1.
Bees and Food Production
lthough known primarily for their honey production, bees are actually more
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important to human well-being as pollinators of the staple crops that make up our diet.
I n fact, the American Environmental Protection Agency claims that pollinators are
responsible for nearly one in every three bites of food you eat.
I f this is true, then the fact that honeybee numbers are dwindling should be a major
cause of concern, not only for their survival but for ours.
study carried out by Nicholas Calderone, associate professor of entomology at
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Cornell University, showed that crops pollinated by honeybees and other insects
contributed 29 billion dollars of annual farm income in the United States revealing the
extent of their importance both agriculturally and economically.
his point was emphasised by Vera Lucia Imperatriz-Fonseca, senior professor at the
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University of São Paulo, who stated in a United Nations report that pollinator's health
is directly linked to our own well-being.
I n fact, a study by Professor Simon Potts in the UK revealed how a massive decline in
honeybee colonies has made agriculture reliant upon pollination by wild bee species,
many of which are also under threat.
2. US Economic Powerhouse and Transportation
espite being less than 250 years old, the United States has become one of the world's
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economic powerhouses.
lthough the country's location, vast size, and abundant natural resources played a
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large role in its success, these would have had little impact without advances in the
transportation industry.
ntil around 1800, the country relied mainly on water-based transportation, such as
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ships and boats for its cargo needs.
ince the country was rather small and most early cities were on the East Coast, early
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Americans could easily trade with one another and with their European trading
partners using this form of transportation.
owever, as the 19th century got underway, the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size
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of the nation and it eventually reached the West Coast.
his resulted in vast interior areas that were not accessible by boat and therefore
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ended the water-based transportation era.
he problem was solved by the construction of the transcontinental rail system, which
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brought the country into the land-based transportation era.
he new railways allowed large-scale shipping of large items from one coast to the
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other for the first time.
ater, after the invention of the automobile, highways mirrored this transcontinental
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system and people could easily drive across the country on their own.
hese land-based systems dominated transportation in America until the mid to
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late-1900s.
he following period saw the simultaneous rise of air travel and information
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technology.
s the air-based transportation era began, people could travel or send parcels across
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the country in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks, and transferring
information became instantaneous.
3. The Necessity of Sleep
leep is a necessity for all animals which, according to some scientists, could reveal
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something about our shared evolutionary ancestry.
ecause of its universality, many early sleep researchers felt that it must have begun
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very early in animal evolution.
owever, this view is contested by some scientists, such as Jerry Siegel of the
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University of California, who suggests that the need for sleep could have developed in
each species separately.
'It could be more of a case of convergent evolution', he states, suggesting that sleep is
'an adaption to an animal's environment' rather than a trait inherited from a common
evolutionary ancestor.
iegel's theory is backed up by the massive variation in sleep patterns across different
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species, from possums that can sleep for up to 18 hours a day, to birds that take
hundreds of short naps every day.
e has also discovered that dolphins, which are renowned for their ability to put one
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side of their brain to sleep at a time, have another unique sleep pattern.
fter an adult dolphin gives birth, neither she nor her offspring will sleep for an
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extended period of time.
his practice, the opposite of what occurs in land mammals, suggests that animals
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adapt their own system of sleep, rather than inherit a universal one.
onetheless many scientists still hope to find an overarching theory for why all
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animals need sleep.
aul Shaw, a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, claims that because
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'sleep is costly' in terms of vulnerability to ambush from other animals, there must be
an underlying evolutionary reason for its universality.
haw cites sleep research pioneer Alan Rechtschaffen, who stated, 'If sleep doesn't
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serve an absolutely vital function, it is the biggest mistake evolution ever made.'
4. Bitter Tastes and Toxicity
In nature, most animals avoid eating things that have a bitter taste.
his occurs, according to Oxford researcher J. Zhang, because bitterness often
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indicates toxicity.
Therefore, animals can prolong their lives by avoiding bitter foods.
sing this knowledge, some manufacturers have begun using bitter flavours to act as
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an animal repellent.
I n fact, researcher A. L. Riley showed in his research that applying bitter compounds
to objects could train birds to avoid them.
I nterestingly, humans seem to have lost the aversion to bitterness that other animals
display.
This can be seen through our use of bitter flavours in commercial food production.
ood manufacturers have developed 'bittering agents' specifically to add this flavour
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to certain foods.
A good example of the use of these bittering agents occurs in the brewing of beer.
he hops that brewers add to their product are meant to impart a bitter flavour to
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balance the sweetness of the sugars that ferment in the malt.
This is also the reason that caffeine is added to colas.
hen its caffeine is removed, cola is simply cloying fizzy water and must be balanced
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with another bittering agent.
One of these is liquid 'bitters' made from aromatic herbs and other plant materials.
hese commercially available liquids are now widely used in food and cocktail
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preparation, but they once had a very different use.
They were seen as health tonics.
his was exactly the case with the popular 'bitters' produced by the House of
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Angostura.
r Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert developed the concoction to ease seasickness
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and marketed the product to sailors.
ver time, his product came to be used to cut the sweetness of drinks such as
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lemonade or the Sazerac cocktail.
5. The First City: Uruk
he region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East is known to
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have been inhabited by primitive people for hundreds or even thousands of years
before the development of a settled population.
his area, which was named the 'Fertile Crescent' by early 19th-century archaeologist
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James Breasted for its fertility, provided a bounty of products from its soil, rivers, and
wildlife that allowed these early inhabitants to feed themselves and their families.
ventually, this brought about the first active production of food and, in turn, the first
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true settled civilisations.
ver time, the ability of these civilisations to produce food with regularity led to an
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increase in the number of people in the area and, around 4500 B.C., something
interesting happened.
he people built a large, densely populated permanent settlement called Uruk, which
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we now know as the first city.
he new city of Uruk had a large temple, homes, and other buildings created entirely
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with sun-dried bricks.
his, according to historian Stephen Bertman, was due to the lack of timber and stone
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commonly used in construction elsewhere.
e know that the use of these bricks allowed them to create large structures with
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columns, arches and fortifying walls for the first time, but it doesn't explain why such
a settlement was developed.
I n traditional retellings such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the leader of the civilisation
ordered the building of the city and its fortifications.
However, research by anthropologist Jason Ur calls this into question.
ccording to Dr Ur's research, early urbanisation likely occurred organically, not
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because of a political ruler.
He showed that different civilisations from the area settled around a central mound.
hese clusters allowed the different civilisations to live near one another, but kept the
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appropriate social distance.
As time passed, they came together to form an interconnected city with one leader.
6. Adolescence and the 'Storm and Stress' Stage
any parents complain that their children are no longer the same people they once
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were.
During their preadolescent stage, these children were generally docile and amenable.
hey were very loving and attached to their parents who probably had no trouble
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interacting with them.
t this point, many parents believe that they have a strong bond with their children
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that will never weaken.
Unfortunately for them, this stage only lasts until about the ages of 10-13.
s children enter adolescence, they undergo changes that can make them quite
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difficult to deal with.
his period of increased conflict with parents, rapid mood changes, and increasingly
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risky behaviour caused early psychologist G. S. Hall to refer to this early teenage
period as the 'storm and stress' stage.
ne reason for the undesirable behaviours associated with this teenage stage is the
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rapid change that the body goes through at this time.
he adolescent's body is maturing rapidly and it may appear that they are adults acting
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with childish impulsivity and emotional instability.
his can frustrate parents, but is simply a sign that the frontal lobes of the brain, the
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areas that control these behaviours, are not yet fully developed.
I n fact, Donald Stuss has found that the frontal lobes sometimes do not fully mature
until the early to mid-twenties.
I n addition to these physical changes, the adolescent's social interactions are
undergoing major changes as well.
ost adolescents will become distant from their parents and focus on external
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relationships as they prepare to enter society as an adult on their own.
This distance is more pronounced now than when it was proposed in the 1950s.
oday, a more interconnected world has dramatically increased the number of social
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relationships we develop outside the family.
dolescents now must figure out who they are while living in larger cities and
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interacting with more people both in real world situations and through online
interactions and social media.
his can lead to greater identity confusion than in the past and may increase the stress
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of parents dealing with the 'storm and stress' stage in their adolescents.
7. Does Yawning Have a Function?
heories for why we yawn date back more than 2,000 years to the time of
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Hippocrates, who considered yawning to be the respiratory system's way of removing
'bad air' from the lungs.
Centuries later, scientists claimed that yawning indicated a lack of oxygen to the brain.
oday, we know that neither of these theories has strong scientific merit, prompting
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contemporary researchers to carry on trying to unravel the mystery of one of our most
common biological reflexes.
obert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, points to the obvious,
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noting that people tend to yawn most when they are bored, hungry, and fatigued.
ecause all of these states can easily lead to the inability to focus on whatever task is
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at hand, he believes that yawning is our bodies' way of alerting us that we need to perk
up.
hen this theory was tested, it was found that subjects did in fact tend to engage in
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some sort of physical activity directly after yawning, suggesting that the subjects'
yawns led to their getting up and seeking out stimulation.
ssentially, Provine contends that yawning occurs due to an absence of stimuli and is
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simply how our bodies try to regain focus.
hen again, so many things seem to cause people to yawn that it is hardly satisfying to
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simply blame a lack of stimulation.
ne situation many of us are probably familiar with is being unable to control
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ourselves from yawning after seeing someone else yawn.
team of researchers from the University of Leeds headed by Catriona Morrison
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believe that this has to do with our inclination to show empathy for other people.
I n other words, if someone yawns in exhaustion, and others in the room follow suit, it
is likely because they identify with and feel sympathy for the original yawner.
his claim is substantiated by studies demonstrating that yawning is most contagious
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among members of the same family or social group and lowest among those with
autism and psychopathy, conditions associated with the inability to empathise.
eanwhile, evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup of the University of Albany
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builds on both Provine's and Morrison's theories with his hypothesis that yawning
developed as a way to alert group members to potential threats.
greeing that yawning is followed by a feeling of improved attentiveness and that it is
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contagious, he believes that early humans capitalised on these effects to quickly
convey the message to others that it was necessary to be on guard against attacks.
ssentially, if everyone was yawning and feeling more alert because of it, the
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likelihood of falling prey to a predator was far lower.
8. The Importance of Gesture
Gesture is a vital and often overlooked element of communication.
I t can be either a supplement to spoken language or an autonomous language system
in its own right.
ognitive scientist Philip Lieberman has suggested that gesture is actually the oldest
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form of language and that it originated in the pre-linguistic stage of human evolution.
ieberman has carried out research into the use of gesture by both primates and
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infants to support his theory.
ieberman contends that language was formed from non-verbal gestures, rather than
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gesture emerging from language, and that our current use of gesture stems from
pre-linguistic communication.
s Natasha Abner, Kensy Cooperrider and Susan Goldin-Meadow state in their article
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'Gesture for Linguists: A Handy Primer', gestures can be broadly split into two
categories, communicative and informative.
he former includes intentionally produced communicative gestures which are
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consciously used in addition to verbal communication, either to provide emphasis or
through modifying the literal meaning.
I nformative communication, on the other hand, refers to passive or involuntary
gestures that are not necessarily part of a communicative act, but can nevertheless
alter the meaning of such an act.
dam Kendon, co-editor of the journal Gesture and a global authority on the subject,
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has developed a categorisation system for differentiating various gestures.
hese include 'gesticulation', a gesture which mirrors accompanying speech,
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'speech-framed gestures', which replace part of a sentence, 'emblems',
conventionalised signs like the 'OK' symbol made by touching the index finger and
thumb, which occur outside verbal communication, and 'signs', gestures with lexical
meaning in a system of sign language.
endon cites the longstanding interest in gesture in Western culture as evidence of its
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importance to communication.
his interest was evident during the Classical era when gesture was considered a
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crucial part of effective rhetoric, as the Roman philosopher and politician Cicero
emphasised in his work De Oratore.
I t is also apparent in the unique gestural systems of religions from Catholicism to
Buddhism, through which adherents can communicate a variety of complex meanings.
he contemporary academic interest in gesture derives from both its roots in
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humankind's pre-linguistic stage, which suggests that gesture is a universal form of
communication, and the recent interest in close psychological reading of face-to-face
communication, from which it is possible to garner numerous non-verbal gestural
cues.
he complexity of gesture as a system of individual communication is evident in the
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range of gesture variants that can express different meanings.
eneviève Calbris suggests that gesture variants reveal how 'gesture is not a word
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illustrator but represents an underlying thought that is formulated and expressed
during the course of an utterance'.
his is apparent in Calbris's analysis of gestures related to time, which can express
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complex and varied meanings about duration without the use of verbal
communication.
ccording to Calbris, these wide-ranging gestural variants reveal the complexity of
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this system of communication, which can both accentuate and alter the meaning of
verbal communications.
9. Is the Detective Novel a Literary Genre?
hen Edgar Allan Poe introduced C. Auguste Dupin in the 1841 novel The Murders
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in the Rue Morgue, the word 'detective' was unheard-of.
owever, the idea of an intelligent amateur out-sleuthing the police intrigued many
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writers, who began creating crime fiction of their own.
et, given the predictability of the plots and characters in these early tales, readers
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began to question whether the detective novel was even a genre at all.
These days, it is undeniable that crime fiction is far more complex than before.
ystery writer Simon Brett makes the point that crime in modern-day stories is no
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longer seen as black or white and that detectives are rarely portrayed as morally
infallible anymore.
e also refutes claims that detective stories follow a formula as cases are not always
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neatly resolved by the end, which shows that plotlines can be hard to predict.
o what makes a crime fiction novel? At the very least, it is the fact that there is a
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mystery in every one.
ut mystery novelist Nicholas Blincoe believes that the similarities in detective stories
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extend further, making the genre easily identifiable; every story has a crime and its
solution (or non-solution), a community where the crime has been committed, and
central characters.
hese characteristics are necessary to define the genre but do not, argues Blincoe,
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limit it, suggesting that writers have a degree of freedom in many facets of their work.
ccording to him, crime fiction 'has produced the widest variety of archetypes and the
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most inventive improvisations in plot or character'.
hat mainstream writers are known to incorporate elements of the crime fiction style
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into their work adds weight to the idea that the genre is distinctive.
ccording to the detective novelist Phyllis Dorothy James, sometimes detective story
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plots are found weaved into the much broader plots of other genres of fiction.
She cites the example of John le Carré's 1974 novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
I n this story, which is technically an espionage novel, the main character emerges
from retirement to take a case that happens to involve a common theme in crime
fiction - a race against time to identify a wrongdoer.
ccording to crime fiction aficionado George Demko, another characteristic that sets
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crime fiction apart is how the setting is used.
pecifically, detective mysteries often take place in a real place and time, and this has
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a significant impact on the case.
e discusses this in an essay, providing the example of how widespread corruption
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was usually emphasised in crime novels set in Mexico during the 1940s.
y explaining that the perpetrator's surroundings were part of the reason the crime
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was committed, readers were left to ponder whether society as a whole shared
responsibility for the terrible actions of an individual.
erhaps the simplest argument for detective fiction deserving its own genre is that
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people from all walks of life read it.
hat it is both engaging and suspenseful is certainly a draw for many devoted fans, but
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maybe the popularity of crime fiction goes far deeper, playing on people's innate
desire to know the truth.
he modernist poet T. S. Eliot, himself a great fan of detective novels, believed their
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appeal lay in the mathematical beauty of their mysteries.
ltimately, by presenting mysteries that only the best can solve, whodunits appeal to
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our inner natures.
10. Climate Change and Human Conflict
or as long as academics have been researching climate change, it has been theorised
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that a change in weather will result in lack of rain and soil degradation.
hile many of us think immediately of the ecological repercussions, fewer of us
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realise that the loss of arable land and the ensuing poor crop yields will likely lead to
higher rates of poverty, political instability, famine, war, and ultimately death for a
large percentage of humanity.
I t is, of course, beyond the power of researchers to alter a region's climate to
determine whether this will in fact come to pass.
owever, by studying the existing documentation on weather disturbances and their
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link to human conflicts throughout history, researchers can draw some conclusions
and speculate about what might happen in the future.
team headed by Solomon Hsiang of the University of California at Berkeley has
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perhaps come as close as possible to predicting how climate change will affect human
behaviour.
ccording to their research, extreme weather does show a strong correlation with a
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rise in human conflict.
pecifically, the frequency of interpersonal and intergroup violence rose by 4 and 14
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per cent, respectively, for each standard deviation change in climate toward warmer
temperatures or more extreme rainfall.
Dr Hsiang's conclusion is startling.
e argues that because locations throughout the inhabited world are expected to warm
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significantly by 2050, this climate change will result in an increase in human conflicts
in the next 30 years.
Are there recent situations that bear out Dr Hsiang's conclusions? Sadly, yes.
Darfur is perhaps the best example.
I n 2007, Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment
Programme, published a research report calling Darfur 'the first climate change war'.
he nation has experienced a 30 per cent drop in precipitation in the last 40 years, and
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in the early 2000s, a lack of rainfall in the northern part of the country caused
agricultural production to drop sharply.
ith no food or water to sustain them, more than two million people migrated to
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refugee camps in the south, where tensions began to mount, and conflict eventually
broke out in 2003.
I t is estimated that as many as 500,000 civilians died, and this does not include those
who perished from starvation.
ther academics, such as agricultural economist Marshall Burke of the University of
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California contend that Darfur is hardly the first climate change war.
e points to sub-Saharan Africa as having a history of civil wars due to warmer
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temperatures.
Somalia, for instance, has been at war now for over two decades.
nd some academics, such as University of South Carolina professor Edward Carr,
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have criticised Dr Hsiang's study.
arr emphasised that focusing solely on climate as a conflict cause is both reductive
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and dangerous, suggesting that it might disproportionately influence policy decisions
in unproductive or even problematic directions.
ccording to Dr Carl Schleussner of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
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Research, 'Devastating climate-related natural disasters have a disruptive potential that
seems to play out in ethnically fractionalised societies in a particularly tragic way'.
ssentially, because of famine due to climate change and there is no clear majority
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group, peoples' allegiances lie with their respective clans.
nd because each clan has the same goal - gain more land to enable survival - violent
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disputes among groups have been unavoidable.