Nautilus Magazine: Survival of the Friendliest

But we know now that that picture is incomplete. Evolutionary progress can be propelled both by the competitive struggle to adapt to an environment, and by the relaxation of selective forces. When natural selection on an organism is relaxed, the creative powers of mutation can be unshackled and evolution accelerated. The relief of an easier life can inspire new biological forms just as powerfully as the threat of death.

One of the best ways to relax selective forces is to work together, something that mathematical biologist Martin Nowak has called the “snuggle for survival.” New research has only deepened and broadened the importance of cooperation and lifting of selective pressures. It’s a big, snuggly world out there. [...]

We tend to conceive of life as separate from its habitat: The environment is a kind of container, and life is like a liquid that adapts to fill it. Sir Arthur Tansley introduced the concept of the ecosystem in 1935. He believed nature operated like a machine, and so, like an engineer, sought to map the flow of energy and matter through life and its environment. But an ecological niche is not, as I’d gathered from building shoebox dioramas in second grade, the raw physical parameters of an animal’s environment: salinity, alkalinity, humidity, temperature. It’s a web of relations, not just between a species and its habitat, but also with all the other species co-existing in the same space. A niche is no less dynamic than evolution is, contrary to Tansley’s mechanistic vision. “Palaeontologists often say that a burst of diversity in the fossil record simply ‘filled in ecological space,’ as if each new species simply took up residence in a square of a pre-existing chessboard,” writes paleobiologist Douglas Erwin. He suggests that a better analogy is that species build the chessboard themselves. Corals, for example, form their own protective niche by building reefs, which slow currents and reduce erosion on themselves. Reefs also serve to house countless other species, many of which have in turn evolved behaviors to protect corals. If an organism can modify its niche—by altering itself or its relationships with other species—it has the chance to build the world in which its future progeny will evolve, reshaping it to better ensure their survival.

read the article 

Jacobin Magazine: Europe’s False Choice

The celebrations in Rome were marked by the publication of a white paper in which European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker established various possible scenarios for the EU’s future — keep the current rhythm, step on the accelerator, apply the brakes, or go into reverse. Not a word was offered on the substance, the policies, that would define these routes. Nothing on youth unemployment, the migration crisis, cuts, violence against women, or climate change. In an umpteenth display of ignorance, Europe’s elite closed their eyes to the crises affecting the continent and the concerns of those experiencing them. [...]

With its aggressive foreign policy, the European Union has intensified conflicts around the world and contributed to fresh waves of forced migration. With its police management of its borders, it has turned the Mediterranean into an enormous mass grave, asylum into an exception and immigration into a danger for whoever is fleeing from bombs and misery. With its institutional xenophobia, the EU has normalized the discourse and proposals of the new radical right formations and the xenophobic populism that are today spreading across Europe, a specter of the past now Le Pen-izing minds across the continent. [...]

Sixty years ago, what is today the European Union was born as a project to create a single market, a customs union, and greater coordination between states in coal mining and steel production. Extractivism, free competition, and commodity circulation are the germ of the European project. Let’s not trick ourselves by presenting the policies of the last decade as somehow exceptional. Market logic and monetary and budget questions have always been the priority. [...]

We could say that today Europe is in dispute. They want to trap us in a false dichotomy where we have to choose between a neoliberal EU or a xenophobic retreat into the nation. This choice is not only a trick, it is a mutually reinforcing one.

We need a Plan B for Europe — and its problem is not its speed, but its direction. Let’s start to give form to a European project that recovers the roots of democracy in partisan antifascism, solidarity, peace, and social justice. A European project that neither excludes nor expels anyone, for it is a project no one would want to walk away from. That task has today become as urgent as it is indispensable.

read the article 

The Atlantic: The Evolution of the Tomb of the Unknowns

For years, sentinels guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery voluntarily had their lives defined by four constant and silent witnesses: the Unknown of World War I, the Unknown of World War II, the Unknown of the Korean War, and the Unknown of the Vietnam War. Until 1998. That’s when the Unknown of the Vietnam War was identified as First Lieutenant Michael Joseph Blassie. The tombs—the first of which was erected in 1921—represent the American soldiers who died in conflict and were never identified. Blassie was originally tallied as one more unidentified service member lost to the war, either missing or killed in action. In the longer course of history, however, he came to occupy a place at the nexus of old and new in how the United States cares for its dead. [...]

A rise in both care and capability borne out over centuries of warfare has caused the number of unidentified to gradually dwindle. Only three individuals who took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2003 to 2010 have yet to be accounted for, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which is responsible for the recovery of missing personnel. It’s a considerable drop from the thousands of American service personnel unaccounted for from past wars. The reasons for the decline are varied, but include both the changing character of war as well as advances in technology like DNA testing, which have made unknowns largely a phenomenon of the past. “The generation that the tomb was built for, and the unknown soldier honored and buried here … that generation of people has come and gone,” said Sergeant of the Guard Paul K. Basso. [...]

“Today, the tomb and the unknown soldiers continue to serve their original purpose, and that’s important,” said Basso, “but they also serve a whole new purpose for many Americans and the world.” War losses may now be identifiable, but they are no less poignant or profoundly grieved. After all, when visitors make the trek up to the tomb, take in the landscape, align their various screens to best capture the grandeur of the space, and hit send on their social-media accounts, those crypts—including the fourth—lie in full view. And maybe that’s enough.

read the article 

Nautilus Magazine: There’s Mysteriously Large Amounts of Methane on Mars

Almost no matter where the methane comes from, it’s an intriguing discovery. If you dropped a molecule of methane into the atmosphere of Mars, it would survive about 300 years—that’s how long, on average, it would take for solar ultraviolet radiation and other Martian gases to destroy the molecule. By rights, the Martian atmosphere should have been scrubbed of its methane eons ago. So, the methane we see must come either from a source that is producing methane today or from a subsurface reservoir that is venting methane produced sometime in the past. On Earth, 95 percent of methane is biological in origin. The class of bacteria known as methanogens feeds on organic matter and excretes methane. They populate our planet’s wetlands, which account for nearly a quarter of the methane present in the Earth’s atmosphere globally. Cows’ gut bacteria are the second largest producers. It is the possibility of microbial life that has propelled the search for methane on Mars.

But even if the methane there comes from geologic processes, it would give us a profound new respect for what looks outwardly like a geologically dead world. Methane can be produced by the geochemical process of serpentinization, which is widespread in Earth’s crust, especially at warm and hot hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor known as Lost City and Black Smokers. This process requires a source of geologic heat as well as liquid water. Those happen to be two main ingredients of life, as well. [...]

Surprisingly, during a single two-month period, four sequential observations reported a spike of 7 ppbv. These values were much too high to explain by comets, meteorites, or dust. They must have been of Martian origin—perhaps a burp from a relatively small and localized subsurface source to the north of the landing site. The Martian winds would blow that methane away over several months, explaining why the signal went away when it did. Alternatively, that pulse could be from a distant and much bigger source, which would require some other unknown mechanism to remove methane quickly. Like the earlier observations of plumes, the spikes seen by Curiosity remain a tantalizing clue to a still-enigmatic Mars.

read the article 

Reuters: History of 'papal tyranny' catches up with pope in northern Italy

The pope passed right by the plaque while standing in his white open popemobile after saying Mass in a square a few dozen meters away during a day-long visit to an area hit by earthquakes in 2012.

Put up in 1881 on the side of castle in the center of town, the marble plaque measuring about 1 meter by 2 meters commemorates the 1870 unification of Italy, which it says "emancipated human thought from papal tyranny." [...]

The region northwest of Bologna that the pope visited was hit by twin quakes in 2012, killing 28 people. Many family-run factories and food processing plants were severely damaged, dealing a devastating blow to the local economy in the area famous for its Parmesan cheese and Parma prosciutto. [...]

To restore the economy, they decided that factories would be restored first, followed by homes and schools. Cultural heritage sites such as churches were fixed last. The Carpi cathedral reopened last week.

read the article 

Deutsche Welle: CSU plans family-centered campaign, as Germans warm to gay marriage

The CSU is currently considering a five-point program of policy measures for families with children. According to the news report, it includes a one-off payment to help parents pay for equipment for their first baby, increased income tax deductions for parents for each child they have, the introduction of a bank account to pay for a child's education into which the state would make contributions, the gradual abolition of day care costs and the reduction of social insurance contributions for low-income families. [...]

At the same time, an opinion survey carried out by pollster Emnid for "Bild am Sonntag" on gay marriage showed that 75 percent of respondents favored full legal equality for homosexuals in life partnerships with the laws for a traditional marriage between a man and a woman. Twenty percent of the 501 people contacted by the pollsters said they were against equality in law for gay couples, with the remaining 5 percent having no opinion.

In January, a survey by the Federal Anti-Discrimination Bureau (ADS) showed 83 percent of respondents saying marriage between two men or two women should be allowed. [...]

The chancellor candidate for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Martin Schulz, has called for equality for gay marriage, and the party looks set to make it an election issue. The party has proposed protection for the status of marriage and family and to extend it to "other forms of cohabitation,"  Thomas Oppermann, chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, said last month. The Greens and Left (Linke) parties also support the idea.

read the article 

Motherboard: Cats Are Actually Nice, Scientists Find

But don't take my word for it. Thanks to new research from Oregon State University, published on Friday in Behavioural Processes, there is scientific evidence that cats are, according to empirical study, nice. In fact, the study concluded, cats like interacting with humans more than they like eating food. Let that sink in: more than food. I don't like anybody more than food. [...]

"Increasingly cat cognition research is providing evidence of their complex socio-cognitive and problem solving abilities," the authors wrote in the paper. "Nonetheless, it is still common belief that cats are not especially sociable or trainable. This disconnect may be due, in part, to a lack of knowledge of what stimuli cats prefer, and thus may be most motivated to work for." [...]

The researchers concluded that there were no significant differences between the homed and the shelter cats, and that most cats preferred human socialization to any of the other categories. Half of the cats preferred social interaction to every other stimulus type, while only 37 percent preferred food.

read the article 

The New York Times: Chechen Authorities Arresting and Killing Gay Men, Russian Paper Says

On Saturday, a leading Russian opposition newspaper confirmed a story already circulating among human rights activists: The Chechen authorities were arresting and killing gay men.

While abuses by security services in the region, where Russia fought a two-decade war against Islamic insurgents, have long been a stain on President Vladimir V. Putin’s human rights record, gay people had not previously been targeted on a wide scale. [...]

By Saturday, the paper reported, and an analyst of the region with her own sources confirmed, that more than 100 gay men had been detained. The newspaper had the names of three murder victims, and suspected many others had died in extrajudicial killings. [...]

“You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic,” the spokesman, Alvi Karimov, told the news agency.

“If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return,” Mr. Karimov said.

read the article