2025-12-10 23:45:00
20年前，詹姆斯·兰森森（James Randerson）从一家公司订购了一段天花病毒的DNA序列。天花是唯一被人类成功根除的疾病，自46年前起便不再存在。它是历史上最致命的传染病之一，三千多年来导致约5亿人死亡，其中仅上个世纪就有3亿人死于该病。如果某人——比如不满意的科学家、恐怖组织或流氓国家——能够合成并释放天花病毒，我们可能会再次面临这种致死率高达30%的疾病，而如今大多数人已不再具备免疫力。幸运的是，兰森森当时是《卫报》的记者，他是在调查DNA合成公司的客户筛查政策松懈问题，而不是一个潜在的生物恐怖分子。
这则故事最初发表于《未来完美》（Future Perfect）通讯。如果你想了解世界面临的复杂问题以及最有效的解决方法，可以在这里注册订阅，每周两次接收最新内容。
兰森森写道：“只需一个虚构的公司名称、一个手机号码、一个免费电子邮件地址，以及伦敦北部的一处住址，就能通过邮寄方式收到该订单。” 近20年来，DNA合成领域迅速发展。DNA合成是现代生物技术研究的重要基石：科学家们订购合成DNA以开发基因疗法、改造细菌以提高农业产量、制造新疫苗等。然而，当人们可以订购特定的基因序列时，也有可能制造出有害的病原体。公司需要确保不会将可能构成生物武器的基因片段发送给恶意分子，但合成DNA的需求却在全球范围内持续增长。如今，编写基因代码从未如此便宜或便捷。而监管措施和实施安全措施的能力则因国家而异。
因此，国际生物安全与生物安全倡议组织（IBBIS）——一个致力于保护现代生物科学和生物技术的非政府组织——于周二在联合国日内瓦总部举行的生物武器公约工作组旁听活动上推出了“全球DNA合成地图”。这是一张互动地图，汇集了80多个国家的数据，展示了各国的筛查机制、监管框架以及DNA合成的可及性。IBBIS高级研究员玛雅·阿门埃罗斯（Mayra Ameneiros）表示：“一年前我们启动这个项目时，还没有对DNA合成领域进行全面的概述。” 这张地图是首个公开且持续更新的全球DNA合成提供商分布图，不仅包括中国和美国这样的主要国家，还包括之前被忽视的拉丁美洲和非洲地区。目前，地图显示全球有1023家DNA合成公司分布在81个国家。它还突出了那些已有健全监管框架和DNA序列筛查要求的地区，使用户能够比较不同国家和地区的状况，发现存在的监管漏洞。
公司应关注地图所揭示的漏洞。阿门埃罗斯表示：“对私营部门而言，这非常重要，因为公司如果无意中向恶意分子出售了高风险的DNA序列，可能会面临法律后果。如果出现问题，出售该序列的公司将始终被追责。” 目前，只有10%的合成DNA供应商会对有潜在风险的DNA序列进行筛查，这意味着公司可能正在向危险分子发送制造致命病原体的材料。这构成了巨大的生物安全漏洞。
目前，超过700家公司提供合成核酸（遗传物质的基本构建模块）和台式DNA合成设备，使科学家能够在自己的实验室中合成定制的DNA序列，而无需从商业供应商处订购。其中超过500家公司需要对订单进行筛查，以确保符合当地法规。然而，随着DNA合成技术日益分散化，有效的筛查可能变得更加困难。随着台式DNA合成设备的出现，人们甚至不需要等待订单到达就可以开始使用合成DNA。越来越多的人能够接触到这项技术。这在发展中国家尤其令人担忧，因为这些地区通常监管较少。此外，人工智能的出现也使得设计新的DNA序列变得更加容易。这可以加快救命基因疗法的开发，但也可能被用于制造新型病原体。同样，我们也可以利用AI来改进筛查，但也可以用它来规避现有的筛查软件。
随着这些技术不断进步并变得更加普及，它们必须得到更严格的保护，因为利用它们制造生物武器的门槛正在降低。防止这些高风险序列落入潜在的危险分子手中变得尤为重要，而这张地图正是为了实现这一目标。最终，IBBIS希望这张地图能够作为一项持续更新的实时资源，推动建立最佳筛查实践的标准，最终将目前混乱的各国监管体系转化为一个可行的国际标准。如果没有这样的标准，世界将比20年前兰森森订购天花DNA时面临更大的由实验室制造的病原体威胁。本文最初发表于《未来完美》通讯，欢迎订阅。
Almost 20 years ago, James Randerson ordered a sequence of smallpox DNA. Smallpox is the only human disease to have ever been successfully eradicated — 46 years ago as of yesterday. It’s one of the deadliest infections in human history, killing about 500 million people over three millennia — with 300 million of those deaths estimated to have occurred in the last century alone.
If someone — like a disgruntled scientist, terror group, or rogue nation — were to synthesize and unleash smallpox, we could see the reemergence of a disease that killed three out of 10 people it infected, one that the vast majority of humanity is now no longer protected against.
Thankfully, Randerson was a journalist for The Guardian writing an exposé on the lax customer screening policies of DNA synthesis companies, rather than an aspiring bioterrorist.
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“All it took was a[n] invented company name, a mobile phone number, a free email address and a house in north London to receive the order by post,” Randerson wrote.
In the nearly 20 years since, the field has grown massively. DNA synthesis is a cornerstone of modern biotechnological research: Scientists order synthetic DNA to develop gene therapies, engineer bacteria to improve agricultural output, create new vaccines, and much more.
But when you can order certain genetic sequences, you can potentially build harmful pathogens as well. Companies need to ensure that they aren’t sending the building blocks of a possible bioweapon to malicious actors, but the demand for synthetic DNA is growing worldwide. It’s never been cheaper — or easier — to write genetic code. And regulations and the ability to institute safeguards vary significantly depending on where you are.
That’s why the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS), an NGO dedicated to safeguarding modern bioscience and biotechnology, launched the Global DNA Synthesis Map on Tuesday at a side event at the Biological Weapons Convention working group at the United Nations in Geneva.
The interactive map draws upon data from more than 80 countries to highlight their screening practices, regulatory frameworks, and access to DNA synthesis.
“When we started this project a year ago, there was no comprehensive overview of the DNA synthesis landscape,”Mayra Ameneiros, a senior fellow at IBBIS and the map’s project lead, told me. It’s the first public and continuously updated look at where DNA synthesis providers operate around the world, including not just the major players like China and the US, but previously neglected regions like Latin America and Africa.
The map currently shows 1,023 DNA synthesis companies operating across 81 countries. It also spotlights regions with established regulatory frameworks and DNA synthesis screening requirements, allowing users to compare countries and territories with each other and notice where gaps exist.
And companies can benefit from paying attention to gaps that the map highlights. “For the private sector, this is important because companies could face legal consequences if they unknowingly sell a risky sequence to a bad actor,” Ameneiros said. “If something goes wrong, the company that made the sale will always be held responsible.”
The map reveals that only 10 percent of synthetic DNA providers currently screen for DNA sequences of concern, meaning that companies could be sending out the makings of a dangerous pathogen. That’s a tremendous biosecurity gap. More than 700 companies provide synthetic nucleic acids, the building blocks of genetic material, and benchtop DNA synthesis devices, which allow scientists to synthesize custom DNA sequences in their own labs rather than ordering it from a commercial provider. More than 500 of those companies need to screen orders to guarantee compliance with local regulations.
But effective screening could become more challenging as DNA synthesis technologies are becoming increasingly decentralized. With the advent of benchtop DNA synthesis devices, people don’t even have to wait for their orders to arrive to start using the synthetic DNA. More people can have access to this technology than ever before. This is of particular concern in the Global South, where there are often fewer regulations.
And then there’s the effect of AI, which can enable the design of novel DNA sequences. That can speed up the pace of life-saving gene therapy development — but it can also help facilitate the creation of novel pathogens. And just as we can use AI to improve screening, it can also be used to evade existing screening software tools.
As these technologies improve and become more accessible, they must be increasingly safeguarded as the barrier to entry to weaponize them decreases. Keeping sequences of concern out of potentially dangerous hands becomes that much more important, and the map aims to facilitate that.
Ultimately, IBBIS hopes the map, which will be continually updated as a live resource, will inform standards around best screening practices, with the aim of eventually turning a dizzying patchwork array of regulations into a workable international standard. Without one, the world will be in much greater danger from lab-made pathogens than it was when James Randerson ordered smallpox sequences to his home nearly 20 years ago.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here!
2025-12-10 20:00:00
2025年12月2日，唐纳德·特朗普在白宫参加内阁会议。 | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
在最近的选举中，共和党遭遇了重大挫败，这让他们感到不安。国会议员们纷纷离开，氛围与特朗普在2025年1月重返权力时的喜悦截然不同。为了理解当前局势以及这对右翼未来意味着什么，我与Vox每日通讯《Today, Explained》的同事安德鲁·普罗科普进行了交谈。以下是我们的对话（已删减并整理），你也可以在这里订阅该通讯，获取更多类似讨论。
为什么现在右翼似乎陷入混乱？
在2024年，人们普遍认为右翼的氛围正在向他们倾斜，公众意见似乎在向右翼靠拢，历史也站在他们这边，精英阶层也承认他们在某些重大问题上是正确的。然而，进入特朗普第二个任期近一年后，这种氛围似乎再次发生了变化。右翼的不同派别开始越来越多地讨论和质疑，到底出了什么问题？他们是如何从“特朗普主义”（MAGA）的胜利转变为对现状的怀疑的？这种变化在哪些方面表现出来？
一个有趣的例子是MAGA影响力群体。在特朗普第一任期时，右翼受众最看重的是对特朗普的忠诚，只要支持他，就能获得最大的病毒传播和互动。但到了2025年，这种模式似乎不再奏效。虽然并非完全脱离特朗普，但一些社交媒体影响者和媒体人物开始对特朗普第二任期的一些政策提出批评，因为他们更清楚地了解受众的想法。此外，国会中一些共和党议员也表现出对特朗普政策的不完全支持，例如释放“埃普斯坦文件”的投票。右翼生态系统的讨论正逐渐转向他们党派应真正代表什么。
特朗普失去势头的原因是什么？
部分原因是总统连任后任期限制的正常现象。11月的选举结果让共和党感到震惊，也再次证明了民调的准确性：特朗普并不受欢迎，公众不喜欢他的行为，而共和党在中期选举中面临严峻挑战。此外，右翼氛围的变化也与特朗普的成功有关。在特朗普第一任期时，他的总统任期一直受到调查和弹劾的困扰，这反而成为右翼团结的纽带。但现在，这些威胁已经消失，特朗普在2024年以压倒性优势获胜，也终结了针对他的调查，因此他不再有这种“威胁”可以依赖。
另一个曾经团结右翼的威胁是对“觉醒主义”（wokeness）的仇恨和恐惧。尽管MAGA 2.0联盟在许多问题上存在分歧，但他们一致认为自己反对“觉醒主义”。然而，这也是一种特朗普自身成功带来的后果：随着右翼对“觉醒主义”的恐惧逐渐消退，他们不再将这一问题作为主要关注点，从而有更多精力去讨论彼此之间的分歧。
这是否只是暂时现象，还是特朗普陷入更长期的困境？
总统在第二任期通常会感到更自由，因为他们不再担心连任。特朗普可能会继续尝试突破法律或社会接受的界限。我们已经看到一些迹象，例如史蒂芬·米勒认为移民政策应更加严厉。如果特朗普继续掌权，这种趋势可能会加剧。右翼基础并未与特朗普决裂，他们并不反对他，只是对未能实现所有梦想感到失望。他可能会尝试提供更多胜利来维持他们的支持，并鼓励他们在中期选举中投票。
JD·万斯（JD Vance）可以说是特朗普的潜在继承人。他在这一过程中扮演什么角色？
万斯与特朗普紧密相连，这让他处于一个艰难的位置：作为副总统，他必须在特朗普日益被视为失望对象的情况下证明自己能做得更好。理论上，他可以通过不同的方式来实现这一点，但压力很大，不能与特朗普彻底决裂。不过，目前共和党选民对特朗普仍保持强烈的支持，这对万斯来说是一个巨大的优势。除非出现类似乔治·W·布什第二任期时那样的进一步分裂，否则万斯仍处于有利地位。
你还有什么值得关注的吗？
我认为有必要区分特朗普在公众中的日益不受欢迎（这主要归因于经济问题）与右翼群体内部日益增长的失望和不满。这两者来源不同，表现也不同。右翼群体对特朗普的不满与普通公众的反对之间存在显著差异。
It’s been a rocky month for the GOP after losing big in last month’s elections, and the party knows it. Members of Congress are heading for the exit; the vibe couldn’t be further from Trump’s exultant return to power in January.
To understand what’s going on — and what it portends for the future of the right — I spoke with my colleague Andrew Prokop for Vox’s daily newsletter, Today, Explained. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below, and you can sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this.
Why does it feel like the right is in disarray right now?
In 2024, there was a lot of talk about the vibes shifting in favor of the right. There was a sense that public opinion was moving in their direction, history was on their side, elites had accepted they were right on some major questions. Nearly a year into the second Trump administration, the vibes appear to have shifted again. Various factions of the right are increasingly discussing and debating this question of, What has gone wrong? How did they go from MAGA triumphant to this increasing suspicion that things aren’t actually going well for them anymore?
How has that manifested?
The most interesting example is in the MAGA influencer sphere. Back in Trump’s first term, the way to get maximum virality and engagement from a right-wing audience was loyalty: Just back Donald Trump in whatever he did. We are increasingly seeing that it doesn’t quite work like that anymore in 2025.
There’s not a full break from Trump, but we’re seeing increasing criticism on certain issues where these social media influencers and media personalities are very attuned to what their audience is thinking. There is this increasing move toward debate and criticism about certain things in Trump’s second term that might not be going very well. And there are signs in Congress of congressional Republicans being a bit less likely to go along with what Trump wants.
This can be exaggerated a little bit, but we have seen some instances of defiance, like the vote to release the Epstein Files. The debate in the larger right-wing ecosystem is about what their party should actually stand for.
What’s responsible for Trump’s loss of momentum?
Part of this is a familiar, normal story about the president winning and being term-limited. The recent election results in November put a scare into Republicans, and hammered home the message that, actually, the polls are correct. Trump is unpopular. The public doesn’t like what he’s doing. And the GOP is on track for a difficult midterms.
I also think that a lot of the vibe shift on the right is about ways in which the broader issue environment has changed, in part because Trump was so successful. For instance, in Trump’s first term, his presidency was constantly under siege, beset by investigations and impeachment. That actually served as a unifying force on the right. But now those threats are gone. Trump won convincingly in 2024. He shut down the investigations into him and so he doesn’t really have that to fall back on anymore.
“I also think that a lot of the vibe shift on the right is about ways in which the broader issue environment has changed, in part because Trump was so successful.”
The other big threat that has united the right, especially in recent years, was the hatred and fear of “wokeness.” The MAGA 2.0 coalition could disagree on a lot of things, but they all came together in the belief that they hated wokeness. And again, this is a case where Trump is a victim of his own success: There has been this vibe shift in which the right’s monster of wokeness appears to have been slain and the culture appears to have moved on. The people who were once united against it are now no longer focused on it as a big threat anymore, and are freed up to focus on what they disagree on.
Is this a temporary thing, or the start of a longer spiral for Trump?
There’s always a push and pull with this stuff. A lot of times in the second term, once reelection concerns are gone, presidents feel more free to try to please their base, to do things that maybe they would have shied away from early on. I do expect Trump to continue to try to push the limits of what’s legal or acceptable.
We’ve seen signs that he’s going to that: Stephen Miller thinks the immigration crackdown should be even harsher than it already is. If he remains empowered in the administration, we should expect it to get harsher. We should expect these constant attempts to implement policy from the executive branch.
The right-wing base hasn’t broken with Trump — they’re not against him. They’re just a little burned out or disappointed that they haven’t gotten everything they dreamed of. He might try to deliver them more wins to keep them engaged and to try to get them to turn out to vote in the midterms.
JD Vance is arguably Trump’s heir apparent. What role does he play in all of this?
He has his wagon hitched to Trump, and that’s a tough spot: a vice president trying to succeed a president who is increasingly being viewed as somewhat of a disappointment. He would have to make the case about what he would do differently; and, in theory, there are ways he can do that, but there’s a lot of pressure not to break from the president in any way.
Having said that, loyalty and affection toward Trump among the larger Republican electorate is still quite strong, so it’s a tremendous advantage for Vance if he does end up being Trump’s anointed successor. It’s going to be very hard to dislodge him unless there’s some sort of even further break from Trump, akin to George W. Bush’s popularity collapse in his second term. Unless that happens, Vance is still in a pretty good place.
Anything else you’re keeping an eye on here?
I do think it’s good to distinguish between Trump’s increasing unpopularity among the general public — which is probably mainly because of the economy — and the increasing disillusionment and dissatisfaction among elements of the highly engaged right-wing Republican coalition, because I think they stem from different sources. The particular issues, and the way this plays out among the right-wing coalition, are very different from what we might be seeing in the general public’s backlash against Trump.
2025-12-10 19:45:00
本月早些时候，房地产网站Zillow结束了一项微妙的社会实验。2024年，Zillow开始在其房产资料中直接嵌入气候风险数据，对洪水、野火、风灾、高温和空气质量等未来风险进行1到10分的评分。例如，如果你正在寻找适合家庭居住的房屋，发现了一间完美的三居室卡普 Cod 房屋，但靠近海岸线，Zillow的房产信息可能会显示其洪水风险评分为9分。根据你个人的风险承受能力，这可能会让你放弃购买该房屋。将这些信息纳入房产资料对Zillow来说似乎是一个显而易见的举措。由于全球变暖加剧的灾害，房屋正遭受数十亿美元的损失，而其竞争对手如Redfin早已在其房产信息中加入气候风险数据。Zillow首席经济学家Skylar Olsen去年曾表示：“气候风险已成为购房决策中的关键因素。” Zillow自己的数据显示，许多购房者确实开始将气候变化纳入考虑，与房屋面积、附近学校和外观吸引力等因素并重，以至于房地产代理和卖家抱怨这些气候风险评分开始影响销售。这正是Zillow的初衷：让购房者了解全球变暖可能导致的野火或洪水风险，从而引导他们远离高风险房产。随着时间推移，人们会购买更安全的房屋；如果他们仍选择购买高风险区域的房产，至少他们事先知情，可以提高保险政策。
野火经常威胁着美国内华达州和加利福尼亚州太浩湖周边的社区。尽管火焰很少进入住宅区，但该地区经常被附近野火产生的浓烟笼罩，居民们开始意识到，野火终将威胁到他们。非营利组织Tahoe Fund今年启动了一个试点项目，旨在打造“太浩湖最防火的社区”。他们发布了一本指南，希望其他地区能借鉴其经验来降低火灾风险。他们首先与内华达州一个名为Tyrolian Village的业主协会合作，该协会位于松树林覆盖的Incline Village，拥有9000名居民，平均房价为140万美元。该协会共有228套房屋。Tahoe Fund团队使用多种火灾风险模型，识别出最容易起火的区域。这些模型比房地产网站使用的更先进，也更贴近社区需求，帮助团队更有效地确定哪些措施能最有效地提高社区的火灾抵御能力。Tahoe Fund的负责人Amy Berry表示：“通过技术，你并不需要做所有事情，只需要做那些最重要的事情，以最大程度降低风险。” 他们随后与社区领袖合作，确定优先采取的措施，如减少公共区域的可燃物、建立防火带、提高房屋的防火能力，并利用公共资金和私人捐款支持这些行动。试点项目还为房主提供了个人火灾风险评估和待办事项清单，并为高优先级房屋的业主提供资助。这一努力已经开始见效，Tyrolian Village的房屋保险费用下降了三分之一。Berry表示，这种有针对性的风险降低措施可以应用于许多地方。
保险公司在任何关于灾害的讨论中都扮演着重要角色。在加利福尼亚州，保险公司已经开始拒绝为高野火风险的客户提供服务。在佛罗里达州和路易斯安那州，一些私人保险公司已停止为新房产提供保险，甚至破产或退出市场。由联邦支持的国家洪水保险计划也持续亏损数十亿美元。因此，一个能有效降低风险的项目是值得鼓励的。
然而，社区中仍有许多人不愿正视他们所面临的威胁。Berry表示：“我们给所有人发了电子邮件和明信片，让他们查看报告，了解该做什么，但只有50户业主查看了报告。” 此外，还需要记住，风险预测并不一定准确，气候变化只是众多影响因素之一。许多房屋即使不在洪水区仍会遭遇洪水，而一些位于高风险区域的房屋却能保持地下室干燥。同样，位于高火灾风险区和非高风险区的房屋也存在类似情况。然而，即使是对风险的模糊认识，也能帮助人们规划诸如排水系统和防波堤等基础设施。购房者可以开始将气候风险评估纳入房屋检查，检查房屋结构是否具有防火材料和良好的排水系统，同时检查白蚁损害和地基裂缝等问题。但这要求购房者意识到这些潜在危险的存在。
过去的研究表明，对气候变化的信念也是影响易受灾地区房价的重要因素。在那些人们认真对待气温上升威胁的社区，房价往往低于那些认为气候变化不是问题的洪水风险区。人们也常常忘记过去的灾难教训，往往在曾经被洪水或野火影响的地区重建甚至扩建房屋。而要让人们适应他们从未经历过的事情，更是难上加难。因此，尽管预测气候变化和适应新兴威胁仍是巨大挑战，但最大的障碍是人类行为，即让人们真正正视他们所面临的危险。隐藏这些信息只能让卖家暂时受益，但最终账单还是会到来。
Earlier this month, the real-estate listing site Zillow ended a subtle social experiment. In 2024, they began to embed climate risk data directly in their property profiles, scoring a home’s future risks from flood, wildfire, wind, heat, and air quality on a 1-to-10 scale.
Say you are looking for a home in your budget for your growing family, and you find the perfect three-bedroom Cape Cod house — but it’s close to a shoreline. Zillow’s property listing might show that it has a nine out of 10 flood risk score. Depending on your personal risk tolerance, that might rule out the house for you.
Including this information seemed like an obvious move for Zillow. Disasters worsened by warming are contributing to multibillion-dollar damages to homes, and the site’s competitors, such as Redfin, already feature climate risk information in their listings.
“Climate risks are now a critical factor in home-buying decisions,” Skylar Olsen, chief economist at Zillow, said in a statement last year.
Zillow’s own data proved that many homebuyers were indeed starting to think more about climate change alongside square footage, nearby schools, and curb appeal — so much so that real estate agencies and sellers complained that the climate risk scores were starting to hurt sales.
Which is kind of the point.
Giving homebuyers a sense of where warming temperatures could lead to a higher chance of a wildfire or flood should ideally steer people away from properties facing greater danger. Over time, people would buy safer homes — and if they chose to buy in riskier areas, at least they were forewarned and could boost their insurance policies.
But climate risk assessments are not great if your current house has a bad score, and you’re trying to sell it. Under pressure from real estate groups, Zillow stopped including them. The climate risks, of course, haven’t gone away.
Welcome to the “la, la, la, can’t hear you” climate era.
In many parts of the US, populations are still increasing in areas vulnerable to disasters such as floods, extreme heat, drought, and fires, while the federal government under President Donald Trump is removing references to climate change from government websites.
People, too, will cover their eyes when the climate reality threatens real estate prices. Clear Lake, Texas, for example, installed signs showing the potential high water mark from storm surge after Hurricane Ike in 2011, but when locals complained that the warnings were hurting sales, the signs were taken down. In 2012, North Carolina outlawed a forecast of sea level rise that showed that many more coastal properties were at risk of flooding over the next century, in favor of adopting a forecast that only looked 30 years ahead.
Yet, while sellers might want to overlook future risks, banks, insurance companies, and buyers don’t want to lose money on what is often their single-most expensive purchase. More costly disaster damages are also taking a bigger bite out of the $55 trillion US residential housing market as a whole.
“I don’t think this is a good thing for anyone but Zillow — people need to know more about their risk, not less,” said Marc Ragin, a researcher studying disaster risk at the University of Georgia, in an email.
Anticipating future threats worsened by climate change is not just about creating warnings, though; they can be useful tools for adapting to climate change. One community that took them seriously actually saved money by lowering their property insurance rates. Here’s how.
Wildfires regularly confront the communities around Lake Tahoe in Nevada and California. Though the flames rarely make it into neighborhoods, the basin is often bathed in choking smoke from nearby blazes, and residents are starting to realize that it’s only a matter of time before they will face an inferno up close.
The Tahoe Fund, a nonprofit, took an unflinching look at the wildfire risks in the area and launched a pilot project this year to create “the most fire-ready community in Tahoe.” They laid out their process in a playbook for reducing fire risks that they hope any place looking to reduce the odds of homes going up in flames could draw on.
They began with a homeowners association in pine-forested Incline Village, Nevada — home to 9,000 people — where the average home price is $1.4 million. The association, Tyrolian Village, is composed of 228 homes. Using a mix of fire risk models, the Tahoe Fund team identified the areas most primed to burn. The models they used were more sophisticated than those used on real estate sites and more tailored to the community, but it helped the team get more bang for their buck when it came to figuring out what tactics would best improve the neighborhood’s fire resilience.
“Through technology, you don’t necessarily need to do everything,” said Amy Berry, who leads the Tahoe Fund. “You need to do the things that are the most important that are going to have the biggest impact on lowering risk.”
They then reached out to community leaders to set priorities for measures like reducing fuel loads in public areas, building defensible spaces, and making homes more fire-resistant, drawing on public funds and private donations. The pilot project also gave homeowners individual fire risk assessments and to-do lists, offering grants to spur owners of the highest-priority homes to act.
The effort is already starting to produce results. Tyrolian Village saw its home insurance premiums drop by one-third. Berry said that this kind of targeted risk reduction could be applied in many places.
Insurance looms in the background of any discussion of disasters. In California, insurance companies have been dropping customers whose wildfire risks were too hot to handle. In states like Florida and Louisiana, some private insurers have stopped insuring new properties, gone bankrupt, or left the market entirely. The federally backed National Flood Insurance Program is continually losing billions of dollars. So, a project that measurably reduces risks is encouraging.
Yet, there are still many people in the community who are reluctant to grapple with the threats they face. “We emailed everyone. We sent postcards. We said open your reports, so you know what to do, and only 50 of the homeowners have opened their reports,” Berry said.
It’s also important to remember that risk forecasts aren’t guarantees, and climate change isn’t the only factor at play. Plenty of homes that aren’t in established flood zones still flood, while some in high-risk areas have kept their basements dry. The same goes for homes inside and outside high fire-risk zones.
Still, having even a vague sense of where risks to property are higher and lower can be useful for planning things like storm drains and seawalls. Individual homebuyers could start to include climate risk assessments in their home inspections, checking structures for fire-resistant materials and water runoff alongside termite damage and cracks in the foundation.
But, that requires buyers to realize these perils are out there. Past research showed that another driver of real estate prices in vulnerable areas was belief in climate change. Homes in at-risk communities where people took threats of rising temperatures seriously sold for less than in flood zones where residents did not think climate change was a problem.
People also quickly forget the lessons of past disasters, often rebuilding and expanding in an area that’s flooded or burned. And it’s even harder to get people to adapt to things that they’ve never experienced before.
So, while forecasting climate change and adapting to emerging threats are still immense challenges, the biggest hurdle is human behavior, getting people to actually engage with the dangers they face. Hiding this information can only help sellers for a little while before the bill comes due.
2025-12-10 19:15:00
青少年的大脑究竟在想什么？当人们从儿童转变为成年人时，大脑发生了哪些变化？为什么年轻人更容易快速掌握乐器或语言？还有，为什么地球上的青少年会做出一些荒谬的选择？这些问题听起来像是父母或老师关心的话题，但科学家们也一直在研究。而且，一个显而易见的警告是：科学家对这些问题并没有完美的答案。不过，他们确实拥有一些非常有趣的技巧，以更好地理解青少年的大脑。他们甚至从发育中的大脑中汲取了一些经验，并尝试将其应用到其他领域。在我们最新一期的《Unexplainable》播客中，Vox的科学节目，我们采访了几位研究人员，以了解我们目前对青少年大脑的了解，以及仍然需要探索的地方，以及如何更好地研究它们。
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十多年前，美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）想要弄清楚哪些风险因素会导致青少年走上滥用物质的道路。当时，佛罗里达国际大学心理学教授拉乌尔·冈萨雷斯（Raul Gonzalez Jr.）已经研究了多年。但正如他告诉Vox的那样，他进行的研究往往规模较小。他说：“我们需要认识到，要真正推动这一领域的发展，理解哪些是风险因素，哪些只是物质使用的结果，我们真的需要从那些尚未开始尝试或使用药物的青少年开始进行一项大规模研究。” 因此，NIH最终决定启动一个大型项目：青少年大脑认知发展研究（ABCD）。该项目计划追踪数千名从9岁开始的青少年，持续十年。研究人员会定期给他们做问卷调查和脑部扫描，以跟踪他们在青春期的发展情况。冈萨雷斯说：“这本来是每个人都想做的研究，但没有人有足够资源去完成。” 他后来成为了佛罗里达州的ABCD研究负责人，该州是全国21个ABCD研究站点之一。他说，当其他青少年研究者得知将有大约12000名青少年被研究长达十年时，他们也想加入自己的研究问题。如今，项目已经进行了十年，研究人员已经收集了大量关于青少年屏幕使用时间、睡眠和运动习惯以及家庭环境的数据。他们还研究了青少年在各种游戏中的表现，并在MRI机器中扫描了他们不断发育的大脑。截至目前，这项研究已经催生了超过1400篇论文，揭示了青少年大脑发展的不同方面。冈萨雷斯表示，数据仍在不断涌入，他期待着深入分析，以进一步理解青少年的思维。
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不过，我们对发育中的大脑还是有一些了解的。在生命的最初几年，我们的大脑会建立大量突触，即神经元之间的连接，使它们能够互相传递信号。随着年龄增长，大脑会修剪掉很多这些连接。因此，或许有些反直觉，青少年在学习大量新知识的时期，大脑似乎是在消除一些连接，同时强化其他连接。“用进废退”，卡内基梅隆大学生物科学教授艾莉森·巴思（Alison Barth）这样说道：“如果你不用某个连接，它可能会被消除。” 这个过程看起来可能效率不高。为什么大脑要建立如此庞大的连接，然后再将其删除？事实上，这是巴思在2010年代初向两位计算机科学家同事提出的问题。但当他们一起研究小鼠大脑的突触修剪，并试图从中学到如何构建计算机网络时，他们发现大脑这种看似反直觉的学习方式，其实可能值得借鉴。本系列内容由安妮·E·凯西基金会的支持得以实现。
What’s actually going on in a teenager’s head? What happens in peoples’ brains as they transform from children into adults? What makes young brains so quick to pick up, say, instruments or languages? And why on Earth do teenagers make some of the absurd choices they make? What were they even thinking?!
These questions might sound like the domain of parents or teachers, but they’ve also been explored by scientists.
And a fair warning that should be pretty obvious: Scientists don’t have perfect answers to any of these questions. But, they do have some really interesting techniques for trying to better understand teenaged brains. They’ve even been taking away some lessons from developing brains that they’ve tried to apply elsewhere.
In our latest series from Unexplainable, Vox’s science podcast, we’ve picked several researchers’ brains to understand what we know — and what we are still trying to figure out — about teen brains and how best to study them.
And a little over a decade ago, the National Institutes of Health wanted to figure out what kind of risk factors lead kids down the road to substance abuse. It was a question that Raul Gonzalez Jr., a professor of psychology at Florida International University, had been studying for years at that point. But, as he told Vox, the studies he was doing were often small.
“There was this recognition that to really move the field forward and understand what is a risk factor as compared to a consequence of substance use,” he said. “We really needed to start with a huge study that started with adolescents before they started experimenting or using drugs.”
And so, the NIH ultimately decided to kick off a massive project: the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, or “ABCD.” The plan was to follow thousands of kids — starting at age 9 — for a decade. At regular intervals, researchers would give them questionnaires and brain scans and track their progress as they went through their teens.
“It was going to be the study that anybody would ever want to do, but nobody would ever have the resources to do,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez wound up becoming the head of the Florida site, one of 21 ABCD sites across the country. And he says that, once other adolescence researchers got wind of just how many kids were going to be studied (about 12,000 at this point) and for how long, they wanted to add their own questions.
Now, a decade into the project, they’ve collected a treasure trove of data on everything from adolescent screen time to sleep and exercise regimens to family situations. They’ve collected data on how the kids approach various games, and they scanned their growing brains in MRI machines.
Already, this study has led to over 1400 papers, teasing out different aspects of teen brain development. But Gonzalez says data is still coming in, and he’s looking forward to pouring through it to keep understanding what’s going on in the minds of teenagers.
There are some things we do know about developing brains, though.
In the first few years of our lives, our brains make lots and lots of synapses, connections between our neurons that let them pass signals to one another. And then, as we get older, brains prune a lot of those connections back. So, perhaps counterintuitively, in the period of adolescence when you’re learning a lot, it actually seems like your brain is eliminating some connections while strengthening others.
“Use it or lose it,” said Alison Barth, a professor of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon. “If you don’t use it, maybe you’re just gonna get rid of it.”
This process might seem inefficient. Why build up HUGE numbers of connections…only to then get rid of them?
This was, in fact, the question that two of Barth’s computer scientist colleagues raised when she told them about the brain’s synaptic pruning back in the 2010s.
But, when they all started working together exploring synaptic pruning in a mouse brain and trying to see what lessons it might have to teach them about building computer networks outside of a brain, they found that the brain’s counterintuitive technique for learning might actually be worth learning from.
This series was made possible by support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
2025-12-10 07:22:49
2025年7月31日，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在白宫罗斯福房间的签署仪式上与教育部部长琳达·麦克马洪交谈。| 安娜·莫尼马克/盖蒂图片社
本文出自《Logoff》，这是一份帮助您了解特朗普政府动态，同时避免政治新闻占据您生活日常的每日简报。点击此处订阅。
欢迎来到《Logoff》：乔·拜登总统学生贷款计划的最后残余部分即将结束。发生了什么？特朗普政府于周二同意终止拜登时期的学生贷款减免计划——“SAVE”计划，以解决由一群共和党州检察长提起的诉讼。该协议仍需获得美国密苏里东部地区地方法院的批准。
“SAVE”计划是如何运作的？该计划约有700万名参与者，是拜登政府于2023年推出的收入驱动还款计划。它提供了比其他计划更低的月供（甚至可能为零），并为贷款减免提供了更快的途径。
背景如何？该计划原本就因共和党通过的税收法案——特朗普的“一个大而美丽的法案”——而面临终止。根据该法案，借款人需在2028年夏天前转至新计划；周二的决定大幅缩短了时间表，但尚不清楚教育部将何时要求借款人更换计划。
接下来会发生什么？更多的混乱。在周二达成协议之前，“SAVE”计划就已经陷入法律纠纷，借款人开始转向其他计划，但据《华盛顿邮报》报道，由于申请积压，这一过程进展缓慢。而“SAVE”计划的结束也将给数百万美国人带来新的财务负担，尽管全国医疗费用预计会上涨，且选民仍将生活成本列为首要问题。
好了，是时候结束今天的简报了。这是我的新Vox同事韩娜·西奥带来的一则美好头条：人们其实比你想象的更友善。具体来说，人们往往对我们有更高的好感度，而我们却低估了他人对善意举动的欣赏程度。韩娜写道，这提示我们应更积极地在日常生活中与他人互动；人们可能会比你预期的更友善地回应你，而你和他们或许都会因此更快乐。
感谢阅读，祝您有一个美好的夜晚，我们明天再见！
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: The last vestiges of President Joe Biden’s student loan plan are on their way out.
What just happened? The Trump administration agreed Tuesday to end a Biden-era student loan forgiveness plan — Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE — to resolve a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican state attorneys general. The agreement will still need to be approved by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.
How did the SAVE plan work? SAVE, which has about 7 million enrollees, was an income-driven repayment plan that the Biden administration introduced in 2023. It provided lower monthly payments than other plans — potentially $0 per month — and an expedited path to loan forgiveness.
What’s the context? The plan was already on its way out after the Republican tax law, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, passed earlier this year. Under that law, borrowers would have had to move to a new plan by summer 2028; Tuesday’s decision condenses the timeline significantly, though it’s unclear exactly when the Department of Education will require borrowers to change plans.
What’s next? More confusion. The SAVE plan has been tied up in court long before Tuesday’s agreement and borrowers have been starting to shift to other plans, but the Washington Post reported that that process has been slow thanks to a backlog in applications.
The end of SAVE will also mean a new financial burden for millions of Americans, even as health care premiums are set to rise across the country and voters continue to register the cost of living as a top issue.
Here’s a wonderful headline from my new Vox colleague Hannah Seo: People are nicer than you think. Specifically, there’s often a “liking gap” — we think people feel less positively about us than they actually do, and underrate how much they might appreciate a kind gesture. The takeaway, Hannah writes, is it’s worth putting yourself out there more in your day-to-day; people will probably react better than you expect, and you and they might be happier for it.
Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
2025-12-10 05:45:00
锂曾经几乎被忽视，仅少量用于医药和强化玻璃中，并在上世纪90年代因涅槃乐队的一首同名歌曲而短暂走红。如今，锂重新成为焦点，被称为“白色黄金”。这个绰号源于过去十年锂价格的大幅上涨，2022年时每吨价格接近7万美元（相比之下，1991年涅槃乐队发行《Lithium》时，锂的价格约为每吨4200美元，仅为当前价格的约6%）。由于全球电动汽车的兴起以及锂离子电池在笔记本电脑、手机和太阳能板等领域的广泛应用，锂的消费量激增：目前全球人均锂消费量是1990年代的近28倍。
尽管美国是全球第二大锂消费国，但其锂矿开采量不足全球供应的1%。锂不仅驱动着我们的电子设备，也推动着清洁能源的未来。为解决国内锂资源短缺问题，美国政府于2025年10月批准了22.6亿美元的贷款，支持加拿大公司Lithium Americas在美国内华达州北部开发泰克帕斯（Thacker Pass）锂矿，这是美国发现的最大锂矿。截至目前，内华达州仍是唯一在国内开采和提炼锂的州。
然而，这项重大投资可能来得太晚。一方面，尽管需求增长，地球上的锂资源并不短缺，2022年锂价高点后仅两年，锂价就降至每吨1.4万美元，随着全球新锂资源的出现。更重要的是，锂供应链中的真正瓶颈并非开采，而是提炼。中国已经在电池制造领域领先数十年，目前提炼了全球70%以上的锂。在本视频解释中，我们将探讨锂如何推动内华达州及其他地区的“白色黄金热”，美国能源部对泰克帕斯的投资是否值得，以及采矿鬼镇和繁荣与萧条周期的历史能否为我们揭示这种关键资源的未来。
Lithium used to be almost an afterthought — found in small quantities in medicine and tempered glass, and peaking in pop culture fame in the ’90s thanks to an eponymous Nirvana song. Today, the metal is back in the spotlight with a new identity: “white gold.”
That nickname, coined over the past decade, stems from lithium’s extraordinary price spike, soaring to nearly $70,000 per metric ton in 2022 (for reference: In 1991, when Nirvana released “Lithium,” the mineral sold for about $4,200 per metric ton, roughly 6 percent of its recent peak). The boom was hard to ignore, even for billionaire Elon Musk, who suggested on X that Tesla “might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale.”
Fueled by the global rise in electric vehicles and the proliferation of lithium-ion batteries in everything from laptops to phones to solar panels, lithium consumption has skyrocketed: globally, people now use nearly 28 times more lithium per capita than in the 1990s. After China, the US is the world’s second-largest consumer of lithium, yet it mines less than one percent of the global supply. And lithium isn’t just powering our devices, it’s powering a future in clean energy.
To rectify this lack of domestic lithium, the US government approved a $2.26 billion loan in October 2025 to Lithium Americas, a Canadian company developing Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, the largest lithium deposit ever discovered in the United States. To this day, Nevada remains the only state that both mines and refines lithium domestically.
But this major investment may have come a little too late.
For one, despite the growing demand, Earth is actually in no short supply of lithium, and the price of this mineral dropped to $14,000 per metric ton just two years after the 2022 high, as new lithium resources became available worldwide. More importantly, the real bottleneck in the lithium supply chain isn’t mining — it’s refining. And China is already decades ahead in the battery-making process, refining over 70 percent of the lithium in the world.
In this video explainer, we’ll explore how lithium is fueling the “white gold rush” in Nevada and other parts of the country, whether or not the US Department of Energy’s investment in Thacker Pass will pay off, and what the history of mining ghost towns and boom and bust cycles can tell us about the future of this critical mineral.