harper’s FINDINGS A global study of 1,554 regions from 1979 to 2019 found that heavy rainfall dampens economic growth. The rings of trees used in European buildings between 1250 and 1699 closely track prosperity and crisis, with the number of felled trees falling during periods of economic decline. Medieval warhorses were the size of modern ponies, and wild ass–donkey hybrids used for travel and war in Mesopotamia were presumed to be the prized kungas of Ur. Funerary avenues lined with wedge-tailed pendants and infilled ringed cairns, which are among the drystone Holocene monuments known to the Bedouin as “the works of the old men,” emanate from the Khaybar Oasis. In the Negev, where archaeologists studying a sixth-century Byzantine church noticed a curly-haired long-nosed beardless Jesus, scientists taught goldfish to drive their tanks on land. The expansion of the Local Bubble, a thousandlight-year-wide star-covered void with Earth at its center, was caused by supernovas. Further support was offered for the fuzzball theory of black holes, and the Schwinger Effect was mimicked in the absence of a cosmic event.
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Researchers speculated that the substantially higher use of erectile-dysfunction medication among feminist Canadian men may be due to nonfeminist men’s underreporting of usage or fear of accessing health care, or to feminist men’s greater desire to please their female partners or reclaim, through better erections, any masculinity forfeited through their feminism. Religiosity was found to be lower in sexually equitable countries, though the decline was more pronounced in men than women. Epigenetic changes were recorded among pregnant Tutsi women who witnessed the Rwandan genocide and their unborn fetuses. Thalecress mutations are not random. The embryonic stem cells of frogs migrate to create the hardness of frog faces. A pharmacologically administered liver enzyme was found to halve ethanol consumption among alcoholic vervet monkeys, macaques in Virginia failed to wean themselves off heroin and cocaine, and a new population of whitehanded gibbons was discovered in Malaysia.
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Even dim light before bedtime suppresses melatonin production in preschoolers. American teens who get too little sleep consume an additional 4.5 pounds of sugar per year, and Zurich teens who were allowed to sleep in during the pandemic reported better health and well-being. The heads of juvenile pheasants cool down in preparation for a fight, then heat up again. New Caledonian crows store complex tools for later use. Mumbai’s mayor mocked the penguin-viewing facility of Ahmedabad. Indian researchers developed a frostbite-prevention cream, Japanese researchers developed a nasal spray to treat dementia, and a team at MIT developed an mRNA vaccine pill. Engineers and molecular geneticists built a web server that can analyze noncoding RNA’s raw CLASH data, and scientists described the cognitive repulsion mechanism that causes people to get lost in supermarkets. An analysis of three decades of Spanish punk lyrics established that “madness” connotes pathology as well as loss of control and opposition to reason, and Finnish hospital admissions reflect lower mortality rates and less self-harm and alcoholism in areas with high numbers of heavy metal bands per capita. A ranking of eighty-one countries found the United Kingdom to be the best place to die. 30
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A P R I L 2 0 2 2 | I C O N D V. C O M
INDEX % by which U.S. military spending has increased since the withdrawal from Afghanistan: 5 Percentage of Afghans who are expected to be living in poverty in August: 97 Minimum number of U.S. immigration history requests held up because of pandemic rules on records storage: 350,000 Percentage change since 2017 in the number of Republicans who say military officers have “high standards of ethics”: −21 Minimum number of people who reported relatives to the FBI for participating in the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot: 15 Portion of U.S. representatives facing investigations last year who refused to cooperate: 1/2 Portion of Americans who have favorable views of both capitalism and socialism: 1/5 Who have unfavorable views of both capitalism and socialism: 1/5 Percentage of Americans who approve of labor unions: 68 Percentage change since 2019 in U.S. labor union membership: −4 Percentage of Americans who have considered committing suicide in response to political developments: 5 Portion of Americans who think “I Have a Dream” speech is no longer relevant: 1/4 Percentage by which Republicans are more likely than Democrats to think so: 94 % by which more white men than black men died of drug overdoses in 2015: 51 By which more black men than white men died of drug overdoses in 2020: 22 Est. portion of overdose deaths in the first half of 2021 that involved fentanyl: 2/3 Number of U.S. states in which it is illegal to possess fentanyl test strips: 30 Estimated percentage decrease in U.S. condom sales since the start of the pandemic: 8 Portion of Americans earning less than $50,000 who cite wedding costs as a reason for not marrying: 3/10 Estimated portion of married Americans who have considered divorce in the past six months: 1/4 Number of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts last year that were NFL games: 92 Factor by which Americans spent more time listening to the radio last year than to podcasts: 6 Amount of time, in years, viewers spent watching livestreams of Grand Theft Auto V on Twitch last year: 214,309 Min. no. of total views for TikTok videos tagged with #MentalHealth: 25,100,000,000 Portion of U.S. adults who have struggled with basic decisions like what to eat or wear since the start of the pandemic: 1/3 Of U.S. millennials: 1/2 Portion of U.S. adults who say their closets contain many things they will never wear again: 3/4 Percentage decrease in spending on dental care since the start of the pandemic: 9.5 Portion of U.S. pet owners who take their pet’s health more seriously than their own: 7/10 Who have sought acupuncture for their pet: 4/10 Who have purchased CBD products for their pet: 3/10 Minimum number of dogs in the United States on anti-anxiety medication: 10,350,000 Of cats: 1,800,000 Estimated portion of passengers on private jets who fly with a pet: 1/4 Average cost of cloning a dog: $50,000 Minimum number of Instagram influencers who have cloned a pet: 12 Number of dogs cloned for law enforcement purposes in Iowa: 52 Minimum number of COVID-19 outbreaks recorded among animal populations: 645 Minimum number of hamsters executed by the Hong Kong government because of COVID-19 exposure: 2,229
SOURCES: 1 Senate Armed Services Committee; 2 UNDP Afghanistan (Kabul); 3 National Archives and Records Administration (Washington); 4 Gallup (Washington); 5 National Public Radio (Washington)/CBS News (NYC)/The Independent (London); 6 Office of Congressional Ethics; 7–9 Gallup; 10 Bureau of Labor Statistics (Washington); 11 Kevin B. Smith, University of Nebraska–Lincoln; 12,13 YouGov (NYC); 14,15 Pew Research Center (Washington); 16 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta); 17 Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association (Washington); 18 IRI (Chicago); 19 Institute for Family Studies (Charlottesville, Va.); 20 Alan J. Hawkins, Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah); 21 Nielsen (NYC); 22 Edison Research (Somerville, N.J.); 23 David Boyd (Belfast, Northern Ireland); 24 TikTok (Culver City, Calif.); 25,26 American Psychological Association (Washington); 27 CivicScience (Pittsburgh); 28 Bureau of Economic Analysis (Washington); 29–31 OnePoll (NYC); 32,33 American Pet Products Association (Stamford, Conn.); 34 Aerial Jets (Lighthouse Point, Fla.); 35 ViaGen Pets (Cedar Park, Tex.); 36 Harper’s research; 37 Canine Tactical (Chariton, Iowa); 38 World Organisation for Animal Health (Paris); 39 Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department.
