Western values are steadily diverging from the rest of the world’s | After 25 years of hype, embryonic stem cells are still waiting for their moment | Waiting to go home: 48,000 evacuated in Myanmar floods

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Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium Western values are steadily diverging from the rest of the world's - The Economist    In 1981 OVER 40% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. But economic growth was starting to accelerate in developing countries. And Ron Inglehart, a professor at the University of Michigan, was organising a worldwide survey team to test the theory that, as peasant farmers escape poverty, they begin to think and behave differently, as people in the past had done when they joined the middle classes. They might give a higher priority to education, to widening their children's knowledge, than their own parents had done. They might give greater weight to their own experience and reasoning, and less to religious books or the authority of kings. And perhaps these new ways, these basic values, would begin to converge around the world. Such matters, Inglehart thought, could be tested by asking questions which revealed underlying values such as "How important is religion in your life?", "Would you be happy living next to a foreigner?" and "Can you trust most people?" Forty years later, only 8% of the world's population is still in extreme poverty; more than half, on some measures, count as middle class. The World Values Survey (wvs), Inglehart's baby, has become the world's biggest social-research network. Every five years or so its researchers sally out into the field interviewing, at last count, almost 130,000 people in 90 countries. Yet its latest wave of results, which covers 2017-22, provides only partial endorsement of the idea that basic values tend to converge as people get richer. In significant ways, the differences between how people think in different parts of the world seem to be widening. Continued here You Might Like � � � � � � � � � After 25 years of hype, embryonic stem cells are still waiting for their moment - MIT Technology Review    Research roadblocks and political debates have delayed progress—but scientists are inching closer to delivering a cure.  Twenty-five years ago, in 1998, researchers in Wisconsin isolated powerful stem cells from human embryos. It was a fundamental breakthrough for biology, since these cells are the starting point for human bodies and have the capacity to turn into any other type of cell—heart cells, neurons, you name it. National Geographic would later summarize the incredible promise: "the dream is to launch a medical revolution in which ailing organs and tissues might be repaired” with living replacements. It was the dawn of a new era. A holy grail. Pick your favorite cliché—they all got airtime. Continued here Waiting to go home: 48,000 evacuated in Myanmar floods - CNA    Residents displaced by flooding take shelter in a monastery compound following monsoon rains in Bago township in Myanmar. (Photo: AFP/Sai Aung Main) BAGO: A baby slept peacefully under a mosquito net oblivious to hundreds of evacuated flood victims lined up for food at a monastery in Myanmar on Saturday (Aug 12), all waiting for water levels to recede before they can return home. Floods and landslides caused by monsoon rain have killed five and forced around 48,000 people to flee their homes, the relief ministry said. Continued here

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