The Express Tribune hi five - December 7

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Your Proofness: Sarah Munir Master Storyteller: Nudrat Kamal Creativity Analysts: Jamal Khurshid, Essa Malik, Talha Ahmed Khan, Munira Abbas, Omer Asim and Umar Waqas

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 7, 2014

Hi light

2

What do you get when you combine the warmth and playfulness of Disney movies and combine it with the action and adventure of the Marvel comics’ superhero universe? You get Big Hero 6, the latest Disney animated film which is based on a lesser-known Marvel superhero team of the same name. The film revolves around Hiro, a 14-year-old boy genius and his team of superheroes. This team’s special member is Baymax, a giant, adorable, marshmallow-looking robot whose job it is to take care of his other team members. The film takes place in a futuristic city called San Fransokyo and when it begins, the protagonist Hiro is using his advanced knowledge in science to commit petty crimes. Hiro’s brother and fellow science genius, Tadashi, is worried that Hiro is wasting his potential and takes him to the robotics lab at his university. There, Hiro meets Tadashi’s friends GoGo Tomago, Wasabi, Honey Lemon and Fred, as well as Baymax, a personal healthcare companion Tadashi created. When Tadashi’s brother is killed by a masked villain, Hiro teams up with Tadashi’s friends and Baymax to take him down. Big Hero 6 combines big laughs and great action with a lot of heart and is a feel-good superhero movie for the entire family to enjoy.

Hiro is a robotics prodigy who creates his own, state-of-the-art robots which he then enters into backalley robot fights to earn money. Luckily, Hiro’s big brother redirects Hiro’s brilliance towards a more constructive avenue — he convinces Hiro to apply to the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology where genius scientists invent cool things. There, Hiro bonds with other inventors and a huggable giant robot called Baymax. Because of his intelligence, Hiro can be a little cocky and proud but he also has a huge heart and is very compassionate and caring.

Fred comes off as a laid-back dude with no direction. But this monster-loving, comicbook aficionado has a lot to offer the Big Hero 6 team. Working as the mascot of the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, Fred indulges in his passion for science by hanging out at the lab. Fred is loud, eccentric and very goofy, to the point where his other teammates often get tired of his antics. But he can be counted upon to lift his team’s spirits by always looking at the bright side and lightening every tense mood with a joke.

Honey is a cheerful and talented engineering and chemistry student at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. But don’t let Honey’s sweet name and even sweeter disposition fool you — there is more to this girl than niceness. A whizz at chemistry and alchemy, Honey is an integral part of the Big Hero 6 team.

Honey creates clever concoctions that can get her team out of any jam, and decodes important clues for their mission. She is a powerful mixture of optimism and brains.

As her name suggests, GoGo lives her life at full speed. She’s tough, athletic and loyal to the bone, even if she’s not a very good conversationalist. A bit of a daredevil, GoGo is at her best in adrenaline-filled dangerous situations. She’s a girl of a few words, and her words mostly tend to be sarcastic jabs, but she would do anything for her team and is committed to their mission. Her speciality is engineering and design, so she designs and operates the team’s gadgets such as her own high-speed motorbike.

Baymax cares. That’s what he was designed to do. Created by Hiro’s brother Tadashi, Baymax is a healthcare providing robot. Tadashi’s goal in creating Baymax was to help improve healthcare around the world. Baymax has a special chip with Tadashi’s inscriptions, which makes him the lovable robot he truly is. Baymax is instantly summoned by the sound of distress, and can only deactivate once his current patient states “I am satisfied with my care”. Hiro gives Baymax additional chips, giving him the ability to perform karate, among other things.

Baymax has a child-like sense of wonder, but his innocence is contrasted with his great knowledge of medicine and healthcare.

Wasabi is an intelligent young man and notable student at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, specialising in applied physics. He is super smart and just a touch neurotic, and is the voice of reason in the group. Wasabi is the most realistic one in the team, ensuring that their often ridiculous plans remain grounded and achievable. He is also a very ‘by the book’ rule-following kind of people. His large, burly physique is a nice contrast to his soft nature. But he uses his physical strength in the right way, combines it with his mixed martial arts training to take down bad guys.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 7, 2014

Hi light

3 Why Big Hero

is awesome

It makes science fun: With all of its main characters being scientists and inventors, the film is basically a love letter to science and how much fun it can be to study it. All the characters study and work in a lab, invent wondrous new things and engineer major advancements. The film also explores the idea that with the knowledge of science comes the responsibility of using that knowledge to improve the world.

It has a diverse range of characters: In most of Disney’s films, the characters are all American but Big Hero 6 changes this by having characters of different ethnicities. Hiro and his brother are Japanese, GoGo is Korean and Wasabi is African-American. The world is made up of people of different skin colours, so it is nice that the film reflects that.

It has great female characters: The girls in this movie are super smart, hardworking and passionate about science (not to mention great at the superhero stuff). For girls who love science but worry that it might be unlady-like to pursue those subjects, this movie proves that girls (like boys) can be good at anything they put their minds to.

It is highly entertaining: The most important thing about any movie is that it should be fun to watch and Big Hero 6 delivers. It’s funny and fast-paced, the action-sequences are epic and the animation is breathtaking.

What would you like to see in Hi Five? Send an email to hifive@tribune.com.pk and let us know!

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 7, 2014

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Cool facts about elephants Elephants are the largest land animals in the world.

What do polar bears eat for lunch?

Ice berg-ers.

The largest elephant on record was an adult male African elephant. It weighed about 24,000 pounds and was 13 feet tall at the shoulder!

Elephants can live to be over 70 years old.

Only one mammal can’t jump — the elephant.

What do you call a grizzly bear caught in the rain?

A drizzly bear.

What do you call a sleeping dinosaur?

A dino-snore.

Elephants prefer one tusk over the other, just as people are either left or right-handed. Tusks are an elephant’s incisor teeth. They are used for defense, digging for water and lifting things.

Elephants are highly sensitive and caring animals. If a baby elephant complains, the entire family will rumble and go over to touch and caress it.

Elephants also express grief.

Baby elephants throw themselves face down into mud when they are upset.

This is called an elephant tantrum.

What birds are found in Portugal?

Portu-geese

Elephants have greeting ceremonies when a friend that has been away for some time returns to the group.

Elephants are social creatures. They sometimes ‘hug’ by wrapping their trunks together in displays of greeting and affection.

Silly boy: I’d like to buy some bird seed.

Clerk: How many birds do you have?

Silly boy: None! I want to grow some.

Elephants pay homage to the bones of their dead, gently touching the skulls and tusks with their trunks and feet. When an elephant walks past a place where a loved one has died, he or she will stop dead still in a silent and empty pause that can last several minutes.

Did you know?

Where did the game Ludo come from?

Intense games of Ludo are a part of everyone’s childhood. The competition as one of the players get frustratingly close to home base, the anger when your friend keeps moving along on the board when you can’t even roll your dice to land a six (the number you need to start playing the game) — it makes Ludo the king of all games. And, it turns out, Mughal Emperor Akbar agrees. The game originated as Pachisi in 4th century India and might be even older. It is so old that drawings of the Pachisi board can be found in the Ajanta caves in India. Mughal emperors in particular were very fond of this game, although they played its slightly different version known as Chaupar. In fact, Akbar made a life-sized Chaupar board in his palace gardens and used real girls from his court as the pieces of the game. You can still see his Chaupar court today in Fatehpur Sikri, India. Chaupar is also mentioned in the Mahabharata, one of India’s classical epic tales that is as old as 300 BC. In this text, the character Shakuni uses Chaupar to defeat his enemy, Yudhisthira. When the British came and started ruling India, they loved the game so much that they took it back to England and started calling it Ludo. Then it went to America where it is known today as Parcheesi.

In fact, Ludo (or variations of it) is played all over the world, under different names. In Germany, it is called “Mensch ärgere dich nicht” which means “Man, don’t get irritated” — a very appropriate name, given how annoying watching another person win this game can be.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 7, 2014

Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny news from across the globe!

Stolen brains It seems like the zombie apocalypse is upon us. The University of Texas in Austin, USA is missing about 100 brains — about half of the specimens the university had in a collection preserved in jars of formaldehyde. “We think somebody may have taken the brains but we don’t know at all for sure,” psychology Professor Tim Schallert, co-curator of the collection, told the Austin American-Statesman. His co-curator, psychology Professor Lawrence Cormack, said, “It’s entirely possible word got around among undergraduates and people started swiping them for living rooms or Halloween pranks.”

The Austin State Hospital had transferred the brains to the university about 28 years ago under a “temporary possession” agreement.

Schallert said his psychology lab had room for only 100 brains, so the rest were moved to the basement of the university’s Animal Resources Centre. “They are no longer in the basement,” Cormack said. The brains included those of a killer, and were being studied to find out more about how the human brain works. “These MRI images will be both useful teaching and research tools. It keeps the brains intact,” Cormack said. GUARDIAN.COM

Frozen teaches computer programming Learning computer coding has just become even more fun. Code.org, an organisation that tries to get girls excited about coding, unveiled a new tutorial this month that uses, Anna and Elsa, a couple of Disney’s wildly popular princesses from the movie Frozen. Disney has given its blessing, and $100,000, for the creation of a one-hour tutorial that shows kids how to use computer code to get Anna and Elsa to ice skate around their computer screens. Using an innovative webpage, the kids can use computer code menus to carve snowflakes and patterns in the ice and create their own winter wonderland. Since 2012, Code.org courses have been used in 62,000 classrooms. The nonprofit, which is backed by tech giants like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, is using the popular Disney heroines to launch its second annual ‘Hour of Code’ event to encourage teachers to teach coding in the classrooms and expose a more diverse set of students to computer science.

Hadi Partovi, co-founder of Code.org, believes that girls should be encouraged to take an interest in computers from a young age. TIME.COM

World wide weird

5

A selfless act

You can never be too young to start doing good in the world. Three-year-old Ariana Smith from Maine, USA, watched a video from Extra Life, a charity that raises money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals through video gaming, that featured a girl who didn’t have any hair. The curious girl then decided to ask her parents about what she saw, Josh Smith, Ariana’s father, told the Huffington Post in an e-mail. “She asked why the little girl had no hair. We explained that she was sick and that the medicine they were using made her hair fall out,” Smith said. The chat left a strong impression on Ariana. “Without a second thought, Ariana said ‘Oh, well she can have some of my hair,’” Smith told ABC News. So, on November 21st, the toddler received her first haircut, and with the help of her parents, donated her hair to Locks of Love. The pictures from the milestone, which were posted on Imgur, have since gone viral with over 500,000 views — an ode to the three-year-old’s generosity. HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

A 3D printed hand A British inventor hopes to revolutionise the health industry after producing 3D printed prosthetic limbs. In England, a prosthetic limb for people with missing limbs cost around £70,000, but robotics expert Joel Gibbard, 23, has come up with an alternative which could cost just £600. The engineering graduate has created the Dextrus hand, a fully-working prototype built with a 3D printer. The hand, which is made from the same material as Lego, can be used without a custom fitting. It can accommodate each finger individually enabling it to hold objects of different sizes and shapes. It takes about eight hours to print one off.

Gibbard said, “‘[Prosthetic limbs] are very expensive so I thought I would create one using my robotics experience and a 3D printer. Money is not my goal with this, I want to make it more accessible for amputees.” DAILYMAIL.CO.UK

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 7, 2014

Reading corner

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Lost girls Imagine being thousands of miles away from home and from your family. Imagine wanting to stay with them, but because of the violence and strife going on in your town, you had to go away to study at a madrassah. And then imagine being taken from the madrassah and getting locked up in a stranger’s house by a teacher they trusted, without knowing why or for how long. That is what 26 little girls from Bajaur Bajau Agency, a place in FATA (which is located in the north-west corner of Pakistan), went through. Last week, these girls were found by the police at a house in Karachi. The girls throu were aged between seven to 12 years, and could only speak Pashto, which is the language wer spoken in the area they come from. The police took the girls in their custody and later sent spo The girls found in Karachi accept refreshments. them to Peshawar, where they were reunited with their families. But why were these girls PHOTO: FILE locked in a cramped room in a house in the first place? Police are still not sure, but it seems as if it i was due to some fight over money between the madrassah owner and the teacher of the girls. The girls hadn’t been properly for two days. Neighbours who had seen the girls entering the house provided them with the food they could and then later fed p alerted the police. It is horrible that little children were used in the petty money disputes of grown-ups. Imagine how terrified the girls alerte would have been, imprisoned in a room, unable to speak the language of the area and with no one to take care of them. It is hoped that woul people who did this will face the consequences of their actions and that Pakistan’s children will be safer in the future. the horrible h

Best Magical Worlds in Books and Films Have you ever wanted to escape to a magical land full of fun and mayhem? A land where anything is possible — where there are rivers of chocolate or staircases that move or where there are animals that talk. It doesn’t matter that such a land doesn’t actually exist. Books and films have given us lots of magical worlds that we can get lost in. Here are a few great magical lands: Narnia in The Chronicles of Narnia series When four siblings are sent to live in a stranger’s house, they discover a wardrobe which is the entrance to Narnia, a faraway mythical land where animals can talk, the evil White Witch rules and there are battles between good and evil mythical creatures.

Narnia is full of adventures and fantasy, with danger lurking in every corner and wonderful things happening left and right.

Read The Chronicles of Narnia series by C S Lewis to get lost in this magical land (there were films made based on the series too, but they didn’t really capture the wonder of Narnia).

Wonderland in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The entrance to Wonderland might be the most strange ever — you fall down a rabbit hole and viola! You’re in Wonderland. That’s how Alice wound up in the magical place, where strange potions can make you tiny or huge, where the crazy Mad Hatter tries to trick you and the constantly grinning Cheshire Cat gives directions. Read Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and find out whether Wonderland lives up to its name. Just beware of the foultempered Queen of Hearts who is always going around chopping people’s heads off.

Neverland in Peter Pan Out near the stars of the milky way lies Neverland, a magical land where children never grow up and can just stay and have fun forever.

Neverland is the home of the Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, and the lost boys. The magical land is first introduced to us when a little girl Wendy is invited there by Peter Pan. They fly out Wendy’s bedroom window and reach this magical island, where there are little fairies like Tinkerbell and evil pirates out to wreak havoc. Read Peter Pan by J M Barrie and watch the numerous film and cartoon adaptations to explore Neverland.

Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Although not technically a magically land, this is a place we’d all love to visit.

Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory makes the best chocolates in the world but it is so secretive that no one is allowed to enter. That is, until Willy Wonka selects five kids to see its marvels for the first time. Among these kids is Charlie Bucket, and we discover, along with him, the many wonders of this factory. There is a Chocolate Room where a huge river of chocolate is flowing. There are also short, funny people called the Oompa Loompas who help make the chocolate. Read Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and enter this delicious world.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy in the Harry Potter series If all schools were as cool as Hogwarts, we would all be scrambling to get to class every day. This is a school where kids learn magic. There are lessons for flying on a broomstick and classes for turning teacups into mice. You learn how to cast spells that make objects zoom across the room or learn to take care of magical creatures like unicorns. Aside from the lessons, the castle itself is full of magic. There are talking paintings and moving staircases, and corridors that might be hiding three-headed dogs. Read the Harry Potter series to explore Hogwarts, the best magic school ever.

Do you have a favourite book or movie you would like us to review? Write to us at hifive@tribune.com.pk and tell us all about it.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 7, 2014

7

Artwork

Shehrbano

Asghar Adnan Winner

Notable Entries for the Liberty Books Cards

Competition

Khadeeja

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 7, 2014

You will need:

You will need:

• A handkerchief

- Vanilla ice cream 2 1/2 pints - Coconut two 7-ounce packages

1

• A glass • Water • A sink

For the eyes, mouth, nose and buttons: Candy 40 pieces

What to do:

For the hat: - Marshmallows 4 - Chocolate wafers 4 - Sifted confectioners’ sugar

1. Drape the handkerchief over the glass, making sure that you push the centre of the handkerchief down into the glass.

2. Fill 3/4 of the glass full with water by pouring water into the middle of the handkerchief.

3. Slowly pull the handkerchief down the sides of the glass making it taut (stretched tightly across the surface of the glass). Grip the ends of the handkerchief at the bottom of the glass.

4. Place one hand over the mouth of the glass and turn it over with the other hand. Pull the lower hand away from the glass (slowly) and the water should stay in the glass! This just goes to prove that the water now has anti-gravity properties.

1. Line a baking pan that fits in your freezer with parchment paper.

Scoop the vanilla ice cream, rounding the scoops as much as possible, until you have four medium-sized scoops and four small ones. Place the scoops on the baking pan. Place the pan in the freezer to harden for 15 minutes.

2. Remove the ice cream scoops from the freezer, and roll them in coconut. Return them to the pan and put them back in the freezer.

3. Remove one small scoop of ice cream at a time from the freezer, and make faces using the candy for eyes and mouth and nose.

Return to the freezer until they are ready to serve.

4. Remove the middle-sized scoops from the freezer one at a time.

Place the candy in a row down the front to create buttons. Remove the remaining scoops from the freezer, and stack the small ones on to the big ones to create the snowmen, pressing slightly to stick them together. Return the snowmen to the freezer.

5. Make the top hats by roasting the marshmallows on skewers over a gas burner. Alternatively, place the marshmallows on a baking sheet under the broiler, and cook until browned, rotating every few seconds. Place the toasted marshmallow on the chocolate wafer, and dust with the sifted confectioners’ sugar. Place the hat on the snowmen just before serving.

MARTHASTEWART.COM

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2

What is happening: Most people predict that the water will leak through the holes in the handkerchief because the water leaked through the holes as it was poured into the glass. The holes in the handkerchief literally disappeared when the cloth was stretched tightly across the mouth of the glass. This action allowed the water molecules to bond to other water molecules, creating what is called surface tension. The water stays in the glass even though there are tiny holes in the handkerchief because the molecules of the water are joined together to form a thin membrane between each opening in the cloth. Be careful not to tip the glass too much because you’ll break the surface tension and surprise everyone with a gush of water!

STEVESPANGLERSCIENCE.COM

Remember kids, always get permission from your parents before you start.

It’s always a good idea to have a helper nearby.

If you want your story to feature in Hi Five, email us at hifive@tribune.com.pk