YCLOAK

What killed off the Neanderthals? It’s a big debate, and now a study says that no matter what the answer, they were doomed anyway.

Our close evolutionary cousins enjoyed a long run in Europe and Asia, but they disappeared about 40,000 years ago after modern humans showed up from Africa.

The search for an explanation has produced many theories including climate change, epidemics, or inability to compete with the modern humans, who may have had some mental or cultural edge.

The new study isn’t intended to argue against those factors, but just to show that they’re not needed to explain the extinction, says Oren Kolodny of Stanford University.

He and colleague Marcus Feldman present their approach in a paper released Tuesday by the journal Nature Communications.   

They based their conclusion on a computer simulation that represented small bands of Neanderthals and modern humans in Europe and Asia. These local populations were randomly chosen to go extinct, and then be replaced by another randomly chosen population, with no regard for whether it represented the same species.

Neither species was assumed to have any inherent advantage, but there was one crucial difference: Unlike the Neanderthals, the modern humans were supplemented by reinforcements coming in from Africa. It wasn’t a huge wave, but rather “a tiny, tiny trickle of small bands,” Kolodny said.

Still, that was enough to tip the balance against the Neanderthals. They generally went extinct when the simulation was run more than a million times under a variety of assumptions.

If survival was a game of chance, “it was rigged by the fact that there’s recurring migration,” Kolodny said. “The game was doomed to end with the Neanderthals losing.”

Kolodny said the evidence that such migrations actually occurred is suggestive rather than conclusive. Such migrations would not be expected to leave much of an archaeological trace, he said.

Experts in human origins said the paper could help scientists pin down the various factors that led to the Neanderthals’ demise. It fits in with other recent attempts to explain the extinction without assuming behavioral differences between Neanderthals and our ancestors, said Wil Roebroeks of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. The notion of such differences is largely disproven, he said.

Katerina Harvati of the University of Tuebingen in Germany said while the new work could be useful in solving the extinction mystery, it doesn’t address the question of why modern humans dispersed from Africa into Europe and Asia. It’s important to figure out what was behind that, she said in an email.
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The suburbs of Washington are the setting for a pilot project to promote healthier eating habits, a partnership between leaders of the Latino community there and researchers at George Washington University. The “Water up Project” encourages the community to drink more water and reduce their consumption of sugary beverages. Faiza Elmasry reports. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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The U.N.’s environment program said Tuesday countries and industries need to do more to meet targets to trim emissions of greenhouse gases that experts say are contributing to global warming.

In its latest “Emissions Gap” report issued ahead of an important climate conference in Germany next week, the program takes aim at coal-fired electricity plants being built in developing economies and says investment in renewable energies will pay for itself — and even make money – over the long term.

Tuesday’s report comes as U.N. officials are making a renewed push to maintain momentum generated by the Paris climate accord of 2015.

It aims to cap global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (Fahrenheit) by the year 2100 compared to average world temperatures at the start of the industrial era.

“The Paris agreement boosted climate action, but momentum is clearly faltering,” said Edgar Gutierrez-Espeleta, Costa Rica’s environment minister who heads the 2017 UN Environment Assembly. “We face a stark choice: up our ambition, or suffer the consequences.”

A new round of U.N. climate talks known as COP 23 starts in Bonn, Germany, on Monday, when countries will take stock of their achievements and prepare more ambitious national goals.

In a summary of the report, UNEP says that current trends suggest that even if current national commitments are met, a temperature increase of 3-degrees Celsius by the end of the century is “very likely — meaning that governments need to deliver much stronger pledges when they are revised in 2020.”

“Should the United States follow through with its stated intention to leave the Paris agreement in 2020, the picture could become even bleaker,” the statement said, alluding to the Trump administration plans to withdraw the U.S. from the global climate pact.

On the upside, the agency highlights “rapidly expanding mitigation action” and says carbon-dioxide emissions have remained stable since 2014, thanks partly to renewable-energy use in China and India. It cautioned that other greenhouse gases like methane continue to rise, however.

UNEP trumpets the positive effects of investment in solar and wind energy and efficient appliances and cars, and efforts to preserve forests.

 
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The suburbs of Washington are the setting for a pilot project to promote healthier eating habits, a partnership between leaders of the Latino community there and researchers at George Washington University. The “Water up Project” encourages the community to drink more water and reduce their consumption of sugary beverages. Faiza Elmasry reports. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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The luncheon special has brought a crowd into El Puente de Oro, a Salvadoran restaurant in Langley Park, Maryland. Owner and chef, Ciro Castro, has put together a meal with a large plate of chicken, beans and rice, salad, and a bottle of water.

“The plate that costs $10, for them costs only $5,” he says.

The meal deal is not only saving his customers money, it’s encouraging them do what they usually don’t – drink water.

“When they are over here eating, they ask for juice or soda, or any other stuff – no water,” Castro says. “I ask the waiters to offer water, even if they have a beer or any other soda or other drink, they can sometimes get a sip of water.”

Castro is pleased to be part of a positive change in his customers’ eating habits.

El Puente de Oro is one of five restaurants in this largely Latino suburb that joined a pilot program called the Water Up Project. Its goal is to get the community to drink more water and reduce their consumption of sugary beverages.

Neighbors and Friends

The campaign depends on volunteers, like local leader Brenda Barrios, who’s been explaining the program to neighbors and restaurant owners.

“It’s not like convincing (the business’ owners), it’s more like informing,” she explains. “It’s more like, you know why we need to change these menus. Can you, please help your families because at the end we are a big family, a big Latino family. We want to be healthy.”

Cindy Aguiler is one of her neighbors who have become supporters of the campaign.

“I like the idea and very excited about the Water Up Project because it promotes water. One of the simple, healthy and cheap things is water.”

She’s now drinking more water, and helping her five children develop this healthy habit by not buying soda drinks at home. “I buy juices. It’s maybe on the weekends, but try to make them drink a lot of water.”

Make it Visible, Make it Accessible

Uri Colon-Ramos, assistant professor of global heath at Milken Institute of Public Health in George Washington University, is co-principal investigator of the Water Up Project.

She says the question was how to promote drinking water instead of sugary drinks.

“One of the things we noticed right away that you go to these businesses, to the restaurants and you sit down and they don’t offer you water to drink,” she says. “You go here in DC and elsewhere, you sit down and this is the first thing they bring you, or there is a place where you can just grab water for free. That’s a big barrier because people would come thirsty, they would say, well give me a beer or horchata or tamarind or something really sugary. And they don’t drink water because they don’t have access there, and even if they ask for water, they would bring you a bottle of water that costs more than sugary drinks.” 

And, she says, ads target Latinos encouraging them to consume more sugary drinks. “Also in their home countries, they are targeted as well, and the globalization is very real. They’re used to drinking or seeing the promotion of soft drinks as well. They come here to the U.S. and they have more access to these drinks.”

The commercials downplay the serious health risks linked to sugary drinks.

“Sugary drinks are the number one risk factor for diabetes that we don’t need to have in in our diet,” the researcher explains. “There is no reason why we need the calories that are coming from sugary drinks. At least other foods provide other kinds of nutrients. These are nutrient poor type of food that contributes nothing but calories. And those calories come all in the form of sugar.”

The four-month long Water Up project started a few months ago, and researchers are now evaluating the results and feedback, hoping to make it more impactful and expand it to more neighborhoods. They hope this pilot project will inspire other communities around the United States and the world to think about what they drink and choose more water.
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Climate change has caused severe harm to human health since the year 2000 by stoking more heat waves, the spread of some mosquito-borne diseases and under-nutrition as crops fail, scientists said on Tuesday.

Scant action to slow global warming over the past 25 years has jeopardized “human life and livelihoods,” they wrote in a report published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

“The human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and potentially irreversible,” said the report, entitled Lancet Countdown and drawn up by 24 groups, including universities, the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Many governments are now trying to cut their greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, though U.S. President Donald Trump has weakened the pact by saying the United States, the world’s second biggest greenhouse gas polluter after China, will pull out.

“This (report) is a huge wake-up call,” Christiana Figueres, chair of the Lancet Countdown’s high-level advisory board and the United Nations’ climate chief at the Paris summit, told Reuters. “The impacts of climate change are here and now.”

Among its findings, the report said an additional 125 million vulnerable people had been exposed to heat waves each year from 2000 to 2016, with the elderly especially at risk.

Labor productivity among farm workers fell by 5.3 percent since the year 2000, mainly because sweltering conditions sapped the strength of workers in nations from India to Brazil.

The report, based on 40 indicators of climate and health, said climate change seemed to be making it easier for mosquitoes to spread dengue fever, which infects up to 100 million people a year.

The number of undernourished people in 30 countries across Africa and Asia rose to 422 million in 2016 from 398 million in 1990, it said.

“Undernutrition is identified as the largest health impact of climate change in the 21st century,” the report added.

“Glimmers of hope”

But despite the overall gloom, Anthony Costello, a director at WHO and co-chair of the Lancet Countdown study, said there were “significant glimmers of hope” in the situation.

The number of weather-related disasters such as hurricanes and floods rose 46 percent since 2000, but the number of deaths remained stable, suggesting that societies were improving protection measures against environmental catastrophes.

Almost 200 nations will meet in Bonn, Germany, from Nov. 6-17 to work on a “rule book” for the 2015 Paris climate agreement for shifting from fossil fuels.

The Lancet Countdown study did not estimate the total number of deaths from climate change. The WHO has previously estimated there could be 250,000 extra deaths a year between 2030 and 2050 because of climate change.

Nick Watts, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, said there could be a few benefits from warmer temperatures, such as fewer deaths from winter cold in nations from Russia to Canada.

“But those numbers are … almost negligible,” he said compared to the overall harm from global warming.

The Lancet study also said that the air in 87 percent of all cities, home to billions of people, exceeded pollution guidelines set by the WHO. Fossil fuels release both toxins and heat-trapping carbon dioxide when burnt.

Johan Rockstrom, director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and who was not involved in the Lancet study, said the report could bolster efforts to limit pollution in cities from Beijing to Mexico City.

“Air pollution is in a way an old issue,” he said, referring to decades of efforts to limit smog. “But it’s potentially coming to the forefront again as the most rapid vehicle to get action on climate change.”
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The best way to further reduce deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is paying owners to preserve their land, and Brazil plans to discuss how to fund such a program at a climate summit next month, the country’s environmental minister said on Monday.

Brazil wants to switch from stick to carrot in its fight against deforestation, with Minister Jose Sarney Filho telling reporters that enforcement and penalties used to decrease the clearance of forest will not be enough.

The Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest tropical one, soaks up vast amounts of carbon and its preservation is seen as vital in the fight against climate change.

Sarney Filho told reporters that payments for so-called “environmental services” to landowners who maintain a minimum percentage of their land in its natural state, is the next step.

“Command and control has already reached its limit. If we don’t immediately start to demonstrate that forest services will be fairly paid, we will have serious problems,” Sarney Filho said.

In the Amazon, landowners generally must maintain 80 percent of their land in their natural state while being allowed to develop the other 20 percent with the rate varying for different biomes.

“We need to start discussing the reward to those that preserve their land,” Sarney Filho said.

The matter of how to value and fund this preservation will be featured at next month’s U.N. climate change conference in Bonn, Germany, on guidelines related to the Paris climate accord.

It will be the first meeting of the group since U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to pull the United States out of the Paris Accord, which seeks to limit the rise in temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

While programs like the Amazon Fund, which is sponsored by Norway and Germany, pay for efforts to stop deforestation, they do not pay these types of rewards to landowners, Sarney Filho said.

He did not offer specifics on how to pay for them.

Brazil is drawing up a national plan for implementing the Paris Accord after seeking opinions from companies, environmentalists, indigenous groups and others.

Sarney Filho said he expects carbon emissions to fall in Brazil this year, corresponding to a 16 percent drop in deforestation between August 2016 and July 2017 from the year-earlier period.
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Cetaceans — whales and dolphins — are among the brainiest of beings. In terms of sheer brain size, the sperm whale is tops on Earth, with a brain six times larger than that of a person.

And now, scientists have identified key differences among cetaceans linked to brain size. A study of 90 cetacean species published last week found that those with larger brains exhibit greater complexity in social structures and behaviors, with species like the killer whale and sperm whale leading the way.

“Dolphin and whale societies are at least as complex as what we have observed in primates,” said evolutionary biologist Susanne Shultz of the University of Manchester in Britain.

“They are extremely playful, they learn from each other, have complex communication. One problem for understanding just how smart they are is how difficult it is to observe them and to understand their marine world. Therefore, we have only a glimpse of what they are capable of.”

The researchers created a comprehensive database of brain size, social structures and cultural behaviors across cetacean species. The group of species with the largest brain size relative to body size was the large whale-like dolphins such as the killer whale, the similar-looking false killer whale and the pilot whale, Shultz said.

“Killer whales have cultural food preferences, have matriarchs that lead and teach other group members, and cooperatively hunt,” Shultz said.

In terms of intra-species food preferences, certain killer whale populations, also known as orcas, prefer salmon whereas others prefer seals or other whales or sharks depending on their group’s culture.

Other big-brained cetaceans also demonstrate sophisticated behaviors.

Mother sperm whales organize babysitting duties using other members of their pod to protect their young while they hunt for food down deep. The distinctive vocalizations sperm whales use to communicate sometimes differ depending upon where they live, much like regional dialects in human language.

Bottlenose dolphins use sea sponges as tools to protect their beaks while foraging for food, and live in structured communities.

Some of the largest cetaceans — filter-feeding baleen whales like the blue whale, fin whale and humpback whale that eat tiny crustaceans called krill rather than fish or squid — were on the low end of relative brain size. They live fairly solitary lives, coming together only for breeding seasons and near rich food sources.

The research was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
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