A Good Samaritan was hiking a narrow, slippery trail on Lookout Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona, and was very focused on his hike until something caught his eye. He was about half a mile up the mountain and a little off the beaten path when he caught a glimpse of light reflecting off of something — and was shocked to realize it was a pair of amber eyes.
The eyes belonged to a very scared dog huddled up in a tiny hole in the side of the mountain. She was completely blending in with her surroundings, and if she hadn’t had such piercing eyes, the hiker may not have noticed her. He had no idea how she’d managed to get up there, but it was clear that she’d been stuck for a while and might not be able to last much longer.
The Good Samaritan quickly contacted the Arizona Humane Society (AHS), who sent two emergency animal medical technicians, Tracey Miiller and Ruthie Jesus, out to help while he waited with the pup until they arrived. The dog was definitely scared but seemed open to getting help.
“This Good Samaritan waited probably almost two hours, and then we found this incredible dog, who incidentally is literally the same color as the dirt,” Jesus said in a press release. “She blends in so much, the complainant told us that he wanted to call her Bright Eyes because when he hiked past her, that was literally the only thing he saw was her amber bright eyes staring back at him.”
After a quick and careful assessment on the side of the mountain, the technicians determined that Bright Eyes was dangerously dehydrated with cut-up paws and a wound on her rear end.
“She was really sweet and letting me pet her head, but she absolutely did not want to come out of that den, so I kind of had to just sort of pull her out,” Jesus said.
She was definitely too weak to walk with her rescuers down the mountain, so the technicians took turns carrying her until they reached the ambulance. Bright Eyes was calm the whole time, so grateful to finally be safe.
“She actually really just relaxed and seemed to enjoy being carried down the mountain,” Jesus said. “But it was a very teeny-tiny rocky trail that was pretty slick, and so Tracey and I took turns carrying her down the mountain, and she was just an absolute angel. She knew we were getting her to safety.”
It’s still a mystery as to how or why Bright Eyes ended up on the mountain in the first place, but the important thing is someone found her and now she’s getting the care she needs.
“We were so elated to be able to get her,” Jesus said. “She was just so dehydrated. I think she’d probably been up there several days and that was probably her last day, and this Good Samaritan really just saved her life.”
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Frankly, there’s nothing more to add to this account. For it captured all that so many people do for dogs.
I have no excuse for not being better at looking after my teeth, for one of my elder sisters, Corinne, was a dental assistant and when I was in my mid-fifties I moved down to South-West England and bought a home just a few miles from Corinne’s home. Thereafter she looked after my teeth at the dental practice in Totnes.
But I was careless in following Corinne’s advice and it wasn’t until in my seventies, and living in Merlin, Oregon, that I saw the light; so to speak!
Read this!
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Healthy teeth are wondrous and priceless – a dentist explains why and how best to protect them
Yet, in a society where 1 out of 5 Americans ages 75 and up live without their teeth, many people may not realize that teeth are designed to stay with us for a lifetime.
In the process, I have developed reverence for natural teeth and for the complex beauty of these biological and mechanical masterpieces.
Designed for lifelong function
The secret of teeth longevity lies in their durability as well as in how they are anchored to the jaw – picture a hammer and its hand grip. For each tooth, durability and anchorage are functions of the complex interface between six different tissues; each alone is a biological marvel.
For anchorage, the cementum, ligament and bone grip the tooth at its root portion that is buried under the gum. The ligament, a soft tissue that is about 0.2 millimeters wide (about the diameter of four hairs), attaches the cementum of the root on one end to the bone of the jaw on the other end. It serves to anchor the tooth as well as to cushion its movement during chewing.
For durability, however, the secret lies in the enamel, dentin and pulp – our focus in this discussion.
The enamel is the protective shell that covers the visible part of the tooth above the gum. Thanks to its high mineral content, enamel is the hardest tissue in the body. It needs to be, since it acts as a shield against the constant impact of chewing.
Enamel does not contain cells, blood vessels or nerves, so it is nonliving and nonsensitive. Enamel is also non-regenerating. Once destroyed by decay or broken by misuse such as ice chewing, nail biting or bottle opening – or touched by the dental drill – that part of our priceless enamel is gone for good.
Because it interfaces with a germ-laden world, the enamel is also where decay starts. When acid-generating bacteria accumulate on unbrushed or poorly brushed teeth, they readily dissolve the minerals in the enamel.
How bacteria invade the teeth and cause cavities.
Like hair or fingernails, the non-innervated enamel is not sensitive. The decay advances through the 2.5-millimeter thick (tenth of an inch) layer of enamel painlessly. When caught at that phase during a dental checkup visit, the dentist can treat the decay with a relatively conservative filling that hardly compromises the tooth’s structural integrity.
Because of its high mineral content, enamel is stiff. Its lifelong support is provided by the more resilient infrastructure – the dentin.
Dentin and pulp – body and heart
With less mineral content than enamel, dentin is the resilient body of the tooth. It is a living tissue formed of parallel tiny tubes housing fluid and cellular extensions. Both originate from the pulp.
The pulp is the tooth’s soft tissue core. Vastly rich in cells, blood vessels and nerves, it is the life source of the tooth – its heart – and the key to its longevity.
Like smoke detectors communicating with a remote fire station, the cellular extensions within the dentin sense decay as soon as it breaks through the nonsensitive layer of enamel into dentin. Once the extensions communicate the danger signal to the pulp, our tooth sensitivity alarm goes off: The tooth heart is in flames.
The inflamed pulp initiates two protective actions. The first is to secrete an additional layer of dentin to delay the approaching attack. The second is toothache, a call to visit the dentist.
The earlier the visit, the less the drilling and the smaller the filling. If caught in time, most of the tooth’s natural tissues will be preserved and the pulp will likely regain its healthy state. If caught too late, the pulp slowly dies out.
Without its heart, a nonliving tooth has no defense against further decay invasion. Without a hydration source, a dried-out dentin will sooner or later break under the forces of constant chewing. Besides, a tooth that has already lost a significant portion of its natural structure to decay, cavity preparation or root canal instrumentation becomes weak, with limited longevity.
In other words, the tooth is never the same without its heart. Pulpless, the tooth loses its womb-to-tomb endurance and mother nature’s lifelong warranty.
The tooth coming together
More complex – and more precious – than a pearl within an oyster, the formation of a tooth within our jawbone involves layered mineral deposition. As tooth development progresses in a process of ultimate cellular engineering, the cells of the six aforementioned tissues – enamel, dentin, pulp, cementum, ligament and bone – multiply, specialize and mineralize synchronously with each other to form uniquely interlocking interfaces: enamel to dentin, dentin to pulp, cementum to dentin and cementum to ligament to bone.
In a progress akin to 3D printing, the tooth crown grows vertically to full formation. Simultaneously, the root continues its elongation to eventually launch off the crown from within the bone across the gum to appear in the mouth – the event known as teething. It is about that time, around 12 years of age, that our set of adult teeth is complete. These pearls are set to endure a lifetime and are undoubtedly worth preserving.
Save your teeth, visit the dentist
Tooth decay, the most prevalent disease in humans, is both predictable and preventable. The earlier it is caught, the more the tooth integrity can be preserved. Since the process starts painlessly, it is imperative to visit the dentist regularly to keep those insidious germs in check.
During your checkup visit, the dental professional will clean your teeth and check for early decay. If you are diligent with your daily preventive measures, the good news for you will be no news – enough to make anyone smile.
As 99% of you know, Jean, my wife, has Parkinson’s Disease. One of the characteristics of the disease is the effect it has on sleeping; Jean frequently has a bad night. Plus, our two dogs, Cleopatra and Oliver sleep in the bedroom on dog beds.
But if I was on my own I would find it difficult not to encourage our dogs to sleep on our double bed. That’s my assessment, at least! Over to The Conversation on the topic.
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Could sharing a bedroom with your pets be keeping you from getting a good night’s sleep?
Sleeping with your dog in the same room could be negatively affecting your sleep quality, according to my team’s recently published research in Scientific Reports.
We recruited a nationally representative sample of more than 1,500 American adults who completed questionnaires assessing their sleep habits. Overall, about half of the participants reported co-sleeping with pets – defined in our study as sleeping in the same room with your pet for at least part of the night.
Next, our research team compared the sleep habits of people who did and didn’t co-sleep with pets. Our analyses revealed that participants who co-slept with pets had poorer sleep quality and more insomnia symptoms than those who did not. These findings persisted even after accounting for demographic differences between these groups. When considering pet type, we found evidence for a negative effect on sleep when co-sleeping with dogs but no evidence for a negative effect on sleep when co-sleeping with cats.
Surprisingly, 93% of people in our study who co-slept with their pets believed that their pets had either a positive or neutral overall effect on their sleep. Although more research is needed, these findings could suggest that most people are unaware of the potential negative effects their pets may have on their sleep.
However, our study fills an important knowledge gap by indicating that co-sleeping with pets can affect sleep quality. Good sleep is a pillar of health and wellness. Even though pets may have an overall positive effect on mental health, it is possible that some of this benefit may be undermined if they are also causing you to lose sleep at night.
Although some people report that co-sleeping with their pets can provide them with a sense of comfort or intimacy, it is important for people sharing a bedroom with their pets to be aware of their potential to serve as a source of nighttime noise, heat or movement that can disrupt your ability to fall or stay asleep.
What still isn’t known
Survey-based studies like ours are unable to prove that co-sleeping with pets causes disrupted sleep, although there is some evidence suggesting that this could be the case.
It probably isn’t realistic for most people to just stop co-sleeping with their pets. So, what should someone do to improve their sleep if they already share a bed with their pets?
Some expert tips include choosing a mattress that is large enough for you and your pets, washing and changing your bedding regularly, and establishing and maintaining a consistent bedtime routine with your pets. Further research is needed to identify more specific habits and routines that pet owners can adopt to ensure a good night’s sleep when sharing the bedroom with their pets.
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
Coming back to Jean and me at least we have a pretty regular routine with us going to our bedroom around 7pm to 8pm. In the morning over our daily coffees I always ask Jean what sort of night she had. Yesterday morning Jean replied that she had had a poor night. My judgement is that Jean has roughly one in two poor nights.
A riveting history of counting and calculating from the time of the cave dwellers to the late twentieth century, The Universal History of Numbers is the first complete account of the invention and evolution of numbers the world over. As different cultures around the globe struggled with problems of harvests, constructing buildings, educating their citizens, and exploring the wonders of science, each civilization created its own unique and wonderful mathematical system.
Dubbed the “Indiana Jones of numbers,” Georges Ifrah traveled all over the world for ten years to uncover the little-known details of this amazing story. From India to China, and from Egypt to Chile, Ifrah talked to mathematicians, historians, archaeologists, and philosophers. He deciphered ancient writing on crumbling walls; scrutinized stones, tools, cylinders, and cones; and examined carved bones, elaborately knotted counting strings, and X-rays of the contents of never-opened ancient clay accounting balls. Conveying all the excitement and joy of the process of discovery, Ifrah writes in a delightful storytelling style, recounting a plethora of intriguing and amusing anecdotes along the way.
Now to that article on The Conversation.
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From thousands to millions to billions to trillions to quadrillions and beyond: Do numbers ever end?
Why don’t numbers end? – Reyhane, age 7, Tehran, Iran
Here’s a game: Ask a friend to give you any number and you’ll return one that’s bigger. Just add “1” to whatever number they come up with and you’re sure to win.
The reason is that numbers go on forever. There is no highest number. But why? As a professor of mathematics, I can help you find an answer.
First, you need to understand what numbers are and where they come from. You learned about numbers because they enabled you to count. Early humans had similar needs – whether to count animals killed in a hunt or keep track of how many days had passed. That’s why they invented numbers.
But back then, numbers were quite limited and had a very simple form. Often, the “numbers” were just notches on a bone, going up to a couple hundred at most.
How numbers evolved throughout the centuries.
When numbers got bigger
As time went on, people’s needs grew. Herds of livestock had to be counted, goods and services traded, and measurements made for buildings and navigation. This led to the invention of larger numbers and better ways of representing them.
About 5,000 years ago, the Egyptians began using symbols for various numbers, with a final symbol for one million. Since they didn’t usually encounter bigger quantities, they also used this same final symbol to depict “many.”
The Greeks, starting with Pythagoras, were the first to study numbers for their own sake, rather than viewing them as just counting tools. As someone who’s written a book on the importance of numbers, I can’t emphasize enough how crucial this step was for humanity.
But there was a problem. Although the Greeks could mentally think of very large numbers, they had difficulty writing them down. This was because they did not know about the number 0.
Think of how important zero is in expressing big numbers. You can start with 1, then add more and more zeroes at the end to quickly get numbers like a million – 1,000,000, or 1 followed by six zeros – or a billion, with nine zeros, or a trillion, 12 zeros.
This brief history makes clear that numbers were developed over thousands of years. And though the Egyptians didn’t have much use for a million, we certainly do. Economists will tell you that government expenditures are commonly measured in millions of dollars.
Also, science has taken us to a point where we need even larger numbers. For instance, there are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy – or 100,000,000,000 – and the number of atoms in our universe may be as high as 1 followed by 82 zeros.
Don’t worry if you find it hard to picture such big numbers. It’s fine to just think of them as “many,” much like the Egyptians treated numbers over a million. These examples point to one reason why numbers must continue endlessly. If we had a maximum, some new use or discovery would surely make us exceed it.
The symbols of math include +, -, x and =.
Exceptions to the rule
But under certain circumstances, sometimes numbers do have a maximum because people design them that way for a practical purpose.
A good example is a clock – or clock arithmetic, where we use only the numbers 1 through 12. There is no 13 o’clock, because after 12 o’clock we just go back to 1 o’clock again. If you played the “bigger number” game with a friend in clock arithmetic, you’d lose if they chose the number 12.
Since numbers are a human invention, how do we construct them so they continue without end? Mathematicians started looking at this question starting in the early 1900s. What they came up with was based on two assumptions: that 0 is the starting number, and when you add 1 to any number you always get a new number.
These assumptions immediately give us the list of counting numbers: 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, and so on, a progression that continues without end.
You might wonder why these two rules are assumptions. The reason for the first one is that we don’t really know how to define the number 0. For example: Is “0” the same as “nothing,” and if so, what exactly is meant by “nothing”?
The second might seem even more strange. After all, we can easily show that adding 1 to 2 gives us the new number 3, just like adding 1 to 2002 gives us the new number 2003.
But notice that we’re saying this has to hold for any number. We can’t very well verify this for every single case, since there are going to be an endless number of cases. As humans who can perform only a limited number of steps, we have to be careful anytime we make claims about an endless process. And mathematicians, in particular, refuse to take anything for granted.
Here, then, is the answer to why numbers don’t end: It’s because of the way in which we define them.
Now, the negative numbers
How do the negative numbers -1, -2, -3 and more fit into all this? Historically, people were very suspicious about such numbers, since it’s hard to picture a “minus one” apple or orange. As late as 1796, math textbooks warned against using negatives.
The negatives were created to address a calculation issue. The positive numbers are fine when you’re adding them together. But when you get to subtraction, they can’t handle differences like 1 minus 2, or 2 minus 4. If you want to be able to subtract numbers at will, you need negative numbers too.
A simple way to create negatives is to imagine all the numbers – 0, 1, 2, 3 and the rest – drawn equally spaced on a straight line. Now imagine a mirror placed at 0. Then define -1 to be the reflection of +1 on the line, -2 to be the reflection of +2, and so on. You’ll end up with all the negative numbers this way.
As a bonus, you’ll also know that since there are just as many negatives as there are positives, the negative numbers must also go on without end!
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
This article was written for those a great deal younger than I am. But, to be honest, it is a fascinating account of something so utterly basic to humans and human cognition.
I shall be 80 in November and I find myself thinking about death more often than I did a few years ago. As an example of how my mind has changed, yesterday I was contemplating renewing my subscription to the Free Inquiry magazine and wondering if I should renew it for two or three years? In other words will I still be alive in three years time? Silly but it is the truth. And that is not taking into account that I go to the Club Northwest two days a week and try and bike ride another two or three times a week.
Then let us not get into the topic of whether I will die before Jean or the reverse. That is an enormous subject and, thank goodness, where we live in Oregon one has the choice to die: “Two states, Oregon and Washington, currently have statutes providing a procedure for a terminally ill patient to request medication to end his or her life. These laws are sometimes referred to as “death with dignity” or “physician-assisted suicide” laws.“
All of which is an introduction to a recent article published in The Conversation that I republish below:
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Loneliness can kill, and new research shows middle-aged Americans are particularly vulnerable
Middle-aged Americans are lonelier than their European counterparts. That’s the key finding of my team’s recent study, published in American Psychologist.
Our study identified a trend that has been evolving for multiple generations, and affects both baby boomers and Gen Xers. Middle-aged adults in England and Mediterranean Europe are not that far behind the U.S. In contrast, middle-aged adults in continental and Nordic Europe reported the lowest levels of loneliness and stability over time.
We used survey data drawn from over 53,000 middle-aged adults from the U.S. and 13 European nations from 2002 to 2020. We tracked their reported changes in loneliness every two years across the midlife years of 45 to 65. This span provided us data from the so-called silent generation of people born between 1937 and 1945; baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964; and members of Generation X, born between 1965 and 1974.
Our study makes clear that middle-aged Americans today are experiencing more loneliness than their peers in European nations. This coincides with existing evidence that mortality rates are rising for working-age adults in the U.S.
We focused on middle-aged adults for several reasons. Middle-aged adults form the backbone of society by constituting a majority of the workforce. But they also face increasing challenges today, notably greater demands for support from both their aging parents and their children.
Loneliness is considered a global public health issue. The U.S. surgeon general released an advisory report in 2023 documenting an epidemic of loneliness and a pressing need to increase social connection. Other nations, such as the U.K.and Japan, have appointed ministers of loneliness to ensure relationships and loneliness are considered in policymaking.
You can be lonely even when surrounded by people.
What still isn’t known
Why are middle-aged Americans exceptional when it comes to loneliness and poorer overall mental and physical health?
We did not directly test this in our study, but in the future we hope to zero in on the factors driving these trends. We think that the loneliness Americans are reporting compared to peer nations comes down to limited social safety nets and to cultural norms that prioritize individualism over community.
Individualization carries psychological costs, such as reductions in social connections and support structures, which are correlates of loneliness. Relative to the other nations in our study, Americans have a higher tendency to relocate, which is associated with weak social and community ties.
One of the reasons why we chose countries from across Europe is that they differ dramatically from the U.S. when it comes to social and economic opportunities and social safety nets. Social and economic inequalities likely increase one’s loneliness through undermining one’s ability to meet basic needs. Generous family and work policies likely lessen midlife loneliness through reducing financial pressures and work-family conflict, as well as addressing health and gender inequities.
Our findings on loneliness in conjunction with previous studies on life expectancy, health, well-being and cognition suggest that being middle-aged in America is a risk factor for poor mental and physical health outcomes.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
And on yesterday afternoon, the Sunday, I went for a bike ride of 22 miles. I loved the ride especially as I listened to music all the way; I have a portable speaker that clips near the front handlebars and plays tracks from my iPhone.
Then there was an article in March from the University of Bristol: “Happiness can be learnt, but we have to work at it – study finds.“
It reads:
Press release issued: 11 March 2024
We can learn to be happy, but only get lasting benefits if we keep practising, a first-of-its-kind study has revealed.
The team behind the University of Bristol’s ‘Science of Happiness’ course had already discovered that teaching students the latest scientific studies on happiness created a marked improvement in their wellbeing.
But their latest study found that these wellbeing boosts are short-lived unless the evidence-informed habits learnt on the course – such as gratitude, exercise, meditation or journaling – are kept up over the long-term.
Senior author Professor Bruce Hood said: “It’s like going to the gym – we can’t expect to do one class and be fit forever. Just as with physical health, we have to continuously work on our mental health, otherwise the improvements are temporary.”
Launched in 2018, the University of Bristol’s Science of Happiness course was the first of its kind in the UK. It involves no exams or coursework, and teaches students what the latest peer-reviewed studies in psychology and neuroscience say really makes us happy.
Students who took the course reported a 10 to 15% improvement in wellbeing. But only those who continued implementing the course learnings maintained that improved wellbeing when they were surveyed again two years on.
Published in the journal Higher Education, it is the first to track wellbeing of students on a happiness course long after they have left the course.
Professor Hood said: “This study shows that just doing a course – be that at the gym, a meditation retreat or on an evidence-based happiness course like ours – is just the start: you must commit to using what you learn on a regular basis.
“Much of what we teach revolves around positive psychology interventions that divert your attention away from yourself, by helping others, being with friends, gratitude or meditating.
“This is the opposite of the current ‘selfcare’ doctrine, but countless studies have shown that getting out of our own heads helps gets us away from negative ruminations which can be the basis of so many mental health problems.”
Professor Hood has distilled the Science of Happiness course into a new book, out on March 10. ‘The Science of Happiness: Seven Lessons for Living Well’ reveals an evidence-informed roadmap to better wellbeing.
The other paper authors are fellow University of Bristol academics Catherine Hobbs and Sarah Jelbert, and Laurie R Santos, a Yale academic whose course inspired Bristol’s Science of Happiness course.
The challenge in deciding what is best for our forests.
As a great many of you already know, we live in a rural area in Southern Oregon. It is a beautiful place and we look out to the East upon Mount Sexton. But locally a great many houses are built on rural sites with the local forest just yards away.
In the U.S., wildland firefighters are able to stop about 98% of all wildfires before the fires have burned even 100 acres. That may seem comforting, but decades of quickly suppressing fires has had unintended consequences.
However, fuel accumulation isn’t the only consequence of fire suppression.
Fire suppression also disproportionately reduces certain types of fire. In a new study, my colleagues and I show how this effect, known as the suppression bias, compounds the impacts of fuel accumulation and climate change.
What happened to all the low-intensity fires?
Most wildfires are low-intensity. They ignite when conditions aren’t too dry or windy, and they can often be quickly extinguished.
The 2% of fires that escape suppression are those that are more extreme and much harder to fight. They account for about 98% of the burned area in a typical year.
The author and colleagues discuss changing wildfire in Montana and Idaho’s Bitterroot Mountains. By Mark Kreider.
In our study, we used a fire modeling simulation to explore the effects of the fire suppression bias and see how they compared to the effects of global warming and fuel accumulation alone.
Fuel accumulation and global warming both inherently make fires more severe. But over thousands of simulated fires, we found that allowing forests to burn only under the very worst conditions increased fire severity by the same amount as more than a century’s worth of fuel accumulation or 21st-century climate change.
The suppression bias also changes the way plants and animals interact with fire.
By removing low-intensity fires, humans may be changing the course of evolution. Without exposure to low-intensity fires, species can lose traits crucial for surviving and recovering from such events.
In contrast, low-intensity fires free up space and resources for new growth, while still retaining living trees and other biological legacies that support seedlings in their vulnerable initial years.
By quickly putting out low-intensity fires and allowing only extreme fires to burn, conventional suppression reduces the opportunities for climate-adapted plants to establish and help ecosystems adjust to changes like global warming.
Firefighters keep watch for smoke from a fire tower in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest, Idaho, in 1932. Forest Service photo by K. D. Swan
Suppression makes burned area increase faster
As the climate becomes hotter and drier, more area is burning in wildfires. If suppression removes fire, it should help slow this increase, right?
In fact, we found it does just the opposite.
We found that while conventional suppression led to less total area burning, the yearly burned area increased more than three times faster under conventional suppression than under less aggressive suppression efforts. The amount of area burned doubled every 14 years with conventional fire suppression under simulated climate change, instead of every 44 years when low- and moderate-intensity fires were allowed to burn. That raises concerns for how quickly people and ecosystems will have to adapt to extreme fires in the future.
With conventional fire suppression, the average fire size will increase faster as the planet warms than it would under a less aggressive approach. Mark Kreider
The fact that the amount of area burned is increasing is undoubtedly driven by climate change. But our study shows that the rate of this increase may also be a result of conventional fire management.
The near total suppression of fires over the last century means that even a little additional fire in a more fire-prone future can create big changes. As climate change continues to fuel more fires, the relative increase in area burned will be much bigger.
To address the wildfire crisis, fire managers can be less aggressive in suppressing low- and moderate-intensity fires when it is safe to do so. They can also increase the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning to clear away brush and other fuel for fires.
These low-intensity fires will not only reduce the risk of future extreme fires, but they also will create conditions that favor the establishment of species better suited to the changing climate, thereby helping ecosystems adapt to global warming.
Coexisting with wildfire requires developing technologies and approaches that enable the safe management of wildfires under moderate burning conditions. Our study shows that this may be just as necessary as other interventions, such as reducing the number of fires unintentionally started by human activities and mitigating climate change.
The article makes a great deal of sense and presents a solution that may not be our first thought. But especially the message is fundamentally important, and please watch the video because it very clearly presents the benefits of the solution.
So we want more low-intensity fires! Please! Or to say it another way, we want more prescribed fires.
We think that climate change is a relatively recent phenomenon. Wrong! And I am not going to say any more because this post from The Conversation covers it beautifully.
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What ancient farmers can really teach us about adapting to climate change – and how political power influences success or failure
A farmer paddles to his fields on an artificial island among canals, part of an ancient Aztec system known as chinampas, in 2021. AP Photo /Marco Ugarte
In dozens of archaeological discoveries around the world, from the once-successful reservoirs and canals of Angkor Wat in Cambodia to the deserted Viking colonies of Greenland, new evidence paints pictures of civilizations struggling with unforeseen climate changes and the reality that their farming practices had become unsustainable.
Among these discoveries are also success stories, where ancient farming practices helped civilizations survive the hard times.
Zuni farmers in the southwestern United States made it through long stretches of extremely low rainfall between A.D. 1200 and 1400 by embracing small-scale, decentralized irrigation systems. Farmers in Ghana coped with severe droughts from 1450 to 1650 by planting indigenous African grains, like drought-tolerant pearl millet.
Ancient practices like these are gaining new interest today. As countries face unprecedented heat waves, storms and melting glaciers, some farmers and international development organizations are reaching deep into the agricultural archives to revive these ancient solutions.
Drought-stricken farmers in Spain have reclaimed medieval Moorish irrigation technology. International companies hungry for carbon offsets have paid big money for biochar made using pre-Columbian Amazonian production techniques. Texas ranchers have turned to ancient cover cropping methods to buffer against unpredictable weather patterns.
But grasping for ancient technologies and techniques without paying attention to historical context misses one of the most important lessons ancient farmers can reveal: Agricultural sustainability is as much about power and sovereignty as it is about soil, water and crops.
In the tropical lowlands of Mexico and Central America, Indigenous Maya farmers have been practicing milpa agriculture for thousands of years. Milpa farmers adapted to drought by gently steering forest ecology through controlled burns and careful woodland conservation.
The knowledge of milpa farming empowered many rural farmers to navigate climate changes during the notorious Maya Collapse – two centuries of political disintegration and urban depopulation between A.D. 800 to 1000. Importantly, later Maya political leaders worked with farmers to keep this flexibility. Their light-handed approach is still legible in the artifacts and settlement patterns of post-Collapse farming communities and preserved in the flexible tribute schedules for Maya farmers documented by 16th century Spanish monks.
Maya farmers and researchers explain milpa farming.
In my book, “Rooting in a Useless Land: Ancient Farmers, Celebrity Chefs, and Environmental Justice in Yucatán,” I trace the deep history of the Maya milpa. Using archaeology, I show how ancient farmers adapted milpa agriculture in response to centuries of drought and political upheaval.
However, these groups condemned the traditional milpa practice of burning new areas of forest as unsustainable. They instead promoted a “no-burn” version to grow certified organic maize for high-end restaurants. Their no-burn version of milpa relies on fertilizers to grow maize in a fixed location, rather than using controlled fire ecology to manage soil fertility across vast forests.
The result restricted the traditional practices Maya farmers have used for centuries. It also fed into a modern political threat to traditional Maya milpa farming: land grabs.
Traditional milpa agriculture requires a lot of forested land, since farmers need to relocate their fields every couple of years. But that need for forest is at odds with hotel companies, industrial cattle ranches and green energy developers who want cheap land and see Maya milpa forest management practices as inefficient. No-burn milpa eases this conflict by locking maize agriculture into one small space indefinitely, instead of spreading it out through the forest over generations. But it also changes tradition.
Maya milpa farmers are now fighting to practice their ancient agricultural techniques, not because they’ve forgotten or lost those techniques, but because neocolonial land privatization policies actively undermine farmers’ ability to manage woodlands as their ancestors did.
Milpa farmers are increasingly left to either adopt a rebranded version of their heritage or quit farming all together – as many have done.
Mexico’s fragile artificial islands: Threats from development
When I look to the work of other archaeologists investigating ancient agricultural practices, I see these same entanglements of power and sustainability.
In central Mexico, chinampas are ancient systems of artificial islands and canals. They have enabled farmers to cultivate food in wetlands for centuries.
The continuing existence of chinampas is a legacy of deep ecological knowledge and a resource enabling communities to feed themselves.
The chinampas of Xochimilco are a UNESCO world heritage site today, but development expanding from Mexico City has put their survival in danger. Sergei Saint via Flickr, CC BY-ND
But archaeology has revealed that generations of sustainable chinampa management could be overturned almost overnight. That happened when the expansionist Aztec Empire decided to re-engineer Lake Xaltocan for salt production in the 14th century and rendered its chinampas unusable.
Today, the future of chinampa agriculture hinges on a pocket of protected fields stewarded by local farmers in the marshy outskirts of Mexico City. These fields are now at risk as demand for housing drives informal settlements into the chinampa zone.
Andean raised fields: A story of labor exploitation
Traditional Andean agriculture in South America incorporates a diverse range of ancient cultivation techniques. One in particular has a complicated history of attracting revival efforts.
In the 1980s, government agencies, archaeologists and development organizations spent a fortune trying to persuade Andean farmers to revive raised field farming. Ancient raised fields had been found around Lake Titicaca, on the border of Peru and Bolivia. These groups became convinced that this relic technology could curb hunger in the Andes by enabling back-to-back potato harvests with no need for fallowing.
But Andean farmers had no connection to the labor-intensive raised fields. The practice had been abandoned even before the rise of Inca civilization in the 13th century. The effort to revive ancient raised field agriculture collapsed.
Since then, more archaeological discoveries around Lake Titicaca have suggested that ancient farmers were forced to work the raised fields by the expansionist Tiwanaku empire during its peak between AD 500 and 1100. Far from the politically neutral narrative promoted by development organizations, the raised fields were not there to help farmers feed themselves. They were a technology for exploiting labor and extracting surplus crops from ancient Andean farmers.
Respecting ancient practices’ histories
Reclaiming ancestral farming techniques can be a step toward sustainable food systems, especially when descendant communities lead their reclamation. The world can, and I think should, reach back to recover agricultural practices from our collective past.
But we can’t pretend that those practices are apolitical.
The Maya milpa farmers who continue to practice controlled burns in defiance of land privatizers understand the value of ancient techniques and the threat posed by political power. So do the Mexican chinampa farmers working to restore local food to disenfranchised urban communities. And so do the Andean farmers refusing to participate in once-exploitive raised field rehabilitation projects.
Depending on how they are used, ancient agricultural practices can either reinforce social inequalities or create more equitable food systems. Ancient practices aren’t inherently good – it takes a deeper commitment to just and equitable food systems to make them sustainable.
We like to think that the changing climate is a modern phenomenon but this article shows it is not. That sentence by Chelsea Fisher offers a route out of the present situation: “The world can, and I think should, reach back to recover agricultural practices from our collective past.”
In our case our (remaining) dogs, Oliver and Cleopatra, are able to go outside but still remain on our land. But plenty of dog owners are not in such a privileged position and need to take their dogs on public pavements and the like.
Thus for all you dog owners in that position then Erik’s advice is for you.
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Dog care below freezing − how to keep your pet warm and safe from cold weather, road salt and more this winter
Dogs get cold in the winter too, but there are things pet owners can do to help them feel comfortable. AP Photo/David Duprey
Time outside with your dog in the spring, summer and fall can be lovely. Visiting your favorite downtown café on a cool spring morning, going to a favorite dog park on a clear summer evening or going on walks along a river when the leaves are changing color are all wonderful when the weather is favorable. But in much of the country, when winter rolls around, previously hospitable conditions can quickly turn chilly and dangerous for people and pups alike.
Winter brings some unique challenges for dog owners, since dogs still need activity and socialization during colder seasons. Studies have shown that dog owners are almost 50% less likely to walk their dogs when the weather gets cold. Knowing the basics of winter safety is critical to maintaining a healthy lifestyle for your dog.
I am an assistant professor at the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine who weathered polar vortexes with my dog while living in Michigan early in my career. While I’ve since moved to sunny California, I’ve seen how quickly frigid temperatures can turn dangerous for pets.
Breed and age differences
Not all dogs have the same abilities to deal with cold weather. A short-coated dog like a Chihuahua is much more susceptible to the dangers of cold weather than a thick-coated husky. When the weather dips below 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius), the well-acclimated husky may be comfortable, whereas the Chihuahua would shiver and be at risk of hypothermia.
Additionally, if your dog is used to warm weather, but you decide to move to a colder region, the dog will need time to acclimate to that colder weather, even if they have a thick coat.
Age also affects cold-weather resilience. Puppies and elderly dogs can’t withstand the chill as well as other dogs, but every dog is unique – each may have individual health conditions or physical attributes that make them more or less resilient to cold weather.
Pet owners should be able to recognize the symptoms of a dog that is getting too cold. Dogs will shiver, and some may vocalize or whine. Dogs may resist putting their feet down on the cold ground, or burrow, or try to find warmth in their environment when they are uncomfortable.
Just like people, dogs can get frostbite. And just like people, the signs can take days to appear, making it hard to assess them in the moment. The most common sites for frostbite in dogs are their ears and the tips of their tails. Some of the initial signs of frostbite are skin discoloring, turning paler than normal, or purple, gray or even black; red, blistered skin; swelling; pain at the site; or ulceration.
Other serious signs of hypothermia include sluggishness or lethargy, and if you observe them, please visit your veterinarian immediately. A good rule to live by is if it is too cold for you, it is too cold for your dog.
Getting your dog a sweater or jacket and paw covers can provide them with protection from the elements and keep them comfortable. Veterinarians also recommend closely monitoring your dog and limiting their time outside when the temperature nears the freezing point or drops below it.
Road salt dangers
Road salt that treats ice on streets and sidewalks can also harm dogs. When dogs walk on the salt, the sharp, rough edges of the salt crystals can irritate the sensitive skin on their paws.
Paw covers for dogs can keep their feet warm and protected from road salt. AP Photo/Jim Cole
Dogs will often lick their feet when they’re dirty, wet or irritated, and if they ingest any salt doing that, they may face GI upset, dehydration, kidney failure, seizures or even death. Even small amounts of pure salt can disrupt critical body functions in dogs.
Some companies make pet-safe salt, but in public it can be hard to tell what type of salt is on the ground. After walking your dog, wash off their feet or boots. You can also keep their paw fur trimmed to prevent snow from balling up or salt collecting in the fur. Applying a thin layer of petroleum jelly or paw pad balm to the skin of the paw pads can also help protect your pet’s paws from irritation.
Antifreeze, or ethylene glycol, is in most vehicles to prevent the fluids from freezing when it gets cold out. Some people pour antifreeze into their toilets when away from their home to prevent the water in the toilet from freezing.
Antifreeze is an exceptionally dangerous chemical to dogs and cats, as it tastes sweet but can be deadly when ingested. If a pet ingests even a small amount of antifreeze, the substance causes a chemical cascade in their body that results in severe kidney damage. If left untreated, the pet may have permanent kidney damage or die.
There are safer antifreeze options on the market that use ingredients other than ethylene glycol. If your dog ingests antifreeze, please see your veterinarian immediately for treatment.
When temperatures dip below freezing, the best thing pet owners can do is keep the time spent outside as minimal as possible. Try some indoor activities, like hide-and-seek with low-calorie treats, fetch or even an interactive obstacle course. Food puzzles can also keep your dog mentally engaged during indoor time.
Although winter presents some unique challenges, it can still be an enjoyable and healthy time for you and your canine companion.
Erik’s comments about ethylene glycol (EG), or antifreeze as it more commonly known, and the incredible dangers to dogs EG possesses are vital to understand.
Please, please keep your dogs very safe in Winter! If Erik’s advice helps save even a single dog then me republishing this will have been worthwhile.
The challenge with writing posts, albeit not so often, about the global environment, especially when I am a non-scientist, is that one relies entirely on the words of others. In the case of a recent article, published by The Conversation, the authors are claimed to be specialists, and I do not doubt their credentials.
The three authors are René van Westen who is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Climate Physics, at Utrecht University, Henk A. Dijkstra who is a Professor of Physics, also at Utrecht University, and Michael Kliphuis, a Climate Model Specialist, again at Utrecht University.
So, here is their article:
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Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows
Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences.
While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised a serious question: If global warming shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is crucial for carrying heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes, how abrupt and severe would the climate changes be?
In a new study using the latest generation of Earth’s climate models, we simulated the flow of fresh water until the ocean circulation reached that tipping point.
The results showed that the circulation could fully shut down within a century of hitting the tipping point, and that it’s headed in that direction. If that happened, average temperatures would drop by several degrees in North America, parts of Asia and Europe, and people would see severe and cascading consequences around the world.
We also discovered a physics-based early warning signal that can alert the world when the Atlantic Ocean circulation is nearing its tipping point.
In the Atlantic Ocean circulation, the relatively warm and salty surface water near the equator flows toward Greenland. During its journey it crosses the Caribbean Sea, loops up into the Gulf of Mexico, and then flows along the U.S. East Coast before crossing the Atlantic.
This current, also known as the Gulf Stream, brings heat to Europe. As it flows northward and cools, the water mass becomes heavier. By the time it reaches Greenland, it starts to sink and flow southward. The sinking of water near Greenland pulls water from elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and the cycle repeats, like a conveyor belt.
This is where our study comes in. We performed an experiment with a detailed climate model to find the tipping point for an abrupt shutdown by slowly increasing the input of fresh water.
We found that once it reaches the tipping point, the conveyor belt shuts down within 100 years. The heat transport toward the north is strongly reduced, leading to abrupt climate shifts.
The result: Dangerous cold in the North
Regions that are influenced by the Gulf Stream receive substantially less heat when the circulation stops. This cools the North American and European continents by a few degrees.
The European climate is much more influenced by the Gulf Stream than other regions. In our experiment, that meant parts of the continent changed at more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) per decade – far faster than today’s global warming of about 0.36 F (0.2 C) per decade. We found that parts of Norway would experience temperature drops of more than 36 F (20 C). On the other hand, regions in the Southern Hemisphere would warm by a few degrees.
The annual mean temperature changes after the conveyor belt stops reflect an extreme temperature drop in northern Europe in particular. René M. van Westen
These temperature changes develop over about 100 years. That might seem like a long time, but on typical climate time scales, it is abrupt.
The conveyor belt shutting down would also affect sea level and precipitation patterns, which can push other ecosystems closer to their tipping points. For example, the Amazon rainforest is vulnerable to declining precipitation. If its forest ecosystem turned to grassland, the transition would release carbon to the atmosphere and result in the loss of a valuable carbon sink, further accelerating climate change.
The Atlantic circulation has slowed significantly in the distant past. During glacial periods when ice sheets that covered large parts of the planet were melting, the influx of fresh water slowed the Atlantic circulation, triggering huge climate fluctuations.
So, when will we see this tipping point?
The big question – when will the Atlantic circulation reach a tipping point – remains unanswered. Observations don’t go back far enough to provide a clear result. While a recent study suggested that the conveyor belt is rapidly approaching its tipping point, possibly within a few years, these statistical analyses made several assumptions that give rise to uncertainty.
Instead, we were able to develop a physics-based and observable early warning signal involving the salinity transport at the southern boundary of the Atlantic Ocean. Once a threshold is reached, the tipping point is likely to follow in one to four decades.
A climate model experiment shows how quickly the AMOC slows once it reaches a tipping point with a threshold of fresh water entering the ocean. How soon that will happen remains an open question. René M. van Westen
The climate impacts from our study underline the severity of such an abrupt conveyor belt collapse. The temperature, sea level and precipitation changes will severely affect society, and the climate shifts are unstoppable on human time scales.
It might seem counterintuitive to worry about extreme cold as the planet warms, but if the main Atlantic Ocean circulation shuts down from too much meltwater pouring in, that’s the risk ahead.
This article was updated to Feb. 11, 2024, to fix a typo: The experiment found temperatures in parts of Europe changed by more than 5 F per decade.
I am 79! I like to think that whatever is coming down the wires, so to speak, will be after my death. But that is a cop out for a) I have a son and a daughter who are in their early fifties, b) I have a grandson, my daughter and son-in-law’s young man, who is a teenager, with his birthday next month, and c) I could possibly live for another twenty years.
The challenge is how to bring this imminent catastrophic global change in temperature to the fore. We need a global solution now enforced by a globally respected group of scientists and leaders, and, frankly, I do not see that happening.
All one can do is to hope. Hope that the global community will eschew the present-day extremes of warring behaviour and see the need for change. That is NOW!
So that the Hollywood movie, The Day After Tomorrow, remains a fictional story. And for those that have forgotten the film or who have never seen it, here is a small slice of a Wikipedia report:
The atmospheric river in California is reaching up to Southern Oregon
After we had the thick end of twelve inches of rain in January, February has kept up the downpours; as of yesterday morning we had had 0.52 inches (1.32 cm) for the month and it was still raining. (And 0.8 in at 08:00 this morning.)
Here’s an item from yesterday about the situation in California.
Plus the BBC News had an item on the California flood.
So it seemed opportune to present this article on atmospheric rivers.
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What is an atmospheric river? A hydrologist explains the good and bad of these flood-prone storms and how they’re changing
A satellite image shows a powerful atmospheric river hitting the Pacific Northwest in December 2023. Darker greens are more water vapor. Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory
A series of atmospheric rivers is bringing the threat of heavy downpours, flooding, mudslides and avalanches to the Pacific Northwest and California this week. While these storms are dreaded for the damage they can cause, they are also essential to the region’s water supply, particularly in California, as Qian Cao, a hydrologist at the University of California, San Diego, explains.
What are atmospheric rivers?
An atmospheric river is a narrow corridor or filament of concentrated water vapor transported in the atmosphere. It’s like a river in the sky that can be 1,000 miles long. On average, atmospheric rivers have about twice the regular flow of the Amazon River.
When atmospheric rivers run up against mountains or run into local atmospheric dynamics and are forced to ascend, the moisture they carry cools and condenses, so they can produce intense rainfall or snowfall. https://www.youtube.com/embed/w3rtYM0HtIM?wmode=transparent&start=0 A satellite view of atmospheric rivers.
Atmospheric rivers occur all over the world, most commonly in the mid-latitudes. They form when large-scale weather patterns align to create narrow channels, or filaments, of intense moisture transport. These start over warm water, typically tropical oceans, and are guided toward the coast by low-level jet streams ahead of cold fronts of extratropical cyclones.
Along the U.S. West Coast, the Pacific Ocean serves as the reservoir of moisture for the storm, and the mountain ranges act as barriers, which is why the western sides of the coastal ranges and Sierra Nevada see so much rain and snow.
Why are back-to-back atmospheric rivers a high flood risk?
The first heavy downpours saturate the ground. As consecutive storms arrive, their precipitation falls on soil that can’t absorb more water. That contributes to more runoff. Rivers and streams fill up. In the meantime, there may be snowmelt due to warm temperatures, further adding to the runoff and flood risk.
California experienced a historic run of nine consecutive atmospheric rivers in the span of three weeks in December 2022 and January 2023. The storms helped bring most reservoirs back to historical averages in 2023 after several drought years, but they also produced damaging floods and debris flows.
Atmospheric rivers forming over the tropical Pacific Ocean head for the U.S. West Coast. NOAA
The cause of AR families is an active area of research. Compared with single atmospheric river events, AR families tend to be associated with lower atmospheric pressure heights across the North Pacific, higher pressure heights over the subtropics, a stronger and more zonally elongated jet stream and warmer tropical air temperatures.
Large-scale weather patterns and climate phenomena such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO, also play an important role in the generation of AR families. An active MJO shift occurred during the early 2023 events, tilting the odds toward increased atmospheric river activity over California.
An aerial view shows a flooded neighborhood in the community of Pajaro in central California on March 11, 2023, after a series of atmospheric rivers. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images
A recent study by scientists at Stanford and the University of Florida found that storms within AR families cause three to four times more economic damage when the storms arrive back to back than they would have caused by themselves.
How important are atmospheric rivers to the West Coast’s water supply?
I’m a research hydrologist, so I focus on hydrological impacts of atmospheric rivers. Although they can lead to flood hazards, atmospheric rivers are also essential to the Western water supply. Atmospheric rivers have been responsible for ending more than a third of the region’s major droughts, including the severe California drought of 2012-16.
They also contribute to the snowpack, which provides a significant portion of California’s year-round water supply.
In an average year, one to two extreme atmospheric rivers with snow will be the dominant contributors to the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada. Together, atmospheric rivers will contribute about 30% to 40% of an average season’s total snow accumulation there.
After several winter storms brought record snowfall to California’s Sierra Nevada in early 2023, Lake Oroville, California’s second-largest reservoir, was at 100% capacity. The previous year, much of the state had faced water restrictions. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
That’s why my colleagues at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of the University of California, San Diego, work on improving atmospheric river forecasts and predictions. Water managers need to be able to regulate reservoirs and figure out how much water they can save for the dry season while still leaving room in the reservoirs to manage flood risk from future storms.
How is global warming affecting atmospheric rivers?
My research also shows that more atmospheric rivers are likely to occur concurrently during already wet conditions. So, the chance of extreme flooding also increases. Another study, by scientists from the University of Washington, suggests that there will be a seasonal shift to more atmospheric rivers earlier in the rainy season.
There will likely also be more year-to-year variability in the total annual precipitation, particularly in California, as a study by my colleagues at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes projects.
Learning from Dogs 
