Philippa Kaur

By Katie Smith-Wong

HOME to more than 39 million people, California is the most populous US state. It is also among the driest. Together, these factors make demand for water a long-standing challenge. River’s End, a new documentary by Jacob Morrison, dives deep into the water crisis and asks difficult questions about who gets the water and why.
At the centre of the film is the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta, an estuary in the north of the state. Connecting the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, the delta is a key source of fresh water and the battleground for the latest California water war.
In 2015, then-governor Jerry Brown and the California Department of Water Resources proposed a $15 billion plan now known as California WaterFix & EcoRestore that would see two large tunnels built from the Sacramento river under the delta to provide water for California. Inevitably, not everyone agrees with the plan: the tunnels would redirect water towards southern California, reducing freshwater supplies to farmers around the delta.
Narrated by DeLanna Studi, River’s End combines stock footage of landscapes around the delta and other parts of California, which highlights the fluctuating water supply levels, with simple animation to bring an educational slant and explain the extent and significance of the issue. With interviewees including politicians, corporate officials and local farmers, Morrison delivers a bleak yet brutally honest insight into the battle for water.
The documentary touches briefly on supply disputes in the early 20th century in the Owens valley and its role in the California water wars, which comprised a number of political conflicts between local farmers and the City of Los Angeles over water rights. But its main thrust examines how current supply issues are causing conflict between regional corporations and local farmers.
Both sides say they need water to run their businesses, but it soon becomes clear that the local communities don’t have nearly as much government support as the corporations. There is testimony from frustrated local farmers who rely on water from the delta to grow their produce and say their livelihoods have been affected, not only by a lack of supply, but also by pumping facilities, which take water away from the area.
The situation in the Westlands Water District in central California proves particularly enlightening. Its connections with ex-President Donald Trump (via former Westlands lobbyist David Bernhardt), a focus on lucrative yet thirsty almond farming and the substantial difference in living conditions between farm owners and workers in the field paint a stark picture of the power and influence of large corporations.
Although the corporation-versus-the-little-person narrative is all too recognisable, the documentary also zooms out further to highlight the consequences on the wider environment and the wildlife that also relies on it for survival. Among the locally endangered species mentioned is the delta smelt, a fish species that is close to extinction due to the ongoing damage to the delta’s ecosystem.
River’s End provides a thorough overview of California’s water issues and the need to achieve a sustainable water supply. It ends with a solemn message. As the state’s population continues to grow, it remains unclear whether there will be enough water to meet the requirements of all those who need it. In the end, it may come down to who needs, or perhaps who wants, it more.

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A study of young heterosexual people on blind dates found that those who instantly felt sparks developed synchronised patterns of heart rates and palm sweating

Humans

1 November 2021

By Alice Klein

During a successful date, people’s heart rates synchroniseShutterstock/Dragon Images
When people feel instant chemistry with each other on a first date, their hearts start to beat in tune, a new study shows.
We often think we know what we are looking for in a partner, but research shows that the people we actually end up falling for often don’t match our ideal preferences.
“While someone may seem a perfect match on Tinder, we may feel nothing when we meet the person in real life,” says Eliska Prochazkova at Leiden University in the Netherlands. This may be because attraction isn’t simply based on what someone “looks like on paper”, but also on a gut feeling we get when we are with them, she says.Advertisement
To study what happens at a physiological level when people instantly spark on a first date, Prochazkova and her colleagues set up “dating cabins” at three festivals – one for music, one for arts and one for science – in the Netherlands.
They invited 142 single heterosexual males and females aged 18 to 38 to go on 4-minute blind dates in these cabins. The participants wore eye-tracking glasses, heart rate monitors and devices for monitoring the sweatiness of their palms.
Some pairs reported becoming more attracted to each other as their dates progressed, while others failed to click. Of all the pairs that were matched up, 17 per cent expressed a mutual wish to go on another date.

The pairs that wanted to see each other again and rated each other as attractive tended to be those who developed physiological synchrony. Their heart rates began to speed up and slow down at the same time and their palm sweatiness increased and decreased in tandem.
It was common for pairs to also mirror each other’s smiles, laughs, head nods and hand gestures, but this type of synchrony didn’t predict mutual attraction.
The results largely replicate those that the team found in an earlier version of the study, which they posted to a preprint server in 2019.
The mechanism underlying physiological synchrony is still unclear, but it is possible that when you meet someone you really like, you unconsciously pay attention to their micro-expressions, such as pupil dilation, eye blinking or blushing, says Prochazkova. “Although you do not consciously register these subtle changes, your brain and body unconsciously process these micro-expressions, which causes your heart rate and skin conductance to sync with the partner.”
Physiological synchrony has also been observed between mothers and their babies while they are playing together, suggesting it may help to strengthen social bonds more generally, says Prochazkova.
Although the new study shows what happens at a deeper biological level when two people feel mutual attraction, we still need more research to answer why we fall for the people we do, says Prochazkova. “What sparks this feeling between people remains one of the unsolved mysteries of science.”
Journal reference: Nature Human Behaviour, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01197-3

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Two complete statues of a man and a woman, along with other Roman objects, were uncovered by archaeologists working on the planned route of the UK’s HS2 high-speed railway

Humans

28 October 2021

By New Scientist
and Press Association

One of the Roman statues unearthed at the site of St Mary’s Church in Stoke Mandeville, UKPA Media
Archaeologists digging on the planned route of the UK’s HS2 high-speed railway have uncovered an “astounding” set of Roman statues. The discovery was made at the site where St. Mary’s, a medieval church in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, once stood.
Two complete statues of what appear to be a man and a woman were found, plus the head of a child. A hexagonal glass Roman jug was also uncovered with large pieces still intact, despite having been in the ground for what is thought to be more than 1000 years. A vessel on display in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is the only known comparable item.
Rachel Wood, lead archaeologist for HS2 contractor Fusion JV, told the Press Association news agency: “They’re hugely significant because they’re really rare finds in the UK. To find one stone head or one set of shoulders would be really astonishing, but we have two complete heads and shoulders as well as a third head as well.”Advertisement

“They’re even more significant to us archaeologically because they’ve actually helped change our understanding of the site here before the medieval church was built,” she said.
The discoveries at old St Mary’s Church have been sent to a laboratory for specialist cleaning and analysis. “They are so significant and so remarkable that we would certainly hope that they will end up on display for the local community to see,” said Wood.
Experts believe the location was used as a Roman mausoleum before the Norman church was built. Around 3000 bodies have been removed from the church and will be reburied at a new site.
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By Michael Marshall

Artist’s rendition of Homo bodoensis, a new species of human ancestor that lived in AfricaEttore Mazza
A new species of extinct human has been named: Homo bodoensis. The species hasn’t been identified based on new fossils, but on re-examination of old ones. Why do researchers think there is another species of human? Here’s what you need to know.
Who was Homo bodoensis?
Homo bodoensis is the proposed name for fossils of a group of hominins that lived in Africa during a period commonly known as the Middle Pleistocene, but now technically called the Chibanian, between 770,000 and 126,000 years ago. The species has been described by Mirjana Roksandic at the University of Winnipeg in Canada and her colleagues. It is named for the Bodo cranium, which was found in 1976 at Bodo D’ar in the Awash river valley of Ethiopia. The cranium is about 600,000 years old.Advertisement
The researchers argue that H. bodoensis lived widely throughout Africa for hundreds of thousands of years. They suggest that other specimens of this species include Kabwe 1 from Zambia, the Ndutu and Ngaloba skulls from Tanzania and the Saldanha cranium from Elandsfontein in South Africa. H. bodoensis may also have wandered into the eastern Mediterranean, they say.
What were all these fossils classified as before?
They were given various species designations, which were often used in contradictory ways. For example, depending on which studies you read, the Bodo cranium is variously called Homo heidelbergensis or Homo rhodesiensis. Both species are hard to pin down.
H. heidelbergensis is named for a 609,000-year-old jawbone found in Mauer, Germany. A number of similar bones are known from Europe and Africa during the Middle Pleistocene. But researchers differ on whether they are all H. heidelbergensis.
Meanwhile, H. rhodesiensis was first named to describe the Kabwe 1 skull. This bone was found in 1921 in what is now Zambia, but was then called Northern Rhodesia. At the time the area was controlled by the British Empire. The name Rhodesia originates with Cecil Rhodes, a British mining magnate and politician. Partly because of this association, Roksandic says, the name is rarely used.
What other hominins lived during the Middle Pleistocene?
In a word, lots. In Europe, the Neanderthals emerged during this period, while further east in Asia their sister group the Denisovans also evolved. In southern Africa there was Homo naledi. Finally, modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago – about halfway through the Middle Pleistocene.
This tangle of species has been dubbed “the muddle in the Middle Pleistocene”. The problem is sorting out which fossils belong to which species and thus how widespread and long-lived each species was. There is also the issue of figuring out which species gave rise to which.
For example, it used to be thought that H. heidelbergensis was the ancestor of Neanderthals. However, this cannot be true because genetics tells us that Neanderthals emerged early in the Middle Pleistocene, possibly even before the time of the oldest H. heidelbergensis fossils. There were Neanderthals living in northern Spain 430,000 years ago. In the past five years, many European specimens previously described as H. heidelbergensis have been reclassified as early Neanderthals.

Where does H. bodoensis fit into all of this?
Roksandic and her colleagues want to make sense of the muddle. They argue that all the African fossils previously called H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis should be thought of as one species, H. bodoensis. This species, they argue, eventually gave rise to ours.
Meanwhile, they say H. heidelbergensis fossils found in Europe can all be reclassified as early Neanderthals, and that fossils from the eastern Mediterranean that don’t quite fit any of the species could represent interbreeding.
The team chose H. bodoensis so that these African hominins would “finally” have an African name, says Roksandic.
Does everyone agree we need a new species name?
It’s not necessary, says Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London.
Stringer does agree that H. heidelbergensis has been used too loosely. “I’m partly to blame for this wide usage of heidelbergensis,” he says apologetically. He thinks it should now be confined to the original Mauer jawbone and some other European fossils, such as the BH-1 jawbone from Mala Balanica cave in Serbia.
As for the African remains, Stringer is happy to use H. rhodesiensis. He argues it was named for the country in which it was found, not for Cecil Rhodes himself, and therefore doesn’t honour him. Furthermore, the rules set out by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature state that established names have priority – so because H. rhodesiensis has already been formally named, it should be used unless the original description was wrong.
Alternatively, if H. rhodesiensis is deemed unsuitable because of its imperial connotations, Stringer says there are pre-existing alternatives. For example, the Saldanha cranium – one of the specimens Roksandic’s team placed in H. bodoensis – was dubbed Homo saldanensis by Matthew Drennan in the 1950s. “Even if you got rid of rhodesiensis, there are other names that would apply rather than creating a new one,” says Stringer.
Stringer is also sceptical of the claim that the Bodo cranium is our direct ancestor. In 2019, his team published a study of the evolution of the human face, which found that the species the Bodo cranium belonged to had gone down a different evolutionary path to our species.
Journal reference: Evolutionary Anthropology, DOI: 10.1002/EVAN.21929
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Tatanka Iyotake, popularly known as Sitting Bull, is famed as a 19th century leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux people – and DNA strengthens the claim that he has living descendants

Humans

28 October 2021

By Alakananda Dasgupta

Sitting BullClassic Image/Alamy
A study that blends history with contemporary DNA technology has further strengthened the claim of a familial relationship between a living Native American and a historical figure: Tatanka Iyotake, popularly known as Sitting Bull.
Sitting Bull was a leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux people. In 1876, he was victorious against General Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment of the US Army in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass.
Today, Ernie LaPointe, a Native American author and president of the Sitting Bull Family Foundation, is widely accepted as the great-grandson of Sitting Bull. Now, LaPointe has had his claim strengthened by genetics.Advertisement
LaPointe and his three sisters have previously used historical records, including birth and death certificates, to make a strong case of a familial relationship with Sitting Bull. In 2007, a lock of Sitting Bull’s hair that had been preserved at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC was repatriated to LaPointe and his sisters – and a small sample was sent to a team of geneticists led by Eske Willerslev at the University of Copenhagen to allow for DNA analysis.
The outcome of the analysis was important for LaPointe, who is named as a co-author on the new study. In order to secure the right to determine the fate of the final resting place of Sitting Bull, he needed to provide irrefutable evidence that Sitting Bull was indeed his forbear. Genetic evidence would serve this purpose.

By comparing DNA from Sitting Bull’s hair with DNA from LaPointe’s saliva, the new study does indeed irrefutably establish that LaPointe is the great-grandson of the legendary leader, says Willerslev.
Willerslev says the methods generally used to establish ancestry, such as analysis of the Y chromosome, weren’t possible in this case because the DNA in the hair sample was so degraded. But it was possible to use haplotype frequency to establish a relationship. A haplotype is a set of alleles inherited from one parent. Even unrelated individuals can share common haplotypes, so Willerslev’s team took saliva samples from non-related members of LaPointe’s community, to detect haplotypes that were specific to Sitting Bull’s bloodline.
“It’s fair to say that the more material you have… the more reliable your results will be,” says Willerslev, but he is still confident that the genetic evidence is incontrovertible.
Willerslev, who has been fascinated by Sitting Bull and his legacy since childhood, attended a traditional Lakota ceremony where Sitting Bull’s spirit was resurrected to obtain permission to use the reclaimed lock of hair for scientific scrutiny.
Oglala Lakota Nation President Kevin Killer, a Lakota Sioux Native American leader, explains that hair has a special significance in Native American culture and is considered sacred and the seat of the spirit.

Killer, who wasn’t involved in the study, welcomes the research, which lends support to the culture of oral history of Indigenous people. “To see [our oral history] backed up by science… is a step in proving how strong our oral history that dates back to 10,000 years [is].”
Kimberly TallBear-Dauphine at the University of Alberta in Canada, a Dakota Native American who wasn’t involved in the study, says that LaPointe’s descent from Sitting Bull was never really contested since Lakota people’s genealogies are very well documented both through paper documentation and oral history.
“I’m sure there are benefits for scientists in the use of this technology… [but] they are simply confirming genetically what we already knew through other kinds of evidence,” she says.
Putting the study in perspective, she says: “It certainly doesn’t give Lakota people anything they didn’t already know in terms of Ernie’s relationship with Sitting Bull.”
Journal reference: Science Advances, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abh2013

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By Adam Vaughan

The fightback against climate change is an all-hands-on-deck situationOneinchpunch/Alamy
“EVERYTHING is happening way faster than it happens in The Ministry for the Future,” says Kim Stanley Robinson of his latest novel, set in a world where an international agency is tasked with fighting for future generations on climate change. That vision was imagined mostly in 2018, which the US science fiction writer says now feels like “another geological age” because so much has happened, from Donald Trump’s election defeat to the covid-19 pandemic.
“Climate change seems to be the main topic on the table now, with all the storms, droughts, fires, freezings – the climate weirdness that has begun and looks like it will never cease in our lifetimes,” he says. Stanley Robinson – or Stan as he is often known – has repeatedly tackled climate change in his work, which is studded with heroic scientists and nods to scientific papers. His focus has increasingly moved beyond the problem of a rapidly warming world to what we should do about it. New York 2140, his 2017 novel, is a salutary warning of the risk of a drowned world if free market economics keep trumping the environment.
The Ministry for the Future hops from Switzerland to India and Antarctica as it mulls every climate fix imaginable, from the titular agency to legal and financial incentives, all the way to activists who are so desperate that they resort to extremism.Advertisement
Real-world versions of the ministry, such as Wales’s future generations commissioner, have suffered from a lack of clout. Does Stanley Robinson think his fictional one would work in reality?
“It would be a great thing, but it wouldn’t be simple or in any way easy to incorporate, because we’re so present-orientated,” he says. Moreover, it would be no panacea. “People would love to have the idea of a single fix, one thing will make everything right,” he says. “That’s just not going to happen.”
Nor is he comfortable with the answer being violent extremism and illegal “black ops”, which some of the book’s characters resort to. “I’m sure that there’s going to be people around the world who are really angry in coming decades and they will commit violence hoping to make a better situation, calling it resistance,” he says. “I think it would be better if we managed to forestall that with legal reforms that are really fast.”
So where does hope lie? In top-down efforts such as international diplomacy, in grassroots local efforts by citizens and everything in between, says Stanley Robinson. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation. The idea of either/or, or one’s better, one’s worse, all that needs to be thrown over the side,” he says. It is for this reason that Stanley Robinson thinks research into geoengineering methods, such as temporarily reducing the amount of the sun’s energy reaching Earth, is worth pursuing. All that matters is what works and is fast, he says.
He is also clear that our economic systems need reform. “It’s one of the reasons we aren’t reacting faster [on climate] than we are, because we’re locked into an ineffective system,” he says.
Stanley Robinson thinks the “capacious” nature of novels makes the form good at tackling the subject of climate change. He says its two strengths are giving readers time travel – “you are suddenly in a different time and space and really living it” – and telepathy. “You are in someone else’s head,” he says. But there are limits. “You can only push a novel so far. I don’t even believe in futurism or futurology – I’m a novelist.”
Yet he follows new science more closely than most novelists. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent report on the state of climate change science was “the ultimate in alarms going off”, he says. “The scientific community has been ringing that alarm since the late 90s. And the response has been slow and the resistance has been high.” But he fears the warning is being drowned by the noise of others, from pandemic disruption to “so-called political divides”, he says.
One of Stanley Robinson’s worries is a real-world equivalent of the deadly heatwave that opens his latest novel. “I fear that something like that is going to happen,” he says. He suspects such an event might topple a government but fail to affect global action. “The rest of the world will say, ‘oh, that’s what happens in the tropics’. We’re very good at ignoring stuff that happens elsewhere and saying ‘it can’t happen to me’.”
Stanley Robinson says he sees opportunity at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK, where he will give a speech. “My hopes are high COP26 will come up with something striking. Progress will be made.” He is also a big fan of US president Joe Biden. “He has been surprisingly good on climate. And I say this as a leftist.”
Kim Stanley Robinson uses climate science as inspiration for his novelsSean Curtin
And what next? More climate change-themed novels are in the offing. Stanley Robinson has already written novels set in Antarctica, including The Ministry for the Future, and now he wants to head to the other pole. “I’m looking at the Arctic – can we keep an ice sheet over the Arctic? It’s so important,” he says. If the idea grows into a story, it will explore a melting Arctic’s impact on governance, ecology and culture, not to mention the global climate as the region’s reflectivity changes.
“You can only push a novel so far. I don’t believe in futurism or futurology – I’m a novelist”
Sixteen years ago, Stanley Robinson told New Scientist he liked novels with happy endings. Does he hope for one on climate change? “We could have a good 21st century, we could have a good dealing with climate change, we could have a good Anthropocene,” he says. “This is what I charge the young science fiction writers with: you have to write that story so people can imagine it in advance – and then try for it.”

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