Life in the Cold, New Not-Normals, and Weird Numbers

Well-researched stories from The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

The post Life in the Cold, New Not-Normals, and Weird Numbers appeared first on JSTOR Daily.

The weird biology of surviving the cold (The New Yorker)
by Jessica Wapner
Some monks in Tibet can raise their body temperatures enough to stay warm in icy conditions. Ground squirrels can survive in hibernation, even as the temperature of their blood drops below freezing. Could the biology that makes this possible help the rest of us?

The people who can’t ‘go back to normal’ (The Atlantic)
by Ed Yong
In discussions about lifting COVID restrictions, immunocompromised people are often a footnote. But there are millions of people who can’t just go back out into the world, and many say they’re increasingly being told they’re unreasonable—or expendable.

Fun with numbers (The Conversation)
by Barry Markovsky
It’s 2-22-22-Tuesday. Does that matter? Not really. But humans seem to be consistently obsessed with striking series of numbers, ascribing all kinds of meanings to numerical coincidences.

Reuniting families after slavery (NBC News)
by Claretta Bellamy
The end of the Civil War brought a flurry of activity as newly free Black people traveled, posted advertisements, and did everything they could to find family members who had been lost to them for years.

Coping with a historic drought (CNN)
by Stephanie Elam
Just how bad is the ongoing megadrought in the American West? A new study finds the last two decades have been the driest in 12,000 years. The situation calls for new, extreme water conservation measures.

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