When your debts become more than you can manage each month, especially your credit card payments, one option many people consider is a debt consolidation loan. Like every approach to managing what you owe, consolidation loans have pros and cons — including the chance that a lender may not approve your application due to your circumstances. If you’ve been turned down, you may wonder what factors lenders consider in evaluating a consolidation loan application, what you can do to improve your chances for approval in the future, or what other options you can consider. WHAT IS A DEBT CONSOLIDATION LOAN?…
Author: Loknath Das
In today’s digital world, we seem to be surrounded by news. Clickbait, anyone? Yet the pervasive and often intrusive nature of internet news articles belies the fact that many of these sites are behind a paywall, biased, or feature low-quality reporting. Still, online articles are a great starting point for all kinds of learning assignments across the curriculum. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best free article websites for students. Many of these sites offer not only high-quality topical articles on every subject, but also ideas for lessons, such as questions, quizzes, and discussion prompts. Student Article Websites…
Netflix has hired veteran video game executive Mike Verdu, signaling the video streaming service is poised to expand into another fertile field of entertainment. Verdu’s addition as Netflix’s vice president of game development, confirmed Thursday, comes as the company seeks to sustain the momentum it gathered last year when people turned to the video streaming service to get through lockdowns imposed during the pandemic. Netflix wound up adding 37 million worldwide subscribers last year, by far the largest annual gain in its history. But the landscape has changed dramatically now that the easing pandemic has allowed people to return to…
It seems so simple, but the Internet is a complex web of connections. And that web looks a lot like a medusa jellyfish, according to new research by scientists in Israel. Within the Internet, they say, there is a dense core of connections surrounded by lots of tentacle-like links. Until now, scientists have had a hard time mapping the structure of the Internet. That’s because it formed almost by accident in the 1960s and 1970s, when universities, government agencies, and companies first decided to link their computer networks so that they could share information. The Internet grew as new groups…
Ten teachers in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, scrambled for $1 bills on hands and knees last week during a hockey game, spurring critics to call the event “dehumanizing” and “dystopian,” according to the Washington Post. The event was intended to help teachers pay for classroom supplies and other materials, according to the report. Schools had to apply to enter the competition, dubbed “Dash for Cash,” which featured $5,000 in $1 bills donated by a local mortgage company. The cash was dumped on a carpet on the ice rink and teachers raced to stuff bills into their pockets. “Teachers should never have…
A farmer using a mobile phone while resting in the back of a tractor trolley on a blocked highway during a protest against new farm laws, at Singhu Border (Delhi-Haryana) in New Delhi, India. Image by Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times via Getty Images On January 26, Nidhi Suresh of Newslaundry travelled with farmers from the Singhu border to Red Fort but could not send any information back to her newsroom. The same day, Asmita Nandy of The Quint could not look up the speeches that protestors at the Singhu border kept referring to. On January 27, independent journalist Saahil Murli…
Video gamers are helping researchers discover methods to design RNA structures. The authors of a study published in PLOS Computational Biology on June 27 analyzed 1.8 million moves by players in a RNA design game. The players are given a target RNA structure and asked to change the RNA sequence to try to match the target. The developers of the game report that approaches based on those choices can be used to create algorithms for a computer to construct RNA. R.V. Koodli et al., “EternaBrain: Automated RNA design through move sets and strategies from an Internet-scale RNA videogame,” PLOS Comput Biol, doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007059, 2019.…
1. Newspaper article Carey, B. (2019, March 22). Can we get better at forgetting? Harlan, C. (2013, April 2). North Korea vows to restart shuttered nuclear reactor that can make bomb-grade plutonium. The Washington Post, A1, A4. Stobbe, M. (2020, January 8). Cancer death rate in U.S. sees largest one-year drop ever. Chicago Tribune. Parenthetical citations: (Carey, 2019; Harlan, 2013; Stobbe, 2020) Narrative citations: Carey (2019), Harlan (2013), and Stobbe (2020) In the source element of the reference, provide at minimum the title of the newspaper in italic title case. If the newspaper article is from an online newspaper that has a…
When Chandrabhan Kushwaha, who runs a small chocolate-biscuit shop in the Hatta tehsil headquarters of Damoh district in Madhya Pradesh, got infected with COVID-19 during the deadly second wave, little did he know that it would devastate his entire family. Chandrabhan succumbed to the virus within a few months, leaving his two kids orphaned. His wife, Rekha, had passed away a few years ago. Their father’s demise meant that Akruthi*, who is studying in class 12 and Santhosh*, studying in class 10th, not only had to halt their education but also find a means to provide for themselves. This harsh…
There are lots of celestial events to look out for this December, from Venus being at its brightest to the arrival of the Full Cold Moon on December 18. One phenomenon that has astronomers extra excited? Peaking on the night of December 13—on this coming Monday, until Tuesday at sunrise—one of the most active meteor showers of 2021 will take place in the form of the Geminids. Farmers’ Almanac reports that, with a clear sky, “free of moonlight, you can easily spot 50 or more meteors per hour. On an optimum night for the Geminids, it may even be possible…