Sunday, July 11, 2021
One Smart Cookie - Historical Spelling Bee Winner = 14 Year Old Black Girl!
From HuffPost -
Spelling Bee Champ Is A Speed-Reading Math Whiz Who Holds 3 World Records
Zaila Avant-garde, 14, also made history at this year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee.
By Elyse Wanshel
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| Zaila Avant-garde competes in the first round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals in Orlando, Florida, on July 8. JIM WATSON VIA GETTY IMAGES |
This year’s spelling bee champ is F-A-S-C-I-N-A-T-I-N-G.
Zaila Avant-garde, a 14-year-old from Harvey, Louisiana, made history Thursday when she became the first African American winner and the second Black champion in the Scripps National Spelling Bee’s 96-year history.
But that may not even be the most interesting thing about the teen.
Zaila, who dipped her toe into competitive spelling just two years ago, knows how to speed-read and discovered that she could divide five-digit numbers by two-digit numbers in her head, according to The New York Times.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/spelling-bee-champ-speed-reading-math-whiz-3-world-records_n_60e856eee4b0b0220ededff8?ncid=NEWSSTAND0001
Tuesday, July 6, 2021
He's A Chess National Master!
From the NY Times -
Remember the Homeless Chess Champion? The Boy Is Now a Chess Master.
By Nicholas Kristof
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| Tanitoluwa Adewumi two years ago. Credit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times |
Once upon a time a 7-year-old refugee living in a homeless shelter sat down at a chess board in school and learned how to play. His school then agreed to his mom’s plea to waive fees for him to join the chess club.
The boy wasn’t any good at first. His initial chess rating was 105, barely above the lowest possible rating, 100.
But the boy, Tanitoluwa Adewumi — better known as Tani — enjoyed chess as an escape from the chaos of the homeless shelter, and his skills progressed in stunning fashion. After little more than a year, at age 8, he won the New York State chess championship for his age group, beating well-coached children from rich private schools.
I wrote a couple of columns about Tani at that time, and readers responded by donating more than $250,000 to a GoFundMe campaign for Tani’s family, along with a year of free housing. It was heartwarming to see Tani running around the family’s new apartment, but I wondered: Is this kid really that good?
It turns out he is. This month, as a fifth grader, Tani cruised through an in-person tournament in Connecticut open to advanced players of all ages and won every game. He emerged with a chess rating of 2223, making him a national master.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/opinion/sunday/homeless-chess-champion-tani-adewumi.html
Twin MDs fight entrenched racism in medical world
Another Brilliant Sista!
From Blavity -
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, Who Helped Develop COVID-19 Vaccine, Joins Harvard’s Faculty
Corbett plans to expand vaccine research in her new laboratory with the goal to create universal vaccines.
by Sìmone Stancil
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| Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett / Photo Credit: Timothy Nwachukwu |
Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, one of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) lead scientists, is joining Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as an assistant professor, the university announced.
Corbett is most widely known for playing an integral role in the development of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine, which has proven to be up to 94.1% effective, according to the CDC.
“I am delighted to welcome Kizzmekia to the School. Working in public health is a calling, and I am proud to work each day supporting an amazing team of researchers who have devoted their professional lives to helping others live full, happy, and healthy lives,” Michelle Williams, dean of the faculty at Harvard Chan School and angelopoulos professor in public health and international development, said.
“Kizzmekia is a natural fit here. Her success in the lab is matched only by her commitment to using science to improve people’s lives, especially for communities that have too often been left behind by advances in health care,” she added.
As a professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Corbett is spearheading the new Coronaviruses & Other Relevant Emerging Infectious Diseases (CoreID) Lab to study and understand the correlation between hosts’ immune systems and viruses that cause respiratory illness. Her goal is to create novel and potentially universal vaccines.
https://blavity.com/dr-kizzmekia-corbett-who-helped-develop-covid-19-vaccine-joins-harvards-faculty?category1=news&category2=Wellness
FAMU's Dillard Tops Golf Ranking
From PGA Tour -
Florida A&M’s Mulbe Dillard IV tops final APGA Collegiate Ranking
Top-five players earn APGA Tour playing privileges and benefits in 2021
By Chris Richards
After a record-setting four years at Florida A&M, Mulbe Dillard finishes his career as the No. 1 player in the APGA Tour Collegiate Ranking.
The top-five players in the 2021 APGA Collegiate Ranking have been finalized, with Florida A&M University’s Mulbe Dillard IV finishing No. 1 and earning an exemption into the Korn Ferry Tour’s REX Hospital Open. Dillard’s teammates Mahindra Lutchman, Cameron Riley and Prince Cunningham also finished in the top five, while Michigan State’s Andrew Walker finished No. 2 and rounds out the inaugural class of the APGA Collegiate Ranking.
“The path to professional golf has never been stronger for Black golfers, and I am excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for the top players in this year’s APGA Collegiate Ranking,” said Ken Bentley, co-founder and CEO of the APGA Tour. “This year’s inaugural class is an important step forward as the APGA Tour continues to grow and provide opportunities in professional golf to Black players.”
All five players receive APGA Tour membership and entry into this season’s tournaments, starting with the APGA Tour event at TPC Louisiana, May 31-June 1. Additionally, this year’s class receives travel costs associated with playing APGA Tour events and the Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying Tournament.
https://www.pgatour.com/university/news/2021/05/26/florida-a-and-m-mulbe-dillard-iv-tops-final-apga-collegiate-ranking.html
HBCUs Matter
From Blavity -
These 6 Black Philadelphia Judges All Graduated From The Same HBCU
HBCUs have produced 80% of the Black judges in the country.
by Tomas Kassahun
Six Black Philadelphia judges sat down for an interview with CBS Philly to talk about their common denominator: Hampton University, one of the most renowned HBCUs in the country.
Judges Roxanne Covington, Jonathan Irvine, Kai Scott, Mark Moore, Sharon Williams Losier and Lillian Harris Ransom, expressed their gratitude for HBCUs and emphasized the need for more diversity in courtrooms.
"When I come out from the back, you’ll see people’s faces change when they see you,” Irvine told the news station of being a Black judge in the city. “I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. You need to see diversity. Sometimes, you need to see people who look like you.”
Scott said it's not only important for the court to have diversity in race, but also in terms of gender and socioeconomic background.
“It’s important that the bench represents the entire community,” she told the station.
https://blavity.com/these-6-black-philadelphia-judges-all-graduated-from-the-same-hbcu?category1=news&category2=politics
Black Women Surfers
From the NY Times -
Making Waves
By Gabriella Angotti-Jones
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/04/opinion/black-women-surfers.html?referringSource=articleShare
First Black PhD in Math from Indiana University
From Black Enterprise -
KEMP MAKES HISTORY AS FIRST BLACK STUDENT TO RECEIVE PH.D. IN MATHEMATICS FROM INDIANA UNIVERSITY
by Charlene Rhinehart
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| www.linkedin.com/Dr. Dóminique Kemp |
Last month, Dr. Dóminique Kemp reached a milestone that few individuals achieve in mathematics education.
The Indiana University student became the first Black graduate to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, Indiana Daily Student reported. Nearly a century ago, Elbert Frank Cox was recognized as the first black person to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. He received his degree from Standford University in 1925 and spent most of his career as a professor at Howard University.
Few have been empowered to further their mathematics education since that time. But Kemp wants to change that. He’s on a mission to inspire and empower the next generation of mathematicians.
https://www.blackenterprise.com/kemp-makes-history-as-first-black-student-to-receive-ph-d-in-mathematics-from-indiana-university/
A Flying Option
From Business Insider -
I flew on Set Jet, where flights on private jets cost the same as typical airlines' first class, and saw why it's one of aviation's best kept secrets
By Thomas Pallini
- Set Jet is a membership-based private jet firm offering seats on private aircraft on set routes across the American West.
- Flights cost less than $500 but still offer most of the trappings of a traditional private jet flight.
- I flew on a Set Jet flight and was impressed by the luxury of the service for the low price point.
Black Scientists Proved the Polio Vaccine Worked
From Scientific American -
Hidden Black Scientists Proved the Polio Vaccine Worked
Tuskegee Institute researchers showed Jonas Salk’s vaccine protected children by developing a key test
By Ainissa Ramirez
In the summers of the early 1950s, multitudes of American children were stuck in their home. Parents didn’t permit them to play together because, when the weather got warm, society entered a nightmare called polio. Children would eagerly begin their school breaks with a bicycle, scooter or kite and end them in crutches, braces or an iron lung.
The disease poliomyelitis, or polio, had been in the medical textbooks for decades. In the summers of the early 20th century, however, this illness grew into an epidemic. The virus behind the disease could infect anyone, but in the U.S., it caused the worst damage among children under five years old, and polio was consequently called infantile paralysis.
In early 1953 there was a glimmer of hope that this nightmare might come to an end. Medical researcher Jonas Salk created a polio vaccine that, when injected, stimulated the immune system to make antibodies that fought off the virus. By January of that year, he had inoculated 161 people, and the results looked promising. Salk’s work was funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP). This organization—founded in 1938 by polio sufferer and U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt—evolved from a dilapidated spa in Warm Springs, Ga., for those afflicted with the disease to become a major polio research funder. Buoyed by Salk’s early results, the NFIP, with its broad mission of conquering polio, started pushing to get hundreds of thousands of children vaccinated. But before moving ahead, Salk wanted to make sure his vaccine was the “safest and most certain” approach by monitoring the inoculation’s ability to trigger enough antibodies to neutralize the virus. In earlier tests, monkeys were injected with the vaccine and monitored to see if they got sick, or their cells were observed to see if they deformed. But the number of the animals needed to test thousands of children was too costly and cumbersome.
Fortunately, researchers had found there were unique cells that could help. These were HeLa cells, the living line of cancer cells that were taken without permission from a Black patient named Henrietta Lacks years earlier. After blood was drawn from a vaccinated patient, part of it was placed in a glass dish along with HeLa cells and a small dose of polio. With those items, a microscopic—and deadly—battle commenced. In the dish, the poliovirus tried to attack the HeLa cells. If there were enough of the proper antibodies in the patient’s blood, however, they blocked the virus from causing any harm. Scientists could readily see the cells under a microscope. If the HeLa cells looked misshapen, this meant that the right antibodies were not present in the blood.
To evaluate his vaccine, Salk would need tremendous amounts of HeLa cells. He would get help not from traditional established institutions such as Harvard University or Yale University but from a small Black college in the South that had become famous for cultivating peanuts.
In 1881 educator Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute with 30 pupils inside an old church building in Alabama. Washington had big dreams for his small school, and they were realized. Just 50 years later, the number of students increased 100-fold. And the entire nation grew to know about this institute from botanist George Washington Carver’s pioneering work on cultivating the peanut there. During World War II, the Tuskegee Airmen, an all-Black flying squadron, also put this sleepy part of the country on the map.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hidden-black-scientists-proved-the-polio-vaccine-worked/
911 Help
Our dispatchers never know what the next call might be.They train for many emergency situations, homework help is not one they plan for. We don't recommend 911 for homework help but this dispatcher helped a young boy out and brightened his day.@PoliceOne @apbweb @wlfi @WTHRcom pic.twitter.com/w3qCYfJP7O
— LafayetteINPolice (@LafayetteINPD) January 25, 2019
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| Antonia Bundy helped the child solve a math problem (Twitter/ @LafayetteINPD) |
Auburn's First Black Female Drum Major
From AL.com
Meet Auburn University’s first Black female drum major
By The Associated Press
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| Brianna Jarvis, a senior in the Auburn band who plays the trumpet, poses for a photo before Auburn played Texas A&M for its final home game in 2020 on Saturday, Dec. 5. (Photo by Giana Han) |
Brianna Jarvis will lead the Auburn University Marching Band into Jordan-Hare Stadium when the football team plays Akron on Sept. 4.
She will also be making history as the band’s first Black female drum major.
The music education major attended Reeltown High School where she says she saw the impact of the university from 30 minutes away. A first-generation college student, Jarvis says she knew she wanted to attend Auburn but didn’t know how to make that happen.
Jarvis’ high school band director was Auburn University alumnus Tyler Strickland, and he acted as a mentor, helping Jarvis navigate college applications, Auburn University Marching Band auditions and more.
https://www.al.com/news/2021/06/meet-auburn-universitys-first-black-female-drum-major.html