Just Science & Health News: septiembre 2019

lunes, 30 de septiembre de 2019

New story in Science and Health from Time: The Climate Crisis is Global, but These 6 Places Face the Most Severe Consequences The Climate Crisis is Global, but These 6 Places Face the Most Severe Consequences

Climate change is expected to affect every country in the world, but its impact will not be felt equally across all regions and some will be worse hit than others because of a range of different threats.

Developing countries, places with widespread poverty, and countries with ineffective governments sometimes face the gravest risks from the changing climate, and are usually poorly equipped to find ways to prepare for and prevent environmental threats.

Measuring the future impact of climate change is very challenging, because scientists’ climate change projections cannot be completely exact and because there are many different factors that come into play such as the risk of extreme weather events and rising temperatures. There are other non-climatic factors that also determine how severely a city or country will be impacted by climate change. Niall Smith, who analyzes regions’ climate change vulnerability for the global risk consulting firm Maplecroft, tells TIME that it’s also necessary to weigh in what’s happening politically and socially in a region to figure out if the country can prepare.

“The places with the least level of economic development are certainly in line to feel the impacts with the greatest degree, partially just due to their geographic fate — or their location — but more so based on the socio-economic and governance factors,” says Smith.

Many developing countries are also uniquely vulnerable, says Kelly Levin of the World Resources Institute, “their livelihoods are dependent on natural resources. And if those natural resources are affected by climate change, their ability to feed their families and make a living is significantly impacted.”

To get a sense of the challenges different regions are facing, TIME spoke to experts about six countries and cities will be be particularly affected by climate change.

Lagos, Nigeria

Lagos is at “extreme” risk on Maplecroft’s Climate Change Vulnerability Index. This is especially concerning because its population is expanding rapidly, and it is considered to be a major economic engine for the region.

The governor boasted that Lagos had reached a GDP of $136 billion in 2017, which is about a third of the entire country’s GDP. The city is also a major transportation hub, with multiple ports and a major international airport and is a regional hub for high tech industry. Lagos has “transformed” over the last 18 years, Lamido Sanusi, a former central bank governor, told the Financial Times last year. “In terms of roads, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of a general investment environment, in terms of security, the government has given people a greater opportunity to thrive.”

Lagos is also at a disadvantage because it’s considered to be one of the fastest growing cities in the world, which will put a “strain on infrastructure and resources,” according to Smith. Its population is projected to nearly double over the next 15 years, growing from its current population of 13,463,420 to 23,418,770.

In the future, Smith warns that Lagos residents will also experience more hot days and droughts.

Climate change could threaten the city’s economy. The city is especially vulnerable because it’s located on the Gulf of Guinea, says Levin. As sea levels rise, it’s likely to affect cause coastal erosion and contaminate potable water. This could harm local agriculture in the countryside and damage the country’s fishing industry, which could be dire in a country with “tremendous” poverty, Levin says.

“You could see more and more people moving in from the countryside because of loss of economic opportunity into a city like Lagos, which could make the whole situation more challenging,” Levin says.

If Lagos struggles, it could seriously reduce economic opportunity in the region.

Haiti

Climate change can be a “threat multiplier,” says Christina Chan, the director of the World Resources Institute’s climate resilience practice. This is especially true for Haiti. The island nation is located in the “Atlantic Hurricane Basin,” which means that it is vulnerable to hurricanes. In comparison to other projections on climate change, scientists are less certain about the link between climate change and hurricane frequency and intensity, but studies have suggested that hurricanes are likely getting wetter and more intense due to climate change.

Since Haiti is a very poor country, recovering from natural disasters and preparing for future storms is especially challenging. The devastation in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and 2016’s Hurricane Matthew was compounded by the country’s lack of disaster preparedness. The disasters were major setbacks for the country’s economic development; the $8 billion price tag of recovering from the earthquake surpassed the country’s GDP, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The landscape is also heavily deforested and mountainous, which means it will be more susceptible to landslides.

According to Levin, Haiti will also struggle because the population is dependent on agriculture, and rising sea levels mean that salt water may contaminate freshwater. The United Nations warns that rising sea levels may cause saltwater to permeate farmland and freshwater supplies.

“There’s certainly a large portion of Haitians that are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods and income. And if you have overall patterns of rainfall declines as temperatures rise, certainly that would impact farmers,” Levin says.

Yemen

Countries with weak institutions and governments are likely to find it especially difficult to adapt to climate change, says Smith. Since civil war broke out in Yemen in 2015, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed directly as a result of the conflict, but also due to the subsequent famine, poor sanitation and a lack of clean water, according to the United Nations. About 1.6 million children in Yemen are living with malnutrition in 2019, according to the UN.

Both war and climate change will make water shortages and famine more likely. According to a Untied Nations report, most contemporary famines result from armed conflict and are worsened by natural disasters.

As the report explains, “Parties to the conflict may use food as a weapon, cutting off food supplies, destroying systems of food production and distribution, and stealing food aid. Agricultural production falls, which both limits the availability of food and cuts off many rural houses from their livelihoods. And with higher levels of poverty, many families cannot afford the food they need, especially at inflated prices.”

Malaria is also becoming more common in Yemen, and may be exacerbated by rising temperatures. As Yemen has a long coast, it’s also vulnerable to rising sea levels, according to Levin.

An area to watch, says Levin, “Whenever you’re thinking about a country in that region… [is] the issue of rising temperatures impacting water scarcity, especially when it’s exacerbated by water management challenges and expanding population.”

As other countries work to curb their oil consumption, it may be a mixed blessing for Yemen, according to Levin. While lower emissions are believed to be necessary to limit climate change, it could also reduce demands for one of Yemen’s major imports — oil — which could impact Yemen’s economy, Levin says.

Manila

Tropical Storm Fung-Wong - Philippines — NurPhoto—Corbis via Getty ImagesFlood victims are evacuated in a rescue boat after their homes were swamped by heavy flooding in Quezon city, suburban Manila, Philippines, Sept. 19, 2014.

The Philippines faces a high risk of natural disasters, including earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and especially hurricanes. Manila, which is located along the coast, is also densely populated, which makes it more difficult to evacuate, requires more social services and makes it more challenging to rebuild after a disaster. Poor infrastructure, including ineffective drainage and sanitation systems, has been blamed for the toll of floods in the city, including a 2009 flood that submerged 80% of the city.

However, Chan says that the Philippines is in fact on the “forefront of adaptation” to climate change, and have designated part of their budget to making their country’s agricultural sector and infrastructure more resilient, and preparing to respond to future disasters. For instance, the government launched a Flood Management Master Plan for Metro Manila in 2012, which aims to manage future floods by modernizing and building new pumping stations and investing in other infrastructure along waterways, according to the Asian Infrastructure investment Bank.

The Philippines have created a Climate Change Commission, which implements programs such as the National Climate Change Action Plan, a long-term strategy for prioritizing “food security, water sufficiency, ecosystem and environmental stability, human security, climate smart industries and services, sustainable energy, knowledge and capacity development.”

Kiribati

Rising sea levels mean that Kiribati may be wiped off the map entirely in the coming decades. The islands have even purchased 5,000 acres of land in Fiji in case they need to relocate.

While Kitribati, like many other countries, is taking steps to prepare for climate change, the Pacific island nation must also reckon with the fact that “for their island, adaptation will have its limits,” says Chan. The islands are only six feet above sea level and sit upon a system of atolls and reef islands, which means that rising sea levels are a threat to the nation’s existence.

This vulnerability has also spurred Kiribati to take serious steps in climate mitigation. Kiribati has allied itself with other vulnerable island countries to advocate for action to fight climate change, and taken other measures such as planting mangrove trees and building sea walls.

Meanwhile, Levin says, rising sea levels are likely to contaminate the island’s freshwater and harm its soil, which is not especially fertile for agriculture to begin with. The island’s vital fishing industry is also more vulnerable, as climate changes leads to shifts in the ocean, including coral bleaching; damage to the structure of reefs; marine “heat waves”; and other conditions that force marine life to move north.

United Arab Emirates

UAE Electricity — STRINGER—AFP/Getty ImagesEmployees walk past solar panels at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Solar Park on March 20, 2017, in Dubai.

Like many of the other places on this list, the United Arab Emirates is facing many risks due to its location. Like Yemen and other neighboring states, the UAE is facing an “extreme risk” of water stress, according to Smith, and will need to spend a lot more energy on cooling.

Unlike many other countries facing these threats, however, the UAE is wealthier and is able to make sophisticated investments to blunt the impact of climate change. For instance, the UAE is working to produce its own fresh water, build temperature-controlled spaces, investments in green energy, and developing crops that can withstand hotter temperatures.

However, according to Levin, it remains to be seen whether these adaptations will reach Yemen’s entire population, because the country faces rampant inequality.

“The question is, will adequate investments be made in time, and will the poorest be able to enjoy the same kind of comforts as the rest of the population,” Levin says. “You can look at the face of a GDP of a given country. But that really masks tremendous inequality. It’s hard to necessarily say that one country’s in such a better position to withstand climate impacts.”

miércoles, 25 de septiembre de 2019

New story in Science and Health from Time: Researchers Discover What Became of a Lost Continent, Now Hidden Under the Adriatic Sea Researchers Discover What Became of a Lost Continent, Now Hidden Under the Adriatic Sea

Researchers with Utrecht University in the Netherlands have uncovered what became of a lost continent that broke off from Africa and wedged itself under Europe, creating mountain ranges that span across 30 different countries from Spain to Iran.

“What we have studied is the very complex history of the geology of the Mediterranean region,” Utrecht professor Douwe van Hinsbergen, the lead researcher on the project, tells TIME. Researchers had already known for decades that a continent created the mountain ranges of Europe and the Middle East. “What that continent might have looked like, however, was until now estimated with rather schematic cartoons,” van Hinsbergen says in an email. With the help of modern software, a clearer picture of that hidden continent emerged.

“What we have done is use very elegant and useful and free plate reconstruction software, called ‘GPlates’ to systematically piece together what that continent looked like… how many there were… and how [it] broke away from Africa,” van Hinsbergen writes. The project was originally scheduled to take three years, but ended up taking 10.

They found that over 200 million years ago, shifting continental plates caused a continent — which the researchers named Greater Adria — to break off from Northern Africa. This created a deep ocean, the last remains of which are the Ionian sea and the Eastern Mediterranean sea between Libya and Turkey.

Reconstruction of the lost continent Greater Adria – mountain range formation and plate tectonics in the Mediterranean region integrally studied for the first time https://t.co/wOtF2xYYsU @UUEarthSciences pic.twitter.com/QgMZMTttrw

— Geowetenschappen UU (@UUGeo) September 2, 2019

If you look at a map of modern day Africa, van Hinsbergen points out, you can see a “bite” from where the continent broke off, running from Tunisia to Israel.

PeterHermesFurian—Getty Images/iStockphotoNorth Africa and Middle East political map with countries and borders.

Greater Adria was then pushed under southern Europe, creating the mountains the region is known for today, such as the Apennine Mountains of Italy, the Dolomites of Italy, the Balkan mountains of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania. It also created Greece and much of Turkey.

“Suppose you have a sweater on with thick sleeves on your arms,” he explains. “And you try to shove your arm below the table… what you will see is your sleeves will crumple up while your arm is going under. That sleeve is the Apennines. That sleeve is Greece. That sleeve is Turkey.”

The last intact remains of the continent lie under the Adriatic Sea. He adds that while Greater Adria was “by far” the biggest continent, there were more, smaller continents that broke away from Africa and were consumed under Europe.

How did researchers figure this out? Using the software GPlates, they analyzed data that, as van Hinsbergen put it, revealed “motions between rock units,” piecing together the history of Greater Adria like a puzzle. They looked at magnetic stripes on the ocean floor, fault motions and magnetic fields stored within rocks themselves. All their data was collected from published literature — around 1,500 papers from scholars in 30 countries — some of which van Hinsbergen and his co-authors had contributed to. The full methodology appears in their published paper.

“The reason why we gave this [continent] a new name, is that these mountains belts, which run from Spain to Iran, cover about 30 different countries… and almost every country had their own names and their own assumptions for what [they] looked like in the past,” van Hinsbergen says.

When explaining his choice of name, van Hinsbergen writes, “I used nomenclature from the Himalaya: the rocks of the Himalaya were also derived from continental crust, but then of the Indian plate. The region from which these rocks derive is known as ‘Greater India’ in the literature, so I exported that addition and called it Greater Adria.”

Van Hinsbergen explains that much of the building materials that are widespread in Italy, Greece and Turkey come from the mountains created by Greater Adria. Marble for example, comes from buried carbon rock that have undergone heat and pressure.

“The marbles that were used by the Romans to make their temples, that is a relic of Greater Adria,” he explains.

When TIME asked him if there’s anything readers should know about his project, he added: “It’s a lot of fun.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: The Science Behind Why People Gossip—And When It Can Be a Good Thing The Science Behind Why People Gossip—And When It Can Be a Good Thing

Gossip. All humans partake in some form, despite the age-old adage, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Whether it’s workplace chatter, the sharing of family news or group texts between friends, it’s inevitable that everyone who talks, well, talks about other people. In fact, a seminal study estimated people spend almost two-thirds of their conversations gossiping.

You may not even realize you’re doing it. Just imagine spending a whole day without sharing any information about anyone else — it would be difficult, if not close to impossible. After all, if you’re not talking about other people, you’re basically left talking about yourself.

So why do people gossip, and is all gossip bad? Here, psychology experts explain the science behind the quintessential human behavior.

What is gossip, really?

People tend to think of gossip as synonymous with malicious rumors, put-downs or the breathless propagation of a tabloid scoop. But researchers often define it more broadly as: “talking about people who aren’t present,” says Megan Robbins, an assistant professor of psychology at The University of California, Riverside. “It’s something that comes very naturally to us,” — an integral part of conversation, information sharing and even community building.

“It’s not necessarily negative,” adds David Ludden, professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College and the author of The Psychology of Language: An Integrated Approach. “It can be positive or neutral.”

In a 2019 study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Robbins and her colleague found that, of the 52 minutes a day on average their subjects spent gossiping, three-quarters of that gossip was actually neutral. One subject in Robbins’ study, for example, spoke about someone who was watching a lot of movies to stay current. “It was kind of boring,” Robbins says, “not salacious and negative” at all. In her study, just a small portion of the conversations analyzed — around 15% — was deemed negative gossip (though positive gossip amounted to a smaller portion still, at only 9%).

So while it is true that people can spend a significant amount of time talking about their peers, oftentimes that chatter is benign.

Why do people gossip?

Some argue that gossip is actually integral to being human, and that it helped our ancestors to survive — and thrive. And it’s not just dedicated gossips making that case, it’s researchers and academics, too. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar first pioneered this idea, comparing gossip to the grooming primates engage in as a means of bonding. Instead of picking fleas and dirt off one another to bond, Ludden explains, we now talk, which is “where gossip comes in, because chit-chat is mostly talking about other people and conveying social information.”

Gossiping, Dunbar’s work suggests, gives humans the ability to spread valuable information to very large social networks. “We are much more social,” says Ludden, “so it can be very helpful to get information about people [from others] when this network is too big to observe by ourselves.”

Some scholars also view gossip as evidence of cultural learning, offering teachable moments and providing people examples of what’s socially acceptable — and what’s not. For example, if there’s someone who cheats a lot in a community or social circle and people start to talk about that person in a negative way, says Robbins, the collective criticism should warn others of the consequences of cheating. The gossip can also caution people to stay away from the cheater — without having to experience their bad behavior first-hand — and, as word near-inevitably trickles back to source of said gossip, it can “serve to keep people in check, morally speaking,” Robbins adds.

What happens physiologically when people gossip?

While it’s an integral part of collective language, gossip is difficult to study, the American Psychological Association noted in a 2004 issue of the Review of General Psychology dedicated to the topic. In part, they say, this is because gossip is typically a pretty private behavior — despite recent trends in embracing the ‘guilty pleasure’ — and a lot of stigma remains attached to the practice.

But some studies have explored what happens to us physiologically when we gab about others or react to it. In a 2015 study published in Social Neuroscience, scientists looked at brain imaging of men and women as they heard positive and negative gossip about themselves, their best friends and celebrities. People hearing gossip good and bad about themselves, as well as negative gossip in general, showed more activity in the prefrontal cortex of their brains, which is key to our ability to navigate complex social behaviors.

This activity indicated the subjects were pleased by the gossip and its insight, and the authors say this is related to our desire to be seen positively by others and fit in socially, regardless of whether this reflects what we’re actually feeling.

The study also found that the caudate nucleus, a reward center in the brain, was activated in response to negative gossip about celebrities; subjects seemed to be amused or entertained by salacious celebrity scandals. (The researchers also polled how the subjects felt, in addition to studying what their brain images revealed. Not surprisingly, they were happier to hear positive gossip about themselves, and more irked by hearing negative gossip about themselves as opposed to hearing gossip about others.)

There’s also a physiological distinction to be drawn between active and passive participation in gossip. Matthew Feinberg, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, and his colleagues explored this in a 2012 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. When subjects heard about another person’s anti-social behavior or an injustice, their heart rates increased. When they were able to actively gossip about the person, or the situation, on the other hand, it soothed them and brought their heart rates down. The act of gossiping, Feinberg explains, “helps calm the body.”

So, can gossip be good for you?

“People are really resistant to thinking about gossip as anything but a bad behavior,” says Robbins. And Feinberg notes that there are a couple of types of gossip that should be avoided, such as gossip that is purely harmful and serves no greater purpose — like nasty comments about someone’s looks.

In such a scenario, “you’re not learning anything,” Robbins adds. “No one is benefiting.” (Likewise, disseminating or not correcting gossip that you know to be untrue is another no-no.)

Along with the cultural learning benefits humans have gained over time, research like Feinberg’s shows there are several ways gossip can actually be beneficial. Gossip can promote cooperation, says Feinberg, by spreading important information. “When people say ‘your reputation precedes you,’ it’s because they have heard gossip about that person,” he says, which “can be extremely useful.”

In another of Feinberg’s studies, a group identified members who behaved selfishly via gossip, and promptly kicked them out. The remaining members were then able to work more harmoniously together on a series of exercises, while the shunned individuals actually came around, trying to redeem themselves. (One caveat to consider, though: a ‘redemption arc’ spurred by gossip is one perhaps most likely to occur in communities with an equitable distribution of power.)

Gossiping also says something about the relationships people have with each other. “In order to gossip, you need to feel close to people,” says Stacy Torres, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied gossip in older adults. “There’s an intimacy” to sharing experiences and feeling like you’re on the same page about others, she points out. Torres’ research has found that gossip can stave off loneliness, while other studies have found it can facilitate bonding and closeness and serve as a form of entertainment.

So, keep on talking. And when your conversation turns to gossip, as it inevitably will, remember that some good can come of it — with the right intentions, of course.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Crew of Multinational Astronauts, Including First United Arab Emirates National, Takes Off For International Space Station Crew of Multinational Astronauts, Including First United Arab Emirates National, Takes Off For International Space Station

(BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan) — A multinational crew made up of an American, a Russian and the first space traveler from the United Arab Emirates blasted off successfully on Wednesday for a mission on the International Space Station. A Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off as scheduled at 6:57 p.m. (1357 GMT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and entered a designated orbit en route to the station.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, Oleg Skripochka of Russian space agency Roscosmos, and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori from the UAE are set to dock at the orbiting outpost six hours later.

The mission is the third spaceflight for Skripochka and the first for both Meir and Almansoori, who is on an eight-day mission under a contract between the UAE and Roscosmos. The trio will join the crew already on the International Space Station: Russians Alexey Ovchinin and Alexander Skvortsov, NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano.

Hague and Ovchinin are scheduled to wrap up a mission of more than 200 days on Oct. 3 and return to Earth with Almansoori.

Meir and Skripochka plan to stay for more than six months.

New story in Science and Health from Time: The World’s Oceans in Trouble. And So Are Humans, Warns U.N. Report The World’s Oceans in Trouble. And So Are Humans, Warns U.N. Report

To most people, the world’s oceans can seem dark and distant. Billions live in close proximity to them and rarely venture in; billions more live with the world’s bodies of water out of sight and out of mind.

But as humans continue to pump global-warming causing gases into the air, oceans are playing a role shaping all of human civilization, according to a new report from the United Nations’ climate science body.

“The world’s ocean and cryosphere have been taking the heat for climate change for decades,” says Ko Barrett, a vice chair of the IPCC. “The consequences for nature and humanity are sweeping and severe.”

Changes to oceans caused by man-made global warming have worsened the impact of hurricanes, shifted the food supply and contributed to rising sea levels. Significant no matter where you live on the planet, oceans have absorbed heat in recent decades that would otherwise have led to warmer — and unsustainable — land temperatures, but the report warns that the oceans will soon no longer be able to play that role.

Since the 1980s, oceans have absorbed as much as 30% of global carbon dioxide emissions and an even larger share of the excess heat, according to the report. The rate of ocean warming has doubled in the last quarter century since the rate in 1970 as humans as have rapidly grown their carbon emissions. “For decades the ocean has been acting like a sponge,” says Barrett. “But it can’t keep up.”

The ocean’s role absorbing carbon and heat is a good news for humans concerned about the warming — at least in the short term — but it’s bad news for the underwater ecosystems disrupted by the change in the resulting change in acidity. Warmer temperatures lead to a spike in marine heat waves, which disrupt life much like a terrestrial heat wave. Meanwhile, higher carbon levels lead to ocean acidification and in turn contribute to a slew of effects, including the destruction of coral reefs.

As with most of effects of climate change, the challenges of the changing ocean will not be distributed equally. Coastal communities will face sea levels that rise increasingly quickly. Event with urgent action to stem emissions sea levels may rise as much as a meter on average by the end of the century; if climate change is left unaddressed sea levels could rise several more meters, especially if Antarctic ice sheets collapse. “Sea level rise has accelerated and will accelerate further,” says Regine Hock, a study author and a professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

The report also addresses the effects of climate change on what’s known as the cryosphere, or frozen water. Changes to ice coverage in the Arctic are “likely unprecedented for at least 1,000 years,” according to the report. Ice coverage is decreasing every month of the year, and coverage at the lowest point, in September, has declined around 13% per decade since 1979.

The report is the latest in a string of influential reports from the IPCC. Last October, the organization released a landmark report warning of the dramatic consequences of 1.5 C of global warming, from the loss of the world’s coral reefs to the displacement of millions of people. And in July the IPCC released a report showing how climate change is reshaping land.

The recent reports come as world leaders continue to struggle to commit to a bold global agenda. The latest report comes just days after a Sept. 23 U.N. summit that brought together heads of state. More than 70 countries committed to net-zero emissions, but the summit fell short of expectations.

The ocean report is a reminder of the powerful role these bodies of water play shaping our lives. For centuries, humans viewed the oceans with skepticism, relying on it to trade but appreciating its dangers. The world’s first port major cities — from London to Guangzhou, Amsterdam to Dhaka — were built on inland rivers rather than on the coast.

“It is as if, before the early modern era, there had existed a general acceptance that provision had to be made for the unpredictable furies of the ocean,” writes Amitav Ghosh in his acclaimed book The Great Derangement. A lot has changed since then, but maybe we have something to learn.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Philosophers, Artists and Geochemists. These Are the 2019 MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Winners Philosophers, Artists and Geochemists. These Are the 2019 MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Winners

A poet, a legal scholar, a theater artist, a paleoclimatologist, an urban designer and a marine scientist are among the luminaries who have been named as this year’s MacArthur fellows.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Wednesday named 26 people who will each receive $625,000 over five years to use as they please.

The Chicago-based foundation has awarded the so-called genius grants every year since 1981 to help further the pursuits of people with outstanding talent.

The 2019 fellows are:

Elizabeth Anderson, 59: philosopher, University of Michigan.

Sujatha Baliga, 48: attorney and restorative justice practitioner, Oakland, California.

Lynda Barry, 63: graphic novelist, cartoonist and education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mel Chin, 67: artist, Egypt Township, North Carolina.

Danielle Citron, 50: legal scholar, Boston University School of Law.

Lisa Daugaard, 53: criminal justice reformer, Seattle.

Annie Dorsen, 45: theater artist, New York City.

Andrea Dutton, 46: geochemist and paleoclimatologist, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jeffrey Gibson, 47: visual artist, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Mary Halvorson, 38: composer and guitarist, New York City.

Saidiya Hartman, 58: Literary scholar and cultural historian, Columbia University.

Walter Hood, 61: landscape and public artist, University of California-Berkeley.

Stacy Jupiter, 43: marine scientist, Suva, Fiji.

Zachary Lippman, 41: plant biologist, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Valeria Luiselli, 36: writer, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Kelly Lytle Hernandez, 45: historian, University of California.

Sarah Michelson, 55: choreographer, New York City.

Jeffrey Alan Miller, 35: literary scholar, Montclair State University.

Jerry X. Mitrovica, 58: theoretical geophysicist, Harvard University.

Emmanuel Pratt, 42: urban designer, Chicago.

Cameron Rowland, 30: artist, New York City.

Vanessa Ruta, 45: neuroscientist, The Rockefeller University.

Joshua Tenenbaum, 47: cognitive scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jenny Tung, 37: evolutionary anthropologist and geneticist, Duke University.

Ocean Vuong, 30: poet and fiction writer, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Emily Wilson, 47: classicist and translator, University of Pennsylvania.

New story in Science and Health from Time: Global Action on Climate Change Blocked By Political Disruptions Global Action on Climate Change Blocked By Political Disruptions

On Sept. 20, millions of young people around the world took to streets demanding bold action on climate change. When world leaders gathered at the United Nations Climate Action Summit three days later, the activists’ demands were left unmet.

The problem, by and large, isn’t that countries are denying the science of climate change. Instead, the issue is the entanglement of a slew of other issues that have gotten in the way: China’s trade war with the United States; the European Union’s Brexit distraction; and long-time concerns about economic development exacerbated by a lack of support from the U.S, among others.

This new reality has left the most concerned leaders grappling for the next move. Some called this week to give preferred trading status to other countries pursuing aggressive climate action. Others called for a broad campaign to shame countries that have failed to meet their commitments. The details varied, but as the dust settled on the summit it seemed clear to many that more aggressive climate measures would not be achieved without a paradigm shift, moving from diplomatic cooperative engagement to forceful pushes.

“What I see is governments still reluctant in changing the regulations, in adopting the adequate tax policies and in making the other moves to allow the markets to work in the way markets will inevitably work,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at a lunch for business leaders Monday, departing from his typical diplomatic tone. “Make sure that governments feel the heat.”

Guterres, who convened the summit, had for months demanded that countries attend the conference with plans of action to address climate change and not just offer rhetoric. Among his calls were demands that countries tax pollution and commit to ending the construction of new coal-fired power plants.

Some countries stepped up to the plate. More than 75 leaders pledged to eliminate their carbon emissions by 2050, though mostly from smaller economies, and a handful of European countries touted their commitment to spend billions to fund climate programs in developing countries. But the world’s biggest economies were largely absent. The U.S. and Brazil brought nothing to the table while China promised to follow through on its previous commitments and India said it would increase its deployment renewable energy, statements that fell short of hopes.

It’s this reality that has pushed forward long-simmering discussions about how to punish inaction. On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his support for using the international trade regime to penalize countries that failed to live up to the Paris Agreement. “We need to have a trade agenda that serves the climate agenda,” he said. “I don’t want to see new trade negotiations opened with countries that are running counter to the Paris Agreement.”

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries are supposed to update and strengthen their pledges to reduce emissions made in the lead up to deal by the end of next year, and, behind the scenes, climate policy experts say that the political environment is such that countries that come to the table may include new trade restrictions.

Conceptually, the idea of trade restrictions, particularly a border carbon adjustment that would impose a carbon fee on products imported at the border from countries out of compliance with the Paris deal, has been around for a long time, but in the past countries have preferred engagement to penalties. “If we’re to keep going with some countries ramping up ambition again and again, and other countries not moving much or even backsliding on what they’re doing, we may need to resort to these kind of trade measures,” says Helen Mountford, vice president for climate and economics at World Resources Institute.

One key question is China. The country has sought to assume a leadership role not only addressing climate change but also elsewhere in the international arena as President Trump has led the U.S. retreat on a slew of issues. But on Monday the country offered little in the way of new commitments, even as international climate experts say that the country is likely to make major announcements in the coming year as the country hammers out the details of its next five-year plan, a key document outlining the country’s development plans.

The scale of China’s ambition may well hinge on whether it can make progress on a slew of other issues it faces, most significantly ending the trade war with the U.S. or bolstering alternative markets. A planned summit between the EU next September could be a break out moment if leaders from the two countries can come to agreement to bolster trade relations and commit to new climate measures at the same time. “That’s a conversation that hasn’t started fully,” says Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris Agreement. “And it’s needed.”

A bilateral announcement between the U.S. and the EU in 2015 played a pivotal role building momentum for the Paris Agreement and helped cement the perception that the two were the leading the rest of the world on the issue. A EU-China deal could serve a similar purpose and cement the place of the two as the world’s climate leaders, though Tubiana says that the EU-China deal would need to be of a much larger scale to make an impact.

Prior to this year’s summit, national pledges would have left the world on track for more than 3C degrees of warming, and countries were not even following through to meet them. A report released last year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the world needs to keep warming to 1.5 C to avoid some devastating impacts of climate change, including the loss of the world’s coral reefs and the displacement of hundreds of millions of people. To change direction, countries will likely need to cut their emissions in half by 2030 and eliminate their carbon foot prints by the end of the century.

Top U.N. officials acknowledged a deficit in commitments from national governments, but said the summit had succeeded in growing momentum ahead of next year’s key climate talks. “The bottom line is governments are not where they need to be today. That’s a fact,” said Robert Orr, special adviser on climate change to the UN Secretary-General, in an interview. But “it takes this process here to get them going.”

Part of that process was hearing from non-government actors committed to addressing climate change. Some of the most significant commitments came from the private sector. Nearly 90 companies with a total value of $2.3 trillion said they would eliminate their carbon-footprint by 2050 and investors with $35 trillion in assets called for the phasing out of coal-fired power. Even sectors that have historically avoided navigating the difficult waters of climate change seemed willing to at least engage on the issue. The shipping sector, for instance, set a net-zero target for 2050. And oil and gas CEOs met on the sidelines of the summit to announce commitments to cut methane emissions, though many activists dismissed these efforts.

And, of course, the tens of thousands of youth who marched in the streets of New York and the millions who marched around the world delivered a clear signal that they would not tolerate continued inaction. “People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg told a gathering of world leaders. “How dare you.”

New story in Science and Health from Time: The Head of NASA Says Security Is Needed to Explore Space Safely The Head of NASA Says Security Is Needed to Explore Space Safely

TOKYO (AP) — The head of NASA said Wednesday that space security is necessary so that the United States, Japan and others can safely explore the moon and Mars.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine also said during his Tokyo visit that he wants to take the U.S. space partnership with Japan to a new level by stepping up cooperation by going to the moon and eventually to Mars together.

But he said that will be possible only if space is kept a safe place.

“NASA fully supports the idea of space security,” he said.

Japan and the U.S. have long cooperated in space science, including the ongoing International Space Station program.

“All of our partners and allies should understand how important space is and understand that we will do what is necessary to preserve it,” Bridenstine said. “And to the extent that NASA and JAXA continue to explore space, it will only be because it is secure.”

On Tuesday, NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, confirmed Japan’s participation in America’s lunar and Mars exploration projects, including an Artemis lunar mission.

The U.S. and Japanese governments are expanding their security alliance into space amid China’s growing activity.

Bridenstine said it’s time to advance to the next stage — sustainable human presence on the moon, and eventually on Mars. He said he has high expectations for Japan’s contribution to future missions.

Bridenstine said he is in Japan to gain Japanese support, including funding, for the manned moon mission planned for 2024.

Responding to a question about the feasibility of sending astronauts to the moon in three years, he said NASA would rather accelerate the timing to avoid the political risk of taking too long to get the program achieved.

Also Tuesday, a Japanese rocket blasted off from a JAXA launch site in southern Japan to deliver powerful new lithium-ion batteries for the space station.

The shipment should arrive at the space station Saturday for spacewalking astronauts to replace old-style batteries with new ones.

JAXA is among several organizations making periodic deliveries to the space station.

lunes, 23 de septiembre de 2019

New story in Science and Health from Time: In the 1980s, the World Acted to Save the Ozone Layer. Here’s Why the Fight Against Climate Change Is Different In the 1980s, the World Acted to Save the Ozone Layer. Here’s Why the Fight Against Climate Change Is Different

viernes, 20 de septiembre de 2019

New story in Science and Health from Time: How Understanding the History of the Earth’s Climate Can Offer Hope Amid Crisis How Understanding the History of the Earth’s Climate Can Offer Hope Amid Crisis

jueves, 19 de septiembre de 2019

New story in Science and Health from Time: North America Has Lost Nearly 3 Billion Birds Since 1970 North America Has Lost Nearly 3 Billion Birds Since 1970

Birds across the U.S. are disappearing, though many of us probably haven’t noticed.

Over the past half century, North American bird populations have undergone a quiet crisis, with scientists estimating the continent to have lost 29% of its total avian population, as revealed a new paper published in the journal Science on Thursday. That’s a loss of nearly 3 billion birds in the last half century.

“I would call it an imminent disaster,” says Ken Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the American Bird Conservancy, and the lead author on Thursday’s paper in Science. “We need to do something about it now, and we need to pay attention.”

Scientists have been tracking populations of threatened and endangered birds for years, and noted that some populations were in decline. But they assumed that those threatened species were being replaced by “generalist species,” or more adaptable birds that were better suited to deal with man-made changes to their environment.

What’s stunning in these newest findings is the fact that broad population declines are being recorded across North American birds as a whole, in a trend not confined to any one species or ecological niche.

“The bulk of that loss is occurring in the common species,” says Rosenberg. “It’s across every habitat.”

Grassland bird species showed the largest impacts, with more than half their number, over 700 million breeding individuals across 31 species, lost since 1970. Birds living in forests also showed massive hits, with total losses of more than a billion birds.

“Birds are really facing an unprecedented crisis due to human activity,” says Nicole Michel a senior quantitative ecologist with the National Audubon Society. “We really need to take action quickly.”

Scientists believe that the loss of bird populations is due to a variety of factors, chief among them habitat loss, intensifying agricultural production and disruption of coastal ecosystems, all of which are exacerbated by the intensifying impacts of anthropogenic climate change. In particular, the authors of the paper believe that the stunning losses of grassland bird populations are driven in large part by increased pesticide usage and habitat loss due to agriculture.

Not all species showed population declines, and many even showed gains over the decades, but the overall drop in bird populations was startling. Those broad declines may not be readily visible to the average bird watcher, but over decades of data the devastating trend becomes all too clear.

“The loss of that magnitude could signal an unraveling of ecological processes,” says Rosenberg. “People need to start paying attention to the birds around them, because if the loss continues we’re really going to notice it and feel it.”

To compile the report, Rosenberg and his colleagues looked at data from sources that tracked 529 species of birds in the continental United States and Canada, spanning far flung geographic areas and habitats. The scientists relied in large part on information gathered through the North American Breeding Birds Survey, a longstanding partnership between scientists and amateur bird watchers. Those efforts showed persistent declines in bird populations. And when the scientists used supercomputers to examined data from weather radar, which for the past decade has recorded the biomass of migrating birds passing overhead at night, they discovered similar population declines.

“This is groundbreaking because of the incorporation of the radar data,” explains Michel. That information, Michel explains, allowed scientists to count bird populations that breed in sparsely populated northern regions where people aren’t necessarily able to reach them, and also enabled the report authors to independently verify the survey data that showed massive population losses.

There was one ray of hope in the paper’s overall gloomy findings — wetland birds showed gains in population, probably due in part to the billions of dollars in investment that have been poured into wetlands protection and restoration. For the authors, those gains show that this crisis does not necessarily need to become a full-blown catastrophe, assuming government and citizens take action to protect bird species from further impacts.

“We’re at a point where we can reverse these declines,” says Rosenberg. “We need to be acting now.”

Public action is urgently needed, but Rosenberg also notes that there are measures that individual citizens can take to help sustain bird populations, like planting native species in gardens and keeping cats indoors.

For Michel, successes like the recovery of raptor populations after DDT, a potent pesticide, was banned show that we have not yet reached the point of no return for North American birds.

“This is a crisis and a warning call,” she says. “But birds are resilient if you give them a chance.”