NASA’s long-delayed James Webb Space Telescope, a $10 billion marvel of engineering and scientific ambition, is finally poised to rocket into deep space from a launchpad in French Guiana, on the northeast shoulder of South America. What happens in the following days and weeks will either change our understanding of the universe, or deliver a crushing blow to NASA and the global astronomical community. The Webb must cruise for 29 days to a unique orbit around the sun that keeps it roughly 1 million miles from Earth, four times the distance to the moon. At launch, it will be folded upon itself, a shrouded package inside the cone of the European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 rocket.
Doctoral student Amir Haluts is researching the unusual and dangerous sex lives of golden orb-weaver spiders. Imagine a two-dimensional enclosed space, where a murderous female ruler sits in the center. Contestants are thrown into the ring, and they seem puny compared to her, but one of them manages to overcome his competitors to maneuver in behind her without her noticing, and wins the right to potentially mate with her. This could be the plot of a bloody reality show – or a Squid Game challenge – but it's actually the way of life of the golden orb-weaver spiders (Trichonephila), common in Africa, South America and the Far East.
Colonel Edward David Shames (June 13, 1922 – December 3, 2021) was a United States Army enlisted man and officer who later served in the U.S. Army Reserve. During World War II he was assigned to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. At the time of his death, Shames was the last surviving officer and, following the death of Roderick G. Strohl in December 2019, oldest surviving member of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was Jewish and reported being deeply affected by his personal viewing of Nazi Germany's concentration camps.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. One of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Sondheim was praised for having "reinvented the American musical" with shows that tackled "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication." His shows addressed "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience," with songs often tinged with "ambivalence" about various aspects of life.
