The majestic great white bear of the north is threatened by its inability to adequately acquire food resources, as a result of melting sea ice caused by climate change. Or is it?

Many now believe that the polar bear, poster child for climate change, is not actually facing the declining populations that popular culture have become familiar with.

The Inuit constantly monitor their environment as part of their daily lives. Through generations of collective observation, they recognize patterns and changes, including those associated with climate change. In the arctic, the sea ice is now noticeably thinner; the ice breaks up earlier and freezes later, and there are fewer icebergs. What has not been observed, however, is an equivalent decline in the number of polar bears. Not all of the 19 polar bear populations are faring as well as others, but Inuit elders living in Nunavut are now encountering polar bears in greater numbers and in areas they never did while growing up. They insist that the bear is resilient, and, as sea mammals, will survive just fine despite the loss of sea ice.

“Those who put the polar bear on the endangered species list, they don’t understand … bears are part of the sea,” Inuit elder Jamesie Mike said.

The other side of the debate has its own evidence.

“In the last two decades, [the Churchill, Manitoba polar bear] population has gone down 22 per cent, due to the earlier ice melt and later ice freeze,” polar bear programme director for the WWF Global Arctic Programme Geoff York said, in a call to action video. The WWF is one of many organizations that strongly advertise the detrimental effects of climate change on the polar bear, having recently teamed up with Coca Cola in the Arctic Home initiative.

Biologists attempt to reconcile these differences by attributing the apparent increase in polar bear population to changes in behaviour, and distribution caused by climate change. Others agree with the Inuit that polar bear populations have increased in the past several decades. One explanation given for the increase is any ban on polar bear hunting. In the early ’70’s, Canada implemented its ban on polar bear hunting with the exception of some native hunting. Furthermore, regulation of commercial seal hunting has led to seal population explosions, providing ample food for the polar bears.

Polar bear hunting is regulated in an attempt to protect it as an endangered species. The United States proposed a change to the status of polar bears at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), but was defeated this past March. Had this change gone through, polar bears would be banned in cross-border trade. This was a major victory for Inuit. The hunting quota in place regulates Inuit harvesting of wildlife, while allowing continued access to the resources that are integral to their lives. Polar bears provide sustenance as both a source of food and income, and the Inuit seek to protect the wildlife like a future investment. Efforts to ‘save the polar bears’ would reduce their freedom to hunt, limiting them culturally and economically.

A new face for climate change is needed. The emphasis on polar bears when advocating climate change may cause climate change deniers to use the conflicting data on polar bear population sizes to prove that there is no problem. It would be far more effective to pick one of the many other species of animals that climate change endangers. Warmer beach temperatures cause dramatic imbalances in the sex ratios of leatherback turtle hatchlings, and the clownfish is threatened by both climate change and oceanic acidification, which affects their senses of smell. If Marlin loses his olfactory abilities, how will he find Dory in the Finding Nemo sequel?

It comes down to the fact that the common aim is to protect our wildlife and protect our planet. Observational interpretations of the natural world give a more holistic view of the environment and allow for a deeper understanding of systems at work. Instead of finger pointing and labeling as right or wrong, greater collaboration between conventional science and other forms of knowledge may be better suited to tackle today’s complex problems.

Three weeks ago when I volunteered to play music for patients at the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH), I was given a special request to play in the psychiatric care centre. The managers who made this request noted that researchers recently released evidence that music can counter the ‘sundowning effect,’ an increased anxiety and restlessness in patients with dementia. Although I had seen that my music could entertain people, I was a bit sceptical at this point about its ability to counter the effects of  mental illness.

As I entered the psychiatric care centre, I noticed a dementia patient­­­—as I was told by the staff—walking around the hall, while weeping about something nobody could really understand or help her with.

I sat down in the hallway and began to play my guitar; and after half an hour I noticed that her tears had stopped. After a full hour, she returned to her room in the best mood I’d seen her since I arrived at the hospital. I thought, “Maybe music has an impact on the sundowning effect after all.”

McGill researchers Dr. Daniel Levitin, associate professor of psychology, and Dr. Mona Lisa Chanda, post-doctoral fellow, have recently consolidated quantitative research and experiments showing music’s effect on neurochemical changes on “reward, motivation and pleasure; stress and arousal; immunity; and social affiliation,” according to Chanda’s paper.

“We came up with 400 articles that dealt with music and neurochemistry,” said Chanda, “which was a topic that had never … been covered in a review. It [gave] the question of what we should make of all this and how it can, in turn, guide us in seeing the overall picture and knowing where to go from here in terms of research directions.”

Through consolidating the results of the study, the research team uncovered numerous conclusions. They saw that “several brain imaging studies found musical pleasure associated with activation of brain regions for the mesolimbic system, [which is] also involved in processing other types of awards, such as food or sex.”

According to Chanda, in addition to uncovering a strong sense of award, music—especially relaxing pieces with slow tempo—reduces stress hormone cortisol. This could explain the soothing effect music has on some patients at the RVH.

A further study conducted by the team compared the effects of anti-anxiety medication benzodiazepine, versus musical therapy on reducing post-traumatic stress. Again, the experiment showed a marked stress reduction after musical therapy—even more than prescribed benzodiazepine medication gave.

However, although there is a large amount of research that provides strong evidence of music’s calming, and even healing effects, Chanda notes that in almost all of the studies the confounding variables were not strongly controlled.

For example, one experiment showed the effects of a drum circle, where people from all musical backgrounds learn and play simple percussive melodies in a group environment, and its ability to increase participants’ immune systems. Evidence showed the anticipated increase in the immunity of subjects who played in the drum circle; however, the circle was also a social activity involving storytelling, laughter, social gathering, and other features apart from just music.

“The aspects to it, other than just the musical component, could’ve contributed to the effects on the [drum circle] community,” explained Chanda.

People throughout history have witnessed the effects of music on personal and community health, but quantitative evidence is just beginning to emerge that scientifically explains these phenomena.

“Studies of the neurochemistry of music may be the next great frontier, particularly as researchers try to investigate claims about the effects of music on health outcomes… scientific inquiry into the neurochemical effects of music is still in its infancy.”

Albert Einstein once said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.”

TED 2013 Prize Winner Sugata Mitra’s idea of building a school in the clouds epitomizes the way in which the human imagination can push boundaries to solve global issues.

Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, describes his idea as the future of learning. In a world driven by ideas and imagination, he understands the importance of looking foward in the field of education. Ken Robinson, international advisor on education in the arts, believes that schools are in some ways killing creativity, and he urges everyone to re-imagine what role schools should play in educating the citizens of tomorrow.

Mitra’s project, known as self-organized learning environments (SOLE), encourages students to learn from each other using resources and mentoring from “the cloud.”

The cloud is a relatively new concept that enables easy collaboration between teachers and students across the planet. The National Institute of Standards and Technology characterizes the cloud as on-demand self-service, broad network access, and resource pooling.

SOLE was the result of a creative and unusual experiment performed by Mitra. As a professor of technology, Mitra was responsible for teaching people how to write computer programs. He observed that young children quickly picked up how to use the computer, just by playing around on it. He wondered if children in the slums close to New Delhi, India would also be able to learn in the same manner.

He made a hole in the wall, close to a bank ATM in New Delhi, and stuck a computer through it, which was programmed in English. He then let the children play around with the computer. Eight hours later, the children had taught themselves how to browse the internet, despite knowing little English and nothing about the world wide web.

Inspired by this discovery, Mitra decided to carry out this experiment 300 miles away from Delhi in a remote village. By removing his experiment from the city, he eradicated the chances of a software engineer passing by, and teaching the children about the internet while they played with the computer.

Surprisingly, when Mitra returned several months later he found children playing games on the computer. When he pointed out that it only worked in English, Mitra was shocked to hear that the children had taught themselves English in order to use it. They also mentioned that they wanted a faster processor and a better mouse. Mitra carried out the experiment in several parts of India, and consistently found the same astonishing results.

Intrigued, Mitra conducted further research. He concluded that in a period of just nine months, children left alone with a computer in any language reached the same level of competency as an office clerk in the West.

This finding has enormous implications in the way today’s technology can be used to create educational opportunities for people in parts of the world which might not have sufficient infrastructure and human resources to obtain a good education. With the declining costs of computing technology juxtaposed with the increasing permeation of internet accessibility, learning from the cloud has never been easier.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the OLPC Project (One Laptop Per Child) posed an important question: “Is knowing obsolete?” In times where the ability to multiply numbers in your head doesn’t account for much, because we have computers everywhere to do that for us, the pertinent skills to have are the ability to think critically and read discerningly. It is these skills that Mitra hopes the children will acquire by using technology to teach themselves.

Mitra talks about how learning should emerge as product of educational self-organization. He envisions a future of learning where the teacher sets the process in motion, stands back, and watches in awe as learning emerges. Ultimately, SOLE stands as a pillar of light, illuminating the minds of children who would otherwise have never received the chance to indulge in learning and education.