Ice cores collected from central-north Greenland provide a fine-grained record of climatic conditions in the area, and it’s not good news. Among other things they reveal the decade from 2001-2011 was 1.5°C (2.7°F) warmer than the 20th century average, as well as being the area’s hottest since at least 1000 CE.

Greenland’s mighty ice sheet shapes the climate of the North Atlantic, and also provides an unmatched record of regional conditions before the invention of the thermometer. A new paper takes advantage of this fact by establishing the temperatures at which the ice was deposited.

“This data shows that the warming in 2001 to 2011 clearly differs from natural variations during the past 1,000 years. Although grimly expected in the light of global warming, we were surprised by how evident this difference really was,” said Dr Maria Hörhold of the Alfred Wegener Institute in a statement. 

Astonishing amounts of Greenland’s ice have melted in recent years, both during extreme hot spells and on an annual basis measured by net ice loss. However, records of this type only go back a few decades, so more information is needed to fill in the long-term picture.

Ice cores are a different matter. Not only do they show the amount of snow deposited in a year, the oxygen ratio of oxygen-16 to oxygen-18 varies depending on the temperatures at which that molecule evaporated and condensed to fall as snow.

At some locations, so little snow falls each year that temperature readings need to be averaged over long periods to gain sufficient data, but the cores collected as part of the North Greenland Ice Core Project allow for higher resolution.

Cores previously taken in the 1990s in the North Greenland Traverse had shown global warming trends were hard to distinguish from local variation at that point. On the other hand, 2001-2011 stands out from the noise. The authors conclude it would have been almost impossible for a decade to be that hot without human activity.

The team also calculated how much meltwater Greenland had produced each year from 1871 to 2011 by combining satellite ice-mass measurements in recent years and earlier weather station data. “We were amazed to see how closely temperatures inland are connected to Greenland-wide meltwater drainage – which, after all, occurs in low-elevation areas along the rim of the ice sheet near the coast,” Hörhold said. 

Using this relationship, the authors extrapolated their ice core data to reveal melting for the last 1,000 years.

A surprising feature of the study’s results is the disconnect between central Greenland’s climate and that of the rest of the Arctic. The authors attribute this to their cores being collected at a point where the ice sheet is kilometers thick. The altitude at the top of the ice increases exposure to atmospheric circulation patterns that have less influence at sea level.

At one time, the climate change denier myth of the month was to claim that Greenland’s name proved it was once covered in verdant fields. Historians instead think Erik the Red was just a canny marketer. Based on this dubious evidence it has been concluded by some that Greenland, and by implication the whole world, was warmer in the late Middle Ages than today, thereby discrediting anthropogenic global warming. Hundreds of scientific papers have disproven these statements, and this one shows the error goes all the way to the icy heart.

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The most intriguing developments in contemporary car design are happening in secure studios tucked away from the competition. In these guarded locations, designers are charged with anticipating what will look and function well in three, four, and five years. It's not a clear-cut assignment. Car designers must operate in a hypothetical future where the rate of adoption and accessibility to public charging networks is still to be determined.

 

By 2026, almost 150 electric and hybrid vehicles are planned to hit the US market. While no designers are spilling the beans on their future plans, most are concentrating solely on designing the electric vehicles that will dominate their future portfolios. Some of their ideas will turn up in concept cars that serve as tools to tease innovations. Many of their best ideas won't see the light of day because of budgets, production limitations, and regulations. But electric vehicles are shaking up the way the industry thinks about design in every category.

 

Car design once meant hand-drawing plans and making clay models, a state of affairs that evolved into complex AutoCAD software for 3D renderings. In the past, plans had to be set in motion years before development. While these techniques are still used, new programs have accelerated the pace of car design and have made clay and sketching more efficient.

 

"This development process happens much more quickly than it used to because of software that speeds up the process and the pressure to keep up with the advancements in production cars pumped out by the competition," Aston Martin design chief Marek Reichman said when I caught up with him at Monterey Car Week back in August. "What technology has done is given you more soak time within a given period. Because of technology, you can think more because you're able to see something quicker, and design is just about looking."

 

The most valuable attribute of a good car designer? An imagination.

 

No one knows exactly how EV adoption will play out in the coming years. Designers must consider charging infrastructure, parking garages (or what they'll become), and how people will use their vehicles as more autonomous features are introduced. Every space inside and outside of the car could be rethought.

 

Traditional car design attracted young artists who spent their childhoods drawing the contours of hot sports cars, and while some of this background continues to be relevant, the broader role of the car design department has expanded to encompass what happens both inside and outside of the car, which requires specialized sets of design skills focused on materials, sound, graphics, and lighting.

 

For high-end car designers, the task is specific. In the post-Tesla Model S and Porsche Taycan era, how can a designer translate advanced design into six-figure electric cars that car enthusiasts will want as driving culture shifts? Six- and seven-figure cars may seem unobtainable and irrelevant for most car owners, but these expensive, low-volume vehicles often serve as testing grounds for new ideas that will eventually work their way into more cost-effective mass-production. It's also where car design is most impractical and fun, but even that has been changing as high-end SUVs become a staple in almost every luxury carmaker's portfolio. Every carmaker is chasing the perfect electric-powered SUV strategy.

 

Top-secret car design studios are hubs for the electric vehicle future

Starship will travel from Earth in a different way. It will launch and first rendezvous with an orbital fuel depot that will give it enough fuel to get to the Moon and then bring the astronauts to and from the Moon. Orion and Starship will meet in the NRHO.

Two astronauts will then transfer to Starship and land on the Moon.

The lunar South Pole will look very different to the equatorial regions visited by the Apollo astronauts. The Sun will be low on the horizon, so the exploration will be aided by headlamps and new, more mobile surface suits that are being designed by Axiom Space. Another difference between Artemis's lunar exploration and Apollo's is that the future mission will spend multiple days on the surface of the Moon. Those days will be used to collect samples, survey geology, and more.

After the brief sojourn on the Moon, Starship will fly back to Orion. The four astronauts will be reunited and they will begin the journey back home before landing in the Pacific. But before we get to Artemis III, Artemis II will have to fly. This will be the first crewed mission of the Artemis program and it is expected to launch in May 2024.

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China lost its title of the world’s largest population last year to India, marking the first decline in its population in 61 years.

China’s population decreased by 850,000, or 0.06%, to 1.412 billion at the end of last year from a year earlier, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. India’s population grew 9.6 million, or 0.68%, to 1.417 billion for the same period.

NBS officials said the bureau did not have the number of deaths for December as most samples that were used to compile the 2022 population figure were taken in November. Health officials said last Saturday about 60,000 Covid patients, mostly elderly, had died in hospitals after the country relaxed its epidemic rules early last month.

Demographers said that in view of the likelihood the decline in numbers and the rise in the average age of China’s population will continue for decades, the county must upgrade its industry to maintain economic growth.

When China started opening up its economy in the late 1970s, it also implemented a one-child policy to control its population by forbidding families to give birth to second children. A couple could have a second child only if the first child was a girl or died. Those who violated the rule either were levied heavy fines or faced forced abortion.

In 2011, China started allowing more people to have second children as the growth of the country’s population was slowing. In 2015, the one-child policy was officially scrapped. Between 1980 and 2015, China’s population had increased 41% from 981 million to 1.38 billion.

In 2021, the Chinese government unveiled a three-child policy to try to boost the birth rate as many young families tended to have fewer children amid high living costs. Last year the government offered incentives such as easier housing purchases and better educational services. It’s too early to say what effect those measures will have.

The NBS said Tuesday that 10.41 million people died and 9.56 million babies were born in mainland China last year, resulting in a net loss of 850,000 people. In 2021, about 10.14 million died and 10.62 million babies were born.

NBS Director Kang Yi said China’s population declined for the first time since 1961 as many young people were having late marriages and becoming less willing to have children while the population has also aged. Kang said the declining trend has just begun.

Women contribute some 41% to China’s GDP, the largest proportion of any country in the world. Get married and have kids? What for? Photo: Pixabay

The public should not be over-worried, Kang said, as long as the country’s workforce and demographic can match with the economic structure.

Population loss is a matter of been there, done that for China. The country lost 35 million people during the Great Chinese Famine between 1959 and 1961, according to former Xinhua reporter Yang Jisheng, who has researched the topic for more than a decade.

In the mid-1950s, China had about 20 million newborns annually. But in 1961, the number of newborns fell to 9.49 million due to a shortage of food. Since then, about 20 million to 29 million babies were born each year. After 2000, the number stayed at around 15 million to 17 million per year. But it has kept falling since 2016.

Song Jian, a professor at the Population Development Studies Center, the Renmin University, noted that the Chinese population declined in the past due to the rise in deaths. This time, she said, the drop was mainly caused by a low birth rate.

She said the number of births per woman, or fertility rate, had already fallen to 1.93 in 1992, below the threshold of 2.1 required for an expansion.

Since then, she said, China’s population kept growing due to momentum – but such a driving force had been exhausted after three decades.

She said governments should launch more policies to reduce the burdens of young families, so they will be more willing to give birth.

According to official data, the number of reproductive-aged women in China fell by 46 million from 380 million in 2010 to 334 million in 2020.

He Yafu, a Chinese demographer, said that between 2016 and last year, the population of reproductive-aged women in China dropped by about 5 million annually. He said young people prefer to get married later and have fewer children.

Besides, He said, the zero-Covid policy in mainland China negatively impacted people’s willingness to give birth. He said China’s population could continue to decline in the next few decades.

He said it was unlikely that China could turn the situation around in the short run, given that Japan and South Korea have so far failed to boost their birth rates despite many supportive policies.

Zhang Zhiwei, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management Ltd, said the declining Chinese population could mean a potential slowdown in domestic demand and economic growth in China. Zhang said China must boost its production efficiency as it can no longer rely on its population growth to drive economic growth.

Unleashed pent-up Chinese demand could drive the global economy in 2023. Image: Screengrab / NDTV

Meanwhile, some economists said India and Vietnam, with their growing populations, will diminish China’s current role as the global manufacturing hub.

An S&P report said India will surpass Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030. Last year, India ranked the fifth largest economy in the world, following the United States, China, Japan and Germany.

Vietnam’s population increased 0.74% to 98.19 million at the end of last year from 97.47 million a year earlier.

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In the early 1980s, America's biggest company knew more about climate change than basically anyone else. Rising emissions posed a threat to Exxon's business — selling fossil fuels — so the oil giant took the lead on understanding what was called the "CO2 problem."

At the time, Exxon was pouring $900,000 a year into researching the effects of burning fossil fuels. It took an oil tanker, revamped it into a research vessel, then sent it on long journeys around the Atlantic Ocean to measure how the ocean was absorbing rising carbon dioxide emissions. In 1982, the company pivoted to a cheaper approach and directed its scientists to create mathematical models that calculated how rising carbon dioxide levels would change life on Earth in the coming decades. They turned out to be eerily accurate.

A study published in the journal Science on Thursday is the first to systematically measure how those models matched up against the real world.

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Potsdam in Germany found that Exxon's estimates from 1977 to 2003 proved to be just as precise as those from independent academics and government scientists. Between 63 and 83 percent of Exxon's projections, depending on how they're measured, accurately predicted how the world would warm in the coming decades. The study could provide fresh support for lawsuits against ExxonMobil by quantifying just how well the company understood the threat of the climate crisis decades ago.

"It kind of took my breath away when I actually plotted for the first time Exxon's predictions, and you see them land so tightly around that red curve of reality," said Geoffrey Supran, a co-author of the study who researched fossil fuel propaganda at Harvard and is now a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami.

The chart below shows how global warming projections modeled by Exxon scientists compared to the actual temperature that ensued.

Grist / Jessie Blaeser

The study comes at a time when oil giants are under pressure to curb carbon pollution and prepare for a future powered by renewables like wind and solar. Activist shareholders have gained seats at oil companies including ExxonMobil, seeking to align their business strategies with the climate crisis. Harvard, Princeton, and other prominent universities are getting rid of investments in fossil fuels. With floods, fires, and smoke growing noticeably worse, a social reckoning is at hand: Young people are turning away from careers in the stigmatized oil and gas industry.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Exxon's own scientists had warned that continuing to burn fossil fuels would lead to "catastrophic" and "irreversible" consequences. But starting in 1989, Exxon publicly dismissed its own findings. The company's leadership cast doubt on the credibility of climate science, deriding models and emphasizing how "uncertainty" made them virtually useless. It's part of a larger story about how many companies — including Shell, coal companies, and utilities — misled the public about climate change while their executives understood and downplayed the dangers of skyrocketing carbon emissions.

Evidence of this deception has become the basis for dozens of lawsuits against fossil fuel giants in recent years, with cities and states seeking to hold companies and governments responsible for damages from climate change. So far, most have failed, with some exceptions that force countries or companies to make deeper cuts to their carbon emissions.

Supran suspects that the new quantitative evidence about what Exxon knew — and when — could prove to be compelling evidence in lawsuits. "I imagine that both in court, and then of course in public opinion, simple visuals proving Exxon knew and misled on climate may prove powerful," Supran said.

The study finds other examples of how Exxon's scientists foresaw the future. They accurately predicted that the scientific community would become confident that human-caused global warming was underway around the year 2000, the median estimate of nearly a dozen speculative reports Exxon conducted 15 to 20 years earlier.

Exxon's researchers also rejected the prospect of an impending ice age, a notion that was popular in news headlines in the 1970s, though not backed by many scientists. They also accurately forecasted how much carbon dioxide could be emitted while keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F).

But Exxon's public stance remained hostile to any public discussion of that same research. The company's leadership and marketing team worked to create a cloud of confusion around climate science. In 2001, an ExxonMobil press release argued that there was "no consensus about long-term climate trends and what causes them." In a 2004 New York Times advertisement, the company stated that "scientific uncertainties continue to limit our ability to make objective, quantitative determinations regarding the human role in recent climate change." The following year, Lee Raymond, then ExxonMobil's CEO, blamed sunspots and the wobble of the Earth for global warming during a PBS interview, claiming that scientists didn't know if humans played a role in changing the climate.

The latest study focused on Exxon because of its well-documented climate research program — which resulted in the largest public collection of global warming projections from a single company — and because of its long record of challenging climate science. Between 1998 and 2019, Exxon gave more than $37 million to organizations that sought to sow confusion about the scientific consensus around climate change and obstruct efforts by governments to take action.

In response to the study, ExxonMobil spokesperson Todd Spitler said that "those who talk about how 'Exxon Knew' are wrong in their conclusions." He cited a ruling from a 2019 court case involving Exxon, in which a judge said that the New York State Attorney General had failed to provide enough evidence that Exxon broke the law by misleading shareholders about climate change. The judge who ruled in Exxon's favor said at the time that the case was "a securities fraud case, not a climate change case."

Casting doubt on the science was just one prong of Exxon's approach. Previous research from Supran and Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes has shown that Exxon used subtle rhetoric to shift the blame for climate change from fossil fuel producers to the individuals who used them to power their cars and heat their houses. Another part of Exxon's strategy was to highlight how climate policies could harm the economy while ignoring the enormous costs of failing to rein in emissions as well as the economic benefits of taking action.

The new study provides a fresh point of comparison in the history of deception from fossil fuel companies, Supran said. "It's one thing to understand that they vaguely knew something about global warming decades ago, that they were broadly aware of the relationship between fossil fuels and warming, but to realize that they knew as much as anyone, as much as independent scientists did … it's kind of shocking."

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The physics behind building an enduring soap bubble

Electric vehicles (EVs) are not new. Battery-powered cars were on city roads more than a century ago. And sales of EVs have been growing steadily over the past decade. EV adoption is already widespread in Europe and is making inroads in the US. In 2021, sales of EVs tripled in China and doubled globally, to 6.6 million. Internal combustion engine car sales peaked years ago—all the new growth in car sales comes from EVs.

Cars are personal vehicles, but the true significance of EVs is less about what they can do for one owner and more about what a widespread network of them can do for everyone. In 2023, with 100 million EVs on the roads and in garages, the world will have, for the first time, a massive distributed network of immense electric energy storage. Just consider that 16,500 cars can store as much energy as all of the battery storage installed in the US by the end of 2020.

The ability to send power from vehicles is the key transformation. In 2023, as people realize the value of the car as an energy-storage device, they will install bidirectional chargers in their homes and businesses. This will enable a truly transactive energy network. Picture electrons flowing in and out of people’s personal batteries by the gigawatt. This will be the first truly intelligent energy network, and it only works if it’s electric—just imagine transacting volatile, explosive gasoline, sloshing in and out of vehicles’ tanks.

In practical terms, this means realizing new value from an asset that sits unused 97 percent of the time. Just as people run transportation businesses off their cars—like Uber or Amazon groceries—car owners will be able to run their own power-trading business. Local communities will combine the power of their privately owned vehicles to safeguard their neighborhood’s power supply in case of emergency, or to enable local power generation from solar and storage, slashing everyone’s power bills. 

Other changes will occur, some of which will be unexpected. In 2023, networked electric vehicles will begin to make semi-autonomous decisions about selling power to the grid where needed. Communities will orient themselves around using—or excluding—these networked capabilities, creating new business models in storing, moving, and selling energy to companies; their neighbors; and other devices, like electric bikes and boats. People will also use their mobile power source to invent new sports and entertainment pastimes. Giving hundreds of millions of people the ability to store and move large amounts of electrical energy will power a Cambrian explosion of creativity.

What exactly will millions of people do with their own mini power plants? I can’t tell you that, but freeing ourselves from a hundred-year-old, calcified, frequently corrupt, centralized system of fossil energy will change everything. 

Mini Power Plants—on Wheels

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"So, what do you do about eating?"

My annual physical was going well, and my doctor was inquiring about my diet. "A little big of everything in moderation?" I said, shrugging; then, I countered, "What do you do about eating?"

"Well," the doctor replied, "I practice intermittent fasting."

I'd heard the hype over the years, about how fasting can help maintain a healthy weight, and potentially stave off everything from Alzheimer's disease to sleep apnea to cancer. But it was the sight of my energetic, razor-sharp doctor — who is my age but doesn't look anywhere near it — that made the most compelling case I'd ever seen for fasting.

As someone who has never once uttered the phrase, "I forgot to eat," who carries granola bars around specifically to stave off hunger rage, I figured myself as unlikely a candidate for meal skipping as you would ever find. And the information out there about intermittent fasting seemed so confusing, so contradictory, I wasn't even sure where to get started. Do you restrict certain types of food? Do you only eat at certain times of day? Do you not eat at all some days? Most importantly of all, though, I wanted to know: what's actually in it for me?

As it turns out, quite a lot... maybe.

Intermittent fasting isn't about what you eat, it's about when," says Elizabeth Ward, a Boston area registered dietitian and nutrition consultant.

"With no calorie restrictions or special foods to make or buy, IF (intermittent fasting) is more of a lifestyle than a prescriptive diet."

How one goes about that, however, can be flexible.

"There are several types of IF, including time-restricted eating, and going with no, or very little, food for entire days," Ward continues. "On the 16:8 plan, only calorie-free beverages are allowed for 16 hours and you eat during an eight-hour period of your choosing. The 5:2 plan consists of eating as usual on five days of the week and consuming 25% of your daily calories (about 500 for women and 600 for men) on the other days. Alternate day fasting (ADF), allows for calorie-free beverages on every other day of the week, and eating on the remaining days."

Most people discover IF because they're interested in losing or maintaining their weight, because it seems to promise dramatic and fast results. It's definitely a simple way of restricting calories and avoiding less nutrient-rich foods.

"Breakfast in America is usually a high carbohydrate, high sugar, dense calorie meal," says New York doctor James Stulman, a physician in my local practice. "And then after 7 pm, that is a really challenging time. A lot of my patients, including myself, are hungry at 9:30 pm. We're snacking on cookies or something sweet. So if you're disciplined enough not to eat after seven o'clock, you're probably getting rid of all the nasty carbohydrates, which are the real problem."

But unlike other diets, intermittent fasting seems to offer real possible health advantages, because it kicks in different processes that can make the body more efficient. A 2021 paper in the journal Nutrients explains, "As a result of periods of restricted food intake, the human body initiates a metabolic switch from glucose to stored lipids, which leads to a cascade of metabolic, cellular, and circadian changes that are associated with numerous health benefits in animal models and humans. Periods of IF have not only been associated with weight- and metabolism-related diseases, but also with reducing the risk/prevalence of neurological diseases."

And a widely circulated 2019 New England Journal of Medicine review of the "Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease" reported that "The metabolic switch from glucose-based to ketone-based energy" may result in "increased stress resistance, increased longevity, and a decreased incidence of diseases, including cancer and obesity."

There is science that attests to why intermittent fasting can be healthy for your cells. Christine Kingsley, Health and Wellness Director of the Lung Institute and an advanced practice registered nurse, explains that "during intermittent fasting, the body attains lower levels of glucose more efficiently, catalyzing the activation of brain synapses and stress resistance. This allows the brain to function at its fullest capacity as humanly possible, which is why verbal memory is notably improved during and after the practice."

There are other potential benefits as well.

"One of the main effects is a reduction in insulin levels," says John Landry, a registered respiratory therapist and the founder and CEO of Respiratory Therapy Zone. "High levels of insulin have been linked to an increased risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. By reducing insulin levels through intermittent fasting, individuals may be able to reduce their risk of these conditions. Intermittent fasting has also been linked to a decrease in inflammation, which is believed to be a contributing factor to several chronic diseases." He adds, "There is currently limited research on the effects of intermittent fasting on lung health. However, some studies suggest that intermittent fasting may have potential benefits for respiratory function, such as reducing inflammation and improving oxidative stress."

Intermittent fasting also typically means your body isn't busy digesting during your resting hours. That can lead to better sleep, experts say.

"An IF schedule that has your last meal at least two to three hours before you go to bed (caveat: for the general population, not night shift workers) can support healthy sleep and optimal daily energy in many ways," says Chester Wu, a board-certified MD in Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine with the sleep and energy app RISE. "It allows for better digestion, reducing the risk of heartburn and acid reflux keeping you up at night." Furthermore, he says, "when we sleep, our brains clear out waste products. But if your body is busy digesting a meal, blood gets diverted to the digestive system, leaving the brain with fewer resources to do this job."

Regardless of the perceived benefits of IF, some people absolutely shouldn't attempt it. As Elizabeth Ward explains, that includes "people under 18 and over 75; pregnant and breastfeeding women; those on medication that must be taken with food at certain times of the day; those with a chronic medical condition, such kidney disease; people with a history of disordered eating." She adds, "IF can be triggering. Preoccupation with the timing of eating can encourage obsessive behaviors concerning food. In addition, exercise reduces glucose and insulin levels, and people relying on IF may need to change the intensity, and timing, of exercise to prevent fatigue."

I may be intrigued by intermittent fasting, but my lifestyle right now isn't realistically compatible with it. I could get by with just black coffee for breakfast, but I'm not yet ready for consistently early bird dinners. People who have families, who travel or socialize, or keep erratic hours would probably likewise struggle to stay on intermittent fasting. And any eating plan is only as good as your ability to stick with it. So for the time being, I'll continue to pay more attention to what I eat than when. "Of first and foremost most importance," says Dr. Stulman, "is your choices of food."

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Dust that billows up from desert storms and arid landscapes has helped cool the planet for the past several decades, and its presence in the atmosphere may have obscured the true extent of global heating caused by fossil fuel emissions.

Atmospheric dust has increased by about 55% since the mid-1800s, an analysis suggests. And that increasing dust may have hidden up to 8% of warming from carbon emissions.

The analysis by atmospheric scientists and climate researchers in the US and Europe attempts to tally the varied, complex ways in which dust has affected global climate patterns, concluding that overall, it has worked to somewhat counteract the warming effects of greenhouse gasses.

The study, published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, warns that current climate models fail to take into account the effect of atmospheric dust.

“We’ve been predicting for a long time that we’re headed toward a bad place when it comes to greenhouse warming,” said Jasper Kok, an atmospheric physicist who led the research. “What this research shows is that so far, we’ve had the emergency brake on.”

About 26m tons of dust are suspended in our atmosphere, scientists estimate. Its effects are complicated.

Dust, along with synthetic particulate pollution, can cool the planet in several ways. These mineral particles can reflect sunlight away from the Earth and dissipate cirrus clouds high in the atmosphere that warm the planet. Dust that falls into the ocean encourages the growth of phytoplankton – microscopic plants in the ocean – that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

Dust can also have a warming effect in some cases – darkening snow and ice, and prompting them to absorb more heat.

But after they tallied everything up, it seemed clear to researchers that the dust had an overall cooling effect.

“There are all these different factors that play into the role of mineral dusts in our atmosphere,” said Gisela Winckler, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. “This is the first review of its kind to really bring all these different aspects together.”

Although climate models have so far been able to predict global heating with quite a bit of accuracy, Winckler said the review made clear that these predictions haven’t been able to pin down the role of dust especially well.

Limited records from ice cores, marine sediment records, and other sources suggest that dust overall had also been increasing since pre-industrial times – in part due to development, agriculture, and other human impacts on landscapes. But the amount of dust also seems to have been decreasing since the 1980s.

More data and research is needed to better understand these dust patterns, Winckler said, and better predict how they will change in coming years.

But if dust in the atmosphere is decreasing, the warming effects of greenhouse gases could speed up.

“We could start to experience faster and faster warming because of this,” Kok said. “And maybe we’re waking up to that reality too late.”

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For a company that depended on an unbounded sense of optimism among investors to maintain its high stock price — Tesla was at one point worth more than Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Ford and General Motors combined — these crashes might seem like a problem.

But to Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, they presented an opportunity. Each collision generated data, and with enough data, the company could speed the development of the world’s first truly self-driving car. He believed in this vision so strongly that it led him to make wild predictions: “My guess as to when we would think it is safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at their destination: probably toward the end of next year,” Musk said in 2019. “I would say I am certain of that. That is not a question mark.”

The future of Tesla may rest on whether drivers knew that they were engaged in this data-gathering experiment, and if so, whether their appetite for risk matched Musk’s. I wanted to hear from the victims of some of the more minor accidents, but they tended to fall into two categories, neither of which predisposed them to talk: They either loved Tesla and Musk and didn’t want to say anything negative to the press, or they were suing the company and remaining silent on the advice of counsel. (Umair Ali, whose Tesla steered into a highway barrier in 2017, had a different excuse: “Put me down as declined interview because I don’t want to piss off the richest man in the world.”)

Then I found Dave Key. On May 29, 2018, Key’s 2015 Tesla Model S was driving him home from the dentist in Autopilot mode. It was a route that Key had followed countless times before: a two-lane highway leading up into the hills above Laguna Beach, Calif. But on this trip, while Key was distracted, the car drifted out of its lane and slammed into the back of a parked police S.U.V., spinning the car around and pushing the S.U.V. up onto the sidewalk. No one was hurt.

Key, a 69-year-old former software entrepreneur, took a dispassionate, engineer’s-eye view of his own accident. “The problem with stationary objects — I’m sorry, this sounds stupid — is that they don’t move,” he said. For years, Tesla’s artificial intelligence had trouble separating immobile objects from the background. Rather than feeling frustrated that the computer hadn’t figured out such a seemingly elementary problem, Key took comfort in learning that there was a reason behind the crash: a known software limitation, rather than some kind of black-swan event.

Last fall, I asked Key to visit the scene of the accident with me. He said he would do me one better; he would take me there using Tesla’s new Full Self-Driving mode, which was still in beta. I told Key that I was surprised he was still driving a Tesla, much less paying extra — F.S.D. now costs $15,000 — for new autonomous features. If my car had tried to kill me, I would have switched brands. But in the months and years after his Model S was totaled, he bought three more.

We met for breakfast at a cafe in Laguna Beach, about three miles from the crash site. Key was wearing a black V-neck T-shirt, khaki shorts and sandals: Southern California semiretirement chic. As we walked to our table, he locked the doors of his red 2022 Model S, and the side mirrors folded up like a dog’s ears when it’s being petted.

Key had brought along a four-page memo he drafted for our interview, listing facts about the accident, organized under subheadings like “Tesla Full Self-Driving Technology (Discussion).” He’s the sort of man who walks around with a battery of fully formed opinions on life’s most important subjects — computers, software, exercise, money — and a willingness to share them. He was particularly concerned that I understand that Autopilot and F.S.D. were saving lives: “The data shows that their accident rate while on Beta is far less than other cars,” one bullet point read, in 11-point Calibri. “Slowing down the F.S.D. Beta will result in more accidents and loss of life based on hard statistical data.”

Accidents like his — and even the deadly ones — are unfortunate, he argued, but they couldn’t distract society from the larger goal of widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. Key drew an analogy to the coronavirus vaccines, which prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths but also caused rare deaths and injuries from adverse reactions. “As a society,” he concluded, “we choose the path to save the most lives.”

We finished breakfast and walked to the car. Key had hoped to show off the newest version of F.S.D., but his system hadn’t updated yet. “Elon said it would be released at the end of the week,” he said. “Well, it’s Sunday.” Musk had been hinting for weeks that the update would be a drastic improvement over F.S.D. 10.13, which had been released over the summer. Because Musk liked to make little jokes out of the names and numbers in his life, the version number would jump to 10.69 with this release. (The four available Tesla models are S, 3, X and Y, presumably because that spells the word “sexy.”)

Key didn’t want to talk about Musk, but the executive’s reputational collapse had become impossible to ignore. He was in the middle of his bizarre, on-again-off-again campaign to take over Twitter, to the dismay of Tesla loyalists. And though he hadn’t yet attacked Anthony Fauci or spread conspiracy theories about Nancy Pelosi’s husband or gone on a journalist-banning spree on the platform, the question was already suggesting itself: How do you explain Elon Musk?

“People are flawed,” Key said cautiously, before repeating a sentiment that Musk often said about himself: If partisans on both sides hated him, he must be doing something right. No matter what trouble Musk got himself into, Key said, he was honest — “truthful to his detriment.”

As we drove, Key compared F.S.D. and the version of Autopilot on his 2015 Tesla. Autopilot, he said, was like fancy cruise control: speed, steering, crash avoidance. Though in his case, he said, “I guess it didn’t do crash avoidance.” He had been far more impressed by F.S.D. It was able to handle just about any situation he threw at it. “My only real complaint is it doesn’t always select the lane that I would.”

After a minute, the car warned Key to keep his hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. “Tesla now is kind of a nanny about that,” he complained. If Autopilot was once dangerously permissive of inattentive drivers — allowing them to nod off behind the wheel, even — that flaw, like the stationary-object bug, had been fixed. “Between the steering wheel and the eye tracking, that’s just a solved problem,” Key said.

Soon we were close to the scene of the crash. Scrub-covered hills with mountain-biking trails lacing through them rose on either side of us. That was what got Key into trouble on the day of the accident. He was looking at a favorite trail and ignoring the road. “I looked up to the left, and the car went off to the right,” he said. “I was in this false sense of security.”

We parked at the spot where he hit the police S.U.V. four years earlier. There was nothing special about the road here: no strange lines, no confusing lane shift, no merge. Just a single lane of traffic running along a row of parked cars. Why the Tesla failed at that moment was a mystery.

Eventually, Key told F.S.D. to take us back to the cafe. As we started our left turn, though, the steering wheel spasmed and the brake pedal juddered. Key muttered a nervous, “OK. … ”

After another moment, the car pulled halfway across the road and stopped. A line of cars was bearing down on our broadside. Key hesitated a second but then quickly took over and completed the turn. “It probably could have then accelerated, but I wasn’t willing to cut it that close,” he said. If he was wrong, of course, there was a good chance that he would have had his second A.I.-caused accident on the same one-mile stretch of road.

Three weeks before Key hit the police S.U.V., Musk wrote an email to Jim Riley, whose son Barrett died after his Tesla crashed while speeding.

Musk sent Riley his condolences, and the grieving father wrote back to ask whether Tesla’s software could be updated to allow an owner to set a maximum speed for the car, along with other restrictions on acceleration, access to the radio and the trunk and distance the car could drive from home. Musk, while sympathetic, replied: “If there are a large number of settings, it will be too complex for most people to use. I want to make sure that we get this right. Most good for most number of people.”

It was a stark demonstration of what makes Musk so unusual as a chief executive. First, he reached out directly to someone who was harmed by one of his products — something it’s hard to imagine the head of G.M. or Ford contemplating, if only for legal reasons. (Indeed, this email was entered into evidence after Riley sued Tesla.) And then Musk rebuffed Riley. No vague “I’ll look into it” or “We’ll see what we can do.” Riley receives a hard no.

Like Key, I want to resist Musk’s tendency to make every story about him. Tesla is a big car company with thousands of employees. It existed before Elon Musk. It might exist after Elon Musk. But if you want a parsimonious explanation for the challenges the company faces — in the form of the lawsuits, a crashing stock price and an A.I. that still seems all too capable of catastrophic failure — you should look to its mercurial, brilliant, sophomoric chief executive.

Perhaps there’s no mystery here: Musk is simply a narcissist, and every reckless swerve he makes is meant solely to draw the world’s attention.

He seemed to endorse this theory in a tongue-in-cheek way during a recent deposition, when a lawyer asked him, “Do you have some kind of unique ability to identify narcissistic sociopaths?” and he replied, “You mean by looking in the mirror?”

But what looks like self-obsession and poor impulse control might instead be the fruits of a coherent philosophy, one that Musk has detailed on many occasions. It’s there in the email to Riley: the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That dictum, as part of an ad hoc system of utilitarian ethics, can explain all sorts of mystifying decisions that Musk has made, not least his breakneck pursuit of A.I., which in the long term, he believes, will save countless lives.

Unfortunately for Musk, the short term comes first, and his company faces a rough few months. In February, the first lawsuit against Tesla for a crash involving Autopilot will go to trial. Four more will follow in quick succession. Donald Slavik, who will represent plaintiffs in as many as three of those cases, says that a normal car company would have settled by now: “They look at it as a cost of doing business.” Musk has vowed to fight it out in court, no matter the dangers this might present for Tesla. “The dollars can add up,” Slavik said, “especially if there’s any finding of punitive damages.”

The many claims of the pending lawsuits come back to a single theme: Tesla consistently inflated consumer expectations and played down the dangers involved.

Slavik sent me one of the complaints he filed against Tesla, which lists prominent Autopilot crashes from A to Z — in fact, from A to WW. In China, a Tesla slammed into the back of a street sweeper. In Florida, a Tesla hit a tractor-trailer that was stretched across two lanes of a highway.

During a downpour in Indiana, a Tesla Model 3 hydroplaned off the road and burst into flames. In the Florida Keys, a Model S drove through an intersection and killed a pedestrian. In New York, a Model Y struck a man who was changing his tire on the shoulder of the Long Island Expressway. In Montana, a Tesla steered unexpectedly into a highway barrier. Then the same thing happened in Dallas and in Mountain View and in San Jose.

The arrival of self-driving vehicles wasn’t meant to be like this. Day in, day out, we scare and maim and kill ourselves in cars. In the United States last year, there were around 11 million road accidents, nearly five million injuries and more than 40,000 deaths. Tesla’s A.I. was meant to put an end to this blood bath. Instead, on average, there is at least one Autopilot-related crash in the United States every day, and Tesla is under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Ever since Autopilot was released in October 2015, Musk has encouraged drivers to think of it as more advanced than it was, stating in January 2016 that it was “probably better” than a human driver. That November, the company released a video of a Tesla navigating the roads of the Bay Area with the disclaimer: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.” Musk also rejected the name “Copilot” in favor of “Autopilot.”

The fine print made clear that the technology was for driver assistance only, but that message received a fraction of the attention of Musk’s announcements. A large number of drivers seemed genuinely confused about Autopilot’s capabilities. (Tesla also declined to disclose that the car in the 2016 video crashed in the company’s parking lot.) Slavik’s legal complaint doesn’t hold back: “Tesla’s conduct was despicable, and so contemptible that it would be looked down upon and despised by ordinary decent people.”

The many claims of the pending lawsuits come back to a single theme: Tesla consistently inflated consumer expectations and played down the dangers involved. The cars didn’t have sufficient driver monitoring because Musk didn’t want drivers to think that the car needed human supervision. (Musk in April 2019: “If you have a system that’s at or below human-level reliability, then driver monitoring makes sense. But if your system is dramatically better, more reliable than a human, then monitoring does not help much.”) Drivers weren’t warned about problems with automatic braking or “uncommanded lane changes.” The company would admit to the technology’s limitations in the user manual but publish viral videos of a Tesla driving a complicated route with no human intervention.

Musk’s ideal customer was someone like Key — willing to accept the blame when something went wrong but possessing almost limitless faith in the next update. In a deposition, an engineer at Tesla made this all but explicit: “We want to let the customer know that, No. 1, you should have confidence in your vehicle: Everything is working just as it should. And, secondly, the reason for your accident or reason for your incident always falls back on you.”

After our failed left turn in Laguna Beach, Key quickly diagnosed the problem. If only the system had upgraded to F.S.D. 10.69, he argued, the car surely would have managed the turn safely. Unfortunately for Musk, not every Tesla owner is like Dave Key. The plaintiffs in the Autopilot lawsuits might agree that the A.I. is improving, but only on the backs of the early adopters and bystanders who might be killed along the way.

Online, there’s a battle between pro-Musk and anti-Musk factions about Autopilot and F.S.D. Reddit has a forum called r/RealTesla that showcases the most embarrassing A.I. screw-ups, along with more generic complaints: squeaky steering wheels, leaky roofs, haywire electronics, noisy cabins, stiff suspensions, wrinkled leather seats, broken door handles. The Musk stans tend to sequester themselves in r/TeslaMotors, where they post Tesla sightings, cheer on the company’s latest factory openings and await the next big announcement from the boss.

I found David Alford on YouTube, where he posted a video called “Tesla Full Self-Driving Running a Red Light.” In it, we see the view through the windshield as Alford’s car approaches an intersection with a left-turn lane that has a dedicated traffic signal. With a few hundred yards remaining, the light shifts from green to red, but the car doesn’t stop. Instead, it rolls into the intersection, where it’s on track to collide with oncoming traffic, until Alford takes over.

In the comments, Tesla fans grow angry with Alford for posting the video, but he pushes back: “How does it help put pressure on Tesla to improve their systems if you are scared to post their faults?” Replying to one comment, he writes that F.S.D. is “unethical in the context they are using it.”

When I called Alford, I was expecting someone suited for r/RealTesla, but he ended up having more of an r/TeslaMotors vibe. He told me that he would be willing to take me to the site of his video and demonstrate the failure, but first I had to make a promise. “The only thing I ask is try not to put me in a bad light toward Tesla,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to think that I hate the company or whatnot, because I’m a very, very big supporter of them.”

Alford lives in Fresno, Calif., and before I went to meet him one day last fall, he told me some exciting news: He had just received the F.S.D. 10.69 update. Our drive would be his first attempt to navigate the intersection from the YouTube video with the new system.

The morning I met him, he was wearing a black T-shirt that showed off his tattoos, black sunglasses and faded black jeans with holes in the knees. Hollywood would typecast him as a white-hat hacker, and indeed he’s a software guy like Key: He is a product engineer for a Bay Area tech company.

His white 2020 Tesla Model 3 had a magnetic bumper sticker he found on Etsy: CAUTION FULL SELF-DRIVING TESTING IN PROGRESS. He said he drives in F.S.D. mode 90 percent of the time, so his car is always acting a bit strange — the sticker helped keep some of the honking from other cars at bay. He seemed to be, like Key, an ideal F.S.D. beta tester: interested in the software, alert to its flaws, dogged in his accumulation of autonomous miles.

I climbed into the passenger seat, and Alford punched in our first destination: a spot a few blocks away in downtown Fresno. We were lucky it was overcast, he said, because the car behaved well in these conditions. On days when it was sunny out and there was a lot of glare, the car could be “moody.” And when it was foggy, and it was often foggy in Fresno, “it freaks out.”

After a few minutes, we approached a crosswalk just as two parents pulling a child in a wagon began to cross. A screen next to the steering wheel showed that the A.I. had registered the two pedestrians but not the wagon. Alford said he was hovering his foot over the brake, but the car stopped on its own.

After the wagon came a woman in a wheelchair. The car stayed put. Alford told me that the automotive jargon for anyone on the street who is not in a car or a truck is a “V.R.U.,” a vulnerable road user. And it’s true: Pedestrians and cyclists and children in strollers and women in wheelchairs — they are so fragile compared with these giant machines we’ve stuffed into our cities and onto our highways. One wrong move, and a car will crush them.

We turned on to Van Ness Avenue, which cuts through downtown. It had been newly paved, and instead of lines on the street, there were little yellow tabs indicating where the lines would eventually go. The Tesla hated this and dodged worriedly right and left, looking for something to anchor it. There were no other cars around, so Alford let it get that out of its system and eventually find a lane line to follow.

“You build a tolerance to the risks it takes,” he said. “Yes, it’s swerving all over the place, but I know it’s not going to crash into something.” Still, the experience of the beta had changed the way he approached his own work. “It’s actually made me, as a software developer, more hesitant to put my software in the hands of people” before it’s fully ready, he said, “even though it’s not dangerous.”

Seconds later, we drove through an intersection as two V.R.U.s — a man walking a dog — entered the crosswalk. They were a safe distance away, but the dog started to strain against its leash in our direction. Alford and I knew that the pet wasn’t in peril because the leash would stop it. But all the Tesla saw was a dog about to jump in front of us, and it came to an abrupt stop. It was a good outcome, all things considered — no injuries to any life-form — but it was far from a seamless self-driving experience.

Alford nudged the steering wheel just often enough that the car never warned him to pay attention. He didn’t mind the strict driver monitoring: He never tired of studying the car’s behavior, so he was never tempted to tune out. Still, he knew people who abused the system. One driver tied an ankle weight to the steering wheel to “kick back and do whatever” during long road trips. “I know a couple of people with Teslas that have F.S.D. beta,” he said, “and they have it to drink and drive instead of having to call an Uber.”

We left downtown and got on the highway, headed toward an area northeast of the city called Clovis, where the tricky intersection was. Alford pulled up his F.S.D. settings. His default driver mode was Average, but he said he has found that the two other options — Chill and Assertive — aren’t much different: “The car is just really aggressive anyway.” For highway driving, though, he had the car set to something called Mad Max mode, which meant it would overtake any vehicle in front of him if it was going even a few miles per hour slower than his preferred speed.

We exited the highway and quickly came to a knot of cars. Something had gone wrong with the traffic light, which was flashing red, and drivers in all four directions, across eight lanes, had to figure out when to go and when to yield. The choreography here was delicate: There were too many cars to interweave without some allowances being made for mercy and confusion and expediency. Among the humans, there was a good deal of waving others on and attempted eye contact to see whether someone was going to yield or not.

We crept toward the intersection, car by car, until it was our turn. If we were expecting nuance, there was none. Once we had come to a complete stop, the Tesla accelerated quickly, cutting off one car turning across us and veering around another. It was not so much inhuman as the behavior of a human who was determined to be a jerk. “That was bad,” Alford said. “Normally I would disengage once it makes a mistake like that.” He clicked a button to send a snapshot of the incident to Tesla.

Later, at a four-way stop, the car was too cautious. It waited too long, and the other two cars at the intersection drove off before we did. We talked about the old saying about safe driving: “Don’t be nice; be predictable.” For a computer, Tesla’s A.I. was surprisingly erratic. “It’s not nice or predictable,” Alford said.

A few miles down the road, we reached the intersection from the video: a left turn onto East Shepherd Avenue from State Route 168. The traffic light sits right at the point where the city’s newest developments end and open land begins. If we drove straight, we would immediately find ourselves surrounded by sagebrush, on the way up into the Sierra.

To replicate the error that Alford uncovered, we needed to approach the intersection with a red left-turn arrow and a green light to continue straight. On our first pass, the arrow turned green at the last second. On the second pass, though, on an empty road, the timing was right: a red for our turn and green for everyone else.

As we got closer, the car moved into the turning lane and started to slow. “It sees the red,” I said.

“No,” Alford said. “It always slows down a little here before plowing through.” But this time, it kept slowing. Alford couldn’t believe it. “It’s still going to run the light,” he said. But he was wrong: We came to a tidy stop right at the line. Alford was shocked. “They fixed it!” he said. “That one I’ve been giving them an issue about for two years.” We waited patiently until the light turned green, and the Tesla drove smoothly onto Shepherd Avenue. No problem.

It was as clear a demonstration of Musk’s hypothesis as one could hope for. There was a situation that kept stumping the A.I. until, after enough data had been collected by dedicated drivers like Alford, the neural net figured it out. Repeat this risk-reward conversion X number of times, and maybe Tesla will solve self-driving. Maybe even next year.

On the drive back to the center of Fresno, Alford was buoyant, delighted with the possibility that he had changed the Tesla world for the better. I asked him whether the F.S.D. 10.69 release met the hype that preceded it. “To be honest, yeah, I think so,” he said. (He was even more enthusiastic about the version of F.S.D. released in December, which he described as nearly flawless.)

A few minutes later, we reached a rundown part of town. Alford said that in general Tesla’s A.I. does better in higher-income areas, maybe because those areas have more Tesla owners in them. “Are there data biases for higher-income areas because that’s where the Teslas are?” he wondered.

We approached an intersection and tried to make a left — in what turned out to be a repeat of the Laguna Beach scenario. The Tesla started creeping out, trying to get a clearer look at the cars coming from our left. It inched forward, inched forward, until once again we were fully in the lane of traffic. There was nothing stopping the Tesla from accelerating and completing the turn, but instead it just sat there. At the same time, a tricked-out Honda Accord sped toward us, about three seconds away from hitting the driver-side door. Alford quickly took over and punched the accelerator, and we escaped safely. This time, he didn’t say anything.

It was a rough ride home from there. At a standard left turn at a traffic light, the system freaked out and tried to go right. Alford had to take over. And then, as we approached a cloverleaf on-ramp to the highway, the car started to accelerate. To stay on the ramp, we needed to make an arcing right turn; in front of us was a steep drop-off into a construction site with no guard rails. The car showed no sign of turning. We crossed a solid white line, milliseconds away from jumping off the road when, at last, the wheel jerked sharply to the right, and we hugged the road again. This time, F.S.D. had corrected itself, but if it hadn’t, the crash would have surely killed us.

Peter Thiel, Musk’s former business partner at PayPal, once said that if he wrote a book, the chapter about Musk would be called “The Man Who Knew Nothing About Risk.” But that’s a misunderstanding of Musk’s attitude: If you parse his statements, he presents himself as a man who simply embraces astonishing amounts of present-day risk in the rational assumption of future gains.

Musk’s clearest articulation of his philosophy has come, of course, on Twitter. “We should take the set of actions that maximize total public happiness!” he wrote to one user who asked him how to save the planet. In August, he called the writings of William MacAskill, a Scottish utilitarian ethicist, “a close match for my philosophy.” (MacAskill, notably, was also the intellectual muse of Sam Bankman-Fried, though he cut ties with him after the FTX scandal came to light.)

Musk’s embrace of risk has produced true breakthroughs: SpaceX can land reusable rockets on remote-controlled landing pads in the ocean; Starlink is providing internet service to Ukrainians on the front lines; OpenAI creeps ever closer to passing the Turing test. As for Tesla, even Musk’s harshest critics — and I talked to many of them while reporting this article — would pause, unbidden, to give him credit for creating the now-robust market in electric vehicles in the United States and around the world.

And yet, as Robert Lowell wrote, “No rocket goes as far astray as man.” In recent months, as the outrages at Twitter and elsewhere began to multiply, Musk seemed to determined to squander much of the good will he had built up over his career. I asked Slavik, the plaintiffs’ attorney, whether the recent shift in public sentiment against Musk made his job in the courtroom any easier. “I think at least there are more people who are skeptical of his judgment at this point than were before,” he said. “If I were on the other side, I’d be worried about it.”

Some of Musk’s most questionable decisions, though, begin to make sense if seen as a result of a blunt utilitarian calculus. Last month, Reuters reported that Neuralink, Musk’s medical-device company, had caused the needless deaths of dozens of laboratory animals through rushed experiments. Internal messages from Musk made it clear that the urgency came from the top. “We are simply not moving fast enough,” he wrote. “It is driving me nuts!” The cost-benefit analysis must have seemed clear to him: Neuralink had the potential to cure paralysis, he believed, which would improve the lives of millions of future humans. The suffering of a smaller number of animals was worth it.

This form of crude long-term-ism, in which the sheer size of future generations gives them added ethical weight, even shows up in Musk’s statements about buying Twitter. He called Twitter a “digital town square” that was responsible for nothing less than preventing a new American civil war. “I didn’t do it to make more money,” he wrote. “I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.”

Autopilot and F.S.D. represent the culmination of this approach. “The overarching goal of Tesla engineering,” Musk wrote, “is maximize area under user happiness curve.” Unlike with Twitter or even Neuralink, people were dying as a result of his decisions — but no matter. In 2019, in a testy exchange of email with the activist investor and steadfast Tesla critic Aaron Greenspan, Musk bristled at the suggestion that Autopilot was anything other than lifesaving technology. “The data is unequivocal that Autopilot is safer than human driving by a significant margin,” he wrote. “It is unethical and false of you to claim otherwise. In doing so, you are endangering the public.”

I wanted to ask Musk to elaborate on his philosophy of risk, but he didn’t reply to my interview requests. So instead I spoke with Peter Singer, a prominent utilitarian philosopher, to sort through some of the ethical issues involved. Was Musk right when he claimed that anything that delays the development and adoption of autonomous vehicles was inherently unethical?

“I think he has a point,” Singer said, “if he is right about the facts.”

Musk rarely talks about Autopilot or F.S.D. without mentioning how superior it is to a human driver. At a shareholders’ meeting in August, he said that Tesla was “solving a very important part of A.I., and one that can ultimately save millions of lives and prevent tens of millions of serious injuries by driving just an order of magnitude safer than people.” Musk does have data to back this up: Starting in 2018, Tesla has released quarterly safety reports to the public, which show a consistent advantage to using Autopilot. The most recent one, from late 2022, said that Teslas with Autopilot engaged were one-tenth as likely to crash as a regular car.

That is the argument that Tesla has to make to the public and to juries this spring. In the words of the company’s safety report: “While no car can prevent all accidents, we work every day to try to make them much less likely to occur.” Autopilot may cause a crash WW times, but without that technology, we’d be at OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Singer told me that even if Autopilot and human drivers were equally deadly, we should prefer the A.I., provided that the next software update, based on data from crash reports and near misses, would make the system even safer. “That’s a little bit like surgeons doing experimental surgery,” he said. “Probably the first few times they do the surgery, they’re going to lose patients, but the argument for that is they will save more patients in the long run.” It was important, however, Singer added, that the surgeons get the informed consent of the patients.

Does Tesla have the informed consent of its drivers? The answer might be different for different car owners — it would probably be different for Dave Key in 2018 than it is in 2022. But most customers are not aware of how flawed Autopilot is, said Philip Koopman, the author of “How Safe Is Safe Enough? Measuring and Predicting Autonomous Vehicle Safety.” The cars keep making “really crazy, crazy, surprising mistakes,” he said. “Tesla’s practice of using untrained civilians as test drivers for an immature technology is really egregious.”

Koopman also objects to Musk’s supposed facts. One obvious problem with the data the company puts out in its quarterly safety report is that it directly compares Autopilot miles, which are mainly driven on limited-access highways, with all vehicle miles. “You’re using Autopilot on the safe miles,” Koopman said. “So of course it looks great. And then you’re comparing it to not-Autopilot on the hard miles.”

In the third quarter of 2022, Tesla claimed that there was one crash for every 6.26 million miles driven using Autopilot — indeed, almost 10 times better than the U.S. baseline of one crash for every 652,000 miles. Crashes, however, are far more likely on surface streets than on the highway: One study from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation showed that crashes were five times as common on local roads as on turnpikes. When comparing Autopilot numbers to highway numbers, Tesla’s advantage drops significantly.

Tesla’s safety claims look even shakier when you try to control for the age of the car and the age of the driver. Most Tesla owners are middle-aged or older, which eliminates one risky pool of drivers: teenagers. And simply having a new car decreases your chance of an accident significantly. It’s even possible that the number of Teslas in California — with its generally mild, dry weather — has skewed the numbers in its favor. An independent study that tried to correct for some of these biases suggested that Teslas crashed just as often when Autopilot was on as when it was off.

“That’s always been a problem for utilitarians,” Singer told me. “Because it doesn’t have strict moral rules, people might think they can get away with doing the sums in ways that suit their purposes.”

Utilitarian thinking has led individuals to perform acts of breathtaking virtue, but putting this ethical framework in the hands of an industrialist presents certain dangers. True utilitarianism requires a careful balancing of all harms and benefits, in the present and the future, with the patience to do this assessment and the patience to refrain from acting if the amount of suffering and death caused by pushing forward wasn’t clear. Musk is using utilitarianism in a more limited way, arguing that as long as he’s sure something will have a net benefit, he’s permitted to do it right now.

In the past two decades, Musk has somehow maneuvered himself into running multiple companies where he can plausibly claim to be working to preserve the future of humanity. SpaceX can’t just deliver satellites into low orbit; it’s also going to send us to Mars. Tesla can’t just build a solid electric car; it’s going to solve the problem of self-driving. Twitter can’t just be one more place where we gather to argue; it’s one of the props holding up civilization. With the stakes suitably raised, all sorts of questionable behavior begin to look — almost — reasonable.

“True believers,” the novelist Jeanette Winterson wrote, “would rather see governments topple and history rewritten than scuff the cover of their faith.” Musk seems unshakable in his conviction that his approach is right. But for all his urgency, he still might lose the A.I. race.

Right now in San Francisco and Austin, Texas, and coming soon to cities all over the world, you can hail a robotaxi operated by Cruise or Waymo.

“If there’s one moment in time where we go from fiction to reality, it’s now,” Sebastian Thrun, who founded Google’s self-driving car team, told me. (“I didn’t say this last year, by the way,” he added.) Thrun was no r/RealTesla lurker; he was on his fifth Tesla, and he said he admired the company: “What Tesla has is really beautiful. They have a fleet of vehicles in the field.” But at this point, Tesla’s competitors are closer to achieving full self-driving than any vehicle equipped with F.S.D.

In recent months, Musk has stopped promising that autonomous Teslas are just around the corner. “I thought the self-driving problem would be hard,” he said, “but it was harder than I thought. It’s not like I thought it’d be easy. I thought it would be very hard. But it was actually way harder than even that.”

On Dec. 29, 2019, the same day a Tesla in Indiana got into a deadly crash with a parked fire truck, an off-duty chauffeur named Kevin George Aziz Riad was driving his gray 2016 Tesla Model S down the Gardena Freeway in suburban Los Angeles. It had been a long drive back from a visit to Orange County, and Riad had Autopilot turned on. Shortly after midnight, the car passed under a giant sign that said END FREEWAY SIGNAL AHEAD in flashing yellow lights.

The Autopilot kept Riad’s Tesla at a steady speed as it approached the stoplight that marked the end of the freeway and the beginning of Artesia Boulevard. According to a witness, the light was red, but the car drove straight through the intersection, striking a Honda Civic. Riad had only minor injuries, but the two people in the Civic, Gilberto Alcazar Lopez and Maria Guadalupe Nieves, died at the scene. Their families said that they were on a first date.

Who was responsible for this accident? State officials have charged Riad with manslaughter and plan to prosecute him as if he were the sole actor behind the two deaths. The victims’ families, meanwhile, have filed civil suits against both Riad and Tesla. Depending on the outcomes of the criminal and civil cases, the Autopilot system could be judged, in effect, legally responsible, not legally responsible or both simultaneously.

Not long ago, I went to see the spot where Riad’s Tesla reportedly ran the red light. I had rented a Tesla for the day, to find out firsthand, finally, what it felt like to drive with Autopilot in control. I drove east on surface streets until I reached a ramp where I could merge onto State Route 91, the Gardena Freeway. It was late at night when Riad crashed. I was taking my ride in the middle of the day.

As soon as I was on the highway, I engaged Autopilot, and the car took over. I had the road mostly to myself. This Tesla was programmed to go 15 percent above the speed limit whenever Autopilot was in use, and the car accelerated quickly to 74 miles per hour, which was Riad’s speed when he crashed. Were his Autopilot speed settings the same?

The car did a good job of staying in its lane, better than any other traffic-aware cruise control I’ve used. I tried taking my hands off the wheel, but the Tesla beeped at me after a few seconds.

As I got closer to the crash site, I passed under the giant END FREEWAY SIGNAL AHEAD sign. The Autopilot drove on blithely. After another 500 feet, the same sign appeared again, flashing urgently. There was only a few hundred feet of divided highway left, and then Route 91 turned into a surface street, right at the intersection with Vermont Avenue.

I hovered my foot over the brake. What was I doing? Seeing if the car truly would just blaze through a red light? Of course it would. I suppose I was trying to imagine how easy it would be to do such a thing. At the end of a long night, on a road empty of cars, with something called Autopilot in control? My guess is that Riad didn’t even notice that he had left the highway.

The car sped under the warning lights, 74 miles an hour. The crash data shows that before the Tesla hit Lopez and Nieves, the brakes hadn’t been used for six minutes.

My Tesla bore down on the intersection. I got closer and closer to the light. No brakes. And then, just before I was about to take over, a pickup truck swung out of the far right lane and cut me off. The Tesla sensed it immediately and braked hard. If only that truck — as undeniable as any giant chunk of hardware can be — had been there in December 2019, Lopez and Nieves would still be alive.

Christopher Cox is an editor at New York magazine and the author of “The Deadline Effect.” His last article for The Times Magazine was about the business empire of the restaurateur Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Justin Metz is an art director and illustrator known for his bold concepts rendered in C.G.I.

The post Elon Musk’s Appetite for Destruction appeared first on New York Times.

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The country had 1.41 billion people at the end of last year, 850,000 fewer than the end of 2021, according to data released by the National Statistics Bureau on Tuesday. That marks the first drop since 1961, the final year of the Great Famine under former leader Mao Zedong, and coincided with figures showing China’s economy expanded last year at the second-slowest pace since the 1970s.

Some 9.56 million babies were born in 2022, down from 10.62 million a year earlier, the lowest level since at least 1950, despite efforts by the government to encourage families to have more children.

A total of 10.41 million people died, a slight increase from around 10 million recorded in recent years. China suffered a surge in Covid-related deaths starting last month after abruptly dropping its zero-tolerance approach to the virus in early December. More Covid-related deaths will likely come this year as fatalities usually lag infections by weeks and infections are still spreading across the country. That outbreak could further push up the number of deaths this year.

The decline in newborns was the main cause of the population contraction, according to Kang Yi, head of the National Statistics Bureau.

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Neuroscientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) observed how the brains of both young and older adults activated when confronted with the psychological suffering of others. Among older study subjects, neuronal connections displayed significant emotional inertia. In other words, negative emotions felt by those older adults appear to have excessively modified their neuronal connections over an extended period of time.

This trend was most pronounced in the posterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala. Both of those brain regions are strongly involved in managing emotions and autobiographical memory.

Study authors explain that these results indicate better management of negative emotions, via meditation for example, may help curb neurodegeneration. This work is just the latest in modern science’s efforts to better understand the brain; researchers have been investigating how the brain reacts to emotions for the past two decades.

‘‘We are beginning to understand what happens at the moment of perception of an emotional stimulus,’’ explains Dr. Olga Klimecki, a researcher at the UNIGE’s Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences and at the Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen, last author of this study carried out as part of a European research project co-directed by the UNIGE, in a university release. ‘‘However, what happens afterwards remains a mystery. How does the brain switch from one emotion to another? How does it return to its initial state? Does emotional variability change with age? What are the consequences for the brain of mismanagement of emotions?’’

‘Older people show a different pattern of brain activity and connectivity’

Earlier studies in psychology have found that the capacity to change one’s emotions in a quick manner can benefit mental health. Meanwhile, those who are unable to regulate their emotions, and thus remain in the same emotional state for longer periods, are usually at a higher risk of depression.

‘‘Our aim was to determine what cerebral trace remains after the viewing of emotional scenes, in order to evaluate the brain’s reaction, and, above all, its recovery mechanisms. We focused on the older adults, in order to identify possible differences between normal and pathological aging,’’ explains Patrik Vuilleumier, professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the Faculty of Medicine and at the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences at the UNIGE, who co-directed this study.

Researchers showed participants a series of short TV clips displaying people in a state of emotional suffering. For example, during a natural disaster. Videos showing neutral emotional content were also presented, and subjects’ brain activity was observed via functional MRI. To start, a cohort of 27 people over 65 years of age were compared with a group of 29 people aged around 25 years old. Then, the same experiment was carried out again with 127 older adults.

‘‘Older people generally show a different pattern of brain activity and connectivity from younger people,’’ comments Sebastian Baez Lugo, a researcher in Patrik Vuilleumier’s laboratory and the first author of this study. ‘‘This is particularly noticeable in the level of activation of the default mode network, a brain network that is highly activated in resting state. Its activity is frequently disrupted by depression or anxiety, suggesting that it is involved in the regulation of emotions. In the older adults, part of this network, the posterior cingulate cortex, which processes autobiographical memory, shows an increase in its connections with the amygdala, which processes important emotional stimuli. These connections are stronger in subjects with high anxiety scores, with rumination, or with negative thoughts.’’

Future study will test how mindfulness meditation can blunt negative emotions

It’s important to note that older people are generally better equipped to regulate their emotions than their younger counterparts. Older adults can usually focus more easily on positive details, even during a negative event. However, changes in connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala suggest a deviation in the normal aging process, accentuated among those who show more anxiety, rumination, and negative emotions. The posterior cingulate cortex is one of the brain regions most affected by dementia, which indicates that the presence of these symptoms could increase neurodegenerative disease risk.

‘‘Is it poor emotional regulation and anxiety that increases the risk of dementia or the other way around? We still don’t know,’’ adds Sebastian Baez Lugo. ‘‘Our hypothesis is that more anxious people would have no or less capacity for emotional distancing. The mechanism of emotional inertia in the context of aging would then be explained by the fact that the brain of these people remains ‘frozen’ in a negative state by relating the suffering of others to their own emotional memories.”

So, is it possible to prevent dementia by acting on the emotional inertia mechanism? Study authors are now conducting an 18-month interventional study focusing on the effects of both foreign language learning and meditation.

‘‘In order to further refine our results, we will also compare the effects of two types of meditation: mindfulness, which consists of anchoring oneself in the present in order to concentrate on one’s own feelings, and what  is known as ‘compassionate’ meditation, which aims to actively increase positive emotions towards others,’’ study authors conclude.

The study is published in Nature Aging.

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The invisible chemicals called PFAS were first developed in the 1940s to resist water and heat, and are now used in items such as non-stick pans, textiles, fire suppression foams and food packaging.

But the indestructibility of PFAS, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, means the pollutants have built up over time in the air, soil, lakes, rivers, food, drinking water and even our bodies.

There have been growing calls for stricter regulation for PFAS, which have been linked to a range of serious health issues including liver damage, high cholesterol, reduced immune responses and several kinds of cancer.

To find out PFAS contamination in locally caught fish, a team of researchers analysed more than 500 samples from rivers and lakes across the United States between 2013 and 2015.

The median level of PFAS in the fish was 9,500 nanogrammes per kilogramme, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Research.

Nearly three quarters of the detected "forever chemicals" was PFOS, one of the most common and hazardous of the thousands of PFAS.

Eating just one freshwater fish equalled drinking water with PFOS at 48 parts per trillion for a month, the researchers calculated.

 Non-stick pans are among the products that use PFAS, which have been linked to a range of serious health issues © Karim SAHIB / AFP/File

Last year the US Environmental Protection Agency lowered the level of PFOS in drinking water it considers safe to 0.02 parts per trillion.

The total PFAS level in the freshwater fish was 278 times higher than what has been found in commercially sold fish, the study said.

'Greatest chemical threat'

David Andrews, a senior scientist at the non-profit Environmental Working Group which led research, told AFP he grew up catching and eating fish.

"I can no longer look at a fish without thinking about PFAS contamination," said Andrews, one of the study's authors.

The findings were "particularly concerning due to the impact on disadvantaged communities that consume fish as a source protein or for social or cultural reasons," he added.

"This research makes me incredibly angry because companies that made and used PFAS contaminated the globe and have not been held responsible."

Patrick Byrne, an environmental pollution researcher at the UK's Liverpool John Moores University not involved in the research, said PFAS are "probably the greatest chemical threat the human race is facing in the 21st century".

"This study is important because it provides the first evidence for widespread transfer of PFAS directly from fish to humans," he told AFP.

Andrews called for much more stringent regulation to bring an end to all non-essential uses of PFAS.

The study comes after Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden submitted a proposal to ban PFAS to the EU's European Chemicals Agency on Friday.

The proposal, "one of the broadest in the EU's history," comes after the five countries found that PFAS were not adequately controlled, and bloc-wide regulation was needed, the agency said in a statement.

© 2023 AFP

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The observed associations between frequent green space visits and lower use of drugs for depression, anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, and asthma were not dependent on socio-economic position.

Exposure to natural environments is thought to be good for health, but the evidence is inconsistent, say the researchers.

They wanted to find out if the amount of residential green and blue space (bodies of water), frequency of green space visits, and views of green and blue spaces from home might be separately associated with the use of certain prescription meds.

They chose prescription meds as a proxy for ill health, and those for anxiety and insomnia, depression, high blood pressure, and asthma, in particular, because they are used to treat common and potentially serious health issues.

They drew on the responses of 16,000 randomly selected residents of Helsinki, Espoo, and Vantaa, to the Helsinki Capital Region Environmental Health Survey in 2015-16. These three cities make up the largest urban area in Finland.

The survey gathered information on how city dwellers, aged at least 25, experience residential green and blue spaces within a 1 km radius of home.

Respondents were also asked to report their use of prescribed meds—drugs for anxiety, insomnia, and depression, collectively known as psychotropic drugs; high blood pressure and asthma drugs—if applicable, for periods ranging from within the past week up to more than a year ago or never.

They were also asked how often they spent time, or exercised outdoors, in green spaces, during May and September, with options ranging from never to 5 or more times a week.

And they were asked whether they could see green or blue spaces from any of their windows at home, and if so, how often they took in these views, with options ranging from seldom to often.

Green areas were defined as forests, gardens, parks, castle parks, cemeteries, zoos, herbaceous vegetation associations such as natural grassland and moors, and wetlands. Blue areas were defined as sea, lakes, and rivers.

Potentially influential factors, including health behaviors, outdoor air pollution and noise, and household income and educational attainment were also considered.

The final analysis included approximately 6000 participants who provided complete information.

This showed that the amount of residential green and blue spaces, or views of them from home, weren't associated with the use of prescription meds for mental health, insomnia, high blood pressure or asthma.

But the frequency of green space visits was. Compared with less than one weekly visit, visiting 3-4 times weekly was associated with 33% lower odds of using mental health meds, 36% lower odds of using blood pressure meds, and 26% lower odds of using asthma meds.

The equivalent figures for visiting at least 5 times a week were, respectively, 22%, 41%, and 24% lower.

These observed associations were weakened when weight (BMI) was factored in, particularly for asthma meds, as obesity is a known risk factor for asthma, point out the researchers.

The effects of visiting green spaces were also stronger among those reporting the lowest annual household income ( below €30, 000). But overall, the associations found didn't depend on household income and educational attainment.

This is an observational study, and so can't establish cause and effect. No information was available on illness severity, and better health may enable a person to spend more time outdoors.

Finland has high forest cover, while Finnish cities are relatively green, making it easy for those willing to use green spaces to access them with minimal effort, they add.

But they conclude: "Mounting scientific evidence supporting the health benefits of nature exposure is likely to increase the supply of high quality green spaces in urban environments and promote their active use. This might be one way to improve health and welfare in cities."

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The gut microbes found in a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks differed substantially from those of their secular neighbors, and have been linked to a lower risk of anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular disease.

Research shows that the gut microbiome can affect mood and behavior through the gut–brain axis. This includes the body's immune response, hormonal signaling, stress response and the vagus nerve—the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system, which oversees an array of crucial bodily functions.

The significance of the group and specimen design is that these deep-thinking Tibetan monks can serve as representatives of some deeper meditations. Although the number of samples is small, they are rare because of their geographical location.

Meditation is increasingly being used to help treat mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, traumatic stress, and eating disorders as well as chronic pain. But it's not clear if it might also be able to alter the composition of the gut microbiome, say the researchers.

In a bid to find out, the researchers analyzed the stool and blood samples of 37 Tibetan Buddhist monks from three temples and 19 secular residents in the neighboring areas.

Tibetan Buddhist meditation originates from the ancient Indian medical system known as Ayurveda, and is a form of psychological training, say the researchers. The monks in this study had been practicing it for at least 2 hours a day for between 3 and 30 years.

None of the participants had used agents that can alter the volume and diversity of gut microbes: antibiotics; probiotics; prebiotics; or antifungal drugs in the preceding 3 months.

Both groups were matched for age, blood pressure, heart rate, and diet.

Stool sample analysis revealed significant differences in the diversity and volume of microbes between the monks and their neighbors.

Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes species were dominant in both groups, as would be expected. But Bacteroidetes were significantly enriched in the monks' stool samples (29% vs. 4%), which also contained abundant Prevotella (42% vs 6%) and a high volume of Megamonas and Faecalibacterium.

"Collectively, several bacteria enriched in the meditation group [have been] associated with the alleviation of mental illness, suggesting that meditation can influence certain bacteria that may have a role in mental health," write the researchers.

These include Prevotella, Bacteroidetes, Megamonas and Faecalibacterium species, the previously published research suggests.

The researchers then applied an advanced analytical technique to predict which chemical processes the microbes might be influencing. This indicated that several protective anti-inflammatory pathways, in addition to metabolism—the conversion of food into energy—were enhanced in the meditation people.

Finally, blood sample analysis showed that levels of agents associated with a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease, including total cholesterol and apolipoprotein B, were significantly lower in the monks than in their secular neighbors by their functional analysis with the gut microbes.

Although a comparative study, it is observational and the numbers of participants were small, all male, and lived at high altitude, making it difficult to draw any firm or generalisable conclusions. And the potential health implications could only be inferred from previously published research.

But based on their findings, the researchers suggest that the role of meditation in helping to prevent or treat psychosomatic illness definitely merits further research.

And they conclude, "These results suggest that long-term deep meditation may have a beneficial effect on gut microbiota, enabling the body to maintain an optimal state of health."

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A Falcon Heavy rocket launched about 10 minutes after sunset on Sunday from Florida.

Trevor Mahlmann

 

The Falcon Heavy rocket made its fifth launch in five years on Sunday evening from Florida. However, this was the first launch of the triple-core booster in twilight, and this rare evening light provided some spectacular new insights into the liftoff and return of the rocket.

 

This post-sunset lighting can be seen in the introductory image above, which showcases reddish hues bouncing off the white cores and upper stage. That colour comes from the rocket gaining enough altitude to be in line of sight with the Sun.

 

Now the second-most powerful rocket in the world after NASA's Space Launch System, the Falcon Heavy always puts on a great show, with its 27 Merlin engines firing at once. It holds the record for the rocket with the most first-stage engines to reach orbit—at least, it will until SpaceX's Starship rocket flies later this year.

 

Sunday's launch was named USSF-67 and carried two payloads into geostationary orbit for the US Space Force. This was the second Falcon Heavy launch for the Space Force, with another scheduled for later this spring.

 

This engine shot showcases the three separate cores of the rocket, each a modified version of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, with its own individual plume.

 

The rocket is seen here climbing into the sky before booster separation, which happens about 2 minutes and 30 seconds into the launch. After this point, the side-mounted boosters will separate from the center core of the rocket.

 

The center core then burns for an additional 30 seconds before its kerosene and liquid oxygen propellant are expended. In the meantime, the side-mounted boosters must arrest their forward motion and reorient themselves for a return to landing zones a few kilometers from the launch site.

 

From start to finish, Sunday’s Falcon Heavy launch delivered spectacular imagery

Siberia is currently going through some dangerously cold weather. On Sunday, January 15, temperatures of -62.4°C (-80.32°F) were picked up in Tongulakh, a rural part of Sakha Republic, Russia. The temperatures were reported by Ventusky, a meteorological company based in Czechia. They explain that this is a “new all-time low” for the station at Tongulakh and the coldest temperature in Siberia since 2002. 

It wasn’t just Tongulakh that felt the chill this weekend (although “chill” is a massive understatement). Numerous patches of the Sakha Republic just east of this station were also clocking temperatures well below -50°C (-58°F) on Sunday.

For context, this is comparable to the temperature on Mars. Although surface temperatures on the red planet can range from up to 20 °C (68 °F) to -153 °C (−243 °F), its average annual temperature is approximately -62 °C (-80°F).

The temperatures currently battering Siberia aren’t far off all-time record-breakers. The coldest temperate ever recorded in the northern hemisphere was documented in Oymyakon of the Sakha Republic on 6 February 1933 when temperatures dropped as low as -67.7°C (-90°F).

Since it’s still only January, there’s still plenty of time for this record to be smashed. 

On the flip side, summers in Siberia are also reaching an astonishing extreme. In June 2021, temperatures of 48°C (118°F) were detected in Verkhoyansk, a Siberian town in the Arctic Circle. 

Just as climate scientists have warned, it's clear that extreme temperatures at both ends of the spectrum are becoming more common and more intense.

Correction 16/01/2023: The second sentence of this paragraph originally said: "On Sunday, April 15, temperatures of..." This typo has since been corrected to say January. 

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The world’s largest plane has taken to the skies to prove that having a 117-meter (385-foot) wingspan does not stop it from going the distance, after breaking yet another world record by flying for six hours straight. Stratolaunch’s Roc, a launch vehicle for hypersonic aircraft and currently the world’s largest plane, completed a six-hour flight over California's Mojave Desert before landing back at the same airport, which is longer than it has ever managed in its previous flights. 

Powered by six engines and essentially the size of two commercial planes attached at one wing, Roc is a test bed that will be used for launching Stratolaunch’s actual cutting-edge technology, the Talon hypersonic vehicle. Used to test hypersonic conditions in real scenarios, the Talon will supposedly be used for the design of the next generation of hypersonic aircraft and missiles. 

This is now the ninth flight of Roc (but the first since October 2022), which precede Talon-A launch tests that may go ahead later this year. 

"The thorough evaluation of release conditions will provide data to reduce risks and ensure a clean and safe release of Talon-A during future tests," said CEO and President Zachary Krevor in a statement to Space.com.  

"We are excited for what’s ahead this year as we bring our hypersonic flight test service online for our customers and the nation." 

While the Antonov-225 “Mriya”, which tragically perished in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, was technically the largest aircraft ever built (using the plane’s overall dimensions, including weight and fuselage length), Roc – named after the legendary bird of prey in Middle Eastern mythology – absolutely demolishes all others when it comes to wingspan. Roc has a wingspan of 117 meters, which is the length of a football pitch, so it really is remarkable that this plane can even fly. 

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Out with the old, in with the new. The fresh addition to Sony’s Walkman family is known as the NW-A306. This is a model that comes 44 years after Sony released its original walkman which was a cassette player. If you’re a millennium baby you probably don’t know what I am talking about. Sony has put an end to carrying a bunch of cassettes by digitizing their new products.

With over 400 million Walkmans sold by Sony, you probably want to stay with us as we unravel this new creation that Sony has unleashed. We will take a look at the full specifications of the new Walkman and give you an idea of how much you have to pay to get one. 

https://routenote.com/blog/sony-walkman-nw-a306/ 

I can safely say the NW-A306 is quite the looker with an aluminium shell, clickable playback controls and a 3.6-inch touchscreen. The screen is a TFT color display with a white LED back-light. 

It also comes with amazing audibility with wired headphones, giving you the ultimate listening experience. Just like its older players, the Sony player doesn’t have the DAC chip that their rivals have. It generates the signal for its source file/stream directly. It has a longer battery life as well. Sony rated it at 36 hours of playtime. 

The new Walkman comes with AI assist and DSEE software with a Bluetooth playback engine that restores compressed audio files to their former excellent format. 

The battery can be recharged with a USB-C socket, found at the bottom of the player. You can also find a micro SD card slot. Onboard the NW-A306 is 32GB although almost half of it is dedicated to apps and the operating system meaning you can only load about 18 GB of music on it without an SD card.

The Sony NW-A306 also comes with wireless connectivity to stream from your favorite sites such as Spotify. This opens up the world of music to you as a listener and takes your listening experience to greater heights with unlimited access to all genres of music. 

Here is a recap of the features of the Sony NW-A306: 

• 3.6-inch touchscreen TFT color display with white LED
• Aluminium cover 
• 36 hours playtime
• Bluetooth playback
• AI Assist
• C-type charger 
• Internal Memory- 32GB (18GB)
• Micro SD card Slot 
• Android OS
• Wireless Wi-Fi connectivity

The next question is: How much does it cost? The Sony NW-A360 comes reasonably priced at around $350. It is available in all online and physical Sony stores worldwide. If you don’t have a Sony store near you you could always order online and have it shipped to you.

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Published today in Nature Medicine, the research solves a 60-year problem of how to detect the hormone-producing nodules without a difficult catheter study that is available in only a handful of hospitals, and often fails. The research also found that, when combined with a urine test, the scan detects a group of patients who come off all their blood pressure medicines after treatment.

For the study, 128 people were scanned after doctors found that their hypertension (high blood pressure) was caused by the steroid hormone aldosterone. The scan found that in two thirds of patients with elevated aldosterone secretion, the hormone originated from a benign nodule in just one of the adrenal glands, which could be safely removed.

The scan uses a short-acting dose of metomidate, a radioactive dye that sticks only to the aldosterone-producing nodule. The scan was as accurate as the old catheter test, but quick, painless and technically successful in every patient. Until now, the catheter test was unable to predict which patients would be completely cured of hypertension by surgical removal of the gland. By contrast, the combination of a "hot nodule" on the scan and urine steroid test detected 18 of the 24 patients who achieved a normal blood pressure off all their drugs.

Professor Morris Brown, co-senior author of the study and Professor of Endocrine hypertension at Queen Mary University of London, said, "These aldosterone-producing nodules are very small and easily overlooked on a regular CT scan. When they glow for a few minutes after our injection, they are revealed as the obvious cause of hypertension, which can often then be cured. Until now, 99% are never diagnosed because of the difficulty and unavailability of tests. Hopefully this is about to change."

Professor William Drake, co-senior author of the study and Professor of Clinical Endocrinology at Queen Mary University of London, said, "This study was the result of years of hard work and collaboration between centers. across the UK. Much of the 'on the ground' energy and drive came from the talented research fellows who, in addition to doing this innovative work, gave selflessly of their time and energy during the national pandemic emergency. The future of research in this area is in very safe hands."

In most people with hypertension (high blood pressure), the cause is unknown, and the condition requires life-long treatment by drugs. Previous research by the group at Queen Mary University discovered that in 5% to 10% of people with hypertension, the cause is a gene mutation in the adrenal glands, which results in excessive production of the steroid hormone aldosterone. Aldosterone causes salt to be retained in the body, driving up the blood pressure. Patients with excessive aldosterone levels in the blood are resistant to treatment with the commonly used drugs for hypertension, and at increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.

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The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland at the base of your neck. It produces hormones that regulate your heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and weight. When your thyroid isn't functioning properly, whether it's too active or not active enough, all these functions are affected.

Hyperthyroidism

Hyperthyroidism, or overactive thyroid, occurs when your thyroid produces too much of the hormone thyroxine.

Hyperthyroidism can mimic other health problems, which can make it difficult for your health care team to diagnose. It accelerates your body's metabolism, causing a wide variety of signs and symptoms.

Symptoms of hyperthyroidism can include:

•     Unintentional weight loss

•     Fast or irregular heartbeat

•     Pounding of the heart, sometimes called heart palpitations

•     Increased hunger

•     Nervousness, anxiety and irritability

•     Tremor, usually a small trembling in the hands and fingers

•     Sweating

•     Changes in menstrual cycles

•     Increased sensitivity to heat

•     Changes in bowel patterns, especially more frequent bowel movements

•     Enlarged thyroid gland, or goiter

•     Tiredness

•     Muscle weakness

•     Sleep problems

•     Warm, moist skin

•     Thinning skin

•     Fine, brittle hair

Hyperthyroidism can lead to a number of health problems, including heart disease; osteoporosis; vision problems; and discolored, swollen skin.

Several treatments are available for hyperthyroidism, and the best approach for you will depend on the underlying cause and severity of your condition, as well as your age, health and personal preference.

Treatment may include medications, radioiodine therapy and surgery.

Hypothyroidism

With hypothyroidism, your thyroid gland doesn't produce enough of certain crucial hormones.

Hypothyroidism affects all aspects of your metabolism and influences the control of vital functions, such as body temperature and heart rate.

Hypothyroidism may not cause noticeable symptoms in the early stages. Or you may simply attribute them to getting older. But as your metabolism continues to slow, you may develop more obvious problems.

Symptoms of hypothyroidism can include:

•     Fatigue

•     Increased sensitivity to cold

•     Constipation

•     Dry skin

•     Weight gain

•     Puffy face

•     Hoarseness

•     Muscle weakness
•  
•     Elevated blood cholesterol level

•     Muscle aches, tenderness and stiffness

•     Pain, stiffness or swelling in your joints

•     Heavier than normal or irregular menstrual periods

•     Thinning hair

•     Slowed heart rate

•     Depression

•     Impaired memory

•     Enlarged thyroid gland, or goiter

Over time, untreated hypothyroidism can cause a number of health problems, such as obesity, joint pain, heart disease and peripheral neuropathy.

Standard treatment for hypothyroidism involves daily use of the synthetic thyroid hormone levothyroxine. This oral medication restores adequate hormone levels, reversing the signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism.

You'll likely start to feel better soon after you start treatment. The medication gradually lowers cholesterol levels elevated by the disease and may reverse any weight gain. Treatment with levothyroxine likely will be lifelong, but because the dosage you need may change, your health care team likely will check your thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) level every year.

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OK, we get it. You fancy yourself a coffee snob. You’ve got a favorite single-origin bean and are low-key judgmental of anyone who takes milk with their morning brew. You rate an espresso by the consistency of its crema, so it’s fortunate that you’re on first-name terms with a neighborhood barista who gets it dead right every single time. “Oh, you’re into coffee too?” you say to your colleague, eying the 10-gallon Starbucks tankard on their desk. “That’s nice. Everyone has to start somewhere!”

But how far into the depths of coffee connoisseurship have you really dived? There are 124 coffee species out there and just two of them—arabica and robusta—account for around 99 percent of global coffee production. Even the most adventurous coffee fans rarely stray beyond these two headliners. But relying so heavily on just two coffee species is starting to look foolhardy. In our warming world, coffee plantations are coming under increased pressure from diseases, drought, and poor growing conditions. Coffee prices have almost doubled in the past two years, largely due to droughts and frosts in Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer.

Enter liberica. It’s the hipster bean that some coffee aficionados hope will herald a more resilient—and delicious—future of coffee. “It’s surprising a lot of people,” says Aaron Davis, a coffee specialist at Kew Gardens in London and author of a new paper in the journal Nature arguing that liberica’s time has come. Coffee importers and sellers are starting to pay attention to liberica, he says, thanks to its distinctive taste and because it can grow in conditions other species can’t. It could be time for this previously much-maligned bean to come back to the big leagues.

Liberica wasn’t always on the periphery of the coffee industry. For a brief time in the late 19th century, it was the bean du jour. At the time, the ubiquitous arabica coffee plants were stricken by leaf rust disease, which was annihilating trees in coffee plantations across Southeast Asia. Liberica seemed to be more resistant to leaf rust and grew well in warmer lowland regions, unlike fussy arabica, which prefers cool temperatures and higher altitudes. Coffee growers switched their crops, and for a while liberica and arabica were the two big beans in the global coffee industry.

Alas, liberica’s time at the top of the (coffee) tree did not last long. Its big fruits were harder for coffee manufacturers to process and the knobbly beans inside were prone to being either over- or under-dried, resulting in a subpar cup of coffee. When coffee production in Brazil started to boom around the turn of the 20th century, most plantations opted to grow arabica, which quickly became the top dog in the international coffee trade. Since then, only two species have dominated. The more expensive arabica beans are used for smooth-tasting, high-end blends and specialty coffees. Robusta, on the other hand, is cheaper and packs a higher caffeine punch. You’ll usually find it in instant coffees or blended with arabica for cheaper ground coffees.

One of the big problems with liberica has been that unless it is processed and roasted carefully, the taste itself can be off-putting. “I first tasted liberica back in 2012 and wrote it off as being completely disgusting,” says Davis. The taste reminded him of tinned soup. People who taste coffee for a living have a name for this: vegetal. In cupper parlance, calling a brew “vegetal” is basically a polite way of saying that the coffee sucks.

But in the right hands, liberica can be a revelation. In 2016 Davis visited some coffee farmers in Uganda and tried a brew of their local beans. The taste surprised him. It was sweet, smooth, and had notes of jackfruit. He started bringing beans back to the UK and sharing them with coffee importers. They were impressed too, and saw the potential for a high-yielding, tasty bean that could grow across a relatively wide range of locations. “We are talking about people who are doing this for profit, not for passion. If it’s not commercial then they’re not going to be interested,” Davis says while, incidentally, sipping on a coffee made with a variety of liberica beans called excelsa.

In south London, Nigel Motley is one of the very few UK-based coffee shop owners also extolling the virtues of the liberica bean. Liberica coffee is widely grown in the Philippines, where Motley’s mother is from, and there it is called barako, which loosely translates as “stud” and has strong associations with masculinity. “It’s seen as this horrendously strong coffee that would give you fuel for the day,” says Motley. One of the reasons for the jarring taste is that liberica beans tend to be oddly shaped with pointy tips that can burn easily while roasting.

But a delicate lighter roast can bring out a different side to the bean, Motley says. “If it’s processed in different ways, not just as a one-dimensional coffee, it can really be exciting for the shop to use and for the customer to try,” he says. He orders his beans from a grower in the Philippines and roasts them in a 3-kg roaster in London. A lot of his customers are surprised when they try liberica for the first time. Prepared in the right way, it can deliver a much more subtle cup than its history suggests. “It’s showing a different side of the liberica bean that the older generations aren’t used to,” Motley says.

Davis is particularly excited about the excelsa variety of liberica. This has smaller, more manageable fruits that are easier to process than the usual chunky liberica beans. A coffee bean is actually the seed of a small cherry-like fruit that grows on coffee plants. The less pulp there is surrounding that seed, the easier it is to harvest and process those fruits. Liberica plants—including excelsa—are also more resilient to warming temperatures. “We’re seeing excelsa and liberica as something you can grow, when you simply can’t grow arabica,” says Davis.

Having more coffee species to choose from isn’t just nice to have—it might end up being a vital way to preserve the livelihoods of people who grow coffee for a living. For example, coffee makes up a quarter of Ethiopia’s total exports, and between 39 to 59 percent of its current growing area could become unsuitable for coffee farming as the climate warms. As other coffee-growing regions get hotter, the need for a plant that’s more resilient to higher temperatures will become even more pressing. History is also dotted with examples where an overreliance on a single crop ends up in disaster. Prior to the 1950s, most exported bananas belonged to a larger, sweeter variety than what we have today, called Gros Michel, which was wiped out by a fungal infection. As temperatures rise, it could make more coffee-growing regions susceptible to leaf rust disease—the infection that sparked the rise of liberica more than a century ago.

The situation facing coffee plants may not be so dire. Within the two major coffee species, there are hundreds of varieties with their own distinct flavors and qualities. And there are other species, such as Coffea stenophylla, that also could be grown in places no longer suitable for arabica. “You’ve got to be able to produce coffee under a warming, changing climate,” says Davis. And if the history of coffee teaches us anything, it’s that things only really change when the alternative is no coffee at all. It may just be that liberica is a bean whose time has come.

This Seriously Hipster Bean Is Coffee’s Best Hope for Survival

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Toxic positivity comes from the belief that, despite an individual’s emotional pain or challenging situation, they should still adopt a positive outlook. It denies, invalidates and delegitimises emotions that aren’t ‘happy’ and includes phrases such as “turn that frown upside down”, “it could be worse” or, a social media favourite, “good vibes only”.

Studies have shown that suppressing feelings can lead to increased stress, anxiety and depression in the long run. More effective is trying not to label emotions as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, instead recognising that it’s okay to feel sad, angry or frustrated, and remembering that emotions will eventually pass.

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