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This interactive map tracks anticipated foliage changes in the contiguous U.S.: smokymountains.com/fall-foliage-map/
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Due to a powerful solar storm, there have been great photos of the aurora borealis spotted in unlikely places this week, including as far south as Missouri. If you'd like to catch the aurora, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides a daily forecast and notes the aurora "does not need to be directly overhead but can be observed from as much as a 1000 km away when the aurora is bright and if conditions are right." www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/aurora-30-minute-forecast
For American high school students interested in studying outside the U.S., applications are now open for a variety of fully funded State Department programs, including the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES), the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX), and the Future Leaders Exchange Program (FLEX Abroad). These programs all have different deadlines, goals, and participating countries. This link to the Department of State exchange search provides information about all of these programs and more: tinyurl.com/32xfy465
Fast forward to 2050: this geo-graphic from Statista looks at the anticipated number of retirees per 100 working people, in selected countries, in 2020 vs. 2050. Numbers in 2050 range from 40.4 retirees per 100 working people in the U.S. to 80.7 (!) retirees per 100 working people in Japan. The length of the bar highlights the change in value from 2020 to 2050. www.statista.com/chart/30831/evolution-of-the-number-of-retirees-per-100-working-people
The Darién Gap is a roadless region of tropical rainforest connecting North and South America; the "gap" refers to the gap in the Pan-American Highway in this section of southern Panama and northern Colombia. Since the economic disintegration of Venezuela in 2018, the Darién Gap has also emerged as a primary, if arduous, transit corridor for migrants trying to get from South America to Mexico and the U.S. This article from the New York Times looks at the how the Darién Gap has become a major cash cow, not just for smugglers but also for entrepreneurs and local officials in what is effectively a space outside central government control. Trafficking migrants across the Darién Gap is described as "the only profitable industry in a place that didn’t have a defined economy before.” www.nytimes.com/2023/09/14/world/americas/migrant-business-darien-gap.html
September is apple-picking time, but in Benton County, Arkansas (today, better known as the headquarters of Walmart) there is an unusual apple that is picked in the fall but not eaten until months later. The Arkansas Black was discovered in an Arkansas orchard in the 1870s and grown commercially until the Great Depression. Today, it is making a bit of a comeback as regional specialty. https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/arkansas-black-apple
New York City recently passed restrictions on renting out properties on sites like Airbnb. Although NYC has (had?) a lot of Airbnb listings, other tourist destinations -- like Hawaii, New Orleans and Washington, DC -- have a lot more on a per capita basis. Asheville, NC, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, has the highest proportion of properties listed on Airbnb. www.statista.com/chart/30761/airbnb-listings-per-1000-inhabitants-in-the-us
History has shown, repeatedly, that philosophies that extol or justify a particular action often find traction after, not before, people have already take those actions for economic reasons. With Japan's population shrinking and domestic consumption also shrinking, then, it is not particularly surprising that an anti-growth book has become a best seller in Japan. This article from the New York Times looks at the philosophy of "degrowth communism" being advocated by the book: www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/kohei-saito-degrowth-communism.html
This geo-graphic from Statista, based on UN data, shows how patterns in human migration have changed over the last 20 years: www.statista.com/chart/30815/top-destination-countries-for-international-migrants
NIH (the National Institutes of Health) offers loads of free resources for teaching health and life science topics, from bioengineering and microbiology to concussions, cannabis, ticks, and nutrition. There are even comics and a board game available for download! Most of the materials are for middle and high school, but there are some things for elementary school students too. science.education.nih.gov/
This satellite image, from Al Jazeera, shows the location of the two dams on the Wadi Derna in far northeastern Libya that collapsed earlier this week following unusually heavy rains. The dams were built in the 1970s by a Yugoslavian company as part of a project to provide reservoirs and an irrigation network for communities in the region. Although Libya is not considered especially vulnerable to climate change, Notre Dame's Global Adaptation Initiative had previously flagged Libya's dam capacity as a significant vulnerability. www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/INTERACTIVE-Libya-Derna-floods-Storm-Daniel-1694506930.png
Cantonese is the primary language of southern China, including Hong Kong, and Cantonese has been a tool for anti-regime satire and solidarity since the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. This article from Quartz looks at Beijing's attempts to crackdown on Cantonese publishing outlets and promote the teaching of Mandarin in Hong Kong's schools: qz.com/hong-kong-s-new-public-enemy-the-cantonese-language-1850780591
With Hurricane Lee dawdling off the Atlantic Coast of the U.S., this graph from NOAA is a reminder that this is the busiest time of year for hurricanes. (Graph from www.nola.com/news/hurricane/hurricane-lee-becomes-a-cat-3-storm-no-threat-to-the-gulf/article_fe6ad090-4f64-11ee-984f-3facb7542d5c.html.)
If your state doesn't produce enough doctors to meet demand, where are the doctors in your state most likely from? This map, based on U.S. Census data, answers that question. (Map from www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/18/states-most-artists-writers/.)
Last Sunday the New York Times ran a question in an etiquette/relationship column that invites interesting ethical consideration as well: a couple that spent $50,000 cloning a favorite, older dog is breaking up; the woman wants both of the dogs, on the grounds that the original dog was hers and its cloned "offspring" should also be hers; the man thinks it's only fair that they each get a dog. Should it matter that the DNA from the clone was from a dog that belonged to the woman? Should it matter that most of the money spent on the cloning came from the man? Should it matter that the cloned puppy has a significantly longer expected life expectancy than the original dog, which is 12 years old? Is it ethical to clone a dog when the shelters are full of dogs waiting to be adopted? Is it true that it's only fair that both partners should get a dog? Is it ethical to spend $50,000 to clone a dog when humans die from a lack of routine medical care? Should it matter that the dogs may prefer to stay together? Feel free to share your thoughts as a comment to this post. (For the original article, see www.nytimes.com/2023/08/30/style/pet-custody-dog-cloning.html.)
This map and geo-graphic from Statista looks at extreme poverty -- defined by the World Bank as a daily income of $2.15 or less -- in selected countries before the COVID epidemic. www.statista.com/chart/30742/people-living-in-extreme-poverty-country-share/
Checkology is a free video-based curriculum devoted to teaching news literacy, from understanding bias and conspiratorial thinking to making sense of data and evaluating science-based claims: get.checkology.org/
Most people are familiar with the concept of life expectancy. Less familiar are the many variants on life expectancy, including "healthy life expectancy" (HALE), which is defined by the World Health Organization as the "average number of years that a person can expect to live in 'full health' by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury." This map shows the countries with the largest gap between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy -- or, thought of another way, with the most years of unhealthy old age -- as of 2019. The U.S. tops the list, with a gap of 12.4 years, followed by Australia, at 12.1 years. Completing the top 10 are New Zealand, the UK, Norway, Spain and Italy (tied), Iran, and Canada, Kuwait, and Switzerland (tied).  Geoengineering is the nascent science and movement to engineer the earth's climate by any number of means, including fertilizing the ocean to increase CO2 uptake and scattering particles in the upper atmosphere to deflect solar radiation. This piece from Foreign Policy argues that one of the lessons from Oppenheimer is that geoengineering, like nuclear weapons, needs international "guardrails and guidelines" because of its planetary impact. foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/21/oppenheimer-movie-atom-bomb-climate-change-geoengineering-solar-radiation-modification-srm-regulation/
China recently indicated President Xi Jinping will skip the G-20 economic summit in India later this month. That decision comes on the heels of a new standard map released by China's ministry of natural resources last week that shows India's state of Arunachal Pradesh, in the far northeastern part of the country, and all of the Aksai Chin plateau, part of which is in Kashmir, as Chinese territory. Although the Himalayan border between India and China has been poorly defined, disputed, and the source of military conflict for decades, the new map is viewed with concern as part of a tendency for China to claim territory in print before trying to assert its claims in other ways. qz.com/india-china-border-dispute-map-arunachal-pradesh-1850786461
Which states produce the most physicians per capita? According to the Census Bureau, as shown on this map, the District of Columbia, New York, and Utah have produced the most people employed as physicians over the last 10 years. (Map from www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/18/states-most-artists-writers/.)
Big money in Silicon Valley is being spent on a quest to extend, even indefinitely, the human lifespan. Less thought is being given to what spending more time as an old person might actually be like. This piece, by an 89-year-old former professor of psychology, considers the realities underpinning the ethics of extending old age:
"Biophysicists have calculated that, with maximal improvement in health care, the biological clock for humans must stop between 120-150 years. Biotechnology firms such as Calico, Biosplice and Celgene are putting this to the test by scrambling to extend our normal lifespan as far as they can. However, a basic problem, at least thus far, is that a sustained quality of life has not been extended to keep up with our expanded longevity. As people get older, they are not gaining economic security, maintaining their usual level of independence, extending their social relationships, or avoiding chronic illnesses. For instance, about 85 per cent of older adults in the United States have at least one common chronic illness such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis or Alzheimer’s. Thus, many routine tasks such as bathing, making the bed, doing errands, shopping, picking up items off the floor, or walking without falling cannot be performed without help. In short, as we live longer we are also unwell for longer. Psychological depression, caused by physical illness plus associated medical expenses, often contributes to even more decline. ... Undesirable, but necessary, medical compromises gradually squeeze the vitality out of a chronically ill person. In most cases, death is not a sudden event at the end of life (except as a legally defined physical state). Rather, it is a long process of progressive functional decline. ... What value is there in existing if the ability to do and experience what you most value becomes unavailable?" psyche.co/ideas/efforts-to-expand-the-lifespan-ignore-what-its-like-to-get-old This map, from The Wall Street Journal, shows global ocean temperatures from mid-July to mid-August as compared with historical averages (red=hotter, blue=colder). The map is used in the context of an article discussing how warming oceans and migrating sea life are forcing changes in fishing and allied industries (from www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/heating-waters-force-change-in-industries-that-depend-on-the-ocean-efd471d6).
High school students in the DC metro area interested in the life sciences should check out Suburban Hospital's Medical Exploring program. Students meet every-other Monday evening in Bethesda and occasionally on school holidays to take field trips and learn about careers in medicine from some of the region's top doctors and healthcare professionals. The virtual info session for this year is Monday, Sept. 18 (6-7 pm). For more information or to register for the info session, see medical-exploring-info.events.suburbanhospital.org/
With the death of Russian mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, many people are wondering about the future of the Wagner Group, especially in Africa where the organization has a large footprint, often trading security services, disinformation campaigns, and similar assistance to governments for mines and minerals. This map shows the Wagner Group's activities in Africa as of earlier this year: www.statista.com/chart/30665/wagner-group-engagement-africa/
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