Tuesday, July 20
Fighting Climate Change
In 2018, Americans used nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline running lawn and
garden equipment. That's the equivalent of 6 million passenger cars
running for a year. Dreamstime / MCT
Summer is officially here. For many Americans, that means blankets of grassy green for kids to play in.
There are an estimated 40 million to 50 million acres of lawn in the continental United States — that’s nearly as much as all of the country’s national parks combined. In 2020, Americans spent $105 billion keeping their lawns verdant and neat.
But our love of grass comes at an environmental cost.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, maintaining those lawns also consumes nearly 3 trillion gallons of water a year as well as 59 million pounds of pesticides, which can seep into our land and waterways.
Department of Transportation data shows that in 2018, Americans used nearly 3 billion gallons of gasoline running lawn and garden equipment. That's the equivalent of 6 million passenger cars running for a year.
As these issues are becoming more prominent in climate change discussion, there are steps you can take to more sustainably manage the impact of your lawn, including choosing organic fertilizers, avoiding pesticides, and using electric lawn maintenance equipment
But how we care for our lawns is secondary to the amount of lawn we have in the first place, experts say. Having less grass and more plants is among the most important factors in keeping a yard eco-friendly.
“Lawn, ecologically, is dead space,” said Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware and author of Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...
Loney Adults Don't Live Long
The study categorically quantifies for the first time the affects of loneliness in old age on life and health expectancy.
“We found that lonely older adults can expect to live a shorter life than their peers who don’t perceive themselves as lonely,” says lead author Rahul Malhotra, assistant professor and head of research at Duke-NUS’ Centre for Aging Research and Education (CARE). “Furthermore, they pay a penalty for their shorter life by forfeiting potential years of good health.”
“Besides being the year associated with the coronavirus disease, 2019 was also when the number of adults aged over 30 made up half the total global population for the first time in recorded history, marking the start of an increasingly aging world,” says senior author Angelique Chan, associate professor and executive director of CARE. “In consequence, loneliness among seniors has become an issue of social and public health concern.”
“This study is timely because stay-at-home and physical distancing measures instituted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic have only intensified concern for the mental and physical well-being of older persons,” says Yasuhiko Saito from the College of Economics at Nihon University and a senior coauthor of the study.
COLLECTIVISTIC VS. INDIVIDUALISTIC CULTURES
The study findings show that people aged 60, who perceive themselves to be sometimes lonely or mostly lonely, can expect to live three to five years less, on average, compared to peers who perceive themselves as never lonely. Similarly, at ages 70 and 80, lonely older people can, on average, expect to live three to four and two to three years less, respectively, compared to non-lonely peers.
Using the same dataset, the researchers found that the perception of loneliness has a similar effect on two types of health expectancy—remaining years of life lived in a self-rated state of good health as well as remaining years of life lived without being limited when going about “activities of daily living.” Such activities include routines like bathing and dressing, rising from or settling into a bed or chair, and preparing meals. TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...
Harvard's Lost Its Way
West, who earlier this year said he was giving up his drive for tenure at Harvard Divinity School to rejoin the faculty at Union Theological Seminary, posted what he called "my candid letter of resignation" to Twitter late Monday.
In it, he writes that the "disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large" at Harvard.
The 68-year-old scholar suggests in the letter that politics were a factor in Harvard's decision not to extend tenure to him, citing his outspoken support for the Palestinian cause.
"We all knew the mendacious reasons given had nothing to do with academic standards. ... I knew my academic achievements and student teaching meant far less than their political prejudices," West says of the Harvard administration.
Letter to Dean below...
Monday, July 19
Unintended Threat to our Environment
With a lifespan of around 450 years, environmental researchers are concerned about an ecological timebomb.
According to the United Nations, a staggering 75% of face masks end up in landfill or waterways. Read more...
Living Off Paper Money
Banks say their wealthy clients are borrowing more than ever before, often using loans backed by their portfolios of stocks and bonds. Morgan Stanley wealth-management clients have $68.1 billion worth of securities-based and other nonmortgage loans outstanding, more than double five years earlier. Bank of America Corp. said it has $62.4 billion in securities-based loans, dwarfing its book of home-equity lines of credit.
The loans have special benefits beyond the flexible repayment terms and low interest rates on offer. They allow borrowers who need cash to avoid selling in a hot market. Startup founders can monetize their stakes without losing control of their companies. The very rich often use these loans as part of a “buy, borrow, die” strategy to avoid capital-gains taxes.
Many wealthy people are also borrowing against their portfolios. When Tom Anderson started at Merrill Lynch & Co. in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 2002, many of his fellow advisers had just one or two securities-based loans in their book of business. Over the years, he encouraged more clients to borrow and noticed peers doing the same. Now it is common for advisers at big firms to have dozens of these loans outstanding, he said. Merrill Lynch is now a part of Bank of America. TO READ FULL STORY... YOU MUST SUBSCRIBE TO THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Our Gut & Diet
Among other things, this internal ecosystem contains bacteria that we rely on to help us break down and process the foods that we’re not readily equipped to digest. But a slew of recent scientific studies shows that our gut also connects more broadly to our holistic health, even to things that are seemingly unrelated, like our brains.
The science is preliminary, but there is compelling evidence that what you eat — and in turn, that changes the gut microbiome — has an outsized influence on your health. But not in the way you’d think.
WHAT’S NEW — A new study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances looks at how diet could alter multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms via the gut microbiome. By feeding mice with an MS-like condition a specific diet, scientists were able to reprogram their gut bacteria — and reduce their symptoms.
The study started with the observation that the gut microbiomes of people with MS lack a kind of bacteria that, in most folks’ gut, breakdowns a nutrient called isoflavones. This nutrient is commonly found in everyday staple foods, like soy and beans.
So, the team hypothesized that MS might be related to the absence of these bacteria — and in turn, eating more foods with isoflavones in them could alleviate the symptoms.
From there, they were able to demonstrate the critical difference that the bacteria’s presence or absence can make in this disease.
WHY IT MATTERS — This study is so intriguing because it identifies a clear relationship between the gut, the food we eat, and our brain and body health.
In the new study, the researchers go further than past work by not only establishing a clear link between gut bacteria and diet, but also the mechanisms driving the relationship — and how to potentially game it to our advantage.
“The hypothesis has always been that bacterial composition is tightly linked to diet,” says Sergio Baranzini, a neurology professor at the University of California, San Francisco who was not involved in the research. While other studies have investigated this relationship, “what those studies fell short of is showing what could be the potential mechanism.”
Explaining Consciousness
Of course, this assumes that consciousness isn’t separate from the material reality that physics explains – which runs counter to René Descartes’s dualist view of mind and matter. Some have no problem with that.
They include Daniel Dennett at Tufts University in Massachusetts and Michael Graziano at Princeton University, who argue that our intuitive sense that consciousness needs an explanation that goes beyond objective descriptions of the physical world is misplaced.
Consciousness is a mirage produced by sophisticated neural mechanisms in the brain, they contend, so we need no new physics to explain it. Rather, we need a better understanding of how the brain creates models: of the world, of a self in the world and of a self subjectively experiencing the world.
Other non-dualists don’t outright deny that consciousness may have unusual properties that need explaining. If they are correct, then quantum mechanics may offer an explanation.
Quantum systems can exist in a superposition of all possible states simultaneously, and classical reality emerges when this superposition collapses into a single state. One idea is that this happens when the mass of a quantum system … Read more:
Sunday, July 18
MIT Predicted Decades Ago
As the world looks forward to a rebound in economic growth following the devastation wrought by the pandemic, the research raises urgent questions about the risks of attempting to simply return to the pre-pandemic ‘normal.’
In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources.
The controversial MIT analysis generated heated debate, and was widely derided at the time by pundits who misrepresented its findings and methods. But the analysis has now received stunning vindication from a study written by a senior director at professional services giant KPMG, one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms as measured by global revenue.
Limits to growth
The study was published in the Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology in November 2020 and is available on the KPMG website. It concludes that the current business-as-usual trajectory of global civilization is heading toward the terminal decline of economic growth within the coming decade—and at worst, could trigger societal collapse by around 2040.
The study represents the first time a top analyst working within a mainstream global corporate entity has taken the ‘limits to growth’ model seriously. Its author, Gaya Herrington, is Sustainability and Dynamic System Analysis Lead at KPMG in the United States. However, she decided to undertake the research as a personal project to understand how well the MIT model stood the test of time. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...
Spain's Top Court Rules Lockdown Unconstitutional
While upholding most terms of the state of emergency, the court said provisions ordering the population off the streets except for shorts shopping trips, unavoidable work commutes and other essential business violated Spain’s Constitution.
The court issued a brief statement that described the ruling as a split decision. State broadcaster TVE said six magistrates were in favor and five against. The full decision is expected to be released in the coming days.
According to TVE, the court majority ruled that the limitations on movement violated citizens’ basic rights and the state of emergency was a constitutionally insufficient mechanism to do that. The six magistrates said a state of exception, which does allow the government to suspend basic rights, would have been necessary.
Justice Minister Pilar Llop said that her government “will uphold but does not share the decision” on the inadequacy of the emergency declaration “that saved hundreds of thousands of lives.”
“The home confinement rule declared under the state of emergency, along with the exemplary behavior of citizens, allowed us to stop the virus,” Llop said, adding that it was similar to orders given by other European governments.
The Constitutional Court made its ruling in response to a lawsuit brought by Spain’s far-right Vox party. Vox leader Santiago Abascal called Wednesday for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to step down.
“We cannot celebrate the decision because we have proof that the government was willing to break the law and tarnish the constitution,” Abascal said.
Spain’s government declared the state of emergency on March 14, 2020, three days after the World Health Organization said the spread of the coronavirus had become a pandemic. With Spain’s hospitals filling up, Sánchez’s left-wing coalition government won parliamentary backing, including from Vox lawmakers, for the state of emergency.
During the first six-week confinement period, Spaniards could not go out even for exercise, and Vox withdrew its support for the lockdown.
The lockdown helped reduce the number of new daily cases. The Spanish government gradually relaxed its pandemic restrictions once the worst of the emergency had passed. Since then, Spain has used a myriad of measures to control infections. The country has reported a pandemic death toll to date of 81,000. TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...
Unemployment Insurance Benefits
About 1.8 million out-of-work Americans have turned down jobs because of the generosity of unemployment insurance benefits, according to Morning Consult poll results released Wednesday.
Why it matters:- U.S. businesses have been wrestling with labor supply shortages as folks capable of working have opted not to work for a variety of reasons.
- One of the more politically controversial reasons has been the availability of unemployment insurance benefits, in particular emergency provisions that were introduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
By the numbers: Morning Consult surveyed 5,000 U.S. adults from June 22-25, 2021.
- Of those actively collecting unemployment benefits, 29% said they turned down job offers during the pandemic. In response to a follow-up question, 45% of that group said they turned down jobs specifically because of the generosity of the benefits.
- Extrapolating from the 14.1 million adults collecting benefits as of June 19, Morning Consult concluded that 1.8 million people turned down job offers because of the benefits.
Furthermore, all 1.8 million won’t necessarily find employment quickly as jobs once offered to them may have been filled by others.
What they’re saying: Morning Consult chief economist John Leer cautions against concluding that this completely validates calls to cut unemployment benefits early.
The bottom line: "Getting people to move from relying on unemployment insurance to wage income doesn't just automatically happen," Leer tells Axios. "There's going to be some searching and matching frictions at work."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)