Big ideas.
Once a week.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
How Big Data Can Help Us Understand Our Own DNA
Don't be afraid of looking into your own genetic make-up.
A lot of people don't want to know, but I'd like to know if I have a 10 percent or a 90 percent chance of developing Alzheimer's some day. If I know I’m likely to develop it, I’m certainly going to start looking around right now to find if there is something that I can do to offset it. So Yasmine Delawari Johnson, who is the young woman featured in the book, is actually two months pregnant in this photograph [See below]. She’s about to have her first daughter, who was actually born recently.
Her dad is from Afghanistan; her mother’s from Italy, and she’s always been very interested in her family heritage and she thought it would be very valuable to know what genes and traits she’s passing on to her daughter. She was very happy to share those with the world, which I was grateful to her for.
The second story that deals with genes and genetic sequencing and understanding our own DNA is related to this site 23andMe. It’s Mohammed Ali, who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. What he’s done is team up with 23andMe, and they’ve invited 10,000 people around the world to basically donate their DNA. They’ll do this genetic sequencing test on their DNA because there's apparently a gene they've discovered that indicates you will probably develop Parkinson’s. But some people have the gene and never develop Parkinson’s. They're trying to figure out if there is some kind of switch that turns that gene on and off.
I think the whole idea is to not be afraid of looking into your own genetic make-up. Maybe you’ll find diseases that right now we don’t have a cure for. Other people just want to stick their heads in the ground and don't want to know about it. I would prefer to know and then again try to learn as much I can about what appears to ameliorate that or keep it at bay as long as possible.
In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think's studio.
Image
© Douglas Kirkland 2012 / from The Human Face of Big Data
Model Released
Popular
3,000-pound Triceratops skull unearthed in South Dakota
"You dream about these kinds of moments when you're a kid," said lead paleontologist David Schmidt.
27 August, 2020
Excavation of a triceratops skull in South Dakota.
Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
Surprising Science
- The triceratops skull was first discovered in 2019, but was excavated over the summer of 2020.
- It was discovered in the South Dakota Badlands, an area where the Triceratops roamed some 66 million years ago.
- Studying dinosaurs helps scientists better understand the evolution of all life on Earth.
<p>David Schmidt, a geology professor at Westminster College, had just arrived in the South Dakota Badlands in summer 2019 with a group of students for a fossil dig when he received a call from the National Forest Service. A nearby rancher had discovered a strange object poking out of the ground. They wanted Schmidt to take a look.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"One of the very first bones that we saw in the rock was this long cylindrical bone," Schmidt <a href="https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2020-08-17/i-was-in-denial-missouri-paleontologist-unearths-rare-triceratops-skull" target="_blank">told</a> St. Louis Public Radio. "The first thing that came out of our mouths was, 'That kind of looks like the horn of a triceratops.'"</p><p>After authorities gave the go-ahead, Schmidt and a small group of students returned this summer and spent nearly every day of June and July <a href="https://news.westminster-mo.edu/news-releases/westminster-college-undergraduate-researchers-discover-triceratops-during-annual-dig/" target="_blank">excavating the skull.</a></p>
<img
class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image"
data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU4NjYyNS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3NTUyODAzMn0.ZULEOeC_oesOV_3aa2LymoiSTR97FdhMkX5QQQlQyzg/img.png?width=980"
id="2feab"
width="924"
height="694"
data-rm-shortcode-id="9c6386ebf352ac22ef1115dc94ea4089" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We had to be really careful," Schmidt told St. Louis Public Radio. "We couldn't disturb anything at all, because at that point, it was under law enforcement investigation. They were telling us, 'Don't even make footprints,' and I was thinking, 'How are we supposed to do that?'"</p><p>Another difficulty was the mammoth size of the skull: about 7 feet long and more than 3,000 pounds. (For context, the largest triceratops skull ever unearthed was about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2010.483632" target="_blank">8.2 feet long</a>.) The skull of Schmidt's dinosaur was likely a <em>Triceratops prorsus, </em>one of two species of triceratops that roamed what's now North America about 66 million years ago.</p><img
class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image"
data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU4NjYyNi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1ODUyNTA3Mn0.rmWU3OpDzvftP-zgbn9OfM_-egS0v7caR7beocVqRPo/img.png?width=980"
id="8a77c"
width="916"
height="682"
data-rm-shortcode-id="5a987525c4702760ad7c8002793f88d2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p>The triceratops was an herbivore, but it was also a favorite meal of the T<em>yrannosaurus rex</em>. That probably explains why the Dakotas contain many scattered triceratops bone fragments, and, less commonly, complete bones and skulls. In summer 2019, for example, a separate team on a dig in North Dakota made <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">headlines</a> after unearthing a complete triceratops skull that measured five feet in length.</p><p>Michael Kjelland, a biology professor who participated in that excavation, said digging up the dinosaur was like completing a "multi-piece, 3-D jigsaw puzzle" that required "engineering that rivaled SpaceX," he jokingly told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>.</p><img
class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image"
data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU4NjgwNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3ODE2MzY2Nn0.-f_J88kXOSmK-LOfuL2ehy8etoMnfgLq9I1w5JZstSE/img.jpg?width=980"
id="a168e"
width="1024"
height="591"
data-rm-shortcode-id="f1fcd62491a33eb22c4ba92fd3e9fe9b" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Morrison Formation" />
Morrison Formation in Colorado
James St. John via Flickr
<img
class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image"
data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU4NjYyOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2NzIwMTk0NH0.udr3vBzsNQ3_gPBTBLnUVxCyqfDcVFK7D94meBFUkSM/img.jpg?width=980"
id="245ad"
width="800"
height="376"
data-rm-shortcode-id="0b80af2b70d26d0520f7a5886111a507" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="\u200bTriceratops illustration" />
<p>As for "Shady" (the nickname of the South Dakota triceratops), Schmidt and his team have safely transported it to the Westminster campus. They hope to raise funds for restoration, and to return to South Dakota in search of more bones that once belonged to the triceratops.</p><p>Studying dinosaurs helps scientists gain a more complete understanding of our evolution, illuminating a through-line that extends from "<a href="https://naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/david-h-koch-hall-fossils-deep-time" target="_blank">deep time</a>" to present day. For scientists like Schmidt, there's also the simple joy of coming to face-to-face with a lost world.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"You dream about these kinds of moments when you're a kid," Schmidt told St. Louis Public Radio. "You don't ever think that these things will ever happen."</p>
Triceratops illustration
| Credit: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons |
Keep reading
Show less
The cost of world peace? It's much less than the price of war
The world's 10 most affected countries are spending up to 59% of their GDP on the effects of violence.
12 April, 2021
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Politics & Current Affairs
- Conflict and violence cost the world more than $14 trillion a year.
- That's the equivalent of $5 a day for every person on the planet.
- Research shows that peace brings prosperity, lower inflation and more jobs.
- Just a 2% reduction in conflict would free up as much money as the global aid budget.
- Report urges governments to improve peacefulness, especially amid COVID-19.
<h3>What is the price of peace?</h3><p>Or put another way, how much better off would we all be in a world where armed conflict was avoided?</p><p>Around <a href="https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/EVP-2021-web.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">$14.4 trillion</a> in 2019, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) which crunched the numbers. That's about <a href="https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/EVP-2021-web.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">$5 a day for every person on the planet</a>.</p><p>To give some context, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">689 million people - more than 9% of the world's population - live on less than $1.90 a day</a>, according to World Bank figures, underscoring the potential impact peace-building activities could have.</p><p>Just over 10% of global GDP is being spent on containing, preventing and dealing with the consequences of violence. As well as the 1.4 million violent deaths each year, conflict holds back economic development, causes instability, widens inequality and erodes human capital.</p><blockquote>Putting a price tag on peace and violence helps us see the disproportionately high amounts spent on creating and containing violent acts compared to what is spent on building resilient, productive, and peaceful societies.<br><cite>—Steve Killelea, founder and executive chairman, Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP)</cite><a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?via=wef&text=Putting%20a%20price%20tag%20on%20peace%20and%20violence%20helps%20us%20see%20the%20disproportionately%20high%20amounts%20spent%20on%20creating%20and%20containing%20violent%20acts%20compared%20to%20what%20is%20spent%20on%20building%20resilient%2C%20productive%2C%20and%20peaceful%20societies.%20%20%E2%80%94Steve%20Killelea%2C%20founder%20and%20executive%20chairman%2C%20Institute%20for%20Economics%20%26amp%3B%20Peace%20%28IEP%29&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.weforum.org%2Fagenda%2Fwar-violence-costs-each-human-5-a-day" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a></blockquote><h3>The cost of violence</h3><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjA0Mjg2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0ODY5ODgwMH0.MQeb_vOp0igUhFtFOY2zQrcdaq2FcLy9a6g6z4VCI8Y/img.jpg?width=980" id="9c31c" width="489" height="562" data-rm-shortcode-id="313caa77d1d5ac9b16a0b60bc9c7c5a9" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p><p><br></p><p>In a report titled<a href="https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/EVP-2021-web.pdf" target="_blank"> "The Economic Value of Peace 2021",</a> the IEP says that for every death from violent conflict, 40 times as many people are injured. The world's 10 most affected countries are spending up to 59% of their GDP on the effects of violence.</p><h3>Grounds for hope</h3><p>But the picture is not all bleak. The economic impact of violence fell for the second year in a row in 2019, as parts of the world became more peaceful.</p><p>The global cost dropped by $64 billion between 2018 and 2019, even though it was still $1.2 trillion higher than in 2012.</p><p>In five regions of the world the costs increased in 2019. The biggest jump was in Central America and the Caribbean, where a rising homicide rate pushed the cost up 8.3%.</p><p>Syria, with its ongoing civil war, suffered the greatest economic impact with almost 60% of its GDP lost to conflict in 2019. That was followed by Afghanistan (50%) and South Sudan (46%).</p><p>The report makes a direct link between peace and prosperity. It says that, since 2000, countries that have become more peaceful have averaged higher GDP growth than those which have become more violent.</p><p>"This differential is significant and represents a GDP per capita that is 30% larger when compounded over a 20-year period," the report says adding that peaceful countries also have substantially lower inflation and unemployment.</p><p>"Small improvements in peace can have substantial economic benefits," it adds. "For example, a 2% reduction in the global impact of violence is roughly equivalent to all overseas development aid in 2019."</p><p><br></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjA0Mjg1NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NTY1MTk2OX0.7iBvD_4mpXNDecsw_yh-yir2jZPL1NlZgMXybU62i8w/img.jpg?width=980" id="618ba" width="1123" height="598" data-rm-shortcode-id="18a6d05283f2c68d24e4c30af66c49b8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p><p><br></p><p>Equally, the total value of foreign direct investment globally only offsets 10% of the economic impact of violence. Authoritarian regimes lost on average 11% of GDP to the costs of violence while in democracies the cost was just 4% of GDP.</p><p>And the gap has widened over time, with democracies reducing the cost of violence by almost 16% since 2007 while in authoritarian countries it has risen by 27% over the same period.</p><p>The report uses 18 economic indicators to evaluate the cost of violence. The top three are military spending (which was $5.9 trillion globally in 2019), the cost of internal security which makes up over a third of the total at $4.9 trillion and homicide.</p><h3>Peace brings prosperity</h3><p>The formula also contains a multiplier effect because as peace increases, money spent containing violence can instead be used on more productive activities which drive growth and generate higher monetary and social returns.</p><p>"Substantial economic improvements are linked to improvements in peace," says the report. "Therefore, government policies should be directed to improving peacefulness, especially in a COVID-19 environment where economic activity has been subdued."</p><p>The IEP says what it terms "positive peace" is even more beneficial than "negative peace" which is simply the absence of violence or the fear of violence. Positive peace involves fostering the attitudes, institutions & structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.</p><p>The foundations of a positively peaceful society, it says, are: a well functioning government, sound business environment, acceptance of the rights of others, good relations with neighbours, free flow of information, high levels of human capital, low levels of corruption and equitable distribution of resources.</p><p>The World Economic Forum's report <a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Mobilizing_the_Private_Sector_Report_2020.pdf" target="_blank">Mobilizing the Private Sector in Peace and Reconciliation </a>urged companies large and small to recognise their potential to work for peace quoting the former Goldman Sachs chair, the late Peter Sutherland, who said: "Business thrives where society thrives."</p><p>Reprinted with permission of the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>. Read the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/war-violence-costs-each-human-5-a-day/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">original article</a>.</p>
Keep reading
Show less
The evolution of modern rainforests began with the dinosaur-killing asteroid
The lush biodiversity of South America's rainforests is rooted in one of the most cataclysmic events that ever struck Earth.
12 April, 2021
Velociraptor Dinosaur in the Rainforest
meen_na via Adobe Stock
Surprising Science
- One especially mysterious thing about the asteroid impact, which killed the dinosaurs, is how it transformed Earth's tropical rainforests.
- A recent study analyzed ancient fossils collected in modern-day Colombia to determine how tropical rainforests changed after the bolide impact.
- The results highlight how nature is able to recover from cataclysmic events, though it may take millions of years.
<p>About 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid slammed into present-day Chicxulub, Mexico, triggering the extinction of dinosaurs. Scientists estimate the impact killed 75 percent of life on Earth. But what's remained more mysterious is how the event shaped the future of plant life, specifically tropical rainforests. </p><p>A new study published in <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/63" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Science</em></a> explores how the so-called bolide impact at the end of the Cretaceous period paved the way for the evolution of our modern rainforests, the most diverse terrestrial ecosystems on Earth.</p><p>For the study, researchers analyzed thousands of samples of fossil pollen, leaves, and spores collected from various sites across Colombia. The researchers analyzed the samples to determine which types of plants were dominant, the diversity of plant life, and how insects interacted with plants. </p><p>All samples dated back to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, some 70 million to 56 million years ago. Back then, the region's climate was mostly humid and hot, as it is today. However, the composition and structure of forests were quite different before the impact, according to the study results.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img class="rm-lazyloadable-image rm-shortcode" type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjAzNTEwNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1OTczNjk5NH0.ymTVXP7GJJrzWaZTP86M4cn20cYrDcqrIz8Ro-PfLAQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="abcc8" width="4897" height="3648" data-rm-shortcode-id="451efc36eff4006a84221ae356978367" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Tropical jungle">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Tropical jungle with river and sun beam and foggy in the garden</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit..."><a href="https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/207145747/sasithorn?load_type=author&prev_url=detail" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SASITHORN</a> via Adobe Stock</small></p><p>For one, the region's rainforests used to have a roughly equal mix of angiosperms (shrubs and flowering trees) and plants like conifers and ferns. The rainforests also had a more open canopy structure, which allowed more light to reach the forest floor and meant that plants faced less competition for light.<br></p><p>What changed after the asteroid hit? The results suggest the impact and its aftermath led to a 45 percent decrease in plant diversity, a loss from which the region took about 6 million years to recover. But different plants came to replace the old ones, with an increasing proportion of flowering plants sprouting up over the millennia. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"A single historical accident changed the ecological and evolutionary trajectory of tropical rainforests," Carlos Jaramillo, study author and paleopalynologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City, told <a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dinosaur-killing-asteroid-tropical-forest-fossil" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Science News</em></a>. "The forests that we have today are really the by-product of what happened 66 million years ago."</p><p>Today's rainforests are significantly more biodiverse than they were 66 million years ago. One potential reason is that the more densely packed canopy structure of the post-impact era increased competition among plants, "leading to the vertical complexity seen in modern rainforests," the researchers wrote. </p><p>The extinction of long-necked, leaf-eating dinosaurs probably helped maintain this closed-canopy structure. Also boosting biodiversity was ash from the impact, which effectively fertilized the soil by adding more phosphorus. This likely benefited flowering plants over the conifers and ferns of the pre-impact era. </p><p>In addition to unraveling some of the mysteries about the origins of South America's lush biodiversity, the findings highlight how, even though life finds a way to recover from catastrophe, it can take a long time. </p><ul class="ee-ul"></ul>
Keep reading
Show less
Politics & Current Affairs
New study determines how many mothers have lost a child by country
Global inequality takes many forms, including who has lost the most children
Scroll down to load more…
