Has Jurassic Park fostered misunderstanding about extinction?

While the blockbuster franchise might have given us a distorted view of science's capabilities to address species extinction, new research might come close to "resurrecting" lost species' DNA.

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  • Jurassic Park has fueled public misconceptions about science's abilities to bring extinct species back to life.
  • De-extinction technology can resurrect genetic material from extinct species into their living relatives in a way that can assist conservation efforts.
  • Fostering empathy for other-than-human lives through stories might be the key to addressing the current ecological catastrophe.
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How to deal when things fall apart

Glenn Albrecht has ideas about how to cope with the effects of a changing world: Invent a new language.

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  • In Earth Emotions, Australia philosopher Glenn Albrecht provides a blueprint for dealing with emotional turmoil resulting from climate change.
  • Technology has many wonderful applications, but distraction and entertainment cannot be the foundation of our devices.
  • Time remains for preparing to deal with the consequences of climate change, if we act now.
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Terraform Mars? How about Earth?

Fauna and flora refuse to go quietly into the Anthropocene.

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  • Pioneers of the Greater Holocene plan to strike back against concrete.
  • Seed packets and plant nutrients are the weapons of choice for standing up to humanity's destructive impact.
  • Hopeless? Maybe. Poignant? Absolutely.
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The invention that made us human: Fire

Did fire change the development of the human brain?

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  • The earliest evidence for fire dates back nearly 440 million years.
  • Our hominin ancestors first used natural wildfires to flush out prey and forage for food.
  • Richard Wrangham's cooking hypothesis suggests that a ready supply of cooked food allowed the Homo lineage to develop its large, complex brains.
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A new spray may help treat the deadly white-nose syndrome

Bats are being subjected to a deadly plague that may be threatening their existence. However, a new bacterial spray may help fight the fungus responsible.

Photo by Clément Falize on Unsplash
  • Since 2006, white-nose syndrome has killed millions and millions of bats, threatening many species with extinction.
  • Bats may not be everybody's idea of a cute and cuddly animal, but losing them would be devastating to the ecosystem.
  • Fortunately, researchers are hard at work trying to uncover a means of dealing with this fungal disease. One such treatment is the use of the antifungal bacteria Pseudomonas fluorescens.
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