October 26, 2014 Edition

A stretch of highway in Canada became solemn ground Friday, October 24, as thousands of people paid tribute to a procession carrying Cpl Nathan Cirillo – the soldier killed in a deadly shooting rampage October 22 at the heart of the capital –back to his hometown. The route was filled with people waving Canadian flags in honor of the slain soldier.

Meanwhile, more details about the identity of suspect Michael Zehaf-Bibeau is being revealed. Zehaf-Bibeau has been described as a man who slowly “slid into criminality and homelessness” in recent years, a profile by The Globe and Mail said.

Canada is now moving to quickly bolster its security, Agence France-Presse reports. Read it on Rappler.

Stuck in a rut? Maybe a 50-year-old essay by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov can help. This week, a never-before-published essay by the legendary writer was published, where he talks about “not only the creative process and the nature of creative people but also the kind of environment that promotes creativity,” Arthur Obermayer, his friend, wrote. Obermayer, a scientist, found the gem among his files recently, and explained it was originally part of a brainstorming process for a possible ballistic missile defense system. He said the essay’s contents “are as broadly relevant today as when he wrote it” in 1959.

Read Vox’s summary of Asimov’s tips. Better yet, read the entire essay on the MIT Technology Review.

It has been six months since around 200 schoolgirls were abducted by the extremist group Boko Haram in Nigeria’s northeast, and the girls from Chibok are still in the hands of the terrorists. Before they were kidnapped, the girls were just like any other group of teenage students – studying, playing, talking about boys, dreaming of what the future holds for them. But one night in April changed all that. Some of the victims, however, were able to escape – and now, we hear their stories, and how their lives have been changed by the harrowing experience.

Read this compelling account of their experience in Medium.

It’s more than extreme: skydiving from the stratosphere, or nearly at the edge of space. That’s what 57-year-old Alan Eustace did on Friday, October 24, when he jumped from a height of 135,000 feet, or 41,000 meters, as part of the Stratospheric Explorer project. According to a statement from the Paragon Space Development Corporation, Eustace completed the four-hour mission over Roswell, New Mexico, using a specially designed space suit and balloon module to carry him to the stratosphere. He broke the previous record set by Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner in 2012, jumping from a height of nearly 128,000 feet or 38,969 meters, also from New Mexico. According to Paragon, the system has wide-ranging applications for the study of the science of the stratosphere.

Watch a video of his jump, and read more about the feat, on Rappler.

Australian surgeons said Friday, October 24, they have used hearts which had stopped beating in successful transplants, in what they said was a world first that could change the way organs are donated. Doctors at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute have developed a technique which means hearts which had been still for 20 minutes can be resuscitated, kept beating and transplanted into a patient.

Read more about this major milestone in cardiac surgery on Rappler.

In the village of Maning, in Paracale, Camarines Norte, a network of pits and tunnels snake their way under a mountain, where thousands of people go everyday to search for gold. The area has around 400 mining pits in operation, up from just 20 in June. Here, miners risk their lives daily to look for the precious metal, their ticket out of poverty. The toll: destruction of nature, and even death.

Read more, and see photos from the mines, on Rappler.

How does a couple’s communication change over time – specifically from dating to marriage? A cute project to woo a girl evolved into an interesting data analysis project, and it shows a pattern that most people in relationships do experience. Data scientist Alice Zhao compared text messages she and her husband sent to each other at certain points of their relationship – dating, engagement, marriage – and analyzed the contents. What she found out was that the messages started out “flirty and personal”; as the relationship grew, text messages “became more predictable” – but this was because they were able to say other things in person. “We no longer have to text “I love you” from a distance in the middle of the night,” Zhao wrote. “I can now roll over, snuggle with my husband and whisper it into his ear.”

Read Alice Zhao’s interesting post on A Dash of Data. 

As thousands across Mexico protest the disappearance of 43 students from the town of Iguala, a small town nearby is also searching for their own missing group of youths – 17 young people, who disappeared in the wee hours of July 1, 2013. In the village of Cocula that night more than a year before the current crisis, gunmen stormed homes and took hostages. They have never been seen since then – and one family has been brave enough to file an official complaint. But so far, there’s no progress.

Read Agence France-Presse’s story of the family of missing boy Victor Varela, one of those kidnapped in Cocula a year ago, on Rappler.

More stories about the missing 43 students in Rappler’s World section.

When Renee Zellweger appeared on ELLE’s red carpet Monday, October 20, people barely recognized her new look – a look, she says, brought by a “different, happy, more fulfilling life.” The furor over the Hollywood A-lister’s look has sparked chatter over America’s obsession to look young, especially among women celebrities. Some have criticized the industry itself for the pressures it imposes on actresses to meet beauty stereotypes.

Read more on Rappler and the New York Times.

The Islamic State has become the world’s wealthiest terror group, earning tens of millions of dollars a month from illegal oil sales and ransoms, according to the United States’ undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. The group, also known as ISIL, has seized a large swath of territory in Iraq and Syria. Its “primary funding tactics…include the sale of stolen oil, the ransoming of kidnap victims, theft and extortion from the people it currently dominates, and, to a lesser extent, donations from supporters outside of Syria and Iraq,” said David Cohen. Thus, he said, “there is no secret weapon to empty ISIL’s coffers overnight. This will be a sustained fight, and we are in the early stages.”

Read the full story on Rappler.