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A younger Kaiba Gionfriddo, with mom April. The child suffers from tracheobronchomalacia, a rare respiratory condition.

(Credit:
Video screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)

A 3D printer saved the life of a baby boy with a rare disease that kept him from breathing properly, doctors are reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The boy, Kaiba Gionfriddo of Ohio, had been diagnosed with severe tracheobronchomalacia, a rare respiratory condition that caused his airways to collapse, blocking the flow of air to his lungs daily.

About 1 in 2,200 babies are born with the condition, but only 10 percent of them have cases as severe as Kaiba’s, according to his doctors. The boy’s parents, April and Brian, learned something was wrong when he was 6 weeks old and the infant turned blue while the family was out to eat.

By the age of 2 months, Kaiba had to be intubated to breathe. Despite the breathing tube and a ventilator he also required, his breathing could not be maintained sufficiently. He needed to be resuscitated on a daily basis.

“Quite a few doctors said he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive,” April Gionfriddo, mother of the now 20-month old Kaiba, said in a written statement. “At that point, we were desperate. Anything that would work, we would take it and run with it.”

A model of Kaiba trachea and bronchi. The splint was designed to slip over the top of the bronchus.

(Credit:
Video screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)

Kaiba’s doctors reached out to Dr. Glenn Green, an associate professor of pediatric otolaryngology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Green and his colleague Dr. Scott Hollister, a professor of biomedical and mechanical engineering at the university, had been developing a “bioresorbable device” that might help the infant.

The device was made using a CT scan of Kaiba’s airways, which was then used to custom-fabricate an airwaysplint with the help of a 3D printer and a polymer called polycaprolactone. The design is similar to the hose of a vacuum cleaner in that it’s strong enough not to collapse while at the same time being flexible enough to expand with growth, the doctors wrote in the May 23 letter to the editor published in the journal.

With little time to spare, the researchers turned to the institutional review board of the University of Michigan, which sought an emergency exception from the Food and Drug Administration to implant the airway.

The surgery took place in February 2012 at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich. The splint was sewn around the boy’s airway to expand it and aid its natural growth. Doctors saw a change immediately.

“It was amazing,” Green said. “As soon as the splint was put in, the lungs started going up and down for the first time and we knew he was going to be OK.”

Seven days after the surgery, doctors began to wean Kaiba off the ventilator and two weeks later, he was released from the hospital. He hasn’t turned blue since, his mom said.

“We are so thankful that something could be done for him. It means the world to us,” April said in the statement.

The splint is supposed to reabsorb into the boy’s body over three years as his windpipe remodels and grows in a healthy manner, Hollister explained.

“Kaiba’s case is definitely the highlight of my career so far,” said Hollister, who is also an associate professor of surgery at U of M. “To actually build something that a surgeon can use to save a person’s life? It’s a tremendous feeling.”

The two researchers have been testing other 3D-printed bone structures, including ears and noses.

“It’s the wave of the future,” Dr. Robert Weatherly, a pediatric specialist at the University of Missouri in Kansas City who was not involved in the boy’s care, told the Associated Press. “I’m impressed by what they were able to accomplish.”

3D printers have been used increasingly in medical care in recent years. Cases of 3D printers making implants of jawbones, portions of skulls, ears, and bones for dental work have been reported.

This story originally appeared on CBSNews.com.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/pRza/~3/2aSRgZF7as4/

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A model, wearing a Campbell’s Soup dress in a nod to Andy Warhol’s iconic pop art, stands at the “Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal” exhibition currently showing in Shanghai.

American pop artist Andy Warhol poses in a Mao suit — the common attire of men in China during the second half of the 20th century, including Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong. The photo was taken in a New York studio after his return from China.

During his first and only trip in China, Warhol is pictured in front of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, with its iconic portrait of Chairman Mao in November 1982.

After signing as a model with Ford Agency, Warhol began considering how to pose for the camera. Warhol experimented with poses in front of his friend and personal photographer, Christopher Makos. Here, he imitates the expression of one of the guardian lions in Beijing’s Forbidden City.

In his hotel room in Beijing, Warhol tried poses inspired by the many people he observed practicing tai chi outdoors.

Warhol stands by Chinese citizens on the Great Wall of China.

Warhol also spent a morning at the Great Wall of China. “It doesn’t look like a wall, it looks like a rollercoaster without the roller,” Makos recalls him remarking.

Christopher Makos (L) and Andy Warhol (R) had their picture taken in front of Tiananmen Square by one of the photographers hanging around the area. Back in the U.S., they received the hand-colored photo in the mail a few months later.

Several of Warhol’s “Chairman Mao” portraits from the collection of Gunter Sachs are pictured at the auction preview at Sotheby’s London in May 2012.

A visitor takes photos at the exhibition “Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal” showing at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art from April 28- May 31. The show excluded his iconic portraits of Chairman Mao.

A Christie’s art expert walks by a Mao portrait by Andy Warhol at a press preview in Hong Kong in October 2006. The piece was auctioned to Hong Kong property tycoon Joseph Lau for US$ 17.4 million the following month in New York, setting a world auction record for the artists.

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Hong Kong (CNN) — When American pop artist Andy Warhol visited Beijing in 1982 and was told there wasn’t a McDonald’s, he replied: “Oh, but they will.”

Twenty-six years after his death, Warhol, whose much-lauded prescience extended across visual and consumer culture, has popped up in China once again — and he was right about the fast-food chain.

“Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal,” the first major retrospective of his work in China, recently arrived in Shanghai with the aim of acquainting the Chinese public with the artist who created some of the most famous paintings of the most iconic figure in the country’s history.

Warhol goes to China

While Warhol’s trip to Beijing was his first and only visit to mainland China, his engagement with the country started a decade earlier, inspired by former U.S. president Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with the communist power in 1972.

On China: Contemporary art

On China: Censoring contemporary art

On China: Contemporary art unhindered

Ripping from the headlines, Warhol adopted Chairman Mao as his subject, applying his signature pop aesthetic to China’s paramount leader. His series of portraits went on to become some of his most well-known works.

READ: Can Chinese art be cutting edge?

“Mao was front-page news in America and that was often where Warhol got his biggest inspiration,” said Eric Shiner, director of Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, which organized the exhibition. He described Mao as “classic Warhol subject matter.”

Warhol relied on a copy of Mao’s portrait photograph in the leader’s Little Red Book of ideological quotations to create his paintings. Little did he know that he would eventually pose for a photo in front of the original portrait hanging in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

His trip to Beijing was an unexpected byproduct of a visit to Hong Kong. The industrialist Alfred Siu had invited him to the city to attend the opening of a night club, decorated with portraits of Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana that he had commissioned from the artist. Upon Warhol’s arrival, Siu announced he had arranged a VIP tour to Beijing for him and his friends.

Artistic inspiration aside, China also provided Warhol with a respite from the pressures of fame. “It was one of the special places,” said Christopher Makos, the artist’s close friend and personal photographer, who accompanied him to China.

READ: Hong Kong’s art explosion

He recalled that Warhol went virtually unrecognized in China, although the artist stood out for his unusual looks. “As Andy would say, he didn’t have to wear his Andy suit. Notoriety and fame is a double-edged sword….you have no privacy.”

China’s communist uniformity, with its blue sea of unisex Mao suits, appealed to Warhol’s aesthetic obsession with repetition. “He was all about multiples…and at the time, China was the ultimate multiple,” Makos said.

The country also provided a source of inspiration for Warhol’s nascent modeling career. Warhol posed for Makos’ camera with gestures he adopted from the tai chi practitioners he observed outdoors — and even adopted the bared-teeth expression of the guardian lion in the Forbidden City in one photo.

Can Warhol make a name in China?

While Warhol is well-known within art and fashion circles in China (Shiner said 600 of these cultural elite attended the exhibition’s pre-opening), he remains unknown to the average Chinese citizen.

Many Chinese are familiar with certain Warhol works, such as the Marilyn Monroe or the Chairman Mao portraits, reproductions of which dot cafes and tourist markets across Beijing. But they are much less likely to connect the work with the artist — or to even have heard of the artist himself.

“If you don’t know who Andy Warhol is, I won’t blame you. But if you say you’ve never seen his Marilyn Monroe portrait, I would have to jump into the Huangpu river and kill myself!” wrote user @Jianisi_yangyang on Sina Weibo. A search on China’s popular Twitter-like platform revealed many posts by users expressing ignorance of whom Warhol was or why he is famous.

Having recently launched a “massive” advertising campaign and sat for dozens of interviews with mainland media outlets, Shiner is hoping to reach the masses.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to do this show is so the general public can learn about the artist behind these iconic works and realize (Mao and Marilyn Monroe) are just a few of thousands of images he made,” he said.

So far, it appears that this education is welcome — and necessary. “For the first time, I learned the charm of pop art,” Weibo user @Yanmingdu wrote about the exhibition, while user @GracieMankedun posted, “Just saw Andy Warhol’s exhibition and I got a little confused. For example, I didn’t understand the Campbell’s soup cans.”

“The curiosity is greater than the awareness,” said John Good, international director for post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s, which is holding its second private sale of Warhol’s work in Hong Kong this week. “We’ve seen a great deal of interest and curiosity (among Chinese) about Western art and international culture. I think Warhol is a perfect artist…to show what Western culture is all about.”

Christie’s first private Warhol sale in Hong Kong last November attracted a mostly Asian demographic and managed to sell nearly half of its lots, Good said.

Censoring Mao in China

However, visitors to the “15 Minutes External” exhibitions in mainland China will not see any Chairman Mao portraits. While Shiner was planning the exhibition with the host venue — the Shanghai Power Station of Art — its staff advised that exhibiting the Mao works wasn’t a “good idea right now.” A staff member told CNN that government authorities would have considered the works “too political.”

“Of course, the primary concern is to get the show there and up and not put anything in a category that would ever question anything,” Shiner said. “Knowing that we would have the censors from the Ministry of Culture, we wanted to make sure… that nothing would put the show in jeopardy.”

An editorial in the state-backed Global Times newspaper suggested that while Warhol may not have had ill intent, the “provocative” blotches of color splattered on Mao’s face suggested that he was wearing make-up — a disrespectful portrayal of the iconic leader.

While Shiner acknowledged the Mao portraits “could be read as a sarcastic or ironic portrayal”, he said Warhol “definitely wasn’t being critical. He always liked to blur the lines on gender, and making colorful men somewhat beautiful was something that he liked to do as an inside joke,” he added.

Once the Chinese public gains a deeper understanding of Warhol’s work, he expects that the Mao works “won’t be as big a deal.”

Influence on Chinese contemporary art

Warhol’s influence on Chinese contemporary art can actually be traced back to 1981, when many contemporary artists, labeled as dissidents, fled the country, Shiner said. While most of them went to Paris and Berlin, two artists “very specifically went to New York because they wanted quite literally to be part of Andy’s universe” — Ai Weiwei and Xu Bing.

Both artists have gone on to become some of the most recognized and celebrated names in Chinese contemporary art, and some would go as far as calling Ai Weiwei “China’s Andy Warhol.”

“Ai Weiwei loves the idea of multiples,” Makos pointed out, noting Ai’s most famous installations, including the 9,000 backpacks representing the schoolchildren killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and the millions of porcelain sunflower seeds he poured into the Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern museum.

Shiner readily concurred: “He’s really gone on to model his entire art-making process and career on proven Warhol tactics, looking at repetition, multiplication, and critique of consumer culture. When you look at his Coca-Cola works, that’s directly related to Warhol and it’s really amazing how many things he picked up from Andy.” Ai’s similarity to Warhol also lies in his social activism, which aims to change Chinese society through art, he added.

As for Xu Bing, viewers may not immediately see Warhol in his work, Shiner said, but he described the artist as a “huge fan of Warhol” who “loves the idea of repetition — the formal arrangement of Chinese character after Chinese character, an endless array of similar looking imagery.”

Unfortunately, neither artist became acquainted in person with their muse, despite moving to New York for him. Ai once spotted Warhol at a party, but did not approach him, Shiner revealed. “As a young man, he was too shy to actually go and say hello,” he said, recalling that Ai told him his English wasn’t good enough at the time.

Ai and Xu aside, the Warhol aesthetic and vocabulary has deeply influenced Chinese contemporary artists over the past 10-15 years, with its characteristic combinations of social realist imagery with pop culture and iconic brands.

The Shanghai exhibition will run to July 28 and make its way to Beijing later this year. Meanwhile, Makos will also hold an exhibition of his photographs of Warhol next month in Shanghai, including images from their 1982 trip to China.

“His work lives on. Maybe (the Chinese) don’t know him, but they know his work,” Makos said, predicting that Warhol “will get bigger and bigger in China.”

“Andy was the ultimate pop artist. To this day you can still find Campbell soup on the shelf in the grocery store and you can see multiples of them,” Makos said. “As long as that imagery is live and well, Warhol will have this built-in publicity.”

CNN’s Feng Ke contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/world/asia/china-andy-warhol-exhibition/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/jk5lqZXtFrk/warhol-pops-up-in-china-again

Leading Women connects you to extraordinary women of our time — remarkable professionals who have made it to the top in all areas of business, the arts, sport, culture, science and more.

(CNN) — The Great Gatsby, the film based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, shows the glamorous and decadent lifestyles of fashionable, high society Americans of the Roaring Twenties.

Set in the prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922, the novel portrays the so-called “flapper” culture, fun-loving young women who wore their hair and their skirts short, listened to jazz music, drank and smoked in public, and were far more sexually liberated than previous generations.

Watch: ‘The Great Gatsby’ hits Cannes

CNN heads to the Cannes Film Festival

But who were the real women of the Great Gatsby era? CNN asked actresses Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher and Elizabeth Debicki, the female stars of Baz Luhrmann’s film, to tell us who gave them inspiration for their characters.

Ginevra King

A wealthy debutante and Fitzgerald’s first love, Ginevra King is widely believed to be the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan, James Gatsby’s love interest.

Fitzgerald met King in 1915 in his hometown of St Paul, Minnesota, when he was a 19-year-old Princeton student home for Christmas vacation and she was a 16-year-old boarding school pupil.

Though they dated for two years before both going on to marry other people, Fitzgerald never forgot his first love, who is often described as his muse.

In 2003, Princeton University acquired the letters to Fitzgerald from King’s family, allowing biographers to learn details of their relationship for the first time.

Carey Mulligan, who played Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby” film, went to Princeton to study the letters while researching her character.

“The way that she writes is absolutely incredible,” Mulligan told CNN. “Her way with language is so reminiscent of the way that Daisy speaks. She came from a very wealthy family and shared so many biographical [details].”

Read: A century of blooming color at Chelsea Flower Show

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

Letters between Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald also provided rich material for Mulligan’s research.

‘The Great Gatsby’ hits Cannes

“One of my favorite parts of the whole experience was the time just before we started shooting when I got to look at the people who inspired Fitzgerald,” said Mulligan. “It was amazing to go to Princeton and to get to read letters between Zelda and Scott, and between Ginerva King and Scott, and see where he’d directly drawn parts of Daisy to put her together.”

Zelda, a Southern belle, met Fitzgerald at a country club dance, but was unimpressed with his wealth and status and refused to marry him until his first novel, “The Side of Paradise”, was published in 1920.

The newly-wed Fitzgeralds became a celebrity couple, known for their partying lifestyle.

However, the party was short-lived and in 1930 — with their marriage crumbling and Fitzgerald suffering from alcoholism — Zelda was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and admitted to hospital, where she wrote a semi-biographical novel, “Save Me the Waltz”.

Clara Bow

Silent film actress Clara Bow was known as the “it” girl of the Roaring Twenties, after her most famous movie “It” of 1927. Despite a poor and unhappy childhood, Bow starred in 38 silent movies.

Is ‘Gatsby’ not so great?

Bow provided inspiration for Gatsby actress Isla Fisher, for her character Myrtle, who has an extramarital affair with Daisy Buchanan’s husband, Tom.

“I was inspired by Clara Bow for Myrtle because I think that’s who she would have wanted to be,” Fisher told CNN. “Myrtle would (have) loved to have been an actress and she would never have [had] the opportunity because of her status.

“I feel like Myrtle is living in her own theatrical world where she’s the star when she is with Tom Buchanan, even though her life is so sad without him.”

Read: Five reasons we love Angelina Jolie

Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks was another great actress of the silent movie era, best known for her films “Pandora’s Box” and “Diary of a Lost Girl”, both filmed in Germany in 1929.

Among the first to sport a bobbed haircut, it was Brooks who inspired the Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, playing “The Great Gatsby” character Jordan Baker in the film.

“She is just fierce, wonderful, intelligent, and I read a lot about her,” said Debicki. “She really typified that woman who appeared in the 1920s, completely independent and, like Gatsby, she built herself up, created the image she wanted.

“I had photos of her in my kitchen, everywhere. When I woke up in the morning I would look at Louise Brooks.”

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/showbiz/carey-mulligan-gatsby-era/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/3wp35DJfYoc/the-real-gatsby-women

Leading Women connects you to extraordinary women of our time — remarkable professionals who have made it to the top in all areas of business, the arts, sport, culture, science and more.

(CNN) — The Great Gatsby, the film based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, shows the glamorous and decadent lifestyles of fashionable, high society Americans of the Roaring Twenties.

Set in the prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922, the novel portrays the so-called “flapper” culture, fun-loving young women who wore their hair and their skirts short, listened to jazz music, drank and smoked in public, and were far more sexually liberated than previous generations.

Watch: ‘The Great Gatsby’ hits Cannes

CNN heads to the Cannes Film Festival

But who were the real women of the Great Gatsby era? CNN asked actresses Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher and Elizabeth Debicki, the female stars of Baz Luhrmann’s film, to tell us who gave them inspiration for their characters.

Ginevra King

A wealthy debutante and Fitzgerald’s first love, Ginevra King is widely believed to be the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan, James Gatsby’s love interest.

Fitzgerald met King in 1915 in his hometown of St Paul, Minnesota, when he was a 19-year-old Princeton student home for Christmas vacation and she was a 16-year-old boarding school pupil.

Though they dated for two years before both going on to marry other people, Fitzgerald never forgot his first love, who is often described as his muse.

In 2003, Princeton University acquired the letters to Fitzgerald from King’s family, allowing biographers to learn details of their relationship for the first time.

Carey Mulligan, who played Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby” film, went to Princeton to study the letters while researching her character.

“The way that she writes is absolutely incredible,” Mulligan told CNN. “Her way with language is so reminiscent of the way that Daisy speaks. She came from a very wealthy family and shared so many biographical [details].”

Read: A century of blooming color at Chelsea Flower Show

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

Letters between Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald also provided rich material for Mulligan’s research.

‘The Great Gatsby’ hits Cannes

“One of my favorite parts of the whole experience was the time just before we started shooting when I got to look at the people who inspired Fitzgerald,” said Mulligan. “It was amazing to go to Princeton and to get to read letters between Zelda and Scott, and between Ginerva King and Scott, and see where he’d directly drawn parts of Daisy to put her together.”

Zelda, a Southern belle, met Fitzgerald at a country club dance, but was unimpressed with his wealth and status and refused to marry him until his first novel, “The Side of Paradise”, was published in 1920.

The newly-wed Fitzgeralds became a celebrity couple, known for their partying lifestyle.

However, the party was short-lived and in 1930 — with their marriage crumbling and Fitzgerald suffering from alcoholism — Zelda was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and admitted to hospital, where she wrote a semi-biographical novel, “Save Me the Waltz”.

Clara Bow

Silent film actress Clara Bow was known as the “it” girl of the Roaring Twenties, after her most famous movie “It” of 1927. Despite a poor and unhappy childhood, Bow starred in 38 silent movies.

Is ‘Gatsby’ not so great?

Bow provided inspiration for Gatsby actress Isla Fisher, for her character Myrtle, who has an extramarital affair with Daisy Buchanan’s husband, Tom.

“I was inspired by Clara Bow for Myrtle because I think that’s who she would have wanted to be,” Fisher told CNN. “Myrtle would (have) loved to have been an actress and she would never have [had] the opportunity because of her status.

“I feel like Myrtle is living in her own theatrical world where she’s the star when she is with Tom Buchanan, even though her life is so sad without him.”

Read: Five reasons we love Angelina Jolie

Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks was another great actress of the silent movie era, best known for her films “Pandora’s Box” and “Diary of a Lost Girl”, both filmed in Germany in 1929.

Among the first to sport a bobbed haircut, it was Brooks who inspired the Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, playing “The Great Gatsby” character Jordan Baker in the film.

“She is just fierce, wonderful, intelligent, and I read a lot about her,” said Debicki. “She really typified that woman who appeared in the 1920s, completely independent and, like Gatsby, she built herself up, created the image she wanted.

“I had photos of her in my kitchen, everywhere. When I woke up in the morning I would look at Louise Brooks.”

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/showbiz/carey-mulligan-gatsby-era/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/VKXluXV7bf0/who-were-the-real-gatsby-women-2

Leading Women connects you to extraordinary women of our time — remarkable professionals who have made it to the top in all areas of business, the arts, sport, culture, science and more.

(CNN) — The Great Gatsby, the film based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, shows the glamorous and decadent lifestyles of fashionable, high society Americans of the Roaring Twenties.

Set in the prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922, the novel portrays the so-called “flapper” culture, fun-loving young women who wore their hair and their skirts short, listened to jazz music, drank and smoked in public, and were far more sexually liberated than previous generations.

Watch: ‘The Great Gatsby’ hits Cannes

CNN heads to the Cannes Film Festival

But who were the real women of the Great Gatsby era? CNN asked actresses Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher and Elizabeth Debicki, the female stars of Baz Luhrmann’s film, to tell us who gave them inspiration for their characters.

Ginevra King

A wealthy debutante and Fitzgerald’s first love, Ginevra King is widely believed to be the inspiration for Daisy Buchanan, James Gatsby’s love interest.

Fitzgerald met King in 1915 in his hometown of St Paul, Minnesota, when he was a 19-year-old Princeton student home for Christmas vacation and she was a 16-year-old boarding school pupil.

Though they dated for two years before both going on to marry other people, Fitzgerald never forgot his first love, who is often described as his muse.

In 2003, Princeton University acquired the letters to Fitzgerald from King’s family, allowing biographers to learn details of their relationship for the first time.

Carey Mulligan, who played Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby” film, went to Princeton to study the letters while researching her character.

“The way that she writes is absolutely incredible,” Mulligan told CNN. “Her way with language is so reminiscent of the way that Daisy speaks. She came from a very wealthy family and shared so many biographical [details].”

Read: A century of blooming color at Chelsea Flower Show

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

Letters between Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald also provided rich material for Mulligan’s research.

‘The Great Gatsby’ hits Cannes

“One of my favorite parts of the whole experience was the time just before we started shooting when I got to look at the people who inspired Fitzgerald,” said Mulligan. “It was amazing to go to Princeton and to get to read letters between Zelda and Scott, and between Ginerva King and Scott, and see where he’d directly drawn parts of Daisy to put her together.”

Zelda, a Southern belle, met Fitzgerald at a country club dance, but was unimpressed with his wealth and status and refused to marry him until his first novel, “The Side of Paradise”, was published in 1920.

The newly-wed Fitzgeralds became a celebrity couple, known for their partying lifestyle.

However, the party was short-lived and in 1930 — with their marriage crumbling and Fitzgerald suffering from alcoholism — Zelda was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and admitted to hospital, where she wrote a semi-biographical novel, “Save Me the Waltz”.

Clara Bow

Silent film actress Clara Bow was known as the “it” girl of the Roaring Twenties, after her most famous movie “It” of 1927. Despite a poor and unhappy childhood, Bow starred in 38 silent movies.

Is ‘Gatsby’ not so great?

Bow provided inspiration for Gatsby actress Isla Fisher, for her character Myrtle, who has an extramarital affair with Daisy Buchanan’s husband, Tom.

“I was inspired by Clara Bow for Myrtle because I think that’s who she would have wanted to be,” Fisher told CNN. “Myrtle would (have) loved to have been an actress and she would never have [had] the opportunity because of her status.

“I feel like Myrtle is living in her own theatrical world where she’s the star when she is with Tom Buchanan, even though her life is so sad without him.”

Read: Five reasons we love Angelina Jolie

Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks was another great actress of the silent movie era, best known for her films “Pandora’s Box” and “Diary of a Lost Girl”, both filmed in Germany in 1929.

Among the first to sport a bobbed haircut, it was Brooks who inspired the Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, playing “The Great Gatsby” character Jordan Baker in the film.

“She is just fierce, wonderful, intelligent, and I read a lot about her,” said Debicki. “She really typified that woman who appeared in the 1920s, completely independent and, like Gatsby, she built herself up, created the image she wanted.

“I had photos of her in my kitchen, everywhere. When I woke up in the morning I would look at Louise Brooks.”

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/showbiz/carey-mulligan-gatsby-era/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/t-FBqo9k_mM/who-were-the-real-gatsby-women

Editor’s note: LZ Granderson, who writes a weekly column for CNN.com, was named journalist of the year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and was a 2011 Online Journalism Award finalist for commentary. He is a senior writer and columnist for ESPN the Magazine and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter @locs_n_laughs.

(CNN) — Each day more than 55 million students attend the country’s 130,000 schools.

Each day, parents and guardians entrust some 7 million teachers with the education of our children.

And on a normal day, that is all we expect teachers to do — teach.

But on those not-so normal days we are reminded that for six hours a day and more, five days a week, teaching is not the only thing teachers are charged with doing. On those not-so-normal days, we are reminded that teachers are also asked to be surrogate parents, protectors, heroes.

Monday was one of those not-so-normal days.

The nation watched in horror as a 2-mile-wide tornado with winds up to 200 mph tore through Moore, Oklahoma. As sirens blared and the ground shook, the full force of the twister hit Plaza Towers Elementary School around 3 p.m. It was full of students, young scared children who had nowhere to hide as the tornado ripped off the roof, sending debris everywhere.

Heroes or just doing their jobs? Teacher save lives during tornado

“We had to pull a car out of the front hall off a teacher and I don’t know what her name is, but she had three little kids underneath her,” a rescuer said. “Good job teach.”

And that teacher was not the only one whose body shielded children from harm.

Tornado hits elementary schools

Teacher impaled while protecting class

Teacher used music game to calm class

Dad to hero teacher: ‘We love you’

A couple of years ago, as state and local officials were looking for ways to cut spending, a study from the American Enterprise Institute emerged in 2011, asking a provocative question: Are teachers overpaid?

Using abbreviated metrics — such as comparing private sector employees’ SAT and GRE scores with those of teachers — the study’s co-author Jason Richwine said the findings suggested that “years of education could be an overestimate of cognitive skills.”

A counterintuitive and insulting proposition. But in retrospect that shouldn’t be too surprising considering Richwine’s doctoral dissertation advocated keeping out immigrants with low IQs, which he maintained are lower than those of the “native white population.” He also co-authored an attack on immigration reform for the Heritage Foundation. And he resigned as the group’s senior policy analyst shortly afterward.

Nevertheless, as educators in Chicago voted to strike and benefits such as tenure came under scrutiny, the question that study proposed sparked a national conversation and helped turn 2012 into a year in which teacher-bashing became a popular past time.

But when I think of the importance of teaching in this country, when I think about the heroism demonstrated in Oklahoma, I find it impossible to overpay teachers.

We can certainly talk about the realities of the economy, debate the best method to evaluate effectiveness and discuss the drawbacks of unions. But anyone who characterizes teachers as overpaid is forgetting what we entrust them with each and every day.

Our children.

Inside a tornado-ravaged school

On a normal day, you don’t think about that too much.

But on a not-so-normal day, that is all you can think about.

Anne Marie Murphy, a mother of four, died trying to protect 6-year-old Dylan Hockley as Adam Lanza terrorized the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. When police found the two victims, Murphy was still holding Hockley in her arms.

And five other educators did not run away from the threat but gave their lives trying to protect students, trying to protect children.

How do you overpay for that?

Obviously no parent or guardian drops their children off at school thinking tragedy is going to happen. But perhaps we should be grateful that if something terrible does happen, that there are these angels in the building who will do right by our kids. Who will give anything — sometimes even their lives — to protect them in our absence.

One of the Plaza Towers teachers reportedly was lying on top of six students in a school bathroom to shelter them from the horrific storm.

I’m sure that is not in the job description.

Snapshot of teacher heroics

So yes, it is fiscally responsible for a community to talk about loss of tax revenue and budget deficits. But we ought to be careful not to vilify this profession while doing so. Teachers are not glorified babysitters with summers off. Their profession fuels all others, and on a normal day that is amazing enough in and of itself.

But on a day that’s not so normal, we hope and pray that they are willing to do much more. And time and time again, in the face of terrible tragedies, we have learned that many of them do.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of LZ Granderson.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/21/opinion/granderson-oklahoma-teachers/index.html?eref=edition

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A model, wearing a Campbell’s Soup dress in a nod to Andy Warhol’s iconic pop art, stands at the “Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal” exhibition currently showing in Shanghai.

American pop artist Andy Warhol poses in a Mao suit — the common attire of men in China during the second half of the 20th century, including Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong. The photo was taken in a New York studio after his return from China.

During his first and only trip in China, Warhol is pictured in front of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, with its iconic portrait of Chairman Mao in November 1982.

After signing as a model with Ford Agency, Warhol began considering how to pose for the camera. Warhol experimented with poses in front of his friend and personal photographer, Christopher Makos. Here, he imitates the expression of one of the guardian lions in Beijing’s Forbidden City.

In his hotel room in Beijing, Warhol tried poses inspired by the many people he observed practicing tai chi outdoors.

Warhol stands by Chinese citizens on the Great Wall of China.

Warhol also spent a morning at the Great Wall of China. “It doesn’t look like a wall, it looks like a rollercoaster without the roller,” Makos recalls him remarking.

Christopher Makos (L) and Andy Warhol (R) had their picture taken in front of Tiananmen Square by one of the photographers hanging around the area. Back in the U.S., they received the hand-colored photo in the mail a few months later.

Several of Warhol’s “Chairman Mao” portraits from the collection of Gunter Sachs are pictured at the auction preview at Sotheby’s London in May 2012.

A visitor takes photos at the exhibition “Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal” showing at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art from April 28- May 31. The show excluded his iconic portraits of Chairman Mao.

A Christie’s art expert walks by a Mao portrait by Andy Warhol at a press preview in Hong Kong in October 2006. The piece was auctioned to Hong Kong property tycoon Joseph Lau for US$ 17.4 million the following month in New York, setting a world auction record for the artists.

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Hong Kong (CNN) — When American pop artist Andy Warhol visited Beijing in 1982 and was told there wasn’t a McDonald’s, he replied: “Oh, but they will.”

Twenty-six years after his death, Warhol, whose much-lauded prescience extended across visual and consumer culture, has popped up in China once again — and he was right about the fast-food chain.

“Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal,” the first major retrospective of his work in China, recently arrived in Shanghai with the aim of acquainting the Chinese public with the artist who created some of the most famous paintings of the most iconic figure in the country’s history.

Warhol goes to China

While Warhol’s trip to Beijing was his first and only visit to mainland China, his engagement with the country started a decade earlier, inspired by former U.S. president Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with the communist power in 1972.

On China: Contemporary art

On China: Censoring contemporary art

On China: Contemporary art unhindered

Ripping from the headlines, Warhol adopted Chairman Mao as his subject, applying his signature pop aesthetic to China’s paramount leader. His series of portraits went on to become some of his most well-known works.

READ: Can Chinese art be cutting edge?

“Mao was front-page news in America and that was often where Warhol got his biggest inspiration,” said Eric Shiner, director of Philadelphia’s Andy Warhol Museum, which organized the exhibition. He described Mao as “classic Warhol subject matter.”

Warhol relied on a copy of Mao’s portrait photograph in the leader’s Little Red Book of ideological quotations to create his paintings. Little did he know that he would eventually pose for a photo in front of the original portrait hanging in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

His trip to Beijing was an unexpected byproduct of a visit to Hong Kong. The industrialist Alfred Siu had invited him to the city to attend the opening of a night club, decorated with portraits of Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana that he had commissioned from the artist. Upon Warhol’s arrival, Siu announced he had arranged a VIP tour to Beijing for him and his friends.

Artistic inspiration aside, China also provided Warhol with a respite from the pressures of fame. “It was one of the special places,” said Christopher Makos, the artist’s close friend and personal photographer.

READ: Hong Kong’s art explosion

He recalled that Warhol went virtually unrecognized in China, although the artist stood out for his unusual looks. “As Andy would say, he didn’t have to wear his Andy suit. Notoriety and fame is a double-edged sword….you have no privacy.”

China’s communist uniformity, with its blue sea of unisex Mao suits, appealed to Warhol’s aesthetic obsession with repetition. “He was all about multiples…and at the time, China was the ultimate multiple,” Makos said.

The country also provided a source of inspiration for Warhol’s nascent modeling career. Warhol posed for Makos’ camera with gestures he adopted from the tai chi practitioners he observed outdoors — and even adopted the bared-teeth expression of the guardian lion in the Forbidden City in one photo.

Can Warhol make a name in China?

While Warhol is well-known within art and fashion circles in China (Shiner said 600 of these cultural elite attended the exhibition’s pre-opening), he remains unknown to the average Chinese citizen.

Many Chinese are familiar with certain Warhol works, such as the Marilyn Monroe or the Chairman Mao portraits, reproductions of which dot cafes and tourist markets across Beijing. But they are much less likely to connect the work with the artist — or to even have heard of the artist himself.

“If you don’t know who Andy Warhol is, I won’t blame you. But if you say you’ve never seen his Marilyn Monroe portrait, I would have to jump into the Huangpu river and kill myself!” wrote user @Jianisi_yangyang on Sina Weibo. A search on China’s popular Twitter-like platform revealed many posts by users expressing ignorance of whom Warhol was or why he is famous.

Having recently launched a “massive” advertising campaign and sat for dozens of interviews with mainland media outlets, Shiner is hoping to reach the masses.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to do this show is so the general public can learn about the artist behind these iconic works and realize (Mao and Marilyn Monroe) are just a few of thousands of images he made,” he said.

So far, it appears that this education is welcome — and necessary. “For the first time, I learned the charm of pop art,” Weibo user @Yanmingdu wrote about the exhibition, while user @GracieMankedun posted, “Just saw Andy Warhol’s exhibition and I got a little confused. For example, I didn’t understand the Campbell’s soup cans.”

“The curiosity is greater than the awareness,” said John Good, international director for post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s, which is holding its second private sale of Warhol’s work in Hong Kong this week. “We’ve seen a great deal of interest and curiosity (among Chinese) about Western art and international culture. I think Warhol is a perfect artist…to show what Western culture is all about.”

Christie’s first private Warhol sale in Hong Kong last November attracted a mostly Asian demographic and managed to sell nearly half of its lots, Good said.

Censoring Mao in China

However, visitors to the “15 Minutes External” exhibitions in mainland China will not see any Chairman Mao portraits. While Shiner was planning the exhibition with the host venue — the Shanghai Power Station of Art — its staff advised that exhibiting the Mao works wasn’t a “good idea right now.” A staff member told CNN that government authorities would have considered the works “too political.”

“Of course, the primary concern is to get the show there and up and not put anything in a category that would ever question anything,” Shiner said. “Knowing that we would have the censors from the Ministry of Culture, we wanted to make sure… that nothing would put the show in jeopardy.”

An editorial in the state-backed Global Times newspaper suggested that while Warhol may not have had ill intent, the “provocative” blotches of color splattered on Mao’s face suggested that he was wearing make-up — a disrespectful portrayal of the iconic leader.

While Shiner acknowledged the Mao portraits “could be read as a sarcastic or ironic portrayal”, he said Warhol “definitely wasn’t being critical. He always liked to blur the lines on gender, and making colorful men somewhat beautiful was something that he liked to do as an inside joke,” he added.

Once the Chinese public gains a deeper understanding of Warhol’s work, he expects that the Mao works “won’t be as big a deal.”

Influence on Chinese contemporary art

Warhol’s influence on Chinese contemporary art can actually be traced back to 1981, when many contemporary artists, labeled as dissidents, fled the country, Shiner said. While most of them went to Paris and Berlin, two artists “very specifically went to New York because they wanted quite literally to be part of Andy’s universe” — Ai Weiwei and Xu Bing.

Both artists have gone on to become some of the most recognized and celebrated names in Chinese contemporary art, and some would go as far as calling Ai Weiwei “China’s Andy Warhol.”

“Ai Weiwei loves the idea of multiples,” Makos pointed out, noting Ai’s most famous installations, including the 9,000 backpacks representing the schoolchildren killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and the millions of porcelain sunflower seeds he poured into the Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern museum.

Shiner readily concurred: “He’s really gone on to model his entire art-making process and career on proven Warhol tactics, looking at repetition, multiplication, and critique of consumer culture. When you look at his Coca-Cola works, that’s directly related to Warhol and it’s really amazing how many things he picked up from Andy.”

As for Xu Bing, viewers may not immediately see Warhol in his work, Shiner said, but he described the artist as a “huge fan of Warhol” who “loves the idea of repetition — the formal arrangement of Chinese character after Chinese character, an endless array of similar looking imagery.”

Unfortunately, neither artist became acquainted in person with their muse, despite moving to New York for him. Ai once spotted Warhol at a party, but did not approach him, Shiner revealed. “As a young man, he was too shy to actually go and say hello,” he said, recalling that Ai told him his English wasn’t good enough at the time.

Ai and Xu aside, the Warhol aesthetic and vocabulary has deeply influenced Chinese contemporary artists over the past 10-15 years, with its characteristic combinations of social realist imagery with pop culture and iconic brands.

The Shanghai exhibition will run to July 28 and make its way to Beijing later this year. Meanwhile, Makos will also hold an exhibition of his photographs of Warhol next month in Shanghai, including images from their 1982 trip in China.

“His work lives on. Maybe (the Chinese) don’t know him, but they know his work,” Makos said, predicting that Warhol “will get bigger and bigger in China.”

“Andy was the ultimate pop artist. To this day you can still find Campbell soup on the shelf in the grocery store and you can see multiples of them,” Makos said. “As long as that imagery is live and well, Warhol will have this built-in publicity.”

CNN’s Feng Ke contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/world/asia/china-andy-warhol-exhibition/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/wEUaT5ak4Y4/andy-warhol-pops-up-in-china-again

Editor’s note: LZ Granderson, who writes a weekly column for CNN.com, was named journalist of the year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and was a 2011 Online Journalism Award finalist for commentary. He is a senior writer and columnist for ESPN the Magazine and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter @locs_n_laughs.

(CNN) — Each day more than 55 million students attend the country’s 130,000 schools.

Each day, parents and guardians entrust some 7 million teachers with the education of our children.

And on a normal day, that is all we expect teachers to do — teach.

But on those not-so normal days we are reminded that for six hours a day and more, five days a week, teaching is not the only thing teachers are charged with doing. On those not-so-normal days, we are reminded that teachers are also asked to be surrogate parents, protectors, heroes.

Monday was one of those not-so-normal days.

The nation watched in horror as a 2-mile-wide tornado with winds up to 200 mph tore through Moore, Oklahoma. As sirens blared and the ground shook, the full force of the twister hit Plaza Towers Elementary School around 3 p.m. It was full of students, young scared children who had nowhere to hide as the tornado ripped off the roof, sending debris everywhere.

“We had to pull a car out of the front hall off a teacher and I don’t know what her name is, but she had three little kids underneath her,” a rescuer said. “Good job teach.”

And that teacher was not the only one whose body shielded children from harm.

Tornado hits elementary schools

A couple of years ago, as state and local officials were looking for ways to cut spending, a study from the American Enterprise Institute emerged in 2011, asking a provocative question: Are teachers overpaid?

Using abbreviated metrics — such as comparing private sector employees’ SAT and GRE scores with those of teachers — the study’s co-author Jason Richwine said the findings suggested that “years of education could be an overestimate of cognitive skills.”

A counterintuitive and insulting proposition. But in retrospect that shouldn’t be too surprising considering Richwine’s doctoral dissertation advocated keeping out immigrants with low IQs, which he maintained are lower than those of the “native white population.” He also co-authored an attack on immigration reform for the Heritage Foundation. And he resigned as the group’s senior policy analyst shortly afterward.

Nevertheless, as educators in Chicago voted to strike and benefits such as tenure came under scrutiny, the question that study proposed sparked a national conversation and helped turn 2012 into a year in which teacher-bashing became a popular past time.

But when I think of the importance of teaching in this country, when I think about the heroism demonstrated in Oklahoma, I find it impossible to overpay teachers.

We can certainly talk about the realities of the economy, debate the best method to evaluate effectiveness and discuss the drawbacks of unions. But anyone who characterizes teachers as overpaid is forgetting what we entrust them with each and every day.

Our children.

On a normal day, you don’t think about that too much.

But on a not-so-normal day, that is all you can think about.

Anne Marie Murphy, a mother of four, died trying to protect 6-year-old Dylan Hockley as Adam Lanza terrorized the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School in December. When police found the two victims, Murphy was still holding Hockley in her arms.

And five other educators did not run away from the threat but gave their lives trying to protect students, trying to protect children.

How do you overpay for that?

Obviously no parent or guardian drops their children off at school thinking tragedy is going to happen. But perhaps we should be grateful that if something terrible does happen, that there are these angels in the building who will do right by our kids. Who will give anything — sometimes even their lives — to protect them in our absence.

One of the Plaza Towers teachers reportedly was lying on top of six students in a school bathroom to shelter them from the horrific storm.

I’m sure that is not in the job description.

So yes, it is fiscally responsible for a community to talk about loss of tax revenue and budget deficits. But we ought to be careful not to vilify this profession while doing so. Teachers are not glorified babysitters with summers off. Their profession fuels all others, and on a normal day that is amazing enough in and of itself.

But on a day that’s not so normal, we hope and pray that they are willing to do much more. And time and time again, in the face of terrible tragedies, we have learned that many of them do.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of LZ Granderson.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/21/opinion/granderson-oklahoma-teachers/index.html?eref=edition

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NewsRipplesWeb/~3/L_BlFL_p8P8/opinion-the-courage-of-teachers

Holon, Israel (CNN) — She never displayed the boundless energy of other children — all she seemed to do was cry,

Her mother couldn’t figure out why until a doctor examined her baby girl and broke the news. She had a heart condition that would eventually kill her if left untreated. Doctors said surgery should be done when she turned one but there was no one able to do it in her home town. The family did not have the money to go elsewhere.

It was torture. The longer she waited, the worse her daughter would get. Then something happened that changed everything. War broke out in Syria and eventually spread to their town. They tried to wait it out but it raged on with non-stop ferocity.

Escape from ruins

Then six months ago, the girl and her mother escaped what was left of their home. But they could not escape their child’s medical problems. The girl had turned four and her condition was getting worse — as doctors predicted.

“She could not play or walk or talk. She would get tired. She could not indulge in anything,” her mother said. “She could only eat very little.”

Graphic images show gruesome acts in Syria

Pressure to end Syria’s war

Assad’s forces gaining momentum in Syria

Syrian refugees stuck in limbo

The child’s mother asked us to keep their identity secret because of what happened after they left Syria. Their journey eventually landed them in Israel, which is technically still at war with Syria and has been for decades. The family worries they will be seen as traitors or spies when they return to their homeland if their neighbors find out they’ve been inside the “enemy state.” But the family acknowledge their journey to Israel saved the girl’s life.

Oxygen starved

Their perilous journey from Syria first landed them in a refugee camp with hundreds of thousands of others. Desperate and dirty, the camp was no place for a sickly child whose heart condition was slowly but surely starving her of oxygen.

“We all have in the heart two pumps but she has only one that is working,” explained Dr. Sion Houri, the head of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel. “We have two tubes in our body — one going to the lung, one going to the body. The one going to the lung was severely narrowed.”

Dr. Houri is from an organization called “Save a Child’s Heart.” Founded in Israel in 1995 by another surgeon at the Wolfson, the non-profit organization’s mission is to provide heart surgery to children wherever they are. So far they have treated 3,200 children from 44 nations. Last week they added another nation to their list, Syria. The civil war across the border sent them a child in need they would probably never been able to help due to the breakdown in relations between the two neighbors. When Save a Child’s Heart heard about the little girl’s plight, they jumped through all the necessary security hoops to get her the treatment she badly needed.

Bridge stereotypes

“We hope that we can contribute in our small way first and foremost to the medical care to the children in our neighborhood. We also believe that this has the ability to bring people closer together to bridge stereotypes,” said Simon Fisher, the executive Director of Save a Child’s Heart.

While the treatment is free for the patients, the organization relies on donations to pay the bills that invariably need to be settled.

A team of doctors and nurses at the Wolfson performed open-heart surgery on the girl. Though it was a major operation, doctors say it is a relatively simple procedure that often produces amazingly fast results.

“You can see differences that are absolutely crazy. Kids that were thought to be retarded all of a sudden start talking and walking, all they needed was a little bit of oxygen,” Dr. Houri added.

Healthy child

We met the little girl three days after surgery. Her curly hair, big brown eyes and huge smile captivated everyone around her. She was playing with bright colored plastic toys strewn alongside her bed. Though still hooked up to a machine, she acted like any typical four-year old, rather than the sickly, constantly exhausted child she was until very recently.

“Thank God, thank God, my daughter has recovered. She is so much better than before,” her mother explained.

She is incredibly relieved. She had been worried about how she would be treated — like so many others who have come to the hospital from far afield. At the moment there are young heart patients being treated from the West Bank, Ethiopia, Sudan, China and Tanzania.

As for the little Syrian girl who has survived a war and now open-heart surgery, she will need one more operation in about a year’s time as her body grows.

As she sits on the bed recovering from surgery, the little girl begins to sing a lullaby asking God to protect her baby brother. It turns out she was the one who needed protection the most. The mere fact the wide-eyed infant is able to sing easily without losing her breath is evidence enough to give her mother a sense of hope she hasn’t felt since before her country was plunged into war.

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This diagram lines up planets recently discovered by Kepler in terms of their sizes, compared to Earth. Kepler-22b was announced in December 2011; the three Super-Earths were announced April 18, 2013. All of them could potentially host life, but we do not yet know anything definitive about their compositions or atmosphere.

This illustration depicts Kepler-62e, a planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun. It is located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

This illustration depicts Kepler 62f, a planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, in the same system as Kepler 62e.

This diagram compares the planets of our own inner solar system to Kepler-62, a five-planet system about 1,200 light-years from Earth. Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are thought capable of hosting life.

The planet Kepler-69c is located about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. This is an illustration of the planet, which is the smallest yet found to orbit in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.

This diagram compares the planets of our own inner solar system to Kepler-69, which hosts a planet Kepler-69c that appears to be capable of hosting life, in addition to planet Kepler-69b.

This artist’s illustration represents the variety of planets being detected by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.

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Editor’s note: Meg Urry is the Israel Munson professor of physics and astronomy and chairwoman of the department of physics at Yale University, where she is the director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics.

(CNN) — On Wednesday, NASA officials announced a serious problem with the Kepler satellite, the world’s most successful planet-finding machine.

Since its launch four years ago, Kepler has found more than 2,700 possible planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, of which more than 100 have been confirmed. A few of these exoplanets resemble the Earth in size or mass.

Recently, three Earth-like planets were even reported to be in the habitable zone: close enough to the star they orbit that water is liquid, yet not so close that it is boiling. Planets with liquid water may well harbor life.

Now, the second of four of the Kepler spacecraft’s reaction wheels, which aim the vessel’s instruments, appears to have failed. It remains to be seen whether full repairs are possible.

For the spacecraft to point accurately, at least three reaction wheels are needed, corresponding to the three dimensions (up-down, north-south, east-west). The fourth wheel serves as a backup and provides cross-comparisons of data among the wheels. The first wheel failed last summer; now Kepler has too few reaction wheels to keep pointing with sufficient stability.

When a major component like a thruster fails on any spacecraft, operations software points the craft’s solar panels toward the sun to ensure a continuous power supply.

Power is a satellite’s lifeblood: Lose it and you lose communications, so the satellite can’t be oriented properly or take data. Backup batteries allow the solar panels to be misdirected for a few hours or so, before all power is lost. But batteries drain quickly, so engineers design software to make sure that when something goes wrong, the spacecraft points in a direction that preserves power.

Urry: Three more homes for life in the universe?

Reaction wheels are spinning flywheels that carry “angular momentum,” a term roughly analogous to the force that keeps a car coasting even when the driver’s foot is off the gas.

Spinning objects keep spinning unless they transfer angular momentum to another object. For example, if a flywheel is commanded to spin more slowly (through an electric motor), the spacecraft will pick up spin to compensate. If the flywheel spins faster, the spacecraft will spin in the opposite direction. Increasing or decreasing the spin of a reaction wheel is therefore a way of pointing the spacecraft.

The Venus transit phenomenon

2009: Kepler telescope launch

CNN Student News STEM Connections

This may sound like a complicated way to make a telescope move, but the problem is, there is nothing in empty space to push on. To close a door, you push on it. This works because gravity holds you firmly on the ground, and your feet stay put because of friction with the floor.

If you pushed on an open door in space, it would push you in the opposite direction. In space, there is no standing still. So Kepler’s reaction wheels are essential for pointing the spacecraft accurately and steadily.

Unfortunately, less stable pointing means less accurate photometry (the measurement of light from the star). Since Kepler finds planets by measuring the tiny dips in a star’s brightness when a dark planet moves across the face of that star, less accurate photometry means Earth-like planets will be too hard to find.

Urry: A meteor and asteroid — 1 in 100 million odds

NASA is trying to figure how to fix or work around the broken reaction wheels. It has done amazing things before; you don’t have to be an optimist to think there is still a chance to turn Kepler around.

But the loss of a fully functional Kepler would be terrible. It has found more potential planets than any other facility or method. Kepler data have yielded an estimate of the total number of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy: at least 17 billion. That’s an Earth-like planet around one in every six stars.

Fortunately, there are other ways to find planets than by detecting transits (the passage of a planetary body across a sun), as Kepler does. In fact, the first few hundred exoplanets were found by the “radial velocity” technique, which detects tiny motions of a star as it and its planets orbit one another.

A Yale astronomy professor, Debra Fischer, has pioneered clever improvements to this technique so that she can find 100 Earth-size planets, perhaps 10% of which might harbor life. (Hear the full story in Fischer’s TEDx talk, “Why We Need to Find 100 Earths.”)

Fischer is going after Earth-like planets in the habitable zone. After all, the discovery of life on another planet would cause a profound shift in our world view, akin to the Copernican shift from an Earth-centric to a Sun-centric world.

So when Fischer says we should be “the alien civilizations that explore other worlds,” I say: With Kepler or without, it’s only a matter of time until we find signs of life on other worlds.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

Read more space and science news at CNN Light Years

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Meg Urry.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/20/opinion/urry-kepler-malfunction/index.html?eref=edition

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