Cultureteca

Armand Duplantis Sets a New Outdoor Benchmark on a Balmy Night in Rome

by Christopher Laws

Within the space of one week last February, before the coronavirus pandemic threw preparations askew and led to the postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympics, the springy Swedish starlet Armand Duplantis set two new pole vault world records. At the indoor meet in Torún, Duplantis broke the six-year record held by Renaud Lavillenie, before adding another centimetre a few days later as he topped a height of 6.18 metres in Glasgow.

Duplantis then at the age of just 20 years old looked all set to echo the achievements of Sergey Bubka, who broke thirty-five pole vault world records over the course of his career, each time raising the bar by the odd centimetre. Since 2000, the pole vault has been unique in the world of track and field for refusing to distinguish between indoor and outdoor records. Duplantis therefore boasted a world record with a dubious caveat, eager to prove himself in less stilted conditions.

That opportunity arrived on Thursday in Rome, as a curtailed Diamond League season reached a climax. After thirteen previous attempts this year from windswept Stockholm to the streets of Lausanne, finally Duplantis sailed over a height of 6.15 metres, setting a new outdoor benchmark in the event, besting the height of 6.14 metres set by Bubka back in 1994. Amid the celebrations, Duplantis said:

‘The 6.15 was really important to me, so I’m happy to get over that. There was kind of this confusion between the indoor and outdoor record – it’s kind of merged. I already had the world record but I wanted to clear everything up and be the best outdoor.’

On a fast track and balmy night in Rome, Jacob Kiplimo kicked past Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the home straight to win the men’s 3000 metres, as the two teenagers entered the record books with the eighth and ninth fastest times in history. Karsten Warholm ran 47.08, the third fastest time of his career, as the Norwegian superstar continues to push for a new world record in the men’s 400 metre hurdles.

Jemma Reekie impressed in the women’s 800 metres, and Yuliya Levchenko held off the challenge from her Ukrainian compatriot Yaroslava Mahuchikh to triumph in the women’s high jump. Meanwhile former champion Elaine Thompson Herah fired a warning shot ahead of the Olympics next year, with a world-leading time of 10.85 in the women’s 100 metres.

The World is Off-Target, Says the Global Biodiversity Outlook Report

by Christopher Laws

On Tuesday the fifth edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook report noted that the world has missed all of its biodiversity targets. Published by the Convention on Biological Diversity as part of the United Nations, the report looked back over the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and a Decade on Biodiversity inaugurated in Nagoya in 2010.

In Nagoya, 18,000 participants representing 193 national parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed strategic goals and targets meant to address the causes and impacts of biodiversity loss. The twenty targets, to be implemented over a ten-year period, included raised funding and awareness alongside specific goals covering pollution, sustainable fishing, and the conservation of natural habitats.

This year’s Global Biodiversity Outlook report therefore served as a final reckoning for the Aichi targets, concluding that none have been fully met while only six have been partially achieved. Stressing the importance of biodiversity for long-term food security and the prevention of future pandemics, the report noted some successes, including falling rates of deforestation, fewer invasive species in island habitats, and improved conservation of inland water and coastal and marine areas.

Yet some of these positive measures continue to be undermined as countries spend heavily to subsidise overfishing and the extraction of fossil fuels. Overconsumption, changing land-use patterns, and climate change threaten to hasten biodiversity losses in the years to come. The Global Biodiversity Outlook report arrives one week after the World Wildlife Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London released the biennial Living Planet Report, warning of an unprecedented decline in global biodiversity.

Pondering Life, Scientists Observe Phosphine in the Clouds of Venus

by Christopher Laws

If men are from Mars, there may be more life on Venus, was the thought perambulating scientific minds this week, upon the discovery of a strange gas in the atmosphere of our sister planet. A group of scientists led by Professor Jane Greaves from Cardiff University, using radio telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, have published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy detailing their observations of phosphine in the Venusian clouds.

Made up of one phosphorous atom and three hydrogen atoms, the gas is a component of the Earth’s atmosphere at very low concentrations, and can be found in the gut bacteria of penguins or in oxygen-deprived wetlands and swamps. Traces exist in the atmospheres of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, formed in their hot interiors before breaking down in their upper atmospheres. On terrestrial Venus however, which boasts the hottest surface temperature of all the planets in our Solar System but lacks the same fiery interior, the scientists detected phosphine at a concentration which cannot be explained by known chemical processes, raising the possibility of some form of life.

At a distance of 50 kilometres from the planet’s surface, temperatures have cooled considerably. But the existence of life even this far up is complicated by the thick clouds of sulphuric acid which shroud Venus, in an arid climate with nowhere to land. In another paper published last month in the journal Astrobiology, the scientists posited microbes sealed inside droplets of sulphuric acid and water, but the description remains tenuous. Discussing the phosphine in the clouds of Venus, they write, ‘Even if confirmed, we emphasize that the detection of PH3 is not robust evidence for life, only for anomalous and unexplained chemistry’.

Such observations are likely to prompt further study. Between 1961 and 1984, the Soviet Venera programme produced a series of firsts, including the first successful landing of a spacecraft on another planet, and the first images from the planet’s surface. The Mariner programme by NASA conducted a series of flybys of Venus, while the Pioneer and Magellan spacecrafts entered orbit for a closer look.

The Venus Express, the first foray from the European Space Agency, sent back data between 2006 and 2014, while the Akatsuki probe from Japan continues to study the planet’s atmosphere. The European EnVision, Russian Venera-D, and Indian Shukrayaan-1 orbital and landing missions remain in the early planning stages, while two Venus missions could receive NASA funding in the next round of the Discovery programme.

Toots Hibbert, Reggae Pioneer and Lead Vocalist of the Maytals, Dies Aged 77

by Christopher Laws

Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his songs with communal spirit and upbeat soul, died on Friday at the age of 77 years old. As the lead vocalist and songwriter for the Maytals, from the late sixties Toots and his band served to define the sound of reggae, while leading the swell of Jamaican music as it gained in popularity overseas.

Born to Seventh-day Adventist preachers as the youngest of seven children, by his teens Hibbert had moved to the Trench Town neighbourhood in the Jamaican capital of Kingston. A talented multi-instrumentalist with a background in gospel music, he formed the Maytals as a vocal trio in 1961.

Charting a course between ska and rocksteady, citing the influence of American soul singers like Otis Redding and James Brown, the Maytals recorded with the producers Coxsone Dodd, Prince Buster, Byron Lee, and Leslie Kong as Jamaican music flourished in the sixties, emerging as one of the country’s most popular local acts.

Increasingly melding religious themes with urban commentary, in 1966 the Maytals won the inaugural Jamaica Independence Festival Popular Song Competition for ‘Bam Bam’. An eighteen-month prison sentence for marijuana possession momentarily halted the band’s progression, but when Hibbert returned the Maytals scored another hit with ’54-46 That’s My Number’, covering his time in jail.

The 1968 song ‘Do the Reggay’ is widely credited for coining the name of the new genre, as the Maytals added scattershot vocal harmonies and elements of gospel, funk, and soul to the slowed-down groove of rocksteady. In 1969 they released some of reggae’s defining early compositions, including the urgent and exhorting ‘Pressure Drop’ and ‘Sweet and Dandy’, which won another Popular Song Competition.

In 1970, the Maytals scored their first international hit, as ‘Monkey Man’ landed on the singles chart in the United Kingdom. By the early seventies the group had become known as Toots and the Maytals, with Hibbert fronting a roving band of instrumentalists and background musicians.

When The Harder They Come hit cinemas in the United States in early 1973, featuring the Maytals with ‘Sweet and Dandy’ and ‘Pressure Drop’ on the soundtrack, reggae was well on its way to international recognition. Catch a Fire and Burnin’ by Bob Marley and the Wailers were released to critical acclaim in the United States, followed by rave reviews in 1975 when Toots and the Maytals revised and reissued their album Funky Kingston.

Toots and the Maytals disbanded in the early eighties, the climax of Hibbert’s solo period the 1988 album Toots in Memphis, which mined the classics of sixties soul. By the mid-nineties he was back heading up a reformulated Maytals.

In 2004, True Love gathered some of the group’s classic songs performed alongside celebrity admirers like No Doubt, The Roots, and Keith Richards, winning Toots and the Maytals a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album. A documentary film and frequent covers and samples helped Toots and the Maytals maintain a lively touring schedule, punctuated in 2013 when Hibbert suffered a head injury after a bottle was thrown onstage.

Toots and the Maytals performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2018, and had just released their latest album Got to Be Tough at the time of Hibbert’s passing. His death at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston was confirmed in a family statement, and while no cause was specified, Hibbert had recently been admitted to intensive care following a test for coronavirus. Fans, friends, and collaborators from Ziggy Marley and Chris Blackwell to Mick Jagger and Willie Nelson paid fond tribute.