Interesting ( but nothing to do with Epicurus!)

Ancestral Eve “Because only mitochondria from eggs are passed on to children – mitochondria from sperm are lost at fertilisation – we can trace people’s maternal ancestors using mitochondrial DNA. This has allowed us to work out that everyone alive had a common female ancestor living at some point between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. …

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Maybe an historical event that had escaped your notice ?

In 1839 a Cyclone slammed south eastern India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroying city of Coringa. Storm waves swept inland, destroying 20,000 ships and killing an estimated 300,000 people. My comment: Was that a freak, one-off event? I don’t know. Maybe no one knows. But it is the sort of …

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Is this a non-sequitur?

Speculation has emerged that penguins may be aliens after scientists found traces of a chemical from Venus in their droppings. Experts are struggling to explain how phosphine exists on Earth – 38 million miles away from Venus. Scientists in the UK who believe alien life forms may have already been detected say studying penguins could …

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Duck recorded speaking to human

Scientists have recorded the first known instance of a duck that has learned to mimic human speech. The duck in in Australia – called Ripper – said: “You bloody fool.” Parrots, songbirds and hummingbirds were thought to be the only birds thought to be able to mimic human speech, though several mammals such as whales, …

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This generational conflict is bogus

A fake generational war over the climate crisis has distorted public thinking and political strategy, when in fact older generations are just as worried about the issue as younger people, according to research. In fact, the study found older people were actually more likely than the young to feel that acting in environmentally conscious ways …

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Extinction of the Komodo dragon?

Climate change is threatening Komodo Dragons, the Earth’s largest living lizards to still walk the Earth. A new report from an international biodiversity conservation organization says the fearsome reptiles are edging closer to global extinction. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List, an assessment of the health of tens of …

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News from Sweden. Nothing is simple or easy.

Southern Sweden may be home to big cities like Stockholm and Gothenburg, but the North is fast emerging as our nation’s industrial powerhouse. The lithium-ion battery cell factory in Skellefrea keeps taking new orders, the State-owned metals company LKAB has made giant investments in its Northern iron mines, and a zero-emissions steelworks has opened in …

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Getting more serious about climate

Recently, the tipping point concept has found a new application in climate science as a way to explain, and possibly engineer, social change. The way changes in attitude creep along at a glacial pace before suddenly bursting forth to take root across society is a classic tipping point. This process is useful because it moves …

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So much for fighting global climate change!

The world’s 60 largest banks have provided $3.8tn of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate agreement in 2015, a coalition of NGOs have said. While the coronavirus pandemic has triggered a drop in energy use, funding is still net rising. US and Canadian banks comprise 13 of the 60 banks analysed but …

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The decimation of fertility. No. 3 (last comments)

Just the other week, hundreds of residents who live near Luke air force base in Arizona were advised not to drink their water, when tests detected high levels of toxic chemicals. Scientists have found these substances in the blood of nearly all the people they tested in the US. No country or region on earth …

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The decimation of fertility. No. 1

The end of humankind? It may be coming sooner than we think, thanks to hormone-disrupting chemicals that are decimating fertility at an alarming rate around the globe. A new book called Countdown, by Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, finds that sperm counts …

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The decline in the US birthrate, no. 1

Women are having fewer children than at any time on record. What are the implications? The U.S.’s total fertility rate, or the number of babies each woman is expected to have during her lifetime, reached a record low of 1.705 births per woman (that’s 1 point 705!)in 2019, the latest year for which data is …

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