Morocco submits a bid to host the finals of this year's Caf club competitions - in both the African Champions League and the African Confederation Cup.
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Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
3 Questions: MIT’s Quality of Life Survey is here
MIT has launched the latest iteration of its Quality of Life Survey, a major project to solicit feedback from students, staff, and faculty about a full range of campus issues, from social concerns to academic and workplace matters. Overseen by the MIT Council on Family and Work and by MIT Institutional Research, the 2020 edition is the first to simultaneously generate feedback from students, faculty, and staff; previously, separate surveys had been developed for different campus groups.
MIT News talked with three leaders who are helping to run the 2020 Quality of Life Survey: Amy Glasmeier, a professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and co-chair of the MIT Council on Family and Work; Ken Goldsmith, assistant dean for finance and planning in the School of Architecture and Planning and co-chair of the MIT Council on Family and Work; and Lydia Snover, director of MIT Institutional Research.
Q: What is the Quality of Life Survey?
Goldsmith: It’s a barometer of the satisfaction people have at MIT within the context of their lives. It’s a way of seeing what is impacting people’s lives. Ultimately our job is to look at the data and determine whether there are measures we can take at MIT to address these areas that need attention.
Glasmeier: The most basic questions are completely relevant to everyone, including faculty, staff, and students. They’re about friendships at work and among students, about having access to the resources you need to do your job well, about feeling appreciated by the people you work for, and if you feel appreciated by the people who are working around you.
Snover: Initially the surveys were really about child care. But it’s gone beyond that because not everybody has children at home. And child care quickly brought up issues of elder care. … We ask questions about whether people feel comfortable. We’re very concerned about whether people have inclusive work and learning environments. There are questions on gender identity, sexuality, disability, and more that will allow us to better understand issues pertaining to these unique groups. Ultimately the survey explores the intersection of work and nonwork life and how one affects the other.
Glasmeier: When we finish, we will have results that will inform the kinds of experiences and benefits that MIT can offer for people here. The results will be used to understand how people do their work and manage their studies, what obstacles might prevent them from thriving, and what opportunities empower them to do their best. For example, in 2016, we were interested in the flexibility people wanted to have in executing their work, and the extent to which they had that. As a result we did experiments, and in different parts of the Institute people can now work in a flexible work environment and not have to negotiate it in a complex way.
Q: What measures does the Institute take to address issues of privacy and security for respondents?
Snover: The Institutional Research office has the ultimate responsibility for the data coming from the community’s responses. The data is securely stored and is only accessed by very experienced analysts with training for research involving human subjects. All results are initially reported by Institutional Research staff in a way that protects the confidentiality of the individual. People who subsequently use the data only have access to aggregate results. There are several open-ended questions on the survey, and respondents are informed those comments will be read verbatim and are advised not to include any identifying information. We are often told that people worry that their supervisor, department head, or senior officer will have access to their individual responses. They will not. No individual responses become part of anyone’s permanent record.
Goldsmith: Confidentiality is a hot-button item, and we can’t stress enough that the Office of Institutional Research is a lockbox for that information.
Snover: We’re committed to transparency in the results, but we’re equally committed to confidentiality for the respondents.
Q: What happens when the period for answering the Quality of Life Survey is finished?
Glasmeier: We’re going to write short analysis papers that summarize the results. These will address specific concerns and experiences people have here. … We work with the MIT Work-Life Center and MIT Human Resources, and they are policy designers and implementers. So far we’ve been very successful at incorporating change into the kinds of benefits or experiences people have.
The postdoc program that exists now in the Office of the Vice President for Research is a very good example. They [postdocs] were really frank about what it’s like to be here, [the struggle to] afford child care, and everything else. Previous surveys have shown the same results, and these issues have been taken seriously and incorporated into the [Postdoctoral Services] programming in the Office of the Vice President for Research.
Goldsmith: The Council on Family and Work is looking at the whole community. There are segments within that community — postdocs, women faculty, junior faculty, junior women faculty, and more — that are examples of areas we want to focus on and respond to. The survey population includes Lincoln Laboratory as well as employees on campus. We feel strongly about hearing from as many people as possible.
Glasmeier: We have been visiting as many groups on campus as possible, including the graduate student council, undergraduates, the Dean’s Group, the Working Group on Support Staff Issues, and individual senior officers, and we’re really encouraged. There is a strong interest in knowing how people in the MIT community feel about their work and their lives outside of work. MIT is a great place, but every place can always improve.
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How to deflect an asteroid
On April 13, 2029, an icy chunk of space rock, wider than the Eiffel Tower is tall, will streak by Earth at 30 kilometers per second, grazing the planet’s sphere of geostationary satellites. It will be the closest approach by one of the largest asteroids crossing Earth’s orbit in the next decade.
Observations of the asteroid, known as 99942 Apophis, for the Egyptian god of chaos, once suggested that its 2029 flyby would take it through a gravitational keyhole — a location in Earth’s gravity field that would tug the asteroid’s trajectory such that on its next flyby, in the year 2036, it would likely make a devastating impact.
Thankfully, more recent observations have confirmed that the asteroid will sling by Earth without incident in both 2029 and 2036. Nevertheless, most scientists believe it is never too early to consider strategies for deflecting an asteroid if one were ever on a crash course with our home planet.
Now MIT researchers have devised a framework for deciding which type of mission would be most successful in deflecting an incoming asteroid. Their decision method takes into account an asteroid’s mass and momentum, its proximity to a gravitational keyhole, and the amount of warning time that scientists have of an impending collision — all of which have degrees of uncertainty, which the researchers also factor in to identify the most successful mission for a given asteroid.
The researchers applied their method to Apophis, and Bennu, another near-Earth asteroid which is the target of OSIRIS-REx, an operational NASA mission that plans to return a sample of Bennu’s surface material to Earth in 2023. REXIS, an instrument designed and built by students at MIT, is also part of this mission and its task is to characterize the abundance of chemical elements at the surface.
In a paper appearing this month in the journal Acta Astronautica, the researchers use their decision map to lay out the type of mission that would likely have the most success in deflecting Apophis and Bennu, in various scenarios in which the asteroids may be headed toward a gravitational keyhole. They say the method could be used to design the optimal mission configuration and campaign to deflect a potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid.
“People have mostly considered strategies of last-minute deflection, when the asteroid has already passed through a keyhole and is heading toward a collision with Earth,” says Sung Wook Paek, lead author of the study and a former graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “I’m interested in preventing keyhole passage well before Earth impact. It’s like a preemptive strike, with less mess.”
Paek’s co-authors at MIT are Olivier de Weck, Jeffrey Hoffman, Richard Binzel, and David Miller.
Deflecting a planet-killer
In 2007, NASA concluded in a report submitted to the U.S. Congress that in the event that an asteroid were headed toward Earth, the most effective way to deflect it would be to launch a nuclear bomb into space. The force of its detonation would blast the asteroid away, though the planet would then have to contend with any nuclear fallout. The use of nuclear weapons to mitigate asteroid impacts remains a controversial issue in the planetary defense community.
The second best option was to send up a “kinetic impactor” — a spacecraft, rocket, or other projectile that, if aimed at just the right direction, with adequate speed, should collide with the asteroid, transfer some fraction of its momentum, and veer it off course.
“The basic physics principle is sort of like playing billiards,” Paek explains.
For any kinetic impactor to be successful, however, de Weck, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, says the properties of the asteroid, such as its mass, momentum, trajectory, and surface composition must be known “as precisely as possible.” That means that, in designing a deflection mission, scientists and mission managers need to take uncertainty into account.
“Does it matter if the probability of success of a mission is 99.9 percent or only 90 percent? When it comes to deflecting a potential planet-killer, you bet it does,” de Weck says. “Therefore we have to be smarter when we design missions as a function of the level of uncertainty. No one has looked at the problem this way before.”
Closing a keyhole
Paek and his colleagues developed a simulation code to identify the type of asteroid deflection mission that would have the best possibility of success, given an asteroid’s set of uncertain properties.
The missions they considered include a basic kinetic impactor, in which a projectile is shot into space to nudge an asteroid off course. Other variations involved sending a scout to first measure the asteroid to hone the specs of a projectile that would be sent up later, or sending two scouts, one to measure the asteroid and the other to push the asteroid slightly off course before a larger projectile is subsequently launched to make the asteroid miss Earth with near certainty.
The researchers fed into the simulation specific variables such as the asteroid’s mass, momentum, and trajectory, as well as the range of uncertainty in each of these variables. Most importantly, they factored in an asteroid’s proximity to a gravitational keyhole, as well as the amount of time scientists have before an asteroid passes through the keyhole.
“A keyhole is like a door — once it’s open, the asteroid will impact Earth soon after, with high probability,” Paek says.
The researchers tested their simulation on Apophis and Bennu, two of only a handful of asteroids for which the locations of their gravitational keyholes with respect to Earth are known. They simulated various distances between each asteroid and their respective keyhole, and also calculated for each distance a “safe harbor” region where an asteroid would have to be deflected so that it would avoid both an impact with Earth and passing through any other nearby keyhole.
They then evaluated which of the three main mission types would be most successful at deflecting the asteroid into a safe harbor, depending on the amount of time scientists have to prepare.
For instance, if Apophis will pass through a keyhole in five years or more, then there is enough time to send two scouts — one to measure the asteroid’s dimensions and the other to nudge it slightly off track as a test — before sending a main impactor. If keyhole passage occurs within two to five years, there may be time to send one scout to measure the asteroid and tune the parameters of a larger projectile before sending the impactor up to divert the asteroid. If Apophis passes through its keyhole within one Earth year or less, Paek says it may be too late.
“Even a main impactor may not be able to reach the asteroid within this timeframe,” Paek says.
Bennu is a similar case, although scientists know a bit more about its material composition, which means that it may not be necessary to send up investigatory scouts before launching a projectile.
With the team’s new simulation tool, Peak plans to estimate the success of other deflection missions in the future.
“Instead of changing the size of a projectile, we may be able to change the number of launches and send up multiple smaller spacecraft to collide with an asteroid, one by one. Or we could launch projectiles from the moon or use defunct satellites as kinetic impactors,” Paek says. “We’ve created a decision map which can help in prototyping a mission.”
This research was supported, in part, by NASA, Draper Laboratory, and the Samsung Foundation of Culture.
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Omar Epps gets cast in one of the four upcoming ‘Power’ spinoffs
It’s official! Veteran actor Omar Epps is joining the Power franchise and has been cast in its prequel and spinoff Power Book III: Raising Kanan.
The announcement was made via Deadline, only five days after the Power series finale wrapped up. Following the highly anticipated last episode, rapper 50 Cent, who executive produces the show, wasted no time confirming that Power Book III: Raising Kanan is in the works along with three other spinoffs.
Amongst those other offerings are: Power Book II: Ghost which will star Mary J. Blige, Method Man, Michael Rainey Jr. and Naturi Naughton. Larenz Tate will star in another spinoff entitled Power Book IV: Influence, and Joseph Sikora will finally get his chance playing the lead in Power Book V: Force, which is slated to be shot in Los Angeles.
The publication also reports that, “Along with Kemp’s End of Episode banner, 50 Cent’s his G-Unit Film and Television and Atmosphere Entertainment MM, Lionsgate TV is producing the four Power spinoffs series for Starz.”
In addition to acting, Epps who is repped by CAA, has also authored a book Fatherless to Fatherhood.
READ MORE: Rosario Dawson officially comes out as queer and explains why she waited so long
.@OmarEpps to star in #Power spinoff, 'Power Book III: Raising Kanan' https://t.co/AJFoA25tBR pic.twitter.com/Dmu7vZ5Kmm
— Shadow And Act (@shadowandact) February 15, 2020
The post Omar Epps gets cast in one of the four upcoming ‘Power’ spinoffs appeared first on TheGrio.
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Kandi Burruss breaks silence after Valentine’s Day shooting at her OLG restaurant
Kandi Burruss is speaking out after an unknown male walked into her popular Atlanta restaurant Old Lady Gang (OLG) and shot three people.
This week the “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star wrote a lengthy and emotional social media post addressing the tragic incident and sending her thoughts and prayers to those impacted.
READ MORE: Gunman walks into Kandi Burruss’ restaurant Old Lady Gang and shoots three people
“My family and I are truly saddened by the unfortunate events that occurred at Old Lady Gang (OLG) Camp Creek, on the evening of February 14th, an evening that was meant to celebrate love, unfortunately turned into something quite different,” began the caption. “Our prayers and thoughts go out to the individuals that were harmed or in any way negatively impacted. We are aware that this matter is being actively investigated by law enforcement and we are cooperating with law enforcement to bring to justice those involved.”
“As African-American business owners, it has been our goal to invest in our community by bringing jobs, quality dining, and a positive experience to the greater Atlanta area; we hope that you know and understand that the acts of violence that occurred yesterday evening do not, in any way, serve as a reflection of OLG or its values,” the message continues.
READ MORE: RHOA star Kandi Burruss’ new baby, Blaze, makes her social media debut
Burress ended by letting her followers know, “We appreciate all of the love and prayers that have come our way and we encourage anyone with any information regarding any aspects of the events that occurred to please reach out to law enforcement as soon as possible.”
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on Valentine’s Day night, while several people were celebrating the holiday with a night out, a man came into the OLG location in East Point targeting another man. After firing multiple shots, the man also hit two bystanders who were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
“We were waiting for our spot at the Juicy Crab and we were waiting outside actually at that bench right there,” witness Brynae Kinsey told CBS 46. “We heard two gunshots and I seen somebody run out that door, and I ran…I just heard her scream ‘ahhh,’ and then I heard two pops. Pop, pop. I just wondered what was going through his head for him to pop off like that.””
READ MORE: Black swimmer suing police after being handcuffed and gun pointed at head
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Tiffany Boone addresses why she left the hit show, ‘The Chi’
Tiffany Boone, who formerly acted on Showtime’s The Chi before abruptly leaving the show in November 2018 after alleging she was being harassed by co-star Jason Mitchell, is shining some light on her experience.
READ MORE: ‘The Chi’ actress Tiffany Boone breaks silence after Jason Mitchell’s firing
In her three-page Instagram post, which she captioned “feeling grateful and free,” Boone said when she worked for Lena Waithe’s hit show, “not everyone was interested in creating a work environment that was conducive to each person feeling safe, seen and heard.”
Boone said she felt a personal responsibility to address the matter. “I felt that if I didn’t speak up, other voices that were trying to be heard would be silenced.”
“You don’t carelessly leave a ‘hit show’ that is praised by your community,” Boone wrote in her IG post. “I deeply love Chicago and the people of that city who have embraced me. I felt honored and privileged to be part of telling their story. The weight of what I was leaving behind felt like a ton, but the weight of my responsibility to speak up was even heavier. There were people who questioned my decision. How could I be sure I would work again, especially on a project of that magnitude? I wasn’t sure, but I had faith that once I took that leap I could be guided wherever I was supposed to go.”
“Never did I imagine that that leap would turn into the most beautiful flight,” Boone added. “I knew it was a risk but I feel as if the second I dove off that cliff, there was a hand beneath me lifting me higher.”
Deadline reported that Boone left The Chi in its second season and was later cast in Jordan Peele’s Amazon series Hunters, where she said everyone affiliated with the project “made it clear that they were creating an environment of safety, respect, and collaboration.”
READ MORE: WATCH: Jason Mitchell denies sexual misconduct and opens up about being fired from ‘The Chi’
Boone also worked on Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, produced by Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon’s production companies. Boone said this experience couldn’t be more different than her time on The Chi. “It is not simply that this show is run by women. It is run by women who are committed to supporting other women, telling unique and compelling stories written by and about women, and creating an environment where each and every person feels safe and inspired to create their best work,” Boone wrote on IG.
Mitchell was subsequently axed from The Chi last year and he also was fired from Desperados, a Netflix movie, after other actresses accused him of harassment. Mitchell was later fired by his agency, UTA.
The post Tiffany Boone addresses why she left the hit show, ‘The Chi’ appeared first on TheGrio.
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Study finds Black students are suspended more than white peers
Black students face the harshest discipline in schools across America. They are also less likely to be accepted into gifted and talented programs.
READ MORE: #BlackExcellence: Atlanta debate team takes top honors at Harvard competition second year in a row
So found a study by the American Educational Research Journal, which examined U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights data from more than 1,880 public school districts nationwide. The study, entitled “Categorical Inequality in Black and White: Linking Disproportionality Across Multiple Educational Outcomes,” found that Black and white students have sizeable differences in discipline rates, grade level-retention, classification into special education, gifted and talented and Advanced Placement programs. The years studied were from 2011 through 2016.
Or to put it another way – Black students are suspended 1.5 times more frequently than their white classmates in the United States. And, on average, white students enroll in AP classes 1.3 times as often as Black students and have a 1.7 times higher likelihood to get into gifted programs, according to The Seattle Times.
So who’s the blame for the racial disparity? The study puts the blame largely on school districts, not families or their socioeconomic status.
“Systemic patterns of racial socioeconomic inequality drive inequalities across multiple educational outcomes; however, discretionary policies at local levels are more influential for nonachievement outcomes,” the study found.
“We want to shine the light back on schools directly so they feel compelled to explain to us why these racial differences (exist),” explained lead researcher Kenneth Shores, assistant professor of human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University, reported The Seattle Times.
Nowhere are the racial disparity numbers more stark than in Seattle, according to The Seattle Times.
READ MORE: Black students subjected to disproportionate amount of discipline, Ed. Dept report says
Seattle, along with nine other school districts, were in the bottom 10 with the largest Black-white achievement gap in terms of students being enrolled in gifted and talented programs. For example, in Seattle, white students are 2.38 times more likely to be enrolled in gifted programs than their Black peers and Black students are twice as likely as white students to be suspended.
Previous studies have blamed the disparity in discipline partly on how Black students are viewed by teachers as less innocent compared with their white peers.
The post Study finds Black students are suspended more than white peers appeared first on TheGrio.
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Stacey Abrams open to VP role in 2020 presidential election
Stacey Abrams is definitely open to running alongside a Democratic presidential candidate as his or her vice president in the 2020 presidential election.
In an interview Monday on ABC’s The View, Whoopi Goldberg told Abrams that while she is not currently running for president, “a lot of people want to see you on that ticket, first as vice president,” for which Abrams responded “of course” she’d accept an offer to join one of the current Democratic contenders for office.
READ MORE: Stacey Abrams confirms she’d consider being VP: ‘I will not diminish my ambition’
This represents a change from a year ago when Abrams told The View that she was not interested in the VP job because “I think you don’t run for second place.”
Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, now sees things differently.
“It would be doing a disservice to every woman of color, every woman of ambition, every child who wants to think beyond their known space for me to say no or to pretend, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want it.’ Of course, I want it. Of course, I want to serve America. Of course, I want to be a patriot and do this work. And so, I’d say yes,” Abrams said to the ladies on The View.
So far, Abrams said none of the remaining Democratic challengers have reached out to her offering her the position. And she refused to endorse a candidate, saying her “job right now is to fix our democracy” by actively working to combat and expose voter suppression tactics.
Abrams has a new book soon to be released entitled: Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America. It draws from her own experience running for governor of Georgia in 2018 and the numerous voter suppression challenges that arose— from access issues to the purging of voter rolls, according to The Hill.
READ MORE: Stacey Abrams tackles voter suppression in new book due out in June
“My best service is to be in that neutral space where it’s not about who the nominee is – it’s about making sure no matter who the nominee is, any person who wants to go and vote, can vote,” Abrams explained on The View. “That’s what we’re doing through Fair Fight 2020.”
Abrams launched Fair Fight 2020 after her 2018 gubernatorial loss to Republican Brian Kemp. Fair Fight 2020 aims to determine voter suppression challenges and fight back by financing voter protection operations in 20 key states, according to ABC News.
The post Stacey Abrams open to VP role in 2020 presidential election appeared first on TheGrio.
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Young Black Americans Can Take A Free Birthright Trip To Africa
Young Black Americans have in recent years been given the opportunity to travel to their ancestral African countries and connect with their roots by nonprofit organizations.
One such nonprofit is Birthright Africa which has its headquarters in New York City.
“This isn’t about validating Black identity. It’s about providing an opportunity for people to explore their ancestry,” Birthright Africa co-founder Diallo Shabaz told CNN.
Another nonprofit organization that does a similar thing is Birthright Israel. It was initiated in 1994 by Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt in collaboration with the Israeli government.
Birthright Israel sponsors free 10-day heritage trips to Israel for young adults aged 18-32.
Since the trips began in 1999, more than 600,000 people from 67 countries have participated in the Birthright Israel program. Around 80 percent of the participants have been from the U.S. and Canada.
During the trips to Israel, Participants are encouraged to discover new meaning in their personal Jewish identity.
Other countries that do this include Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Armenia, Cuba, and Ireland.
Bright Africa’s goal is to give young people knowledge and understanding about Africa that the American school system does not provide.
To be eligible for a birthright trip to Africa, one has to be a U.S. citizen and between 13 and 30 years old. The person also has to be of African descent.
The trips are free. Flights, hotels, food, and the cost of museums are covered by Birthright Africa and its partners.
Register here for a Birthright Africa application.
From CNN: Young Black Americans who want to explore their roots can take a free birthright trip to Africa. Here’s how (check it out): https://t.co/mANEHMOHBz #Africa pic.twitter.com/zLGUZinKzY
— Ayodele Odusola (@AyodeleOdusola) February 4, 2020
An Experience That Lasts Beyond #BlackHistoryMonth | Young Black Americans Who Want to Explore Their Roots Can Take a Free Birthright Trip to Africa. Here’s How | CNN https://t.co/lPc0BssyDY pic.twitter.com/MA2ek9eQM5
— Karen-Kay Harrison (@K4Kats) February 3, 2020
This article was originally written by Kevin Mwanza for The Moguldom Nation.
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