From underdog in 2024 to reigning champion in 2025, Barbora Krejčíková emerged to a warm applause on a boiling day at Wimbledon.
The Czech Olympic tennis champion was in for a tough opening round against rising Filipina star Alexandra Eala, but Krejčíková came through to win 3-6, 6-2, 6-1 on Tuesday, 1 July.
Krejčíková will meet Caroline Dolehide or Arantxa Rus in the second round of the Championships 2025.
More to follow.
ReutersKing Charles and Queen Camilla have arrived in Edinburgh for a series of events to mark Holyrood Week – the annual royal celebration of Scottish culture, community and achievements.
The King’s first engagement was the traditional Ceremony of the Keys in the gardens of the Palace of Holyroodhouse, his official residence in the Scottish capital.
It took place shortly after the Royal couple arrived by helicopter.
The monarch traditionally spends a week each July in Edinburgh but last year the programme was shortened by the general election.
Reuters
PA MediaBefore the ceremony, the palace’s gardens were transformed into a parade ground and the King met senior military and uniformed figures.
He then received a royal salute before inspecting a Guard of Honour of soldiers from the Royal Company of Archers, who serve as the King’s ceremonial bodyguard in Scotland.
Also lined up was the Palace Guard made up of soldiers from Balaklava Company, 5 Scots, and the High Constables of the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
PA MediaDuncan Scott, who won his eighth Olympic medal at the Paris Games last year, said receiving an OBE for services to swimming was a “special moment”.
Recently the 28-year-old gave evidence in parliament calling on MSPs to recognise the value of swimming pools and provide financial relief to keep them open.
He is also an ambassador for Scottish Swimming’s Learn to Swim programme.
“You don’t do sport for the recognition. You do it for things that you want to achieve, either individually or as part of a team,” he said.
“But there is that added element that it’s really humbling and really nice to be recognised for the hard work that you’ve put in.”
PA MediaParalympian Stephen Clegg, who won two gold medals at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, described being made an MBE as a “huge honour”.
The swimmer, who has a visual impairment and swims in the S12 category, said the recognition “puts a spotlight on not just the sport as a whole, but sport for the disabled community”.
He said as a child he struggled with “all the barriers and limitations” people had placed on him and that swimming had allowed him to prove them wrong.
PA MediaFalkirk-born artist Dame Barbara Rae said her damehood for services to art was a “really quite rare accolade”.
The painter and printmaker studied at Edinburgh College of Art and went on to teach art in secondary schools, then lecture at Aberdeen College of Education and Glasgow School of Art.
The 81-year-old’s work has been exhibited around the world, including at venues in New York and Hong Kong.
She said she hopes her damehood will inspire up-and-coming artists.
Retired solicitor Kevin Hay was also made an MBE after spending 17 years translating the Bible into Doric – the first time the whole text has ever changed into any variant of the Scots language.
The Old Testament was published last year while the New Testament was released in 2012, comprising more than 800,000 words between them.
He said he was “absolutely delighted” to have been recognised for his work.
“When I was at school, you got belted if you spoke Scots of any kind, even one Scots word, and you could get the belt,” he said.
“And here’s now a recognition for doing something in that very language. So it’s great.”
PA Media
PA Media
PA MediaQueen Camilla officially opened Ratho Library in Newbridge near Edinburgh Airport, alongside Scottish crime author Sir Ian Rankin.
She was greeted by librarians, local schoolchildren, young writers and poets, and figures from Edinburgh’s annual literary festival.
It marked the launch of a five-year initiative by the Edinburgh International Book Festival and Edinburgh City Libraries to promote literature in local communities.
In 1920, a young Armenian painter named Vosdanig Manuk Adoian emigrated to the US, fleeing from the Armenian genocide. After four years living with relatives in Massachusetts, he moved to New York City and changed his name to Arshile Gorky in honour of the celebrated Russian poet Maxim Gorky.
A new publication titled Arshile Gorky: New York City, edited by Ben Eastham, examines Gorky’s artistic evolution against the backdrop of New York as a Modernist mecca, straddling Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. In the book, writers and art historians explore Gorky’s Manhattan years, including Adam Gopnik who, in the essay “Gorky Again”, reflects on the relationship of the artist’s paintings to time and place. Here, he turns our focus to an important double portrait and Gorky’s experience as an Armenian immigrant to the US.
What Arshile Gorky and the other great immigrant observers of America had in common is that each pursued a passion in the modern sense, making art against the grain of commerce, while each underwent a passion in the mythical Greek sense—had some moment of struggle or pain that resolved in art, and, often, in the closest thing artists get to immortality: a place in the collective memory. In the artist’s last interview [1948], he again describes himself as Russian, but also as an “early American”, who, according to his interviewer, “dislikes being called a foreigner and says he is more like one of the first settlers because he can appreciate the advantages of being in America to a far greater extent than those who were born here by ‘lucky accident’”.
With Gorky we sense a classic immigrant’s plight: a desire to restore and recuperate the recipes and precise tastes and qualities of a lost, more savoury and less homogenised past, while making it live within the scale and ambition of American reality. Scale alone becomes a vital form of assimilation: do it big and you do it American. To do “Poussin over entirely from nature” was Cézanne’s cry; to do the artisanal, puzzling, irregular Old-World particularism—a world wrought, as Gorky itemised, from the shape of apricots and baker’s bread—over in a landscape of grand generalisations and unlimited horizons, that was the dream that [Willem] de Kooning and Gorky shared.
And so, we keep coming back to Gorky’s prime, begetting picture, a masterpiece of the American immigrant experience, which is to say of the American experience: The Artist and His Mother (around 1926-36). Taken from a formal photograph, remade over more than a decade, [it is] the foundation of his art. We see boy and mother and know that she will die, unthinkably, of starvation in his arms, as part of the [Armenian] genocide, and never see her son again. The image sits so sharply within our consciousness, no matter how often we return to it, because it offers something not illustrative but iconic, part of now-vanishing stories of loss redeemed by possibility. From starvation and persecution and the wistful enforced formality of the Old World, comes, after a long voyage, energy and hope—and with the hope, a residual longing for the older world, and a need to picture all that happened between the departure and the painting. Gorky’s kind lives as a series of passionate pilgrimages made by improbable arrivals and painters who, however necessarily absurd in their effect at moments, struggled against unimaginable hardship to realise their images.
Gorky’s last written words before his painfully premeditated suicide [he took his own life in 1948]—“good-bye my ’loveds,” in one version—were a cry of the heart of a suffering man who loved his daughters, as well as a literary reference to a phrase [the Russian poet and playwright Alexander] Pushkin is reported to have written before he died following a duel. The curse of history and the hope of renewal, old and new drawn together in pain. All artists die in a duel, perhaps the duel of talent against the world. We honour them not by placing them back in history, but by reminding ourselves that what we call history is just what they did, which was everything they could.
• Arshile Gorky: New York City, Ben Eastham (editor) and various contributors incl. Adam Gopnik, Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 244pp, £32 (pb)
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (AP) — South Africa equalled its longest winning streak in men’s test cricket when it finished off Zimbabwe by 328 runs on Tuesday.
The ninth straight win for the world test champion tied the record of the 2002-03 Proteas.
Medium-pacer Corbin Bosch claimed a maiden five-for as Zimbabwe, set a target of 537, was bowled out for 208 in its second innings after lunch on day four.
Zimbabwe suffered its heaviest test defeat on runs.
Bosch struck on the day’s first ball, removing Nick Welch after he did the same with the last ball on Monday when opener Takudzwanashe Kaitano was caught at third slip.
Sean Williams prevented the hat trick, but Zimbabwe’s first-innings century-maker was among the five wickets to fall in the first hour.
Zimbabwe went from 32-1 overnight to 82-6, effectively the end of its unlikely chase.
The main resistance came from captain Craig Ervine with 49 and tailender Wellington Masakadza with 57, his maiden test half-century.
Bosch took 5-43 in his second test, and along with his unbeaten 100 in the first innings, became the first South African to do the hundred and five-for double in the same test since Jacques Kallis in 2002. He is only the fifth South African to achieve the feat.
South Africa, with only four of the 11 who won the World Test Championship at Lord’s last month, scored 418-9 declared and 369. Zimbabwe replied with 251 and 208.
The 19-year-old Lhuan-dre Pretorius was man of the match for his 153 on debut, and the other two debutants also starred; Dewald Brevis made 51 and took a wicket, and medium-pacer Codi Yusuf had figures of 3-42 and 3-22.
“I’ve had my eye on Lhuan-dre since the SA20, and he hasn’t looked back since in any format,”” Proteas stand-in captain Keshav Maharaj said. “He’s a mature young lad. To see how goes about his business in pressure situations was very heart-warming.
“And then there’s Dewald Brevis. Not many youngsters come into our system and express themselves the way he does. Bosch is new to the international scene, but he’s really fit in like a glove. To see him conquer both facets in this test match was really special.”
The teams stay at Queens Sports Club for the second and last test of the series starting on Sunday.
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AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket
WIMBLEDON — Given their form coming in, Barbora Krejcikova and Alexandra Eala couldn’t have been on more different trajectories.
Krejcikova, the defending Wimbledon champion and No. 17 seed, missed the first five months of 2025 with a back injury and had to withdraw from this week’s Eastbourne quarterfinals citing a thigh injury. She was a modest 3-4 in 2025 since returning from a debilitating back injury.
Eala, still a teenager, leaped into the public consciousness back in March by beating three former Grand Slam champions — Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys and Iga Swiatek — in Miami. At the age of 20, last week she won six matches, including qualifying, to reach the final in Eastbourne before losing to Maya Joint — 12-10 in a third-set tiebreak.
But as Tuesday’s match progressed, muscle memory seemed to take over and Krejcikova regained her groove on the grass, defeating Eala 3-6, 6-2, 6-1.
A clean backhand down the line to finish it left Krejcikova — fist aloft — roaring in triumph. She now has 14 match-wins at Wimbledon, more than any other Grand Slam.
Before the tournament began, Krejcikova was reunited with the Venus Rosewater Dish, the trophy she won here nearly a year ago. Now, it appears, she’ll have a chance to regain it.
At the outset, things didn’t look quite so rosy.
With Krejcikova serving at 2-3 in the first set, Eala broke through on the strength of a backhand winner. Playing only the second Grand Slam main draw of her young career, she made that stand up by taking better care of her serve and hitting fewer unforced errors than Krejcikova.
But the defending champion came screaming back, taking a 5-0 lead in the second set and eventually forcing a decider.
Down 1-0 and facing her second break point, Eala didn’t do enough with an approach shot and couldn’t handle the subsequent volley. In the final analysis, Krejcikova — an accomplished doubles player — was better at the net. She won eight of 13 points, while Eala was only 2-for-9.
At the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the 88-Inch Cyclotron is a powerful machine built to accelerate ions and explore the atomic nucleus. For decades, it has helped scientists probe the building blocks of matter.
There’s another side to this machine that is less well known but equally impactful: It’s an indispensable testbed for electronics, materials, and medical isotopes. By delivering beams of charged particles that can be tuned to different energies and compositions, the 88-Inch Cyclotron plays a surprising and wide-ranging role in science and technology – advancing energy technologies, helping spacecraft survive radiation, and improving cancer treatments.
In collaboration with companies, universities, and government partners, here are a few examples of how the 88-Inch Cyclotron has made modern technology more reliable, resilient, and revolutionary:
Much of the 88-Inch Cyclotron’s work is in testing electronics components – think microchips and circuit boards – to make sure they can stand up to harsh environments. These efforts are concentrated at the Berkeley Accelerator Space Effects (BASE) Facility, which can emulate years of exposure to space radiation in just hours. Since pioneering this type of heavy ion testing in 1979, researchers have used the 88-Inch Cyclotron to test every generation of GPS – the system behind smartphone directions, app-based location services, shipping logistics, emergency response, and many more everyday applications. By assessing how cosmic rays deposit energy and damage electronics on satellites, manufacturers can then design resilient components to keep this crucial tool running smoothly.
Nuclear fusion could provide a huge supply of power, but building a fusion plant that can handle the intense process requires solving fundamental engineering problems. Using an intense beam of high-energy neutrons produced by the 88-Inch Cyclotron, researchers and companies can test materials under consideration for fusion energy machines; for example: optics that focus the laser, structural materials, and the superconducting wire for magnets.
Previous tests at other facilities used X-rays, beams of charged particles, or low-energy neutrons, which don’t fully replicate the reactions from fusion. Berkeley Lab’s more realistic neutron beam helps teams know how their materials might respond with far greater accuracy, and, in turn, design more resilient equipment up to the challenge. “No one wants to use a poor surrogate for their tests if they can use what’s basically the real thing,” said Andrew Voyles, a UC Berkeley research engineer at the 88-Inch Cyclotron who leads that research program.
To prepare for extreme conditions, launch vehicles like the Atlas, Delta, and Falcon rockets have tested their electronics at the BASE Facility. Prototype components undergo rigorous trials that reveal design vulnerabilities and allow for crucial improvements before launch. The impact of even a single high-energy particle – a “single event effect” – can disrupt or disable an unprotected microchip. BASE Facility research coordinator Mike Johnson estimates that over 90% of the U.S. spacecraft that have ever gone to space have at least some of their electronics evaluated at the 88-Inch Cyclotron.
Actinium-225 is a promising isotope for targeted cancer treatments, but it’s notoriously difficult to produce. It has been called “the rarest drug on Earth,” with a global supply of about 1,000 doses a year. Researchers used the 88-Inch Cyclotron’s neutron beam to pioneer a new method to make the isotope more efficiently. The team also designed and tested a piece of equipment that industry can license and pair with the technique to produce actinium-225 in far larger quantities – potentially thousands of doses per week. In addition, experts at the facility research the optimal ways to make other medical isotopes used in PET scans, diagnostics, and potential treatments, and have shared that knowledge with industry and academic partners across the country.
“We do these basic measurements to find the optimum recipes for making these rare isotopes, then hand it off to production facilities that can start making it in large quantities,” Voyles said. “We sit at this intersection of really interesting scientific challenges with massive societal benefits on a time scale faster than you usually see in physics. It’s the best of both possible worlds: We get to do impactful work while figuring out some cool science in the process.”
At the BASE Facility, researchers can tune the particle beam and adjust the “cocktail” of ions and energies to simulate different radiation conditions that you might find in low-Earth orbit, deep space, or on the surface of another planet. That adjustability helps space agencies like NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) assess their equipment as precisely as possible. The 88-Inch Cyclotron has tested electronics for dozens of high-profile missions, including multiple Mars rovers, the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and the James Webb Space Telescope. “We’ve tested parts for spacecraft that have gone to all the planets in the solar system,” Johnson said.
When astronauts venture into space, the stakes are even higher. The 88-Inch Cyclotron has supported human spaceflight efforts for decades, testing electronics for the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and spacesuits. Recently, it’s been used to evaluate the electronics in the latest generation of extravehicular mobility units, spacesuits designed for NASA’s Artemis program and future missions to the Moon and Mars. These tests help engineers identify how radiation might affect systems, allowing teams to troubleshoot and safeguard those technologies before astronauts rely on them in the field.
Molten salt reactors are a next-generation nuclear energy design that use liquid salts (similar to sodium chloride, or table salt) to transfer heat and eventually create electricity. Designers had theorized that chlorine isotope impurities in the salt might absorb too many neutrons, limiting reactor performance – and filtering out the impurities was expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But the reaction had never been tested directly. Using a neutron beam at the 88-Inch Cyclotron, researchers measured the process and found that the impact was negligible. Filtering the chlorine wouldn’t be necessary, saving potential commercial developers money and making molten salt reactors more viable.
Electronics used in national defense systems must withstand extreme conditions. The Missile Defense Agency and Test Resource Management Center are among those who use the BASE Facility to test and strengthen critical components. By replicating challenging radiation environments, the cyclotron ensures that these systems remain reliable under stress. “Even on land, depending on what a computer is doing, you might have sensitive parts,” Johnson said. “It highlights the importance of this kind of testing. Whether damaging particles come from the sun or a nuclear incident, if you have these parts fail, you could lose crucial systems.”
While much of the 88-Inch Cyclotron’s testing focuses on electronics destined for space, its capabilities are also important for systems on Earth that require high reliability and safety. Modern commercial aircraft and vehicles rely on increasingly complex electronics, from autonomous navigation systems and flight control computers to advanced driver-assist features in cars. These systems must be able to withstand single event effects from cosmic rays that find their way to Earth. Companies working on aviation and automotive technologies use the BASE Facility to rapidly put their electronics through their paces.
WASHINGTON, July 1, 2025 — In blinding bright light or pitch-black dark, our eyes can adjust to extreme lighting conditions within a few minutes. The human vision system, including the eyes, neurons, and brain, can also learn and memorize settings to adapt faster the next time we encounter similar lighting challenges.
In an article published this week in Applied Physics Letters, by AIP Publishing, researchers at Fuzhou University in China created a machine vision sensor that uses quantum dots to adapt to extreme changes in light far faster than the human eye can — in about 40 seconds — by mimicking eyes’ key behaviors. Their results could be a game changer for robotic vision and autonomous vehicle safety.
“Quantum dots are nano-sized semiconductors that efficiently convert light to electrical signals,” said author Yun Ye. “Our innovation lies in engineering quantum dots to intentionally trap charges like water in a sponge then release them when needed — similar to how eyes store light-sensitive pigments for dark conditions.”
The sensor’s fast adaptive speed stems from its unique design: lead sulfide quantum dots embedded in polymer and zinc oxide layers. The device responds dynamically by either trapping or releasing electric charges depending on the lighting, similar to how eyes store energy for adapting to darkness. The layered design, together with specialized electrodes, proved highly effective in replicating human vision and optimizing its light responses for the best performance.
“The combination of quantum dots, which are light-sensitive nanomaterials, and bio-inspired device structures allowed us to bridge neuroscience and engineering,” Ye said.
Not only is their device design effective at dynamically adapting for bright and dim lighting, but it also outperforms existing machine vision systems by reducing the large amount of redundant data generated by current vision systems.
“Conventional systems process visual data indiscriminately, including irrelevant details, which wastes power and slows computation,” Ye said. “Our sensor filters data at the source, similar to the way our eyes focus on key objects, and our device preprocesses light information to reduce the computational burden, just like the human retina.”
In the future, the research group plans to further enhance their device with systems involving larger sensor arrays and edge-AI chips, which perform AI data processing directly on the sensor, or using other smart devices in smart cars for further applicability in autonomous driving.
“Immediate uses for our device are in autonomous vehicles and robots operating in changing light conditions like going from tunnels to sunlight, but it could potentially inspire future low-power vision systems,” Ye said. “Its core value is enabling machines to see reliably where current vision sensors fail.”
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A back-to-back structured bionic visual sensor for adaptive perception
Xing Lin, Zexi Lin, Wenxiao Zhao, Sheng Xu, Enguo Chen, Tailiang Guo, and Yun Ye
Fuzhou University, Fujian Science and Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China
Kipu Quantum and IonQ have set a new benchmark in quantum computing by solving the most complex protein folding problem ever tackled on quantum hardware – creating potential for real-world applications in drug discovery.
Kipu Quantum and IonQ have published a landmark achievement in quantum computing, announcing the successful solution of the most complex known protein folding problem ever done on quantum hardware. This collaboration highlights the powerful synergy between Kipu Quantum’s advanced algorithmic approaches and IonQ’s cutting-edge quantum systems.
In their latest study, the two companies tackled a 3D protein folding problem involving up to 12 amino acids – the largest of its kind to be executed on quantum hardware. This study marks a critical moment in leveraging quantum technologies for applications in drug discovery and computational biology.
The success of this study showcases the increasing capability of near-term quantum computing to address real-world scientific challenges.
The collaboration also achieved optimal solutions in two other highly complex problem classes. The first involved all-to-all connected spin-glass problems formulated as QUBOs (Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimisation) a challenging class of problems commonly used to benchmark quantum algorithms and hardware. The second involved MAX-4-SAT, a Boolean satisfiability problem expressed as a HUBO (Higher-Order Unconstrained Binary Optimisation), which was solved using up to 36 qubits – the basic units of quantum information.
For those outside the computing field, this means the team successfully used quantum hardware to solve notoriously difficult mathematical problems – the kind that model real-world challenges in areas like logistics, drug discovery and AI. It’s a sign that quantum systems are becoming powerful enough to take on practical, high-value tasks that classical computers struggle with.
All computational instances were run on IonQ’s Forte-generation quantum systems using Kipu Quantum’s proprietary BF-DCQO (Bias-Field Digitised Counterdiabatic Quantum Optimisation) algorithm.
Kipu’s BF-DCQO algorithm stands out for being non-variational and iterative, allowing it to deliver high-accuracy results while using fewer quantum operations with each iteration. This approach is particularly suited to problems like protein folding, which require managing complex, long-range interactions.
“Connectivity between qubits in quantum computing impacts efficiency and accuracy. Having all-to-all connectivity means faster time to solution, with higher quality results, and is a unique characteristic of trapped-ion systems. Combining that with Kipu’s unique quantum algorithms results in unparalleled performance with minimal resources, a sine qua non path to quantum advantage with IonQ’s next-generation system,” said Professor Enrique Solano, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Kipu Quantum. “This collaboration is not only breaking performance records but is also positioning us to actively pursue quantum advantage using trapped-ion technologies with IonQ for a wide class of industry use cases.”
IonQ emphasised the role of its full hardware-software stack in achieving these breakthroughs.
“Our collaboration with Kipu Quantum has delivered breakthroughs in both speed and quality that sets a new standard for what’s possible in quantum computing today,” said Ariel Braunstein, SVP of Product at IonQ. “This collaboration demonstrates the value of every part of IonQ’s quantum computing stack – from the quality of our qubits and how they are connected, to our compiler and operating system to how error mitigation techniques are applied. Kipu’s capabilities complement IonQ’s cutting-edge systems perfectly and this collaboration is only the first step in our mutual pursuit of near-term commercial value for customers across multiple industries.”
Building on this success, IonQ and Kipu Quantum plan to extend their partnership by exploring even larger-scale problems using IonQ’s upcoming 64-qubit and 256-qubit systems. These next-generation chips will tackle industrially relevant challenges in areas such as drug discovery, logistics optimisation, and advanced materials design.
By aligning new algorithms with robust hardware, the collaboration between Kipu Quantum and IonQ is laying the groundwork for realising quantum advantage across a broad range of real-world applications – and bringing the commercial promise of quantum computing closer to being a reality.
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NASA’s Curiosity rover takes photos of low-ridges across Mars. | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
For over a decade, NASA’s Curiosity rover has been capturing images of Mars as scientists continue to study the planet’s structures and surface.
Curiosity’s goal as it travels across Mars is to look for unique signs of life, including signs of possible ancient life on the planet.
Curiosity captured this 360-degree image after traveling to an area full of low ridges called boxwork patterns. These patterns look like spiderwebs, as NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter saw in 2006.
Since its arrival on Mars from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station via an Atlas V rocket in 2012, Curiosity has been exploring the surface of the Red Planet, including these low ridges. In the middle of the photo, Curiosity’s tracks can be seen as its wheels its way across the dust.
Curiosity took this photo at the base of Mount Sharp, a 3 mile (5 km) tall mountain within Mars’ Gale Crater. In the far distance of the image to the right is the “Texoli” butte, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The 360-degree panorama shows the low-ridge boxwork pattern of Mars’ landscape, with Curiosity’s tire tracks in the center of the image and the “Texoli” butte in the back right. | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
This panorama image was created by combining 291 images from Curiosity’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, taken over three days in mid-May 2025, according to JPL.
The boxwork pattern Curiosity captured is of particular interest to astronomers because its ridges were created by ancient groundwater flowing across Mars surface. The minerals in this groundwater helped harden the surface, and after thousands of years of being sandblasted by atmospheric winds, low ridges appeared at the foot of Mount Sharp.
While this ancient groundwater eventually disappeared from the planet entirely, astronomers believe it might have had nutrients to sustain ancient microbes. Using rovers like Curiosity, astronomers can get samples to determine whether there was life on Mars at some point in the planet’s past.
You can read more about ancient Martian water and NASA’s rovers as astronomers continue to study the red planet.
CNN
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Netflix is taking a bite out of our cultural obsession with sharks with the new documentary, “Shark Whisperer.”
The project focuses on free-diving conservationist Ocean Ramsey (her real name), who recounts her “fascination and kinship with one of the ocean’s most feared predators,” according to Netflix.
“Her passion for sharks, who she feels are gravely misunderstood and unfairly maligned, became her life’s work,” a story on the streamer’s Tudum site states. “Over 100 million sharks are killed each year, imperiling the survival of a species that is integral to a balanced marine ecosystem, and critical to a healthy Earth.”
While some view sharks as scary and “monsters,” Ramsey and her partner and videographer, Juan Oliphant, advocate for the safety of the sharks and are working on improving their image.
“I’m not a crazy person,” Ramsay says in a trailer for the project as she swims near several large sharks. “I’m hyper aware of what they’re capable of.”
The new doc, from Oscar-winning director of “My Octopus Teacher,” James Reed, is not without controversy, however.
“Ramsey’s approach to her activism has drawn criticism by both members of the scientific community and the public at large; Ramsey’s detractors say she is putting herself, other humans, and the sharks at risk by seeking media attention,” according to Tudum.
Ramsey advocates for the protection of sharks through her social media platforms, which have more than 2 million followers on Instagram alone.
“Shark Whisperer” is currently streaming on Netflix.
