Women reported slightly more openness to uncommitted sexual relationships during the peri-ovulatory session, but significant differences were restricted only to women who exhibited the luteinizing hormone surge

Variation in sociosexuality across natural menstrual cycles: Associations with ovarian hormones and cycle phase. Urszula M. Marcinkowska et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 42, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 35-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.06.008

Abstract: The psychological construct of sociosexuality—one's sexual openness or propensity to engage in uncommitted sexual relationships—has been broadly examined within numerous cultures and mating contexts. Although there is some evidence suggesting that components of sociosexuality, namely behavior, desire and attitude, change within-person, relatively little research has investigated potential sources of such variation. The aim of our study was to explore if the individual components of sociosexuality change across the menstrual cycle, either as a function of cycle phase or ovarian hormones. One hundred and two naturally cycling women, both single and in a committed relationships, completed questions from the the SOI-R (Sociosexuality Revised) questionnaire three times during a menstrual cycle, scheduled to coincide with their early follicular, peri-ovulatory, and luteal phases. Women provided saliva samples and performed luteinizing hormone tests to distinguish between ovulatory and anovulatory cycles. Women reported slightly more openness to uncommitted sexual relationships during the peri-ovulatory session, but significant differences were restricted only to women who exhibited the luteinizing hormone surge. Ovarian hormone concentrations within cycles significantly predicted SOI Attitude and Desire scores, with estradiol positively related, and progesterone negatively related to openness to uncommitted sexuality. These effects were generally modest in size. The results of this study suggest that sociosexuality can vary within short periods of time, such as a single menstrual cycle.

Keywords: SociosexualitySOI-RMenstrual cycleLH testsEstradiolProgesteronePeri-ovulatory shifts

Baby falls while walking: We propose that a system that discounts the impact of errors in early stages of development encourages infants to practice basic skills such as walking to the point of mastery

The impact of errors in infant development: Falling like a baby. Danyang Han  Karen E. Adolph. Developmental Science, December 5 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13069

Abstract: What is the role of errors in infants' acquisition of basic skills such as walking, skills that require immense amounts of practice to become flexible and generative? Do infants change their behaviors based on negative feedback from errors, as suggested by “reinforcement learning” in artificial intelligence, or do errors go largely unmarked so that learning relies on positive feedback? We used falling as a model system to examine the impact of errors in infant development. We examined fall severity based on parent reports of prior falls and videos of 563 falls incurred by 138 13‐ to 19‐month‐old infants during free play in a laboratory playroom. Parent reports of notable falls were limited to 33% of infants and medical attention was limited to 2% of infants. Video‐recorded falls were typically low‐impact events. After falling during free play in the laboratory, infants rarely fussed (4% of falls), caregivers rarely showed concern (8% of falls), and infants were back at play within seconds. Impact forces were mitigated by infants' effective reactive behaviors, quick arrest of the fall before torso or head impact, and small body size. Moreover, falling did not alter infants' subsequent behavior. Infants were not deterred from locomotion or from interacting with the objects and elevations implicated in their falls. We propose that a system that discounts the impact of errors in early stages of development encourages infants to practice basic skills such as walking to the point of mastery.

Modern women show signs of the ancestral competition among women, disliking & aggressing against those who threaten their romantic prospects, targeting especially physically attractive & sexually uninhibited peers

Our Grandmothers’ Legacy: Challenges Faced by Female Ancestors Leave Traces in Modern Women’s Same-Sex Relationships. Tania A. Reynolds. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jan 4 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-020-01768-x

Abstract: Investigations of women’s same-sex relationships present a paradoxical pattern, with women generally disliking competition, yet also exhibiting signs of intrasexual rivalry. The current article leverages the historical challenges faced by female ancestors to understand modern women’s same-sex relationships. Across history, women were largely denied independent access to resources, often depending on male partners’ provisioning to support themselves and their children. Same-sex peers thus became women’s primary romantic rivals in competing to attract and retain relationships with the limited partners able and willing to invest. Modern women show signs of this competition, disliking and aggressing against those who threaten their romantic prospects, targeting especially physically attractive and sexually uninhibited peers. However, women also rely on one another for aid, information, and support. As most social groups were patrilocal across history, upon marriage, women left their families to reside with their husbands. Female ancestors likely used reciprocal altruism or mutualism to facilitate cooperative relationships with nearby unrelated women. To sustain these mutually beneficial cooperative exchange relationships, women may avoid competitive and status-striving peers, instead preferring kind, humble, and loyal allies. Ancestral women who managed to simultaneously compete for romantic partners while forming cooperative female friendships would have been especially successful. Women may therefore have developed strategies to achieve both competitive and cooperative goals, such as guising their intrasexual competition as prosociality or vulnerability. These historical challenges make sense of the seemingly paradoxical pattern of female aversion to competition, relational aggression, and valuation of loyal friends, offering insight into possible opportunities for intervention.

Supposedly, having multiple non-marital sex partners reduces traditional incentives for men to get married; instead, recent sex partners reduce the odds of marriage, but the lifetime number of non-marital sex partners does not

Wolfinger, Nicholas H., and Samuel Perry. 2021. “Does Promiscuity Affect Marriage Rates?.” SocArXiv. January 4. doi:10.31235/osf.io/n9e6p

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1346329239063293952

Abstract: Sociologists have proposed numerous theories for declining marriage rates in the United States, generally highlighting demographic, economic, and cultural factors. One controversial theory contends that having multiple non-marital sex partners reduces traditional incentives for men to get married and simultaneously undermines their prospects in the marriage market. For women, multiple partners purportedly reduces their desirability as spouses by evoking a gendered double-standard about promiscuity. Though previous studies have shown that having multiple premarital sex partners is negatively associated with marital quality and stability, to date no research has examined whether having multiple non-marital sex partners affects marriage rates. Data from four waves of the National Survey of Family Growth reveal American women who report more sex partners are less likely to get married (though so too are virgins). Yet this finding is potentially misleading given the retrospective and cross-sectional nature of the data. Seventeen waves of prospective data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth’s 1997 mixed-gender cohort that extend through 2015 show that more non-marital sex partners has a temporary effect on marriage rates: recent sex partners reduce the odds of marriage, but the lifetime number of non-marital sex partners does not. Seemingly unrelated bivariate probit models suggest that the short-term effect is likely causal. Our findings ultimately cast doubt on recent scholarship that has implicated the ready availability of casual sex in the retreat from marriage. Rather, the effect of multiple sex partners on marriage rates is “seasonal” for most Americans.

A 44-year-old woman started to ask whether her family had attended her funeral; since she thought she had died, she told her husband to marry another woman

Cotard syndrome in anti-NMDAR encephalitis: two patients and insights from molecular imaging. J Ramirez Bermudez et al. The Neural Basis of Cognition, Jan 4 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2020.1866018

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1346129241281339398

Abstract: Cotard syndrome is a clinical condition defined by the presence of nihilistic delusions. We report two patients with Cotard syndrome in whom anti-NMDAR encephalitis (ANMDARE) was confirmed. Both cases showed features of affective psychosis, developed catatonic syndrome, and worsened after the use of antipsychotics. 18F-FDG PET brain studies showed a bilateral hemispheric pattern of hypometabolism in posterior regions, mainly in the cingulate cortex and in the medial aspects of parietal and occipital lobes. A more severe hypometabolism was observed in the right hemisphere of both patients. Both cases remitted with the use of specific immunotherapy for ANMDARE.

KEYWORDS: Cotard syndromenihilistic delusionsanti-NMDAR encephalitisautoimmune encephalitismolecular imaging

This paper proposes that ancestral use of irrigation increases autocracy and a culture of collectivism, & reduces contemporary female labor force participation and female property rights

Fredriksson, Per G.; Gupta, Satyendra Kumar (2020): Irrigation and Culture: Gender Roles and Women’s Rights, GLO Discussion Paper, No. 681, Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/225005/1/GLO-DP-0681.pdf

Abstract: This paper proposes that ancestral use of irrigation reduces contemporary female labor force participation and female property rights. We test this hypothesis using an exogenous measure of irrigation and data from the Afrobarometer, cross-country data, the European Social Survey, the American Community Survey, and the India Demographic and Household Survey. Our hypothesis receives considerable empirical support. We find negative associations between ancestral irrigation and actual female labor force participation, and attitudes to such participation, in contemporary African and Indian populations, 2nd generation European immigrants, 1.5 and 2nd generation US immigrants, and in cross-country data. Moreover, ancestral irrigation is negatively associated with attitudes to female property rights in Africa and with measures of such rights across countries. Our estimates are robust to a host of control variables and alternative specifications. We propose multiple potential partial mechanisms. First, in pre-modern societies the men captured technologies complementary to irrigation, raising their relative productivity. Fertility increased. This caused lower female participation in agriculture and subsistence activities, and the women worked closer to home. Next, due to the common pool nature of irrigation water, historically irrigation has involved more frequent warfare. This raised the social status of men and restricted women’s movement. These two mechanisms have produced cultural preferences against female participation in the formal labor market. Finally, irrigation produced both autocracy and a culture of collectivism. These are both associated with weaker female property rights.

JEL Codes: J16, J21, N50, O10, P14, Q15, Z13.

Keywords: Irrigation; agriculture; culture; gender; norms; labor force participation; property rights.

5. Possible Mechanisms

In this section, we discuss possible mechanisms for the effect of irrigation potential on

female labor force participation and female property rights, respectively.

5.1. Female participation on pre-industrial agriculture

Boserup (1970) argues that males have historically captured technologies complementary

to irrigation, which increased their productivity in irrigated agriculture. Women worked with

less advanced technology and were relatively less productive. Irrigation activities may also be

dangerous (including to accompanying children), and may involve confrontations with

neighbors over water allocation. These factors all contribute to male labor specialization in

irrigated agriculture. While women still worked in agriculture to some degree, their work

gravitated toward the homestead, e.g. specializing in processing cereals and child care,

spending their lives mainly indoors or in the courtyard with little contact with non-relatives

(Ember, 1983).20

The Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), compiled by Murdock and White (1969), has

data from 186 separate pre-industrial societies.21 The Ethnographic Atlas by Murdock (1967)

has data on 1,267 pre-industrial societies from around the world. The Atlas contains little

information about the societies themselves, however. The measure of the female-relative-tomale participation in overall agricultural production takes values from 1 to 5, where relative

participation is coded as follows. 1: males exclusively; 2: males predominantly; 3: equally; 4:

females predominantly; and 5: females exclusively. The dependent variables. The measure of

the relative time and effort spent on subsistence activities by females varies from 1 to 3, where

1: men expend more; 2: men and women expend roughly equal; 3: women expend more.

While the SCCS and the Atlas contain information on the centroid of each society, the

measurement of the precise location may involve errors. Moreover, information about the land

area covered by these pre-industrial societies is missing. We use a buffer zone of 200 km

around the centroid in order to construct the measure of irrigation potential and control

variables (Alesina et al., 2013). The ethnographic controls include suitability of the local

environment for agriculture, the presence of large domesticated animals, the proportion of the

local environment that is tropical or subtropical, an index of settlement density, and an index

of political development.

The mean variable values are provided in the table heading of Table 6. While column (1)

uses data from the Ethnographic Atlas, the remaining columns use SCCS data. Columns (1)-

(4) use female overall participation in agriculture as outcome variable, column (5) studies the

overall relative female contribution to subsistence in time and effort, and columns (6)-(8)

provide estimates for crop tending, harvesting, and milking, respectively. All columns include

fixed effects for the century-of-observance and language, ethnographic controls including plow

use, suitability of the local environment for agriculture, the presence of large domesticated

animals, the proportion of the local environment that is tropical or subtropical, economic

complexity, and political development.

Column (1) irrigation potential has a negative and statistically significant influence on

relative female participation in agricultural activities overall. The effect of moving from zero

to complete irrigation potential equals -1.45, which is substantial given the 3.04 mean. The

effect is stronger in column (2), using SCCS data. Column (3) adds a dummy for whether

cereals are the main crops, which Ember (1983) and Hansen et al. (2015) suggest influences

female labor force participation. The coefficient on irrigation potential rises further. Column

(4) controls for societies with formal class stratification systems, where males may be less

likely to participate in agricultural field work. The two added controls are insignificant, while

irrigation potential remains significant. Column (5) suggests that the female relative

contribution to subsistence activities were lower in societies with greater irrigation potential.

This reflects a shift away from agricultural field activities towards greater domestic and child

rearing duties. Columns (6)-(7) provide evidence that irrigation is associated with a decline in

female participation in some important agricultural activities outside the home, while column

(8) suggests the opposite effect occurred to milking which occurs closer to home. Table C5 in

online Appendix C provides cross-country OLS evidence that irrigation is associated with

restrictions on women’s freedom of movement within a country, using data from Coppedge et

al. (2019).

Overall, the results are consistent with women staying closer to the homestead in irrigated

areas during the pre-industrial time period. This suggests one possible partial mechanism which

links irrigation to lower contemporary female labor force participation rates and related

attitudes. The division of labor appears to have persisted through intergenerational cultural

transmission. [Table 6]

5.2. Warfare

Irrigation water is frequently a common pool resource. Since water consumption by

upstream communities may affect consumption by downstream communities, especially in

times of drought, conflicts are likely to occur. Anecdotal evidence includes Iraq and the

Andes.22 Irrigation agriculture also led to a storable surplus and relatively more valuable land,

providing incentives for raids and external warfare by other groups (e.g., Ember, 1982; Ang

and Gupta, 2018). We hypothesize that irrigation societies had a greater incidence of violent

external conflict. This yielded a greater demand for men due to greater muscle strength and

aggressiveness, improving their social standing (Chagnon, 1988; Ramos-Toro, 2019). RamosToro (2019) provides evidence of a negative relationship between exposure to conflict and

contemporary female labor force participation.23 Warfare may also have been associated with

reduced female mobility, and stricter social norms and restrictions on women’s labor market

participation outside the home.

Table 7 provides some support for this hypothesis. Columns (1)-(3) utilize society level

data from the SCCS (Murdock and White, 1969), while columns (4)-(9) use historical district

level data from India. The dependent variable in column (1) is a measure of external warfare.

We focus on societies with agricultural activities. We recode the Murdock and White (1969)

external warfare measure as follows: it takes a value of 1 if external war is ‘frequent, occurring

at least yearly’ or ‘common, at least every five years’; it takes a value of zero if ‘occasional, at

least every generation’ or ‘rare or never’. The sample size declines to 54. This renders language

and century fixed effects and the inclusion of tropical climate infeasible in this analysis. The

results should thus be interpreted with these drawbacks in mind. The logit model in column (1)

suggests that irrigation potential is positively associated with external warfare. Columns (2)-

(3) present ordered logit regressions. Column (2) is the basic model from Table 1 with female

participation in overall agriculture as the outcome variable (but with a smaller sample size).

External warfare is negative and significant in column (3), while the irrigation potential point

estimate declines modestly (in absolute value) from -2.00 to -1.67. This provides some support

for the hypothesis that a history of external warfare a partial channel between irrigation and

female participation in agriculture in pre-industrial societies.

Columns (4)-(9) provide district level evidence from India in support of the proposed

warfare mechanism. In rural India, most households working outside the home are engaged in

agricultural sector work (Kapsos et al., 2014). We measure female employment outside the

home by the ratio of the population of female agricultural workers to the total female population

in year 2011. In column (4), war count is a measure of the total number to land battles over

years 610-1962 occurring within a distance of 50km from the district, geocoded using Jacques

(2007).24 In column (7), the period of observations for war count is instead restricted to 1001-

1867AD. Jacques (2007) records relatively few instances of wars before 1001 (data quality

may be an issue), and in 1858 the British Crown took over the administration of India from the

British East India Company. The wars for accession of the native states ceased after 1857.

Columns (4) and (7) present negative binominal regressions, while columns (5), (6), (8), and

(9) are generalized linear model regressions. Geographical controls (temperature, precipitation,

latitude, area, land quality, and nightlight luminosity) and language fixed effects (largest

language group within the district, reflecting cultural variation across districts) are included.

One benefit of using data on India is the low interstate migration rate, which maintains longterm cultural differences (Kone et al., 2018).

Column (4) suggests a positive association between a district’s irrigation potential and the

historical experience with wars. When war count is included in column (6), the (absolute value

of the) irrigation potential point estimate declines relative to column (5), from -0.137 to -0.115,

while war count is negative and significant. The takeaway from columns (7)-(9) is similar.

These findings provide some support for the hypothesis that a history of warfare is a possible

partial mechanism linking irrigation and female participation in agriculture in contemporary

India. [Table 7]

5.3. Autocracy

Next, we provide evidence that historical irrigation may affect contemporary female

property rights regimes via an autocracy channel. Underpinned by resource curse theory,

Bentzen et al. (2017) argue that historical irrigation agriculture raised the likelihood that a preindustrial society was ruled by an elite based on the control of a natural resource. This has

yielded lower levels of contemporary democracy. Autocracies have weaker property rights

(Gradstein, 2007), and Fish (2002) suggests that authoritarianism is associated with negative

outcomes for women.25

To study the determination of female property rights, we utilize the standard general

measures of democracy, Polity2. The male political majority (in both democracies and

autocracies) is likely to determine the extent of female property rights. Table 8 shows that

democracy works as channel for the effect of irrigation potential on contemporary female

property rights. Column (1) establishes that irrigation potential has a negative effect on

democracy, measured by Polity2. In column (2), irrigation potential has a negative effect on

female property rights as shown above, but this effect disappears when we include democracy

in column (3). This suggests that the effect of irrigation on female property rights works at least

partially through the democracy channel. In contrast, while democracy has a positive

association with male property rights in column (5), there is no evidence that democracy works

as a link between irrigation and male property rights. [Table 8]

Table C6 in the online appendix provides additional evidence that attitudes, actual female

political participation rates, and the freedom to discuss politics are negatively associated with

irrigation potential. The first column uses a statement from the Afrobarometer as outcome

variable, and the remaining three columns use variables from Coppedge et al. (2019). 26

5.4. Individualism vs. Collectivism

This section investigates the cultural dimension of individualism vs. collectivism as a

possible potential mechanism. Buggle (2020) finds that irrigation is negatively correlated with

individualism, because irrigation required constant collaboration which yielded collectivism.

Gorodnichenko and Roland (2017) argue that the degree of individualism influences societies’

institutional choices. In particular, they find that individualism has a positive association with

the level of protection against expropriation risk, a measure of property rights. Binder (2019)

reports that collectivism is correlated with a belief in traditional gender roles.

Table 9 explores whether individualism vs. collectivism may function as a partial channel

between irrigation potential and contemporary female property rights. We use Hofstede et al.’s

(2010) measure of individualism and Coppedge et al.’s (2019) measure of property rights.

Irrigation potential has a negative correlation with individualism in column (1) and with female

property rights in column (2). This effect declines moderately (in absolute value) when

individualism is entered in column (3), from -1.75 to -1.64. However, a similar pattern occurs

for male property rights in columns (4) and (5), from -1.67 to -1.57. It appears that the

individualism vs. collectivism dimension of culture may provide a partial link between

irrigation potential and property rights for both genders. Thus, we do not find strong evidence

that this link is stronger for female than for male property rights. To investigate this further,

Table C7 in the online appendix includes both individualism and democracy as potential

mechanisms. It appears that both mechanisms work for female property rights, but only

democracy constitutes a channel for male property rights. [Table 9]

Taste is afforded the greatest relevance to nutrition as it is posited to have improved the probability of survival, helping screen safe and potentially toxic properties of foods; this teleology is dubious

Taste, teleology and macronutrient intake. Richard D Mattes. Current Opinion in Physiology, Volume 19, February 2021, Pages 162-167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cophys.2020.11.003

Abstract: Among the human sensory systems, taste is afforded the greatest relevance to nutrition as it is posited to have aided the identification and ingestion of nutrients in the environment and thereby improved the probability of survival. With respect to the macronutrients, sweet, umami and oleogustus (fat taste) reportedly facilitated meeting energy, essential amino acid and essential fatty acid requirements. However, such a teleological view fails to account for the fact that humans are largely blind to the primary sources of the macronutrients in the environment (starch, protein and triacylglycerol) and, in the case of protein and fat, the effective taste stimuli are generally unpleasant degradation products. Additional challenges to the prevailing teleology are also presented. Some have proposed that the sense of taste serves as a palatability screen that functions more basically by signaling safe and potentially toxic properties of potential foods. However, it is well documented that sensory qualities are unreliable predictors of food safety (sweet foods can be toxic and bitter foods nutritious). Instead, it is proposed that taste contributes to food choice by acquiring predictive information about wholesomeness through innate and learned mechanisms.

Sweet taste

Humans are limited to carbohydrates, fats and proteins as substrates to meet energy needs. Knowledge of the composition of ancient human diets is incomplete, but recent evidence supports a substantive contribution of starchy foods in many pre-agricultural populations [12] though it likely varied widely between subpopulations [13]. Access to simple carbohydrates would have been extremely low [14].

A functional role for sweet taste is forcefully made by reduced conservation of the sweet taste receptor and evidence of insensitivity to this quality by vertebrates not exploiting sweet foodstuffs (e.g. cats, sea lions, whales, pandas, horses, western clawed frog, vampire bats) as well as reemergence of sensitivity by hummingbirds who are exclusive nectar feeders while other birds lack this capability and food choice [15•,16,17••]. However, a broader analysis reveals a lack of association between losses of sweet taste sensitivity and diet [17••].

There are multiple additional observations that challenge the view that sensitivity to sweetness would be a functional mechanism to access carbohydrate. First, there is no essential mono or disaccharide and those are the predominant effective sweet taste stimuli. Thus, sweet taste is not tuned to an essential nutrient. Second, sources of sweet carbohydrate were extremely rare in the environment throughout most of human evolution. With the exception of limited access to honey and seasonal fruits, a receptor tuned to simple sugars would have served little purpose post-weaning. Even its role in promoting milk ingestion pre-weaning is uncertain. Fat is the primary determinant of the energy density of breast milk and studies with gruels varying in energy density and sweetness reveal intake is more closely related to energy density [18]. Also, interestingly, kittens who are carnivores and lack a functional sweet receptor nurse effectively [19] on mature cat milk that is approximately 4% lactose and only 6.3–8.6% protein [20]. Third, a more functional taste contribution to locating and promoting carbohydrate intake would have been sensitivity to starch which was abundant. There is preliminary evidence of human sensitivity to short chain oligosaccharides of 7 and 14 units (not 44) [21], but the sensation is not mediated by the T1R2–T1R3 (sweet) receptor and the sensation they evoke is not sweetness.

Further, it is clear that sweetness is an imperfect indicator of safe and available carbohydrate as sweet fruits are not necessarily rich sources of carbohydrate or energy (i.e. they have low energy density due to their high water content), not all sweet stimuli are carbohydrate (e.g. Monellin, Thaumatin, Brazzine are proteins) and some sweet molecules are toxic (e.g. lead acetate).

In summary, sweetness lacks the sensitivity and specificity to identify and promote the consumption of wholesome carbohydrates in the environment. However, it is not disputed that sweetness is rewarding and an appetitive signal that promotes feeding generally [18,22,23].

Umami taste

Proteins are comprised of amino acids, nine of which are considered essential that is, cannot be synthesized in humans so must be acquired from the diet. Rarely are free amino acids encountered in the environment because protein synthesis is extremely efficient. Amino acids are synthesized when needed to build proteins and in requisite proportions. Proteins play many roles in the body. They serve as enzymes, hormones, neurotransmitters, nutrient transporters, structural elements and are crucial for growth and development, pH balance, fluid balance, immune function and when consumed in excess of need, can provide energy.

Given these multiple essential roles, a teleological view would support a sensory system tuned to protein sources in the environment. However, the importance of taste in this regard is questionable. Some evidence suggests taste alone allows rapid identification of dietary protein sources in protein-depleted rats [24], but the preponderance of evidence indicates selection in rodents and other animals depends on post-ingestive learning where the sensory signal only acquires predictive power based on an association with a corrective post-ingestive outcome [25,26]. Second, a number of essential amino acids are effective taste stimuli, but a number of these elicit unpleasant sensations (e.g. methionine, leucine, tryptophan) and render protein hydrolysates unpalatable. This would discourage ingestion of the required nutrient.

The more specific case of Umami taste has attracted considerable attention. The prototypical stimulus for Umami taste is monosodium glutamate (MSG). Psychophysical studies in infants [27] and adults [28] indicate the stimulus is rejected when presented in water. In suprathreshold concentrations the quality of D-MSG is soapy-metalic and L-MSG is described as predominantly bitter [29], generally negative qualities. It is only in selected food contexts that it contributes a positive quality [30] and then this is augmented by the co-presence of 5′ ribonucoleotides [31]. Despite the low palatability of MSG, the teleological argument has been made that sensitivity to the compound signals the presence of protein sources in the environment and presumably the desirability of consuming them [32••]. Consistent with this view, herbivores generally lack the umami taste receptor [16]. However, the necessity of this signaling system is not supported. Selected animals have lost taste responsivity to umami (e.g. pig, horse, rabbit, tree shrew, mouse lemur, marmoset, tarsier, hyrax, sea lion, bottlenose dolphin) but all animals require protein [17••,33]. Additionally, if the teleological perspective that umami sensitivity aids acquisition of needed protein is true, individuals with low or marginal protein status should exhibit augmented hedonic responses to MSG containing foods. Heightened hedonic responses to other nutrients during periods of deficit have been documented [34]. While there is a report to this effect [35] for protein, the broader literature is not supportive [28,36]. Indeed, palatability is diminished in this state and is relatively heightened in the protein replete state [32••], counter to the hypothesis. An additional teleological argument holds that there would have been a survival benefit of detecting and consuming purine-rich foods which would contain higher concentrations of ribonucleotides. These foods can lead to elevated uric acid concentrations with consequent physiological responses that could have mitigated famine-related threats to survival [37]. If true, then, it is problematic now where famines are less common and diseases of overconsumption predominate, including gout, hypertension and glucose intolerance. If gustatory wisdom held in this case, it appears to have been lost or rendered non-functional in the current environment.

Taken together, the evidence indicates food choices related to satisfying protein requirements are guided more by non-protein specific signals that become associated with post-ingestive cues that protein needs are met and umami taste, in particular, serves to promote the overall palatability of the diet and thereby encourages food intake generally [38].

Fat taste (Oleogustus)

Linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) are essential fatty acids (EFA) for humans, that is, they cannot be synthesized in the body and must be obtained via the diet. Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) can be synthesized from ALA, but the conversion efficiency is low so a dietary source is beneficial. These fatty acids serve multiple purposes in the body. They have anti-inflammatory activity, are structural elements in cell membranes and are precursors to a range of bioactive compounds. Additionally, fats, in general, are the most energy dense macronutrient. Thus, a system to detect them and promote their consumption would hold survival value.

Though there have been isolated claims that there is a taste for fat, this view received little empirical support until recently [39••]. The predominant signals from dietary fat were considered visual, somatosensory and olfactory. The somatosensory contribution from triacylglycerols, the predominant form of dietary fat, include sensations such as creaminess, viscosity, lubricity, and mouth-coating and are largely rated as appetitive (i.e. palatable). In contrast, the olfactory cues, stemming primarily from free fatty acids (FFA) derived from triacylglycerol, are largely considered aversive. Consequently, for most foods, concentrations of free fatty acids are purposefully held below detection thresholds during product development. Of course, through experience even strong fat-based odors can acquire a positive valence. Work demonstrating dietary fat can elicit an early spike in plasma triacylglycerol concentrations when somatosensory and olfactory cues were largely controlled, suggested a role for taste [40]. Studies in mice indicate FFA, not triacylglycerol, are the effective taste stimuli [41]. Subsequent studies documented measurable and differential taste threshold for various fatty acids [42] in humans and the qualities appear to change with fatty acid chain length. Short-chain fatty acids are largely sour (<C:6) while longer chain fatty acids (>C:16) evoke an unpleasant sensation that is unique from other primary taste qualities [43] and has been termed oleogustus. The essential fatty acids are consistently rated as unpleasant. They would be encountered in the environment largely through rancid foods and it has been posited that they act more as warning signals than appetitive signals. This is inconsistent with a teleological perspective that the function of oleogustus is to aid in the acquisition of EFA and/or energy. Indeed, it has further been proposed that high fat intake occurs because of insensitivity to the taste of fatty acids [44]. There is the possibility that the taste of low concentrations of long-chain FFA could contribute positively to the overall flavor profile of some foods, just as bitter notes, unpleasant in isolation, contribute to the palatability of selected foods (e.g. wines, chocolate, coffee). Of course, if one accepts this caveat, it is also true that bitterness cannot be regarded as a uniformly aversive signal protecting against toxin exposure.

Whether oleogustus qualifies as a taste primary is not settled science. If it is accepted, the effective taste stimulus would most likely occur in rancid foodstuffs. The quality of the sensation would discourage ingestion and hinder meeting EFA and energy needs.

People vary with regard to their temperature & spiciness preferences for unknown reasons; these preferences correlate, & were not associated with age, gender & cultural background, which suggests that they may be innate

Some like it hot: Preference for temperature and pungency consumption is associated with sensitivity to noxious heat. Ruth Defrin  Michal Dekel‐Steinkeller  Gideon Urca. European Journal of Pain, October 21 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.1686

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1346085339493003265

Abstract

Background: Individuals vary in their temperature and pungency preferences; whereas some individuals prefer to bath in, or consume food and beverages at very high temperatures, others prefer lukewarm temperatures. Similarly, pungent food may be preferred by some, but not by others. The aim was to investigate, for the first time whether temperature and pungency preferences are associated with variations in thermal sensitivity or ethnic origin related to pungency consumption.

Methods: 115 healthy volunteers participated. The thresholds for warm (WST) and heat‐pain (HPT) sensations were measured over the tongue and dorsal hand, and the participants’ preferred drinking and bath temperatures were measured. In addition, data on the participants’ ethnic background as well as temperature and pungency preferences and household habits regarding eating, drinking and bathing were collected.

Results: The reported drinking and bathing preferences correlated significantly with the measured drinking and bath temperatures, respectively, validating subjects’ reports. Tongue and hand HPT, but not WST, correlated with both the reported and the measured drinking and bathing preferences, as well as with pungency preferences. Neither ethnic origin nor gender affected HPT or temperature preferences; however, males preferred a greater level of spiciness than females.

Conclusions: The association of the reported and measured preferences with noxious heat sensitivity in both relevant and irrelevant body regions, and lack of an ethnicity effect may suggest that these qualities are innate. The association of HPT and spiciness preferences correspond with the mutual activation of the tongue vanilloid receptors by noxious heat and capsaicin.

Significance: People vary with regard to their temperature and spiciness preferences for reasons yet unknown. The study revealed that these preferences correlate with one another and were associated with the sensitivity to noxious heat but not with age, gender and cultural background, which suggests that they may be innate.

The historian Fred Shannon said in 1945 that local soil heterogeneity limited the ability of American farmers to learn from the experience of their neighbors, & that this contributed to their "traditional individualism"

Learning is Caring: Soil Heterogeneity, Social Learning and the Formation of Close-knit Communities. Itzchak Tzachi Raz. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, December 2020. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ste4oik85j5kjc0/Raz_Learning_is_Caring.pdf

This paper studies the impact of social learning on the formation of close-knit communities. It provides empirical support to the hypothesis, put forth by the historian Fred Shannon in 1945, that local soil heterogeneity limited the ability of American farmers to learn from the experience of their neighbors, and that this contributed to their "traditional individualism." Consistent with this hypothesis, I establish that historically, U.S. counties with a higher degree of soil heterogeneity displayed weaker communal ties. I provide causal evidence on the formation of this pattern in a Difference-in-Differences framework, documenting a reduction in the strength of farmers' communal ties following migration to a soil-heterogeneous county, relative to farmers that moved to a soil-homogeneous county. Using the same design, I also show that soil heterogeneity did not affect the social ties of non-farmers. The impact of soil heterogeneity is long-lasting, still affecting culture today. These findings suggest that, while understudied, social learning is an important determinant of culture.

Keywords: Culture, Individualism, Community, Social Learning, Agriculture, Persistence

JEL Classification: N51, N52, N91, N92, N31, N32, Z10, Z13, O13, D83, D70

Gendered Fitness Interests: An individual's socio-political views covary with the sex of their children or the numbers of relatives of each sex

Gendered fitness interests: A method partitioning the effects of family composition on socio-political attitudes and behaviors. Robert C. Brooks, Khandis R. Blake. Evolution and Human Behavior, January 4 2021. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513820301495

Abstract: Whereas most people are biologically either male or female, their genetic interests are almost never aligned with just their own sex. Drawing on the evolutionary theory of inclusive fitness gained through relatives, we partition the effects of kin on fitness into those that derive from female versus male relatives. We argue that the balance of these female- and male-derived effects, which we call ‘Gendered Fitness Interests’ (GFI), might influence human behavior, especially the adoption of socio-political attitudes that have a gendered dimension. Our proposal builds on observations that an individual's socio-political views covary with the sex of their children or the numbers of relatives of each sex. Further, it is consistent with the relatively small average differences between women's and men's socio-political positions. We outline a method for partitioning GFI, and use simulation models to explore some of its properties. We then show that (1) the GFI component of women's and men's socio-political attitudes will converge, on average, with age. (2) The contributions of both descendent and non-descendent kin lead to considerable variation in GFI. (3) When men have longer average reproductive lifespans than women, GFI can show small male-biases. (4) Paternity uncertainty reduces the variation in GFI between individuals, and (5) Large family sizes are associated with more variation among individuals in GFI. Our proposal provides a framework for the study of the effects of kin on traits and attitudes with a gendered dimension. In this respect, it may prove generally useful in resolving the complex origins of gendered behavior.

From 2019... The 1862 Homestead Act granted 10% of the land in the United States to 1.6 million individuals; areas with greater historical exposure to homesteading are poorer and more rural today

From 2019... There’s No Such Thing As Free Land: The Homestead Act and Economic Development. Ross Mattheis, Itzchak Tzachi Raz. Harvard Job Market Paper, December 31, 2019. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/iraz/files/Raz_JMP_2019.pdf

Abstract: The 1862 Homestead Act provided free land conditional on five years of residency and cultivation to settlers of the American West. In total, the Act granted 10% of the land in the United States to 1.6 million individuals. This study examines the impact of the Act on long-run development. Using spatial regression discontinuity and instrumental variable designs, we find that areas with greater historical exposure to homesteading are poorer and more rural today. The impact on development is not only driven through differences in the urban share of the population; cities in homesteading areas are less developed and non-agricultural sectors are less productive. Using newly geo-referenced historical census data, we document the path of divergence starting from the initial settlement. We find that homesteading regions were slower to transition out of agriculture. The historical and empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the transitory distortions caused by the Act’s residency and cultivation requirements induced selection on settlers’ comparative advantage in agriculture. This, in turn, inhibited the development of non-agricultural sectors and the subsequent benefits of agglomeration.

Appendix C Alternative Explanations

In this section, we consider two competing hypotheses regarding channels. The first is that a higher prevalence of land consolidation and large landowners in non-homesteading regions had a positive impact on development. The second is that homesteading contributed to the development of cultural traits and values that were unfavourable for long-run economic development. We find that neither hypothesis is supported by the empirical facts.

C.1 Land Consolidation and Large Landowners

A main competing hypothesis regarding channels focus on the existence of large landowner. Some historians have argued that the large land holdings of absentee owners, often referred to as land speculators, had an adverse effect on economic development (Gates, 1973; Swierenga, 1977). Specifically, it has been argued that absentee owners slowed economic development by keeping land idle and away from settlers, contributed to the raise in farm tenancy and lower investments in agriculture, and reduced local tax collection needed to support public goods. Recent studies in economics provide causal evidence supporting some of these arguments (Raz, 2018; Smith, 2019). On the other hand, other scholars have argued that absentee landownership actually had a positive impact, stressing their important function as land retailers, their risk-bearing and informational roles, their contribution to the development of early cities, and the fact that they helped to attract settlers west (North, 1974; Swierenga, 1977).

Moreover, Cogswell (1975) finds a negative correlation between absentee landownership and farm tenancy, and argues that land “speculators may have directly reduced the proportion of tenant farmers by offering land on credit” (p. 27). Can a lower prevalence of large land owners in the homesteading region be responsible for the adverse impact on long-run development?

In the context of the Osage land cessions, this seems less plausible. Similar to privatization under the Homestead Act, land on the Osage cessions was only sold to actual settlers, in tracts not exceeding 160 acres. Nevertheless, this is not the general case for the counterfactual to homesteading,45 and it is theoretically possible that unlike homestead tracts, for which property rights were only awarded after five years, land on the Osage cessions was quickly consolidated and passed to the hands of large landowners.

To assess the likelihood of this possibility, we utilize census data on the average size of farms, available at the civil townships level in 1930,46 and use the discontinuity in homestead assignment across the historical Osage boundary to examine effects on farm sizes. The results of the analysis are presented in table C.1. We do not find any statistically significant effects. Not only that, but the point estimates are highly unstable across specification and bandwidth, which suggests that the lack of statistical significance is not likely to be driven by low power alone.

C.2 Values and Culture

Another competing hypothesis we consider is that settlement under the Homestead Act shaped values and culture, which in turn affected economic activity. We will consider two separate hypotheses.

The first is that the settlement under the Act contributed to the creation of more egalitarian communities with a closely knit social structure. Some historians have argued that the adverse conditions during the first years of settlement draw homesteaders to rely on each other’s assistance. Lee (1979) notes that "Homestead neighbors shared labor, provisions and most important of all, each other’s company" (p. 552). Moreover, he argues that the relative equality of possessions and social status in homesteaders’ communities helped prevent disputes and divisions. The common practices of labor sharing and mutual assistance and the relative social equality shaped the social nature of the newly formed communities, making them more egalitarian and cohesive and strengthening within them the sense of communal values.

Collectivism, or communal values, have been found to be negatively associated with economic growth (Gorodnichenko and Roland, 2011).47 It is thus possible in theory that homesteading led to stronger communal values relative to communities that were not settled under the Act, which in turn lowered economic development in the long-run.48

We use the IV strategy and county level data to examine this hypothesis. Table C.2 presents the results. In column (1), we use survey data from the Moral Foundations Questionnaire49 to measure the relative importance of universal values over communal values. We follow the procedure in Enke (2019) to aggregate individual level data to the county level. There does not seem to be any association between homesteading and the prevalence of universal values. In columns (2)-(4), we examine effects on the share of religious adherents, the divorce-to-marriage ratio, and the fraction of single female households with children out of total households with children. These measurements were found to be correlated with collectivism or communal values. We do not find any evidence for an impact of the Act on on these outcomes. Moreover, the point estimates across the different outcomes are not aligned. The point estimate suggest a positive effect on religiosity, but also on divorces and the relative importance of universal values over communal values, and a negative impact on single parenthood.

Another hypothesis is that acquiring land for “free” affected homesteaders’ view regarding the importance of economic success as a mean to achieve personal welfare, and therefore the degree to which they (and latter, their children) were willing to exert effort in the labor market. This in turn contributed to a lower economic development in the long-run.

In order to test the plausibility of this hypothesis, we look for effects of the Act on labor market participation. To do so, we use the RD strategy and full count census data for years 1880, and 1900- 1940. The results are presented in Figure C.1. We do not find any association between historical homesteading and labor force participation. The RD estimate of β from equation (1) are insignificant in all years. Moreover, the point estimates are positive in some years, while negative in others.

Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios

Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios. Roger Pielke Jr., Justin Ritchie. Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 72, February 2021, 101890. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101890

Abstract: Climate science research and assessments under the umbrella of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have misused scenarios for more than a decade. Symptoms of misuse have included the treatment of an unrealistic, extreme scenario as the world’s most likely future in the absence of climate policy and the illogical comparison of climate projections across inconsistent global development trajectories. Reasons why such misuse arose include (a) competing demands for scenarios from users in diverse academic disciplines that ultimately conflated exploratory and policy relevant pathways, (b) the evolving role of the IPCC – which extended its mandate in a way that creates an inter-relationship between literature assessment and literature coordination, (c) unforeseen consequences of employing a temporary approach to scenario development, (d) maintaining research practices that normalize careless use of scenarios, and (e) the inherent complexity and technicality of scenarios in model-based research and in support of policy. Consequently, much of the climate research community is presently off-track from scientific coherence and policy-relevance. Attempts to address scenario misuse within the community have thus far not worked. The result has been the widespread production of myopic or misleading perspectives on future climate change and climate policy. Until reform is implemented, we can expect the production of such perspectives to continue, threatening the overall credibility of the IPCC and associated climate research. However, because many aspects of climate change discourse are contingent on scenarios, there is considerable momentum that will make such a course correction difficult and contested - even as efforts to improve scenarios have informed research that will be included in the IPCC 6th Assessment.

Keywords: Climate changeClimate scenariosEnergy scenariosIPCCRCPsSSPs

Copernicus monitoring, data 2003—2020, show the decreasing trend of wildfire emissions

Official EU info on how wildfires in the Americas and tropical Africa in 2020 compared to previous years. Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. Dec 14 2020. https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/how-wildfires-americas-and-tropical-africa-2020-compared-previous-years

The article is about the points in which there was a great media focus, but this graph is the one that caught our attention (global total estimated wildfire carbon emission for January 1—December 7, 2020):

CAMS data show a slightly decreasing trend since 2003, with 2020 one of the low years.

We can only show an image, data downloading is a really obscure, cumbersome set of methods.

Paris Agreement cost of $819–$1,890 billion per year in 2030 would reduce emissions in 1% of what is needed to limit average temperature rise to 1.5C; global costs from extreme weather have declined 26% over the last 28 years

Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies. Bjorn Lomborg. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 156, July 2020, 119981. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119981

Abstract

Climate change is real and its impacts are mostly negative, but common portrayals of devastation are unfounded. Scenarios set out under the UN Climate Panel (IPCC) show human welfare will likely increase to 450% of today's welfare over the 21st century. Climate damages will reduce this welfare increase to 434%.

Arguments for devastation typically claim that extreme weather (like droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes) is already worsening because of climate change. This is mostly misleading and inconsistent with the IPCC literature. For instance, the IPCC finds no trend for global hurricane frequency and has low confidence in attribution of changes to human activity, while the US has not seen an increase in landfalling hurricanes since 1900. Global death risk from extreme weather has declined 99% over 100 years and global costs have declined 26% over the last 28 years.

Arguments for devastation typically ignore adaptation, which will reduce vulnerability dramatically. While climate research suggests that fewer but stronger future hurricanes will increase damages, this effect will be countered by richer and more resilient societies. Global cost of hurricanes will likely decline from 0.04% of GDP today to 0.02% in 2100.

Climate-economic research shows that the total cost from untreated climate change is negative but moderate, likely equivalent to a 3.6% reduction in total GDP.

Climate policies also have costs that often vastly outweigh their climate benefits. The Paris Agreement, if fully implemented, will cost $819–$1,890 billion per year in 2030, yet will reduce emissions by just 1% of what is needed to limit average global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Each dollar spent on Paris will likely produce climate benefits worth 11¢.

Long-term impacts of climate policy can cost even more. The IPCC's two best future scenarios are the “sustainable” SSP1 and the “fossil-fuel driven” SSP5. Current climate-focused attitudes suggest we aim for the “sustainable” world, but the higher economic growth in SSP5 actually leads to much greater welfare for humanity. After adjusting for climate damages, SSP5 will on average leave grandchildren of today's poor $48,000 better off every year. It will reduce poverty by 26 million each year until 2050, inequality will be lower, and more than 80 million premature deaths will be avoided.

Using carbon taxes, an optimal realistic climate policy can aggressively reduce emissions and reduce the global temperature increase from 4.1°C in 2100 to 3.75°C. This will cost $18 trillion, but deliver climate benefits worth twice that. The popular 2°C target, in contrast, is unrealistic and would leave the world more than $250 trillion worse off.

The most effective climate policy is increasing investment in green R&D to make future decarbonization much cheaper. This can deliver $11 of climate benefits for each dollar spent.

More effective climate policies can help the world do better. The current climate discourse leads to wasteful climate policies, diverting attention and funds from more effective ways to improve the world.

7. Conclusion

As municipalities, counties, and even countries declare a “climate emergency,” it is apparent that global warming is often being presented as an existential challenge requiring urgent and strong climate policies to avoid devastation.

This article has shown that these claims are misleading and often incorrectly describe the issue and its future. While climate change is real, human caused, and will have a mostly negative impact, it is important to remember that climate policies will likewise have a mostly negative impact. Thus, we must account for the effects of both to find the policies that will achieve the highest welfare gains.

7.1. Baseline welfare keeps increasing

This article first established how the baseline development for the world has improved dramatically and is likely to continue. Welfare has increased and will increase dramatically. While GDP per person is often criticized, it effectively captures some of the most important impacts for humans and the environment: longer life, less child deaths, better education, higher development, lower malnutrition, less poverty, more access to water, sanitation, and electricity, and better environmental performance. Most importantly, it strongly captures the most important welfare indicator, subjective well-being.

Welfare per capita has increased 16-fold from 1800 to today (Fig. 1), and it is likely to increase another 5–10 times by the end of the century. Likewise, the global income gap is closing (Fig. 2) and the world could by 2100 be less unequal than it has been in the last two hundred years (Fig. 3).

One of the main reasons we have become much better off is that we have access to much more energy. From 1800 until today, each person in the world has access to four times as much energy (Fig. 4). Because of efficiency gains, human benefits from energy have increased even more: Each person in Great Britain has obtained 18 times more domestic heating, 170 times more transport, and 21,000 times more light. This trend will continue towards 2100.

While many believe that renewables are slated to take over the world, this is unlikely to happen soon (Fig. 5). Indeed, by mid-century we will likely get less energy from renewables than we did in the last mid-century in 1950. By 2100, in the middle-of-the-road scenario, the world will still get 77% of its energy from fossil fuels.

That is why much of our progress in the 21st century will remain bound to fossil fuels (unless we innovate cheap green energy). Cutting back fossil fuels helps alleviate global warming but at the same time has real costs to human development. Thus, it is crucial to identify the size of the problem of global warming and the effectiveness of its solutions.

7.2. Climate impacts real but often vastly exaggerated

There are two major reasons why most people believe global warming is making things worse, whereas the data shows this mostly to be untrue. First, it is because of the so-called Expanding Bull's-Eye effect (Fig. 7). In just 20 years, the number of exposed houses on floodplains in Atlanta increased by 58% (while becoming more valuable). Not surprisingly, when a flood hits more houses that are each more valuable, damages will go up. But adjusted for wealth, US flooding costs have declined almost tenfold from 0.48% of GDP in 1903 to 0.057% in 2017 (Fig. 10)

Second, adaptation is often ignored and that leads to vastly exaggerated impacts. One good example is coastal flooding, where increasing sea levels might confer costs of up to $100 trillion+ per year, if we do not adapt (Fig. 8). However, if we do adapt, the cost of both flooding and adaptation in percent of GDP will decline.

Globally, climate-related deaths have declined 95% over the past century, while the global population has quadrupled (Fig. 17). When we look at all weather-related catastrophes across the globe, their share of global GDP has not increased, but rather decreased since 1990 (Fig. 18).

7.3. Costs and benefits: Paris agreement

The Paris Agreement will cost between $819 billion–$1,890 billion per year in 2030 (Table 2), most likely towards the upper end. The beneficial impact of the 2016–30 Paris Agreement will be rather small, at 1% of the cuts needed to achieve 1.5°C or an immeasurable 0.03–0.04°C temperature reduction by 2100.

The costs of the Paris Agreement are much larger than its benefits. For every dollar spent on Paris, we will likely avoid 11¢ cents of climate damage (Table 3).

7.4. Costs and benefits: optimal climate policy

Shedding unsubstantiated fears of global warming makes it easier to achieve a rational climate policy, securing the highest possible welfare. Climate decisions need to consider two costs: climate costs and climate policy costs. This paper uses Nordhaus’ DICE model to find the climate policy that realistically will deliver the lowest combined welfare loss. This optimal policy will reach 3.75°C by 2100, still aggressively halving global emissions by 2100 compared to the no-policy scenario, saving about $18 trillion or 0.4% of GDP across the next five centuries (Fig. 26).

Aiming for much stronger climate policies will end up costing humanity much more than the benefits they provide. Trying to reach 2°C, which has become the least-ambitious target discussed internationally, could end up saddling humanity with more than $250 trillion in extra costs. The current level of climate ambition voiced by almost all policymakers and campaigners, while undoubtedly well-intentioned, will in total be hugely detrimental to the world, akin to cutting off one's arm to cure a wrist ache.

7.5. Climate policy in a world of many challenges

Yet, it is often argued that we need to proceed with strong climate policies to help the world and especially its poor. This is mostly bad advice. There are much more deadly environmental problems in the world (Fig. 27): indoor and outdoor air pollution kills almost 5 million people, while global warming kills perhaps 150,000. It is clear that global warming by any comparison is a small issue in a world still beset by problems of air pollution, lack of education, gender inequality, poor health, malnutrition, trade barriers, and international conflicts (Fig. 28). In the biggest UN-led global priority survey, global warming came in last, 16th of 16 priorities, with education, health, jobs, an end to corruption, and nutrition leading the field (Fig. 29).

There are many better ways to help than through traditional climate policies (Fig. 30). For climate, we should invest in green R&D and phase out fossil fuel subsidies. For the world's many other problems, we can do more good by halving coral reef loss, reducing child malnutrition, halving malaria infections, cutting tuberculosis deaths by 95%, expanding immunization, achieving universal access to contraception, and achieving freer trade. For a dollar spent, each of these policies would achieve hundreds or thousands of times more good than Paris.

7.6. The most important future choices

If we look at the future world outlook, we are likely to see a much richer humanity with much less poverty, more nutrition, better education, lower child mortality, longer lives, access to water, sanitation, and electricity, and better environmental performance. It will also be a world that will be less unequal and have much more access to energy.

We can see our choice of futures by looking at the five scenarios from IPCC. If we focus too much on global warming, we are likely to miss the by far most important investments in education and technological R&D to ensure we avoid the relatively poor scenarios of regional rivalry SSP3 or inequal SSP4. But even looking at the two richest scenarios from IPCC––the sustainable SSP1 and the fossil fuel-driven SSP5––an outsized focus on climate will make us choose less well. Aiming for the SSP1 is not bad. But the SSP5 world would be much better on almost all accounts. It would provide more energy, less poverty, less inequality, avoid more than 80 million premature deaths, and leave the average person in the developing world––after correcting for global warming––$48,000 better off each year by 2100. In total, choosing SSP1 in favor of SSP5 would leave the world half as rich, forgoing almost $500 trillion in extra annual welfare.

Global warming is real and long-term has a significant, negative impact on society. Thus, we should weigh policies to make sure we tackle the negative impacts without ending up incurring more costs by engaging in excessively expensive climate policies. We cannot and must not do nothing. But the evidence also manifestly alerts us to the danger that we end up with too ambitious and overly costly climate policies, and a general outlook that puts the world on a growth path that will deliver dramatically less welfare, especially for the world's poorest.

The online behaviors of Islamic state terrorists in the United States: There is reason to believe that using the Internet may be an impediment to terrorists’ success

The online behaviors of Islamic state terrorists in the United States. Joe Whittaker.  Criminology & Public Policy, January 3 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12537

Research Summary: This study offers an empirical insight into terrorists’ use of the Internet. Although criminology has previously been quiet on this topic, behavior‐based studies can aid in understanding the interactions between terrorists and their environments. Using a database of 231 US‐based Islamic State terrorists, four important findings are offered: (1) This cohort utilized the Internet heavily for the purposes of both networking with co‐ideologues and learning about their intended activity. (2) There is little reason to believe that these online interactions are replacing offline ones, as has previously been suggested. Rather, terrorists tend to operate in both domains. (3) Online activity seems to be similar across the sample, regardless of the number of co‐offenders or the sophistication of attack. (4) There is reason to believe that using the Internet may be an impediment to terrorists’ success.

Policy Implications: The findings of this study have two important policy implications. First, it is vital to understand the multiplicity of environments in which terrorists inhabit. Policy makers have tended to emphasize the online domain as particularly dangerous and ripe for exploitation. While this is understandable from one perspective, simplistic and monocausal explanations for radicalization must be avoided. Terrorists operate in both the online and offline domain and there is little reason to believe that the former is replacing the latter. The two may offer different criminogenic inducements to would‐be terrorists, and at times they may be inseparably intertwined. Second, when policy responses do focus on online interventions, it is vital to understand the unintended consequences. This is particularly the case for content removal, which may inadvertently be aiding terrorists and hampering law enforcement investigations.

Daily Coffee Drinking Is Associated with Lower Risks of Cardiovascular and Total Mortality in a General Italian Population: Results from the Moli-sani Study

Daily Coffee Drinking Is Associated with Lower Risks of Cardiovascular and Total Mortality in a General Italian Population: Results from the Moli-sani Study. Emilia Ruggiero et al. The Journal of Nutrition, nxaa365, Dec 31 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/nxaa365

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1345941116680613888

Abstract

Background: An inverse relationship between coffee intake and mortality has been observed in several population cohorts, but rarely within Mediterranean countries. Moreover, the biological pathways mediating such an association remain unclear.

Objectives: We assessed the associations between coffee consumption and total and cause-specific mortality and examined the mediating roles of N-terminal pro B–type natriuretic peptide (NTproBNP), high-sensitivity Troponin I, blood glucose, lipid metabolism, and selected biomarkers of inflammation and renal function.

Methods: We longitudinally analyzed data on 20,487 men and women (35–94 years old at baseline) in the Moli-sani Study, a prospective cohort established in 2005–2010. Individuals were free from cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer and were followed-up for a median of 8.3 years. Dietary data were collected by a 188-item semi-quantitative FFQ. Coffee intake was standardized to a 30-mL Italian espresso cup size. HRs with 95% CIs were calculated by multivariable Cox regression.

Results: In comparison with no/rare coffee consumption (up to 1 cup/d), HRs for all-cause mortality across categories of coffee consumption (>1 to ≤2, >2 to ≤3, >3 to ≤4 and >4 cups/d) were 0.79 (95% CI, 0.65–0.95), 0.84 (95% CI, 0.69–1.03), 0.72 (95% CI, 0.57–0.92), and 0.85 (95% CI, 0.62–1.12), respectively. For CVD mortality, a nonlinear (P for non-linearity = 0.021) J-shaped association was found (magnitude of the relative reduction = 37%; nadir at 3–4 cups/d). Circulating levels of NTproBNP explained up to 26.4% of the association between coffee and all-cause mortality, while systolic blood pressure was likely to be on the pathway between coffee and CVD mortality, although to a lesser extent.

Conclusions: In this large cohort of Italian adults, moderate consumption (3–4 cups/d) of Italian-style coffee was associated with lower risks of all-cause and, specifically, of CVD mortality. Among the known biomarkers investigated here, NTproBNP likely mediates the relationship between coffee intake and all-cause mortality.

Keywords: coffee consumption, mortality risk, cardiovascular mortality, general population, Mediterranean diet

The development of the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation in the study of psychological functions has entered a new phase of sophistication; largely due to an increasing physiological knowledge of its effects

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and the Understanding of Behavior. David Pitcher, Beth Parkin, and Vincent Walsh. Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 72:- (Volume publication date January 2021). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-081120-013144

Abstract: The development of the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in the study of psychological functions has entered a new phase of sophistication. This is largely due to an increasing physiological knowledge of its effects and to its being used in combination with other experimental techniques. This review presents the current state of our understanding of the mechanisms of TMS in the context of designing and interpreting psychological experiments. We discuss the major conceptual advances in behavioral studies using TMS. There are meaningful physiological and technical achievements to review, as well as a wealth of new perceptual and cognitive experiments. In doing so we summarize the different uses and challenges of TMS in mental chronometry, perception, awareness, learning, and memory.

The development of the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in the study of psychological functions has entered a new phase of sophistication. This is largely due to an increasing physiological knowledge of its effects and to its being used in combination with other experimental techniques