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The group has previously estimated that, in the Americas, nature itself—animals, plants, soil, water, all of it—is worth about twenty-four trillion dollars to us, an implausibly specific figure that makes the costs of degradation both more and less concrete.

“I think fundamentally we’ve got to get the message across that this is a crisis for humanity that could signal the end of human civilization as we know it. It’s not about animals somewhere off in the Arctic. It’s about the life that we lead, and whether we can keep leading it, and the chaos and violence that could ensue if we don’t do something immediately.”

“Even as someone who is basically an alarmist, it seemed really up in your face,” Wallace-Wells said of the group’s name and messaging. “But I also think, like, you kind of can’t argue with the results.”

Extinction Rebellion considers climate change and looming mass extinctions as intersecting but separate and potentially competing issues. In a statement last week, in response to the I.P.B.E.S. report, the group said that “too much of the focus has been on greenhouse gases and climate change. We also face an ecological crisis—the sixth mass extinction—which is as dangerous for our planet as climate change.” Jonathan Franzen said much the same, in this magazine, in 2015, describing climate change as a “usefully imponderable” problem compared to the threat of mass extinctions.

“There’s places where you’re losing habitat because temperatures are increasing, climate ranges are shifting north,

One third of the planet right now is in production of agriculture, and only about half of that is actually agriculture that has any kind of mind for the wildlife-habitat benefits that could be provided by just doing things slightly differently.”

“We’re trying to convince folks that, like, if we save nature, we save ourselves,” he continued. “If you have healthy habitats, we have healthy wildlife populations with clean water—all of that can help reduce emissions.”

Environmental groups insist that the sage grouse, just one of the countless bird species now thought to be at risk, really matters, and not only because undermining protections for it would be a boon for the fossil-fuel industries.

“It’s not just the sage grouse, right?” O’Mara said. “It’s the pronghorn. It’s the pygmy rabbit, the sagebrush vole. There’s a series of smaller species and bigger species that—if the sage grouse is healthy, that means the bigger ecosystem is doing pretty well. There’s three hundred and fifty other species that are likely doing O.K. if this one indicator species is doing O.K.”

the reality is that you have folks in both parties that deeply care about wildlife.”

We could all be doing more, but there’s maybe no greater separation between Democrats and Republicans today than on climate and pollution.”

Unlike climate change, the extinction crisis offers no clear targets to race toward or timelines to stick to. But addressing both will require, instead, a million revolutions, large and small, in the way we interact with and think about the natural world.

The image of Latinos breeding makes them not quite human, parasites among a host people, an enemy within given sanctuary when they should be cast out. The aliens among us are not like us, but, unfairly protected, they breed and bring danger.

The notion later became a staple of Nazi propaganda. From 1944 : “Jewry is the product of the inbreeding of asocial, criminal, sick, degenerate, and rejected elements. . . . [It] leads a rootless, parasitic life at the expense of the host peoples. Its current homeland is largely the criminal neighborhoods of the great cities of the world.”

let’s look at the modern custom in this country of likening immigrants and minorities to breeding animals.

rump appointee Carl Higbie resigned after the publishing of his earlier complaints that black women think “breeding is a form of government employment.”

ep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) has spoken of immigration policy as “allowing any kind of vagrant, or animal . . . to come in.”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a Trump ally, described the screening of immigrants: “You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog.”

Dan Stein, the president of the anti-immigrant Federation for American Immigration Reform, famously said immigrants are conducting “competitive breeding” to dilute the white majority.

White nationalist Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute frets about white “displacement by the subject race through differential fertility rates and interracial breeding.”

Dive into the fever swamps of the Internet and social media and you will find the conspiracy theory that minorities’ higher birthrates are designed to bring about “white genocide” in America: “We can’t let the Muslims and Mexicans outbreed us . . . Their goal is to come here and breed whites out of existence . . . What they will do is breed like rats and displace white people and white culture. . . . They’re outbreeding us and outvoting us.”

Souls can move not only among different levels of human society but also into other animals - hence the vegetarianism of many Hindus. Within a life cycle, people had little social mobility. They had to strive for virtue during their present lives in order to attain a higher station the next time around.

The three key areas of life dominated by caste were marriage, meals and religious worship

Marriage across caste lines was strictly forbidden; most people even married within their own sub-caste or jati.

At meal times, anyone could accept food from the hands of a Brahmin, but a Brahmin would be polluted if he or she took certain types of food from a lower caste person. At the other extreme, if an untouchable dared to draw water from a public well, he or she polluted the water and nobody else could use it.

If the shadow of an untouchable touched a Brahmin, he/she would be polluted, so untouchables had to lay face-down at a distance when a Brahmin passed.

People who violated social norms could be punished by being made "untouchables." This was not the lowest caste - they and their descendants were completely outside of the caste system.

Mohandas Gandhi advocated emancipation for the Dalits, too, coining the term harijan or "Children of God" to describe them.

Curiously, non-Hindu populations in India sometimes organized themselves into castes as well.

The Bhagavad Gita, however, from c. 200 BCE-200 CE, emphasizes the importance of caste. In addition, the "Laws of Manu" or Manusmriti from the same era defines the rights and duties of the four different castes or varnas.

Thus, it seems that the Hindu caste system began to solidify sometime between 1000 and 200 BCE.

The caste system was not absolute during much of Indian history. For example, the renowned Gupta Dynasty, which ruled from 320 to 550 CE, were from the Vaishya caste rather than the Kshatriya.

From the 12th century onwards, much of India was ruled by Muslims. These rulers reduced the power of the Hindu priestly caste, the Brahmins.

When the British Raj began to take power in India in 1757, they exploited the caste system as a means of social control.The British allied themselves with the Brahmin caste, restoring some of its privileges that had been repealed by the Muslim rulers. However, many Indian customs concerning the lower castes seemed discriminatory to the British and were outlawed.

During the 1930s and 40s, the British government made laws to protect the "Scheduled castes" - untouchables and low-caste people.

The untouchables did work that no-one else would do, like scavenging animal carcasses, leather-work, or killing rats and other pests. They could not be cremated when they died.

India's new government instituted laws to protect the "Scheduled castes and tribes" - including both the untouchables and groups who live traditional lifestyles. These laws include quota systems to ensure access to education and to government posts.

Over the past sixty years, therefore, in some ways, a person's caste has become more of a political category than a social or religious one.

They were able to reverse engineer the ancient climate by analyzing temperature-sensitive structures of lipids produced by fossil bacteria and archaea living in these bygone wetlands, and preserved for all time in the coal. The team found that, under this past regime of high CO2, in the ancient U.K., Germany, and New Zealand, life endured mean annual temperatures of 23–29 degrees Celsius (73–84 degrees Fahrenheit) or 10–15 degrees Celsius (18–27 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than modern times.

“These wetlands looked exactly how only tropical wetlands look at present, like the Everglades or the Amazon,” Naafs says. “So Europe would look like the Everglades and a heat wave like we’re currently experiencing in Europe would be completely normal. That is, it would be the everyday climate.”

But over 50 million years ago this would have been the baseline from about 45 to 60 degrees latitude. Under this broiling regime, with unprecedented heat as the norm, actual heat waves might have begun to take on an unearthly quality.

closer to the equator in this global sweat lodge, the heat might have been even more outrageous, shattering the limits of complex life. To see exactly how hot, Naafs’ team also analyzed ancient lignite samples from India, which would have been in the tropics at the time—that subcontinent still drifting across the Indian Ocean toward its eventual mountain-raising rendezvous with Asia. But unfortunately, the temperatures from these samples were maxed out. That is, they were too hot for his team to measure by the new methods they had developed.

“Some climate models suggest that the tropics just became a dead zone with temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) like in Africa and South America,” says Naafs. “But we have no data so we don’t know.”

“Basically every type of paleoclimate research that’s being done shows that high CO2 means that it’s very warm. And when it gets very warm, it can be really, really, really warm.

“You start really looking into them and you go, ‘Wow. We are dealing with a rainforest.’”

“You’ve got alligators, giant tortoises, primates, things like that. We have these big hippo-like animals called Coryphodon. You have tapirs—so you’ve got tapirs living pretty close to the North Pole in the early Eocene, which today—clearly tapirs are not at the North Pole,” she says, laughing.

One obvious way to reconcile this disparity is by noticing that the changes to the ancient earth took place over hundreds-of-thousands to millions of years and (IPCC graphs notwithstanding) that time won’t stop at the end of the 21st century. The changes that we’ve already set in motion, unless we act rapidly to countervail them, will similarly take millennia to fully unfold

we’re clearly not content to stop at just 400 ppm. If we do, in fact, push CO2 up to around 1,000 ppm by the end of the century, the warming will persist and the earth will continue to change for what, to humans, is a practical eternity

Most worryingly, the climate models that we depend on as a species to predict our future have largely failed to predict our sultry ancient past.

we know methane can actually amplify high-latitude warming, so maybe that’s some of the missing feedback.

Though there are no trees here at the top of the world, there are tree stumps. And they are around 50 million years old.

Clearly we are missing something, and Naafs thinks that one of the missing ingredients in the models is methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which might help close the divide between model worlds and fossil worlds.

We know tropical wetlands pump much more methane into the atmosphere compared to [cooler] wetlands.

The last time CO2 was at 400 ppm (as it is today) was 3 million years ago during the Pliocene epoch, when sea levels were perhaps 80 feet higher than today.

Naafs thinks that many of the wildest features of the early age of mammals could be recreated.

Many scientists have been warning us for years, citing a pace of extinctions far beyond the historical "background" rate. Yet critics have argued that's based on inadequate data, preserving doubt about the scope of modern wildlife declines. To see if such doubt is justified, the 2015 study compared a conservatively low estimate of current extinctions with an estimated background rate twice as high as those used in previous studies. Despite the extra caution, it still found species are disappearing up to 114 times more quickly than they normally do in between mass extinctions

six important things to know about life in the sixth mass extinction:

1. This isn't normal.

"Even under our assumptions, which would tend to minimize evidence of an incipient mass extinction, the average rate of vertebrate species loss over the last century is up to 114 times higher than the background rate," the study's authors write. "Under the 2 E/MSY background rate, the number of species that have gone extinct in the last century would have taken, depending on the vertebrate taxon, between 800 and 10,000 years to disappear.

ndicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way."

2. Space is at a premium.

The No. 1 cause of modern wildlife declines is habitat loss and fragmentation, representing the primary threat for 85 percent of all species on the IUCN Red List. That includes deforestation for farming, logging and settlement, but also the less obvious threat of fragmentation by roads and other infrastructure.

3. Vertebrates are vanishing.

The number of vertebrate species that have definitely gone extinct since 1500 is at least 338,

Even under the most conservative estimates, the extinction rates for mammals, birds, amphibians and fish have all been at least 20 times their expected rates since 1900, the researchers note (the rate for reptiles ranges from 8 to 24 times above expected). Earth's entire vertebrate population has reportedly fallen 52 percent in the last 45 years alone

he threat of extinction still looms for many — including an estimated 41 percent of all amphibian species and 26 percent of mammals.

4. It's probably still worse than we think.

The 2015 study was intentionally conservative, so the actual rate of extinctions is almost certainly more extreme than it suggests

The study also focuses on vertebrates, which are typically easier to count than smaller or subtler wildlife like mollusks, insects and plants. As another recent study pointed out, this leaves much of the crisis unexamined. "Mammals and birds provide the most robust data, because the status of almost all has been assessed," the authors of that study write. "Invertebrates constitute over 99 percent of species diversity, but the status of only a tiny fraction has been assessed, thereby dramatically underestimating overall levels of extinction.

we may already have lost 7 percent of [contemporary] species on Earth

5. No species is safe.

"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," says Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México, lead author of the 2015 study. "We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on,"

6. Unlike an asteroid, we can be reasoned with.

it is entirely possible to grow food that’s better for us and grow it in ways that are better for the land. Better land management techniques include limiting the use of fertilizers that contribute to emissions and planting crops that add carbon to the soil.

The way forward, they point out, requires reducing planet-warming emissions, removing carbon from the atmosphere by storing it in trees or soil, and changing diets, especially among the world’s wealthy.

it also requires a hard look at who gets to eat what

Scientists often refer to these as “natural climate solutions,” and they point out that sequestering carbon in the soil not only helps slow down climate change, it can also make the soil hardier to deal with extreme weather events and ultimately increase crop yields.

“Farming must work with nature, not against it,

“The I.P.C.C.’s land report puts a big question mark on the future of industrial agriculture.”

when it comes to land use, better forest management has the “largest potential for reducing emissions.”

The world’s forests are under intense threat, though, especially in the tropics. They are cleared for things we consume, including soy, palm oil and beef cattle

Nowhere is that more stark than in the world’s largest rain forest, the Amazon. Its destruction has increased drastically since Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, took power with a promise to further open the forest to commercial exploitation.

Livestock can be raised on lands that are too arid to grow crops, they can be fed differently so they produce lower methane emissions and they produce manure that can fertilize soil.

animal protein is vital nourishment for a hungry child and raising animals has been part of the culture and livelihood for millions of people around the world.

But if the heaviest meat eaters in places like the United States and Australia cut back on meat, especially red meat, it would make a big difference.

It is entirely possible to eat well without depriving ourselves. There are tips we can borrow from many traditional cuisines.

Taken together, the amount of food that is wasted and unused accounts for close to a 10th of global emissions.

Curbing food waste is arguably the single most effective thing that can be done at an individual or household level to slow down climate change.

In the United States, this story is perhaps best exemplified by Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross and one of the most celebrated figures in the nation's history. Her lifesaving work on Civil War battlefields and her lasting contributions to the betterment of society are a reminder of how much a determined woman can do.

In this historic year of celebrating the 19th Amendment giving women the power of the vote, I'm still a believer in Bella's prediction because I have witnessed what can happen when women bring forward the full scope of our experiences as mothers, daughters and sisters, individually and collectively, to redefine power by how we use it and share it. From negotiating peace to leading toward climate justice, we have, as a global women's community, the opportunity to fully actualize Bella's faith in us.

Although recent victories against these companies are encouraging, there is a long fight ahead of us still, and Rachel will continue to inspire. Because she never gave up, and she succeeded in banning DDT despite the vested interests of corporations and the government—despite the fact that she was secretly battling the cancer that killed her. In addition, I was always supported and encouraged by my mother.

My first reaction to learning about Claudette Colvin was, "How did I not know about her until now?" In 1955, Claudette was 15 and living in Montgomery, Alabama. On her ride home from school one day, the driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white woman. Claudette refused, and two police officers dragged her off the bus in handcuffs.

When I first met Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, I was a young, single mom on public assistance and food stamps. I was active in the community—serving as president of the Black Student Union, volunteering with the Black Panther Party, while raising two young boys. The time I spent on her campaign deeply impacted my life.

As soon as she finished her speech, I offered to do anything I could for her campaign. But when she asked me if I was registered to vote, I admitted that I was not. She was not pleased. She looked at me and said: "Little girl, you can't change the system if you're on the outside looking in. Register to vote."

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm remains an inspiration to little girls and women everywhere, including myself, reminding us to strive for what's possible, unburdened by what's been. As my mother—another hero in my eyes—used to say, "You may be the first to do many things, but make sure you're not the last."

When the New York Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights passed 10 years ago, I knew I was both witnessing a massive historical achievement in that moment and riding the crest of a longer historical arc, lifted up by millions of women who have been fighting for respect and dignity for generations.

Along with nearly one thousand other women from all over the world, I traveled to Brussels in May of 1989 for the first-ever international peace conference convened by women. Proudly hanging on the front of the European Parliament building was a banner: "WOMEN: GIVE PEACE A CHANCE."

One of the people who has inspired me is Mariame Kaba, one of the nation's leading prison abolitionists and the founder of the organization Project NIA, which works to end youth incarceration. She's truly remarkable. One of the attributes I most admire about her is the resilience she embodies and the genuine sense of hope she exudes. She is deeply principled and warm hearted in her pursuit of justice. She said something years ago that has stayed with me: "Hope is a discipline." When things feel bleak, I come back to these words to maintain perspective and to persevere.

In 1962, after two years studying chimpanzees, I went to Cambridge University to read for a PhD in ethology. There I was told there was a difference in kind between humans and other animals, that only we humans had personalities, minds, and emotions. But I had learned that this was not true from my childhood teachers, my wonderful mother and my dog, Rusty! So I refused to comply with this reductionist thinking. Eventually, because the chimpanzees are so similar to us biologically as well as behaviorally, most scientists accepted that we are part of the animal kingdom. But I received much criticism.

Amelia Earhart broke the barrier for women in aviation, then Jackie Cochran founded the WASP, a WWII Women Pilots Service, paving the way for Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

And finally, suffragists rallied and marched for women's equality starting in 1848, seeking the basic right to vote and assure their voices were counted. It took over 50 years before their dream was realized and none of the brave early leaders lived to celebrate or exercise this important right. It opened so many doors for the next steps to true equality.

More than 20 years ago in Beijing, Hillary Clinton stood in front of the United Nations World Conference on Women and declared that "human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights." Although Hillary's history-making speech was directed at the world, it felt like she was speaking directly to me. At the time, I was a young lawyer, but Hillary's words forced me to ask myself tough questions about what I was doing to make the world a better place.

During times of uncertainty, it's important to reach for inspiration as a way to stay connected to what's possible. I'm grateful for my own mother, Lynette Schwartz, who taught me from a young age to always expect the unexpected and be prepared for the things that you cannot see. When I was growing up, I used to think that my mother was unnecessarily worried about everything and overly prepared. Her advice and habits have become especially helpful in the last few weeks as uncertainty spreads. Because of her, our home has become a sanctuary for those who don't have the same.

The women of color who founded the movement we carry forward today are my inspiration. Their persistence to be seen and heard gives me strength to carry on in uncertain times. The term "women of color" was born in 1977 in Houston, Texas, at the first and only National Women's Conference. There, among more than 20,000 mostly white women, a cadre of Black, Latina, Asian American and Native women redefined the women's agenda to include race, class and solidarity. They inspired entire generations of us to step fully into our collective leadership and power. Now women of color—a majority of women in several states—are leading progressive reforms as voters, organizers and courageous elected leaders.

I can still remember standing with my mother, Ann Richards, on the floor of the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. It was the first time we'd done anything like this together. As State Treasurer of Texas, Mom had been asked to give a speech seconding Walter Mondale's nomination for the presidency, and she asked me to go along. Even though her speech was the next day, it was the furthest thing from our minds while we waited for Mondale's running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, to take the stage. That night, she would become the first woman ever nominated as vice president on a major party ticket.

As a young girl impacted by over-policing and over-incarceration in my communities, I was particularly grateful when I learned about the abolitionist movement that helped support enslaved Africans to gain their freedom. I would learn and relearn the brilliant story of Harriet Tubman—a young enslaved woman who would free herself from slavery and eventually free so many others including her entire family. This kind of bravery helped me assess the life I was living and created a courage in me that translated into the work I currently do today.

In my life, I have had many moments of self-doubt when I have felt that I lacked the knowledge, the background, the expertise necessary to deal with vexing issues. Most women have had such experiences.

Born into slavery and orphaned as a young woman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an uncompromising and courageous voice for race and gender justice. She resisted not just the terror of racism and the suffocation of sexism, but also the conventions that artificially limited advocacy against these "isms."

When I wrote "American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country" an observation jumped out: in many instances in the remarkable progress of women in history, the first barrier breakers worked for years to be recognized in their fields, but never saw their success.

We went out into one of the tiny rice-paddy villages, a cluster of six tin open-sided lean-to huts. It's a day's trek, by minibus from the little town of Bontoc, then by foot up and down steep hillsides and across fragile rope bridges, then teetering along thin strips of earth that divide the paddies. Finally we sit on the mud floor of one of the huts, drinking peanut coffee from a shared tin cup. Urban Filipinas speak English, some Spanish and only a little Filipino (Tagalog); the tribal people of the North have their own languages. One woman translates.

Later that afternoon, each of us clutching at the ropes of a swaying bridge, my activist translator shouted to me that somehow, she must find the funding to start an adult literacy program for the women of this rice paddy. And so we all did. But Gunnawa is always with me. Because all of us need to know how to read the signs that tell us where we are. So we can know where we're going.

While conspiracy theories might falsely claim the virus was concocted in a lab, the virus’s genome makes clear that it arose in bats.

Sophisticated computer programs can then figure out how all of those mutations arose as viruses descended from a common ancestor. If they get enough data, they can make rough estimates about how long ago those ancestors lived. That’s because mutations arise at a roughly regular pace, like a molecular clock.

Tracking viral mutations demands sequencing all the genetic material in a virus — its genome. Once researchers have gathered the genomes from a number of virus samples, they can compare their mutations.

In January, a team of Chinese and Australian researchers published the first genome of the new virus. Since then, researchers around the world have sequenced over 3,000 more. Some are genetically identical to each other, while others carry distinctive mutations.

The most closely related coronavirus is in a Chinese horseshoe bat, the researchers found. But the new virus has gained some unique mutations since splitting off from that bat virus decades ago.

Dr. Boni said that ancestral virus probably gave rise to a number of strains that infected horseshoe bats, and perhaps sometimes other animals.

It’s entirely possible, Dr. Boni said, in the past 10 or 20 years, a hybrid virus arose in some horseshoe bat that was well-suited to infect humans, too. Later, that virus somehow managed to cross the species barrier.

already, the genomes of the virus are revealing previously hidden outlines of its history over the past few months.

While the coronavirus mutations are useful for telling lineages apart, they don’t have any apparent effect on how the virus works.

The deepest branches of the tree all belong to lineages from China. The Nextstrain team has also used the mutation rate to determine that the virus probably first moved into humans from an animal host in late 2019.

In January, as the scope of the catastrophe in China became clear, a few countries started an aggressive testing program. They were able to track the arrival of the virus on their territory and track its spread through their populations.

But the United States fumbled in making its first diagnostic kits and initially limited testing only to people who had come from China and displayed symptoms of Covid-19.“It was a disaster that we didn’t do testing,”

As new cases arose in other parts of the country, other researchers set up their own pipelines. The first positive test result in New York came on March 1, and after a couple of weeks, patients surged into the city’s hospitals.

Dr. Heguy and her colleagues found some New York viruses that shared unique mutations not found elsewhere. “That’s when you know you’ve had a silent transmission for a while,”

And researchers at Mount Sinai started sequencing the genomes of patients coming through their hospital. They found that the earliest cases identified in New York were not linked to later ones.“Two weeks later, we start seeing viruses related to each other,”

Dr. Gonzalez-Reiche and her colleagues found that these viruses were practically identical to viruses found around Europe.

hey write that the viruses reveal “a period of untracked global transmission between late January to mid-February.”

Dr. van Bakel and his colleagues found one New York virus that was identical to one of the Washington viruses found by Dr. Bedford and his colleagues. In a separate study, researchers at Yale found another Washington-related virus. Combined, the two studies hint that the coronavirus has been moving from coast to coast for several weeks.

Dr. Boni and his colleagues found that the genome of the new virus contains a number of mutations in common with strains of coronaviruses that infect bats.

Some viruses evolve so quickly that they require vaccines that can produce several different antibodies. That’s not the case for Covid-19. Like other coronaviruses, it has a relatively slow mutation rate compared to some viruses, like influenza.

Now we have a body of research that makes the connection between stress and addiction definitive. More surprising, it shows that we can change the path to addiction by changing our environment.

Neuroscientists have found that food and recreational drugs have a common target in the “reward circuit” of the brain, and that the brains of humans and other animals who are stressed undergo biological changes that can make them more susceptible to addiction.

In a 2010 study, Diana Martinez and colleagues at Columbia scanned the brains of a group of healthy controls and found that lower social status and a lower degree of perceived social support — both presumed to be proxies for stress — were correlated with fewer dopamine receptors, called D2s, in the brain’s reward circuit

The reward circuit evolved to help us survive by driving us to locate food or sex in our environment

Today, the more D2 receptors you have, the higher your natural level of stimulation and pleasure — and the less likely you are to seek out recreational drugs or comfort food to compensate

people addicted to cocaine, heroin, alcohol and methamphetamines experience a significant reduction in their D2 receptor levels that persists long after drug use has stopped. These people are far less sensitive to rewards, are less motivated and may find the world dull, once again making them prone to seek a chemical means to enhance their everyday life.

Drug exposure also contributes to a loss of self-control. Dr. Volkow found that low D2 was linked with lower activity in the prefrontal cortex, which would impair one’s ability to think critically and exercise restraint

Food, like drugs, stimulates the brain’s reward circuit. Chronic exposure to high-fat and sugary foods is similarly linked with lower D2 levels, and people with lower D2 levels are also more likely to crave such foods. It’s a vicious cycle in which more exposure begets more craving.

At this point you may be wondering: What controls the reward circuit in the first place? Some of it is genetic. We know that certain gene variations elevate the risk of addiction to various drugs. But studies of monkeys suggest that our environment can trump genetics and rewire the brain.

simply by changing the environment, you can increase or decrease the likelihood of an animal becoming a drug addict.

The same appears true for humans. Even people who are not hard-wired for addiction can be made dependent on drugs if they are stressed

Is it any wonder, then, that the economically frightening situation that so many Americans experience could make them into addicts? You will literally have a different brain depending on your ZIP code, social circumstances and stress level.

In 1990, no state in our country had an adult obesity rate above 15 percent; by 2015, 44 states had obesity rates of 25 percent or higher. What changed?

What happened is that cheap, calorie-dense foods that are highly rewarding to your brain are now ubiquitous.

Nothing in our evolution has prepared us for the double whammy of caloric modern food and potent recreational drugs. Their power to activate our reward circuit, rewire our brain and nudge us in the direction of compulsive consumption is unprecedented.

The processed food industry has transformed our food into a quasi-drug, while the drug industry has synthesized ever more powerful drugs that have been diverted for recreational use.

Fortunately, our brains are remarkably plastic and sensitive to experience. Although it’s far easier said than done, just limiting exposure to high-calorie foods and recreational drugs would naturally reset our brains to find pleasure in healthier foods and life without drugs.

“the Koran of the so-called Romantic artists.”

The first marker of a French Romantic painting may be the facture, meaning the way the paint is handled or laid on to the canvas.

The theme of man and nature found its way into Romantic art across Europe.

Raft of the Medusa (1819

Some artists, including Gericault and Delacroix, depicted nature directly in their images of animals.  

Lion and Serpent (1835.)

Another interest of Romantic artists and writers in many parts of Europe was the concept that people, like animals, were not solely rational beings but were governed by instinct and emotion.

Whatever he thought of being called a Romantic artist, Delacroix brought his intense fervor to political subjects as well.

That intensity of emotion, so characteristic of French Romantic art, would be echoed if not amplified by the sculptor François Rude’s Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (La Marseillaise) (1833-6).

French Romanticism remains difficult to define because it is so diverse. Baudelaire’s comments from the Salon of 1846 may still apply:

Despite repeated efforts from the city’s municipality to kill them — and the presence of several shelters, Afghan pet owners and empathetic dog-friendly foreigners eager to adopt — the animals thrive in the streets.

Rabies vaccinations are frequent, especially in Kabul, and take a chunk out of the Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health budget. It spends around $200,000 a year on the vaccines across the country, said Masouma Jafari, a spokeswoman for the ministry.

“If you carry anything after 7 at night they will attack you,” Mr. Ahmad Shah said, referring to both the thieves and the hounds.

“The government and the police, they do what they can,” Mr. Ibraheem said. “But they don’t have the capacity to fight dogs, terrorists and thieves.”

Experts are urging the public to temper its delight with awareness of the ecological significance, in a country where avid enthusiasm for conservation has not necessarily coincided with a reckoning of what it will mean to live alongside more elephants.

But movement is normal for elephants, which have large “home ranges” over which they travel searching for food or mates, said Dr. Campos-Arceiz. So it was not until relatively recently that researchers and government officials began to notice just how far this herd had wandered. In April, the elephants were spotted around Yuanjiang County, about 230 miles north of the nature reserve.

It’s not clear what spurred the elephants to leave their home. But after conservation efforts, China’s elephant population has grown in recent years, from fewer than 200 several decades ago to around 300 today, according to official statistics.

The elephants’ growing proximity to humans — and their strictly protected status — has emboldened the animals, according to Dr. Campos-Arceiz. And, they’re smart: As they began breaching the boundaries of nature reserves and crossing into more populated areas, they discovered that crops were more appealing than their usual forest fare.

As a result, it’s unsurprising to see elephants wandering beyond their usual habitats, he said, and the phenomenon is likely to continue as their population continues to grow.

Still, that doesn’t explain the long-distance movement of the “northbound wild elephant herd,” as the other herd has come to be known on social media.

While acknowledging the public’s amusement, the government has warned people to stay away from the animals, reminding them that they can be dangerous. The wandering herd has yet to cause any injuries to humans, but there were more than 50 casualties involving Asian elephants between 2011 and 2019, according to state media.

The best-case outcome, Ms. Chen said, would be for the attention that the herd has drawn to raise more awareness around the possibility of human-elephant conflict, which is likely to increase. Only by preparing people for that reality, she said, would conservation efforts really succeed.

The news comes a week after President Biden defended Major in an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, calling the 3-year-old a "sweet dog" who was just startled by an unfamiliar person in his new home.

Major got some remedial training while he was there, according to Biden, who stressed that the rescue dog is still adjusting to his new environment.

The Bidens fostered and then adopted Major from the Delaware Humane Association — where his litter of six puppies was dropped off in poor condition after ingesting an unknown toxic substance — in 2018. According to the shelter, Biden was looking for a companion for Champ, who is now 12 years old. Major is, famously, the first dog to go from a shelter to the White House — a historic journey that now also includes a brief detour to the dog house.

Consider a calculation to determine the threshold for herd immunity: Vc=(1− 1/R0)/E. "Vc" is the proportion of people who must be vaccinated to protect the rest of the herd, "R0," pronounced R-naught, is an estimate of the number of secondary cases from the original infected person and "E" represents effectiveness of a given vaccine against transmission. And this, which resembles a brutal SAT math section entry, is the dumbed-down version.

This is not a fund-raiser with a fixed universal goal we all are striving to reach. The above equation evaluates the nation as a homogenized entity, but people live in communities

In other words, susceptible cows should be culled to lessen the risk of new infections

Though, of course, the fix -- culling -- is not an option for human disease, the benefit of an immune herd is self evident.

Fast forward to the 21st century world of vaccines. Pandemics and health care are decidedly more complex, which has led all to wonder: what is the magic number of people we need to vaccinate so we can all forget these disastrous last 14 months?close dialogOur free Provoke/Persuade newsletter compiles the week’s most thought-provoking pieces and delivers them straight to your inbox. Please enter aboveSign me upBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Thanks for Subscribing!Continue ReadingBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.close dialog/* effects for .bx-campaign-1295603 *//* custom css .bx-campaign-1295603 *//* custom css from creative 52220 */.bxc.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-row-image-logo img { height: 42px;}@media screen and (max-width:736px) { .bxc.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-row-image-logo img { height: 35px;}}/*Validation border*/.bxc.bx-custom.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-row-validation .bx-input { border-color: #B50000; /*Specify border color*/ border-width: 1px; box-shadow: none; background-color: transparent; color: #B50000; /*Specify text color*/}/* rendered styles .bx-campaign-1295603 */.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative:before {min-height: 220px;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative {border-color: #c1c1c1;border-style: solid;background-size: contain;background-color: white;border-width: 1px 0;border-radius: 0;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative:before {min-height: 200px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 780px;vertical-align: middle;padding: 10px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603.bx-active-step-1 .bx-creative> *:first-child {width: 340px;padding: 20px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603.bx-active-step-1 .bx-close {stroke: rgb(193, 193, 193);stroke-width: 2px;width: 24px;height: 24px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603.bx-active-step-1 .bx-close {width: 30px;height: 30px;padding: 0 0 10px 10px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-group-1295603-y4M7jyO {width: 660px;text-align: left;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-group-1295603-y4M7jyO {text-align: center;width: 315px;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-element-1295603-tVcUlRZ {padding: 0;width: auto;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-element-1295603-tVcUlRZ> *:first-child {background-color: transparent;background-size: contain;}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-group-1295603-BpRQ7DR {width: 660px;text-align: left;padding: 25px 0 15px;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-group-1295603-BpRQ7DR {width: 310px;padding: 15px 0 15px;text-align: center;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-element-1295603-oUX5Jvf {width: 100%;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-element-1295603-oUX5Jvf {width: auto;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-element-1295603-oUX5Jvf> *:first-child {font-family: CNN Business,CNN,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Utkal,sans-serif;font-weight: 400;font-size: 24px;line-height: 1.1em;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-element-1295603-oUX5Jvf> *:first-child {font-size: 16px;padding: 6px 0 0;line-height: 1.2;}}.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-group-1295603-PZ8dLrW {width: 660px;padding: 0;min-width: 550px;text-align: left;}@media all and (max-width: 736px) {.bxc.bx-campaign-1295603 .bx-group-1295603-PZ8dLrW {min-width: auto;width: 310px;padding: 0;}}@media all and (min-wi

Lessening the threat of fetal loss therefore was straightforward: farmers should "retain" immune cattle -- those who had already had a spontaneous abortion -- and not waste "material, time, and energy ... on animals of doubtful value." Rather, they advised to butcher the non-immune cows and concentrate on the immune, "profitable" ones.

A famous mumps outbreak in adolescent boys from the Orthodox Jewish community is thought to have been exacerbated by the school practice of promoting close, sustained (15 hours a day) contact with a study partner ("chavrusa") including "animated" face-to-face discussion resulting in transmission despite the fact that most had been vaccinated years before.

Stated more simply, the herd likely is protected at a very different percent of vaccinated people in an Orthodox Jewish community in San Diego where people live near the school and walk to most activities compared to a gated community in a Minneapolis suburb where many prefer to keep to themselves.

We have received a master class in viral variants in recent months, witnessing day by day the alarming uptick in new cases as the B.1.1.7. variant has been introduced to new communities. But a single R-naught cannot fit all variants of Covid-19; a community with higher rates of B.1.1.7. and, therefore, a higher R-naught will require, among other things, a higher level of vaccination to designate the herd as sufficiently immune.

There is not one magic number to signal to the entire country that we have finally made it;

This is extremely important to keep in mind in the weeks and months ahead as we continue to vaccinate and wait and vaccinate and wait, chasing a number that is fundamentally misleading.

The heterogeneity of human behavior, geography and the virus itself explains the vagueness of the pronouncements of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, and other experts as they seek to evade specifying just how many more people need vaccination before we officially can claim victory.

As we have seen in the US during the 15-month arc of the pandemic, trust in science and scientists has been the key to progress. Masks work. Vaccines work. Certain medications work.

Manatees, nicknamed "sea cows," are protected under US law, and anyone found guilty of harassing them faces up to a year in prison and a $50,000 (£37,000) fine.Images of the animal was first shared by the Citrus County Chronical, a local newspaper, and have been widely shared on social media.

The Centre for Biological Diversity, a conservation charity, is also offering a $5,000 for information leading to the conviction of those responsible.

"It's clear that whoever harmed this defenceless, gentle giant is capable of doing grave violence and needs to be apprehended immediately," she added.The manatee is a large, slow-moving mammal which has become an unofficial mascot for Florida. There are around 6,300 currently in the state, according to the USFWS.

their numbers have fallen in recent years due to habitat loss, algae blooms and strikes by fast-moving boats.They are also vulnerable to attacks by humans while they congregate in the shallow water of local rivers and canals.

637 manatees died in 2020, 90 of which were victims of boat collisions. Another 15 were killed by other interactions with humans.

The disease would ravage Wuhan before it was brought under control in March. The city was locked down on Jan. 23 with little or no warning. The hardships endured and lives lost became a source of both sorrow and pride for residents once the 76-day lockdown was lifted on April 8.

Scientists initially suspected the virus came from wild animals sold in the market.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology maintains an extensive archive of genetic sequences of bat coronaviruses built in the wake of the 2003 SARS pandemic, which spread from China to many countries.

China has firmly rejected calls for an independent outside investigation. The head of the WHO recently expressed impatience with how long China took to make necessary arrangements for the expert team's visit.

China stifled independent reports about the outbreak and has published little information on its search for the origins of the virus. An AP investigation found that the government has strictly controlled all scientific research related to the outbreak and forbids researchers from speaking to the press.

Meanwhile, North America’s Pacific Coast was choking under successive waves of fume and ash. As with Australia, the forests, chaparral and grasslands of California, Oregon and Washington State had been rendered explosive by a chain of summers so searing that by mid-August this year, Death Valley’s temperature spiked to 130 degrees Fahrenheit — probably the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth.

So what are we to make of this yin-yang spectacle, with ourselves at nature’s throat in the south and nature at ours up north? Clearly a tremendous intercontinental drama is underway. Having sown the wind with greenhouse gases for centuries, we’re reaping the whirlwind, sometimes quite literally. Add pestilence to this picture of drought, fire and flood and you have a scene straight out of the Book of Revelation, with the coronavirus, as invisible to the naked eye as it is from space, playing the role of the fourth Horseman, sent by nature to counter our continuing assaults on the natural world.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story

Your antibodies may be not as effective, but they’re still going to be effective. If you have 10 times the amount of antibody that you need and you lose half of that, you’re still going to be well protected. And I think that’s where these variants are. Most people will be well protected from the worst aspects of disease.

There are four or five common-cold coronaviruses. Many of them have their roots in animals, whether they be bats or cows or other animal species, and then jumped into humans. None of those viruses cause severe disease. They’re all relatively transmissible, and you can get infected every two or three years with them.

There is some possibility [SARS-CoV-2] will go along that route. Once we’ve all gotten some level of baseline immunity—we’ve seen a virus like this or very similar to this—the next time you have it, it [may cause] a mild infection but, for the most part, you won’t end up in a hospital or on a respirator. That’s kind of the trajectory that you could expect, but again, we don’t know.

This event could have happened in 2002 with [SARS-CoV-1], but that virus was effectively stopped through quarantining and other procedures. We have an event now where most of the world will have seen this virus, either through a vaccine or through natural immunity, and so its trajectory in a few years is really hard to predict. I’m hopeful that it’s going to be more like a common-cold coronavirus. The best outcome would be that it’s like SARS 1 and it just disappears from the Earth.

The culture accelerated with the appearance of Homo erectus (1.9 million years ago), whose larger brain and shorter digestive system reflected the increased consumption of meat

the Neanderthals (400,000 to 40,000 years ago), who developed more sophisticated technology.

It also spanned most of the existence of Homo sapiens, dating from the first anatomically modern humans 200,000 years ago, to the transition to permanent agricultural communities around 10,000 B.C.

sharpened stones were used for cutting before hand-axes were developed, marking the onset of Acheulean technology about 1.6 million years ago.

Use of hearths dates back almost 800,000 years ago, and other findings point to controlled heating as far back as 1 million years ago.

Fire enabled hunter-gatherers to stay warm in colder temperatures, cook their food (preventing some diseases caused by consumption of raw foods like meat), and scare wild animals that might otherwise take their food or attack their camps.

These more specialized tools enabled them to widen their diet and create more effective clothing and shelter as they moved about in search of food.

From their earliest days, the hunter-gatherer diet included various grasses, tubers, fruits, seeds and nuts. Lacking the means to kill larger animals, they procured meat from smaller game or through scavenging.

Modern humans were cooking shellfish by 160,000 years ago, and by 90,000 years ago they were developing the specialized fishing tools that enabled them to haul in larger aquatic life.

With limited resources, these groups were egalitarian by nature, scraping up enough food to survive and fashioning basic shelter for all.

Physiological evolution also led to changes, with the bigger brains of more recent ancestors leading to longer periods of childhood and adolescence.

By the time of the Neanderthals, hunter-gatherers were displaying such “human” characteristics as burying their dead and creating ornamental objects

By 50,000 years ago, huts made from wood, rock and bone were becoming more common,

Modern-day hunter-gatherers endure in various pockets around the globe. Among the more famous groups are the San, a.k.a. the Bushmen, of southern Africa,