The first space mission by a private company failed to launch on Saturday after a series of postponements. SpaceX was attempting to demonstrate to Nasa that its rocket and spaceship systems are ready to take up a cargo transfer contract. Thrust from earth by the Falcon 9 rocket, the Dragon space ship would “drive” to the international space station where a robotic arm would grab it while astronauts at the space station extract the supplies inside. But the onboard computer aborted the lift-off on sensing unusual pressure in one of the engine combustion chambers just as mission control expected to see it shoot up. SpaceX will make another attempt on Tuesday.
India drug regulator is reckless
India’s version of the FDA, Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) is failing at its important job according to an investigation by the parliamentary health committee. The drug regulator has become the latest government body to come under fire for its corrupt ways. In its report, the health committee writes that the body has been clearly colluding with the drug manufacturers putting Indian patients under threat by expediting approval of drugs without proper clinical trials. It adds that the body is understaffed and lacks medical expertise. The investigation seems to have received considerable attention from international press.
Global warming outpacing migration
A new study warns that mammals, including many species of primates, may not make it to safety of cooler habitats in time at the expected rate of global warming. Migration is the first order of adaptation to changing conditions and previous research has already seen wildlife move towards the poles. There is a threat of losing many higher species rapidly as their habitats warm quicker than subsequent generations can take further steps away from their place of birth. Land use by humans for agriculture, mining and settlement will add to their problems.
When did we become a peace loving species?
The strong desire to dominate and be willing to risk a fight for it is a primal biological drive we inherited from our evolutionary ancestors. Both our living cousins- chimps and bonobos show the same aggressive climb through social hierarchy, implying that our direct ancestor 5 million years ago was no stranger to conflict. But somewhere along the line things changed turning us into peace insisting species consciously holding itself culpable for doom on the planet, the helpless mute animal world and even each other. We have even gone to the extent of attempting to setup diplomatic protocol in case we succeed in meeting intelligent aliens.
Last week leading American journal Science published an elaborate spread on how much we understand human conflict by pooling in articles from edges of academic research, each one addressing questions that pop into our heads in introspective moments.
One of them points out an important turning point in our history where peace-making resolutions might have set in. With bigger more complex brains our modern human ancestors could foresee the consequences of combat and avoiding it came easy with their kind of lifestyle.
Hunter-gatherers living a nomadic lifestyle freely moved from one community to another.
When conflict arose, they preferred to walk away, travelling far to settle into a new conflict-free tribe.
Culture started to play a big part in formalising peacekeeping initiatives taking form of tribal rituals spewing displays of strength in solidarity and bonhomie.
Avoiding conflict was easy for the nomadic hunter-gatherer but eventually with agriculture came the need to settle down. Now there were assets to secure with a need for a strong leader to take charge while the rest went about their livelihood. As the population grew kingdoms emerged led by rulers instead of leaders for whom territorial dominance came as a birthright.
This was a perfect recipe for organised combat witnessed by many age-old wars in our graspable modern history.
Armies that formed were supported by the desire to nurture our “group-self” and dehumanising outsiders. We know from neuroscience that being good to each other strikes prominently on the reward areas in the brain unlike conflict of any kind. From this trait of empathy towards our own might have further evolved a sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of the wider world. However, morality isn’t universal in our behaviour. One article discussing group-self points out that “the flip side of the in-group bias in empathy is lack of empathy for the outgroup, as is typical of xenophobia,”
In the modern world we are tending towards multiculturalism but questions over whether we are truly capable of all-accepting tolerance remains. Our innate conflict tendencies will need to fade to a greater extent and how we deal with this change is now more important than ever.
Another concluding review says that we are more capable of establishing peace systems citing examples of the existing ‘peace systems’ where neighbours with distinct national identities are living together like the European Union. It’s not hard to see that we quickly learn from past weaknesses of aggression and establish truce at many levels. The secret is to benefit from each other by trading goods and cultures along with interacting in more and more ways – both economically and socially.