HARPER’S

FINDINGS

A review of 14,024 babies injured while being worn by caregivers found the youngest most vulnerable. One quarter of first- year college students reported moderate to severe pet separation anxiety. Shelter cats gradually become less unfriendly, and a case of hip dysplasia suggests saber- toothed cats were sociable. A Finnish study inventoried hyperactivity and impulsivity in 11,000 dogs. Birds living in the former conflict zones of Sri Lanka’s civil war remain wary of humans. Zoo gorillas recognize the voices of specific people and behave guardedly if the individual is someone they have had negative experiences with. African penguins recognize one another’s voices and faces. The mismatch between snowshoe hares’ winter coats and snowless environments has little impact on their mortality rates. The Japanese wolf, the last known specimen of which was killed by humans in 1905, was found to be the closest known relative of the dog. Paleontologists announced the discovery of a 100- million- year- old crab preserved in amber and a turtle impaled by a flying branch in the moments after the Chicxulub Impact. For the first time in lizards’ existence, a tail was regenerated with its original dorsoventral patterning on the skeleton. 9

Researchers with the Institute for Mummy Studies reported that Iron Age feces recovered from the salt mines of Hallstatt contained evidence of beer and blue cheese, and that microbiomes in human guts were consistent until the Baroque period. A thousand- year- old gold Sicán burial mask was found to be covered in human blood and bird egg. The year of the first Viking settlement in North America was determined to be ad 1021. Tall el- Hammam may have been destroyed by a massive cosmic airburst and may have been the biblical Sodom. Astronomers recorded the Camel, which joins the Cow and the Koala as the third known fast blue optical transient; the MicroBooNE experiment excluded the possibility of a sterile neutrino; and binary neutron star mergers were found to produce more heavy metals than mergers between neutron stars and black holes. The majority of space travelers experience back pain. CBD may block the hyperlocomotive effects of ketamine. Unusual medial prefrontal cortex activity was recorded in the brains of subjects enticed to approximate intimate partner violence, and an investigation of body maps of psychotic hallucinations found that none of the male subjects hallucinated in their genitals. 9

A conservative estimate put the number of microplastic particles in the upper oceans and the Great Lakes at 24.4 trillion. Warming seas are making giant kelp less nutritious, and replacing the consumption of beef and poultry with tropical forest bushmeat would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Both the chucao tapaculo and the black-throated huet- huet enjoy truffles. Order fulfillment at drive- through restaurants slowed by 26 seconds from 2020 to 2021. The life expectancy of English men now differs by as much as 27 years depending on the region of the country in which they live. High- risk laborers work 2.6 minutes less a day for each degree the temperature rises above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but only during periods of economic growth. Ecologists reported that, following a California megafire in 2018, deer returned while the trees were still smoldering. Thirty headless goats were found floating in the Chattahoochee River, and a man fleeing bees in Brazil jumped into a lake, where he was eaten by piranhas. n

INDEX

Portion of adults who think COVID-19 will change the United States for the better: 1/5 Who say it’s acceptable to fake one’s vaccination status to keep a job: 1/5 To eat at a restaurant: 1/5 Percentage of restaurant workers who say the past year has taken a toll on their mental health: 78 Chance that a small restaurant was unable to pay rent in September: 1 in 2 Portion of U.S. households that say they have faced serious financial difficulties in recent months: 2/5 That say they have depleted all of their savings since the pandemic started: 1/5 Percentage of Americans who think that not having the newest iPhone is a sign of financial struggle: 15 Portion of Americans willing to go into debt for a new iPhone: 1/5 Percentage increase in the number of yachts sold last year: 14 Amount by which the price of a seat on a Virgin Galactic spaceflight increased last year: $200,000 Percentage increase in the wealth of U.S. billionaires since the start of the pandemic: 70 Percentage increase since 2020 in the number of Americans who view the existence of billionaires as bad for the country: 26 Portion of adults who believe that U.S. crime has increased in the past year: 3/5 Of regular Fox News viewers who believe so: 3/4 Percentage change in the number of major crimes in the United States in the past year: -5 Percentage by which yakuza membership has declined in the past decade: 63 Percentage of people killed by police between 1980 and 2018 whose death certificates list a different cause of death: 55 Percentage by which more men died from police encounters than from testicular cancer in 2019: 135 Factor by which the Chicago Police Department’s advertising budget is projected to increase this year: 96 Minimum number of times Chevron has aired TV ads since June 2020 promoting itself as green or sustainable: 26,400 Maximum percentage of Chevron’s budget spent on green technologies in the past decade: 1 Average number of U.S. oil spills reported in the Gulf of Mexico each month: 25 Percentage increase last year in the amount of U.S. electricity generated by coal-fired plants: 22 Percentage of people worldwide who are “not too concerned” about climate change: 27 Who are unwilling to make significant changes to their lives to reduce its effects: 19 Factor by which someone born in 2020 will likely experience more river floods and droughts than someone born in 1960: 3 By which they will likely experience more heat waves: 7 Percentage change since 2005 in the number of teenagers who say it is a bad time to be growing up: +65 Percentage of teenagers who say they have a good or excellent relationship with their parents: 96 Portion of single American men who live in a parent’s home: 3/10 Amount per month the president of Spain has proposed paying adults to move out of their parents’ homes: $292 Percentage by which single U.S. adults are less likely than those in relationships to have at least a bachelor’s degree: 41 By which they are less likely to be employed: 9 Percentage by which men are more likely to panic-sell their stock portfolios than women: 15 By which those who rate their investment knowledge as “excellent” are more likely to do so than those who claim none: 70 Estimated number of fake businesses removed from Google Maps in 2020: 3,000,000 Minimum number of fake reviews on Google: 107,000,000 Rank of “Google” among the most searched terms on the search engine Bing: 1

SOURCES:1 Washington Post/ABC News; 2,3 YouGov (NYC); 4 Black Box Intelligence (Dallas); 5 Alignable (Boston); 6,7 Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Boston); 8,9 WalletHub (Washington); 10 National Marine Manufacturers Association (Chicago); 11 Virgin Galactic (Mojave, Calif.); 12 Institute for Policy Studies/Americans for Tax Fairness (Washington); 13 Pew Research Center (Washington); 14–16 YouGov; 17 National Police Agency (Tokyo); 18,19 University of Washington (Seattle); 20 Chicago Office of Budget and Management; 21 AdImpact (Alexandria, Va.); 22 ClientEarth (London); 23 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Silver Spring, Md.); 24 U.S. Energy Information Administration (Washington); 25,26 Pew Research Center; 27,28 Wim Thiery, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium); 29,30 Washington Post/Ipsos; 31 Pew Research Center; 32 La Moncloa (Madrid); 33,34 Pew Research Center; 35,36 Andrew Lo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge); 37 Google (Mountain View, Calif.); 38 Uberall (Berlin); 39 Ahrefs (Singapore).