harper’s FINDINGS

Five-year-olds will believe a trustworthy robot over an unreliable human, even if the robot is shaped like a truck. White-tufted marmosets, like corvids, are not fooled when a magician performs the French drop illusion, since, unlike yellow-breasted capuchins, they lack opposable thumbs, which precipitate thumbrelated assumptions. Bumblebees learn from one another how to solve puzzle boxes. Researchers recommended further study of the reproductive plasticity of female Gambian pouched rats, among whom dominant individuals may pheromonally signal to submissive ones that they should close up their genitals. Stoats remain interested in the bedding of estrous females whether or not it is mating season. Dutch trains are being disrupted by tunneling badgers, and windy outdoor conditions were worsening bacterial contamination on chicken farms in the American West.

9

An autopsy of a house cat revealed amphetamine, methamphetamine, and three types of benzodiazepine. A serval found in a tree in Cincinnati tested positive for cocaine. Colombia planned to send India sixty and Mexico ten of the descendants of Pablo Escobar’s hippos. Skeleton G, who went down in 1628 with the Vasa, was found to have been a woman. An elite Mongol woman buried with a birch-bark hat and silk robes depicting a golden dragon was found to have drunk yak milk. Archaeologists proposed that syncretized Ishtar–Aphrodite figurines carved from alabaster and wearing crescent crowns helped women both to understand their sexuality and to prefigure their journeys into the afterlife. Whipworms are present in 83.3 percent of Joseonera mummy feces.

9

Scientists calculated that earth was likely cooling between 6500 bc and 1800 ad; that one third of the estimated 2,400 to 3,200 cubic kilometers of displaced seafloor sediment previously blamed on the Storegga Event was caused by the Nyegga Landslide; that the majority of CO2 emissions from the Solfatara crater, which vary between 4,000 and 5,000 tons daily, are due to magma; and that Pakistan’s Chenab, Jhelum, Kabul, and upper Indus River basins will reach 25 percent of their annual streamflow between eleven and thirtyseven days earlier in the year by 2099. Leaves are staying on the trees of northwestern Ohio a month longer than they did a century ago. The destabilization of forests is reducing their usefulness as a carbon sink. Removed atmospheric CO2 can be stored as bicarbonate of soda. Compulsory carbon rationing on the model of British wartime rations may be fairer than individual cap-andtrade schemes. Smoke from the 2020 Australian wildfires widened the hole in the ozone layer by 10 percent. The number of stars visible in the sky will fall by 60 percent in the next eighteen years. Pine ghost canker has spread to southern California. UC Davis students who experience lawn-mowing sheep report less stress. Researchers developed a blood test for anxiety, which was found to underlie the joy of missing out. n

Portion of Democrats who consider China an enemy of the United States: 1/3 Of Republicans who do: 3/5

Americans who believe China poses a greater threat to national security than Russia: 24% Who believe that China and Russia pose equally great threats: 43

Number the U.S. Army fell short of its active-duty recruitment goals last year: 15,000

Factor by which the rate of China’s GDP growth exceeded that of the United States between 2020 and 2022: 1.6

Percentage of U.S. adults who say there is too little government spending on education: 65 On health care: 63 On infrastructure: 62

Who say there is too much government spending overall: 60

Factor by which the number of U.S. adults caring for an aging friend or family member has increased since 1989: 6

Min. monthly amount federal funding for food per household will decrease this year: $95

Amount the CEO of Domino’s personally spent on pizza last year: $7,322

% of the average U.S. household’s total at-home food spending this represents: 139

Chances an American has worried about his/her financial security in the past week: 3 in 5

Percentage increase since 2020 in the amount of work employees are doing outside of the nine-to-five workday: 28

Portion of U.S. hiring managers who report leaving job postings up for more than two months: 2/5

Portion of online job postings that are for positions that have already been filled: 2/5

Percentage by which the cost of homeownership has increased since 2020: 71

% increase since 2000 in the cost of household fuel/utilities in the average U.S. city: 137

Percentage increase last year in U.S. shortages of antibiotics: 42

Minimum number of people in the United States currently on waiting lists for organ transplants: 104,000

Number of organs that have been discarded since 2013: 59,255

Chance an American has not filled a medication prescription because of its cost: 1 in 3

Minimum number of states that have passed laws since the start of the pandemic limiting public health powers: 25

Percentage increase since 2008 in the value of assets held by financial institutions without banking licenses: 141

Portion of U.S. adults who own at least one AR-15: 1/20

Factor by which more children are shot in domestic violence incidents than in school shootings: 3

Portion of U.S. five-year-olds who do not live to the age of forty: 1/25

Percentage by which remote-working women are more likely than other working women to plan to have children: 22

By which they are more likely to plan to marry in the next year: 40

Portion of fathers who took on more childcare obligations during pandemic lockdowns: 1/3

Portion of those who continued to do so after lockdowns ended: 1/5

Year in which U.S. fourth graders are projected to catch up to pre-pandemic math performance levels: 2036

In which U.S. eighth graders are projected to catch up to pre-pandemic math performance levels: 2050

Percentage decrease since 2012 in the number of times per week that high school seniors go out with friends: 25

Portion of college students who report having used TikTok for help studying: 1/2

Portion of those students who report learning more on TikTok than they do in class: 1/2

Average number of minutes per day users spend on TikTok: 93

Average age at which brain transmission speed plateaus: 35

SOURCES: 1–4 YouGov (NYC); 5 U.S. Department of Defense; 6 International Monetary Fund (Washington); 7–10 AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (Chicago); 11 AARP (Washington); 12 U.S. Department of Agriculture; 13 Domino’s Pizza (Ann Arbor, Mich.); 14 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; 15 YouGov; 16 Microsoft (Redmond, Wash.); 17,18 Clarify Capital (NYC); 19 National Multifamily Housing Council (Washington); 20 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; 21 United States Pharmacopeia (Rockville, Md.); 22 Health Resources and ServicesAdministration (Rockville, Md.); 23 Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (Minneapolis); 24 YouGov; 25 Center for Public Health Law Research, Temple University (Philadelphia); 26 Financial Stability Board (Basel, Switzerland); 27 Ipsos (NYC); 28 Gun Violence Archive (Washington); 29 Human Mortality Database (Berkeley, Calif.); 30,31 Economic Innovation Group (Washington); 32,33 Richard Petts, Ball State University (Muncie, Ind.); 34,35 McKinsey & Company (NYC); 36 Jean Twenge, San Diego State University; 37,38 Intelligent (Seattle); 39 Sensor Tower (San Francisco); 40 Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.).