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Editor's note
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You don’t need another reason to like elephants but here’s one anyway: they help fight climate change. That’s what a team of scientists realised when they looked at “forest elephants” in central Africa and how they affect the ecosystem around them. By choosing to eat certain plants and not others, the elephants promote big, woody trees over more flimsy ones, and this in turn means the whole forest stores more carbon – 7% more in fact.
Of course, a hundred thousand or so animals can’t do all that much in the grand scheme of things. Elephants aren’t about to reverse global warming – that’s up to us. But with African forest elephants disappearing much faster than their relatives in the savanna, this research gives us even more reason to protect them.
Declaring African forest elephants endangered might help. But for the time being they are officially lumped in with the more populous African bush elephant and marked only as “vulnerable”, even though genetic analysis long ago proved the two are separate species. Authorities point to the presence of hybrid populations which confuse things. It’s grey areas like this, Henry Taylor argues, that mean it might be time to abandon the concept of
“species”.
Academic experts have also looked at why the Church of England should speak up on Brexit, and why Scotland’s death rate from drugs – three times that of the UK as a whole – is a national scandal.
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Will de Freitas
Environment + Energy Editor
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Top story
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zahorec / shutterstock
Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, University of Nottingham
A new study shows these elephants boost the carbon stored in their forests by 7%.
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The Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Rev Justin Welby (right) with the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu in February 2015.
Nick Ansell/PA Wire/PA Images
Jonathan Chaplin, University of Cambridge
The church is itself divided on Brexit, but that doesn't mean it can't provide guidance for a polarised community.
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Christopher Elwell/Shutterstock
Alex Stevens, University of Kent; Andrew McAuley, Glasgow Caledonian University
More than 1,000 people died as a result of drugs in Scotland last year.
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Science + Technology
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Henry Taylor, University of Birmingham
Scrapping the idea of a species is an extreme idea – but perhaps a good one.
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Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Southern Cross University; Ian Moffat, Flinders University; Justin W. Adams, Monash University; Luca Fiorenza, Monash University
A new study shows the enigmatic hominin species Australopithecus africanus may have breastfed young for around five to six years – a very costly practice for the mother.
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Arts + Culture
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Richard Marggraf-Turley, Aberystwyth University
Chichester Cathedral's stone effigy famously influenced Philip Larkin's An Arundel Tomb. But a new discovery suggests it may have inspired the tale John Keats wrote as La Belle Dame Sans Merci too.
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Business + Economy
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Christian Yates, University of Bath
The man who conceived the computer and helped crack the Nazi Enigma code deserves national recognition.
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Louis Brennan, Trinity College Dublin
Luxembourg is creating a business environment to service the growing number of space start-ups.
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Education
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Mel Ainscow, University of Manchester
When it comes to inclusive education, England has gone backwards, with more and more students placed in segregated provision or excluded from educational opportunities.
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Politics + Society
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Michael Palmer, University of Western Australia; Nora Groce, UCL; Sophie Mitra, Fordham University
The Vietnam War ended in 1975. But it's still harming the health of Vietnamese people born after the conflict ended.
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Benjamin Waddell, Fort Lewis College
Deportees and other migrants return home wealthier, more educated and with more work experience than people who never left. This 'brain gain' benefits the whole community, financially and politically.
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Marco Bocchese, University of Illinois at Chicago
African leaders who have sought ICC involvement have all seen the court as being beneficial to the survival of their governments.
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