BBC: The plan to turn half the world into a reserve for nature

One of the major reasons for adoption of these extreme preservation goals is a 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which found that more than 1 million species are at risk of extinction. Conducted by hundreds of researchers around the world, the study is considered the most comprehensive analysis of the state of the world’s biodiversity ever. [...]

The ambitious goal of protecting and restoring natural systems on a large scale is shared by a number of groups and people. The Wyss Campaign for Nature is working in partnership with the National Geographic Society to support the goals of the so-called “30x30” movement, a highly ambitious initiative that aims to protect 30% of the planet, on land and at sea, by 2030. [...]

The European Parliament has pledged to protect 30% of European Union territory, restore degraded ecosystems, add biodiversity objectives into all EU policies, and earmark 10% of the budget for improvement of biodiversity. In the US, politicians working with conservation organisations recently introduced a resolution to drum up support for protection of 30% of the US’s land and marine areas.[...]

The ambitious goals of campaigns like 30x30 and Half Earth have been met with criticism. Some question whether focusing on saving up to half of the land’s surface will do much for protecting the remaining biodiversity. In a 2018 paper, Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University, and others, argued that most biodiversity occurs in tropical regions, and much of it is already fragmented. They wrote how protecting broad swaths of nature in largely untouched regions – such as Canada’s boreal forest – has benefits. But the remaining large wild landscapes are mostly in temperate regions, which won’t do much for protecting biodiversity because by far most of the world’s species are in the tropics. “This begs our question of how much biodiversity will we protect if the trend to protect wild places continues,” says Pimm.

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BBC: American parenting styles sweep Europe

It’s generally acknowledged that raising a child has geographic variations. In 2009, for example, a study by an international group of academics looked at the way parents in different countries talked about the traits they wanted their children to have. The differences were fascinating. Dutch parents, for example, focused on the Three Rs: rust, reinheid and regelmaat (rest, cleanliness and routine). Italian parents preferred their children to be even-tempered, well-balanced and “simpatico”. American parents, meanwhile, were more likely to want their child to be “intelligent” or “cognitively advanced”. [...]

“[Intensive parenting] is a type of parenting that requires a significant amount of time and money,” says Patrick Ishizuka, a sociology professor at Cornell University who studies intensive parenting. It includes scheduling children for multiple extracurricular activities, as well as advocating for their needs and talents in communications with schools and other institutions. And it’s not limited to a small subset of parents. “I would describe it as the dominant cultural model of parenting in the US right now,” says Ishizuka. [...]

He believes that the rise in inequality, including in Europe, makes parents feel they need to help drive their children’s education, a view shared by Matthias Doepke, a researcher living in the US and co-author of the book Love, Money and Parenting: How Economics Explains the Way We Raise Our Kids. “If inequality is very high, that means from the parents’ perspective, it’s becoming very important for the kids not to be left behind. And so parents will assume a parenting style that is more intense and that is more success-oriented,” Doepke explains.

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BBC: Crows could be the smartest animal other than primates

Rutz is unequivocal. Some birds, like the New Caledonian crows he studies – can do remarkable things. In a paper published earlier this year, he and his co-authors described how New Caledonians seek out a specific type of plant stem from which to make their hooked tools. Experiments showed that crows found the stems they desired even when they had been disguised with leaves from a different plant species. This suggested that the birds were selecting a kind of material for their tools that they knew was just right for the job. You wouldn’t use a spanner to hammer in a nail, would you? [...]

You might think that some animals are smarter than others – with humans at the top of the proverbial tree. Certainly, humans do rely excessively on intelligence to get by. But that doesn’t mean we’re the best at every mental task. Chimps, notes Dakota McCoy at Harvard University, have been shown to possess better short-term memories than humans. This might help them to memorise where food is located in the forest canopy, for example.

Ranking the intelligence of animals seems an increasingly pointless exercise when one considers the really important thing: how well that animal is adapted to its niche. Intelligence is, first and foremost, a means towards specialisation. [...]

The crows McCoy studies have a natural curiosity, she says. They cheekily grab scientific equipment and fly off with it in the aviary. Young birds especially, she says, love to play. Humans are not so different, she argues: “We have these incredibly huge brains but we use them to do crossword puzzles – that’s not something that is evolutionarily selected for.”

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BBC: In pictures: Thousands join Pride parade in Taiwan

More than 2,000 same-sex couples have married since then, and many of them took part in Saturday's festival, one of the largest Pride events in the region.

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BBC: 'Sex work paid my student bills. Now I regret it'

A survey of students suggested that one in 25 undergraduates have tried adult work, including sugar dating by going out with older men, selling used underwear and having sex for money. [...]

The proportion of those asked - who had done some kind of adult work - was double the proportion of the previous year.

An additional 6% of students said they would try adult work if they needed emergency cash.

Nearly four in five students worried about making ends meet, according to the survey which was published in August. [...]

"Adult work can feel isolating because of the stigma attached to it, meaning that if the student has a negative or dangerous experience they might feel unable to talk about it, leading to a deeper sense of loneliness," she said.

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BBC: Germany’s tiny geographic oddity

The village’s eastern border lies a mere 700m from the rest of the Federal Republic of Germany. And while politically this town of about 1,450 inhabitants belongs to Germany, economically it’s part of Switzerland. [...]

Still, for residents, living a binational life brings up daily contradictions and choices. Although commerce is typically conducted in Swiss francs and most residents work in nearby, larger Swiss towns, they still must pay the higher German income taxes. Children go to a local (German) primary school, but parents decide in which country they’ll attend high school. Likewise, Büsingen locals have both German and Swiss postal and international telephone codes: callers can dial either Germany’s +49 or Switzerland’s +41, and still ring a resident. And perhaps most notably, the town’s football club is the only German team allowed to play in the Swiss league. [...]

Others have discovered that too. Because Germany offers a tax break for pensioners, Büsingen attracts retired Swiss residents. The result: “The young people go to Switzerland, and the old people come here. The village gets older every day,” said Rainer Krause, whose daughter runs Restaurant Waldheim on the international border.

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BBC News: Dukes, aristocrats and tycoons: Who owns Scotland?

Scotland is said to have some of the most concentrated land ownership in the developed world. It’s estimated that fewer than 500 people own half the country’s privately-owned rural land.

But how does land ownership affect our lives and is it important who the land belongs to?

BBC: Tomorrow's Gods: What is the future of religion?

We take it for granted that religions are born, grow and die – but we are also oddly blind to that reality. When someone tries to start a new religion, it is often dismissed as a cult. When we recognise a faith, we treat its teachings and traditions as timeless and sacrosanct. And when a religion dies, it becomes a myth, and its claim to sacred truth expires. Tales of the Egyptian, Greek and Norse pantheons are now considered legends, not holy writ. [...]

Now that we’re actually in the 21st Century, Berger’s view remains an article of faith for many secularists – although Berger himself recanted in the 1990s. His successors are emboldened by surveys showing that in many countries, increasing numbers of people are saying they have no religion. That’s most true in rich, stable countries like Sweden and Japan, but also, perhaps more surprisingly, in places like Latin America and the Arab world. Even in the US, long a conspicuous exception to the axiom that richer countries are more secular, the number of “nones” has been rising sharply. In the 2018 General Social Survey of US attitudes, “no religion” became the single largest group, edging out evangelical Christians. [...]

The pattern Pew predicted was of “the secularising West and the rapidly growing rest”. Religion will continue to grow in economically and socially insecure places like much of sub-Saharan Africa – and to decline where they are stable. That chimes with what we know about the deep-seated psychological and neurological drivers of belief. When life is tough or disaster strikes, religion seems to provide a bulwark of psychological (and sometimes practical) support. In a landmark study, people directly affected by the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand became significantly more religious than other New Zealanders, who became marginally less religious. [...]

So the nones mostly represent not atheists, nor even secularists, but a mixture of “apatheists” – people who simply don’t care about religion – and practitioners of what you might call “disorganised religion”. While the world religions are likely to persist and evolve for the foreseeable future, we might for the rest of this century see an efflorescence of relatively small religions jostling to break out among these groups. But if Big Gods and shared faiths are key to social cohesion, what happens without them?

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BBC: The strange link between the human mind and quantum physics

For one thing, the mind seemed, to the great discomfort of physicists, to force its way into early quantum theory. What's more, quantum computers are predicted to be capable of accomplishing things ordinary computers cannot, which reminds us of how our brains can achieve things that are still beyond artificial intelligence. "Quantum consciousness" is widely derided as mystical woo, but it just will not go away. [...]

When this "observer effect" was first noticed by the early pioneers of quantum theory, they were deeply troubled. It seemed to undermine the basic assumption behind all science: that there is an objective world out there, irrespective of us. If the way the world behaves depends on how – or if – we look at it, what can "reality" really mean? [...]

Physicists are not terribly comfortable with finding themselves inside their theories. Most hope that consciousness and the brain can be kept out of quantum theory, and perhaps vice versa. After all, we do not even know what consciousness is, let alone have a theory to describe it. [...]

One particularly puzzling question is how our conscious minds can experience unique sensations, such as the colour red or the smell of frying bacon. With the exception of people with visual impairments, we all know what red is like, but we have no way to communicate the sensation and there is nothing in physics that tells us what it should be like.

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BBC: Abortion in US: What surprise Supreme Court ruling means

A majority of the justices sided with Indiana, holding that the burial provision didn't place an "undue burden" on a woman's right to an abortion and it advanced a legitimate interest of the state, even if the law wasn't "perfectly tailored" to address foetal remains in all circumstances. [...]

With nearly a dozen states enacting new abortion regulations and outright prohibitions in 2019, this won't be the only opportunity for the Supreme Court to reconsider whether there is a constitutional right to abortion.

Anti-abortion activists, and state legislatures with anti-abortion majorities, may believe that with the addition of Mr Trump's appointments, there is a majority on the court willing to finally put a stake through the heart of Roe.

Tuesday's decisions, however - made with little fanfare and no advanced notice - could be an indication that a majority of the justices on the court are in no hurry to reverse 46 years of precedent.[...]

Also on Tuesday an abortion clinic in St Louis announced that it may be forced to stop performing the procedure on Friday because the state had yet to renew its licence. If that happens, Missouri would become the first state since Roe was decided to have no abortion clinics within its borders. Five other states have only one.

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BBC Newsnight: Brexit: National humiliation or just embarrassing?

In these divided times, there may be one thing that many on both sides of the Brexit debate can agree on: that this is a national humiliation.

But can an entire nation be humiliated?

David Grossman reports.

Dr Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire: Anticolonialism and British Dissent and Professor Richard Tombs from the University of Cambridge, join Katie Razzall in discussion.

BBC: Clever crows reveal 'window into the mind'

New Caledonian crows are known to spontaneously use tools in the wild. This task, designed by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, and the University of Oxford, presented the birds with a novel problem that they needed to make a new tool in order to solve.[...]

The sticks were designed to be combinable - one was hollow to allow the other to slot inside. And with no demonstration or help, four out of the eight crows inserted one stick into another and used the resulting longer tool to fish for and extract the food from the box. [...]

And this study, he added, has reinforced the evidence that the crows have "highly flexible abilities" that allow them to solve novel problems very quickly with tools they have never seen before.

The researchers suspect that the crows might do this by envisaging a simulation of the problem in front of them - playing out different actions in their brains until they figure out the solution.[...]

The problem-solving demonstrations could also help in the development of artificial intelligence in robots - to discover ways to build machines that are also able to reach "autonomous creative solutions" to new problems.

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BBC: Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars

Previous research found possible signs of intermittent liquid water flowing on the martian surface, but this is the first sign of a persistent body of water on the planet in the present day. [...]

The result is exciting because scientists have long searched for signs of present-day liquid water on Mars, but these have come up empty or yielded ambiguous findings. It will also interest those studying the possibilities for life beyond Earth - though it does not yet raise the stakes in the search for biology. [...]

Marsis wasn't able to determine how thick the layer of water might be, but the research team estimate that it is a minimum of one metre. [...]

"We are not closer to actually detecting life," Dr Patel told BBC News, "but what this finding does is give us the location of where to look on Mars. It is like a treasure map - except in this case, there will be lots of 'X's marking the spots."

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BBC: The young Turks rejecting Islam

In the 16 years that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party has been in power, the number of religious high schools across Turkey has increased more than tenfold. [...]

But over the past few weeks, politicians and religious clerics here have been discussing whether pious young people have started to move away from religion.  [...]

While there are no statistics or polls to indicate how widespread this is, anecdotal evidence is enough to worry Turkey's leaders. [...]

Turkey's top religious cleric, the head of Religious Affairs Directorate Ali Erbas, has also denied the spread of deism and atheism among the country's conservative youth. "No member of our nation would ever adhere to a such a deviant and void concept," he said.

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BBC: The time when America stopped being great

It is tempting to see Trump's victory this time last year as an aberration. A historical mishap. The election all came down, after all, to just 77,744 votes in three key states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But when you consider the boom-to-bust cycle of the period between 1984 and 2016, the Trump phenomenon doesn't look so accidental. [...]

Consider how the fall of the Berlin Wall changed Washington, and how it ushered in an era of destructive and negative politics. In the post-war years, bipartisanship was routine, partly because of a shared determination to defeat communism. America's two-party system, adversarial though it was, benefited from the existence of a shared enemy. To pass laws, President Eisenhower regularly worked with Democratic chieftains such as House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. [...]

Clinton's impeachment signalled the emergence of another new political trend: the delegitimisation of sitting presidents. And both parties played the game. The Democrats cast George W Bush as illegitimate because Al Gore won the popular vote and the Supreme Court controversially ruled in the Republican's favour during the Florida recount. [...]

US universities dominate global rankings, but its top colleges could hardly be described as engines of intergenerational mobility. A study by the New York Times of 38 colleges, including Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth, showed that students from the top 1% income bracket occupied more places than the students from the bottom 60%. Of this year's intake at Harvard, almost a third were the sons and daughters of alumni.

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BBC: The mystery of the lost Roman herb

Indeed, the Romans loved it so much, they referenced their darling herb in poems and songs, and wrote it into great works of literature. For centuries, local kings held a monopoly on the plant, which made the city of Cyrene, at modern Shahhat, Libya, the richest in Africa. Before they gave it away to the Romans, the Greek inhabitants even put it on their money. Julius Caesar went so far as to store a cache (1,500lbs or 680kg) in the official treasury.

But today, silphium has vanished – possibly just from the region, possibly from our planet altogether. Pliny wrote that within his lifetime, only a single stalk was discovered. It was plucked and sent to the emperor Nero as a curiosity sometime around 54-68AD. [...]

The herb stumped even the most enthusiastic plant geek of the day, Theophrastus. Widely known as the father of botany, this Greek author was best friends with another giant – Aristotle, the father of biology – and wrote extensively about the characteristics of plants. Though he didn’t understand why it couldn’t be cultivated either, he observed that they tended to grow best on land which had been dug up the previous year. [...]

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people descend on America’s National Parks, from the Pacific Northwest to the mountains of Montana and Idaho. Instead of hiking gear, they’re armed with baskets, pots and pans, ready to brave grizzly bears and territorial gunfights in pursuit of one of the most coveted fruits on the planet: the huckleberry. The tart red berries are added to jams, sauces, pies, ice creams, snow cones, daiquiris, and even curries – and every year, demand exceeds supply. But there isn’t a single commercial huckleberry farm on the continent. [...]

So could silphium make a comeback? According to Rowan, even if the herb isn’t extinct, it probably wouldn’t be to modern tastes – in the Western world at least. “There’s a whole bunch of seasonings that the Romans used to use, like lovage, that today most people haven’t even heard of,” says Rowan. Back in the day, lovage was a staple of the Roman dinner table. Today it’s virtually impossible to buy, consigned to niche online shops and obscure corners of garden centres.

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BBC: Saudi Arabia has 'clear link' to UK extremism, report says

The Henry Jackson Society said there was a "clear and growing link" between Islamist organisations in receipt of overseas funds, hate preachers and Jihadist groups promoting violence.

The foreign affairs think tank called for a public inquiry into the role of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations. [...]

The Home Office report into the existence and influence of Jihadist organisations, commissioned by former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, has reportedly yet to be completed amid questions as to whether it will ever be published.

Critics have suggested it could make uncomfortable reading for the government, which has close and longstanding diplomatic, security and economic links with the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said he understood the report was "largely finished and sitting on Theresa May's desk", but there was probably a reluctance to publish it because of "embarrassing" content. [...]

Saudi Arabia also has a much-criticised human rights record. This has prompted calls from some, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia.

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BBC: How Western civilisation could collapse

The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society – democracy, individual liberties, social tolerance and more – would begin to teeter. Our world would become an increasingly ugly place, one defined by a scramble over limited resources and a rejection of anyone outside of our immediate group. Should we find no way to get the wheels back in motion, we’d eventually face total societal collapse. [...]

Safa Motesharrei, a systems scientist at the University of Maryland, uses computer models to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to local or global sustainability or collapse. According to findings that Motesharrei and his colleagues published in 2014, there are two factors that matter: ecological strain and economic stratification. The ecological category is the more widely understood and recognised path to potential doom, especially in terms of depletion of natural resources such as groundwater, soil, fisheries and forests – all of which could be worsened by climate change.

That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own, on the other hand, came as more of a surprise to Motesharrei and his colleagues. Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour. The inequalities we see today both within and between countries already point to such disparities. For example, the top 10% of global income earners are responsible for almost as much total greenhouse gas emissions as the bottom 90% combined. Similarly, about half the world’s population lives on less than $3 per day.  

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BBC: Why high-flying Singapore is scrapping grades

Reminiscent of the examinations for selecting mandarins in old China, the road to success in Singapore has always been focused on academic credentials, based on merit and allowing equal access for all.

 

This centralised system helped Singapore to create social cohesion, a unity of purpose among its schools and an ethos of hard work that many nations envy.

But the purpose of the education system has changed and Singapore in 2017 is no longer the fledgling state it was in 1965.[...]

The next update of the education system will have to ensure that Singapore can create a more equitable society, build a stronger social compact among its people while at the same time develop capabilities for the new digital economy.

Government policies are moving away from parents and students' unhealthy obsession with grades and entry to top schools and want to put more emphasis on the importance of values. 

Schools have been encouraged, especially for the early elementary years, to scrap standardised examinations and focus on the development of the whole child. [...]

An important segment of the new curriculum, at the primary level is family time, and how parents should play an important role in inculcating the right values in their children.

At the secondary and high school levels, "values in action" programmes lie at the core of educating young Singaporeans to be empathetic, socially responsible and active citizens in their community. 

For example, students work on projects that serve the elderly, reach out to migrant workers and read to latch-key children in day-care centres.

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BBC: Life after death? Resurrecting a modern ruin

About 20 miles west of Glasgow lies a modern ruin. St Peter's Seminary was built only 50 years ago, yet by the 1990s it was derelict. However, plans to breathe new life into the building are now close to being realised.

The concrete ghost is hidden in woods on the north side of the River Clyde - the shell of an ambitious 1960s modernist building which the Catholic Church had planned to use to train 100 novice priests.

But the seminary - at the back of a golf course on the edge of the village of Cardross - was built in changing times. The Church would soon shift away from training priests in seclusion, instead placing them in the community. [...]

The post-war years saw the break-up of many of the traditionally Catholic areas in Glasgow - as sections of the old inner city were demolished and people moved into new high-rise homes or out to new towns like East Kilbride or Cumbernauld.

In this photo taken in the mid-60s, newly-built 20-storey flats in the Gorbals area of Glasgow overlook St Francis Church and Friary.

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