Showing posts with label Young Scientist Challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Young Scientist Challenge. Show all posts

Sunday, October 18, 2020

“An inquisitive mind”

Photo courtesy
Young Scientist Challenge

Big news

Anika Chebrolu. 
Remember that name. Anika is 14 years old, lives in Frisco, Texas, and may have discovered a potential therapy for Covid-19. Anika won the 2020 3M Young Scientist Challenge - and a $25,000 prize - for an invention that uses an in-silico methodology to discover a lead molecule that can selectively bind to the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Anika Chebrolu, an “inquisitive mind,” along with self-confidence, thinking outside the box, and other qualities that suggest our youth might have the wherewithal to force change on our current crop of leaders’ old ways of thinking.  

News blues…

Lordy, Lordy, who else is really sick of Donald Trump and his crew, the lies, the obfuscation, ubiquitous presence on TV, social media, and constant presence in our faces….? 
The scariest part? Trump is president until January 20th.
He’ll be at his most dangerous during this lame duck period. I predict he’ll wreak more damage in those weeks than he has to date. For Trump, being Trump, will punish We the People for ousting him via the ballot box…
It’s not just little ole me, opining via keyboard in locked down South Africa. Former Trump administration officials have hands-on experience that they are – finally - willing to share with the republic…  (3:40 mins)
Ah, yes, but… then you have the creativity expressed about Trump. Here, South African The Kiffness has Trump doing the Jerusalema ….  (1:00 mins)
***
President Ramaphosa extends Covid-19 grant.  (2:08 mins)
***
The US, along with European countries, experiences yet another surge in Covid cases.
The third surge of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is under way. Outbreaks have been worsening in many states for more than a month, and new COVID-19 cases jumped 18 percent this week, bringing the seven-day average to more than 51,000 cases a day. Though testing rose by 8 percent nationally, that’s not enough of an increase to explain the steep rise in cases.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 hospitalizations, which had previously been creeping upward slowly, jumped more than 14 percent from a week earlier. 
***
Infections are rising in South Africa, too. The toll of confirmed infections surpassed 700,000 yesterday, and that number includes South Africa’s health minister, Zweli Mkhize and his wife, both of whom tested positive.  
More than 18,000 South African residents have died of the virus.
***
Cats for Biden/Harris 
Meidas Touch:
Believe in America  (0:55 mins)
Stronger with Biden  (0:55 mins

Healthy planet, anyone?

Meercat Manor  (20:05 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Funny thing about selling a house at this time, in this place in South Africa: no bites. Not even nibbles.
Information about the house sale published on the real estate agency’s web site a week ago. Recently, I asked a friend about her experience selling her house – two years ago and not during a pandemic. She said, “We got an offer within 48 hours” – and that offer was accepted. My friend added, “It took 18 months, and dropping the selling price by ZAR 200K, for an acquaintance in the same village, albeit a different neighborhood, to sell their well-maintained house.”
18 months!
The real estate market in the San Francisco Bay Area is the opposite: a seller usually receives multiple, competing offers within a day of publishing the sales info.
Local realtors handing the sale of this house concur, telling me, “a sale could take months – sometimes 18 months.”
Sobering. 
I can't stay in South Africa for 18 months! What am I going to do? 
Time to take a lesson from "an inquisitive mind": think outside the box.