Situation Report

Sites like Pueblo Bonito in northern New Mexico reached their maximum size in the early A.D. 1100s, just before a major drought began to decrease birth rates throughout the Southwest. Credit: Nate Crabtree

Scientists chart an ancient baby boom—in southwestern Native Americans from 500 to 1300 AD

phys.org - June 30, 2014

Washington State University researchers have sketched out one of the greatest baby booms in North American history, a centuries-long "growth blip" among southwestern Native Americans between 500 to 1300 A.D.

It was a time when the early features of civilization—including farming and food storage—had matured to where birth rates likely "exceeded the highest in the world today," the researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A crash followed . . .

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CLICK HERE - PNAS - RESEARCH - Long and spatially variable Neolithic Demographic Transition in the North American Southwest

timesofindia.indiatimes.com - June 17, 2014

SYDNEY: Large concentrations of trash in the oceans, also known as "plastic soups", are as dangerous as climatic change, one of the experts in the field, Mike Moore said, Australian media reported.

These high concentrations of ocean garbage "are currently killing a more animals than climate change", Moore said.

. . . "We are facing a new phenomenon. In fact, it is a new habitat which does not have precendents in the planet's history," Moore added.

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CLICK HERE - Tracking the garbage deserts of the ocean

RESEARCH - Origin, dynamics and evolution of ocean garbage patches from observed surface drifters

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CREDIT: AP Photo/Gus Ruelas

thinkprogress.org - by Annie-Rose Strasser - June 28, 2014

The latest way that Facebook has been peeking into its users’ personal lives may be the most surprising yet: Facebook researches have published a scientific paper that reveals the company has been conducting psychological experiments on its users to manipulate their emotions.

The experiments sought to prove the phenomenon of “emotional contagion” — as in, whether you’ll be more happy if those in your Facebook news feed are.

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RESEARCH STUDY - Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks

With Ebola continuing to spread in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, bringing the epidemic under control will require a massive deployment of resources by governments in West Africa and aid organizations, according to the international medical organization Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which also warned that it has reached the limits of what its teams can do.

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