There is a persistent belief that these behaviors reflect poor parenting, he said, but in fact, there is often a strong biological component to behavioral issues, and the responses which come naturally to most parents faced with these behaviors may not have the desired results.

“If you’re going to have persistent behavior problems involving aggression and defiance, it’s already elevated at 2,” said Michael F. Lorber, a senior research scientist with the Family Translational Research Group at New York University. 

In a study published last year in the Journal of Pediatrics, Dr. Lorber and his colleagues looked at 477 children from 6 to 24 months of age, asking their mothers to report on how often in the past month the children had shown specific behaviors ranging from kicking and hitting to pulling hair, biting and even hurting animals.

These behaviors were very common, with some actions (hitting or smacking someone) much more common than others (hurting animals). The prevalence of the behaviors tended to increase over time, with hitting peaking at 18 months, and kicking and pushing, as well as throwing objects at people, peaking at 20 months. “Eight of 10 kids were hitting and smacking at 18 months,” Dr. Lorber said. “The terrible twos started before 2.”

reference:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/well/family/dealing-with-aggression-in-children.html

The ice caves of Ontario, Canada, accessible via the Trans-Canada Highway that skirts the shores of Lake Superior, are on the 2019 list of 52 Places to Go for a disheartening reason. Like any phenomenon dependent on ice, cold and weather patterns, the caves are under threat from climate change. This, even though the lakeshore gets reliably pounded by snow every year thanks to a lake effect that sends wind hurtling toward nearby mountains, which then spark heavy precipitation. The International Joint Commission, a binational organization that manages and protects boundary waters between the U.S. and Canada, predicts that Lake Superior could be completely ice-free in the next two to three decades.

For now, most winters, the wind, waves, and bitter cold combine to form the ice caves, though there have been winters when they don’t happen at all and others when a multitude of them soar 20 feet high.

To see them now, before they’re gone, felt like an immense privilege — even as I was forced to confront the contradictions that arise from the amount of carbon I expended getting to them. Searching for the caves was a travel experience that is increasingly rare for other reasons. There are no signboards. I didn’t come across any organized tours to the caves and going out on the ice in search of them is dangerous. Mother Superior, as I heard more than one local refer to the lake, has sunk hundreds of ships — she’d have no qualms, I’m sure, in sinking me too.

Reference:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/travel/ontario-canada-ice-caves-52-places.html

Dr. Uhlenbeck is a professor emerita at the University of Texas at Austin, where she spent the better part of her career (having declined a professorship at Harvard). She retired in 2014 and moved to Princeton. At the institute, she keeps a desk piled with boxes of books. She describes herself as a messy reader, and a messy thinker, and she is stylishly disheveled, with a preference for comfy, colorful clothing with pockets and Birkenstocks with socks.

As a procession of speeches and toasts lauded her life’s work, Dr. Uhlenbeck stood to the side of the lectern and listened, eyes mostly closed. When it finally came time to make her own remarks (unprepared), she began by simply agreeing: “From the perspective of my late seventies, I find myself as a young mathematician sort of impressive, too.” 

She went on to note that, for lack of mathematical candidates, her role model had been the chef Julia Child. “She knew how to pick the turkey up off the floor and serve it,” Dr. Uhlenbeck said.
 A decade ago, Dr. MacPherson and a collaborator formulated an equation describing how, in three and higher dimensions, individual bubbles evolve in live foams — the fleeting foam at the meniscus in his champagne flute, for instance, or the more enduring head on a pint of beer. 

References:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/science/uhlenbeck-bubbles-math-physics.html