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    in Humans

    Rich countries must pay for the environmental damage they have wreaked

    There is a historical obligation for higher-income countries to transfer some of their vast and ill-gotten wealth to lower-income ones to compensate them for the damage they have done to the environment, writes Graham Lawton

    Humans

    | Columnist

    20 April 2022

    By Graham Lawton
    B5HKJ9 The United Glass Limited Glass Works in Alloa, Clackmannanshire, Scotland, UK. Reflected in the River ForthDavid Robertson/Alamy

    THE country I live in is one of the richest on the planet, but also one of the poorest. By GDP, the UK is a superpower with the fifth largest economy in the world. But in terms of intact biodiversity, it is in the bottom 10 per cent globally and the worst in the G7.
    These two facts aren’t unrelated. The UK got rich – and has stayed rich – in no small part by overexploiting its natural resources. The agricultural and industrial revolutions turned great swathes of what was once green and pleasant into a polluted and overgrazed wasteland. Even today, more than two-thirds of the UK’s land area is farmed and 8 per cent is built on, leaving little room for wildlife. The nation’s Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) – a measure of how much wild nature remains – is 53 per cent. The global average is 75 per cent. The ideal is 90 per cent plus.Advertisement
    That pathway to riches is one that many less-wealthy countries aspire to. But it is also a pathway to mutually assured destruction. A global BII comparable with the UK’s would be catastrophic.
    Preventing nature-rich countries from trashing their biodiversity is, of course, one of the goals of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), over which the latest round of negotiations took place in Geneva last month. Such talks naturally feature conservation targets, habitat restoration and so on. But they actually revolve around something else: money.
    Before the meeting began, I spoke to conservation biologists about what to look out for. One of them, Stephen Woodley at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, told me bluntly: “It’s all about the money.”
    Biodiverse countries are often GDP-poor, and many don’t see why they should be forced to remain so in order to rescue wealthy nations from catastrophe. And even where there is the will to preserve, countries often lack the necessary resources and need financial help. “The big issue is about wealth transfer,” Woodley told me. “I suspect that the negotiations will hinge on that.”
    He was right. There were many sticking points, but by far the stickiest was finance. Reports from the meeting say that the spirit of the talks was mean, with negotiators generally putting national interests first. For rich countries, that meant digging their heels in over the payments.
    “The US and Europe are responsible for more than half of global ecological destruction over the past 50 years”
    If anything, the negotiations went backwards. The draft text at the start of the meeting included concrete figures, such as that lower-income nations should be given an extra $10 billion every year for conservation. By the end of the talks, all of those numbers had disappeared, replaced by a dog’s breakfast of watered-down and disputed suggestions.
    This isn’t just greedy and immoral in the here and now. There is also a historical obligation for richer countries to transfer some of their vast and ill-gotten wealth to poorer ones, to compensate them for the damage they have done to the environment. A recent analysis published in The Lancet Planetary Health found that the US and Europe are responsible for more than half of global ecological destruction over the past 50 years. Other wealthy countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan and Saudi Arabia, are collectively responsible for another quarter, while the low and middle-income countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia are responsible for just 8 per cent.
    Alongside greed, immorality and injustice, we can add short-sightedness. “We will pay this amount of money, either today, or we will pay substantially more later on in lost ecosystem services, clean water, clean air, pollination, all these things that we take for granted,” says Brian O’Donnell at the Campaign for Nature, an alliance of more than 100 conservation organisations. “If we destroy the ecosystems we rely on, the cost will be astronomical.”
    This is depressingly familiar from climate talks. In 2015, wealthy nations promised to donate billions to lower-income ones to help them mitigate climate change and adapt, but have yet to cough up. They cynically stamp out attempts to extract compensation for “loss and damage”, apparently frit that this would be seen as an admission of guilt and open the floodgates to reparation claims.
    There is hope. The clean text that the talks opened with was an ideal one drawn up by the CBD; the mess that emerged is a work in progress by the people who wield actual power. There is a history of brinkmanship at such talks and the CBD itself said that progress had been made.
    And while countries like the UK will never accept that much of their wealth is an ecological overdraft that is now overdue, they are starting to understand that they have no option but to pay. “I think governments are starting to recognise that this is an investment rather than just a cost,” says O’Donnell.

    Graham’s week
    What I’m reading
    The Age of Extremes: The short twentieth century, 1914–1991 by Eric Hobsbawm. Suddenly very relevant again
    What I’m watching
    Dinosaurs: The final day with David Attenborough on the BBC. Attenborough does it again.
    What I’m working on
    Whether to get a new cat. The old one sadly joined his younger companion.

    Up next week: Annalee Newitz

    More on these topics: More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    ‘Goldilocks’ stars may pose challenges for any nearby habitable planets

    If you’re an aspiring life-form, you might want to steer clear of planets around orange dwarf stars.

    Some astronomers have called these orange suns “Goldilocks stars” (SN: 11/18/09). They are dimmer and age more slowly than yellow sunlike stars, thus offering an orbiting planet a more stable climate. But they are brighter and age faster than red dwarfs, which often spew large flares. However, new observations show that orange dwarfs emit lots of ultraviolet light long after birth, potentially endangering planetary atmospheres, researchers report in a paper submitted March 29 at arXiv.org.

    Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomer Tyler Richey-Yowell and her colleagues examined 39 orange dwarfs. Most are moving together through the Milky Way in two separate groups, either 40 million or 650 million years old.

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    To Richey-Yowell’s surprise, she and her team found that the ultraviolet flux didn’t drop off from the younger orange stars to the older ones — unlike the case for yellow and red stars. “I was like, `What the heck is going on?’” says Richey-Yowell, of Arizona State University in Tempe.

    In a stroke of luck, another team of researchers supplied part of the answer. As yellow sunlike stars age, they spin more slowly, causing them to be less active and emit less UV radiation. But for orange dwarfs, this steady spin-down stalls when the stars are roughly a billion years old, astronomer Jason Lee Curtis at Columbia University and colleagues reported in 2019.

    “[Orange] stars are just much more active for a longer time than we thought they were,” Richey-Yowell says. That means these possibly not-so-Goldilocks stars probably maintain high levels of UV light for more than a billion years.

    And that puts any potential life-forms inhabiting orbiting planets on notice. Far-ultraviolet light — whose photons, or particles of light, have much more energy than the UV photons that give you vitamin D — tears molecules in a planet’s atmosphere apart. That leaves behind individual atoms and electrically charged atoms and groups of atoms known as ions. Then the star’s wind — its outflow of particles — can carry the ions away, stripping the planet of its air.

    But not all hope is lost for aspiring life-forms that have an orange dwarf sun. Prolonged exposure to far-ultraviolet light can stress planets but doesn’t necessarily doom them to be barren, says Ed Guinan, an astronomer at Villanova University in Pennsylvania who was not involved in the new work. “As long as the planet has a strong magnetic field, you’re more or less OK,” he says.

    Though far-ultraviolet light splits water and other molecules in a planet’s atmosphere, the star’s wind can’t remove the resulting ions if a magnetic field as strong as Earth’s protects them. “That’s why the Earth survived” as a life-bearing world, Guinan says. In contrast, Venus might never have had a magnetic field, and Mars lost its magnetic field early on and most of its air soon after.

    “If the planet doesn’t have a magnetic field or has a weak one,” Guinan says, “the game is over.”

    What’s needed, Richey-Yowell says, is a study of older orange dwarfs to see exactly when their UV output declines. That will be a challenge, though. The easiest way to find stars of known age is to study a cluster of stars, but most star clusters get ripped apart well before their billionth birthday (SN: 7/24/20). As a result, star clusters somewhat older than this age are rare, which means the nearest examples are distant and harder to observe. More

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    in Space & Astronomy

    Crumbling planets might trigger repeating fast radio bursts

    Fragmenting planets sweeping extremely close to their stars might be the cause of mysterious cosmic blasts of radio waves.

    Milliseconds-long fast radio bursts, or FRBs, erupt from distant cosmic locales. Some of these bursts blast only once and others repeat. A new computer calculation suggests the repetitive kind could be due to a planet interacting with its magnetic host star, researchers report in the March 20 Astrophysical Journal.

    FRBs are relative newcomers to astronomical research. Ever since the first was discovered in 2007, researchers have added hundreds to the tally. Scientists have theorized dozens of ways the two different types of FRBs can occur, and nearly all theories include compact, magnetic stellar remnants known as neutron stars. Some ideas include powerful radio flares from magnetars, the most magnetic neutron stars imaginable (SN: 6/4/20). Others suggest a fast-spinning neutron star, or even asteroids interacting with magnetars (SN: 2/23/22).

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    “How fast radio bursts are produced is still up for debate,” says astronomer Yong-Feng Huang of Nanjing University in China.

    Huang and his colleagues considered a new way to make the repeating flares: interactions between a neutron star and an orbiting planet (SN: 3/5/94). Such planets can get exceedingly close to these stars, so the team calculated what might happen to a planet in a highly elliptical orbit around a neutron star. When the planet swings very close to its star, the star’s gravity pulls more on the planet than when the planet is at its farthest orbital point, elongating and distorting it. This “tidal pull,” Huang says, will rip some small clumps off the planet. Each clump in the team’s calculation is just a few kilometers wide and maybe one-millionth the mass of the planet, he adds.

    Then the fireworks start. Neutron stars spew a wind of radiation and particles, much like our own sun but more extreme. When one of these clumps passes through that stellar wind, the interaction “can produce really strong radio emissions,” Huang says. If that happens when the clump appears to pass in front of the star from Earth’s perspective, we might see it as a fast radio burst. Each burst in a repeating FRB signal could be caused by one of these clumps interacting with the neutron star’s wind during each close planet pass, he says. After that interaction, what remains of the clump drifts in orbit around the star, but away from Earth’s perspective, so we never see it again.

    Comparing the calculated bursts to two known repeaters — the first ever discovered, which repeats roughly every 160 days, and a more recent discovery that repeats every 16 days, the team found the fragmenting planet scenario could explain how often the bursts happened and how bright they were (SN: 3/2/16).

    The star’s strong gravitational “tidal” pull on the planet during each close pass might change the planet’s orbit over time, says astrophysicist Wenbin Lu of Princeton University, who was not involved in this study but who investigates possible FRB scenarios. “Every orbit, there is some energy loss from the system,” he says. “Due to tidal interactions between the planet and the star, the orbit very quickly shrinks.” So it’s possible that the orbit could shrink so fast that FRB signals wouldn’t last long enough for a chance detection, he says.

    But the orbit change could also give astronomers a way to check this scenario as an FRB source. Observing repeating FRBs over several years to track any changes in the time between bursts could narrow down whether this hypothesis could explain the observations, Lu says. “That may be a good clue.” More

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    in Humans

    People tend to believe populations are more diverse than they are

    In 12 psychological experiments with a total of 942 participants, 82 per cent overestimated the presence of individuals from minority ethnic groups

    Humans

    14 April 2022

    By Jason Arunn Murugesu
    A stock image of a group of people of a range of ethnicitiesShutterstock/Rawpixel.com
    People may subconsciously overestimate the presence of individuals from minority ethnic groups, even if they belong to those groups, which could create illusions of diversity within populations.
    “Individuals from the minority group are by definition less frequent,” says Rasha Kardosh at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. “Therefore, we are more likely to notice them and so are more likely to remember their presence, and so we end up overestimating their presence.”
    Previous studies suggest people in … More

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    in Humans

    Earliest evidence for Maya calendar may have been found in Guatemala

    The earliest evidence of calendar use by the Maya may have been found in the remains of an ancient temple in Guatemala

    Humans

    13 April 2022

    By Carissa Wong
    An ancient fragment of a Maya calendarHeather Hurst/Skidmore College/Saratoga Springs
    Two pieces of an ancient wall may preserve the earliest evidence of the Maya calendar. The fragments are decorated with a dot and line above a deer head – representing one of the dates from the 260-day calendar – and they are from a temple built between 2300 and 2200 years ago in what is now Guatemala in central America.
    Several ancient communities living across the Americas – including the Aztecs, Maya, Mixtecs and Zapotecs – tracked the time using cycles of 13 days denoted by numbers, alongside cycles of 20 days named after gods. In this calendar, a specific day is assigned both a number and a name, producing 260 unique days before the cycle repeats. It is thought that people used the calendar to decide when to hold ceremonies, to mark important dates or to attempt to predict future events.
    Until now, most previous early evidence for calendar use by these ancient people had been found on stone monuments dating to around 100 BC. David Stuart at the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues have now found evidence that the Maya people may have used this calendar over a century earlier.Advertisement
    The team previously discovered the San Bartolo archaeological site, which includes a pyramid called Las Pinturas – meaning “the paintings” – back in 2001. Excavations then revealed that the Maya completed several phases of construction, with earlier structures eventually knocked down to form the foundations of the pyramid.
    When the researchers were sorting through pieces of plaster collected from the pyramid’s foundations, they realised that two pieces fit perfectly together to form a date symbol.
    “That was a stunner – we believe that this is the earliest example of the use of the Maya calendar, showing the day seven Deer,” says Stuart.

    The fragments came from the remains of a long platform that was probably built to track astronomical events as well as the time. “This platform may have acted as an observatory for looking at the rising sun or other astronomical bodies in the sky, or for just keeping track of time. Like a kind of architectural clock,” says Stuart.
    By radiocarbon dating charcoal found alongside the fragments, the team dated the symbols to between 300 and 200 BC. Stuart believes the symbols may have been used to denote the date of a new year, but they may also have been used to reference a person or deity.
    However, some archaeologists question whether this is really the earliest evidence of the 260-day calendar. Mary Pohl at Florida State University believes that a previously discovered roller stamp from Tabasco in Mexico shows this date notation was used in 500 BC. But Stuart thinks the symbols on the stamp from 500 BC aren’t necessarily a form of date notation comparable to the Maya system.
    “Early evidence of the… calendar has been debated, but in this study they present clear evidence of the 260-day calendar use. This is very important work,” says Takeshi Inomata at the University of Arizona.
    Journal reference: Science Advances, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl9290
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    in Humans

    Women in a 19th-century Dutch farming village didn't breastfeed

    An analysis of bones from about 500 individuals who died between 1830 and 1867 in Middenbeemster suggests women in the dairy farming community did not breastfeed

    Health

    13 April 2022

    By Jason Arunn Murugesu
    Engraving from From The Five Senses by Fredrick Bloemaert, after Abraham Bloemaert, 1632-1670F. Bloemaert/A. Bloemaert/N. Visscherimage/Rijks Museum/Public Domain
    Women from a 19th-century farming community in the Netherlands probably didn’t breastfeed their babies because they were too busy working. It is the first time that widespread artificial feeding has been discovered in a farming community from this period.
    Andrea Waters-Rist at Western University in Canada and her colleagues analysed the bones of about 500 individuals who died between 1830 and 1867 in Middenbeemster, a rural village in the north of the Netherlands.
    The remains were dug up because a church was expanding into the cemetery, and Waters-Rist and her team were offered the chance to analyse them. They also had death certificates for about half the people. “It’s really rare to have such a large sample size and to have all this amazing archival information,” she says.Advertisement
    The researchers wanted to find out more about the diets of the women and children in this village, which mainly consisted of dairy farmers at this time. “One of the main reasons behind this type of research is to rectify the historical record about the lives of women and children,” says Waters-Rist. “Traditional archaeology has focused on what adult males were doing and women were just seen as passive actors.”
    The team was able to determine whether the children were breastfed by analysing the chemical isotopes in their bones. Children who are breastfed have different carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios to their mothers.

    Out of 20 children who had died before the age of 1, 15 showed no evidence of breastfeeding. “Even the five who did show some sign – it did not seem like they were breastfed for long,” says Waters-Rist.
    And out of 35 children aged between 1 and 6, 29 showed no signs of breastfeeding in their bones. The team believes this was probably due to the fact that women predominantly worked the farms in this community, milking and raising the cows.
    “We think it’s a sign of how hard the women were working and that they were just really busy,” she says. “Also, there was always fresh cow’s milk.”
    Waters-Rist says this has never been seen among farmers from this period before. “We’ve only seen this behaviour in really large cities where women were working in factories and couldn’t take their babies with them,” she says.
    “The findings of this study are intriguing for an agricultural community where mothers and infants would not have spent long periods apart,” says Ellen Kendall at Durham University in the UK. But she says the results may be skewed by only looking at children who died before the age of six – it could be that children who weren’t breastfed were more likely to die early.
    Journal reference: PLOS One, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265821

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    in Humans

    Don’t Miss: Russian Doll returns to Netflix for more time loop fun

    New Scientist’s weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss

    Humans

    13 April 2022

    Visit
    Don’t Adjust Your Mindset by artist Pete McKee welcomes you to a futuristic Great(ish) Britain of lockdown, climate change and digital dependence. Running from 22 April at London’s Hoxton Arches.
    COURTESY OF NETFLIX
    Watch
    Russian Doll returns to Netflix on 20 April for a second season. The highly successful series stars co-creator Natasha Lyonne as Nadia, a woman facing an unusual existential crisis: she is trapped in a time loop on a subway train in Manhattan.Advertisement

    Read
    The Sloth Lemur’s Song haunts Alison Richards’s account, fuelled by more than 50 years of research, of Madagascar’s deep past and uncertain present. This island microcosm is a bellwether for the whole planet. More

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    in Humans

    How interior design choices can boost your mental and physical health

    Neuroscientists have figured out what interior design choices, from flooring to lighting, can help create homes that improve our mental health, decrease stress and fatigue, and even spark creativity

    Humans

    13 April 2022

    By David Robson
    Leonie Bos
    YOU might recognise the sensation from visits to a friend’s house – the feeling that a space is good for you. Perhaps it is a sense of profound relaxation, as if you left your worries at the door. Or you may have found the perfect office space that leaves you buzzing with creative ideas. Yet try to explain why you felt that way, or recreate those effects at home, and you fall short.
    According to the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui, there are rules of harmonious living that affect the flow of energy through your body, and many modern design gurus take a similar line, dishing out guidance in lifestyle magazines and Instagram accounts. They advise on the shape of rooms, materials in furnishings, colours on walls and organisation of books – it may make your home look good, but does it make you feel good?
    While there is nothing wrong with going with your gut when it comes to decor, there could be a better way to make design choices. A growing number of neuroscientists are collaborating with architects and interior designers. With carefully controlled experiments using objective physiological and psychological measures, they are starting to systematically test the influence of design elements on brain and body.
    The work couldn’t be timelier. The rise of remote working has meant more time at home for many. Whether you want to boost your mood, lower your blood pressure, decrease your bad habits or ease the burden of dementia, this research can provide evidence-based strategies to optimise your living space for your physical and mental health.
    The roots of this work lie in … More