​Chimpanzees really have entered the stone age ● Coastal cities have begun to flood, and it’s worse than expected ● Frogs are gone and people are getting sick. Cause and effect ● Americans and Russians go together with the rocket

Chimpanzees really entered the stone age

This phrase has been used for many years, as if certain groups of chimpanzees entered the stone age, that is, they use stone tools. One such group in Senegal has even been documented to learn to use wooden spears to hunt small mammals. However, what we are discovering now is not new.

With the advent of a new branch of archaeology, namely that which deals with the history of primates, this behavior has been found to be at least 4,300 years old. Most likely, it was copied by hunters of that time and culturally transferred to primate communities.

Well, the joke is amplified by a recent study published in Royal Society Open Science, which shows that throughout Ivory Coast, chimpanzees have already developed the ability to use specialized tools of various types to crack different nuts. And this is not an exaggeration of the phrase “stone age”, because it means specialization and cultural evolution.

In fact, this is how your evolutionary great-great-great-great-grandfathers, i.e. Australopithecus, started when they started inventing stone tools. They no longer used rough stones to crack nuts like a mink or a crow, but began to select them according to their utility and then even carve them. Watch them, be vigilant, because in a few million years you can see how they will tear us apart and rebuild the world anew!

Flooding of coastal cities has begun, and it’s worse than expected

We’ve all heard, it’s no longer news, that glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, coastal areas are flooding, global warming, climate disasters, and more. The problem is, look, it’s already happening. That is, large urban settlements in coastal areas begin to take water, and this is much faster than climatologists predicted. This is confirmed by a study published in Nature Sustainability by experts from NASA and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

According to these people, previous reports have shown that sea and ocean levels are rising by 3.7 mm per year. Well, it’s not. In the former Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, the largest Vietnamese city, the increase is more than 16 mm/year. In other areas, it reaches more than 20 mm/year. 48 large urban areas were studied, and in 44 of them the rate of sea level rise is higher than originally calculated.

You’re going to say that 20mm of extra water per year is no big deal. You scoop it up with a spoon and throw it into the sink. Cases are solved! It does not. You know how that translates into growth? As a convincing example, by 2030 water will reach 2 kilometers inside the city of Rio de Janeiro. Come on, it’s not good!

Frogs disappeared, and people got sick. Cause and effect

On the same pessimistic note that there has been only bad news lately, some researchers in Costa Rica and Panama tell us in an article published in Environmental Research Letters that they have just discovered an unexpected effect of the disappearance of frogs there. Your last concern is probably frogs, especially when the Russians are mobilizing right next to us for full-scale war, but we say keep an eye on them too, because you don’t know how important they are.

For example, since the 1980s, these people have found their frogs disappearing alarmingly. And the case is not isolated, it spread in Asia as well. Over 500 species have been severely affected, with around 90 extinct since then, all due to an extremely virulent pathogen called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. A resurgence of malaria cases was also reported within a short time, as no evil comes alone.

You may suspect a connection. Because the amphibians no longer consumed them, the number of mosquitoes increased significantly. The number of mosquitoes has increased, cases of malaria, dengue fever, Zika virus infection and many others have increased. Tell me what you can do without frogs! Everything has a purpose in this world, and you go through life with frogs whether you like it or not.

Americans and Russians are traveling with the rocket

Today at 16:54 American astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmytro Petelin will fly together to the International Space Station. The flight will be carried out by a Soyuz launch vehicle, which will launch from the Baikonur station in Kazakhstan. This is the first time since the beginning of the war that an American astronaut will fly aboard a Soyuz rocket.

On the other hand, cosmonaut Anna Kikina will arrive at the orbital station in early October aboard the Crew Dragon capsule of SpaceX, which is headed by billionaire Elon Musk. In practice, astronauts and cosmonauts give a clear signal that they distance themselves from what is happening on the front, although space cooperation is one of the last areas in which countries still clap their hands. Please, the agreement was initialed before the war, it’s a good thing they didn’t abandon it, although both NASA and Roskomos were tight-lipped about the flights.

In the voice of Yuri Borisov, the new general director of the Russian space agency “Roscosmos”, the Russians say that after 2024 they intend to leave the International Space Station in order to build their own station modeled after the Chinese one. It is hard to believe that they will succeed, given the recent wave of economic sanctions, as well as the recent corruption scandals at Roscosmos.

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