Mo Yan Wins Nobel Literature Prize

PARIS — The Swedish Academy announced on Thursday that it had awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to the Chinese author Mo Yan, the cultural high point of a week of accolades to scientists, writers and peacemakers. 

Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition,” the citation for the award declared.In addition to novels, Mo Yan has published short stories, essays on various topics, and “despite his social criticism is seen in his homeland as one of the foremost contemporary authors.”Mr. Mo was born in 1955 in Gaomi, China, and, according to the academy, is resident in China. The citation for the award described him as a writer “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the

contemporary.”The name Mo Yan is a pseudonym for Guan Moye. He is the son of farmers who left school during the Cultural Revolution to work, first in agriculture and later in a factory, according to his Nobel biography.In 1976 he joined the People’s Liberation Army and began to study literature and write. His first short story was published in a literary journal in 1981, the biography on the Nobel Web site said.

“In his writing Mo Yan draws on his youthful experiences and on settings in the province of his birth,”the biography said, referring to his 1987 novel published in English as Red Sorghum in 1993. His novel The Garlic Ballads, as it was called on its publication in English in 1995, and other works “have been judged subversive because of their sharp criticism of contemporary Chinese society.” 

Other works include Big Breasts and Wide Hips (1996), Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (2006) and Sandalwood Death, to be published in English in 2013. His most recent published work, called Wa in Chinese (2009) “illuminates the consequences of China’s imposition of a single-child policy.”

Google Doodle Celebrates Physicist Niels Bohr’s 127th Birthday

Sunday’s Google Doodle celebrates the 127th birthday of Niels Bohr, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who revolutionized our understanding of the structure of atoms.

The Google Doodle shows off the atomic model that Bohr came up with in 1913. Bohr was the first to incorporate quantum physics into our understanding of atoms by putting forth the notion that electrons orbit around the nucleus of an atom.

Bohr was born in Copenhagen in 1885 and went on to win the Nobel Prize for his work in 1922. After World War II broke out, Bohr fled Denmark and eventually ended up in the United States where he and his son worked on the Manhattan Project, which led to the development of the atomic bomb. While he may be associated with the bomb, the Nobel Prize committee points out in their biography of him online that Bohr devoted much of his later years to the “peaceful application of atomic physics and to political problems arising from the development of atomic weapons.”Bohr is now widely viewed as one of the leading physicists of the 20th century.

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 Source:Mashable

Google Maps Updates Street View for New Orleans

Google Street View first came to New Orleans in 2008, just three years after Hurricane Katrina. The original images showed areas that were unaffected by the disaster and others that remained completely devastated.

Fast forward to 2012, and Google has introduced updated images of the iconic city.

With revamped streets and playgrounds, and even a view of an improved Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park—which mayor Mitch Landrieu refers to as the birthplace of jazz—it’s clear that conditions continue to improve in the cultural hub that is New Orleans.

Google Maps allows users explore areas around the globe, but it also helps us remember the past. Google posted before and after photos of 2011′s tsunami in Japan, providing the world with a real-life glimpse of the damage that was caused.

As for New Orleans, Landrieu says he is proud of his city, and these images serve as a reminder that, despite past events, the jazz plays on.

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Google Fights to Save 3,054 Languages

Will you be any worse off the moment humans cease to speak in Aragonese? How about Navajo or Ojibwa? Or Koro, a language only just discovered in a tiny corner of northeast India?

No, you probably wouldn’t, not in that moment. But humanity would be. Science, art and culture would be. If, as the phrase goes, another language equals another soul, then some 3,054 souls — 50% of the world’s total languages — are set to die out by 2100.

If there is hope, it lies in the world’s centers of information — such as Google. The search giant’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has launched the Endangered Language project, a website devoted to preserving those ancient tongues that are now only spoken by a few thousand of us.

The site, launched early Thursday, features videos and an interactive map. The curious can click on any one of the dots that hang over each country (including a suprising number in the US), each representing a whole language.

You can hear the heartbreaking, beautiful sound of Koro being sung, or read 18th century manuscripts written in a nearly-dead Native American tongue. “Documenting the 3,000+ languages that are on the verge of extinction is an important step in preserving cultural diversity,” write project managers Clara Rivera Rodriguez and Jason Rissman.

The idea is to unite a lot of smaller preservation efforts under the Google.org banner. “By bridging independent efforts from around the world we hope to make an important advancement in confronting language endangerment,” said Rodriguez and Rissman. “We hope you’ll join us.”

Via:[mashable]

Yahoo Launches Web Browser Axis, Makes Searches More Visual

Google isn’t the only search engine in town with its own web browser. Yahoo announced its own new browser Wednesday evening: Axis.

Working seamlessly between your iPhone, iPad and computer Yahoo is aiming to streamline your searches and connect your experience across devices by giving you access to the same information no matter what device you’re accessing it on.

Visual previews of sites in Axis eliminate the traditional step in web searches where you’re looking through links and replaces that experience with an image of the website you’ll be going to. Some searches can even be done without leaving the page you’re on.

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iOS

Tapping the Axis Bar -– which combines the search box and address bar into one -– will bring up a list of trending searches. You can tap a particular trending search to learn more, or enter your own search term or website address into the bar.

Answers will begin to appear automatically for common searches like movie times and weather, often allowing you to see what you’re looking for without having to leave the page you’re on.

For other searches the browser will create a row of visual previews to websites matching your specific query. You can swipe through the results, and then tap on a picture to visit a specific page. If you don’t like the result you’ve selected you can swipe across the screen to check out the next search result.

An Axis homepage gives you access to the sites you’ve recently visited not only on your iOS device, but also on your home computer or any other device you might use running Axis. So, the homepage on your iPad will show a website you visit frequently on your iPhone, or one you check out often while browsing at home.

Searches can also be continued from one device to another. For instance, a “Continue from iPhone” button will appear on your iPad and allow you to continue viewing search results you were looking at one your phone on a bigger screen.

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On your computer

On your computer Axis is a plug-in for your favorite web browser rather than a stand-alone product of its own. Available for Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Safari, the Axis toolbar shows up at the bottom of your web browser and can be used much like the iOS version to see visual previews of sites, and to look up information without leaving the page you’re on.

The homepage option is also available within your browser, letting you to look at favorite websites and continue viewing search results from your iPhone or iPad.

Axis is available now. What do you think of the web browser. Can you see yourself using it? let us know in the comments.