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The Level of Happiness Required to Reap Health Benefits

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On average, do you feel happier than 2.7 out of 10?? And does your country’s population score high as well? Good news! According to a new study, your community is happy enough to enjoy significant health advantages.

The study, published in Medical Frontier, found that countries with a Life Ladder score exceeding 2.7 out of 10—a global indicator of well-being—experienced markedly lower mortality rates from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like heart disease, cancer, asthma, and diabetes.

These findings indicate that while happiness and health are interconnected, nations need to progress beyond this well-being threshold for citizens to fully realize these benefits.

For each 1% rise in well-being above the 2.7 threshold, deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) declined by an average of 0.43%. This implies that even slight increases in happiness can result in tangible health improvements.

In the United States, where the average happiness score stands at 6.96, such an increase could translate to nearly 11,500 fewer NCD-related deaths annually.

“Happiness is not merely a personal feeling; it serves as a measurable public health resource,” stated Yulia Iuga, a professor at the University of Alba Iulia in Romania and the study’s lead author.

The research analyzed well-being data from 123 countries collected between 2006 and 2021, comparing NCD mortality rates among adults aged 30 to 70.

Researchers employed the Life Ladder, a global tool for assessing subjective well-being that asks individuals to rate their lives on a scale of 0 to 10, where higher scores represent greater satisfaction.

“You can think of the life ladder as a straightforward happiness scale from zero to 10, with zero indicating the worst life and 10 the best,” Iuga clarified. “An appropriate descriptor for the 2.7 threshold could be ‘barely coping.'” Currently, only one nation falls below this benchmark: Afghanistan, with a happiness score of 1.36. Meanwhile, Finland leads the world ranking with a Life Ladder score of 7.74, followed by Denmark (7.52) and Iceland (7.51).

Many studies link health and happiness – Credit: Getty

Iuga noted that the findings suggest the benefits of happiness are likely to continue expanding indefinitely. “There’s no downside to being excessively happy,” she emphasized. “This study found no point at which the health benefits began to taper off or reverse.”

Iuga further indicated that policies aimed at enhancing population well-being can foster self-sustaining cycles of health improvement. In essence, better health boosts happiness, which in turn encourages further health gains.

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Federal Judge Rules Google Not Required to Sell Chrome

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Google will not be compelled to divest its Chrome browsers. A federal judge ruled last year’s monopoly case in the ongoing legal dispute involving the tech giant.

The company is prohibited from specific monopolistic transactions with device manufacturers and is required to share data from search engines with competitors, according to the judge’s decision.

Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling comes after months of speculation regarding the penalties Google might face, following a judgment last year which found that Google violated antitrust laws, establishing what the company referred to as an online search monopoly. This case is considered one of the most significant antitrust proceedings in decades, resulting in further hearings in April to ascertain appropriate government actions for relief.

Mehta’s decision to let Google retain Chrome reflects a more favorable outcome for the company than what federal prosecutors had sought. The prosecution had proposed that Google divest its marquee search products and barred it from entering the browser market for a period of five years. In his extensive 230-page ruling, Mehta stated that the prosecutors had “overvalued by seeking mandatory sales of these key assets.”

While Google averted the most severe repercussions for antitrust violations, Mehta’s ruling supported prosecutors by forbidding the establishment or continuation of exclusive agreements regarding the distribution of products such as Chrome, Google Assistant, and Gemini apps. However, this ruling does not restrict Google from compensating distributors.

Following Mehta’s decision, Google’s shares experienced a rise in after-hours trading, indicating investor confidence in the favorable outcomes for the company.

The ruling was critiqued as “a complete failure” by the nonprofit advocacy group, the American Economic Freedom Project.

“It’s akin to finding someone who robbed a bank, only to tell him to write a thank-you note to the robber,” remarked Nidhi Hegde, the executive director of the American Economic Freedom Project. “Likewise, Google is not held accountable for monopolistic behavior, while a remedy is drafted to safeguard that monopoly.”

Google contended that under the Antimonopoly Act, which was first tried in 2023, its advantage in search is not a product of anticompetitive actions but stems from the creation of superior products.

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Meanwhile, prosecutors have demonstrated that Google has invested billions in agreements with device manufacturers like Samsung and Apple to establish the browser as the default search for their products, allowing it to secure approximately 90% of the U.S. search market.

“After thorough deliberation and consideration of witness testimonies and evidence, the court concluded that Google was the monopoly and acted to preserve its monopoly,” Mehta ruled last year.

Mehta’s relief decision this week acknowledged that there have been significant transformations in the internet search industry since last year’s case concluded, indicating that his ruling was designed to address both popular search engines and the recent emergence of AI search engines and chatbots developed by Google.

“The procedures for these remedies were aimed at fostering competition among general search engines (GSEs) as much as ensuring that the advantages in search were not overshadowed by developments in the AI space,” Mehta stated.

Additionally, Google is set to face another hearing later this year regarding how the government will manage antitrust violations connected to its monopoly in online advertising technology.

Source: www.theguardian.com

What is Required to Rebuild Economics with Nature at its Core?

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Shrimp Harvesting on a Farm in Southeastern Vietnam

Quang Ngoc Nguyen/Alamy

About Natural Capital
Parta Dasgupta (Witness Book) (UK, now); Mariner’s Book (USA, January 20, 2026)

How do environmental hazards associated with production influence costs? What implications does that have for the nation’s economy? Can we quantify the significance of a healthy living environment and the biodiversity surrounding us?

In 2021, Partha Dasgupta, emeritus professor of economics at Cambridge University, authored a comprehensive 610-page report addressing these inquiries for the UK government. His latest work, About Natural Capital: The Value of the World Around Us, aims to broaden its accessibility.

Your opinion of Dasgupta’s success may hinge on your interest in an analytical exploration of economic concepts interspersed with engaging narratives. His core thesis asserts that GDP’s utility in measuring economic success is fundamentally inadequate. Historical advancements in living standards have primarily stemmed from human innovations; as Dasgupta notes, “entrepreneurs have prioritized labor and capital-saving devices over natural savings devices.”

This is particularly evident with the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, a hallmark of humanity’s quest for “labor and capital savings.” High-tech billionaires behind AI tout extraordinary productivity gains, yet the substantial water consumption for the cooling of associated data centers is often overlooked.

Dasgupta notes in his original report that from 1992 to 2014, per capita human capital (encompassing our health, education, and skills) rose by about 13% globally, while per capita natural capital plummeted by nearly 40%. To remedy this disparity, he champions the widespread adoption of a metric for “global wealth per person” that incorporates nature.

The narrative can be further expanded by examining shrimp farms in Vietnam and Bangladesh. Dasgupta elucidates how these operations adversely impact the “natural capital” of those nations, effects that remain unaccounted for in the retail price of shrimp. The establishment of shrimp farms typically necessitates the destruction of mangroves and salt marshes, reducing carbon storage capabilities.

Notably, around 30% of the diet for these shrimp consists of soybeans cultivated in plantations that replace tropical forests. Dasgupta references a case study suggesting that if true environmental costs were factored in, shrimp export prices might rise by 15-20%. Essentially, affluent nations purchasing shrimp may be receiving an unfair bargain.

While I do not profess expertise in economics, I am generally apprehensive about pursuing economic gains at the expense of significant environmental degradation. So, what are the actionable steps we can take? In a concise chapter, Dasgupta proposes a method to value nature adequately. This could involve collecting fees from shipping companies navigating global waters, with proceeds allocated towards job creation to alleviate pressures on ecosystems worldwide.

These concepts resonate intuitively for me, but I find myself seeking more detailed explanations. Dasgupta alludes to the challenges of achieving collective agreement and the lack of enthusiasm surrounding global shipping fees. This is an area where I wished he presented a more impassioned argument. While his ideas are captivating, they lack the urgency many readers might desire.

About Natural Capital provokes a reevaluation of economic perspectives, though I yearn for a more emotive approach. Perhaps this expectation is excessive for such a publication, yet I remain concerned that crucial messages may not resonate with a broader audience.

Jason Arun Mruguez is a writer based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

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Source: www.newscientist.com

As Watchdog Acts, Google May Be Required to Alter UK Search Practices

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Google may be compelled to implement a range of modifications in its search operations, including allowing internet users to select alternative services, following suggestions from the UK’s competition regulator to strengthen regulations on the company.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is set to classify the leading search engine as having “strategic market status,” a designation that empowers regulators to impose stricter controls on major tech firms deemed to hold substantial market influence.

The CMA expressed its intention to introduce tailored regulatory measures for U.S. companies, which may include offering users a “selection screen” to ensure a fair ranking of search results, thereby gaining more oversight on content usage, including AI-generated responses.


Should the CMA finalize its decision in October, Google will be the first company subjected to new regulatory powers established this year.

CMA CEO Sarah Cardell highlighted that this announcement signifies a “major milestone” in the newly enacted regulatory framework stemming from recent digital market, competition, and consumer legislation.

Cardell remarked, “These proportionate measures will create greater opportunities for UK businesses and consumers, providing them with more choices and control over their engagement with Google’s search services, as well as fostering innovation within the UK’s tech industry and the economy at large.”

Google has stated that this move could significantly impact businesses and consumers in the UK.

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“We are worried that the breadth of CMA’s considerations is excessive and unfocused, and that various interventions are being contemplated prior to the collection of sufficient evidence,” stated Oliver Bethell, senior director at Google.

Source: www.theguardian.com

New Google AI technology significantly decreases computing power required for weather forecasting

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AI could help us predict the weather more accurately

LaniMiro Lotufo Neto/Alamy

Google researchers have developed an artificial intelligence that they say can predict weather and climate patterns as accurately as current physical models, but with less computing power.

Existing forecasts are based on mathematical models run by extremely powerful supercomputers that deterministically predict what will happen in the future. Since they were first used in the 1950s, these models have become increasingly detailed and require more and more computer power.

Several projects aim to replace these computationally intensive tasks with much less demanding AI, including a DeepMind tool that forecasts localized rainfall over short periods of time. But like most AI models, the problem is that they are “black boxes” whose inner workings are mysterious and whose methods can’t be explained or replicated. And meteorologists say that if these models are trained on historical data, they will have a hard time predicting unprecedented events now being caused by climate change.

now, Dmitry Kochkov The researchers, from Google Research in California, and his colleagues created a model called NeuralGCM that balances the two approaches.

Typical climate models divide the Earth's surface into a grid of cells up to 100 kilometers in size. Due to limitations in computing power, simulating at high resolution is impractical. Phenomena such as clouds, turbulence, and convection within these cells are only approximated by computer codes that are continually adjusted to more closely match observed data. This approach, called parameterization, aims to at least partially capture small-scale phenomena that are not captured by broader physical models.

NeuralGCM has been trained to take over this small-scale approximation, making it less computationally intensive and more accurate. In the paper, the researchers say their model can process 70,000 days of simulations in 24 hours using a single chip called a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). By comparison, competing models, called X-Shield A supercomputer with thousands of processing units is used to process the simulation, which lasts just 19 days.

The paper also claims that NeuralGCM performs predictions at a rate comparable to or better than best-in-class models. Google did not respond to a request for an interview. New Scientist.

Tim Palmer The Oxford researcher says the work is an interesting attempt to find a third way between pure physics and opaque AI approximations: “I'm uncomfortable with the idea of ​​completely abandoning the equations of motion and moving to AI systems that even experts say they don't fully understand,” he says.

This hybrid approach is likely to spur further discussion and research in the modeling community, but time will tell whether it will be adopted by modeling engineers around the world, he says. “It's a good step in the right direction and the type of research we should be doing. It's great to see different alternatives being explored.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

US corporations will be required to disclose climate-related risks to the public

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Companies will now be required to disclose information on how climate change could impact their financial performance, although not as detailed as initially proposed.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved new climate risk disclosure rules, a significant change that mandates companies to include details about their emissions and other important risks they face in their public disclosures.

While some critics argue that the rules have been diluted due to pressure from business leaders, others believe this is an opportunity for investors to better understand the economic risks associated with climate change.

The new rules, approved by a 3-2 vote, require large publicly traded companies to disclose some aspects of their carbon footprint and how climate change could impact their business. Compared to the initial draft, the final rules apply to fewer companies and do not require disclosure of most indirect carbon emissions.

Many large companies already voluntarily disclose this information, and experts believe that the new rules could help reduce greenwashing, establish a common disclosure standard, and improve transparency for investors.

The adoption of these rules reflects a growing recognition within the business community about the economic risks of climate change, shifting from a previously abstract issue to a tangible threat that requires regulatory attention.

According to Cynthia Hanawalt, from Columbia University’s Sabin Center on Climate Change Law, the rules represent a significant step towards standardizing information for investors and enhancing transparency regarding the risks posed by climate change.

The rules were proposed in 2022 and have faced significant scrutiny, resulting in a final version that excludes the disclosure of Scope 3 emissions, which are indirect emissions associated with a company’s supply chain and product use.

As the rules are phased in, only large companies with a market value of at least $75 million will be required to disclose their emissions information, potentially impacting sectors such as automotive, agriculture, and cement.

Despite the limitations of the final rules, experts believe that they will set a new standard for climate risk disclosure globally and influence expectations in capital markets.

While the rules have been praised for promoting transparency and accountability, they may face legal and political challenges from groups seeking stricter disclosure requirements and opponents of such regulations.

Overall, the new rules aim to help companies manage their climate and emissions goals, prevent greenwashing, and provide investors with crucial information about the risks associated with climate change.

Legal challenges are anticipated, and resolution could take years, as the SEC works to address concerns from both sides of the debate.

evan bush

Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News. Contact him at Evan.Bush@nbcuni.com.

brian chan contributed.

Source: www.nbcnews.com

AI Companies Will Be Required by Labor to Share Test Data on Their Technology

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Labor is planning to require artificial intelligence companies to share the results of their road tests with authorities, replacing voluntary testing agreements with a statutory system. Peter Kyle, the shadow technology secretary, emphasized the need for greater transparency from tech companies, particularly in the wake of Brianna Gee’s murder.

Under Labor’s proposals, AI companies would be required to disclose their plans for developing AI systems and ensure safe testing under independent oversight. The testing agreement announced at the Global AI Safety Summit was supported by the EU and other countries, including the US, UK, Japan, France, and Germany.

During a visit to the United States, Kyle emphasized the importance of test results in providing independent scrutiny of cutting-edge AI technology. He stressed the need to ensure the safe development of technology that will have a significant impact on workplaces, societies, and cultures.

Tech companies that have agreed to test their models include Google, OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. Kyle also highlighted the role of the British AI Safety Association in independently scrutinizing AI development.

“We are moving from voluntary regulations to statutory regulations,” Mr Kyle told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. We can find out what they’re testing for, so we know exactly what’s going on and where this technology is taking us.”

At the first Global AI Safety Summit in November, Rishi Sunak announced voluntary agreements with major AI companies such as Google and OpenAI. Under Labor’s proposals, AI companies would be required to disclose their plans for developing AI systems and ensure safe testing under independent oversight.

He added: “Some of this technology will have a profound impact on our workplaces, societies and cultures. And we need to ensure that its development occurs safely.”

Source: www.theguardian.com