Brief – Others 2026-11-12
Worth Noting
Female bonobos are rewriting the “man the hunter” story. These Killer Female Apes Challenge the ‘Man the Hunter’ Origin Story — New evidence that female bonobos, humanity’s closest living relatives alongside chimps, are the primary hunters in their groups undercuts a decades-old assumption baked into theories of early human social evolution.
The US has quietly lost its measles-elimination status. The U.S. Has Lost Its Measles-Elimination Status, Data Suggests — Genetic data shows the virus is now continuously circulating domestically rather than arriving via travelers, a reversal of a public-health milestone achieved in 2000. Update since 2026-11-08: this follows the first US measles death in three decades reported last week in New York, confirming the outbreak has moved from isolated tragedy to structural failure.
A head-to-head ranking of 21 antidepressants. New Research Compares Long-Term Relief From 21 Antidepressants — A large meta-analysis finds a handful of drugs clearly outperform the rest for sustained relief, information that’s been surprisingly hard to pin down despite decades of prescribing.
War, not policy, is bending the global emissions curve. The Iran War Unexpectedly Drove Down Carbon Emissions This Year — The first drop in planet-warming pollution since the 2020 pandemic came from disrupted oil and gas flows tied to the Iran conflict, not deliberate climate action — and researchers warn it could reverse fast once supply stabilizes.
Deep-sea mining targets may be teeming with life. Metal-rich deep-sea ‘nodules’ also harbor diverse ocean life — The same polymetallic nodules eyed for battery-metal extraction turn out to support surprisingly rich seafloor ecosystems, complicating the push to scale up ocean mining.
Hospitals are scrambling before a January Medicaid cliff. Hospitals Brace for Medicaid Work Rules and Deep Funding Cuts — New eligibility hoops and funding reductions take effect January 1, and health systems say they don’t have enough time or staff to guide millions of patients through re-enrollment without mass coverage losses.
One Thing Worth Reading Deeply
A Super El Niño Is Bearing Down. ‘What Are We to Do?’ — This on-the-ground report from Malawi captures what one of the strongest El Niños on record means for subsistence farmers facing drought and hunger risk, with almost no money to prepare. It pairs a sweeping climate phenomenon with granular human stakes — a government plan with ambition but no budget — and is a useful counterweight to the abstraction of COP31 headlines happening the same week.