Sunday, September 20, 2020

Readings: Measuring Sea Levels, Human Evolution, Elements

 Some interesting articles from the past few weeks:

1) What is global mean sea level? What is relative sea level? Is sea level rising or falling along the India coastline? Science writer Shreya Dasgupta explains how scientists measure sea level change with special reference to the Indian coast.

The Surprisingly Difficult Task of Measuring Sea-Level Rise Around India

2) A long thought human ancestor that turns out to be a contemporary.. a cousin perhaps. Multiple human species coexisted across African landscapes in the Mid Pleistocene, around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, just when skeletal features that we recognize as 'modern' were evolving.  New fossil finds supplemented by genetics is enriching our understanding of human origins. Fine summary article by Katarina Zimmer.

Genetics Steps In to Help Tell the Story of Human Origins

3) What is an element? From Lavoisier to Mendelev to recent times, Philip Ball traces the contentious issue of pinning down what exactly an element is? 

What is an element?

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