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March 2021 The housing crisis right now in New Zealand is one of our biggest contributors to income and wealth inequality. “With the explosive increase in sales and prices, those with houses have their income and/or wealth rapidly increasing, and those who are not on the property ladder are falling .
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Samoans went to the polls on Friday, and delivered a stinging blow to Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi one-party state. Pre-election Malielegaoi s Human Rights Protection Party had controlled 44 of 49 seats in Parliament, while using restrictive standing orders to prevent there from even being a recognised opposition in .
In 2018, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spotted a giant dark storm, which is 7,400 km (4,600 miles) across, in the northern hemisphere of Neptune. Observations a year later showed that the vortex began drifting southward toward the equator, where such storms are expected to vanish from sight. To the surprise of astronomers, Hubble spotted the vortex change direction by August 2020, doubling back to the north. At the same time as the spot’s stunning reversal, a new, slightly smaller dark feature appeared near its bigger cousin and later disappeared.
This Hubble image of the dynamic blue-green planet Neptune reveals a huge dark storm (top center) and the emergence of a smaller dark spot nearby (top right). The giant vortex, which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean, was traveling south toward certain doom by atmospheric forces at the equator when it suddenly made a U-turn and began drifting back northward. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) captured this visi
Dec. 16, 2020 , 1:20 PM
In 2018, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) raised the hopes of many LGBTQ scientists when it announced it would explore adding questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to its workforce surveys, starting with the 2021 National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG). But that timeline hasn’t held up: Last month, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget approved NSF’s plans for its 2021 NSCG and it doesn’t include a question about sexual orientation. A modified gender question with options other than “male” and “female” will appear, but only for a 5000-person test sample of the approximately 169,000 total survey recipients. And the agency has not released the exact wording, which has raised concerns over whether the question will yield reliable data and be sensitive to the transgender community.
Maggie WalkerUniversity of Washington
The University of Washington today announced a major gift that elevates the importance of climate change and secures the legacy of Seattle philanthropist Maggie Walker by creating a namesake deanship for the College of the Environment.
Honoring her life of service and commitment to the UW, in addition to an initial 10-year pledge of more than $400,000 annually, the Maggie Walker Deanship will provide a stable source of discretionary funding for the incoming dean and attract world-class talent to fill the position. A global search is currently underway to replace Dean Lisa J. Graumlich, who previously announced she is stepping down at the end of the 2020-2021 academic year and has been elected to serve as president-elect of the American Geophysical Union.
UCLA UCLA Newsroom |
December 16, 2020
Rong Fu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and associate director of the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, and Gregory Okin, professor of geography, have been selected as 2020 American Geophysical Union fellows. Fu and Okin were recognized for propelling the field of geoscience forward and pushing the boundaries of human knowledge to create a healthier planet.
The fellows were selected for their exceptional contributions to Earth and space science. Since the fellowship’s establishment in 1962, AGU has elected fewer than 0.1% of its members to join the prestigious group of individuals.
Fu’s research aims to clarify the causes and predictability of the variability of the atmospheric water cycle in a climate context, primarily focusing on the interactions between land and vegetation, fire and aerosols, clouds and rainfall, and connections with the adjacent oceans. Her research has been