This interesting geo-graphic from HowMuch.net shows the world's 10 biggest economies (as measured by GDP) from 1980 to 2021. howmuch.net/articles/worlds-biggest-economies-over-time
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This article from ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine looks at the future of issue of climate migration, or rather at several possible futures depending on the choices leaders make today. "For most of human history, people have lived within a surprisingly narrow range of temperatures, in the places where the climate supported abundant food production. But as the planet warms, that band is suddenly shifting north. According to a pathbreaking recent study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the planet could see a greater temperature increase in the next 50 years than it did in the last 6,000 years combined. By 2070, the kind of extremely hot zones, like in the Sahara, that now cover less than 1% of the earth’s land surface could cover nearly a fifth of the land, potentially placing 1 of every 3 people alive outside the climate niche where humans have thrived for thousands of years. Many will dig in, suffering through heat, hunger and political chaos, but others will be forced to move on." features.propublica.org/climate-migration/model-how-climate-refugees-move-across-continents
Did physical geography, including terrain and biogeography, influence early human brain development? New research suggests that yes, it did:
"'The basic idea is that open spaces—open grassland, flat plains—are just speed games, favoring the predator, since they are larger," [Northwestern University neuroscientist and engineer Malcolm] MacIver told Ars. 'Closed spaces—dense forests or jungles—favor simple strategies of running for cover. Using a complexity measure, we show both of these habitats have low complexity.' ... The complexity 'sweet spot,' according to MacIver, is a landscape like the one featured in The Hobbit chase scene, or like Botswana'a Okavango Delta, both of which feature an open grassland and moss zones dotted with clumps of trees and similar foliage. 'In this zone, neither speed games nor running for cover maximizes survival rate,' said MacIver. 'But planning—by which I mean imagining future paths and picking the best based on what you think your adversary will do—gives you a considerable advantage.' And that planning requires the kind of advanced neural circuitry typical of the human brain. MacIver and his Northwestern colleague and co-author, Ugurcan Mugan, performed numerous supercomputer simulations, which revealed that while seeing farther (MacIver's original theory) is needed for advance planning to emerge evolutionarily, it is not sufficient by itself. Rather, it requires a combination of long-range vision and complex landscapes. This, in turn, may have led to the development of one of the most difficult cognitive operations: envisioning the future. ... [I]n the simple water and land simulations, the prey showed low survival rates regardless of which strategy it employed, demonstrating that there was no evolutionary benefit to being able to plan in environments that are very open or too densely packed. In the former, the best bet is to try and outrun the predator; in the latter, there are too few clearly available paths, and the densely packed environment hinders how far the prey can see. But a patchy landscape in the Goldilocks zone of complexity showed a huge increase in survival rates for prey that relied on the planning strategy, compared to the habit-based approach." arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/how-the-geometry-of-ancient-habitats-may-have-influenced-human-brain-evolution The U.S. presidential election is 3 months away. Political geographers are intensely interested in not just polling data but also where donations are coming from. This map from The New York Times shows where donations to the Trump (red) and Biden (blue) campaigns came from April through June by zip code. The article also contains enlarged maps of a sampling of key states. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/24/us/politics/trump-biden-campaign-donors.html
Biohacking and do-it-yourself science have become popular as prices and skills needed for projects have dropped. But is DIY science a useful development to address modern challenges, or is it a dangerous way of evading institutional review boards and the professional ethics they codify? Here's a topical case in point: DIY COVID vaccine development, including inoculation of volunteers.
"Preston Estep was alone in a borrowed laboratory, somewhere in Boston. No big company, no board meetings, no billion-dollar payout from Operation Warp Speed, the US government’s covid-19 vaccine funding program. No animal data. No ethics approval. What he did have: ingredients for a vaccine. And one willing volunteer. Estep swirled together the mixture and spritzed it up his nose. ... The group, calling itself the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative, or Radvac, formed in March. That’s when Estep sent an email to a circle of acquaintances, noting that US government experts were predicting a vaccine in 12 to 18 months and wondering if a do-it-yourself project could move faster. He believed there was 'already sufficient information' published about the virus to guide an independent project. ... To come up with a vaccine design, the group dug through reports of vaccines against SARS and MERS, two other diseases caused by coronaviruses. Because the group was working in borrowed labs with mail-order ingredients, they wouldn’t make anything too complicated. The goal, says Estep, was to find 'a simple formula that you could make with readily available materials. That narrowed things down to a small number of possibilities.' He says the only equipment he needed was a pipette (a tool to move small amounts of liquid) and a magnetic stirring device. ... Despite the lack of evidence, the Radvac group has offered the vaccine to a widening circle of friends and colleagues, inviting them to mix the ingredients and self-administer the nasal vaccine. Estep has now lost count of exactly how many people have taken the vaccine. 'We have delivered material to 70 people,' he says. 'They have to mix it themselves, but we haven’t had a full reporting on how many have taken it.' One of the Radvac white paper’s co-authors is Ranjan Ahuja, who volunteers as an events manager for a nonprofit foundation that Estep started to study depression. Ahuja has a chronic condition that puts him at heightened risk from covid-19. Although he can’t say whether the two doses he took have given him immunity, he feels it’s his best chance of protection until a vaccine is approved. ... Estep believes Radvac is not subject to oversight because the group’s members mix up and administer the vaccine themselves, and no money changes hands. 'If you are just making it and taking it yourself, the FDA can’t stop you,' says Estep. The FDA did not immediately respond to questions about the legality of the vaccine. ... Whether or not regulators step in, and even if the vaccine proves to be a dud, the DIY covid-19 vaccine is already changing the attitudes of those who’ve taken it. [Alex Hoekstra, a data analyst with an undergraduate degree in biology who previously volunteered with Harvard's Personal Genome Project] says that since twice spraying the formulation into his nose, he moves through an 'unsafe' world differently. 'I am not licking doorknobs,' says Hoekstra, who joined the group after departing his day job due to the shutdown. 'But it’s an amazingly surreal experience knowing that I may have an immunity to this constant danger [and] that my continued existence through this pandemic will be a useful dataset. It lends a level of meaning and purpose.'" www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/29/1005720/george-church-diy-coronavirus-vaccine Reader's Digest magazine ran a statistically unreliable but nevertheless fun experiment: 12 wallets were "dropped" in each of 16 cities around the world. Each wallet contained a family photo, a name with cell phone number, business cards, and the equivalent of $50 in local currency. The wallets were "dropped" on sidewalks, in parks, and near shopping malls. This map shows what fraction of the 12 wallets were returned in each of the test cities: https://www.earthlymission.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/TheLostWalletExperiment.jpg
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