harper’s FINDINGS Climate change will benefit rattlesnakes. A 1972 MIT model predicting societal collapse in the twenty-first century continued to prove prescient, coastal flooding in the 2030s will be exacerbated by the wobbling of the moon, the stratosphere shrank by 400 meters between 1980 and 2018, and the cryosphere shrank by 3.2 million square kilometers between 1979 and 2016. The lead author of a study in “The Cryosphere” called saving the Greenland ice sheet by injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere “a plan B that is not!” The carbon released annually by feral pigs’ rooting in the ground is equivalent to the emissions of 1.1 million cars. In a fifteen-hour period, pyrocumulonimbus clouds in western Canada produced 710,117 flashes of lightning, including 112,803 ground strikes. The permafrost of Svalbard is becoming less seismically active as the Arctic warms. Scientists warned that we may be approaching an irreversible or poorly reversible plastic-pollution threshold. Easter Island never experienced a demographic implosion. RhGB01, a novel coronavirus, was discovered among British bats, and 15,000-yearold viruses were extracted fromTibetan glacier ice. Frozen feces in Alaska revealed evidence of sled dog cannibalism. New-world rabbits were never domesticated, though rabbits found in the stomachs of Aztec sacrificial eagles and pumas appear to have been raised by humans and fed a diet rich in corn or cactus. Researchers who gave ayahuasca to a group of Israelis and Palestinians were optimistic about its potential for peace-building. Lisdexamfetamine can treat daydreaming. Multiple rounds of ketamine anesthesia or light flickering at 60 Hz can induce childlike brain plasticity in mice, and a single dose of psilocybin makes them less depressed and creates strong neural connections. An Indian woman presented with multiday visual hallucinations after being bitten by a Russell’s viper. Ambient environmental levels of methamphetamine are sufficient to cause addiction among brown trout. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service renamed Asian carp “invasive carp,” and Australian experts pushed to rename shark attacks “negative encounters.” A 450-million-year-old trilobite showed signs of having survived a stab in the eye by a giant sea scorpion. Danes’ ability to smell fried meat, but not vanilla, declines with age. Wisdom tooth extraction results in a 3 to 10 percent improvement in taste precision two decades later. Researchers concluded that preschool girls’ and boys’ engagement with “princess culture” correlated with “lower adherence to norms of hegemonic masculinity and higher body esteem” in early adolescence. A study of NYPD precincts found that the opening of an adult-entertainment business led to a 13 percent drop in reported sex crimes the following week. Male jackdaws fail to console female life partners who have been subjected to forcible mating attempts. Vampire bats have a highly fluid social order, and place little value on sustained dominance. Being a trash parrot is a learned behavior. Dog puppies can intuit human meanings, whereas wolf puppies cannot. Researchers worried that regionally specific cattle adaptations were being lost amid a nationalized market for bull semen. The Warlis’ belief in the leopard-tiger god Waghoba was found to defuse human-leopard conflict. Wolbachia bacteria make mosquitoes more heat-sensitive. Rat snakes were used to gauge post-Fukushima radionuclide levels in the Abukuma Highlands, and hedgehogs with transmitter backpacks were found hibernating at unexpectedly high altitudes. Storks are attracted to the smell of freshly mown meadows. Mammals about to be born dream of the world to come. 30
ICON | NOVEMBER 2021 | ICONDV.COM
INDEX Ratio of residents to publicly available bathrooms in New York City : 7,258:1 In Singapore : 197:1 Minimum percentage of federal funds for pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure last year that went to roads, bridges, and highways : 15 Percentage by which the wealthiest neighborhoods in U.S. cities have more trees than the poorest : 65 By which the whitest neighborhoods have more trees than the least white : 78 Number of additional trees needed to achieve an equitable distribution across U.S. neighborhoods : 522,000,000 Est. portion of the contiguous U.S. affected by wildfire smoke on July 21, 2021 : 9/10 Factor by which monthly records are more now than in the preindustrial era : 5 Estimated portion of new monthly heat records attributable to climate change : 4/5 Factor by which the earth’s heating rate increased from 2005 to 2020 : 2.4 Percentage by which average nighttime temperatures have increased more quickly than daytime temperatures since 1951 : 37 Estimated number of Americans it takes to produce enough carbon dioxide to cause one temperature-related death : 3 Min. amount that FEMA pent to cover the funerals of COVID-19 victims : $804,000 Percentage of Americans who have “zero confidence” in the healthcare system’s ability to handle a future emergency : 45 Portion of Americans who would agree to live on Mars for the rest of their lives : 1/4 % increase since 2015 in amount of money raised by space startups : 174 Average number of annual spacecraft launches from 2015 to 2019 : 381 Number of launches last year : 1,282 Percentage of Americans who developed a new hobby during the pandemic : 59 Percentage of those Americans who have successfully monetized that hobby : 48 Percentage of U.S. cryptocurrency holders who are men : 74 Who are white men : 56 Chance that an office space in Manhattan is available for lease : 1 in 5 % by which open-plan offices have been found to decrease face-to-face interactions : 70 Factor by which Americans prefer working 4-day 40-hr weeks to 5-day40-hr weeks : 3 Portion of Americans who think their productivity would improve or remain the same if they worked 4-day weeks : 3/4 Percentage change in Icelandic workers’ output after they began working five fewer hours per week : 0 Percentage decrease last year in the hours worked by the average European : 4.5 By the average American : 0.6 Percentage increase in the rate of police resignations from April 2020 to March 2021 compared with the previous year : 18 In the rate of police retirements : 45 Chance that a U.S. election official feels “unsafe” in his or her job : 1 in 3 That he or she is concerned about death threats : 1 in 5 % of local election officials who plan to resign or retire before the 2024 election : 22 Number of state immunization managers who have left their jobs since the COVID-19 vaccine became available : 10 % increase last year in volume of cardboard used to ship goods to households : 38 Weight, in tons, of that cardboard : 23,203,653 Percentage change in the number of babies named Alexa since the launch of the Amazon product : −79 Minimum number of children named Alexa who have legally changed their names because of it : 4 SOURCES: 1 Urban Design Forum (NYC); 2 World Toilet Organization (Singapore); 3 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (Washington); 4–6 American Forests (Washington); 7 Nancy H. F. French, Michigan Technological University (Houghton); 8,9 Dim Coumou, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; 10 NASA Langley Research Center (Hampton, Va.); 11 National Centers for Environmental Information (Asheville, N.C.); 12 R. Daniel Bressler (NYC); 13 Federal Emergency Management Agency; 14 Pew Research Center (Washington); 15 YouGov (NYC); 16–18 BryceTech (Alexandria, Va.); 19,20 LendingTree (Charlotte, N.C.); 21,22 Gemini (NYC); 23 Newmark (NYC); 24 Ethan Bernstein, Harvard Business School (Cambridge, Mass.); 25,26 YouGov; 27 Alda (Reykjavík, Iceland); 28,29 Daniel S. Hamermesh, Barnard College (NYC); 30,31 Police Executive Research Forum (Washington); 32,33 Brennan Center for Justice (NYC); 34 Paul Manson, Reed College (Portland, Ore.); 35 Association of Immunization Managers (Rockville, Md.); 36,37 Smithers (Leatherhead, England); 38 Social Security Administration (Woodlawn, Md.); 39 Human Alexas (Atlanta).
