<p>Groundbreaking new research from the Museums Victoria Research Institute has turned upside down our previous understanding of the evolution of the largest animals ever––baleen whales. </p>
<p>Why is Earth’s climate and ecology changing so quickly? In a peer-reviewed opinion entitled “<a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0255"><u>The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social-ecological transformations</u></a>,” published in the <em>Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B</em> journal, Erle Ellis, <a href="https://ges.umbc.edu/ellis/"><u>professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County</u></a>, explains why and how a new force of nature is transforming the planet—the force of widely-held human aspirations—and how this force might be guided toward shaping a better future both for people and for the rest of life on Earth. The article is part of the theme issue, “<a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2022.0
<p style="text-align:left"><strong>We, as adults, experience a unified conscious world by integrating various scattered pieces of information from the external environment. To experience consciousness by integrating individual features into one, it is believed that not only aggregating information from lower to higher visual areas but also the 'feedback processing,' where information is sent back from higher to lower visual areas in the brain, plays a crucial role. While it is known that this process is crucial in the integration of features, its development has not been fully understood until now.</strong></p>
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<p>Michigan State University researchers have shown that relationships and social interactions between hyenas influence when they “mob” lions.</p>
<p>Flames roared through Santa Barbara County in late 2017. UC Santa Barbara canceled classes, and the administration recommended donning an N95, long before the COVID pandemic made the mask a household item. Smoke and ash choked the air, but the Thomas Fire’s effects weren’t restricted to the land and sky. Huge amounts of ash settled into the oceans, leaving researchers to wonder what effect it might have on marine life.</p>
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