187: The Most Complicated Thing You Could Possibly Imagine

This is the members only edition of Future Crunch, a weekly roundup of good news, mind-blowing science, and the best bits of the internet (not necessarily in that order). One third of your subscription fee goes to charity.

Hi everyone, Gus here. A big thank you to the 569 of you that completed our survey from the last edition. That's a nice hefty sample size, and we've managed to some great data, plenty of good ideas to mull over and some lovely reviews too. We'll be sharing what we've learned over the next few weeks, and you might start seeing a few small changes in the newsletter as we do so.

Our first and most important task of course, is to announce the winner of that $200 Patagonia gift voucher. Every person who completed the survey was entered, given a number between 1 and 569, and then we used a random number generator that works off atmospheric noise to pick the winner. Congratulations to Jennifer Rhomberg from Colorado, United States. Check your email!

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to let us know what they think, we've read every one of your comments and suggestions, and really appreciate all of the ideas and feedback. Watch this space.

Good news you probably didn't hear about

The arrival of two vaccines for malaria portends a sea change for humanity's efforts to fight one of our greatest scourges. The first, Mosquirix, was approved by the WHO last year and will begin distribution in 2023. A more powerful vaccine with up to 80% efficacy, developed by a team at Oxford, is also just a year or two away. NYT

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a dramatic worldwide decrease in the incidence of flu, and along with it, a collapse in the genetic diversity of circulating strains. Researchers still haven't detected any sign of the B/Yamagata virus - one of the four main strains of flu that circulate in humans - since April 2020. Ars Technica

Earlier this week global leaders confirmed $2.6 billion in funding for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The funds will support efforts to overcome the final hurdles to polio eradication, vaccinate 370 million children annually over the next five years, and continue surveillance across 50 countries. “No place is safe until polio has been eradicated everywhere." WHO

The UN is calling it a historic change. Between 2005 and 2019, nearly 415 million people in India were lifted out of what is known as multidimensional poverty (MDI), a measure that includes health, education and standard of living. Children saw the fastest reduction, with child poverty falling from 34.7% to 21.8%. Economic Times

MacKenzie Scott has donated $15 million to provide glasses to farmers in developing countries, the largest single private donation ever to help solve the problem of uncorrected blurry vision. The move kickstarts a $70 million initiative to provide glasses to hundreds of thousands of tea, coffee, cocoa and artisan workers in India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda. Guardian

The past quarter century has witnessed an unprecedented decline in US child poverty. In 1993, more than one in four children lived in families living below the poverty threshold. 26 years later, that number has fallen to roughly one in 10. The magnitude of this decline - 59% - is unequalled in the history of poverty reduction efforts in the United States. Child Trends

Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? Of course you do. Well, the FDA recently approved a new drug for Lou Gehrig's disease that was partially funded by those proceeds, and the ALS Association says the remaining funds are supporting funding 130 research projects in 12 different countries, as well as 40 potential treatments in development. NPR

Slovenia's parliament has passed an amendment allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt after a constitutional court ruling earlier this year made it the first country in Eastern Europe to do so. "With these changes, we are recognising the rights of same-sex couples that they should have had for a long time." Euro News

Earlier this month, the US federal government took a big step in repairing the harms of the War on Drugs, by pardoning thousands of people with federal offenses for marijuana possession, and initiating a review of its classification. The move lifts a burden on the roughly 6,500 people whose employment and housing chances are harmed by their past convictions. Reuters

Japan will change an archaic 19th-century law whereby a child born to a woman within 300 days of divorce is considered to be that of her former husband, even if she has remarried. The revised legislation will also end a ban on pregnant women remarrying within 100 days of divorce. Bloomberg

Wealth vs income
In our last edition, we misrepresented the data from Credit Suisse about a reduction in global inequality since 2011. Our description referred to income (as in annual cash flow) but the chart represented wealth (sustained net worth). Still good news, but not quite the same thing. Shout out to Josh Browder for the pickup.

South America vs Latin America
We also reported on a reduction in river blindness in South America. However, some of the countries we mentioned, like Mexico and Guatemala, are of course in North and Central America. Looks like we were guilty here of the lazy heuristic whereby North America = first world and South America = everyone else. Similar to what people do when they use 'Asian' or 'African' as a descriptor, missing the rich diversity of those places. A better term of course would have been Latin America. Thanks to Diego Gonzalez for setting us straight.

Number of the week

The only home we've ever known

“The most astonishing and heartening coral rebirth the world has ever seen." In 2015/16, the strongest El Niño on record moved across the coral reefs of the Pacific Line Islands, killing half of them. Six years on the reefs are thriving, with more than 43 million colonies per square kilometre. Nature will recover if we let it. Nat Geo

The Republic of Congo will establish its first three marine reserves in the Atlantic. The reserves will cover 12% of the West African country’s ocean zone and protect breeding grounds used by humpback whales and leatherback turtles. The reserves will also cover areas inhabited by whale sharks, the world’s largest fish. Bloomberg

The endangered Galápagos Penguin has recorded its best breeding season on record. In 2010, conservationists began chiselling small holes out of lava for the birds after original nesting sites were taken over by feral predators. 12 years later, a quarter of the population are juveniles - a significant milestone for a species numbering less than 5,000 birds. Nat Geo

A rewilding project spanning 8,500 km² of Spain's Iberian highlands is reintroducing black vultures, lynx, and wild horses. A herd of tauros – cattle bred to fulfil the ecological role of ancient aurochs – has already been released along with 11 semi-wild horses. It's the tenth project from Rewilding Europe, and the first one in Spain. Guardian

A record-breaking 92 Saimaa ringed seal pups were born in the Saimaa Lake region of Finland this year, thanks to fishing restrictions introduced in the last few years. The population of the highly endangered species has increased by of 5.6% every year between 2015-20 due to reduced deaths from fish traps and nets. Yle

Switzerland has reversed the decline of endangered amphibians in the Aargau region. In 1999 the canton decided a mass conservation effort was needed to combat the loss of frogs, newts and toads. Authorities, non-profits, landowners and volunteers worked for 20 years to build 422 ponds - resulting in an increase in almost every pond-breeding amphibian species. BBC

Good news for animals in California, with five new laws improving welfare and protection: banning unnecessary testing for pesticides or chemical substances, enforcing disaster evacuation plans for kennel owners, easing the process for emotional support dog certification, and making it illegal to steal someone’s pet. Dodo

The first commercial crop of the methane-busting seaweed Asparagopsis has been harvested off the coast of Western Australia. When added to cattle feed, a daily dose of 20 grams per animal can reduce methane output by up to 95%. While still in its infancy, the asparagopsis industry is forecast to be worth $100 million by 2025. ABC

New legislation in the EU will require USB-C to be the single charger standard for all new smartphones, tablets, and cameras from late 2024. The makers of laptops will have until early 2026. The move is expected to cut over a thousand tons of electronic waste every year. Tech Xplore

We might be slowly getting a handle on the food waste problem. In London, grocers have stopped putting expiry dates on fresh produce, in California and France supermarkets are now giving away unsold food, and South Korea’s tough-love approach is working: between 2010 and 2019 food waste in the country declined from 3,400 tons to 2,800 tons per day. NYT

Saving the world is cheaper than ruining it

By launching a bloody invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has done more than almost any other single human being to speed up the end of the fossil fuel era.

Who said it? Nope, not us (although to be fair, you know we've been banging that drum for months). The above quote actually comes from the inaugural Green 28 List by Politico, their annual ranking of the 28 power players behind Europe’s green agenda. Top of their list? Mr Putin.

The ambition for solar and wind in China continues to balloon. Early this year, analysts tallied up plans for 600 GW of additions in 2021-25, but have now had to revise that upwards to 870 GW. That equates to China adding a US-sized, instead of a German-sized amount of clean energy, every year. At this pace, China will hit peak emissions by 2025. Lauri Myllyvirta

The government of Estonia just agreed to a 100% renewable power target for 2030. Its previous target was 40%, which Estonia now aims to reach by 2025. Down south, Greece just hit an incredible milestone. Power generation from renewables covered 100% of electricity demand for a few hours on the 6th October, for the first time in the history of the country's electricity system.

Amidst the justifiably scary talk of climate crisis, it's worth remembering tipping points aren’t just for desertification, ice sheets and coral bleaching. The same gradually-then-all-at-once dynamic also applies to decarbonization. 87 countries have now crossed the 5% tipping point for clean energy, and 19 countries have done it for electric vehicles (Canada, Australia and Spain are next). Bloomberg

New coal projects are becoming 'effectively uninsurable' outside China because so many insurance companies have ruled out support. 62% of the reinsurance market and 39% of the primary insurance market are now covered by coal exclusions, and there has also been a significant shift away from oil and gas, with more than a third of the reinsurance market now covered by exclusions. Insure our Future

The latest company to do so is the world’s largest reinsurer, Munich Re, which published an ambitious oil and gas exit policy earlier this month. The German reinsurer says that as of April 2023 it will not invest or insure projects involving new oil and gas fields or new midstream oil infrastructure.

Uruguay is doing it right: a low poverty rate, a rapidly increasing middle class and an electricity grid powered by 98% renewables. It’s also pulled off the remarkable feat of increasing annual beef production without any increase in emissions. “The true revolution is a different culture: learning to live with less waste and more time to enjoy freedom.” NYT

Want to see how quickly solar + storage can eat the world? Check out the energy interconnection queue for the United States. Absolutely astonishing shift in less than a decade, as the not-so-invisible hand of the market has really started to bite. Enough building for you, Marc Andreessen? MISO

EV battery manufacturing in the United States is about to go nuts. Six gigafactories, worth around $5 billion, were announced between 2018 and 2020. Since the start of 2021, more than 15 new facilities or expansions have been announced, reflecting a potential investment of more than $40 billion. Enough building for you, Marc Andreessen? Dallas Fed

At the biggest trucking show in the world, held in Germany last month, the exhibition was dominated by electric trucks. Scepticism about the future of battery long-distance freight is gone. Reports said it was difficult to spot a single diesel model. "No noise, no vibrations, no emissions. This is the biggest transition we've ever seen." The Driven

Indistinguishable from magic

Earth now has a defence system. Scientists have confirmed the orbit of Dimorphos was altered when NASA's probe struck it last month. The mission was conceived to test a potential strategy to defend Earth against threatening objects. The results prove such an idea would work, provided it was initiated early enough and the target wasn't overly massive. BBC

The James Webb Telescope just took a photograph of the Pillars of Creation, and we're just gonna go and leave it here because explanations don't really do it justice. How's that for a lens upgrade? We're not sure which one we like more. It's like the difference between the Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. NYT

Status update on the proton. It was first imagined a century ago as a featureless lump in the middle of a stylised atom. Then it was re-imagined as a bundle of quarks. Now, thanks to quantum mechanics, it must be re-imagined yet again as a mere abstraction, a 'haze of probabilities' which collapses, when observed, into a sort of tiny seething soup. Quanta

New research on hibernation suggests the common ancestor of all mammals was a hibernator. It seems increasingly likely that humans used to hibernate, and may be able to do so again. Your regular reminder that our brains and bodies are built over ancient underground labs filled with tools and switches we've forgotten we ever owned. New Scientist

Two big new studies have shown that deep neural networks can interpret retinal scans to predict the risk of heart attack, stroke and Alzheimer's with extraordinary accuracy. They add to the growing consensus in the medical profession that machine vision can 'see' well beyond human limits. We wonder what this capability is going to look like ten years from now? Eric Topol

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have pioneered a new type of microelectrode array for brain computer interfacing that's about one order of magnitude denser than the standard Utah array. 3D-printed at the nanoscale, and fully customizable, the array is the first interface that has three-dimensional sampling ability, drastically increasing its accuracy.

This is SG 14-222 DD. It looks pretty ordinary, but it's anything but. It just broke the world record for the most power produced by a single turbine in one day - enough for roughly 18,000 average European households. Incredible engineering. Wind power has come a long way.

The information highway is still super

Dogs and cats aren't our only friends. Gambian pouched rats are the perfect land mine detection specialists: light enough not to set off explosives, with a superb sense of smell, highly intelligent and exacting, and fun to work with — congenial, outgoing, curious. Across seven countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, they’ve been responsible for finding 150,000 explosives and had a hand (paw?) in returning 70 million m² of land back to communities, freeing close to two million people from the terror of land mines. Experience

Journalist Alex Shams spoke to six protesters in Iran about why they continue to take to the streets, four weeks after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Their voices and stories are crucial to understanding what’s happening on the ground, and what people see for their country’s future. There’s fear. There’s hope. But overall, they feel a strong and unprecedented sense of unity. "I don’t think these protests will ever stop. They will keep going, and more people will put their fear aside and join them." New York Magazine

Can't decide whether this is hokey, or a perfect little bit of wisdom. Probably both. It's from an early childhood educator named Tom Hobson, who has one of those blogs that looks like it teleported here straight from 2007. While watching a group of young kids argue over play dough, he was tempted to intervene and make it a teachable moment, but decided instead to let things play out, with surprising results. "I've come to the conclusion that this is what humans are designed for." Teacher Tom

Humankind

The Mother Teresa of Singapore

Meet Teresu Hsu Chih, a social worker dubbed the “'The Mother Teresa of Singapore,' after a lifetime of service that continued up until her death at 113 years old.

Teresa was born in China in 1898 into extreme poverty. When her abusive father abandoned the family, Teresa moved with her mother and three siblings to Malaysia where she worked as a cleaner in a convent. Determined to get an education, Teresa asked the nuns if she could study alongside the other children, and after passing her exams ventured to Hong Kong to work as a secretary and then to China, where the horrors of World War II prompted her to join the volunteer ambulance service.

Frustrated by her lack of medical skills to help the wounded, Teresa decided to become a nurse. After the war, at 47 years old, she moved to London to study nursing and spent eight years as the only trained nurse in a small hospital in South America. In 1964 she settled in Singapore, alongside her mother and elder sister and worked as a matron at a local hospital.

The following year, Teresa and her sister combined the little funds they had and opened the Home for the Aged Sick: a free nursing home for elderly people who lacked the funds or relatives to care for them. It was one of the first free nursing homes in Singapore and Teresa worked as its unpaid matron until she retired in 1983.

Teresa continued her mission as a supercentenarian, setting up her charity Heart-to-Heart, that distributed food and cash donations. She credited her long life to her curiosity, vegetarian diet and yoga practice, which she picked up at 69 years old. After a lifetime of service, Teresa died in 2011, leaving behind a legacy of kindness that continues through her charity today.

Wherever I go, I do the same thing: I put my bags down and look for people who don’t have enough to eat. This is now my life. To share what I have with those who are hungrier than I.

That's it for this edition. Thanks for being patience while we took last week off, we're back in action now and will be with you all the way until the end of the year.

Much love,

Gus, Amy and the rest of the team