In the 21st century, however, using technology humanity has exceeded far beyond just using telescopes from the earth. Rather, it started placing them in earth’s orbits to observe stellar bodies much more efficiently and without any environmental disturbances. The well-known Hubble Space Telescope [launched on April 24, 1990] was placed in earth orbit at a distance of 535 km approx. and now the historic launching of JWST on December 25, 2021, is poised to continue the legacy
The ‘Golden Age’ is a label applied to the period in Russia’s literary history which saw the rise of and prevalence of the movements of Romanticism, Realism, and Classicism. Beginning in the 19th century and centered in Moscow (Buckler, et al.), the authors of this Golden Age are familiar to Western tongues: Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol. In his groundbreaking work on Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, scholar Joseph Frank conducts an exhaustive study of, among other books, The Brothers Karamazov and traces the author’s common themes within his work; themes such as “man lifted up” as well as the “inherent stupidity of man” are common throughout (903). Thematically, the Golden Age addressed moral, ethical, and religious dilemmas, all of which are present in The Brothers Karamazov and Dostoevsky’s other major work, Crime and Punishment.
Diamonds have undoubtedly become the most prominent gemstone in popular culture, with 86% of engagement rings in the United States being diamond. The popularity of diamond-studded jewelry in American hip-hop culture has also exploded, leading to an even further glorification of diamonds as a status symbol. However, demand for diamonds was not always so high and De Beers, which until recently held arguably the strongest monopoly in history, was able to utilize brilliant marketing techniques in order to embed diamonds into everyday life around the globe and set market prices to make incredible profits. Recently, a slew of antitrust laws against the company has diversified the market and growth in the efficiency of lab-made diamonds promises to benefit consumers.
On September 26th, 2022, the U.K.’s economy, the 6th largest in the world, nearly collapsed as the British pound fell 5% to its lowest value ever at just 1.03 USD. This left the U.K. teetering on the edge of a very serious potential economic crisis. To illustrate the severity of the situation, nearly ¾ of pubs in the U.K. are currently facing permanent closure, citizens are purchasing generators and torches as they anticipate blackouts in the coming winter, and police are preparing for an incredible surge in violent crime and civil unrest as the cost of living will make for a very tough winter for the country. The driver for all of this was the announcement from the new U.K. government that they would be borrowing billions more pounds as a part of their mini-budget which sent the markets tumbling out of control. Unfortunately for the U.K., all of this is occurring while a recession looms on the global economy set to further disrupt the country in many ways.
In the context of psychotherapy, MDMA is a psychedelic that has a considerable quantity of data supporting its efficacy in its role as an adjunct to therapy. With the completion of the second and final phase three clinical trial of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treatment of PTSD in 2022, and the data available from those trials–MAPP1 demonstrated that 88% of participants displayed significant improvements, 67% no longer met criteria for diagnosis, MAPP2 showed results from participants having moderate PTSD, not exclusively severe, and lastly, MAPP2 enrolled nearly twice as many participants of color–it is evident that there will be a New Drug Application in the near future (Kuntz, 2022). This presents a potentially very promising future for PTSD patients who have yet to find relief from their symptoms in psychotherapy or psychopharmacology.
While attempting to buy an NFL team, Bobby Axelrod, the imperfect protagonist of the popular HBO TV series ‘Billions’ opined that “Sports franchises are how we knight people in this country.” While the series somehow manages to dramatize the already sensational world of hedge funds and high finance, the observation from Axelrod is a poignant one; ownership of sports franchises is America’s closest comparable to knighthood in the United Kingdom. With the lofty societal status assigned to owners of professional sports franchises, the reasoning for parting with such as asset is not always apparent.
Social media have become one of the major sources of communication and information worldwide, with trillions of bytes of information being exchanged every second online. While trending topics on social media tend to change according to several factors, such as country or age, health-related content has recently been trending all over the world, across all ages on all major social media platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok).
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), colloquially known as depression, has plagued millions of people over the course of time, and research suggests that between 30-35% of depression cases meet the criteria to be deemed treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Despite the relatively low figure representing treatment resistance, a lot of the population experiencing depression maintains a low response rate to treatment in general. The established difficulty in treating so many cases of depression has created room for masses of research to be done regarding effective second-line remedies, and recently, the FDA has allowed depression treatment and research with drugs such as ketamine.
Planned obsolescence is the practice of designing a product with a limited useful lifespan so that it will become outdated or unusable after a certain period of time. This is typically done in order to encourage consumers to replace their existing products with new ones, thus driving demand and sales. Planned obsolescence can be seen in various products, including automobiles, appliances, and consumer electronics. It is often criticized for contributing to waste and consumerism, as it encourages the frequent replacement of still-functioning products. Kramer in “User Experience in the Age of Sustainability” calls it “the expiration date effect”
In May 2022, Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership. The decision arrived at a time of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, which sparked, and is continuing to elicit, growing security concerns among its European neighbors. Both Sweden and Finland have engaged in regular military cooperation with NATO allies, especially with respect to the sale and purchase of military equipment. Finland’s decision to purchase 64 F-35 aircraft from the US aerospace corporation Lockheed Martin in early 2022 was viewed as a move that, although not entirely indicative of a NATO future, provided a parallel with the neighboring, fellow Arctic country Norway, which also operates the F-35 aircraft. Indeed, the sense of shared military prowess and interoperability between Arctic countries and the wider NATO intergovernmental organization as a whole is a fundamental component of both the feasibility and practicality of Sweden and Finland’s decision to join NATO.
