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Category: Humanity

Human-made stuff now outweighs every living thing on Earth

Human-made stuff now outweighs every living thing on Earth

ScienceAlert reports: All of the Amazon’s splendid greenery. Every fish in the Pacific. Every microbe underfoot. Every elephant on the plains, every flower, fungus, and fruit-fly in the fields, no longer outweighs the sheer amount of stuff humans have made. Estimates on the total mass of human-made material suggest 2020 is the year we overtake the combined dry weight of every living thing on Earth. Go back to a time before humans first took to ploughing fields and tending livestock,…

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What complexity science says about what makes a winning team

What complexity science says about what makes a winning team

Jessica Flack and Cade Massey write: In Philip K Dick’s classic science fiction novel Ubik, one of the main characters, Runciter, is in charge of assembling a team of individuals called ‘inertials’. The hope is that they will counteract the power of ‘precogs’ and ‘telepaths’, recruited by corporations to carry out espionage and other nefarious activities. Each inertial is a superstar with a unique talent – but Runciter’s concern is their collective power. Interest in collective behaviour is not new….

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Humans evolved to get along with one another

Humans evolved to get along with one another

Bret Stetka writes: In 1959, Dmitri Belyaev made his way to Siberia to look for the most polite foxes he could find. A Soviet geneticist, Belyaev was interested in how animal domestication occurs — and in what happens biologically when the wild canine evolves into the mild-mannered dog. The thousands of fox fur farms stippling the Siberian countryside at the time were ideal grounds for his experiment. Belyaev started breeding especially docile foxes and observing the temperament of their pups….

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The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

The challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism

Dirk Philipsen writes: A basic truth is once again trying to break through the agony of worldwide pandemic and the enduring inhumanity of racist oppression. Healthcare workers risking their lives for others, mutual aid networks empowering neighbourhoods, farmers delivering food to quarantined customers, mothers forming lines to protect youth from police violence: we’re in this life together. We – young and old, citizen and immigrant – do best when we collaborate. Indeed, our only way to survive is to have…

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Humans are all more closely related than we commonly think

Humans are all more closely related than we commonly think

Scott Hershberger writes: The late esteemed English actor Christopher Lee traced his ancestry directly to Charlemagne. In 2010 Lee released a symphonic metal album paying homage to the first Holy Roman emperor—but his enthusiasm may have been a tad excessive. After all, says geneticist Adam Rutherford, “literally everyone” with European ancestry is directly descended from Charlemagne. The family tree of humanity is much more interconnected than we tend to think. “We’re culturally bound and psychologically conditioned to not think about…

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Why are there so many humans?

Why are there so many humans?

By Karen L. Kramer, Sapiens, June 9, 2020 Something curious happened in human population history over the last 1 million years. First, our numbers fell to as low as 18,500, and our ancestors were more endangered than chimpanzees and gorillas. Then we bounced back to extraordinary levels, far surpassing the other great apes. Today the total population of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans is estimated to be only around 500,000, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Many species are critically…

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The links between ecological degradation and emerging infectious diseases

The links between ecological degradation and emerging infectious diseases

Wildlife Conservation Society: A WCS special report shows how degradation of ecological systems has significantly increased the overall risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks and has other complex effects on human health. You can read the full report here. The authors are WCS’s Tom Evans, Sarah Olson, James Watson, Kim Gruetzmacher, Mathieu Pruvot, Stacy Jupiter, Stephanie Wang, Tom Clements, and Katie Jung. The report, which draws on detailed case studies, global analyses, modelling, and broad expert consensus, notes that the majority…

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Even the Anthropocene is nature at work transforming itself

Even the Anthropocene is nature at work transforming itself

Beth Lord writes: In his book Novacene (2019), James Lovelock writes: ‘We must abandon the politically and psychologically loaded idea that the Anthropocene is a great crime against nature … The Anthropocene is a consequence of life on Earth; … an expression of nature.’ This insight resonates with the 17th-century philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Lovelock is the inventor of Gaia theory, the idea that the Earth is one living organism that regulates and strives to preserve itself. Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’ is…

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Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world’s top scientists

Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world’s top scientists

The Guardian reports: The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be followed by even more deadly and destructive disease outbreaks unless their root cause – the rampant destruction of the natural world – is rapidly halted, the world’s leading biodiversity experts have warned. “There is a single species responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic – us,” they said. “Recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity, particularly our global financial and economic systems that prize economic growth at any cost. We…

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Threats to humanity more dangerous than Covid-19

Threats to humanity more dangerous than Covid-19

Andrew Anthony writes: According to [moral philosopher Toby] Ord, the period we inhabit is a critical moment in the history of humanity. Not only are there the potentially disastrous effects of global heating but in the nuclear age we also possess the power to destroy ourselves in a flash – or to at least leave the question of civilisation’s survival in the balance. Thus Ord believes the next century will be a dangerously precarious one. If we make the right…

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When confronting a pandemic, we must save nature to save ourselves

When confronting a pandemic, we must save nature to save ourselves

Sahir Doshi and Nicole Gentile write: The COVID-19 pandemic has brutally and tragically exposed the extent to which the health and well-being of every family in America depends on the health and well-being of nature—both here at home and around the world. Nature is connected to human health, from the inherent mechanisms through which ecosystems regulate the emergence of new pathogens to the health benefits of spending time outdoors. But in our destruction of earth’s natural resources, we are losing…

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Why mammalian brains are geared toward kindness

Why mammalian brains are geared toward kindness

Patricia Churchland writes: Three myths about morality remain alluring: only humans act on moral emotions, moral precepts are divine in origin, and learning to behave morally goes against our thoroughly selfish nature. Converging data from many sciences, including ethology, anthropology, genetics, and neuroscience, have challenged all three of these myths. First, self-sacrifice, given the pressing needs of close kin or conspecifics to whom they are attached, has been documented in many mammalian species—wolves, marmosets, dolphins, and even rodents. Birds display…

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What will the world be like after coronavirus? Four possible futures

What will the world be like after coronavirus? Four possible futures

By Simon Mair, University of Surrey Where will we be in six months, a year, ten years from now? I lie awake at night wondering what the future holds for my loved ones. My vulnerable friends and relatives. I wonder what will happen to my job, even though I’m luckier than many: I get good sick pay and can work remotely. I am writing this from the UK, where I still have self-employed friends who are staring down the barrel…

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Anatomy of a pandemic

Anatomy of a pandemic

Kevin Patterson writes: Wuhan, in the province of Hubei, China, is a transportation hub of 11 million built where the Yangtze and Huan Rivers meet. In December, patients began presenting, in steadily increasing numbers, with symptoms and clinical findings suggestive of viral pneumonia. (Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs; it may be caused by viruses, bacteria, or fungi.) Tests for known pathogens capable of causing such an illness came back negative. This raised the question of whether a novel…

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Deforestation plays a key role in triggering epidemics

Deforestation plays a key role in triggering epidemics

On Feb. 18, 2020, in Seoul, South Korea, people wearing face masks pass an electric screen warning about COVID-19. AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon By Suresh V Kuchipudi, Pennsylvania State University The coronavirus disease, known as COVID-19, is a frightening reminder of the imminent global threat posed by emerging infectious diseases. Although epidemics have arisen during all of human history, they now seem to be on the rise. In just the past 20 years, coronaviruses alone have caused three major outbreaks worldwide….

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Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities

Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities

Bruce Bower writes: Nebelivka, a Ukrainian village of about 700 people, sits amid rolling hills and grassy fields. Here at the edge of Eastern Europe, empty space stretches to the horizon. It wasn’t always so. Beneath the surface of Nebelivka’s surrounding landscape and at nearby archaeological sites, roughly 6,000-year-old remnants of what were possibly some of the world’s first cities are emerging from obscurity. These low-density, spread-out archaeological sites are known as megasites, a term that underscores both their immense…

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