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| 'STATUS' DRIVES EXTINCTION OF LANGUAGES |
| Languages evolve and compete with each other much like plants and animals, but those driven to extinction are almost always tongues with a low social status, U.S. research shows. |
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| HUMAN REPRODUCTIVE RATES FOLLOW BIOLOGICAL SCALING RULES |
| In nations with high per capita energy consumption, women have fewer children. This phenomenon is an unexpected consequence of the biological scaling relationship between metabolism and reproductive rate: larger species of mammals have higher metabolism but lower birth rates. In the April 2003 issue of Ecology Letters, Moses and Brown show that these same biological scaling rules describe the demographic transition to lower birth rates in human populations. Birth rates decline predictably with increased energy consumption, even though most of that energy comes from fossil fuels, not food. |
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| WEALTH OF NATIONS DEPENDS ON JACK FROST, RESEARCH FINDS |
| Why do the rich get richer and the poor stay poor? When it comes to nations, the answers may include frost, according to a study that for the first time links economic and new global climate data. |
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