Amelia Borger Staff Writer We have liftoff! NASA Astronaut Peggy Whitson, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy launched in the Expedition 50/51 mission up to the International Space Station on November 17. There, they met NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko, who docked with the ISS a couple weeks ago. Whitson became the Commander of the ISS when they arrived on Saturday. Three weeks earlier, the latter three astronauts launched in the 49/50 mission that would bring them up to the station, and that capsule would bring the astronauts currently residing in the station back from the previous mission to Earth. On Saturday, two days after the launch, Whitson, Pesquet, and Novitskiy joined Kimbrough, Ryzhikov, and Borisenko when they docked with the Rassvet module, one of four Russian docking ports on the space station. Amber Hancock-Burns Staff Writer Have you ever seen the movies in which a machine scans the character’s face, and they are able to enter into wherever their secret lair is? You may have also wondered when a technology like that would be available in real life. Now you are able to use this form of technology in Wuzhen, China. Wuzhen is a town slightly larger than Apex and receives millions of visitors per year due to its beautiful agriculture and classic canals. Baidu, a Chinese technology company, has implemented facial recognition devices into different parts of the town to shorten wait times and be more convenient for guests. When a visitor arrives to the town, their picture is taken and entered into a database which stores the pictures until they are used throughout the town. When the visitor wants to enter certain parts of the town, a tablet that is attached to the entry gates takes a video around two seconds long and sends it to a database in the cloud connected to it. This cloud then takes the picture on file and ensures that the visitor is authorized to enter. This entire process takes about 0.6 seconds to complete. Because of this new technology, guests’ wait times have decreased by more than half, and it is much less of a hassle for guests to enter different facilities and attractions. Jessica Dorcelien Features Editor On Nov. 17, Wake County Public School System Superintendent Dr. James “Jim” Merrill was named North Carolina’s Superintendent of the Year, becoming the only North Carolina Superintendent to win the state award twice. Merrill was named Superintendent of the Year in 2005 while working for the Alamance-Burlington School System. He was again awarded the same title while serving as a top administrator of the Virginia Beach City Public Schools. Beginning his career in the 1970s as a teacher and coach within the Winston-Salem/Forsyth county schools, Merrill has worked in education for forty years, sixteen of which were with Wake County. In the summer of 2013, Dr. Merrill became the ninth superintendent of Wake County, the nation’s sixteenth largest district which has 177 schools and enrolls about 160,000 students. Merrill says a large portion of his re-election can be credited to his dedication to the district’s Strategic Plan document that calls for the district to “annually graduate at least ninety-five percent of its students ready for productive citizenship as well as higher education or a career.” Merrill, speaking on the current Wake County education system, says, “I’ve never been more urgent or convinced about the importance of shifting how we’re working with kids and preparing them upon graduation for what comes next.” Patrick LaLiberte Staff Writer There has been talk about humans going to Mars for quite some time now; however there has never been any planned expeditions to the red planet. The human race has the technology to go to Mars, but has not had the motivation and will to do it until now. The time has finally come for humans to land on Mars and colonize the planet, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk. In fact, Musk is confident enough to say that he will send eighty thousand people to Mars by 2050. Also, Musk has recently stated that he plans on going “well beyond” Mars, aiming to colonize other planets, moons, and possibly even asteroids. Despite these claims, Mars is currently the most likely candidate, at least in the near future, for humans to land on and colonize. Musk’s plan to colonize Mars will start with sending equipment and tools necessary for the survival of the colonists. Some of this equipment will be used to make new fuel for the journey back to Earth. Soon after that, the launch of the “Red Dragon” spacecraft will take the astronauts to the red planet sometime between 2018 and 2020. When the colonists arrive on Mars, they will need to find all of the supplies to make an outpost. The equipment needed for the outpost would probably be impossible to lift and move here on Earth, but because the gravity on Mars is only 37% of Earth’s gravity, lifting the heavy equipment should not be a problem for the colonists. These colonists will have to work together to do many things in order to survive as a community on Mars. Although some are skeptical of Musk’s plan to land on Mars and colonize the planet, SpaceX has already begun the billion dollar project, and Musk is determined to follow through with the expedition. Only time will tell how far Elon Musk’s plan to colonize the solar system will really go, but humans landing on Mars in the near future seems inevitable at this point. Jessica Stiehm News Editor After a late night at the polls this past Tuesday, all results from the Electoral College point toward uncharted territory for the United States. There is no doubt that 2016 has been a historic election year. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton running against reality TV star Donald Trump seems like a political landslide, but somehow it has become the most intense presidential race in decades. Meenakshi Sathish Features Editor Different schools have many different initiatives to get students to drive safely since it is not breaking news that teen drivers can be careless at times on the road. However, one school took it too far and is now under criticism. Brodhead High School in Wisconsin thought it was a bright idea to tell their students that four of their classmates died in a car accident to incite fear. The school told the four selected students to stay home one day and instructed them not to text their peers that they were okay. The next morning the announcement was made. The students were absolutely mortified, and some were even crying. Brodhead is a small town where everyone knows everyone, so hearing the death of their fellow students is personal. Ten minutes later, the announcers tell the students that it was just a drill and that the four students are safe. Nevertheless, the students were still hurt at the recklessness of their teachers and staff to be able to go through with such a malignant tactic to push safe driving. "It wasn't really effective. They were trying to teach using scare tactics, which doesn't teach. It just makes you not trust the teachers and any of the announcements you're going to get," said Sam Bolen, who attends Brodhead. Even parents found the announcement uncalled for. “I don’t feel that you need to go to those kinds of extremes to teach a lesson. It minimizes other people’s feelings who have actually gone through it,” explains mother of student Sam Bolen, whose uncle died in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. Jessica Stiehm
News Editor On the week of Sept. 10, Apex High School sophomore Matt Rice became the youngest presenter ever for the 41st National Weather Association convention. The annual meeting took place in Norfolk, Virginia, and lasted five days. This year’s convention theme was “Connecting Operational Meteorologists in Pursuit of Excellence in Weather Forecasting, Communication and Service”. Hundreds of “professionals in meteorology and the related sciences” attended the meeting for the five workshops offered. In addition, Rice met the association's president, David Freeman, for a photo including his presentation titled Social Meteorology & its Impact During Severe Weather. Rice was featured in the September/October President’s Message here. Congratulations Matt! Jessica Dorcelien
Editor-in-Chief The 13th Amendment of the American Constitution, the amendment that abolished slavery, was ratified in 1865. This is why is it so alarming that the American Correctional Association (ACA), the country’s largest trade organization for prison and jails, recently passed a resolution that urges the repeal of the amendment’s “exclusion clause”: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States.” This clause, according to the ACA, allows prisoners to work for little to no pay, which in some cases, crosses the limits of human decency amounting to modern-day servitude. Despite that many correctional officials claim that there is nothing punitive about withholding wages, the ACA has called upon Prison Work Programs to “aspire” to offer inmates productivity-based wages. Questions of a modern-day slavery come in addition to interrogations of whether racial discrimination and excessive force have become prominently used tactics within the correctional system. Jessica Stiehm Editor-In-Chief Long time critics of Obamacare will be happy to learn that the program is experiencing growing pains. Ironically praised for their universal affordability, premiums will be going up an average of 20% nationwide within the next year. Health insurance is hard to understand on a good day. Nevertheless, here are the basics: In the barest terms possible there are two choices: Obamacare or a private insurance plan. Obamacare benefits the previously uninsured and lower income class who cannot afford a more stylized, expensive plan. People employed in larger companies often have insurance offered through their employer. Jessica Dorcelien
News Editor On Oct. 27, the White House announced that President Barack Obama had commuted, or reduced, the sentencings of ninety-eight inmates, most of which were convicted of nonviolent drug charges. This comes as a direct attempt to bring old sentencings up to current standards. Prior conditions for sentencing included a strict implementation of “mandatory minimums”, a condition that has now been replaced. It has been a highly vocalized goal of Obama’s to combat the severe sentencing practices from more than twenty years ago that were presumably brought on by the “war on drugs”. Obama has taken large strides towards his goal by recognizing that many of these individuals “made mistakes at a young age” but have “diligently worked to rehabilitate themselves while incarcerated”. |
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