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Why your sleeping brain replays new rewarding experiences

Why your sleeping brain replays new rewarding experiences

Jim Davies writes: During this Olympics, I’ve been rooting for Kelleigh Ryan, who is on the women’s foil team. She’s from Ottawa, where I live. Whenever she scored a point, she’d emit a victory scream, probably feeling a rush of pleasure. Watching her on television, I did, too. Getting better at something involves emotion. When we do well, we have good feelings—pride, pleasure, excitement—and these emotions help reinforce whatever behaviors we just engaged in. Similarly, the pain of failure makes…

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Acceleration of global warming signals ‘code red’ for humanity

Acceleration of global warming signals ‘code red’ for humanity

Phys.org reports: We ignored the warnings, and now it’s too late: global heating has arrived with a vengeance and will see Earth’s average temperature reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels around 2030, a decade earlier than projected only three years ago, according to a landmark UN assessment published on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) bombshell—landing 90 days before a key climate summit desperate to keep 1.5C in play—says the threshold will be breached around 2050, no…

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IPCC climate report: Profound changes are underway in Earth’s oceans and ice – a lead author explains what the warnings mean

IPCC climate report: Profound changes are underway in Earth’s oceans and ice – a lead author explains what the warnings mean

What might seem like small changes, like a degree of warming, can have big consequences. AP Photo/John McConnico By Robert Kopp, Rutgers University Humans are unequivocally warming the planet, and that’s triggering rapid changes in the atmosphere, oceans and polar regions, and increasing extreme weather around the world, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns in a new report. The IPCC released the first part of its much anticipated Sixth Assessment Report on Aug. 9, 2021. In it, 234 scientists…

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Rising seas and melting glaciers: these changes are now irreversible, but we have to act to slow them down

Rising seas and melting glaciers: these changes are now irreversible, but we have to act to slow them down

Shutterstock/slowmotiongli By Nick Golledge, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington After three years of writing and two weeks of virtual negotiations to approve the final wording, the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms that changes are happening in Earth’s climate across every continent and every ocean. My contribution was as one of 15 lead authors to a chapter about the oceans, the world’s icescapes and sea level change — and this…

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Scientists understood physics of climate change in the 1800s – thanks to a woman named Eunice Foote

Scientists understood physics of climate change in the 1800s – thanks to a woman named Eunice Foote

Eunice Foote described the greenhouse gas effects of carbon dioxide in 1856. Carlyn Iverson/NOAA Climate.gov By Sylvia G. Dee, Rice University Long before the current political divide over climate change, and even before the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), an American scientist named Eunice Foote documented the underlying cause of today’s climate change crisis. The year was 1856. Foote’s brief scientific paper was the first to describe the extraordinary power of carbon dioxide gas to absorb heat – the driving force…

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The world is nowhere near the end of the pandemic, says epidemiologist Larry Brilliant

The world is nowhere near the end of the pandemic, says epidemiologist Larry Brilliant

CNBC reports: The pandemic is not coming to an end soon — given that only a small proportion of the world population has been vaccinated against Covid-19, a well-known epidemiologist told CNBC. Dr. Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who was part of the World Health Organization’s team that helped eradicate smallpox, said the delta variant is “maybe the most contagious virus” ever. In recent months, the U.S., India and China, as well as other countries in Europe, Africa and Asia have…

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‘This is really scary’: Kids struggle with long Covid

‘This is really scary’: Kids struggle with long Covid

The New York Times reports: Will Grogan stared blankly at his ninth-grade biology classwork. It was material he had mastered the day before, but it looked utterly unfamiliar. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he blurted. His teacher and classmates reminded him how adeptly he’d answered questions about the topic during the previous class. “I’ve never seen this before,” he insisted, becoming so distressed that the teacher excused him to visit the school nurse. The episode, earlier this year,…

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As Taliban capture cities, U.S. says Afghan forces must fend for themselves

As Taliban capture cities, U.S. says Afghan forces must fend for themselves

The New York Times reports: If the Taliban had seized three provincial capitals in northern Afghanistan a year ago, like they did on Sunday, the American response would most likely have been ferocious. Fighter jets and helicopter gunships would have responded in force, beating back the Islamist group or, at the very least, stalling its advance. But these are different times. What aircraft the U.S. military could muster from hundreds of miles away struck a cache of weapons far from…

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Too many people are dying right now

Too many people are dying right now

David Wallace-Wells writes: A few weeks ago, in a back-of-the-envelope calculation during an interview with Eric Topol of Scripps, I suggested that because of widespread vaccination of the most vulnerable elderly, we may have reduced overall mortality risk in the country by 90 percent. Topol thought that was a little high, but agreed that vaccines were delivering great protection against death and hospitalization, and while we would likely see some of each during the Delta wave, “it won’t be like…

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Neighbors’ deaths from Covid-19 have an Arkansas town reassessing vaccines

Neighbors’ deaths from Covid-19 have an Arkansas town reassessing vaccines

The Wall Street Journal reports: Michael Lejong fully intended to get vaccinated for Covid-19, his wife said, standing in the pavilion that the prominent architect designed for his hometown. But he was relatively young, very healthy and not overly concerned about the virus. He wanted to get his shots separately from his wife, so he could care for her if she had adverse side effects. She got hers immediately in April and he put his off. In late June, he…

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Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

Republicans treated Covid like a bioweapon. Then it turned against them

Rebecca Solnit writes: Some of the most powerful conservatives in the United States have, since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, chosen to sow disinformation along with mockery and distrust of proven methods of combating the disease, from masks to vaccines to social distancing. Their actions have afflicted the nation as a whole with more disease and death and economic crisis than good leadership aligned with science might have, and, in spite of hundreds of thousands of well-documented deaths and…

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Former acting attorney general testifies about Trump’s efforts to subvert election

Former acting attorney general testifies about Trump’s efforts to subvert election

The New York Times reports: Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the Trump administration, has told the Justice Department watchdog and congressional investigators that one of his deputies tried to help former President Donald J. Trump subvert the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the interviews. Mr. Rosen had a two-hour meeting on Friday with the Justice Department’s office of the inspector general and provided closed-door testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee…

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Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan

Taliban seize Kunduz, a key city in northern Afghanistan

The New York Times reports: The Taliban seized the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said. It is the first major city to be overtaken by the insurgents since they began their sweeping military offensive in May, and it happened just weeks before U.S. forces were set to complete a total withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was also the third provincial capital to be overtaken by Taliban in three days, and a major blow to the Afghan government….

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Taliban capture second provincial capital, tightening grip on Afghanistan

Taliban capture second provincial capital, tightening grip on Afghanistan

The Wall Street Journal reports: Taliban fighters seized the capital of northern Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province Saturday, the second such provincial center to fall to the insurgency in two days, as the U.S. Embassy advised American citizens to leave the country immediately. The fall of the city of Sheberghan is particularly important because Jowzjan has long been the traditional stronghold of ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, one of the country’s main anti-Taliban leaders who served as Afghanistan’s vice president until…

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