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Evidence mounts that gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression

Evidence mounts that gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression

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Science magazine reports: Of all the many ways the teeming ecosystem of microbes in a person’s gut and other tissues might affect health, its potential influences on the brain may be the most provocative. Now, a study of two large groups of Europeans has found several species of gut bacteria are missing in people with depression. The researchers can’t say whether the absence is a cause or an effect of the illness, but they showed that many gut bacteria could…

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Rising temperatures could melt most Himalayan glaciers by 2100, threatening the water supply of 25% of global population

Rising temperatures could melt most Himalayan glaciers by 2100, threatening the water supply of 25% of global population

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The New York Times reports: Rising temperatures in the Himalayas, home to most of the world’s tallest mountains, will melt at least one-third of the region’s glaciers by the end of the century even if the world’s most ambitious climate change targets are met, according to a report released Monday. If those goals are not achieved, and global warming and greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rates, the Himalayas could lose two-thirds of its glaciers by 2100, according to…

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Gigantic cavity in Antarctica glacier is a product of rapid melting, study finds

Gigantic cavity in Antarctica glacier is a product of rapid melting, study finds

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The New York Times reports: The Thwaites Glacier on Antarctica’s western coast has long been considered one of the most unstable on the continent. Now, scientists are worried about the discovery of an enormous underwater cavity that will probably speed up the glacier’s decay. The cavity is about two-thirds the area of Manhattan and nearly 1,000 feet tall, according to a study released Wednesday by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The hulking chamber is large enough to have contained about 14…

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Tasmania is burning

Tasmania is burning

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Richard Flanagan writes: As I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old. Fire has broached the boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine vegetation, unlike anything on the planet. Fire laps at the edges of Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of Mt Anne…

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Fool Britannia

Fool Britannia

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Hari Kunzru writes: From the ill-conceived Brexit referendum onward, Britain’s governing class has embarrassed itself. The Remain campaign was complacent, the Leave campaign brazenly mendacious, and as soon as the result was known, most of the loudest advocates for severing ties with the European Union ran away like naughty schoolboys whose cricket ball had smashed a greenhouse window. Negotiations have revealed the pitiful intellectual limitations of a succession of blustering cabinet ministers, the leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition…

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Blackface is the tip of the iceberg

Blackface is the tip of the iceberg

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Jamelle Bouie writes: In American politics, lawmakers can get a pass for almost anything short of open allegiance to racist ideologies or the explicit use of racist imagery. There is a logic to this dynamic, even as it produces absurd results, like forceful condemnations of racism from a Virginia Republican Party that fielded an unapologetic neo-Confederate for Senate just over three months ago or calls for Northam’s resignation from a Republican National Committee that otherwise stands firmly behind President Trump….

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Trump nominates former lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry as the next Interior secretary

Trump nominates former lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry as the next Interior secretary

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump announced Monday that he will nominate David Bernhardt, a veteran lobbyist who has helped orchestrate the administration’s push to expand oil and gas drilling as the Interior Department’s number-two official, to serve as the next secretary. If confirmed, Bernhardt, a 49-year old Colorado native known for his unrelenting work habits, would be well positioned to roll back even more of the Obama-era conservation policies he has worked to unravel since joining Interior a year…

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Trump administration is slower to fill jobs and has higher turnover than any other administration

Trump administration is slower to fill jobs and has higher turnover than any other administration

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The Washington Post reports: From the Justice Department to Veterans Affairs, vast swaths of the government have top positions filled by officials serving in an acting capacity — or no one at all. More than two years into Trump’s term, the president has an acting chief of staff, attorney general, defense secretary, Office of Management and Budget director and Environmental Protection Agency chief. To deal with the number of vacancies in the upper ranks of departments, agencies have been relying…

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Most Americans support appropriate levels of taxation on those with excessive wealth

Most Americans support appropriate levels of taxation on those with excessive wealth

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Politico reports: The prospect of 70 percent tax rates for multimillionaires and special levies on the super-rich draw howls about creeping socialism and warnings of economic disaster in much of Washington. But polling suggests that when it comes to soaking the rich, the American public is increasingly on board. Surveys are showing overwhelming support for raising taxes on top earners, including a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Monday that found 76 percent of registered voters believe the wealthiest Americans should…

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David Wallace-Wells on climate: ‘we have done more damage knowingly than we ever managed in ignorance’

David Wallace-Wells on climate: ‘we have done more damage knowingly than we ever managed in ignorance’

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Jonathan Watts writes: David Wallace-Wells’s apocalyptic depiction of a world made uninhabitable by climate chaos caused an outcry when it was published in New York magazine in 2017. Based on the worst-case scenarios foreseen by science, his article portrayed a world of drought, plague and famine, in which acidified oceans drown coastal homelands, dormant diseases are released from ancient ice, conflicts surge, economies collapse, human cognitive abilities decline and heat stress becomes more intolerable in New York City than in…

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Welcome to the new age of nuclear instability

Welcome to the new age of nuclear instability

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Rachel Bronson writes: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement on Friday that the United States is suspending the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty should worry everyone. The I.N.F. is a landmark treaty and it has made the world a safe place. It was the first nuclear agreement to ever outlaw an entire class of weapons. The Trump administration has dismissed the I.N.F. as irrelevant because Russia has abrogated its commitment to it by developing a treaty-busting cruise missile of its own….

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John Bolton is a serial arms control killer

John Bolton is a serial arms control killer

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Joseph Cirincione writes: John Bolton relishes in targeting nuclear arms treaties. He is very good at it. The U.S. national security adviser’s latest hit is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, but his list of victims goes back decades. He had a hand in either the U.S. withdrawal or repeal of Richard Nixon’s Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Bill Clinton’s Agreed Framework with North Korea and Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. Now he has helped put the knife into Ronald Reagan’s landmark…

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How will John Roberts respond to a constitutional crisis?

How will John Roberts respond to a constitutional crisis?

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Michael O’Donnell writes: Two years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts gave the commencement address at the Cardigan Mountain School, in New Hampshire. The ninth-grade graduates of the all-boys school included his son, Jack. Parting with custom, Roberts declined to wish the boys luck. Instead he said that, from time to time, “I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice.” He went on, “I hope you’ll be ignored, so you know…

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Regulate social media now. The future of democracy is at stake

Regulate social media now. The future of democracy is at stake

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Anne Applebaum writes: A few days ago, ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom, discovered that a tool it was using to track political advertising on Facebook had been quietly disabled — by Facebook. The browser extension had detected political ad campaigns and gathered details on the ads’ target audiences. Facebook also tracks political ad campaigns, but sometimes it fails to detect them. For the past year, the company had accepted corrections from ProPublica — until one day it decided it didn’t…

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