The Chinese platform has gained six places in just one year, surpassing all services linked to Google.
With one billion monthly active users, TikTok is reaching a new milestone. The application of short videos overtakes Google and thus becomes the most visited website in the world in 2021, according to the ranking of the American company Cloudflare.
In other words, TikTok generates more traffic on its site than all of Google’s services combined: search engine, mapping, translation, news or photos. This is the first time that the ByteDance firm has climbed to the top of the charts.
After TikTok and Google, Facebook occupies the last place on the podium. Next are Microsoft, Apple , Amazon , Netflix , YouTube , Twitter and WhatsApp . This latest messaging app throws Instagram out of the Top 10, yet ninth in 2020. Compared to last year, Netflix has lost two places while Twitter has gained one. But this comparison should be taken with caution because the 2020 ranking began in September, so Cloudflare only analyzed the last four months of the year.
An « exquisitely preserved » embryo has been found inside a fossilised dinosaur egg.
The discovery, dubbed « Baby Yingliang », is believed to be between 66 and 72 million years old, and was found in the Late Cretaceous rocks of Ganzhou, China.
Professor Steve Brusatte, part of the research team, said: « This dinosaur embryo inside its egg is one of the most beautiful fossils I have ever seen. » The embryo is believed to be a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur – a group of feathered theropods, closely related to modern-day birds.
China has just overtaken the United States in the ranking of the richest countries on the planet, according to a report, now settling in first place.
China has just overtaken the United States in the ranking of the richest countries on the planet, according to a report, now settling in first place. The country’s value would have increased from $ 7 trillion in 2000 to over $ 120 trillion in 2020.
China goes ahead
The world has gotten much richer over the past two decades (net worth has tripled), but the distribution of wealth has shifted. Long behind the United States, China has just overtaken its main rival as the richest nation in the world. These are the two main lessons of a new report from the research arm of McKinsey & Co consultants, relayed by Bloomberg . For this work, the experts examined the national balance sheets of ten countries representing more than 60% of world income.
In detail, global net worth has grown from $ 156 trillion in 2000 to $ 514 trillion in 2020 , according to the report. China accounted for nearly a third of this development. The country’s wealth would thus have climbed from $ 7 trillion in 2000 to $ 120 trillion in 2020 . Its membership in the World Trade Organization in 2001 would obviously have accelerated this meteoric economic rise.
The United States, for its part, saw its net worth more than double over the period to reach $ 90 trillion in 2020. It should also be noted that in both the United States and China, more than two-thirds of wealth are owned by the richest 10% of households, and their share continues to increase.
According to the report, around 68% of that global net worth is stored in real estate. This sector includes machinery, infrastructure and equipment.
China widens the innovation gap
It should also be recalled that in 2019, China had overtaken the United States in the field of international patents with a thousand filings in advance. However, these applications filed through the WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) are one of the key indicators for measuring the various activities related to innovation.
In 2020, the Middle Kingdom retained its first place with 68,720 patents filed (+ 16% compared to 2019), ahead of the United States with its 59,230 filings (+ 3%). In other words, China remains in the lead, but also widens the gap on its direct competitor. Next come Japan, South Korea and Germany.
Even before its launch, Trump was forced to shut down access to his social network Truth Social . Internet users managed to register in his name and published a shower of insults as well as the same distasteful tweet » Pig Poop Balls » dating from 2011.
What do we do when we can no longer access social networks? We throw his! After being banned from Twitter , Facebook and YouTube , Donald Trump announced his own site on Wednesday. Dubbed « Social Truth », it is part of a new Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) created to fight the » liberal media consortium » and » resist the tyranny of the web giants . »
In a few hours, Internet users, some of whom claim to be part of the Anonymous movement , had already discovered the address of the site when it was not yet officially launched. They then succeeded in creating accounts in the names of the former US president and several other personalities such as Steve Bannon (his former adviser), Mike Pence (his former vice-president), Ron Watkins (member of QAnon) or even the P .-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey .
Troll festival and licensing issues
These fake accounts were then used to troll personalities and the site, between insults, conspiracy theories and images of a pig defecating on his testicles . The administrators first closed the creation of new accounts before having to disconnect the entire platform.
Others immediately realized that the site was a modified version of Mastodon, free software . The AGPLv3 license requires anyone who uses it to share their code and clearly display the license on the site. Of course, this was not done with Truth Social. The creator of Mastodon, Eugen Rochko, told the Talking Points Memo site that he plans to find out about possible legal remedies. As expected, Trump’s site is off to a rocky start even before its launch …
It was from the north that the Vikings would have discovered America around the year 1000. Pixabay – gloverbh222
The doubt was allowed since archaeological discoveries of a few decades ago. Now it is a fact: the presence of the Vikings in North America has been confirmed … 400 years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.
We will have to review all the textbooks and update all our certainties on the discovery of the Americas. Until now, history has taught schoolchildren around the world that Christopher Columbus, funded by Queen Isabella of Spain, discovered America in 1492 while exploring a new sea route to India through the Atlantic Ocean.
Since archaeological excavations dating back 50 years, there was doubt about the identity of the first Europeans to have set foot on American soil. Indeed, traces of Vikings had been spotted in northeastern Canada in particular thanks to wooden objects.null
But this time, there is no longer any doubt. A study published in the journal Nature by the University of Groningen (Netherlands) toured the world on Wednesday, October 20. It indicates that researchers found a way to confirm the presence of the Vikings in Newfoundland, 400 years before the arrival (much further south) of Christopher Columbus.
A decisive solar storm
And it is the sun that enlightened the researchers. This is because a solar storm dated to AD 993 released a huge pulse of radiation that was absorbed and stored by trees all over the Earth. It was this solar event that turned out to be decisive in determining the exact year the Vikings were present in the Americas.
Until now, the wooden elements recovered 50 years ago had been dated but with the radiocarbon technique the margin of error was about a century. But researchers at the time had recovered and preserved hundreds of other additional pieces of wood found on and around the site, storing many in freezers in a Canadian warehouse to prevent them from rotting.
A stock which represented a « gold mine » for the archaeologist of the University of Groningen, Margot Kuitems, co-author of the study.
The thing that changed everything is that three of the wood samples were from living trees during the solar event of 993. The cosmic storm was so powerful that it embedded itself in the layers of trees around the world. , creating a kind of timestamp of these.
This phenomenon having only occurred twice during the last 2000 years, it was then « easier » to date the pieces of wood … and in particular the year of the felling of the tree by the Vikings which dates back to the 1000s. Christopher Columbus did not land in San Salvador until 1492 …
American photographer Spencer Tunick and his team work on a photographic installation with dozens of naked people near the Dead Sea, Israel, October 17, 2001 Menahem KAHANA AFP
Some 200 people posed naked on Sunday with their painted white bodies for the latest project by American photographer Spencer Tunick, in Israel near the Dead Sea, which is threatened with drying out.
This is the third project of its kind on the shores of the Dead Sea for the 54-year-old photographer, invited by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism and the city of Arad (east), where the session took place.
Stationed on a truck, Mr. Tunick, known for his compositions of naked crowds, gave his instructions with a megaphone to people posing on the rocky hills overlooking the turquoise sea.
He explained that he covered his models with white paint to evoke the biblical episode of Lot’s wife, traditionally transformed into a pillar of salt there.
Nissan Ben Hamo, the mayor of Arad, has expressed hope that this shoot will help raise funds for a new museum on the Dead Sea.
The latter has lost a third of its surface since 1960 and continues to decline by more than a meter per year.
At this rate, this natural wonder, located at the lowest point in the world (minus 420 meters) between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories, could have disappeared by 2050, according to experts.
The drying up began in the 1960s with the economic exploitation of the waters of the Jordan River, the main source of supply for the Dead Sea, the saltiest in the world.
When you see a model showing our solar system, all of the planets, and even asteroids, orbit at roughly the same plane. With all the space around the Sun, one might wonder why this is the case.
The explanation for this phenomenon can be found by going back in time to the very formation of the solar system, that is, 4.5 billion years ago. As Nader Haghighipour, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, explains, the solar system at that time was just a massive cloud of spinning dust and gas. This cloud had a diameter of about 12,000 astronomical units (AU), one AU corresponding to the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or roughly 150 million kilometers.
According to the researcher, the cloud kept growing and eventually collapsed on itself and contracted due to its own mass. At the same time, the cloud of dust and gas flattened like a pizza dough being tossed and whirled in the air.
The formation of the Sun
Unlike pizza dough, in the middle of the swirling cloud, the gas molecules clumped together until their temperature rose significantly. With the high temperature and pressure, the hydrogen atoms began to coalesce to form helium, and this activated the nuclear reaction that will last for billions of years. It is about the formation of the Sun.
Over the next 50 million years, the Sun continued to grow, collecting gas and dust from its surroundings, and ejecting intense heat waves and radiation. Gradually, an empty space began to form around him.
Around the planets and asteroids
Haghighipour explains that as the Sun grew, the cloud continued to collapse and form a disc around the star. This disc became increasingly flat and continued to expand with the Sun at its center. At some point it became what is called a protoplanetary disk.
For tens of millions of years, the dust particles in this protoplanetary disc swirled gently, and sometimes collided with each other. Some got stuck, and after a while the particles became grains, then the grains became pebbles of the order of a centimeter.
At some point, all of the material on the disc clumped together to form massive objects. Some of these objects grew so large that gravity eventually shaped them into spheres, forming planets, dwarf planets, and moons. Other objects took a more irregular shape and we were able to obtain asteroids, comets, or even certain small satellites.
The point is that all these objects formed from the protoplanetary disk have remained on one plane all this time. This is why we now have this configuration.
The Nobel Peace Prize will announce, on October 8, who will be nominated in 2021. The climate issue being at the heart of global concerns, the young Greta Thunberg could be the new distinguished personality.
If Greta Thunberg were to become the Nobel Peace Prize winner, she would be, at 18, the second youngest distinguished (only a few months old), after Pakistani Malala Yousafzai. | MIGUEL MEDINA / AFPWest FrancePublished on 02/10/2021 at 1:29
« It’s less hot in hell »: on Friday, hundreds of young people marched through the center of Milan, behind Swedish activist Greta Thunberg , demanding rapid action for the climate one month before the crucial COP26 conference in Glasgow . This week again, the young Swedish activist hit the mark with her scathing resignation and unwavering determination for the planet.
In just three weeks, the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced, just before Cop26. A crucial meeting which, according to many scientists, could determine the future of the planet. With this major deadline approaching, price watchers may well distinguish Greta Thunberg this year.
Who will receive the world’s most prestigious honor in 2021 will be unveiled on October 8. If this remains, each time, a total surprise, the prognoses are well underway and the committee carefully examines the global issues before selecting the recipient. With the COP26 climate summit set for early November in Scotland, the issue of the environment and the climate emergency could be at the heart of the committee’s concerns.
If Greta Thunberg were to become the Nobel Peace Prize winner, she would be, at 18, the second youngest distinguished (only a few months old), after Pakistani Malala Yousafzai.
“The committee often wants to send a message. And that would be a strong message to send to COP26, which will take place between the announcement of the award and the ceremony, ” Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute told Reuters.
According to a preliminary study, the loss of this part of the body in humans is partly explained by the addition during evolution of a small sequence of DNA in a particular gene.
The best stories of scientific discovery always begin with an anecdote. “This question – where is my tail? – I’ve been running around in my head since I was a kid, ” says Bo Xia, a doctoral student in evolutionary biology at New York University School of Medicine.
He is the first author of a preliminary study – yet not peer reviewed – on tail loss in the animal kingdom. The New York Times is passionate about its story: “A bad Uber ride in 2019, in which Bo Xia injured his tailbone, brought this question to his mind with new urgency. ‘It took me a year to recover, and it really made me think about the tailbone.’ ”
The importance of the TBXT gene
Uploaded to the bioRxiv platform on September 16 , the study suggests that tail loss is linked to the insertion of a small DNA sequence into a gene called TBXT. This gene was already suspected in previous studies to be involved in the formation or not of the tail in animals, specifies the American newspaper, but “the mutation that Bo Xia [and his team] discovered had not until then never been observed ”.
The researchers noted the presence of this mutation in humans and great apes, but not in other monkeys with tails. In this case, it is the addition of a short sequence, called Alu and recurrent in the human genome.
The Ethiopian calendar is seven years and eight months behind the Western calendar.
This is because it calculates the year of birth of Jesus Christ differently. When the Catholic Church changed its calculation in AD 500, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church did not.
The new year therefore falls on September 11 in the Western calendar, or September 12 in leap years, in early spring.
Unlike children growing up elsewhere, young Ethiopians do not need to learn nursery rhymes to remember the number of days in each month.
In Ethiopia, it’s simple: 12 months each have 30 days, and the 13th – the last of the year – has five or six days, depending on whether it is a leap year or not.
Time is also counted differently: the day is divided into two 12-hour increments starting at 6 a.m., which means that noon and midnight are both six o’clock in Ethiopian time.
So if someone meets you in Addis Ababa at 10 a.m. for a cup of coffee – Ethiopia is the birthplace of the Arabica bean after all – don’t be surprised if they show up at 4 p.m. .
The curious 