harper’s FINDINGS Life expectancy in the United States declined between 2018 and 2020 by 3.88 years for Hispanics, 3.25 years for blacks, and 1.36 years for non-Hispanic whites; in peer countries, the average overall decline was 0.22 years. Banded mongoose societies distribute resources equally because parents do not know who their children are. A study of ninety-eight fruit fly societies populated with clones demonstrated that the same clones consistently became the most popular flies. Hunger causes male fruit flies to fight among themselves. A single female worker Cape honey bee who cloned herself in 1990 has hundreds of millions of clone descendants, some of whom became queens. The introduction of an assassin bug among broad-horned flour beetles reversed sexual selection and led to fitter females. Dragon Man (Homo longi), a species with square eye sockets and large teeth, was proposed to be the closest relative of Homo sapiens. Iceberg scours in the Florida Keys were dated to 29,000 bc. The Maori may have reached Antarctica in the seventh century. An analysis of pottery residues from ninth- to twelfth-century Palermo suggested that fish was unpopular in medieval Islamic cuisine. British chickens from the Iron Age through the Saxon period tended to live long lives because they were sacred. An Egyptian vulture was seen in Britain for the first time since 1868. A plague of bunions in Cambridge at the turn of the fourteenth century was blamed on a craze for pointy shoes.
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In Indonesia, where coral growth patterns indicated that a thirty-two-year earthquake had preceded the Sumatra earthquake of 1861, a meteor appeared to have fallen into an active volcano. Evidence grew stronger that the Younger Dryas Impact spurred the formation of sedentary human civilization. A survey of spiders who prey on snakes found that the victims can be up to a meter long and noted that tarantulas eat fer-de-lance and golden silk orb-weaver spiders eat eyelash vipers. Snakes will decline to attack if they are running low on venom. Pharmacologists were optimistic about treating irritable bowel syndrome with tarantula venom. A single dose of laughing gas can alleviate treatmentresistant depression. Childhood trauma makes morphine more pleasurable, SSRIs make crayfish too outgoing, and marijuana makes lobsters slower but does not significantly alter their response to being boiled alive.
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The twenty-eight Tasmanian devils introduced to Maria Island in an effort to save them from facial cancer were found to have killed three thousand pairs of little penguins. The feathers of Australian red-backed fairy wrens have gotten duller to blend in with wildfire-scorched habitats. Monarch butterflies raised in captivity can still figure out how to migrate south. Female seahorses will move on to mate with new males if they become unable to smell their current mates. Marine biologists spent five years training snowflake moray eels to slither up a ramp, demonstrating that the eels’ second set of jaws works equally well on land. Nuclear-blast detectors picked up the signature of a new population of pygmy blue whales and the infrasonic rumblings of 1,001 rocket launches. Worms and Jeff Bezos were to be sent into space. Scientists worried that humans could take advantage of benevolent AI and suggested that an autonomous robot could re-create Earth’s primordial soup. Researchers from fourteen countries agreed that we are all going to die. 30
ICON | FEBRUARY 2021 | ICONDV.COM
INDEX Portion of unruly-passenger incidents on U.S. flights this year that involved face masks: 3/4 Number of new microorganisms that have been discovered on urban mass-transit systems since 2016: 11,676 Of new viruses: 10,928 Est. percentage by which parking demand will decline across the United States by 2050: 40 No. of NYC parking spots converted into outdoor dining areas during the pandemic: 8,550 % of streets closed during the pandemic now reopened/scheduled to reopen to traffic: 85 Number of people admitted to Phoenix’s burn unit last summer after contact with hot asphalt, sidewalks, or sand: 104 Number of those people who died: 7 Min. portion of the world’s mature giant sequoias killed in a single wildfire last year: 1/10 Percentage decline in California’s monarch butterfly population since the 1980s: 99.7 Estimated number of additional humans who will be exposed to disease-carrying mosquitoes by 2080: 950,000,000 No. of serious injuries at Amazon warehouses for every 200,000 hours worked: 5.9 At other U.S. warehouses: 3.1 % of Europeans who prefer to have packages delivered by a drone instead of a human: 35 Who would like to see artificial intelligence replace some of their legislative representatives: 51 Min. number of candidates in Mexico who were murdered before the June elections: 34 % of atheists more likely than religious Americans to oppose the death penalty for murder: 76 % of Americans who thought religion was gaining influence in the U.S. a year ago: 38 Who think so today: 16 % change in the share of Democrats who regard the country’s moral values as “poor”: −29 In the number of Republicans: +65 Percentage of Democrats who have a favorable view of critical race theory: 86 Of Republicans who have an unfavorable view of it: 91 Percentage by which Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they have a “good idea” of what it is: 34 Factor by which high-income college applicants are more likely than low-income applicants to write essays about mental health: 1.5 About sports: 4 About failure: 4.5 No.of prisoners who requested compassionate release during the pandemic last year: 30,969 Number of these prisoners whose requests were approved: 36 Minimum number who died while their requests were pending: 35 Chance that a European Union resident who received public services last year did so through a personal connection: 1 in 3 Percentage decrease in the number of families reporting depression and anxiety after the last two rounds of stimulus checks: 20 In the number of families reporting food shortages: 42 Percentage increase last year in the sale of vacation homes in the United States: 16 Portion of millennial homeowners who have “some regrets” about purchasing a house: 2/3 Date on which China announced that it would allow couples to have a third child: 5/31/21 Percentage of women surveyed in the central Chinese city of Xi’an who say they would like to have three children: 8 % of American men in relationships who think their partner is more attractive than they are: 37 Of American women in relationships who think so: 14 SOURCES: 1 Federal Aviation Administration; 2,3 Christopher E. Mason, Weill Cornell Medicine
(NYC); 4 Walker Consultants (Indianapolis); 5 Office of the Mayor of New York City; 6 Stephan J. Schmidt, Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.); 7,8 Kevin N. Foster, Arizona Burn Center (Phoenix); 9 National Park Service (Three Rivers, Calif.); 10 The Xerces Society (Portland, Ore.); 11 Sadie J. Ryan, University of Florida (Gainesville); 12,13 Occupational Safety and Health Administration; 14,15 Oscar Jonsson, IE University (Madrid); 16 Integralia (Mexico City); 17 Pew Research Center (Washington); 18–21 Gallup (Washington); 22–24 YouGov (NYC); 25–27 Benjamin Gebre-Medhin, Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, Mass.); 28–30 Federal Bureau of Prisons; 31 Transparency International (Berlin); 32,33 Patrick Cooney, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor); 34 National Association of Realtors (Chicago); 35 Bankrate (NYC); 36 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing); 37 Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (Beijing); 38,39 YouGov.
