EUREKA!

EUREKA!

Who Is Happiest?

Not the folks who used to be.

Many studies have shown that plotting age and happiness levels forms a distinctive U-shape, with happiness slumping in middle age—the “midlife crisis”—before rebounding. Economics prof David Blanchflower, a leading proponent of the happiness curve, says it has all but disappeared. “That was then. Everything has changed,” he explains. Rising despair among teens and young adults, especially young women—which Blanchflower links to a marked increase in screen time and calls “an international crisis that requires immediate attention”—has shifted the happiness life trajectory. The rapid change began in the mid20105, with a precipitous decline starting around 2017. “Unhappiness now declines with age, and happiness now rises with age,” he says.

into the Deep

A little waste goes a long way.

»> A recent study led by earth sciences prof Mukul Sharma proposes a new method to recruit zooplankton to eat, digest, and excrete carbon deep into the ocean instead of into the atmosphere. The research team found that spraying clay dust on the ocean’s surface causes carbon particulates to clump into heavy sticky pellets, which the hungry zooplankton cannot resist. “They just eat it,” says Sharma. When the microscopic marine bacteria then poop—at lower depths—the carbon sinks into what can be called “deep storage.” By covering hundreds of square miles of algae blooms with the clay dust, scientists could enlist zooplankton to remove 150 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year.

Nancy Schoeffler