Could getting rid of old cells turn back the clock on aging?

mRNA is one of the first molecules of life. While identified six decades ago as the carrier of the blueprint for proteins in living cells, its pharmaceutical potential was long underestimated. mRNA appeared unpromising—too unstable, too weak in potency, and too inflammatory. 

The successful development of the first mRNA vaccines against Covid-19 in 2020 was an unprecedented achievement in the history of medicine. That success was built on iterative progress over decades, driven by the independent contributions of scientists around the world. 

We fell in love with mRNA in the ’90s because of its versatility, its ability to stimulate the immune system, and its safety profile—after fulfilling its biological task, the molecule completely degrades, leaving no trace in the body. We discovered ways to exponentially improve the properties of mRNA, increasing its stability and efficacy, as well as the ability to deliver it to the right immune cells in the body. That progress allowed us to create effective mRNA vaccines that, when administered in small amounts to humans, elicit powerful immune responses. Moreover, we established rapid, scalable processes to manufacture new vaccine candidates for clinical application within weeks. The result was mRNA’s breakthrough in the fight against Covid-19. 

The potential of mRNA vaccines goes beyond the coronavirus. We now want to use this technology to tackle two of the world’s oldest and deadliest pathogens: malaria and tuberculosis. Worldwide, there are around 10 million new cases of tuberculosis every year. For malaria, the medical need is even higher: about 230 million malaria cases have been reported in the WHO Africa region in 2020, with most deaths occurring among children under 5.

The convergence of medical advances—from next-generation sequencing to technologies to characterize immune responses on large data sets—boosts our ability to discover ideal vaccine targets. Science has also made progress in understanding how malaria and tuberculosis pathogens hide and evade the immune system, providing insights into how to combat them. 

The ongoing revolution in computational protein structure prediction allows for the modeling of three-dimensional structures of proteins. This is helping us decipher regions in these proteins that are optimal targets for vaccine development. 

One of the beauties of mRNA technology is that it enables us to rapidly test hundreds of vaccine targets. Moreover, we can combine multiple mRNAs—each encoding a different pathogen antigen—within a single vaccine. For the first time, it has become feasible for an mRNA-based vaccine to teach the human immune system to fight against multiple vulnerable targets of a pathogen. In 2023, we plan to begin clinical trials for the first mRNA vaccine candidates against malaria and tuberculosis that combine known and new targets. If successful, this endeavor may change the way we prevent these diseases and may contribute to their eradication.

Medical innovations can only make a difference for people around the world when they are available on a global scale. The production of mRNA is complex and involves tens of thousands of steps, making technology transfer resource- and time-intensive, and error-prone. To overcome this bottleneck, we have developed a high-tech solution called BioNTainer—a shippable, modular mRNA manufacturing facility. This innovation could support decentralized and scalable vaccine production worldwide by leapfrogging toward automated, digitized, and scalable mRNA manufacturing capability. We expect the first facility to be up and running in Rwanda in 2023. 

We anticipate that 2023 will bring us these and other important milestones that could contribute to shaping a healthier future, a future that can build on the potential of mRNA and its promise to democratize access to innovative medicines. Now is the time to drive that change.

The Magic of mRNA Will Push Medical Advances for Everyone

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It's almost that time of year. Everyone you know will soon be hitting the gym, smiling while eating broccoli, or crushing out a last cigarette. For some, the gym really will become a new part of life, and that really will be the last cigarette they smoke. But most of us have probably experienced the letdown—perhaps even self-loathing—of failing to stick to a New Year's resolution.

I can't promise the advice I've collected will help—anyone who knows me would laugh hysterically at the idea of me guiding anyone toward successful habit formation—but there are some things you can do to set yourself up for success and make sure your resolutions become more than just that.

Updated December 2022: I've added some thoughts pulled from a recent rereading of David Allen's Getting Things Done.

Forget Goals. You Want Systems

The first and most important part of changing something in your life is to forget the resolutions and forget the goals. Think instead of creating a system that allows you to do what you want to do.

This advice is something I picked up from James Clear's book Atomic Habits ($12 on Amazon). If you find this article whets your appetite for a deeper dive into how you can create better habits, Clear's book is a great next step. It has plenty of suggestions about how to set up systems that work for you and help build the habits you want.

Common sense can take you a long way. As WIRED associate editor Adrienne So says, “reduce friction wherever you can.” Make it easier to go for a run by keeping your shoes by the door. Make it easier to eat healthier by keeping fruit on the counter. As So says: “It's easier to work out every day if you've prepped everything beforehand. Then you can run into the basement and do a 30-min Peloton strength video in 32 mins, instead of spending another 20 minutes looking for a clean sports bra.”

It also helps to be honest with yourself about yourself. For example, while some people might run downstairs and actually do a Peloton video, even that seemingly simple act presents enough friction to me that I'd never actually do it. This is why, instead of getting into Peloton, I have picked an activity with even less friction: body weight exercises. My body is always there, ready to go. I don't have to go anywhere or find anything. I just start exercising.

Which is to say, if you have to rely on the power of your iron will, just gritting your teeth and toughing it out, you're unlikely to turn it into a habit. That doesn't mean there won't be moments when whatever you're doing isn't be hard, but it shouldn't be hard to start.

Progress Incrementally

Wired senior editor Michael Calore suggests the app Couch to 5K to anyone who wants to build a running habit. It's a great app; stick with the personal trainer voices to keep you motivated. But you know what it won't have you do? Run a 5K on the first day you use it.

This goes along with the previous suggestion to ditch the goals. It takes a while to develop the strength and stamina to run 5 kilometers. If you're going to be disappointed every time you don't run 5K, that's not going to make you want to keep running.

The far better, and more encouraging, plan is to run a little bit more today than you did yesterday. No matter what your system is, do a little bit more than last time, even if it's only a tiny bit more. Read 21 pages instead of 20 pages, walk for 11 minutes instead of 10, and so on. Incremental progress is the goal.

Incremental progress is part of the reason I don't take days off from new habits and I recommend you don't either, at least for the first 90 days. Your body could benefit from rest days if your habit is exercise-related, but if your new habit doesn't require physical exertion, don't stop for the first 90 days. Depending on which study you want to cite, it takes anywhere between 60 to 243 days to build a new habit. I've had good luck with about 90, and strongly recommend you go at least that long on your first try.

On the internet of yore, there was an apocryphal story about Jerry Seinfeld supposedly giving advice to software developer and would-be comedian Brad Isaac. Isaac asked him if he had any tips on becoming a comic. Seinfeld's answer amounts to, well, build a habit of writing jokes.

That's fairly obvious, but Seinfeld had a technique. He reportedly told Isaac to get a big wall calendar and said every time he sat down and did the work, he should make a big X over that day. “After a few days, you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

Even if it's apocryphal, it's still excellent advice. It also sounds like something a Seinfeld character would say.

Reduce Friction Even More

One of the reasons we have trouble changing our habits is that we're highly emotionally invested in the habits we have. I like doing nothing in the morning. I don't want to read/workout/cook/etc. Overcoming this inertia and resistance to change is difficult, especially since this resistance is often not entirely conscious. 

This is partly why I have avoided suggestions about stopping habits you don't like (grab Clear's book if you're interested in stopping a bad habit; he has plenty of good advice on that score) and focused on creating new habits—there's generally less emotional baggage.

But what if you could reduce your emotional baggage? That way, you could stop focusing on specific habits and train your will instead. This is a common theme in older texts ranging from Catholic meditation guides to the New Thought Movement of the early 20th century. 

The will is like a muscle, and you need to build it up through strength training. I've seen countless versions of this exercise, but they all go something like this: Sit down in a chair facing a wall. Pick a spot on the wall. Get up out of chair and go touch the spot in the wall. Return to the chair and sit down again. Rinse and repeat. Most books tell you to start out doing this 10 times and work your way up from there.

The idea is to will yourself to do something, but something you have no emotional investment in. This builds up a fortitude of the will that you can then apply to things you are emotionally invested in.

Out With the Old

This is the time of year when we focus on new beginnings (natch), but it's also worth spending some time reevaluating old commitments to see if you're still actually committed to them. This is one of the most useful lessons I took from David Allen's organizational classic Getting Things Done ($18, Amazon). Allen refers to everything you have to do, or want to do, as an “open loop.” Open loops, no matter how small, take up some space in our brain. That's space that you can't use for other things. So any time you can close one of those loops you get a little bit of energy back. As anyone who has done the exercises in Allen's book can tell you, there really is something very energizing about clearing your mind of all those loops (not only by doing them, but more importantly by making a decision about what to do with them).

This applies not just to things you have to do but also things you think you want to do. Maybe you think you should learn Spanish, but you haven't done anything to actually learn Spanish. Admitting that you aren't actually committed to the idea enough to do the work of learning Spanish can help close that loop. And letting go of that feeling that you should learn Spanish just might be the thing that frees up your mind enough that you decide to take up paddle boarding on a whim. The point is that the new year isn't just a time for starting something new, it's a time for letting go of the things from that past that are no longer serving you.

In many ways this is the antidote to that ever-so-popular slogan, “just do it.” Just do it implies not thinking about it, not deciding whether what you're about to do is what you really want to do or should do. Maybe don't just do it. Maybe spend some time remembering why you wanted to do it in the first place, and if those reasons no longer resonate with you, just don't do it.

If you like this idea, I highly recommend getting Allen's book. It goes into much more detail on this idea and has some practical means of letting go while still keeping track of those things in case you do decide, years from now, when you're paddle boarding through the Sea of Cortez, that now you really do want to learn Spanish and are willing to do the work.

Do the Work

As one of my writing professors used to say, to be a writer you have to park your butt in a chair and actually write. To be a yogi, you have to do yoga. To run, you have to run. There's no easy way around it. You have to put on your grown-up pants and do the work.

However, on the flip side, as Clear points out early on in Atomic Habits, the way to change who you are is to change what you do. “Each time you write a page, you are a writer. Each time you practice the violin, you are a musician. Each time you start a workout, you are an athlete.” Each time you do the work, you become the future self you want to be.

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How to Start (and Keep) a Healthy Habit

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It seemed as if the world was plunging from one crisis to another this year. Just as most countries broke free from the shackles of the pandemic, the horror of war returned to Europe, millions around the world suffered at the hands of extreme weather, and the double pain of energy shortages and inflation arrived. But thanks to the hard work of scientists and a bunch of companies and policymakers, it wasn’t all bad. Here’s our rundown of the best news to come out of 2022.

US renewables generated more power than coal and nuclear

More than one-fifth of all electricity in the US now comes from hydropower, wind, and solar, meaning that renewables have narrowly overtaken coal and nuclear, which make up 20 percent and 19 percent of the energy mix respectively. The only other year this was the case was 2020—but back then overall power generation was reduced due to the pandemic. Read more at Scientific American.

The first train line switched fully to hydrogen

Germany has put into service the world’s first fleet of hydrogen-powered trains. The fleet of 14 engines has replaced diesel trains on a commuter line near the city of Hamburg, where the high costs of electrification would be too expensive. Hydrogen trains are equipped with fuel cells that generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, producing no emissions other than water vapor. Read more at Deutsche Welle.

Lab-grown meat was deemed safe to eat

Meat without the slaughter of an animal could soon be dished up in American restaurants. The US Food and Drug Administration has deemed a Californian company’s cultivated chicken safe to consume, bringing it one step closer to commercialization. Upside Foods grows the meat from real animal cells in bioreactors and will initially offer it for tasting in a small number of top restaurants. Read more at WIRED.

Scientists found a way to reduce shark bycatch

A battery-powered device, called SharkGuard, prevents sharks and rays from accidentally getting caught in commercial fishing nets and lines by emitting a short electrical pulse every two seconds. These pulses temporarily overstimulate the marine animals’ electrosensory organs, called ampullae of Lorenzini. When this happens, they choose to swim away, unharmed. Read more at The Guardian.

Following the historic decision at COP27 in November to financially compensate the countries worst affected by the climate crisis, there’s now also a financial package for biodiversity. At the UN biodiversity conference in Montreal in December, countries agreed to allocate $200 billion annually by 2030 to protecting biodiversity. $30 billion of this should come from countries in the Global North for conservation efforts in developing countries. Read more at Carbon Brief.

Beavers were given legal protection in England

Four hundred years after they were hunted to extinction for their fur, meat, and glands, beavers are now a protected species in England. Since October it’s been illegal to deliberately trap, injure, kill, or otherwise disturb the charismatic rodents, whose dams create wetlands. The reason for the law change? Hundreds of reintroduced beavers live in England today, so the government now officially recognizes them as native wildlife. Read more at The Guardian.

Wild mammals made a comeback in Europe

Once on the brink, populations of iconic animals like gray wolves, brown bears, bison, and, yes, beavers are thriving again in Europe thanks to legal protections, changes in land use, and human interventions like rewilding. Initially the beaver colonies in England reappeared through illegal releases or escapes from private collections, but more recently the UK government has authorized releases in enclosures—in 2002, nine beavers were brought in from Norway and officially released in Kent. Read more at the BBC.

A rare pigeon was captured on camera

For the first time in 140 years, researchers have sighted and scientifically documented a rare bird, the black-necked pheasant pigeon. The large ground-dwelling species is found only deep in the forests of Papua New Guinea and was considered lost to science and possibly extinct. Read more at CNN.

NASA gave us a detailed look at distant galaxies

The James Webb Telescope, the largest space telescope ever built, reached its destination in orbit around the sun in January, following decades of planning and a million-mile journey from Earth. Since then, the $10 billion observatory has captured mesmerizing images of a planet outside our solar system, nebulae where stars are born, and distant galaxies. Read more at Science.

DART proved we can protect Earth from asteroids

No asteroid or comet is currently on a collision course with Earth, but it’s best to be prepared for the worst. In September, NASA and its partners deliberately plowed the DART spacecraft into a small asteroid at 14,000 miles per hour to see if the impact could deflect its path. It did. But let’s hope we never have to do this for real. Read more at WIRED.

Humans got one step closer to returning to the moon

On December 11, the Orion spacecraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean after a 25-day flight past the moon. The uncrewed test flight was part of Nasa’s Artemis mission, which plans to send the first woman and first person of colour to the moon as early as 2025. The moon has become a popular destination for other national space agencies and private companies too, with several other test flights taking place this year. Read more at Scientific American.

Alzheimer’s became partially treatable

In a clinical trial of nearly 1,800 people with early Alzheimer’s disease—the most common form of dementia—an antibody drug slowed the rate of cognitive decline by 27 percent in patients treated for 18 months. This follows decades of frustration with other drugs designed to slow or stop Alzheimer’s. That said, the new treatment is not without risks, including brain bleeds and swelling, and 7 percent of people given it had to stop because of side effects. Read more at NPR.

Doctors performed the first pig-to-human heart transplant

In January, David Bennett became the first person to have a pig’s heart successfully transplanted—though the 57-year-old handyman from Maryland died two months later. Yet even a few weeks is a long time in so-called xenotransplantation, and researchers are keen on more human trials. In the long term, xenotransplantation may be key to ending organ shortages. Read more at Discover.

Spinal implants helped paralyzed people walk again

Several people with severe spinal injuries were able to take some first steps within hours of neurosurgeons implanting nerve-stimulation devices into their spines. And with months of consistent training and by controlling the device using a touchscreen tablet, one patient even regained the ability to cycle and swim independently. Read more at CNN.

Hair follicles were grown for the first time in a lab

A Japanese research team successfully created hair follicles by modifying the embryonic skin cells of mice. The follicles grew for up to a month and reached up to 3 millimeters in length. Their technique could offer an approach to treating hair loss or an alternative to animal testing. The researchers are now working on repeating the experiment with human cells. Read more at New Scientist.

Abortion rights are advancing—outside the US

While Americans suffered the loss of the constitutional right to abortion, other countries positively reformed their laws. In February, Colombia became the eighth country in Latin America and the Caribbean to decriminalize abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. Finland and Malta are also in the process of easing their abortion laws, which are some of the strictest in the European Union. Read more at the Times of Malta.

More countries banned conversion therapy

Laws against practices intended to forcibly change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, known as conversion therapies, have been gaining momentum around the world. France and New Zealand banned these harmful practices at the beginning of the year, and in October, Mexico’s senate voted on a bill that would make conducting conversion therapies a criminal offense (the bill is now awaiting approval from the lower house). Read more at the Gay Times.

AI tools changed the way we create

A number of AI tools have broken new ground in supporting human creativity. DALL-E 2 can turn text inputs into vivid images, while language models like ChatGPT can answer complex questions and write relatively coherent essays or computer code. But ChatGPT is far from perfect: It often provides inaccurate answers. Plus, it can only generate answers using the data it has been fed and trained, which runs up to 2021. So its knowledge base is already out of date, and the system can’t search the internet for new information—yet. Read more at Slate.

Patagonia founder gives away his billions to protect the environment

In September, Yvon Chouinard, the 83-year-old founder of the American clothing brand Patagonia, announced that he had transferred ownership of his $3 billion company to a set of trusts and nonprofits. All of the company’s profits, which amount to around $100 million per year, will be used to help fight climate change. Read more at The New York Times.

The shorter working week finally caught on

In June, 70 UK companies began the largest ever trial of a four-day working week, with around 3,300 employees working fewer hours with no cuts to their pay. After six months, the companies saw happier employees, and productivity had either remained the same or improved. Now a total of 100 British companies have agreed to make the four-day week permanent. Read more at The Guardian.

Young adults in Europe received cultural gifts for their birthdays

In a bid to revive creative industries that have suffered from years of funding cuts and the pandemic, Germany announced in November that anyone turning 18—which will be an estimated 750,000 people in 2023—will be entitled to a voucher worth €200 ($213) to spend on theater visits, museums, or movies. Spain is even offering €400 euros, while French and Italian youths have benefited from such culture passes since 2021 and 2016, respectively. Read more at Time.

Women’s sports surged in popularity

For too long women’s sports have received less attention than men’s sports—but in 2022 support swelled. A world-record 91,000 spectators watched Barcelona play Real Madrid in March in the UEFA Women’s Champions League, while across a wide variety of sports in the US, viewing figures, funding, and prize money are up. There is, though, still a long way to go before women’s and men’s sports reach parity. Read more at Forbes.

22 Things That Made the World a Better Place in 2022

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The year 2022 will be remembered across the US for its devastating flooding and storms—and also for its extreme heat waves and droughts.

By October, the US had already seen 15 disasters causing more than $1 billion in damage each, well above the average. The year started and ended with widespread severe winter storms from Texas to Maine, affecting tens of millions of people and causing significant damage. Then, March set the record for the most reported tornadoes in the month—233.

During a period of five weeks over the summer, five 1,000-year rainfall events occurred in St. Louis, eastern Kentucky, southern Illinois, California’s Death Valley, and Dallas, causing devastating and sometimes deadly flash floods. Severe flooding in Mississippi knocked out Jackson’s troubled water supply for weeks. A historic flood in Montana, brought on by heavy rain and melting snow, forced large areas of Yellowstone National Park to be evacuated.

In the fall, hurricanes Ian and Fiona deluged Florida and Puerto Rico with over 2 feet (6.6 meters) of rain in areas and deadly, destructive storm surge. Ian became one of the most expensive hurricanes in US history. And a typhoon pounded 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of the Alaska coast.

While too much rainfall threatened some regions, extreme heat and too little precipitation worsened risks elsewhere.

Persistent heat waves lingered over many parts of the country, setting temperature records. Wildfires raged in Arizona and New Mexico on the background of a megadrought in the Southwestern US more severe than anything the region has experienced in at least 1,200 years.

Drought also left the Mississippi River so low near Memphis in the fall that barges couldn’t get through without additional dredging and upstream water releases. That snarled grain shipping during the critical harvest period. Along the Colorado River, officials discussed even tighter water use restrictions as water levels neared dangerously low levels in the major reservoirs.

The United States was hardly alone in its climate disasters.

In Pakistan, record monsoon rains inundated more than one-third of the country, killing over 1,500 people. In India and China, prolonged heat waves and droughts dried up rivers, disrupted power grids, and threatened food security for billions of people. Widespread flooding and mudslides brought on by torrential rains also killed hundreds of people in South Africa, Brazil, and Nigeria.

In Europe, heat waves set record temperatures in Britain and other parts of the continent, leading to severe droughts, low river flows that slowed shipping, and wildfires in many parts of the continent. Much of East Africa is still in the grips of a multiyear drought—the worst in over 40 years, according to the United Nations—leaving millions of people vulnerable to food shortages and starvation.

This isn’t just a freak year: Such extreme events are occurring with increasing frequency and intensity.

Climate change is intensifying these disasters

The most recent global climate assessment from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found significant increases in both the frequency and intensity of extreme temperature and precipitation events, leading to more droughts and floods.

Extreme flooding and droughts are also getting deadlier and more expensive, despite an improving capacity to manage climate risks, a study published in 2022 found. Part of the reason is that today’s extreme events, enhanced by climate change, often exceed communities’ management capabilities.

Extreme events, by definition, occur rarely. A 100-year flood has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year. So when such events occur with increasing frequency and intensity, they are a clear indication of a changing climate state.

Climate models showed these risks were coming

Much of this is well understood and consistently reproduced by climate models.

As the climate warms, a shift in temperature distribution leads to more extremes. For example, globally, a 1° Celsius increase in annual average temperature is associated with a 1.2° C to 1.9° C (2.1° Fahrenheit to 3.4° F) increase in the annual maximum temperature.

In addition, global warming leads to changes in how the atmosphere and ocean move. The temperature difference between the equator and the poles is the driving force for global wind. As the polar regions warm at much higher rates than the equator, the reduced temperature difference causes a weakening of global winds and leads to a more meandering jet stream.

Some of these changes can create conditions such as persistent high-pressure systems and atmospheric blocking that bring more intense heat waves. The heat domes over the Southern Plains and South in June and in the West in September were both examples.

Warming can be further amplified by positive feedbacks.

For example, higher temperatures tend to dry out the soil, and less soil moisture reduces the land’s heat capacity, making it easier to heat up. More frequent and persistent heat waves lead to excessive evaporation, combined with decreased precipitation in some regions, causing more severe droughts and more frequent wildfires.

Higher temperatures increase the atmosphere’s capacity to hold moisture at a rate of about 7 percent per degree Celsius. This increased humidity leads to heavier rainfall events.

In addition, storm systems are fueled by latent heat—the large amount of energy released when water vapor condenses to liquid water. Increased moisture content in the atmosphere also enhances latent heat in storm systems, increasing their intensity. Extreme heavy or persistent rainfall leads to increased flooding and landslides, with devastating social and economic consequences.

Even though it’s difficult to link specific extreme events directly to climate change, when these supposedly rare events occur with greater frequency in a warming world, it is hard to ignore the changing state of our climate.

The new abnormal

This year might provide a glimpse of our near future, as these extreme climate events become more frequent.

To say this is the “new normal,” though, is misleading. It suggests that we have reached a new stable state, and that is far from the truth. Without serious effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions, this trend toward more extreme events will continue.

Source

The world must rapidly decarbonise to avoid the most dangerous climate change harms. World leaders know this. But that knowledge must urgently turn into concrete commitments and plans.

If humanity continues on its current path, we’re going to leave a hotter, deadlier world for the children of today and all future generations.

Earth desperately needs COP27 to succeed. I’m a climate scientist and I believe world leaders should have these three things top-of-mind heading into the conference.

1. Our planet is undeniably in crisis

So far, Earth has warmed just over 1℃ relative to pre-industrial levels, meaning we’ve already damaged the climate system. Our greenhouse gas emissions have already caused sea level to rise, sea ice to shrink and the ocean to become more acidic.

Extreme events in recent years – particularly heatwaves – have the fingerprints of climate change all over them. The record-smashing heat in western North America in 2021 saw massive wildfires and straining infrastructure. And earlier this year, temperatures in the United Kingdom reached a deadly 40℃ for the first time on record.

The ocean, too, has suffered a succession of marine heatwaves that have bleached coral reefs and reduced the diversity of species they host. Heatwaves will worsen as long as we keep warming the planet.

Frighteningly, we risk tipping the climate into a dangerous new regime bringing even worse consequences. Research from September finds we’re on the brink of passing five major climate “tipping points”, such as the collapse of Greenland’s ice-sheet.

Passing these points will lock the planet into continuing damage to the climate, even if all greenhouse gas emissions cease.

Human health is also on the line. Research last month revealed the climate crisis is undermining public health through, for instance, greater spread of infectious diseases, air pollution and food shortages.

Among its disturbing findings, heat-related deaths in babies under a year old, and adults over 65, increased by 68% in 2017-2021, compared to 2000-2004.

Future generations cannot afford our dithering on action to reduce emissions.

2. Emissions reduction is too slow

Some countries, particularly in Europe, are succeeding in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through transitioning to renewable energy.

But globally it’s not happening fast enough. A UN report this week found if nations deliver on their climate action goals for 2030, Earth will still heat by about 2.5℃ this century - overshooting the Paris Agreement goal to keep global warming well below 2℃.

Sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now considered inevitable. AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov, File

Such warming would be disastrous, especially in poorer parts of the world that have contributed little to global emissions.

For decades, the world has talked about reducing carbon dioxide emissions. But annual global emissions have risen by over 50% in my lifetime, and since the first COP back in 1992. The UN warns there’s still “no credible pathway” to limiting warming to 1.5℃.

Until we reach close to net-zero emissions, the amount of CO₂ in our atmosphere will rise and the planet will warm. At our current rate, we are warming the planet by about 0.2℃ every decade.

Global carbon dioxide emissions remain at close to record highs and have roughly quadrupled since 1960. Global Carbon Project

3. The stalling must end

With so many challenges facing the world, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis, it may be tempting to view climate change as a problem that can wait. This would be a terrible idea.

Climate change will get only worse. Every year of delay makes it much harder to prevent the most dangerous climate projections becoming a reality.

Only concerted efforts from all nations will avoid destroying our most sensitive ecosystems, such as coral reefs. We should be doing everything we can to stop this by transitioning away from fossil fuels. Any new fossil fuel development is just making the problem worse and will cost humanity and the environment far more in future.

And yet, the International Energy Agency last week projected that the net income for oil and gas producers will double in 2022 “to an unprecedented US$4 trillion”, a $2 trillion windfall.

We can’t, as climate activist Greta Thunberg put it, just have more “blah, blah, blah” from world leaders at COP27 - we need concrete action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What now?

COP27 must lead to a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, including no new fossil fuel developments, and more support for countries dealing with the biggest climate change impacts. We must be on a credible path to reach global net-zero emissions within the next few decades.

The lack of progress at past global climate talks means I’m not optimistic that COP27 will achieve what’s needed. But I hope world leaders will prove me wrong and not let their nations down.

Source

Figure 1: World population since 1800 and projections up to 2100. Gilles Pison, based on UN data, Author provided

In 1800 the world’s population was around 1 billion people. Since then it has increased eightfold to reach 8 billion in 2022 (see figure 1), and is forecast to top 10 billion by 2050. Will population growth inevitably continue? Will it level off over the long term? Should we try to reduce or stop this growth?

Simply put, the world’s population is increasing because the number of births outnumber deaths by two to one. A surplus of births first occurred two centuries ago in Europe and North America, when mortality started to decline. This marked the beginning of what scientists call the demographic transition. This transition subsequently spread to the rest of the planet as social and economic progress, combined with advances in hygiene and medicine, began to reduce mortality rates.

Rapid population growth in Africa

Figure 2: World population growth rates, 1700-2100. Gilles Pison, based on UN data, Author provided

Still, the annual population growth rate actually peaked 60 years ago at more than 2%, and has fallen by half since then, to 1% in 2022 (see figure 2). This trend should continue in coming decades because fertility is decreasing at global level, from 5 children per woman in 1950 to 2.3 today. In 2022, the regions where fertility is (still) high – above 2.5 children per woman – include practically all of Africa, some countries of the Middle East, and a part of Asia stretching from Kazakhstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan (see map below). These are the regions that will drive future world population growth.

A key trend in future decades will be population growth in Africa. Including North Africa, the continent’s population could triple by the end of the century, rising from 1.4 billion inhabitants in 2022 to 3.9 billion in 2100 according to the UN medium projection. While, globally speaking, one person in six currently lives in Africa, the proportion will probably be more than one in three a century from now. Growth should be especially rapid in sub-Saharan Africa, where, under this same scenario, the population is set to rise from 1.2 billion in 2022 to 3.4 billion in 2100.

World fertility (2022), average number of children per woman

Figure 3: World fertility (2022), average number of children per woman. Gilles Pison, based on UN data, Author provided

What will happen in the coming decades?

These figures are projections, and no one can predict what the future will bring. That said, demographic projections are quite reliable for forecasting population size over the next 10, 20 or 30 years. Most of the people who will be alive in 2050 have already been born, their number is known and we can estimate quite accurately the proportion among those currently alive who will die over the period. Likewise, the women who will bear children over the next 20 years are already alive today, and can be counted. By estimating their potential fertility we can determine the number of future births with relative accuracy.

It would be unrealistic to imagine that population trends can be modified over the short term. Depopulation is not an option. Indeed, how could it possibly be achieved? Through increased mortality? No one hopes for that. Through mass migration to Mars? Unrealistic. Through a drastic and durable decrease in fertility to below replacement level (2.1 children)? This is already taking place in many parts of the world, as couples decide to have fewer children so as to give them the best chances for a long and fulfilling life.

But for reasons of demographic inertia, this does not result in an immediate population decline. Even if world fertility were just 1.5 children per woman, as is the case in Europe, the population would continue to increase for several more decades; there are still large numbers of adults of childbearing age who were born when fertility was still high, so the number of births also remains high. The proportion of old and very old people is very small at the world level, on the other hand, so deaths are far less numerous.

The question of fertility decline

Demographers were taken by surprise in the 1960s and 1970s when surveys revealed the onset of a sharp decline in fertility in many countries of Asia and Latin America, and demographic projections for these regions of the world were revised strongly downward.

Another more recent surprise concerns intertropical Africa. Fertility decline in the region was expected to begin later than in Asia and Latin America because of later social and economic development. But it was assumed that, while delayed, the transition would follow the standard pattern, with a decline similar to that observed in other regions of the Global South. This is indeed the case in North and southern Africa, but not in intertropical Africa, where the decline is occurring more slowly. This explains the upward revision of projections for Africa, a continent which could be home to more than a third of the world’s population by 2100.

Figure 4: Fertility-rate trends by world region. Gilles Pison, based on UN data., Author provided

Fertility is in fact decreasing in intertropical Africa, but mainly among the educated and urban populations rather than in rural areas where most of the population still lives. While the fertility decline is still slower than that observed some decades ago in Asia and Latin America (see figure 4), the reason does not lie in an unwillingness to use contraception.

While most rural families have yet to adopt a two-child family model, they would prefer to have fewer children and to space them further apart. They are willing to use contraception for this purpose, but the necessary services are not available to them.

National birth-control programmes exist but are ineffective because they lack resources and, above all, because their organisers and the personnel responsible for implementing them are unenthusiastic. Many are not convinced of the advantages of birth control, even at government level, even if this is not the official line adopted with respect to international organisations.

This is one of the differences with respect to Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, and one of the obstacles to faster fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa.

Long-term outlook: explosion, implosion or equilibrium?

Beyond the next 50 years, however, the future is much more uncertain and there is no established forecasting model.

The demographic transition, which has served well to predict changes over the last two centuries, will be of little use for this distant future. There is much uncertainty about future fertility. If the very small family becomes a dominant model over the long term, with mean fertility of fewer than two children per women, then the world population, after peaking at 10 billion, will gradually decrease to the point of extinction.

But another scenario is possible, in which fertility recovers in the countries where it is now very low, ultimately stabilising at more than two children per woman worldwide. This would result in continuous growth, and again in the extinction of the human race, this time due to overpopulation. If we cannot resign ourselves to these catastrophic scenarios of extinction through under- or over-population, then we must imagine a scenario of ultimate equilibrium.

It is life choices that matter

Of course, humans must start thinking today about the need for long-term equilibrium, but it is the next few decades that are of most urgent concern.

The world population will inevitably increase by 2 billion between now and 2050 because of demographic inertia that no one can prevent. Nonetheless, we have the power to change our way of living – and there is an urgent need to do so – by ensuring greater respect for the environment and more efficient use of natural resources. All in all, the long-term survival of humankind depends more on its choice of lifestyle than on its population size.

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How do the two differ? Image Credit: Viacheslav Lopatin/Shutterstock.com

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Why is astronomy a science, but not astrology? – Katelyn, age 11, Arlington, Texas

Are you sure astrology isn’t a science?

Both astrology and astronomy are in the business of making predictions. The theories of astrology claim that the positions of the planets and the stars influence who you are and what happens to you: your job, your personality and your romantic partner. Astrologers make these predictions based on the positions of the planets at the time of your birth.

Astronomy, in contrast, makes predictions about such phenomena as the movements of planets and the expansion of galaxies. Astronomers explain their predictions with such properties as masses, distances and gravitational forces.

As a philosopher and an anthropologist who study what science means to society, we think it is important to separate the question of whether something is a science from the question of whether it is true or false.

Astrology makes scientific claims

Science, in essence, involves making and testing factual claims about the world. Factual claims are true or false descriptions of the world (Joe is 1 meter tall) as opposed to descriptions of how we define things (1 meter is 1,000 milimeters). In this sense, astrologers, like astronomers, make factual claims about the world. To us, that makes astrology sound a lot like a set of scientific beliefs.

For a very long time, until the 17th or 18th century, astronomy and astrology were practiced side by side. After all, knowing where the planets were relative to the stars was necessary to make accurate predictions about how their locations influenced human affairs. That’s why astronomers and astrologers populated medical schools and governments, advising people on what the heavens signaled was to come on Earth.

Even famed astronomers Galileo and Kepler practiced astrology. Any rule that says they are scientists only if they make one set of factual claims but not when they make another set of factual claims divides these thinkers into two halves that aren’t meant to be contradictory. In both cases, they wanted to know how things worked so they could predict how things would go in the future.

Being false vs. being unscientific

But here’s the rub: When researchers test the predictions astrology makes about people’s lives, those predictions turn out to be no better than guesswork.

There is currently no broadly accepted evidence that galactic forces are capable of influencing the choices people make. The truck parked on the street exerts more gravitational pull on you than Mars does, and the radio waves from your local station far outpower those from Jupiter, for instance.

There is an important difference between being false and being unscientific. Currently, astrological theories are false precisely because they make scientific claims about the world, and those claims turn out to be wrong. Although the predictions astrology makes are false, they are nonetheless a matter of science. That’s how we know they are wrong, after all.

Image from ‘Astronomy Without a Telescope’ (1869). Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr

Some people believe they find support for astrological predictions in their own personal experience. They read their horoscope and it seems just right: They did “meet someone interesting” or “benefit from listening to a close friend’s advice.” But the predictions are vague enough that they would often be true even if astrology were utterly bogus. That’s why it can be difficult to figure out how to assess an astrologer’s predictions with precision.

Theories of astronomy, on the other hand, have evolved over the years with advances in technology. They are routinely corrected in response to increasingly precise measurements. For example, Einstein’s theory of general relativity got a boost over Newton’s because it predicted the precise migration of Mercury’s closest point to the Sun year after year. If astrology had the same ability to make correct predictions with such precision, it might still be a major focus of scientific attention.

Why is astrology still popular?

But then why do so many people find astrology so useful if its predictions are not well founded? Why are astrological signs and horoscopes so popular?

It seems that looking to the sky to make some sense of what’s going on right now and what’s going to happen in the future has appealed to a lot of different people at different times in history all over the world.

When it comes to what’s commonly known as Western astrology, many people find their astrological sign to be a source of meaning in their lives. In fact, nearly 30% of Americans believe in astrology. It’s one of many tools we have for telling stories about ourselves to make sense of who we are, why we are that way and why experiences that otherwise would feel meaningless and confusing seem to happen to us all the time. In this sense, astrology’s success might be less about prediction and more about what it offers in terms of meaning and interpretation.

Throughout history, people have looked to the stars to derive some form of meaning from existence. Christianto Soning/EyeEm via Getty Images

Among other things, astrology can be a useful prompt for self-reflection. It asks us whether we have traits typical of our astrological sign, and whether those we love have traits the theory suggests they ought to have. Thinking about our traits and relationships with the people around us is generally a good tool for understanding who we are, what we want to be and the meaning of our lives. Perhaps astrology is helpful in this way, independently of whether those traits are fixed by the stars.

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Your veggie sausages could be lying to you. Image credit: Michael Vi/Shutterstock.com

The popularity of plant-based food has skyrocketed in recent years, as has the number of studies investigating its impact on our planet. Unfortunately, there are still massive gaps in our knowledge when it comes to the health implications of these products, particularly surrounding the nutritional value of plant-based meat substitutes. A study, from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, has set out to address this by analyzing the nutritional contents of different meat alternatives available in the country.

It finds that many of the options, which claim to contain a high content of nutrients such as iron and zinc, actually contain very little in a form that can be readily absorbed.

“Among these products, we saw a wide variation in nutritional content and how sustainable they can be from a health perspective,” lead author Cecilia Mayer Labba said in a statement. 

“In general, the estimated absorption of iron and zinc from the products was extremely low. This is because these meat substitutes contained high levels of phytates, antinutrients that inhibit the absorption of minerals in the body.”

Phytates, also known as phytic acid, are found in lots of plant-based foods including seeds, nuts, grains, and legumes. They bind to certain minerals in the digestive tract and block their absorption in the intestine, which can lead to mineral deficiencies over time. However, this is only really an issue for people whose diet is already lacking nutrition and is rarely a concern for people following a well-balanced diet.

During protein extraction when making meat substitutes, phytates can accumulate. “Both iron and zinc also accumulate in protein extraction. This is why high levels are listed among the product’s ingredients, but the minerals are bound to phytates and cannot be absorbed and used by the body,” Mayer Labba added, explaining the discrepancy between food labels and actual nutritional value.

The team analyzed 44 meat substitutes available in Sweden for their dietary fiber, fat, iron, zinc, phytate, salt, and protein content, as well as for their amino acid and fatty acid composition. These products were largely made from soy and pea protein, but also included tempeh and mycoproteins, which are derived from fermented soy and fungi, respectively.

“None of the products could be regarded as a good source of iron due to very high content of phytate… and/or low content of iron,” the study authors write. However, of the products tested, tempeh performed the best for iron, having a content similar to that claimed on the packaging, and was found to have a lower phytate content. Mycoprotein, meanwhile, was found to be rich in zinc and also low in phytate.

Their findings may paint meat alternatives in a generally unsavory light, but rather than suggest people shun them altogether, the researchers suggest that those following a plant-based diet simply “meet their iron needs through other sources”. They also call for improvements in the industry.

“We believe that making nutrition claims on only those nutrients that can be absorbed by the body could create incentives for the industry to improve those products,” said co-author Ann-Sofie Sandberg.

“Plant-based food is important for the transition to sustainable food production, and there is huge development potential for plant-based meat substitutes,” Mayer Labba concluded. 

“The industry needs to think about the nutritional value of these products and to utilise and optimise known process techniques such as fermentation, but also develop new methods to increase the absorption of various important nutrients.”

The study is published in the journal Nutrients.

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TL;DR don't eat a 3-kilogram burger. Image credit: Evgeniy Kalinovskiy/Shutterstock.com

The great American pastime of competitive eating is not for weak stomached. In a medical case study from 2017, doctors in Singapore report how a 30-year-old man was hospitalized after chomping down a 3.2 kilogram (7-pound) burger in 30 minutes at a competitive eating event. 

The doctors explain how the man came to the hospital after feeling ill and throwing up. An initial examination showed he had a “tense and distended abdomen” and a blood test revealed his body was under considerable stress. 

Concerned by his condition, the patient was given a CT scan (image below) which revealed a large mass of food clogging up his stomach and small intestine. Worse of all, this severely engorged digestive tract was squashing his organs, leading to acute pancreatitis and acute kidney injury.

The man was given a stomach pump, but his symptoms failed to go away. Just as the doctors were preparing to carry out even more medical interventions, relief finally came: he passed wind and eventually managed to poop, resolving his conditions.

“Plans for an open gastrostomy to evacuate the undigested food particles were abandoned when the patient started to pass flatus and there was resolution of metabolic acidosis and elevated white counts”, reads the case study. 

“Eventually, the patient managed to move his bowels and was discharged well 5 days later”, it concludes. 

This patient was pretty lucky to leave the hospital relatively unscathed. There are a bunch of examples where people have died at competitive eating competitions, primarily by choking. In one such instance, a 32-year-old in Florida choked to death while competitively eating live roaches and worms.

In 2020, researchers wrote a study that looked at how many hot dogs is it possible to eat in 10 minutes by analyzing 39 years of data from the annual Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in the US. At the moment the record is held by Joey Chestnut, who ate 75 hot dogs in the 2020 contest. However, the research indicates that it is theoretically possible to devour 84 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

Judging by the case study above though, we wouldn’t want to test that theory. 

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Nuclear power can generate vast amounts of energy while producing relatively little carbon emissions compared to fossil fuels. Image credit: hxdyl/Shutterstock.com

Japan is looking to fire up its use of nuclear energy once again, marking a major change of heart from the previous decade that formed in the wake of the Fukushima meltdown in 2011. 

Back in November, Japan said it will look into keeping some nuclear reactors operating beyond the current 60-year limit and develop next-generation reactors to replace them, Associated Press reports. Some parts of the government are even pushing to build new nuclear power plants.

Just last week, the new suggestion was reportedly given the green light from Japan’s nuclear watchdog, providing the clearest indication yet that the Japanese government is changing its stance on nuclear power.

All of this comes off the back of the pressures that many countries are facing, primarily the global energy crisis and the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. 

Although nuclear power does come with its own environmental issues, it can generate vast amounts of energy while producing relatively little carbon emissions compared to fossil fuels. As such, studies have shown how nuclear energy could become crucial in achieving the target of zero emissions by mid-century and staving off the worst of the climate crisis.

It’s also evident that Japan relies heavily on the global energy markets, importing about 90 percent of its energy from elsewhere.

However, the tragic legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster remains strong in Japan. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and a 15-meter (49-foot) tsunami stuck three reactors at the sea-side nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, sparking a catastrophic series of meltdowns.

Due to the harmful radioactive isotopes that were spewed into the surrounding environment, nearly 160,000 residents were evacuated and Japanese authorities implemented a 30-kilometer (over 18-mile) exclusion zone around the power plant.

In the following years, Japan’s nuclear energy industry almost ground to a standstill with authorities suspending operations at 46 of the country’s 50 operational power reactors. Nuclear power accounted for about a third of Japan’s energy consumption prior to Fukushima, but it had fallen to around 7 percent by 2019. 

Much of this decline was driven by strong public opposition to nuclear energy. In the 2010s, a prominent anti-nuclear movement sprung up in Japan and thousands took part in street protests asking the government to not return to atomic power. 

Over a decade has now passed since the disaster. Some strong resistance to nuclear energy still exists, but attitudes among the wider population have eased. When it comes to managing the energy woes of the 2020s, it looks like Japan is going to have to somehow balance the scars of the past with the new challenges the world faces. 

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This happy chappy was among the newly discovered figures. Image credit: Yamagata University

While some ancient civilizations left behind written histories or crumbling temples, all that remains of Peru’s long-lost Nazca culture are the epic geoglyphs that adorn the desert landscape they once inhabited. Back in 1994, when these so-called Nazca Lines were given UESCO World Heritage status, only 30 of the giant etchings had been identified, yet archaeologists have just announced the discovery of a further 168 geoglyphs, bringing the current total to 358.

The newly identified artworks were spotted by researchers from Yamagata University between June 2019 and February 2020. Using drones and other aerial imaging techniques, the team revealed geoglyphs depicting humans, snakes, felines, killer whales, birds, and camelids, among other designs.

All of the images are attributed to the Nazca culture and are thought to have been created between 100 BCE and 300 CE, yet the local tradition of landscape carving is believed to have begun several centuries earlier. A number of previously identified geoglyphs – including a giant cat that was first spotted in 2020 – were actually created by the Paracas culture, which predates the Nazca civilization, who began engraving enormous figures into the landscape around 500 BCE.

The etchings were created by removing dark rocks and pebbles from the ground, revealing a white sandy layer beneath. Luckily for archaeologists, this sub-layer is rich in lime, which has rendered the geoglyphs weatherproof and protected them from erosion for two millennia. 

This strange 'humanoid' figure with two faces was first spotted in 2018. Image credit: Yamagata University

Both the Paracas and Nazca cultures were prolific designers of these ancient drawings, some of which are up to 50 meters (165 feet) long and can only be seen in their entirety from the air. It’s thought that the glyphs were probably created either for the benefit of deities looking down from the heavens or for use in astronomical rituals.

Many of the smaller figures – which measure around 5 meters (16 feet) in length – are located along ancient trails, and may have served as landmarks or signposts for desert travelers. However, because so little is known about the lives of these ancient artists, archaeologists are still unsure exactly why they created their famous depictions.

Of the 168 recently-spied geoglyphs, all but five are relatively small and were found on these old walking paths. Among the figures identified was a human sporting a bob haircut and beard.

According to the researchers, more carvings are likely to be scattered across the desert waiting to be discovered. Archaeologists are therefore planning to scan the entire area in search of the remaining geoglyphs, using artificial intelligence to help identify faded figures lurking within aerial photographs.

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Just two siblings palling around. Image credit: Nina Buday/Shutterstock.com

Dogs, we are told, are humanity’s best friend. They’ve been by our side for up to 30,000 years and counting, evolving from a few particularly dopey apex predators into the loyal companions of close to half of US households.

But in some ways, this relationship presents something of a philosophical quandary. We don’t know what exactly went down when dogs first wandered in from the cold all those years ago, but it’s certainly true that most of our canine pals were working animals for a lot of human history. They helped us hunt, or herd livestock, or even cook in the kitchens, all at the mercy of an arbitrary hierarchy imposed by their human masters.

Today, the picture is pretty different. Dogs are pampered, carried around in handbags, and given fabulous haircuts and TV shows. But what does it look like from the dogs’ perspective? Do they think of us as their friends? Their parents? Or are we still just their masters, ordained by some natural law to rule over them with a firm but loving hand?

And more importantly – can we ever truly know what lies in the mind of a pupper?

What makes human-dog bonds special?

There’s no disputing that dogs occupy a special place in humanity’s collective heart. But it bears repeating just how profound that bond really is. Point at an object, and your doggo will take a look at what you’re showing them – an understanding of intention that even our closest cousins, chimpanzees, are unable to demonstrate.

That comprehension runs both ways. “What does a happy bird look like? A sad lion? You don’t know, but dog talk you get,” author and journalist Jeffrey Kluger wrote in 2018. “And as with your first human language, you didn’t even have to try to learn it.

You grew up in a world in which dogs are everywhere and simply came to understand them.”

Even weirder is the fact that, despite still being virtually indistinguishable from wolves on the DNA level – the two species’ mitochondrial DNA is 99.9 percent identical – the human-dog bond cannot be replicated with their wilder cousins. 

And it’s certainly been tried: in a 2015 study into the hormonal basis behind our species’ collective puppy love, researchers found that petting, talking to, and gazing into the eyes of pet dogs produced a massive spike in oxytocin levels in both human and canine partners. The same could certainly not be said of the few pet wolves involved in the study: there was no such increase in hormonal levels after time spent petting and talking with the animals. Gazing into the eyes of a wolf, meanwhile,

is more likely to get you attacked than loved up – it’s an unambiguous sign of aggression in the species.

“It's an incredible finding,” Brian Hare, an expert on canine cognition at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the work, told Science Magazine at the time. “[It] suggests that dogs have hijacked the human bonding system.”

Do dogs think we’re friends/family?

Now, all this talk of oxytocin might have reminded you of another type of relationship: the bond between mother and child. Not for nothing is oxytocin sometimes known as the “love hormone”: it’s what connects parents to their children, helps us make friends and trust one another, and if we’re lucky, gets us some terrific orgasms along the way.

So if bonding with our pet doggos can also release this hormone, does it follow that dogs see us as their family? After all, it certainly seems to work in the opposite direction – at least if all those social media posts about “fur babies” are anything to go by. We dress our canine companions up in little outfits; we give them cutesy names like Trixie Woofwoof or Fred; we spend thousands of dollars a year on them; and we mourn them when they’re gone. 

But is the same true in reverse? Perhaps not: as psychologist Jessica Oliva pointed out in Science Magazine, all that petting and eye gazing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It may well be that the pups were anticipating food or playtime with their humans – both behaviors that can also boost oxytocin levels. 

That said, perhaps it depends on how you define “parent”. That unique bond between hound and human doesn’t just reveal itself through pointing and puppy-dog eyes – dogs are also trusting and dependent on their two-legged companions in a way that even other pets are not.

“Adult dogs behave towards their caregivers like human children do,” said Lisa Horn, from the Vetmeduni’s Messerli Research Institute, Austria, back in 2013. She had recently led an investigation into the “secure base effect” in dogs – the phenomenon more familiarly seen in young children, who depend on the presence of their parents for confidence and emotional security.

And that’s not the only way in which dogs can resemble children in their interactions with humans. “They try to understand from facial expressions what humans want,” Carlo Siracusa, an associate professor of clinical behavior medicine and director of the animal behavior service at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, told NBC in 2020. “How likely is it they are going to get something to eat rather than be punished. They are like toddlers.”

Do dogs think we’re masters?

So what about the other option? Dogs are, after all, descended from wolves, an animal virtually synonymous with hierarchical structures. Perhaps our canine pals aren’t our friends or fur babies at all – maybe they see us as benevolent masters? Their alphas, perhaps – or even some kind of hairless bipedal god?

This, at least, is unlikely. For one thing, that whole idea of wolf packs having an “alpha” male or pair has been thoroughly debunked for some time now – that role simply doesn’t exist in the canine mind for a human owner to step into.

On the other hand, there’s clearly a power imbalance in the human-dog relationship. It’s unlikely you’d withhold food from your human child until they completed an unnecessary errand for you, for example, yet this is still standard fare for some canine training manuals. Even today, dogs are put to work herding animals, pulling sleds, and protecting their human owners – all responsibilities you (hopefully) would not entrust to your toddler, no matter how doglike they may sometimes act.

But the important question there is: how do the doggos feel about all that? And the answer, likely, is “pretty good, actually” – the instinct to herd for herding breeds, for example, is so strong that bored little pups will sometimes even try herding their owners. If this is a master-servant relationship, it’s a pretty good one.

Mommy or master?

So, which is it? Does Fido see you as his owner? His master? Or his mommy? It’s a hard question to answer, not least because of how few dogs speak English. 

But then again – who needs English when you have functional magnetic resonance imaging machines? One 2020 study found that dogs shown a picture of their owner responded with increased activation in areas of the brain associated with emotion and attachment processing – and that seeing that face showing a happy emotion activated the “reward” areas of the brain. Clearly, we are special to our little furry guys.

But exactly how special is a question you might not want to think about too deeply. While there’s little doubt your pupper loves you like an adoptive mommy or daddy, from a species-wide point of view, we might just have been the right species at the right time.

Dogs have “an abnormal willingness to form strong emotional bonds with almost anything that crosses their path,” Clive Wynne, a psychologist at Arizona State University who specializes in dog behavior, told The New York Times. And as multiple studies have shown, that need not be a human: dogs that are kept with goats or sheep will bond with goats and sheep; others have even been known to attach themselves to teeny-tiny penguins.

“And they maintain this [bonding ability] throughout life,” Wynne explained. “Above and beyond that they have a willingness and an interest to interact with strangers.”

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The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, looked at college students in the US and Norway, all of whom were heterosexual. The volunteer participants were sent questionnaires, asking them to rate how effective 40 different types of flirting were when looking for a short or long-term relationship, and based on whether the flirter was male or female. The researchers also looked at the participants' own extroversion levels, age, how religious they were, how willing they were to be in a relationship, as well as how attractive they are in the dating market.

“What’s most effective depends on your gender and whether the purpose of the flirtation is a long-term or short-term relationship,” Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, professor of psychology at Norwegian University of Science and Technology explained in a press release.

For women looking for short-term relationships – a fling or a one-night stand, for example – the most effective technique was fairly unsurprising.

“People consider signals that you’re sexually available to be the most effective for women who are looking for a short-term relationship,” Kennair said. Friendly contact such as hugging or a friendly kiss on the cheek isn't enough in those situations, and so women who want a quick fling are better off using cues that highlight sexual availability, such as rubbing against potential partners, moving closer, and making body contact.

Men looking for short-term flings could not rely on just one technique.

"The tactics that were judged most effective for women for a one-night stand were exclusively sexual or physical," the team wrote in the study. "In contrast, men were judged more effective if they, in addition to physical and sexual tactics, also smiled, showed interest in conversations, gave compliments, and made her laugh."

The team found that for men seeking longer-term relationships, “signs of generosity and a willingness to commit works best". However, if you're looking for more general advice on flirting, there was one type that appeared to be universally effective. 

“People think that humour, or being able to make another person laugh, is most effective for men who are looking for a long-term relationship. It’s least effective for women who are looking for a one-night stand. But laughing or giggling at the other person’s jokes is an effective flirtation tactic for both sexes,” Kennair said in the statement. This held true across US and Norway participants in the study. 

“It is not only effective to be funny," Rebecca Burch, a co-author from SUNY Oswego, US, added. "But for women it is very important that you show your potential partner that you think they are funny”.

If you have trouble being funny, Kennair recommends that you begin with another effective flirting technique – smiling and eye contact – before working on the other skills from that baseline.

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Your furry face caterpillars are key for social functions. Image Credit: Krakenimages.com/Shutterstock.com

Aside from suspiciously white teeth and an ungodly number of selfies on their phone, is there a way to spot a narcissist? According to a new study, look no further than their eyebrows.

New research from the University of Toronto, published in the Journal of Personality, has suggested that people with “distinctive eyebrows” are more likely to display narcissistic personality traits.

The word “narcissist” comes from the ancient Greek story of young Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. In general, people with strong narcissistic personality traits score very highly on the self-loving spectrum.

hey often make good first impressions, appearing to be likable and charming, but they also exhibit self-centered and selfish behavior, often with a grandiose view of their own abilities or appearance.

For an unclear reason, they also have great eyebrows too.

The team of researchers came to this conclusion by photographing almost 40 undergrad students with neutral expressions. They then got the students to carry out a psychological test known as the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to test the strength of any narcissistic traits. The researchers showed the photographs to other participants and asked them to guess how narcissistic each person was based on how they looked.

First of all, their initial results showed participants were particularly good at using eyebrows to make an estimation of the student’s levels of narcissism. In particular, eyebrow thickness and a high density of hair were most likely to be used as an accurate judge of narcissism.

They expanded on this by measuring how much perceptions of narcissism changed when swapping narcissists’ and non-narcissists’ eyebrows between faces. This showed that they rated narcissists’ faces as less narcissistic when they donned non-narcissists’ eyebrows and vice versa.

They concluded that this shows "distinctive eyebrows reveal narcissists’ personality to others," as well as strongly influencing whether people view you as narcissistic.

So, why could this be the case? The researchers didn’t look for a mechanism to explain this link, but they note eyebrows are highly important for social functions and nonverbal communication, so we have an especially acute sense for them.

Furthermore, the eyebrow can be used as a microcosm of a person’s wider appearance and identity.

Narcissists seek to be admired so maintain a high level of grooming. “Individuals reporting high levels of narcissism tend to wear more fashionable, stylish, and expensive clothing; have a neater, more organized appearance; and look more attractive,” the study authors write. 

Eyebrows are also very important for facial recognition and mate selection (in both females and males), and a pair of meticulously well-kept eyebrows suggest the owner knows this.

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Laughing through the pain can leave its mark. Image credit: Marzufelo / Shutterstock.com / IFLScience 

In the hit series This Is Us, a revealing episode centers around the show’s clown, Toby, who as a child responded to his mother’s anguish by being funny. The attempt at resolution transforms him into a very funny individual, but also one who suffers from debilitating depression. 

The story is a familiar one and it has a name: the Sad Clown Paradox. It explains the association between people who are exceptionally funny, often entertainers by trade, with mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. 

In Pretend the World Is Funny and Forever: A Psychological Analysis of Comedians, Clowns, and Actors, Seymour and Rhoda Fisher used childhood accounts, the Rorschach inkblot test and the Thematic Apperception Test to explore depressive characteristics among performers, reports Psychology Today. They found that the funniest of the bunch often came from low socioeconomic backgrounds, and may have adopted the role of the “class clown” in school as a means of overcoming stress and anxiety. 

Comparatively, the comedians had faced more adversity at a younger age compared to the actors. There were also trends in parental relationships, as comics more often self-reported a positive relationship with their fathers, while mothers were described as critical, aggressive and non-maternal, a trend that’s been reflected in studies of college-age amateur comedians. 

Humor has long been used as a tool against stress and uncertainty, perhaps best captured in The Wipers Times: a satirical newspaper that went to print in the decimated city of Ypres, Belgium, during World War I. So named because most of the soldiers reading it couldn’t pronounce Ypres (they said why-pers instead of ee-pruh), the trench newspaper included sporting notes in which gas attacks were reported as a horse race, regular serials (one of the earliest: a detective series “Herlock Shomes”) and a Things We Want To Know section, including "whether the pop’lar Poplar tree’s as pop’lar as it used to be?"

During the COVID-19 pandemic, humans across the globe took to their windows, bathrooms, and balconies to showcase a similarly resilient sense of humor in the face of life-threatening disease, all while grappling with the stress and isolation of lockdown. And later, amidst the devastation unfolding in Ukraine, hackers found the time to make Russian charging stations display the message: "Putin is a dickhead". 

Humor is now considered as a character strength, scientifically speaking. Positive psychology, a field that examines what people do well, notes that humor can be used to make others feel good, to gain intimacy or to help buffer stress. It also figures, then, that a well chiseled sense of humor can be born out of a complicated past as a means of coping, but that doesn’t necessarily spare the “clown” from the mental toll of certain life histories.  

Focusing on positive relationships at an early age may be a tool for avoiding the Sad Clown Paradox, but the phenomenon is a reminder that even the funniest of friends may be in need of a shoulder to cry on. 

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An area that, statistically speaking, does not have that many sunken ships. Image Credit: WindVector/Shutterstock.com

For much of the latter part of the 20th Century, you couldn't flip through the channels without finding at least one documentary on the Bermuda Triangle, an area in the Atlantic Ocean that was chomping down ships and airplanes like they were Reese's Pieces.  

But over recent years, a new genre of Tweet has come out: asking what happened to the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. 

What is behind the sudden decline in Bermuda Triangle intrigue? Well, it could have something to do with the fact it has been repeatedly solved, and that there was no mystery in the first place. But for people who are missing that intrigue from their life, let's go back to the beginning.

Interest in a loosely-defined area of ocean between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda can be traced back to a 1968 article about "Flight 19" in 1945. On 5 December 1945, five US Avenger Torpedo Bombers went missing over the supposed Bermuda Triangle, during average weather conditions and under the control of several experienced pilots, as well as inexperienced pilots who were being trained. 

A radio message was intercepted at around 4 pm between one trainee and their instructor, explaining that they had become uncertain of their position and that the aircraft's compass was malfunctioning. Shortly after that, the planes became lost somewhere east of Florida, and the planes were never seen or heard from again. 

As intriguing as the article was, planes go missing for all sorts of reasons. In this case, the Navy assumes that after becoming lost the crew were likely forced to make a landing at sea, to which the choppy seas were unsuited.

"It is also possible that some unexpected and unforeseen development of weather conditions may have intervened," they write in a report, "although there is no evidence of freak storms in the area at the time."

Nevertheless, something about the idea of an area where things go missing caught on, and sinkings and missing planes in the area became attributed to it over the years, while sinkings that had happened prior to 1945 got backdated, and attributed to the Triangle in retrospect, including the loss of the USS Cyclops, which disappeared without a trace en-route home from Brazil in 1918.

In a fact-sheet, the US Coast Guard put together possible rational explanations for disappearances in the area.

"The majority of disappearances can be attributed to the area's unique environmental features," they write. "First, the 'Devil's Triangle' is one of the two places on earth that a magnetic compass does point towards true north. Normally it points toward magnetic north. The difference between the two is known as compass variation. The amount of variation changes by as much as 20 degrees as one circumnavigates the earth. If this compass variation or error is not compensated for, a navigator could find himself far off course and in deep trouble."

They note that another area known as the "Devil's Sea" by fishermen, just off the east coast of Japan, has the same problem.

"Another environmental factor is the character of the Gulf stream," they continue. "It is extremely swift and turbulent and can quickly erase any evidence of a disaster," quickly turning a tragic loss of a ship into a mystery that may never be solved.

"The unpredictable Caribbean-Atlantic weather pattern also plays its role. Sudden local thunder storms and water spouts often spell disaster for pilots and mariners."

But all of the above is irrelevant, as statistically there are not more accidents that happen in the Bermuda Triangle compared to other areas of the oceans and seas. In fact, a study looking at the most dangerous waters for shipping by documenting accidents and incidents did not feature the Bermuda Triangle in its top 10. Meanwhile, a UK Channel 4 documentary looking into incidents around the Bermuda Triangle determined that "large numbers of ships had not sunk there". 

Must try harder, the mysterious patch of water that supposedly sinks boats.

The belief that there are more sinkings in the area likely comes from the media (and conspiracy theorists) focusing on any sinkings in the area, because of intrigue around the Bermuda Triangle, reinforcing the mystery when really, statistically speaking, accidents are no more likely to occur here than in other areas ships and planes pass over.

So, why has there suddenly been less focus on the Bermuda Triangle? 

Probably because people making programs and articles about the supposed mystery and enough of the public know that it isn't really a thing, or at least not enough of a mystery to keep pulling in viewers.

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About 76 percent of all non-visually impaired people experience something known as "floaters". These appear as moving structures, like little worms, that sometimes appear in your field of vision if you are staring at something bright and uniform such as the sky, snow, or a white screen. 

Their scientific name is Muscae volitantes, or "flying flies" – but they are not insects. As an excellent TED-Ed video explains, they are tiny objects within your eyes. They could be bits of tissue, red blood cells, or protein clumps floating in the vitreous humor. This is the gel-like substance between the lens and the retina that keeps the eye in shape.

Light enters the eye through the lens and activates certain cells on the retina, but as floaters move around the vitreous they cast shadows on the retina, creating the peculiar images that many of us can see.

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The most convincing evidence that this part of the cave was used by Neandtherals is the shell of a large whelk, an edible type of sea snail. Image credit: Colinmthompson/Shutterstock.com 

On the rocky shores of Gibraltar, archaeologists have discovered a new chamber in a cave system that was a hangout of some of Europe's last surviving Neanderthals. Among the markings and bones discovered in the newly found chamber, the team hopes to uncover more insights into the culture and customs of our mysterious sibling species.  

The new chamber was discovered within the Gorham’s Cave Complex World Heritage Site, a sea-level cave in Gibraltar, a British overseas territory nestled on the southern tip of Spain. Thought to be one of the last known hideouts of the Neanderthals in Europe, the cave has been widely explored since it was first excavated in 1997. Last month, however, archaeologists from the Gibraltar National Museum discovered a new 13-meter (42-foot) deep chamber at the back of the cave that had been sealed by sediment for at least 40,000 years.

As well as the bones of a lynx, hyena, and griffon vulture, an initial analysis of the chamber revealed the presence of scratch marks on the walls, most likely made by an unidentified carnivore. The most convincing evidence that this part of the cave was used by Neandtherals is the shell of a large whelk, an edible type of sea snail, that must have been transported up to the chamber due to its distance from the waters. 

Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) were a human species that emerged over 400,000 years ago — long before us (Homo Sapiens) — across Eurasia until they slipped into extinction around 40,000 years ago. However, their legacy still lives on;

Neanderthal genes can be found in every modern human population due to prolific interbreeding. The percentage of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans is just 0.3 percent in African populations but is about 1 to 3 percent in people of European or Asian ancestry.

In the past, Neanderthals were often portrayed as H. Sapiens’ heavy-browed caveman relations, assumed to lack the cognitive abilities to develop complex cultures. However, a number of discoveries in recent decades have shown that our extinct cousins were perhaps on a comparable level to us, cognitively speaking. The growing picture we have is of Neanderthals as complex people who created art, buried their dead, decorated their bodies with jewelry, cared for the disabled, and had already discovered penicillin. 

Through further work at this cave, it’s possible that archaeologists might be able to shed into how this mysterious species lived. 

“These are exciting finds that open a new chapter of our rich history. Knowing Vanguard cave well, I often wondered what might lie behind the sands. Now we are beginning to get a first glimpse,” Dr John Cortes, Gibraltar’s Minister for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change, and Education, said in a statement. 

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Bees like to roll little wooden balls as a form of play, study finds

Don't worry - it's not coming to destroy us all. Image Credit: kwan tse/Shutterstock.com

There’s a massive lump of liquidized, carbon-rich material hiding hundreds of kilometers beneath Yellowstone’s supervolcano and the greater Western United States area. It’s truly massive – 1.8 million square kilometers (about 700,000 square miles) in size – and it’s bubbling inside the upper region of the mantle, the region of the planet that’s a partly-molten churning mass of fiery doom. 

It’s essentially molten carbonates, a type of rock that has a lot of carbon contained within it. In fact, this reservoir of carbon is so huge that it’s completely changed the way scientists understand the carbon cycle.

To put it in comparable terms, back in 2011, the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere – mainly through human activity – was about 10 billion tonnes (about 11 billion tons). This newly found reservoir implies that the upper mantle contains 10,000 times more carbon than this, primarily as trapped carbon dioxide gas.

“Releasing only 1% of this CO2 into the atmosphere will be the equivalent of burning 2.3 trillion barrels of oil,” lead co-author Sash Hier-Majumder, a senior lecturer in geophysics at Royal Holloway, said in a statement.

That’s roughly 325 times greater than the United States’ annual oil consumption.

Although this carbon will slowly make its way to the surface via volcanic eruptions, there’s absolutely no need to fret. It will have an incredibly small effect on the rate of climate change we are now experiencing, which a recent study clocked as being 170 times faster than what would be expected if humanity was taken out of the equation.

Writing in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, a team from London’s Royal Holloway explain how they used an enormous network of seismic sensors to pick up on the carbonate monster beneath our feet.

Seismic waves travel at different speeds and at different angles through a variety of materials. This means that researchers can use such waves to determine what the innards of the planet are made of, and this newly emplaced, extensive sensor network was used to make this astonishing discovery.

“Under the western US is a huge underground partially-molten reservoir of liquid carbonate,” Hier-Majumder added. “It is a result of one of the tectonic plates of the Pacific Ocean forced underneath the western USA, undergoing partial melting thanks to gasses like CO2 and H2O contained in the minerals dissolved in it.”

Normally, when one tectonic plate gets forced under another in a process known as subduction, you get a very complex, layered style of melting within the space above the descending plate as it dehydrates. This ultimately produces large volumes of thick, gassy magma that produces some of the most explosive volcanoes.

Mount St. Helens – and the entire Cascade Arc it belongs to – are prime examples of this type of subduction-zone volcanism. However, every now and then, you get a very weird form of melt appearing in the mix – in this case, plenty of carbon-rich rocks were added to the upper mantle.

When carbon-rich magma makes it to the eruption phase, it tends to produce incredibly fluid, very “cold,” black-and-white carbonatite lava. Several volcanoes in the East African Rift exhibit this type of eruptive activity, which creates some truly alien-looking landscapes.

There isn’t any evidence at the surface yet that carbonatite volcanoes will spring up across the Western US anytime soon, and it’s more likely that you’ll just get very gassy, “conventional” explosive eruptions instead.

Still, give it a few tens of millennia, and hey, you never know, the planet may surprise you – or your descendants, anyway – with its strange volcanic ways.

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The fish have much to fear, but luckily a lot of water to hide in. Image credit: © Sergey Pesterev / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

The world’s oldest lake can be found in southeastern Siberia where it’s believed to have existed for around 25 million years. As well as being the great great grandad of lakes, Baikal is also the deepest at 1,700 meters (5,600 feet). The impressive accolade means it’s home to around 20 percent of the world’s unfrozen freshwater reserves, and in a pond that massive you can expect a fish or two.

Lake Baikal is known as the “Galapagos of Russia” for the many weird and diverse species that call it home. Despite being covered by a thick layer of ice for five months each year, the ecosystem that has developed in the lake is astonishing and like few others. It is estimated that 80 percent of plants and animals that live in it are found nowhere else on the planet.

Among them is the Baikal oilfish, also known as the golomyankas. They’re scale-less fish with translucent bodies that can stretch to around 21 centimeters (8.3 inches). There are two species in the Comephorus genus, C. baikalensis and C. dybowski.

As fish go, the golomynkas are pretty peculiar. Image credit: Rvalette - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Beyond their peculiar appearance, they’re unusual as they occupy the entire water column of the staggeringly deep lake, making them the most abyssal freshwater fish in the world. The oilfish are also cannibals, partial to swallowing up their own young as part of a diet made up of planktonic copepods, amphipods, and larvae.

Throughout the year, Lake Baikal’s temperature ranges quite dramatically. In the summer, the surface layer can be as warm as 16°C (61°F) in some areas, but the surface freezes for just over four months from early January to May. On average, the ice is about 0.5 to 1.4 meters (1.6 to 4.6 feet), but in some areas where there are hummocks (a knoll of ice that rises above the surface), it can be as thick as 2 meters (6.6 feet).

The lake has long been famous for the puzzling ice rings that appear during the winter months that are so vast they are visible from space. In fact, it was thanks to the help of NASA scientists that the mystery of these enormous spectacles was finally solved in 2020. 

The source of the massive ice rings was tracked down in 2020 with help from NASA. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Using data collected from satellites and sensors dropped into the lake, it was discovered that warm eddies deep below the frozen lake’s surface were creating a warm flow of water in a clockwise direction, even in the cooler months. The strength of the current is weakest in the center, where the surface ice remains frozen, but the stronger current on the outside of the eddy can thaw the ice, creating these astonishing formations visible from above.

While beautiful, the rings can prove perilous for the drivers who take their vehicles across the frozen lake, as despite being apparent from the perspective of satellites, they are a lot harder to spot at ground level. As a public service, Alexei Kouraev, an assistant professor at the Laboratory for Studies in Spatial Geophysics and Oceanography (LEGOS) at the Federal University in Toulouse, France, routinely updates a website with his team of researchers identifying the locations of newly formed ice rings.

As for what’s at the bottom of Lake Baikal, research has uncovered mats of bacteria along with sponges, limpets, and fish. It was also once thought that a dragon called Lusud-Khan was down there, and while nothing in the way of evidence has been found of the beast, it sounds a lot cooler than bacteria so we’re all for it.

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Researchers used LiDAR to detect 964 Maya settlements. Image credit: Hansen et al., Ancient Mesoamerica 2022 (CC-BY 4.0)

A previously unidentified Maya civilization made up of 964 interconnected settlements has been discovered in northern Guatemala. Dated to the Preclassic Maya period – which lasted from around 1000 BCE until 150 CE – the scattered sites cover an area of approximately 1,685 square kilometers (650 square miles) and are linked by 177 kilometers (110 miles) of ancient roads. 

Researchers spotted the network of settlements using LiDAR, a detection system that bounces laser signals off surfaces in order to reveal hidden features and structures. While flying over Guatemala’s Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin (MCKB), the team utilized the technology in order to penetrate the thick jungle canopy and expose the ancient constructions lurking beneath.

“The LiDAR survey revealed an extraordinary density and distribution of Maya sites concentrated in the MCKB, many of them linked directly or indirectly by a vast causeway network,” write the researchers in a new study. In total, they found 775 sites within the MCKB itself, with a further 189 located in the surrounding karstic ridge.

These 964 sites were grouped into 417 cities, towns and villages, all of which appear to have formed part of a single unified civilization. “The consistency of architectural forms and patterns, ceramics, sculptural art, architectural patterns, and unifying causeway constructions within a specified geographical territory suggests a centralized political, social, and economic organic solidarity among the occupants,” explain the authors.

Previously, archaeologists had assumed that this low-lying corner of the Maya empire was sparsely populated, yet the complexity of the newly-discovered sites suggests otherwise. “The magnitude of the labor in the construction of massive platforms, palaces, dams, causeways, and pyramids dating to the Middle and Late Preclassic periods throughout the MCKB suggests a power to organize thousands of workers,” say the researchers.

To build such a civilization would have required highly skilled “lime producers, mortar and quarry specialists, lithic technicians, architects, logistics and agricultural procurement specialists, and legal enforcement and religious officials, all operating under a political and ideological homogeneity,” they explain.

Among the many architectural surprises present in the region, the researchers single out the astonishing network of causeways as “one of the crowning achievements” of the ancient Maya. Overall, the team identified 133.22 kilometers (82.8 miles) of roads linking different settlements, with a further 38.23 kilometers (23.8 miles) of intrasite causeway.

The existence of these transport links, they say, would have allowed people to easily visit other settlements while also facilitating collective labor efforts.

Large platforms and pyramids were identified within some sites, suggesting they may have served as political hubs, while a total of 30 ballcourts were found scattered throughout the system.

Furthermore, as the MCKB has no year-round rivers or lakes, the existence of such a large population would have required extensive water collection projects. Accordingly, the researchers found 195 artificial reservoirs, as well as a network of canals for transporting water around the region.

The study is published in the journal Ancient Mesoamerica.

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Despite all the talk about the need to curb our climate impact, carbon emissions from fossil fuels are set to reach a record high this year. So while 2022 may have resembled the trailer for a disaster movie, some experts believe we may have already bought a ticket for the feature film.

Climate scientist Robert Vautard, head of France's Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, told Agence France-Presse that "the year 2022 will be one of the hottest years on Earth, with all the phenomena that go with higher temperatures.” Appearing on the year’s highlight reel are record heatwaves which caused lakes to evaporate across Europe and Asia, a catastrophic drought that brought misery to millions in the Horn of Africa, and devastating floods in Pakistan.

"Unfortunately, this is just the beginning," says Vautard.

Looking back over the past 12 months, it’s clear that the warning signs have been getting louder, and some climate scientists believe it may already be too late to save ourselves from disaster. Back in February, for instance, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicated that 42 percent of the world’s population are living in areas deemed “highly vulnerable” to the impacts of climate change.

Commenting on the report, UN secretary-general António Guterres said the globe is now doomed to become an “atlas of suffering”. 

In May, meanwhile, research indicated that there is a 48 percent chance that global temperatures will rise to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels within the next five years. This represents the lower acceptable limit of warming established by the Paris Agreement of 2015, which aims to prevent a catastrophic rise of 2°C (3.6°F).

Yet as 2022 dragged on, and the record-breaking northern hemisphere summer came and went, it became ever clearer that the goals identified in Paris are slipping from our grasp. According to a depressing report, The Gambia was the only nation that had actually stuck to its Paris Agreement pledges, before being downgraded recently to 'Almost Sufficient'.

At COP27 in Egypt in November, the UN presented its own findings that there is currently “no credible pathway” in place to limit global warming, as Guterres told delegates that the “1.5°C goal is on life support – and the machines are rattling.” 

“We are getting dangerously close to the point of no return,” he said during his opening address.

Then came the news – delivered by the Global Carbon Project – that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on course to rise by one percent this year, reaching a record high of 36.6 billion tonnes. For the 1.5-degree target to remain viable, global emissions need to fall by 45 percent this decade and reach net zero by 2050, so it’s clear we’re moving in the wrong direction.

If current trends continue, the UN predicts that the world will heat up to between 2.4 and 2.6°C (4.3-4.7°F) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Should such a temperature rise occur, the climate catastrophes of 2022 will be looked back on as the good old days.

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom, as some progress has been made and there is still time to limit the damage. Earlier this month, 190 countries signed up to a plan called the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which aims to protect 30 percent of the world’s terrestrial and marine ecosystems by 2030.

Sticking to pledges like the GBF could be the key to protecting the climate and preventing further disasters in the future. Over the next 12 months, the commitment of governments and corporations to delivering on these promises will be once again put to the test, not least at COP28, which is set to be hosted by fossil fuel exporting giant the United Arab Emirates.

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One of the most perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics is that tiny subatomic particles don't seem to "choose" a state until an outside observer measures it. The act of measurement converts all the vague possibilities of what could happen into a definite, concrete outcome. While the mathematics of quantum mechanics provides rules for how that process works, that math doesn't really explain what that means in practical terms.

One idea is that consciousness — an awareness of our own selves and the impact we have on our surroundings   — plays a key role in measurement and that it's our experience of the universe that converts it from merely imagined to truly real.

But if this is the case, then is it possible that human consciousness could explain some of the weirdness of quantum mechanics?

Quantum measurement

Quantum mechanics are the rules that govern the zoo of subatomic particles that make up the universe. Quantum mechanics tells us that we live in a fundamental nondeterministic world. In other words, at least when it comes to the world of tiny particles,  it's impossible, no matter how clever scientists are in their experimental design or how perfectly they know that experiment's initial conditions, to predict with certainty the outcome of any experiment. Know the force acting on a proton? There's no set location where it's certain to be a few seconds from now — only a set of probabilities of where it could be.

Thankfully, this indeterminism surfaces only in the subatomic world; in the macroscopic world, everything operates according to deterministic laws of physics (and no, we're not exactly sure why that split happens, but that's a problem for a different day).

When physicists perform an experiment on quantum systems (for example, trying to measure the energy levels of an electron in an atom), they're never quite sure what answer they'll get. Instead, the equations of quantum mechanics predict the probabilities of these energy levels. Once scientists actually conduct the experiment, however, they get one of those results, and all of a sudden the universe becomes deterministic again; once scientists know the energy level of the electron, for example, they know exactly what it's going to do, because its "wavefunction" collapses and the particle chooses a certain energy level.

This flip from indeterminism to determinism is outright odd, and there is no other theory in physics that operates the same way. What makes the act of measurement so special? Myriad quantum interactions happen in the universe all the time. So do those interactions experience the same kind of flipping even when no one is looking?

The role of consciousness

The standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, known as the Copenhagen interpretation, says to ignore all this and just focus on getting results. In that view, the subatomic world is fundamentally inscrutable and people shouldn't try to develop coherent pictures of what's going on.

Instead, scientists should count themselves lucky that at least they can make predictions using the equations of quantum mechanics.

But to many people, that's not satisfying. It seems that there's something incredibly special about the process of measurement that appears only in quantum theory. This specialness becomes even more striking when you compare measurement to, say, literally any other interaction.

For instance, in a faraway gas cloud, deep in the vastness of interstellar space, nobody is around; nobody is watching. If, within that gas cloud, two atoms bump into each other, this is a quantum interaction, so the rules of quantum mechanics should apply. But there is no "measurement" and no result — it's just one of trillions of random interactions happening every day, unobserved by humans. And so the rules of quantum mechanics tell us that the interaction remains indeterministic.

But if those same two atoms bump together inside a laboratory, scientists can measure and record what happened. Because a measurement occurred, the same rules of quantum mechanics tell us that the indeterminism flipped to become deterministic — that's what allowed me to write down a concrete result.

What's so different between these two cases? Both involve subatomic particles interacting with other subatomic particles. And every step of the measurement process involves subatomic particles at some level, so there shouldn't be an escape from the usual quantum rules that say the outcome should be indeterminate.

Some theorists, such as pioneering quantum physicist Eugene Wigner (opens in new tab), point out that the only difference between these two scenarios is that one involves a conscious, thinking observer and the other does not. Thus, what's called a "collapse" in quantum mechanics (the transition from indeterministic probabilities to a concrete result) relies on consciousness.

Dreams of the universe

Because consciousness is so important to humans, we tend to think there is something special about it. After all, animals are the only known conscious entities to inhabit the universe. And one way to interpret the rules of quantum mechanics is to follow the above logic to its extreme end: What we call a measurement is really the intervention of a conscious agent in a chain of otherwise mundane subatomic interactions.

This line of thinking requires consciousness to be  different from all the other physics in the universe. Otherwise, scientists could (and do) argue that consciousness is itself just the sum of various subatomic interactions. If that's the case,  there's no end point in the chain of measurement. And if so, then what scientists do in the laboratory really isn't any different from what happens in random gas clouds.

While not strictly a physical theory, the concept of consciousness as different and separate from the material universe does have a long tradition in philosophy and theology.

However, until someone can figure out a way to test this concept of consciousness as separate from the rest of the physical laws in a scientific experiment, it will have to stay in the realm of philosophy and speculation.

This is part of an ongoing series describing potential interpretations of quantum mechanics.

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