Why we're seduced by climate tech and what it means for our happiness

For the most climate-anxious among us, it may even seem best to succumb to the climate tech horizon bias because of the short-term happiness benefits. However, recent research and personal experience are increasingly revealing that the climate catastrophe has already begun. Severe weather events, sea-level rise, and record-breaking heatwaves are impacting millions of people around the world, and doing so with increasing frequency (IPCC, 2023). In the face of this overwhelming evidence, nearly everyone (that doesn't already) should realize that climate tech is not a complete solution to the climate crisis. For those so in the grip of the climate tech horizon bias that they haven't done anything to help address climate change, the happiness impacts of being exposed to extreme weather events and other climate-change-related harms (Clayton, 2020) will include the extra sting of realizing that they had been seduced by the easy solace offered by over-hyped climate tech, and that they could have done more to prevent this affront to their and others' happiness. Human selfishness, weakness of will, and uncritical thinking are the root problems. Climate tech is part of the solution but, thanks to the horizon bias, may exacerbate the climate problem and cause unhappiness if it is relied upon too heavily. Given the current climate crisis, some unhappiness seems unavoidable. In our view, the best solution is to keep acting in climate friendly ways as individuals, which includes joining with others to encourage governments and businesses to take immediate large-scale steps to reduce emissions as well as mitigate the ongoing effects of historical emissions. Schwartz et al. (2022) found that collective climate action seemed the most likely way to prevent climate anxiety turning into depression, plausibly because it alleviates feelings of individual powerlessness. Perhaps even more importantly, collective climate action may be necessary to prevent a future marred with many climate catastrophes (Gonzalez-Perez and Piedrahita-Carvajal, 2022) and the widespread unhappiness they would cause. So while we should empower promising climate tech by investing in it, we should also empower ourselves by joining with others and pushing for immediate emissions reductions. If we're right, this will make us happier individually and collectively, especially in the medium- and long-run

Sensing iron availability via the fragile [4Fe-4S] cluster of the bacterial transcriptional repressor RirA

Rhizobial iron regulator A (RirA) is a global regulator of iron homeostasis in many nitrogen-fixing Rhizobia and related species of α-proteobacteria. It belongs to the widespread Rrf2 super-family of transcriptional regulators and features three conserved Cys residues that characterise the binding of an iron–sulfur cluster in other Rrf2 family regulators. Here we report biophysical studies demonstrating that RirA contains a [4Fe–4S] cluster, and that this form of the protein binds RirA-regulated DNA, consistent with its function as a repressor of expression of many genes involved in iron uptake. Under low iron conditions, [4Fe–4S] RirA undergoes a cluster conversion reaction resulting in a [2Fe–2S] form, which exhibits much lower affinity for DNA. Under prolonged low iron conditions, the [2Fe–2S] cluster degrades to apo-RirA, which does not bind DNA and can no longer function as a repressor of the cell's iron-uptake machinery. [4Fe–4S] RirA was also found to be sensitive to O2, suggesting that both iron and O2 are important signals for iron metabolism. Consistent with this, in vivo data showed that expression of RirA-regulated genes is also affected by O2. These data lead us to propose a novel regulatory model for iron homeostasis, in which RirA senses iron via the incorporation of a fragile iron–sulfur cluster that is sensitive to iron and O2 concentrations

Can ‘eugenics’ be defended?

In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear that there has been too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call - or in this case perhaps it would be better to say brand - particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenicist’ or ‘eugenic’, rather than the more philosophically important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each othe

Prevalence and type of artefact with spectral domain optical coherence tomography macular ganglion cell imaging in glaucoma surveillance

PURPOSE:The ganglion cell analysis (GCA) of the CIRRUSTM HD-OCT (Carl Zeiss, Meditec; Dublin, CA) provides measurement of the macular ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) thickness. This study determined the frequency of scan artefacts and errors in GCIPL imaging in individuals undergoing HD-OCT surveillance for glaucoma. METHOD:A total of 1439 eyes from 721 subjects enrolled in a prospective study assessing predictors of glaucoma progression underwent macular GCIPL imaging with the CIRRUS HD-OCT at recruitment. The prevalence of acquisition errors, segmentation errors, and co-morbid macular pathology was determined. RESULTS:A total of 87 (6.0%) of the 1439 scans had either acquisition errors, segmentation artefacts, or other macular pathology. The most common co-morbid macular pathology was epiretinal membrane in 2.2% of eyes. CONCLUSION:The macular GCIPL scan was artefact free in 94% of eyes. However, epiretinal membrane and high myopia can cause scan artefact and should be considered when interpreting the results.Mona S. Awadalla, Jude Fitzgerald, Nicholas H. Andrew, Tiger Zhou, Henry Marshall, Ayub Qassim, Mark Hassall, Robert J. Casson, Stuart L. Graham, Paul R. Healey, Ashish Agar, Anna Galanopoulos, Simon Phipps, Angela Chappell, John Landers, Jamie E. Crai

The Prospects of the Baby Boomers: Methodological Challenges in Projecting the Lives of an Aging Cohort

In most industrialized countries, the work and family patterns of the baby boomers characterized by more heterogeneous working careers and less stable family lives set them apart from preceding cohorts. Thus, it is of crucial importance to understand how these different work and family lives are linked to the boomers' prospective material well-being as they retire. This paper presents a new and unique matching-based approach for the projection of the life courses of German baby boomers, called the LAW-Life Projection Model. Basis for the projection are data from 27 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel linked with administrative pension records from the German Statutory Pension In-surance that cover lifecycle pension-relevant earnings. Unlike model-based micro simula-tions that age the data year by year our matching-based projection uses sequences from older birth cohorts to complete the life-courses of statistically similar baby boomers through to retirement. An advantage of this approach is to coherently project the work-life and family trajectories as well as lifecycle earnings. The authors present a benchmark anal-ysis to assess the validity and accuracy of the projection. For this purpose, they cut a signif-icant portion of already lived lives and test different combinations of matching algorithms and donor pool specifications to identify the combination that produces the best fit be-tween previously cut but observed and projected life-course information. Exploiting the advantages of the projected data, the authors compare the returns to education - measured in terms of pension entitlements - across cohorts. The results indicate that within cohorts, differences between individuals with low and high educational attainment increase over time for men and women in East and West Germany. East German boomer women with low educational attainment face the most substantial losses in pension entitlements that put them at a high risk of being poor as they retire

HUMANITY'S END: WHY WE SHOULD REJECT RADICAL ENHANCEMENT

Acknowledgments -- 1. What is radical enhancement? -- 2. Radical enhancement and posthumanity -- 3. The technologist: Ray Kurzweil and the law of accelerating returns -- 4. Is uploading ourselves into machines a good bet? -- 5. The therapist: Aubrey de Grey's strategies for engineered negligible senescence -- 6. Who wants to live forever? -- 7. The philosopher: Nick Bostrom on the morality of enhancement -- 8. The sociologist: James Hughes and the many paths of moral enhancement -- 9. A species-relativist conclusion about radical enhancement -- Notes -- Inde

Designing Babies: Morally Permissible Ways to Modify the Human Genome

My focus in this paper is the question of the moral acceptability of attempts to modify the human genome. Much of the debate in this area has revolved around the distinction between supposedly therapeutic modification on the one hand, and eugenic modification on the other. In the first part of the paper I reject some recent arguments against genetic engineering. In the second part I seek to distinguish between permissible and impermissible forms of intervention in such a way that does not appeal to the therapeutic/eugenic distinction. If I am right much of what we would intuitively call eugenic intervention will be morally acceptable. Central to my argument is an asymmetry in the way genetic engineers can influence a person's capacities on the one hand and life-goals on the other. Forms of genetic intervention that have a high probability of producing a mismatch of life-goals and capacities will be ruled out