University of Texas

SAN FRANCISCO - The algorithms powering Facebook and Instagram, which drive what billions of people see on the social networks, have been in the crosshairs of lawmakers, activists and regulators for years. Many have called for the algorithms to be abolished to stem the spread of viral misinformation and to prevent the inflammation of political divisions.

John Goodenough, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the lithium-ion battery that revolutionized modern life, has died at the age of 100, the University of Texas announced.

Goodenough died on June 25, said the university, where he worked as an engineering professor.

Sir Vasilios (Basil) Markezinis, a Greek-British barrister and legal scholar, has died in Oxford, United Kingdom, aged 79. 

The news was made public on Monday by his long-time friend, Nikandros Bouras, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at King's College, London, who said that Markezinis had been suffering from dementia in the past four years.

Scientists have found the remains of four species of dinosaurs, including a megaraptor, in an inhospitable valley in Chilean Patagonia that has emerged over the past decade as an important fossil deposit, researchers said on Jan. 11.

 A fossilized millipede-like creature discovered in Scotland may represent the oldest-known land animal, a humble pioneer of terrestrial living 425 million years ago that helped pave the way for the throngs that would eventually inhabit Earth's dry parts.

Ta Nea on 9 November published an interview with American economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz in which he essentially admitted that he and a team of his colleagues from the University of Texas in 2015 were working on a plan for Greece to return to the drachma and leave the eurozone.

He viewed this prospect as an attractive solution for Greece's economic problems.

The following material originally appeared on Global Voices, 26 August 2019 15:55 GMT 

Are you tempted to stop a powerful sneeze? Better not, recommend British experts who have encountered unusual serious consequences of attempts to suppress the reflex, the Associated Press and Daily Express report.

The administration of the University of Texas has ordered the removal from campus  the statutes of General Robert Lee and other prominent personalities of the Confederation. The decision, announced by University director Greg Fenvos, argues that such monuments are "symbols of the modern superiority of the white race and neo-Nazism," Reuters reported.

U.S. and German medical experts who examined Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo said on July 9 it was safe to transport him abroad for cancer treatment, contradicting the assertions of Chinese doctors.