Washington is getting China wrong

Washington is getting China wrong

Michael Schuman writes: Evergrande Group, one of China’s largest property developers, is tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. Its founder, Hui Ka Yan, is scrounging to find the cash to meet payments on the $300 billion his company owes. Beijing has warned local officials to prepare for possible fallout if the gargantuan firm collapses. Around the world, financial analysts are wondering if Evergrande is China’s “Lehman moment,” the starting gun for a destructive wave of defaults that could take down…

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Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

Fred Pearce writes: We know how to decarbonize energy production with renewable fuels and land transportation with electric vehicles. Blueprints for greening shipping and aircraft are being drawn up. But what about the big industrial processes? They look set to become decarbonization holdouts — the last and hardest CO2 emissions that we must eliminate if we are to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. In particular, how are we to green the three biggest globally-vital heavy industries: steel, cement, and ammonia,…

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Simple mathematical law predicts movement in cities around the world

Simple mathematical law predicts movement in cities around the world

Scientific American reports: The people who happen to be in a city center at any given moment may seem like a random collection of individuals. But new research featuring a simple mathematical law shows that urban travel patterns worldwide are, in fact, remarkably predictable regardless of location—an insight that could enhance models of disease spread and help to optimize city planning. Studying anonymized cell-phone data, researchers discovered what is known as an inverse square relation between the number of people…

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Mass protests in Poland amid EU exit fears

Mass protests in Poland amid EU exit fears

BBC News reports: Poles backing EU membership have taken part in protests across the country, amid fears it could leave the bloc. The rallies on Sunday were held in response to a top court ruling that said key EU laws were “incompatible” with the Polish constitution. Protests were held in about 100 towns and cities, with some 100,000 people gathering in the capital, Warsaw. The ruling has raised concerns Poland could exit the EU, but the government has denied having…

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Being Persian before nationalism

Being Persian before nationalism

Mana Kia writes: At the end of the 19th century, under the looming shadow of European colonial encroachment, political and intellectual elites in Iran began to draw on nationalist forms of belonging as a way to unify the various ethnic and religious groups that lived within its territory. The nation was gaining ground at this time as the acceptable and legible idiom of collective political demands. As in most of Africa and Asia, nationalism was anticolonial, understood as a liberatory…

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Flatworms can reproduce ripping themselves in half

Flatworms can reproduce ripping themselves in half

Ed Yong writes: When planarian flatworms want to reproduce, some have sex. Others, more straightforwardly, tear themselves in two. The latter option is fast and violent. The planarian begins as a small, flattened, sluglike creature with a spade-shaped head and two googly eyes. After a few minutes of stretching and ripping, it separates into two halves—a head and a tail. Within days, the head piece grows a tail. And even more miraculously, the tail regrows its head. “It’s just mind-blowing,”…

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Why the Nobel Peace Prize award is a huge blow to Facebook

Why the Nobel Peace Prize award is a huge blow to Facebook

Nina Jankowicz writes: The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov is a big victory for free expression. In an era when attacks on the press have been increasing, Ressa and Muratov are a reminder of the critical role the Fourth Estate plays in upholding democracy. But Ressa’s win has another dimension as well: It also is an indictment of the failings of Facebook. Ressa, a former CNN journalist, is co-founder of Rappler, the…

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Fix the Senate, save America

Fix the Senate, save America

Norm Ornstein writes: In the face of obduracy, the only way Democrats can get democracy reform, universal background checks on guns, climate change laws, minimum wage increases and immigration reform will be to overcome the impossible 60-vote hurdle. To do so will require all 50 Democrats to agree, and several, led by Manchin and Sinema, are resistant. But it is still doable, not by eliminating the filibuster or weakening it, but by restoring it. For most of its existence, the…

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Kyrsten Sinema wants to cut $100 billion in proposed climate funds, sources say

Kyrsten Sinema wants to cut $100 billion in proposed climate funds, sources say

The New York Times reports: Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who began her political career with the Green Party and who has voiced alarm over the warming planet, wants to cut at least $100 billion from climate programs in major legislation pending on Capitol Hill, according to two people familiar with the matter. Sinema is one of two centrist Democrats in the Senate whose votes are crucial to passing two bills that together would comprise President Biden’s legislative agenda: a…

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Defense Department warns climate change will increase conflicts over water and food

Defense Department warns climate change will increase conflicts over water and food

CNBC reports: Climate change poses a serious threat to U.S. military operations and will lead to new sources of global political conflict, the Department of Defense wrote in its new climate adaptation plan this week. Water shortages could become a primary source of friction or conflict between U.S. military overseas and the countries where troops are based, the department warned. It also expects that political efforts to mitigate food and water shortages will result in more frequent physical and cyber…

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Concrete needs to lose its colossal carbon footprint

Concrete needs to lose its colossal carbon footprint

An editorial in Nature says: Wet concrete has been poured into buildings, roads, bridges and more for centuries. Structures using concrete have survived wars and natural disasters, outlasting many of the civilizations that built them. Alongside its strength and resilience, concrete is also a staple of building because it is relatively cheap and simple to make. Worldwide, 30 billion tonnes of concrete is used each year. On a per capita basis, that is 3 times as much as 40 years…

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What if emotions aren’t universal but specific to each culture?

What if emotions aren’t universal but specific to each culture?

Elitsa Dermendzhiyska writes: The first time I saw Pixar’s movie Inside Out (2015), I was too entranced by its craftsmanship to realise that there was something odd, almost eerie, about its human characters. I was charmed by little Riley, the protagonist, with the chattering critters prancing around in her head. There’s Joy, a feisty version of Tinker Bell with cropped blue hair and indomitable optimism; Anger, a flaming-red stump with eyes like slits and fire bursting from his head; Sadness,…

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Would we still see ourselves as ‘human’ if other hominin species hadn’t gone extinct?

Would we still see ourselves as ‘human’ if other hominin species hadn’t gone extinct?

Would we see Neanderthals (right) as human if they were around today? wikipedia, CC BY-SA Nicholas R. Longrich, University of Bath READER QUESTION: We now know from evolutionary science that humanity has existed in some form or another for around 2 million years or more. Homo sapiens are comparatively new on the block. There were also many other human species, some which we interbred with. The question is then inevitable – when can we claim personhood in the long story…

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U.S. and China enter dangerous territory over Taiwan

U.S. and China enter dangerous territory over Taiwan

The New York Times reports: The 25 Chinese fighter jets, bombers and other warplanes flew in menacing formations off the southern end of Taiwan, a show of military might on China’s National Day, Oct. 1. The incursions, dozens upon dozens, continued into the night and the days that followed and surged to the highest numbers ever on Monday, when 56 warplanes tested Taiwan’s beleaguered air defenses. Taiwan’s jets scrambled to keep up, while the United States warned China that its…

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