Four New Horsemen of an Apocalypse? Solar Flares, Super-volcanoes, Pandemics, and Artificial Intelligence

If economists have largely failed to predict or prevent the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, and the more disastrous economic collapse associated with the pandemic of 2020, what else is the profession missing? This is the question that motivates this survey. Specifically, we want to highlight four catastrophic risks – i.e., risks that can potentially result in global catastrophes of a much larger magnitude than either of the 2008 or 2020 events. The four risks we examine here are: Space weather and solar flares, super-volcanic eruptions, high-mortality pandemics, and misaligned artificial intelligence. All four have a non-trivial probability of occurring and all four can lead to a catastrophe, possibly not very different from human extinction. Inevitably, and fortunately, these catastrophic events have not yet occurred, so the literature investigating them is by necessity more speculative and less grounded in empirical observations. Nevertheless, that does not make these risks any less real. This survey is motivated by the belief that economists can and should be thinking about these risks more systematically, so that we can devise the appropriate ways to prevent them or ameliorate their potential impacts.

Two years of SARS-CoV-2 infection (2019–2021): structural biology, vaccination, and current global situation

The deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus has infected more than 259,502,031 confirmed cases with 5,183,003 deaths in 223 countries during the last 22 months (Dec 2019–Nov 2021), whereas approximately 7,702,859,718, vaccine doses have been administered (WHO: https://covid19.who.int/) as of the 24th of Nov 2021. Recent announcements of test trial completion of several new vaccines resulted in the launching of immunization for the common person around the globe highlighting a ray of hope to cope with this infection. Meanwhile, genetic variations in SARS-CoV-2 and third layer of infection spread in numerous countries emerged as a stronger prototype than the parental. New and parental SARS-CoV-2 strains appeared as a risk factor for other pre-existing diseases like cancer, diabetes, neurological disorders, kidney, liver, heart, and eye injury. This situation requires more attention and re-structuring of the currently developed vaccines and/or drugs against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Although a decline in COVID-19 infection has been reported globally, an increase in COVID-19 cases in the subcontinent and east Mediterranean area could be alarming. In this review, we have summarized the current information about the SARS-CoV-2 biology, its interaction and possible infection pathways within the host, epidemiology, risk factors, economic collapse, and possible vaccine and drug development.

States of Emergency

More than one hundred years after the conclusion of the First World War, the edited collection States of Emergency. Architecture, Urbanism, and the First World War reassesses what that cataclysmic global conflict meant for architecture and urbanism from a human, social, economic, and cultural perspective. Chapters probe how underdevelopment and economic collapse manifested spatially, how military technologies were repurposed by civilians, and how cultures of education, care, and memory emerged from battle. The collection places an emphasis on the various states of emergency as experienced by combatants and civilians across five continents—from refugee camps to military installations, villages to capital cities—thus uncovering the role architecture played in mitigating and exacerbating the everyday tragedy of war.

As the Druze Go, So Goes the Middle East

The Druze, despite being a small minority faith group, have long survived in a challenging region, thanks in part to a doctrine of deference to whatever state they live in. In the past few years, however, the three largest Druze populations—in Israel, Lebanon, and Syria—have each faced some of their most difficult challenges yet, from a downgrading of their citizenship status to economic collapse and civil war. An increasingly active diaspora has emerged as an important advocate for Druze interests worldwide.

Examining the Research on Business Information-Entropy Correlation in the Accounting Process of Organizations

Open business organizations, where information flows, is shared, and exchanged, are more prepared to adapt and survive chaos, uncertainty, and entropy, so they will be more predisposed to change management. The aim of this study is to analyze research trends at the international level on business information–entropy correlation in the accounting process of organizations. Mathematical and statistical techniques were applied to 980 articles during the period 1974–2020, obtaining results on the scientific productivity of the driving agents of this topic: authors, research institutions, countries/territories, and journals. Five lines of research were identified during the period analyzed, which mainly study information theory, maximum entropy, information entropy, decision-making, and enthalpy. Future research should focus on analyzing the evolution of this topic, which forms new thematic axes related to bitcoin market efficiency, business hierarchy information, business model evaluation systems, catastrophic economic collapse, corporate diversification, CSR reports affecting accounting conservatism, economic income accounting, and information loss. Currently, the research presents an upward trend, which allows a growing interest in the subject to be deduced in the academic and scientific community worldwide.

The Bridge Connecting Silkworms to Mosquitos

This chapter relates the history of sugar, a thread that links the Silk Roads, Portuguese sailors, Atlantic islands, endangered seals, the African slave trade, and yellow fever, all because of our physiological need for glucose, which we satisfy with sugar. The chapter tells how from its origin in Southeast Asia, sugarcane, later called “Creole cane” and processing technology moved along the Silk Roads to Western Asia, then to Mediterranean islands. To begin with, Portuguese colonists transformed the Atlantic island of Madeira into a large sugar producer using slave labor until ecological and economic collapse forced production to move to São Tomé, using Angolan slave labor. After Portugal discovered Brazil, colonists took sugarcane with them, creating large plantations and initiating the enslavement and trans-Atlantic movement of millions of Africans. As the chapter shows, sugar production moved into the Caribbean and Central America, and African slave ships inadvertently carried yellow fever and yellow fever mosquito to the Americas.

Neoliberal Managerialism and the Human Services

Neoliberalism emerged in the United States in the mid-1970s in response to the second economic crisis of the 20th century. Seeking to undo the New Deal enacted in response to the 1930s economic collapse, neoliberalism redistributes income upward and downsizes the state using tax cuts, budget cuts, privatization, devolution, and reducing the power of social movements. Privatization, a key neoliberal strategy, is typically understood as shifting responsibility for entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare from public to the private sector. Managerialism (i.e., the adoption of business principle and practices) refers to operationalization privatization within human service agencies. The growing dominance of managerialist productivity, accountability efficiency, and standardization has redefined the landscape of the human services The troubling impact on service provision, working conditions, and the well-being of human service workers leads us to ask if the social work mission will become a casualty of managerialism.