On May 2, after nightfall shut down photosynthesis for the day in Hawaii, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere touched 400 parts-per-million there for the first time in at least 800,000 years. Near the summit of volcanic Mauna Loa—where a member of the Keeling family has kept watch since 1958—sensors measured this record through sunrise…
Every time I look at my face in a magnified mirror in a hotel bathroom, I jump back in surprise. Seen closely, my skin looks like the surface of a strange planet. Ridges and canyons pock my chin and lips. Forests of tiny hairs grow from my ear lobes. Unnoticed pimples rise from my nose…
Forty years after C.S. Holling gave academic status to the word “resilience,” the concept has found a home in several different disciplines. From ecology, where Holling first defined resilience in 1973 as the measure of a system’s ability to maintain its operational integrity, the term is now cropping up frequently in economics, psychiatry, robotics, medicine,…
In 2005 the National Science Foundation brought together some unlikely collaborators—ecologists and psychologists among them—to talk about resilience. It turns out they had a lot in common. For decades researchers in each field had been studying the ways in which external events and stresses could transform complex systems. Their conclusions were strikingly similar: Resilience is…
The gorgeous red tomatoes, piled high in the hot West African sunshine, suggested a huge success. Just two years after the region’s economically vital crop was decimated by a fly-borne virus, university experts found a gene that conferred resistance and bred it into the tomato seeds. The science was so efficient that the tomatoes quickly…
For a lesson in the compounding effects of surprising events, go back to a March afternoon in 2011: A powerful earthquake hits 40 miles off the eastern coast of Japan. The country’s building codes ensure that most structures can cope with even this major stress, but a resulting tsunami pounds the shore, unexpectedly breaches the…
A number of environmental groups are giving a thumbs-down to the efforts of an advocacy group established earlier this year by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, the Los Angeles Times reports. Created in April, Fwd.us promotes policies designed to keep the United States and its citizens competitive in a global economy, including comprehensive immigration and education…
How can we think 100 years ahead, and is that enough? Well, it’s not enough, but it’s a fantastic start. I think that to trust the future of the Earth to economists, after what we’ve seen over the last few years is total insanity. And economists who teach us to discount the future don’t see…
Senior US government officials are to be briefed at the White House this week on the danger of an ice-free Arctic in the summer within two years. The meeting is bringing together Nasa’s acting chief scientist, Gale Allen, the director of the US National Science Foundation, Cora Marett, as well as representatives from the US…
People who use a ‘brain-workout’ program for just 10 hours have a mental edge over their peers even a year later, researchers report today in PLoS ONE1. The search for a regimen of mental callisthenics to stave off age-related cognitive decline is a booming area of research — and a multimillion-dollar business. But critics argue…