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Einstein turned this insight into an equation that described the jittering mathematically. His Brownian motion paper is widely recognized as the first incontrovertible proof that atoms and molecules really exist—and it still serves as the basis for some stock market forecasts.

He was trying to explain an odd fact that was first noticed by English botanist Robert Brown in 1827. Brown looked through his microscope and saw that the dust grains in a droplet of water were jittering around aimlessly. This Brownian motion, as it was first dubbed, had nothing to do with the grains being alive, so what kept them moving?

If you’ve been to a conference or played with a cat, chances are you’ve seen a laser pointer in action. In the nearly six decades since physicists demonstrated the first laboratory prototype of a laser in 1960, the devices have come to occupy almost every niche imaginable, from barcode readers to systems for hair removal.

So Einstein made an inspired guess: Maybe photons like to march in step, so that the presence of a bunch of them going in the same direction will increase the probability of a high-energy atom emitting another photon in that direction. He called this process stimulated emission, and when he included it in his equations, his calculations fit the observations perfectly

A laser is just a gadget for harnessing this phenomenon

The blog post was notable for its dispassionate tone, as the young engineer who had left the company after a year walked the reader through everything that had gone very, very wrong in the brozilla culture of kegs, sexual coarseness and snaky competition.

Ms. Fowler took screen shots and reported the manager to human resources, thinking, “They’ll do the right thing.”

But they didn’t, explaining that the manager was “a high performer” and it was his first offense, something Ms. Fowler later discovered to be untrue.

“I didn’t really care if they branded me a troublemaker,” she says

In her memo, she says, “I knew I had to be super-careful about how I said it if I wanted anybody to take it seriously.

So I was disappointed in her because I expected her to be an advocate,”

Although three million miles sounds vast, it’s not much on the scale of our solar system. In fact, despite the planet’s elliptical path through the heavens, most astronomers say that Earth’s orbit is basically circular. On a scale of 0 to 100 percent, where 0 is a perfect circle and nearly 100 is a very thin oval, Earth only scores a 1.7.

It’s a defining trait that keeps our planet at roughly the same distance from our sun, and keeps the climate relatively stable. This has led many astronomers to wonder whether a circular orbit just might be a crucial ingredient in the cocktail of life — and a key factor to consider as they search for signs of alien life around the thousands of exoplanets known to be circling other stars within the galaxy.

Such a dire portrait could suggest that life prefers a circle. But do most exoplanets orbit their host stars in bands similar to the Earth, or are their orbits more like that of HD 20782 b?

Consider the exoplanet known as HD 20782 b, which boasts the highest eccentricity yet discovered — a whopping 97 percent. Although the alien world is likely more akin to Jupiter than Earth in mass, it’s easy to imagine what might happen to a wildly eccentric Earthlike planet.At its closest approach to the star, the planet would face an explosion of heat that would evaporate the planet’s oceans and strip the planet’s atmosphere, sending crucial molecules such as oxygen streaming into space.

This suggests that most of these rocky worlds might be able to host a stable climate and, therefore, life.But Dr. Kane and other researchers warned against dismissing the possibility of life forming on worlds with highly-eccentric orbits.

Last year, Dr. Kane and his colleagues estimated that a planet with an eccentricity as high as 30 or even 40 percent could remain habitable

the galaxy and its many orbiting planets could surprise us. “I think it’s often assumed that life is wimpy and needs ‘just so’ conditions to exist,” Dr. Raymond said. “But life on Earth did indeed survive some tough times.”

That requires a high bar and makes it difficult to win unless the situation is similar to a prior case with nearly identical facts. In some cases with unique fact patterns, of which there are many, officers have been granted immunity even if they have been found to have acted in violation of the Constitution.

"Everyone has the potential for adverse encounters with state actors, whether it's members of law enforcement, public school officials, city council members, or other municipal employees," said Jay Schweikert, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute. "So long as the Supreme Court continues to permit this unlawful shield for government agents, no citizen will have any assurance that their rights will be respected."

"Until we shift the focus of our inquiry to whether immunity existed at common law, we will continue to substitute our own policy preferences for the mandates of Congress," the conservative Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion. "In an appropriate case, we should reconsider our qualified immunity jurisprudence."

In its 1982 decision, the court found that the aides were entitled to qualified immunity. "Government officials performing discretionary functions, generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known," the court ruled.

"The principle that government officials should be accountable for their violations of the Constitution is not a partisan issue. It's an American one," Boston University law professor Jack Beermann said in an interview with CNN. "Conservatives are just as concerned with abuse of government power as liberals are. And you combine that with what seems to be a rash of police misconduct in recent years and you can get a pretty strong coalition."

"There's an incredible urgency as communities across the country seek accountability for police violence against individuals of color in particularly, to open up the courts, claim a constitutional violation and make sure officers aren't provided a get-out-of-court-free card when they violate people's rights,"

"We are in the midst of a crisis of accountability in law enforcement,

As George Floyd's death tragically illustrates, for many people in this country, our culture of near-zero accountability for law enforcement is not an abstract public-policy concern, but a matter of life and death.

"At its heart, qualified immunity protects police officers' split second decisions ... courts must afford them a measure of deference in their on-the-scene assessments about the application of force to subdue a fleeing or resisting suspect,"

"Abandoning qualified immunity ... would leave hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers exposed to potential liability, likely second guessing themselves in situations where a hesitation to act could mean the difference between life and death," the lawyers said in court papers.

Our case presents some of the problems with qualified immunity very starkly," said Michelman, lead counsel representing Baxter in the case. "Everyone should know, and everyone does know, that putting your hands up is a universal symbol of surrender and it is completely out of bounds to attack somebody who has surrendered."

"These cases very frequently arrive from police use of force in particular circumstances," Hughes said. "When an individual or his or her estate alleges that a police officer used excessive force the officer will invariably raise a qualified immunity defense."

I propose we start to teach the Wason selection task in mathematics courses at the high-school level and higher. The puzzle captures so much that is essential to mathematics: the nuts and bolts of inference, the difficulty of absorbing abstract concepts when removed from the context of real-world experience, the importance of a slow, deliberative cogitative process and the pitfalls of instant intuitive judgments.

The Vatican is facing a sharp drop in visitors to the Vatican Museums, which bring in €40 million in profit in a normal year and are a key revenue source for the church. Vatican officials declined to comment on a report in an Italian newspaper saying the museums had experienced a 60% drop in attendance

"For as long as we have citizens willing to follow their example, to carry on their burden, to continue their legacy, then America's cause will never fail and American freedom will never, ever die."

But that doesn't mean it isn't jarring, as the most wrenching moment so far approaches in the nation's battle against a pandemic that while ebbing in terms of total deaths is trending up in 18 states, is steady in 22 and easing in 10 more. More than 98,000 people in the US have now died from the coronavirus and more than 1.6 million have been infected. More than 30 million Americans have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate is approaching Great Depression levels.

There was little evidence of a deeper meaning to his presidency at this stage than personal and political grievances.

No White House could have been fully prepared for the disaster and subsequent economic hollowing of this year's pandemic

Trump spent much of Memorial Day, fulminating against Cooper, complaining that the North Carolina governor was "unable to guarantee" the arena for the convention in August can be filled to capacity. The President is determined to deploy the full pageantry of convention season to portray a nation and economy in the full throes of what he calls a "transition to greatness."

Yet such a spectacle as the Republican convention seems utterly incongruous with real-world events. Sports teams that use such arenas are expecting to play without fans for at least months in a bio-secure environment. The prospect of thousands of delegates pouring into convention cities from all over the country, including coronavirus hotspots, is a huge headache for organizers.

"In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space."

It was not immediately clear whether Trump and the Republican National Committee are serious about pulling the convention from Charlotte.

Trump has used federal resources multiple times to fly to his resorts and golf courses. Trump's two rounds this weekend struck critics as inappropriate during a national crisis and on a weekend when American remembers its war dead.

"Nearly 100,000 lives have been lost, and tens of millions are out of work. Meanwhile, the president spent his day golfing," Biden wrote in a tweet accompanying an online ad Saturday.

Trump may not come under such criticism had he not been so dismissive of Obama's afternoons on the golf course -- and saying he wouldn't have time to play golf if he was elected president.

All of your devices emit short wavelength light, known as blue light. A Harvard study claimed that exposure to blue light before bed decreases natural melatonin production, a hormone that regulates sleep. The brightness from your phone screen can interrupt your natural circadian rhythm, and cause for shorter REM cycles and overall restless sleep.

With a constant influx of information grabbing your attention, it can put pressure on you to have your phone on you at all times to stay informed. Researchers agreed, telling The Chicago Tribune that the possibility of missing something if you don’t keep your phone nearby can induce a feeling of stress and anxiety. 

Remember the blue light? The cornea and lens can’t filter it, so the light goes to the back of the eye, which can weaken vision over time.

Though social media can be fun entertainment, it can also open up the door for harmful comparison. Being able to keep up to date with someone else’s success (or pitfalls) invites the opportunity for you to compare your life to theirs. That can invoke a feeling of inadequacy and unhappiness, according to Psychology Today

Annual data, which go back to 1929, show that the unemployment rate peaked during the Great Depression at an average of 24.9% in 1933.

Goldman Sachs warned Wednesday that the real jobless rate will peak at 35%, up from the bank's previous projection for a peak of 29%.

, told CNN last week that the real jobless rate could hit 25% before "hopefully" falling following a transition period this summer.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday that the "consequences could be really serious" if states reopen ahead of the guidelines issued by the White House.

Goldman also upgraded its GDP forecasts, predicting a "somewhat more V-shaped path" as states relax lockdown orders. The bank now expects rapid annualized growth of 29% in the third quarter, up from 19% previously.

And Goldman noted several "serious health risks": "insufficient testing and contact tracing" in some states, reopening high-risk sectors and limited evidence of how effective measures like social distancing and will be.

"Prolonged weakness could cause severe scarring effects such as permanent layoffs and business closures that delay the recovery," Goldman Sachs economists wrote.

But when our own memories are challenged, we may neglect all this and instead respond emotionally, acting as though we must be right and everyone else must be wrong

This fall the panel (which one of us, Daniel Simons, served on) released a comprehensive report that recommended procedures to minimize the chances of false memory and mistaken identification, including videotaping police lineups and improving jury instructions.

In general, if you have seen something before, your confidence that you have seen it and your accuracy in recalling it are linked: The more confident you are in your memory, the more likely you are to be right. But new research reveals important nuances about this link.

But when people mistakenly recalled words that were similar to those on the lists but not actually on the lists — a false memory — they also expressed high confidence.

When we recall our own memories, we are not extracting a perfect record of our experiences and playing it back verbatim. Most people believe that memory works this way, but it doesn’t. Instead, we are effectively whispering a message from our past to our present, reconstructing it on the fly each time.

In Dr. Tyson’s case, once the evidence of his error was undeniable, he didn’t dig his hole deeper or wish the controversy away. He realized that his memory had conflated his experiences of two memorable and personally significant events that both involved speeches by Mr. Bush. He probably still remembers it the way he described it in his talks — but to his credit, he recognizes that the evidence outweighs his experience, and he has publicly apologized.

Good scientists remain open to the possibility that they are wrong, and should question their own beliefs until the evidence is overwhelming. We would all be wise to do the same.

Politicians should respond as Dr. Tyson eventually did: Stop stonewalling, admit error, note that such things happen, apologize and move on

some activities, including dangerous ones, provide negative feedback only rarely. When I am in a rush, I often cross the street at a red light. I understand intellectually that this is stupid, but I’ve never once seen evidence of my stupidity.

Exposure to COVID-19 works the same way. Every time you engage in a risky activity—like meeting up with your friends indoors—the world is likely to send you a signal that you made the right choice. I saw my pal and didn’t get sick. Clearly, I shouldn’t have worried so much about socializing!

Let’s assume, for example, that going to a large indoor gathering gives you a one in 20 chance of contracting COVID-19—a significant risk. Most likely, you’ll get away with it the first time. You’ll then infer that taking part in such gatherings is pretty safe, and will do so again. Eventually, you are highly likely to fall sick.

2. Individually Rational, Collectively DisastrousWe tend to think behavior that is justifiable on the individual level is also justifiable on the collective level, and vice versa. If eating the occasional sugary treat is fine for me it’s fine for all of us. And if smoking indoors is bad for me, it’s bad for all of us.

The dynamics of contagion in a pandemic do not work like that

if everyone who isn’t at especially high risk held similar dinner parties, some percentage of these events would lead to additional infections. And because each newly infected person might spread the virus to others, everyone’s decision to hold a one-off dinner party would quickly lead to a significant spike in transmissions.

The dynamic here is reminiscent of classic collective-action problems. If you go to one dinner, you’ll likely be fine. But if everyone goes to one dinner, the virus will spread with such speed that your own chances of contracting COVID-19 will also rise precipitously.

3. Dangers Are Hard to Recognize and Avoid

Many of the dangers we face in life are easy to spot—and we have, over many millennia, developed biological instincts and social conventions to avoid them

When we deal with an unaccustomed danger, such as a new airborne virus, we can’t rely on any of these protective mechanisms.

The virus is invisible. This makes it hard to spot or anticipate. We don’t see little viral particles floating through the air

In time, we can overcome these biases (at least to some extent).

Social disapprobation can help

We all should do what we can to identify the biases from which we suffer—and try to stop them from influencing our behavior.

Harvard Business School, I think put out a study a few years ago, showing that something like 30% of all hiring for what's called sort of bachelor's level jobs are for skill sets that don't require a bachelor's. So that alone exclude something like 70% of African Americans for no reason.

This whole pandemic, what it's done, it's unmasked the huge disparities that exist in our society already. I mean, the fact of the matter is this educational one we just talked about in terms of access to broadband and hardware. But you look at the disparities. I mean, the African American according to a study at Yale is 3.5 times more likely to die from COVID than a white. Somebody who's Latinix is three times more likely to die. So this has unmasked these huge structural elements of racism that existed in this country for a long time. And we need to step up to those structural elements that determine the lives of so many people.

Well, this virus doesn't really care about that. And if you're going to do it, if you're going to exercise your liberty at my personal expense, then we can't control the pandemic. And the Europeans are looking at that and they're saying, "We don't want you bringing that into our shores."

We have to have the psychological armor to defend ourselves against the racism that's all around us, that's the first piece of advice.

The second piece of advice I give is that, you really can't plan your career. You have to take advantage of all the opportunities that you have before you. And I believe that at least in my own instance, what helped me a lot was that I wanted a certain level of autonomy and accountability. And when you do that, you get more responsibility because you are willing to go outside the lane of what most people do.

it's sort of humorous to me when people say to me, "I don't see color. I don't even notice that you're a Black man." Every minute of my life, I realize I'm a Black man. How they don't realize it is beyond me. But I really think it's important for young African Americans to have their own communities, to reinforce one another so that they can deal with that incoming.

My father Otis Frazier 's father, Richard Frazier , was born in 1861. And so I have only one generation between me and slavery, which is quite unusual for someone at this stage. And my father only had a third grade education and what passed for third grade education for an African American child in South Carolina, between 1906 to 1909. But he was self-taught. He had immaculate habits of speech and dress and behavior, and he was his own man. And he gave me the single most important piece of advice I've ever had when I was growing up in the inner city. And here it is, he would say to me, Kenny, what other people think about you is none of your damn business. And the sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be

now I can see when you're running a company like Merck and Wall Street is criticizing you because you don't do what they want you to do, I can hear my father saying, you know what they think about you is none of your damn business.

And that is what it meant to be a man to me, was to get up every morning, go to work, take care of your family, take your family to church on Sunday and to make sure that your children understood the importance of education and opportunity. And so, while I was born in a really tough inner city neighborhood, I always tell people I had the good fortune to be born in my mother and my father's house. More my father, because my mother died when I was really young and I was raised by a father who was not sentimental about his children, but had high standards. And it helped me a lot to have to live up to my father's standards, which I'm still living up to.

Yet the loss of leadership capability and potential that results from unresolved grief, as well as the human suffering and pain, can seem beyond measure.

Educating yourself on the history and current state of racism is one way to show positive allyship, as reported in CNN's guide to being an ally.

Influencing the people in your circle is another -- and part of that can include sharing books about racism with friends and family and discussing how oppression affects marginalized groups.

If they are weighing a more sophisticated audio or visual connection -- to each other, and to the public -- the justices have the support of an on-site technology team and young law clerks, four per chamber. At the other end of the spectrum, they might weigh canceling the remaining argument sessions and resolve the cases based only on the written briefs filed. Those lengthy filings are more comprehensive than lawyers' presentations in hour-long oral sessions.

Maybe Rogers's muscle cells are normal, and he experiences pain as most of us do but chooses to disregard it when he feels in command.

An illusion is a perception that does not match the physical reality. Is pain, then, as with illusions, a mind construct that some people can decide to turn off? As you will see in the studies that follow, pain varies as a function of mood, attentiveness and circumstances, lending support to the theory that pain is an emotion.