Warming Trends: How Urban Parks Make Every Day Feel Like Christmas, Plus Fire-Proof Ceramic Homes and a Thriller Set in Fracking Country

CULTURE

Completely happy Tweets From City Parks

City parks could be oases of biodiversity within the depths of concrete jungles, not solely benefiting vegetation and animals but in addition people, a truth underlined through the Covid-19 lockdowns, when stir-crazy urbanites sought inexperienced areas to get in contact with nature. 

Now a brand new examine exhibits that the happiness individuals expertise inside city parks is akin to the happiness individuals expertise on holidays like New Yr’s Day and Christmas. 

The examine was carried out by researchers on the College of Vermont utilizing a timeline of common societal happiness, based mostly on a software constructed and maintained by the college that makes use of Twitter posts to measure the proportion of optimistic phrases to damaging phrases. For instance, on Christmas 2021, phrases like “merry,” “glad” and “household” littered the platform, driving up the day’s common happiness rating. On Feb. 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine, phrases like “warfare,” “invasion” and “assault” dominated, driving the happiness rating down.

The authors of the examine, revealed Wednesday within the journal PLOS One, used the happiness information from tweets posted by individuals in city parks, within the 25 most populous cities in america. They discovered {that a} larger proportion of happier phrases have been included in tweets posted inside parks in comparison with these posted exterior of parks. The impact was larger in bigger parks exceeding 100 acres. 

“The kinds of phrases that that we see them utilizing, like ‘lovely’ and ‘enjoyable,’ ‘wonderful,’ ‘having fun with,’ these are phrases that counsel that they’ve type of put aside the elements of their life which can be mundane and unlikable,” mentioned examine co-author Chris Danforth, a arithmetic professor on the College of Vermont.

Indianapolis, Austin and Los Angeles have been the highest three cities for glad phrases tweeted inside metropolis parks. The outcomes didn’t seem to correlate with metropolis spending on parks; in actual fact, Indianapolis was town with the bottom municipal funding in parks among the many 25 cities analyzed. 

Though the phase of the inhabitants that posts on Twitter will not be essentially consultant of People as an entire, Danforth mentioned that information collected from the platform does present a superb indicator of society-wide sentiments and holds up when in comparison with scientific polls. 

“One of many thrilling issues concerning the examine is that it demonstrates that these areas are actually vital to serving to individuals handle their life,” Danforth mentioned. “Simply having the ability to spend time exterior and in an atmosphere the place they’ll really feel emotions of fascination and wonder. These are good issues for us.”

SOLUTIONS

The Newest in Geodesic Domes

A startup firm desires to scale back its carbon footprint and the excessive expense of houses by setting up homes in a singular form with a novel materials. 

Geoship, based mostly in Nevada Metropolis, California, lately constructed a prototype of its geodesic design—a dome-shaped dwelling constructed with triangular blocks of ceramic composite, a brand new form of dwelling constructing materials that’s forged equally to concrete, but has a crystalline construction like ceramic and may type glue-like bonds with different supplies. So far as he is aware of, mentioned Geoship co-founder and CEO, Morgan Bierschenk, the prototype is the primary construction on Earth constructed solely of ceramic composite supplies.

“There’s no wooden, there’s no metallic, there’s no concrete and there’s [sic] no plastics and petrochemicals,” Bierschenk mentioned. “The body, the outside, the inside and the insulation are all ceramic composites.”

He estimates that the geodesic houses have a carbon footprint that’s 10 instances smaller than a traditional, wood-structured dwelling, as a result of the manufacturing of ceramic materials releases much less carbon dioxide and the ceramic houses function extra effectively. The houses are also resilient within the face of local weather change and immune to wildfires, in keeping with Geoship. The ceramic materials is fireproof, the corporate says, and the dome form of the homes permits hurricane-force winds to move over with out tearing a house off its basis. 

Bierschenk estimates {that a} 1,000-square-foot geodesic dwelling would price round $130,000 to $180,000, however prices would probably come down as Geoship’s operations scale up. However mass manufacturing remains to be just a few years away, he mentioned.  

“I feel in 20 to 30 years, there might be at the least as a lot of a marketplace for spherical dwelling, dome-type constructions as there’s for rectangle, rectilinear constructions,” Bierschenk mentioned. “So, I feel there’s the potential for it to turn into just like the bread and butter of twenty first century homebuilding.”

CULTURE

A Fracking Thriller 

After 40 years as an environmental lawyer, Joel Burcat needed to deliver his follow to an finish following a illness he was recognized with in 2018 that left him legally blind. Now he makes use of voice-to-text apps and a three-foot-wide large-text pc monitor to jot down authorized thrillers, the most recent of which debuted earlier this yr. 

Within the ebook, “Unusual Fireplace,” a neighborhood in the course of fracking nation in Pennsylvania contends with water contaminated by a grasping drilling firm. Individuals locally are dying and disappearing, and a younger lawyer named Mike Jacobs tries to deliver them justice, indulging in a little bit of romance alongside the best way. 

Inside Local weather Information lately mentioned the ebook with Burcat. This dialog has been calmly edited for size and readability. 

Your ebook is chock stuffed with details about fracking. How do you steadiness what the reader must find out about a very complicated matter with the necessity to inform an entertaining story?

One of many issues I attempt to do in my tales is, together with entertaining my readers, I attempt to educate my readers. And on this story, there’s an terrible lot of misinformation on the market. And there’s an terrible lot of fiction on the market about fracking. And what I needed to do was, I needed to coach individuals. In order you undergo my story, you’re studying lots about fracking.

Is Mike Jacobs in any approach based mostly on your self? Or are any of his instances just like instances you tried throughout your profession as a lawyer?

The case is ripped from the headlines. So I used to be very cautious to not base this on instances through which I used to be concerned. There definitely are loads of tales, whether or not it’s in Inside Local weather Information, or within the newspapers or in Law360, or simply studying instances. There are various, many instances on the market that might make fairly good tales.

You inform this story from all sides of the fracking story: the business, the federal government, the neighborhood, the anti-fracking activists and the attorneys on all sides litigating the fallout of fracking air pollution. How did you steadiness all these views?

I don’t need individuals to learn my ebook, and say, ‘That is propaganda, I’m not going to learn this ebook.’ I would like them to learn my ebook, I would like them to study. And I really feel that readers are sensible individuals. And so they’re going to determine for themselves what’s proper. And if I current them with all the knowledge, they’ll come to their very own conclusions. 

However the different factor, too, and this I feel is actually vital, I would like them to learn the story, and listen to the opposite sides. Sadly, I feel at this time, persons are so polarized. They watch MSNBC, or they watch Fox Information, and so they don’t need to hear something in any respect about what the opposite facet has to say. They don’t actually in any respect need to spend any time figuring out about what the opposite facet thinks. 

SCIENCE

Fowl Eggs and Local weather Change 

A group of century-old hen eggs helped researchers uncover that some birds are laying eggs weeks earlier because the local weather has modified.

The examine, led by the Chicago Subject Museum of Pure Historical past, checked out a group of eggs relationship again to the late 1800s and early 1900s with information on when the eggs have been laid. Researchers in contrast the timing of egg laying of the historic eggs to information about egg laying in fashionable instances. They centered on birds that reside in or migrate to the Midwest, comparable to killdeer and crimson winged blackbirds and lay their eggs within the spring. The researchers discovered that for twenty-four of the 72 species examined, the typical egg laying date happened 25 days sooner than within the late 1800s and early 1900s. The modifications correlated with elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which have been used as a proxy for temperature. 

“That’s according to responding to local weather change,” mentioned examine lead creator John Bates, curator of birds on the Subject Museum.

Birds can profit from laying eggs earlier by beating the competitors for scarce assets, however additionally they can endure if they start breeding too early within the spring and are struck with a late winter deep freeze or snowstorm, Bates mentioned. 

The information revealed a major change in solely a couple of third of the species examined, which he mentioned means extra analysis must be achieved to grasp why some birds are affected greater than others. 

Scientists estimate that North America has seen its hen inhabitants decline by 29 p.c since 1970, a lack of 3 billion birds. 

“These varieties of knowledge counsel that we must be frightened about what’s happening on the market,” Bates mentioned. “We have to perceive the fundamental biology of the birds to attempt to perceive what’s main to those declines, the place they’re occurring.”