in 1968.
Authenticated News via Getty Images

Black Power leaders such as Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown explained to the press that if Columbia did not negotiate with the Black students in Hamilton, then the university would have to deal with the “brothers out on the streets” of Harlem. The threat of a coalition with Harlem neighbors aided in the success of the activists in ending the university’s construction of a private gymnasium in nearby Morningside Park and the cessation of the school’s ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses, a consortium of flagship and elite higher education institutions conducting government-funded defense research during the Cold War.

The threat of violence loomed with the recent building capture and arrests at Hamilton. The 2024 protest is starting to resemble the 1968 protest in terms of students feeling uncomfortable with their university’s decision-making and administrators feeling compelled to regain control of campus. The differences are becoming slimmer and the similarities thicker.

What about the use of symbolism?

In 1968 and today, students used symbolism to send a message.

Fifty-six years ago, demonstrators also took over Hamilton Hall – named after Alexander Hamilton – renaming it Malcolm X University and hanging images of Stokely Carmichael.

Today, protesters renamed it Hind’s Hall – in honor of a 6-year-old Palestinian child killed by Israeli tank fire in Gaza – and flew a Palestinian flag from a Hamilton window.

What is the legacy of the 1968 protest?

The major legacy is that students are the moral compass of these well-endowed, elite institutions – even if they engage in disruptive behavior. They are willing to act on campus when no one else will. If left to the trustees, administrators, faculty and staff, the university would likely be quiet and civil while waiting for the marketplace of ideas and countless committees to suss out what to do about real-time humanitarian crises.

Young people have always been impatient in their calls for justice. In 1968, the issues were Columbia’s construction of a gymnasium in West Harlem and the university’s relationship with the IDA; in the 1980s, it was the university’s financial interests in apartheid South Africa; and in the 2010s, the school’s investments in private prison corporations. The 1968 rebellion taught later generations not to accept indiscriminate killing and injustice.

Another legacy is that the deployment of police to break up demonstrations may end disruptions in the short term, but it may also end up radicalizing moderate students who see their friends get arrested or injured.

What makes a protest successful?

Of course, students want every demand met, but that is often unlikely to happen. A better mark of success is the disruption of the status quo and the amount of attention they bring to issues. In that regard, the protests have been a success.

Conflict at a place like Columbia garners attention because of its location in the media capital of the world. When administrators respond to issues students raise by focusing on policies and procedures, it can give the impression that the issues are not important.

Fifty-six years ago, campus activists inspired students abroad to chant “Two, Three, Many Columbias!” Administrators may want to remain apolitical, but campus demonstrators want to know where their tuition goes and have a say in how it is spent. Highlighting the conflict between key sources of funding – the students paying tuition and the school’s major donors – is a notable victory.

How unprecedented are the student arrests?

There is precedence for student arrests on and off campus. The NYPD violently arrested more than 700 students in April 1968 and dozens more in May.

When students in the 20th century rebelled against the idea that the university was supposed to act in the place of their parents, higher education officials turned to law enforcement in the hope that students would comply.

There were arrests at the Fisk Institute in 1925 for protests over strict student rules, including those that limited participation in civil rights movements; there was the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, when students demanded the right to pass out civil rights literature on campus.

In 1970, there were also police or National Guard-involved shootings of students at Jackson State and Kent State, a predominantly white university.

In 2016, police battled students protesting tuition hikes in California. There were no fatal shootings, but nonlethal weapons like pepper spray were deployed. Inviting police onto campus introduces an element that concedes power to those not interested in the educational well-being of students. Läs mer…

The exponential growth of artificial intelligence over the past year has sparked discussions about whether the era of human domination of our planet is drawing to a close. The most dire predictions claim that the machines will take over within five to 10 years.

Fears of AI are not the only things driving public concern about the end of the world. Climate change and pandemic diseases are also well-known threats. Reporting on these challenges and dubbing them a potential “apocalypse” has become common in the media – so common, in fact, that it might go unnoticed, or may simply be written off as hyperbole.

Is the use of the word “apocalypse” in the media significant? Our common interest in how the American public understands apocalyptic threats brought us together to answer this question. One of us is a scholar of the apocalypse in the ancient world, and the other studies press coverage of contemporary concerns.

By tracing what events the media describe as “apocalyptic,” we can gain insight into our changing fears about potential catastrophes. We have found that discussions of the apocalypse unite the ancient and modern, the religious and secular, and the revelatory and the rational. They show how a term with roots in classical Greece and early Christianity helps us articulate our deepest anxieties today.

What is an apocalypse?

Humans have been fascinated by the demise of the world since ancient times. However, the word apocalypse was not intended to convey this preoccupation. In Greek, the verb “apokalyptein” originally meant simply to uncover, or to reveal.

In his dialogue “Protagoras,” Plato used this term to describe how a doctor may ask a patient to uncover his body for a medical exam. He also used it metaphorically when he asked an interlocutor to reveal his thoughts.

A wood engraving by German painter Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld illustrates a scene from the Book of Revelation.
ZU_09/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty images

New Testament authors used the noun “apokalypsis” to refer to the “revelation” of God’s divine plan for the world. In the original Koine Greek version, “apokalypsis” is the first word of the Book of Revelation, which describes not only the impending arrival of a painful inferno for sinners, but also a second coming of Christ that will bring eternal salvation for the faithful.

The apocalypse in the contemporary world

Many American Christians today feel that the day of God’s judgment is just around the corner. In a December 2022 Pew Research Center Survey, 39% of those polled believed they were “living in the end times,” while 10% said that Jesus will “definitely” or “probably” return in their lifetime.

Yet for some believers, the Christian apocalypse is not viewed entirely negatively. Rather, it is a moment that will elevate the righteous and cleanse the world of sinners.

Secular understandings of the word, by contrast, rarely include this redeeming element. An apocalypse is more commonly understood as a cataclysmic, catastrophic event that will irreparably alter our world for the worse. It is something to avoid, not something to await.

What we fear most, decade by decade

Political communications scholars Christopher Wlezien and Stuart Soroka demonstrate in their research that the media are likely to reflect public opinion even more than they direct it or alter it. While their study focused largely on Americans’ views of important policy decisions, their findings, they argue, apply beyond those domains.

If they are correct, we can use discussions of the apocalypse in the media over the past few decades as a barometer of prevailing public concerns.

Following this logic, we collected all articles mentioning the words “apocalypse” or “apocalyptic” from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post between Jan. 1, 1980, and Dec. 31, 2023. After filtering out articles centered on religion and entertainment, there were 9,380 articles that mentioned one or more of four prominent apocalyptic concerns: nuclear war, disease, climate change and AI.

Through the end of the Cold War, fears of nuclear apocalypse predominated not only in the newspaper data we assembled, but also in visual media such as the 1983 post-apocalyptic film “The Day After,” which was watched by as many as 100 million Americans.

By the 1990s, however, articles linking the word apocalypse to climate and disease – in roughly equal measure – had surpassed those focused on nuclear war. By the 2000s, and even more so during the 2010s, newspaper attention had turned squarely in the direction of environmental concerns.

The 2020s disrupted this pattern. COVID-19 caused a spike in articles mentioning the pandemic. There were almost three times as many stories linking disease to the apocalypse in the first four years of this decade compared to the entire 2010s.

In addition, while AI was practically absent from media coverage through 2015, recent technological breakthroughs generated more apocalypse articles touching on AI than on nuclear concerns in 2023 for the first time ever.

What should we fear most?

Do the apocalyptic fears we read about most actually pose the greatest danger to humanity? Some journalists have recently issued warnings that a nuclear war is more plausible than we realize.

That jibes with the perspective of scientists responsible for the Doomsday Clock who track what they think of as the critical threats to human existence. They focus principally on nuclear concerns, followed by climate, biological threats and AI.

It might appear that the use of apocalyptic language to describe these challenges represents an increasing secularization of the concept. For example, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben has argued that the media’s portrayal of COVID-19 as a potentially apocalyptic event reflects the replacement of religion by science. Similarly, the cultural historian Eva Horn has asserted that the contemporary vision of the end of the world is an apocalypse without God.

However, as the Pew poll demonstrates, apocalyptic thinking remains common among American Christians.

The key point is that both religious and secular views of the end of the world make use of the same word. The meaning of “apocalypse” has thus expanded in recent decades from an exclusively religious idea to include other, more human-driven apocalyptic scenarios, such as a “nuclear apocalypse,” a “climate apocalypse,” a “COVID-19 apocalypse” or an “AI apocalypse.”

In short, the reporting of apocalypses in the media does indeed provide a revelation – not of how the world will end but of the ever-increasing ways in which it could end. It also reveals a paradox: that people today often envision the future most vividly when they revive and adapt an ancient word. Läs mer…

In early 1824, 30 members of Vienna’s music community sent a letter to Ludwig van Beethoven petitioning the great composer to reconsider his plans to premiere his latest work in Berlin and instead debut the symphony in Vienna.

Beethoven had lived in Vienna since 1792, when he left his hometown of Bonn, Germany, to pursue a career as a composer. Beethoven rose to world renown, but by the 1820s he had fallen out of favor with Viennese arts patrons who, at the time, were drawn to the sounds and styles of Italian composers.

Beethoven had not appeared before a Viennese audience in a dozen years, but he was moved by the letter’s sentiment and agreed to debut his new work, Symphony No. 9 in D minor, in the city. The premiere performance was on May 7, 1824, at Kärntnertor Theater.

Concert promoters promised the public that the legendary – and legendarily antisocial – composer would be present at the performance of his latest symphony. Indeed, during the entirety of the performance, he was on stage, his back to the audience, as described by Maynard Solomon in his acclaimed biography of Beethoven.

Symphony No. 9 premiered at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna.
DEA/A. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini via Getty Images

The composer insisted upon conducting the symphony from a conductor’s stand. The official conductor at the concert, Michael Umlauf, had instructed the musicians – a Viennese orchestra and choir – to ignore Beethoven, who was completely deaf and who theoretically could not be relied upon to keep time.

The performance was interrupted several times by rapturous applause from the approximately 2,000 attendees, but Beethoven could not hear the reaction. According to eyewitnesses, the composer “threw himself back and forth like a madman” and fell several bars behind in his “conducting.”

The enthusiastic response to the symphony’s debut performance presaged its reception in the European music community, globally and across time.

Global appeal

Symphony No. 9, sometimes referred to as the Choral Symphony, was the capstone to Beethoven’s extraordinary career. In the 200 years since its debut, the symphony has become an essential composition in the orchestral repertoire and is often cited as the crowning achievement of Western classical music.

A central reason for the symphony’s accessibility to a broad audience was Beethoven’s incorporation of the 1785 poem “An die Freude,” or “Ode to Joy,” by Friedrich Schiller, a leading German author, historian and philosopher. Matched to a memorable melody in the fourth movement, this text – with its uplifting, humanitarian sentiment – contributed to the symphony’s character as an anthem.

The Ode to Joy section of the Ninth Symphony is among the most recognized melodies in the world.

Widely interpreted as Beethoven’s plea for a global “brotherhood,” the fourth movement has been incorporated into ceremonial events sponsored by international organizations such as UNESCO, the Olympics, the Council of Europe and the European Union. Given the work’s fame the Ode to Joy section of the symphony has also been appropriated for propaganda by supporters of Nazism, Bolshevism, Maoism and other ideologies.

Groundbreaking composition

Symphony No. 9 is extraordinary in many ways, according to Teddy Abrams, music director of the Louisville Orchestra and a Grammy Award-winning conductor.

The Ninth Symphony was not the first long piece of music at the time, but the others were generally built by stringing together many shorter sequences. In contrast, Beethoven crafted the Ninth Symphony – a 74-minute work – out of just four long movements. “The proportions alone are staggering,” Abrams said in an interview for this article.

Each of the Ninth’s four movements is a single cohesive, coherent musical statement. This, more than the innovation of using a chorus in a symphony, was what made Beethoven’s Ninth revolutionary, according to Abrams.

At the beginning of the last movement, Beethoven reprised elements of the previous three movements. This “quoting” was a highly unusual technique at the time, according Abrams. “It is from these musical ‘memories’ that the timeless Ode to Joy theme emerges,” he said.

Energy and drive

The symphony has influenced artists across the cultural spectrum, including various modern and avant-garde music genres. British composer Gabriel Prokofiev, grandson of famed Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, was commissioned by a French orchestra in 2011 to create a new work, Beethoven9 Symphonic Remix, that interpreted the symphony through a fusion of classical and electronic music.

When interviewed for the 2020 documentary film “Beethoven’s Ninth: Symphony for the World,” Prokofiev commented: “A lot of the techniques and approaches [Beethoven] used, particularly his climactic finales and his codas and the drama and the sense of energy and drive he had, we find that everywhere, especially in dance music and electronic music.”

Beethoven’s Ninth has been interpreted and reimagined countless times.

For over a century, Symphony No. 9 has played an iconic role within the recording industry. Given the ongoing popularity of Beethoven’s work, record companies since 1923 have sought to release commercial recordings of this particular symphony. Early records couldn’t fit the entirety of the symphony, however.

Then, around 1980, two record companies – Sony and Philips – negotiated the length of the new digital compact disc format at just over 74 minutes per CD. According to Joop Sinjou, a Philips engineer who played a key role in developing the technology, Sony Chairman Akiyo Morita and his wife insisted that the new format be designed to fit the full Symphony No. 9. However, there are variations of the story, so it’s not certain that the companies’ decision to make CDs capable of holding more than an hour of music was specifically to accommodate Beethoven’s Ninth.

Goodwill symphony

Embedded in the symphony’s fourth movement is a message for peace with particular resonance in the 21st century. In one section of that movement, Beethoven incorporated a “Turkish March” featuring two instruments associated with Turkey: the cymbal and bass drum. According to Prokofiev, during Beethoven’s era Europeans discriminated against Turks.

Daniel Barenboim & the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, composed of young Israeli and Arab musicians, performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in 2006.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 was performed in 2006 by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble that consisted of young Israeli and Arab musicians. The performance was part of a campaign for a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict.

YouTube videos of this performance have been viewed by millions. The aspiration of Beethoven’s “goodwill” symphony continues to inspire a vision of a united humanity. Läs mer…

If all goes well late on May 6, 2024, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will blast off into space on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Launching from the Kennedy Space Center, this last crucial test for Starliner will test out the new spacecraft and take the pair to the International Space Station for about a week.

Part of NASA’s commercial crew program, this long-delayed mission will represent the vehicle’s first crewed launch. If successful, it will give NASA – and in the future, space tourists – more options for getting to low Earth orbit.

Suni Williams, right, and Butch Wilmore, the two astronauts who will crew the Starliner test.
AP Photo/Terry Renna

From my perspective as a space policy expert, Starliner’s launch represents another significant milestone in the development of the commercial space industry. But the mission’s troubled history also shows just how difficult the path to space can be, even for an experienced company like Boeing.

Origins and development

Following the retirement of NASA’s space shuttle in 2011, NASA invited commercial space companies to help the agency transport cargo and crew to the International Space Station.

In 2014, NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX to build their respective crew vehicles: Starliner and Dragon.

Boeing’s vehicle, Starliner, was built to carry up to seven crew members to and from low Earth orbit. For NASA missions to the International Space Station, it will carry up to four at a time, and it’s designed to remain docked to the station for up to seven months. At 15 feet, the capsule where the crew will sit is slightly bigger than an Apollo command module or a SpaceX Dragon.

Boeing designed Starliner to be partially reusable to reduce the cost of getting to space. Though the Atlas V rocket it will take to space and the service module that supports the craft are both expendable, Starliner’s crew capsule can be reused up to 10 times, with a six-month turnaround. Boeing has built two flightworthy Starliners to date.

The Starliner capsule in transit.
AP Photo/John Raoux

Starliner’s development has come with setbacks. Though Boeing received US$4.2 billion from NASA, compared with $2.6 billion for SpaceX, Boeing spent more than $1.5 billion extra in developing the spacecraft.

On Starliner’s first uncrewed test flight in 2019, a series of software and hardware failures prevented it from getting to its planned orbit as well as docking with the International Space Station. After testing out some of its systems, it landed successfully at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

In 2022, after identifying and making more than 80 fixes, Starliner conducted a second uncrewed test flight. This time, the vehicle did successfully dock with the International Space Station and landed six days later in New Mexico.

The inside of a Starliner holds a few astronauts. Crew members first trained for the launch in a simulator.

Still, Boeing delayed the first crewed launch for Starliner from 2023 to 2024 because of additional problems. One involved Starliner’s parachutes, which help to slow the vehicle as it returns to Earth. Tests found that some links in those parachute lines were weaker than expected, which could have caused them to break. A second problem was the use of flammable tape that could pose a fire hazard.

A major question stemming from these delays concerns why Starliner has been so difficult to develop. For one, NASA officials admitted that it did not provide as much oversight for Starliner as it did for SpaceX’s Dragon because of the agency’s familiarity with Boeing.

And Boeing has experienced several problems recently, most visibly with the safety of its airplanes. Astronaut Butch Wilmore has denied that Starliner’s problems reflect these troubles.

But several of Boeing’s other space activities beyond Starliner have also experienced mechanical failures and budget pressure, including the Space Launch System. This system is planned to be the main rocket for NASA’s Artemis program, which plans to return humans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era.

Significance for NASA and commercial spaceflight

Given these difficulties, Starliner’s success will be important for Boeing’s future space efforts. Even if SpaceX’s Dragon can successfully transport NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, the agency needs a backup. And that’s where Starliner comes in.

Following the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia shuttle accident in 2003, NASA retired the space shuttle in 2011. The agency was left with few options to get astronauts to and from space. Having a second commercial crew vehicle provider means that NASA will not have to depend on one company or vehicle for space launches as it previously had to.

Perhaps more importantly, if Starliner is successful, it could compete with SpaceX. Though there’s no crushing demand for space tourism right now, and Boeing has no plans to market Starliner for tourism anytime soon, competition is important in any market to drive down costs and increase innovation.

More such competition is likely coming. Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser is planning to launch later this year to transport cargo for NASA to the International Space Station. A crewed version of the space plane is also being developed for the next round of NASA’s commercial crew program. Blue Origin is working with NASA in this latest round of commercial crew contracts and developing a lunar lander for the Artemis program.

SpaceX’s dragon capsule.
NASA TV via AP

Though SpaceX has made commercial spaceflight look relatively easy, Boeing’s rocky experience with Starliner shows just how hard spaceflight continues to be, even for an experienced company.

Starliner is important not just for NASA and Boeing, but to demonstrate that more than one company can find success in the commercial space industry. A successful launch would also give NASA more confidence in the industry’s ability to support operations in Earth’s orbit while the agency focuses on future missions to the Moon and beyond. Läs mer…

At an auction in England in 2011, one of John Lennon’s teeth sold for just over US$31,000.

How much are your teeth worth?

Teeth are amazing little miracles. They light up our smiles, we use them to speak and we chew with them more than 600 times at every meal.

Yet, in a society where 1 out of 5 Americans ages 75 and up live without their teeth, many people may not realize that teeth are designed to stay with us for a lifetime.

I’m a dentist and an assistant professor spanning clinical dentistry and craniofacial regeneration research. Researchers like me are still deepening our understanding of tooth development, with the ultimate goal of serving patients with on-demand regrown ones.

In the process, I have developed reverence for natural teeth and for the complex beauty of these biological and mechanical masterpieces.

Designed for lifelong function

The secret of teeth longevity lies in their durability as well as in how they are anchored to the jaw – picture a hammer and its hand grip. For each tooth, durability and anchorage are functions of the complex interface between six different tissues; each alone is a biological marvel.

For anchorage, the cementum, ligament and bone grip the tooth at its root portion that is buried under the gum. The ligament, a soft tissue that is about 0.2 millimeters wide (about the diameter of four hairs), attaches the cementum of the root on one end to the bone of the jaw on the other end. It serves to anchor the tooth as well as to cushion its movement during chewing.

For durability, however, the secret lies in the enamel, dentin and pulp – our focus in this discussion.

Dentin and pulp are the body and heart of the tooth.
Anna Koroleva/iStock via Getty Images

Enamel – the shield

The enamel is the protective shell that covers the visible part of the tooth above the gum. Thanks to its high mineral content, enamel is the hardest tissue in the body. It needs to be, since it acts as a shield against the constant impact of chewing.

Enamel does not contain cells, blood vessels or nerves, so it is nonliving and nonsensitive. Enamel is also non-regenerating. Once destroyed by decay or broken by misuse such as ice chewing, nail biting or bottle opening – or touched by the dental drill – that part of our priceless enamel is gone for good.

Because it interfaces with a germ-laden world, the enamel is also where decay starts. When acid-generating bacteria accumulate on unbrushed or poorly brushed teeth, they readily dissolve the minerals in the enamel.

How bacteria invade the teeth and cause cavities.

Like hair or fingernails, the non-innervated enamel is not sensitive. The decay advances through the 2.5-millimeter thick (tenth of an inch) layer of enamel painlessly. When caught at that phase during a dental checkup visit, the dentist can treat the decay with a relatively conservative filling that hardly compromises the tooth’s structural integrity.

Because of its high mineral content, enamel is stiff. Its lifelong support is provided by the more resilient infrastructure – the dentin.

Dentin and pulp – body and heart

With less mineral content than enamel, dentin is the resilient body of the tooth. It is a living tissue formed of parallel tiny tubes housing fluid and cellular extensions. Both originate from the pulp.

The pulp is the tooth’s soft tissue core. Vastly rich in cells, blood vessels and nerves, it is the life source of the tooth – its heart – and the key to its longevity.

Like smoke detectors communicating with a remote fire station, the cellular extensions within the dentin sense decay as soon as it breaks through the nonsensitive layer of enamel into dentin. Once the extensions communicate the danger signal to the pulp, our tooth sensitivity alarm goes off: The tooth heart is in flames.

The inflamed pulp initiates two protective actions. The first is to secrete an additional layer of dentin to delay the approaching attack. The second is toothache, a call to visit the dentist.

The earlier the visit, the less the drilling and the smaller the filling. If caught in time, most of the tooth’s natural tissues will be preserved and the pulp will likely regain its healthy state. If caught too late, the pulp slowly dies out.

Without its heart, a nonliving tooth has no defense against further decay invasion. Without a hydration source, a dried-out dentin will sooner or later break under the forces of constant chewing. Besides, a tooth that has already lost a significant portion of its natural structure to decay, cavity preparation or root canal instrumentation becomes weak, with limited longevity.

In other words, the tooth is never the same without its heart. Pulpless, the tooth loses its womb-to-tomb endurance and mother nature’s lifelong warranty.

The tooth coming together

More complex – and more precious – than a pearl within an oyster, the formation of a tooth within our jawbone involves layered mineral deposition. As tooth development progresses in a process of ultimate cellular engineering, the cells of the six aforementioned tissues – enamel, dentin, pulp, cementum, ligament and bone – multiply, specialize and mineralize synchronously with each other to form uniquely interlocking interfaces: enamel to dentin, dentin to pulp, cementum to dentin and cementum to ligament to bone.

Tooth development – the ultimate process of cellular engineering.

In a progress akin to 3D printing, the tooth crown grows vertically to full formation. Simultaneously, the root continues its elongation to eventually launch off the crown from within the bone across the gum to appear in the mouth – the event known as teething. It is about that time, around 12 years of age, that our set of adult teeth is complete. These pearls are set to endure a lifetime and are undoubtedly worth preserving.

Save your teeth, visit the dentist

Tooth decay, the most prevalent disease in humans, is both predictable and preventable. The earlier it is caught, the more the tooth integrity can be preserved. Since the process starts painlessly, it is imperative to visit the dentist regularly to keep those insidious germs in check.

During your checkup visit, the dental professional will clean your teeth and check for early decay. If you are diligent with your daily preventive measures, the good news for you will be no news – enough to make anyone smile. Läs mer…

Acclaimed Waanyi writer Alexis Wright has made Australian literary history by being the first author to win the Stella Prize twice. This time, it’s for Praiseworthy, her fourth novel – her first in more than a decade.

The Stella Prize was established out of an activist aim to redress the lack of women writers (and from 2019, non-binary writers too) on the shortlists of Australia’s major literary awards. It has often been idiosyncratic in its choices, steering clear of “big” books by established, “major” authors. Here, the Stella judging panel has awarded a book that is big in every sense –  and a writer who is widely acclaimed.

When looking for words to describe this novel, critics have reached for “epic”, “monumental”, “mighty”. This isn’t just shorthand for “736 pages long” – Praiseworthy is a novel of substantial ambition and cultural, literary and political heft.

Beejay Silcox, chair of the judging panel, called it “mighty in every way” and “not only a great Australian novel – perhaps the great Australian novel”.

In awarding the prize to Wright and Praiseworthy, the judges are sticking with the core role of the literary prize in Australia’s ecosystem: to recognise achievement, especially in works that might not find easy success in the market.

Alexis Wright’s work has been much-awarded. Carpentaria (2006) – in many ways the precursor and companion to Praiseworthy in the sweep of its ambition and its focus on Gulf Country – won a slew of awards, including the nation’s most prestigious, the Miles Franklin.

In addition to the A$60,000 Stella Prize, Praiseworthy has won the Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book Award, and has been shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

‘Like being in a mosh pit’

In this novel, the remote town of Praiseworthy is covered in an ancestral haze that carries the uncertain metaphorical weight of everything wrong with the town. The narrative follows the lives of four members of the Steel family.

The father, Cause Man Steel, is driving the town (and his wife) crazy with his plan to ensure the survival of his people through a scheme to harness the transport energy of the country’s millions of feral donkeys when the fossil fuel runs out. Roaring across Country in his falling-apart Falcon, with a cranky ancestral donkey strapped into the back seat, Cause Man Steel is a combination of Mad Max, Don Quixote, Tracker Tilmouth (the activist subject of Wright’s first Stella Prize-winning book), Odysseus and his own madcap self.

Reading this novel is a bit like being in a mosh pit, or a choppy ocean: it can be hard to find your feet, and just when you think you have some solid ground, something happens to sweep you up and plonk you down where you have to take your bearings all over again. A large part of this is the complex tonal mix. There is no doubt Praiseworthy is working in the mode of satire, with colonialism and assimilation as the targets. But as in all good satire, the sharpness, disgust and pity point in several directions.

Youngest son Tommyhawk Steel is the victim of worldviews he inhales from his addiction to watching the white news on the internet. He is repeatedly described by his father as a fascist. His conviction that he lives in a town of paedophiles leads him to turn on his brother, Aboriginal Sovereignty, and the question of what happens to him as a consequence develops into a doomed love story that is also a wild ride: the characters themselves are confused about whether to read his loss as allegorical, if indeed he is lost at all.

Declan Fry describes the novel’s narrative strategy as “anti-realist”, but as Mykaela Saunders argues in her review, it is telling stories that are manifestly true.

The pace of the narrative slows to a sudden focus when it comes to its grimly matter-of-fact depictions of the suicide of children and violence of police against them. Wright draws a causal link between these suicides and the Intervention and the deficit discourse that underpinned it, which continues to be the norm in much Australian media.

Wright herself describes her approach to fiction as “hyper real”. This goes some way to explaining the temporality of this novel, which speaks specifically to its purported setting in 2008 and the context of the Northern Territory Intervention, as concrete details like the Basics Card float in the broader metaphorical waters of the novel.

But it also breaks free of this setting –  and is intent on connecting all times, including the present and future. Twitter, climate change and the pandemic are folded into the catastrophic background to the Steel family’s story.

Questions of survival

Wright’s work has long had the ability to speak to history as it unfolds into the future. Reading Praiseworthy in the wake of the failed referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, these looping, tragicomic accounts of searching and mourning for Aboriginal Sovereignty feel both forceful and urgent.

Praiseworthy is about so many things, but what I was most strongly left with was the question of survival. The members of the Steel family practise different methods of surviving ongoing catastrophe and all of these strategies – perhaps especially those of Dance, the mother – are guided in complicated ways by Country and ancestors.

While it is important for “activist” awards like the Stella Prize to continue to draw attention to lesser-known works and authors, it is also taking its role seriously in recognising and awarding women’s literary achievement. And Alexis Wright’s achievement with Praiseworthy – in world-building, in illuminating what is happening in this country, and in doing something entirely new with the form of the novel – is significant indeed.

Read more:
Enraged, tragic and hopeful: Alexis Wright’s new novel Praiseworthy explores Aboriginal sovereignty in the shadow of the anthropocene Läs mer…

In a teaser video for her third album, Radical Optimism, Dua Lipa explained that every track has that “through-the-struggle-you-are-going-to-make-it” optimistic feeling.

She has also said that the album “taps into the pure joy and happiness of having clarity in situations that once seemed impossible to face”. She added: “The hard goodbyes and vulnerable beginnings that previously threatened to crush your soul, become milestones as you choose optimism and start to move with grace through the chaos.”

Dua Lipa’s teaser video for Radical Optimism.

This “chaos” is a feeling all too familiar for many young adults today. The philosophy of radical optimism sounds like an answer to the confusion that often accompanies our 20s and 30s. So, should we all seek to harness “radical optimism” to gain the kind of clarity and fortitude Lipa speaks of in our own lives?

I’m a pragmatist philosopher researching how we can constructively and honestly face personal and collective catastrophe. While I like the idea of fostering a hopeful and empowering outlook when facing life’s many challenges, I worry that radical optimism can have some damaging consequences.

This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our 20s and 30s. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.

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Radical optimism isn’t a singular recognisable philosophical school of thought, so it can be hard to pin down exactly what it means.

If pessimism is the expectation that mostly bad things will happen, then optimism is the expectation that mostly good things will happen. Radical optimism stresses the importance of agency and responsibility in understanding our negative experiences, prescribing a mindset that things will ultimately work out for the better.

This might sound a lot like the deeply unscientific “law of attraction”, which suggests that positive thoughts can somehow cosmically “attract” positive outcomes, such as wealth and success. But radical optimists, much like people who follow stoicism, generally place a greater emphasis on equanimity (calmness and composure in difficult situations) than fans of the “law of attraction”. They believe that confidence and trust are better ways of dealing with problems than fear and worry.

The perceived importance of happiness and positivity is so embedded in our culture that phrases like “stay positive” or “be kind to yourself” seem to have become the common sense adages of our age.

In most cases, they serve as simple reminders not to be too hard on ourselves. This is appropriate because humans tend to suffer from a negativity bias – we notice and dwell more readily on negative experiences than positive ones. Taken too literally, however, these adages can result in “toxic positivity” – a compulsion to present an upbeat attitude, regardless of how you authentically feel.

This can be damaging as it can lead to desensitisation and even dissociation by hindering your capacity to discern your true feelings and values. It can also disconnect you from valuable experiences of sadness, frustration, anger and grief.

Radical optimism ultimately aims for a middle way between toxic positivity and fearful pessimism. But when coming from a megastar like Lipa, the message of radical optimism can feel a bit rich.

On the whole, with a positive attitude and appropriate efforts, things probably will work for out for privileged people like her. But is the same thing true for those living within the normal range of talents, gifts and wealth? If not, then embracing radical optimism could actually be a mild self-delusion, heightening expectations that simply can’t be met and so causing greater despair down the line.

I suspect that Lipa is not blind to this, as she has shared her own experiences of suffering and is the daughter of refugees. The album title comes from her 2021 Grammy acceptance speech, when she said:

One thing that I’ve really come to realise is how much happiness is so important. I felt really jaded at the end of my last album where I felt like I only had to make sad music to feel like it mattered … happiness is something that we all deserve and something that we all need in our lives.

The 2021 Grammy acceptance speech that inspired the album title.

These words were heartfelt and poignant, personal but also collective since they arrived on the screens of millions of people during the pandemic – probably feeling a good deal of fear and despair. In times of duress, allowing yourself to hope for future happiness is both healthy and helpful.

However, directly trying to boost our happiness has a tendency to make it recede ever further on the horizon.

Psychologists have amassed a trove of data about happiness, and it turns out that happy people rarely think about their own subjective happiness. Instead, they direct their attention towards things that they find intrinsically valuable (like personal passions or their sense of purpose) and towards their relationships with others. They also tend to be physically active and regularly feel grateful.

Meliorism and being ‘radically open’

I think a better approach than radical optimism is to understand that the future is radically open. The American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey described “meliorism” as “the belief that the specific conditions which exist at one moment, be they comparatively bad or comparatively good, in any event may be bettered”. In other words, Dewey thought that we should believe that we can make progress, but understand that it demands personal and often collective efforts.

A well-grounded hope that recognises the radical openness of the future can bolster our initiative and deepen our compassion. It also avoids unhelpful forms of emotional suppression.

As the great existential psychotherapist, Irvin Yalom, said: facing the negative parts of human life (mortality, loss, isolation, uncertainty) head on can be a powerful experience that yields self-knowledge and life-sustaining meaning. It can help us to slay superficial, comfortable hopes to allow for a deeper, less shaky, form of hope to grow.

Understood in the right way, meliorism can see us through the most painful and confusing times in our life more effectively than any kind of simplistic optimism. That’s because it can remind us of our own frailty and fallibility, while at the same time affirming our agency and interdependence. It reminds us to ask for help and to believe that our habits, actions and beliefs ultimately matter in helping us find a way through.

Perhaps, meliorism is what Lipa is really referring to when she speaks of “radical optimism”. I will have to listen to the album carefully to know for sure. But I admit it: “radical meliorism” isn’t quite such a catchy title. Läs mer…

UK business is beaming with pride with the recent news of the country’s emergence as the fourth largest exporter in the world based on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report. The UK jumped three places in 2022, surpassing France, the Netherlands and Japan.

This pride is justified, as there have been many challenges along the way, especially in the wake of Brexit, when the UK found itself redefining its economic landscape. With the dust settling from its EU departure, combined with COVID disruption, the UK was embarking on an uncertain journey.

But with the newfound autonomy, the UK decided to chart its own course in the international space. The break from the EU trading bloc meant a departure from established trade agreements and regulations, leading to a revaluation of economic policies and partnerships.

So how did the UK get from a place of uncertainty to the fourth largest exporter in the world? Untangling what export means is a good way to start. In simple terms, export means taking goods or services made in one country and sending them to another country to be sold or traded.

This description fits well with the two main categories into which the UK export portfolio is split: products and services. Exporting is a fundamental aspect of international trade, and it allows countries to exchange goods and services that they specialise in producing for those that they do not. Global economic growth, employment creation and access to a larger variety of goods and resources are all eased by export.

Right now, the UK government is trying to drive expansion in exports in response to global
economic opportunities, and challenges like navigating new trade barriers and customs procedures, increased bureaucracy and logistical issues. Yet, the country has remained resilient, negotiating with old and new trading partners.

The government has signed strategic partnerships, for instance joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade pact with 11 countries, which allows the UK to develop its economic connections with Asia, among other regions. It also signed a agreement with Texas, boosting trading opportunities with the second-largest US state.

Perhaps because of deals like these, the government is promoting an export plan that aims to achieve a value of £1 trillion by 2030. It’s an ambitious figure but, based on the UK’s rising position, it aligns with business and trade secretary Kemi Badenoch’s comment that the UK is “punching above its weight”. Figures show that UK exports were worth £861.6 billion in the 12 months to the end of February this year.

Business and trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch and Texas governor Greg Abbott sign the trade agreement in London in March.

But we should sound a note of caution here. The growth is evident in the services sector, while the goods sector lags, especially compared to this time last year. This concern was highlighted by the Bank of England (BoE) at its March 2024 meeting, when the bank also noted that demand for UK goods remained strong in the US, while weakening in China and the EU.

The export of vehicles and aerospace equipment from brands like Land Rover and Rolls-Royce have contributed extensively to the UK’s export figures. But the dominance of the service category is evident in the tourism and professional sectors such as higher education, architecture and insurance, and particularly in financial services. In the same March meeting, the BoE noted that service exports grew in value due primarily to prices, as volumes grew only slightly.

The post-Brexit export landscape

Since leaving the EU, the UK has negotiated trade agreements with several countries, allowing organisations to increase their reach through global supply chains. And there are ongoing discussions with Turkey on a modernised trade deal targeting the services sector.

Brexit happened in January 2020 and the UK’s export figures saw a decline that year, with figures dropping from £706.7 billion in 2019 to £624.8 billion. But there has be a steady rise since, with exports reaching £864.5 billion in 2023.

It’s hard to say whether the UK can sustain this trajectory. The rate of exported goods declined in 2023 compared to 2022, and some trading agreements are expiring. And there is also the perennial threat of cheaper goods flooding export locations.

However, there are ways the UK can attempt to maintain its exporting momentum. It could diversify the country’s export portfolio, drawing on its reputation for creativity, research and development, and resilience.

Data from the Office for National Statistics from 2021 suggest that only 11.4% of UK businesses were exporting. This has been largely attributed to the lack of awareness of the opportunity, knowledge of the process and skills.

But there is good news for UK businesses if exporting is something they’d like to explore. The first thing they should remember is that they are not alone on this journey – many have gone before that they can learn from, and there is help and support out there.

Businesses looking to move into exports can seek information from the Chamber of Commerce’s international trade department and the Department for Business and Trade. The opportunities are vast but it’s not without risk, so knowledge of the process is critical. But as the UN figures show, UK goods – and especially services – are in demand by the rest of the world. It could be a great time for businesses to capitalise. Läs mer…

Falling under the spell of a celebrity crush is a common part of adolescence. But in the age of social media and unprecedented access to our idols, admiration can morph into harm.

In April, a woman was jailed for stalking singer Harry Styles, after sending him 8,000 cards in less than a month. Her case vividly illustrates the alarming consequences of overstepping boundaries between fans and celebrities. Journalist Emily Maitlis, The Crown actor Claire Foy and TV presenter Jeremy Vine have all experienced similar stalking incidents.

As audience members, we connect to media figures in different ways. We might empathise with a cherished character’s experiences, or feel a sense of closeness with TV hosts who become a familiar presence in our lives. These connections, known as parasocial relationships, thrive on perceived intimacy, but lack reciprocity.

Audience involvement is a spectrum. At the less intrusive end is participation in fandom activities, such as collecting merchandise and engaging with online fan communities.

But social media’s curated posts, livestreams, and the ability to directly interact with celebrities through messages and comments, have intensified the parasocial relationship. It’s not surprising that many fans feel a heightened level of intimacy, with deeper emotional attachment.

Even then, stalking does not emerge merely out of a gradual escalation of these parasocial relationships. People (possibly battling mental health challenges) may harbour various motivations, potentially culminating in toxic obsession.

These motivations can range from a desire for vengeance and retribution against the target, to loneliness and resentment, or a quest for control. Some may hold delusions such as erotomania: believing someone loves them and will eventually reciprocate. In the case of Maitlis’s stalker, his “unrequited love” for the journalist led him to repeatedly breach a restraining order.

The law on privacy and stalking

Legal boundaries separate genuine appreciation from repetitive, oppressive conduct that jeopardises someone’s wellbeing. Despite being public figures, celebrities – like everyone – deserve a level of privacy.

Picture your life as a house, with each room symbolising different facets: thoughts, emotions and personal endeavours. Around it is a protective zone of privacy, shielding specific aspects of your life from unwanted intrusion by strangers, acquaintances or the government.

According to the European Court of Human Rights, the scope of this privacy zone extends beyond the strict confines of our homes. It also protects our personal growth and ability to nurture relationships. This is what is known as the “right to lead a private social life”.

When stalking rises to the level of inducing fear of violence or has a substantial adverse effect on someone’s regular activities (such as forcing someone to make significant changes to their lifestyle), the law steps in to protect victims.

There are various legal tools to maintain the integrity of these restricted areas, including civil remedies and criminal offences. Some may be racially or religiously aggravated, attracting more severe penalties.

Stalkers frequently exhibit a consistent pattern of fixated, obsessive, unwanted and repeated actions (which can be remembered as the acronym FOUR). Such behaviour can violate both a person’s “inner circle” privacy zone and also the outer sphere of their private social life.

Claire Foy signs autographs for fans.
Ettore Ferrari/EPA-EFE

Secretly monitoring someone’s activities or lingering around their home without valid cause gravely endangers the core privacy zone. Foy’s stalker, who had become “infatuated” with the actor, received a stalking protection order after appearing uninvited at her doorstep. He left her “scared” of her doorbell ringing and feeling “helpless” in her own home.

Sending unsolicited gifts is also associated with stalking, as shown by Styles’s relentless pursuer, who sent countless unsettling letters and hand-delivered two to the singer’s address, causing “serious alarm or distress”.

Read more:
Why you might start to hate the influencers you once loved

Family members, coworkers or neighbours of the main victim may also experience direct intrusion themselves. For example, Maitlis’s stalker showed “breathtaking persistence” in contacting his victim and her mother, while Foy’s stalker had emailed the actor’s sister and texted her ex-boyfriend.

This conduct breaches that outer circle of privacy and interferes with the right to a private social life. It can severely impair someone’s ability to freely establish normal social networks, ultimately isolating them and disrupting their support systems.

Technology has facilitated the proliferation of such behaviour via cyberstalking. For example, Vine’s stalker “weaponised the internet”, sending relentless emails identifying the presenter’s home address and making him fear for his family’s safety.

In 2022, a 28-year-old man was sentenced to prison for orchestrating a chilling stalking spree via social media. Targeting more than 100 victims, he issued harrowing threats of severe sexual violence. His proactive pursuit of personal details left victims petrified in their own homes.

Such digital variations of traditional stalking might also be dealt with in law through communications offences, including the newly enacted “threatening communications” offence. Above all, acknowledging that celebrities are humans with a right to privacy reminds us of the importance of respect for boundaries, distinguishing between harmless admiration and harmful fixation. Läs mer…

Recently, there has been a flurry of publicity about the planned upgrades to OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI-powered chatbot and Meta’s Llama system, which powers the company’s chatbots across Facebook and Instagram.

The technology behind these systems is known as a large language model (LLM). These are artificial neural networks, a type of AI designed to mimic the human brain. They can generate general purpose text, for chatbots, and perform language processing tasks such as classifying concepts, analysing data and translating text.

They acquire these abilities through an intensive process known as training, where the AI system is exposed to vast amounts of data in an effort to improve what it does. OpenAI and Meta are expected to release the newer versions of their chatbots – called GPT-5 and Llama 3, respectively, before the end of summer 2024. But how will these differ from their predecessors and what value will they add?

Like its predecessor GPT-4, GPT-5 will be capable of understanding images and text. For instance, users will be able to ask it to describe an image, making it even more accessible to people with visual impairments.

However, GPT-5 will have superior capabilities with different languages, making it possible for non-English speakers to communicate and interact with the system. This includes greater mastery of language translation. The upgrade will also have an improved ability to interpret the context of dialogue and interpret the nuances of language.

Compared to its predecessor, GPT-5 will have more advanced reasoning capabilities, meaning it will be able to analyse more complex data sets and perform more sophisticated problem-solving. The reasoning will enable the AI system to take informed decisions by learning from new experiences.

Hence, it will be able to provide more accurate information to users. For instance, the system’s improved analytical capabilities will allow it to suggest possible medical conditions from symptoms described by the user. GPT-5 can process up to 50,000 words at a time, which is twice as many as GPT-4 can do, making it even better equipped to handle large documents.

It will feature a higher level of emotional intelligence, allowing for more
empathic interactions with users. This could be useful in a range of settings, including customer service. GPT-5 will also display a significant improvement in the accuracy of how it searches for and retrieves information, making it a more reliable source for learning.

It is said to go far beyond the functions of a typical search engine that finds and extracts relevant information from existing information repositories, towards generating new content.

GPT-5 is also expected to show higher levels of fairness and inclusion in the content it generates due to additional efforts put in by OpenAI to reduce biases in the language model.

It will be able to interact in a more intelligent manner with other devices and machines, including smart systems in the home. The GPT-5 should be able to analyse and interpret data generated by these other machines and incorporate it into user responses. It will also be able to learn from this with the aim of providing more customised answers.

GPT-5 could communicate with connected devices in smart homes.
Aslysun / Shutterstock

This could enable smarter environments at home and in the workplace. GPT-5 will be more compatible with what’s known as the Internet of Things, where devices in the home and elsewhere are connected and share information. It should also help support the concept known as industry 5.0, where humans and machines operate interactively within the same workplace.

GPT-5 will feature more robust security protocols that make this version more robust against malicious use and mishandling. It could be used to enhance email security by enabling users to recognise potential data security breaches or phishing attempts.

Overall, the upgrade from OpenAI should be more versatile, more energy efficient in its computations and offer a more adaptable and personalised service.

Meta’s Llama upgrade

Llama-3 is Meta’s competitor to GPT-5. It features several improvements compared to its predecessor, Llama-2. It is a more capable model that will eventually come with 400 billion parameters compared to a maximum of 70 billion for its predecessor Llama-2. In machine learning, a parameter is a term that represents a variable in the AI system that can be adjusted during the training process, in order to improve its ability to make accurate predictions.

Llama-3 will also be multimodal, which means it is capable of processing and generating text, images and video. Therefore, it will be capable of taking an image as input to provide a detailed description of the image content. Equally, it can automatically create a new image that matches the user’s prompt, or text description.

It will be able to perform tasks in languages other than English and will have a larger context window than Llama 2. A context window reflects the range of text that the LLM can process at the time the information is generated. This implies that the model will be able to handle larger chunks of text or data within a shorter period of time when it is asked to make predictions and generate responses.

Meta is planning to launch Llama-3 in several different versions to be able to work with a variety of other applications, including Google Cloud. Meta announced that more basic versions of Llama-3 will be rolled out soon, ahead of the release of the most advanced version, which is expected next summer.

The transition to this new generation of chatbots could not only revolutionise generative AI, but also mark the start of a new era in human-machine interaction that could transform industries and societies on a global scale. It will affect the way people work, learn, receive healthcare, communicate with the world and each other. It will make businesses and organisations more efficient and effective, more agile to change, and so more profitable. Läs mer…