Innholdsfortegnelse for Aug-14 i National Geographic Magazine

“The New Face of Hunger” in this issue is part of our special series on food. See more online at natgeofood.com and on Twitter at #FutureofFood. I’ll never forget the words of the Cleveland school administrator or how awful I felt when he uttered them. It was 2007, and, as the new editor of the Plain Dealer, the city’s daily newspaper, I was meeting with a group involved in improving public education. The topic turned to Cleveland’s “lake effect,” which dumps about 68 inches of snow on the city each year. “The kids must love all the snow days,” I joked. The room went silent. People exchanged glances. “We try never to close the schools,” one man finally said. “When we do, a lot of kids won’t eat.” I’m embarrassed…

Your Town This month, we asked to see portraits of cities looking their best. To see more entries and to find future assignments, visit ngm.com/yourshot/assignments. Michael Filippoff Foster City, California One rainy night in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, wet sidewalks enhanced the neon glow from an Italian eatery. Filippoff set up his tripod just in time to capture perfectly a red car driving by. Voltaire Siacor Bacolod City, Philippines Last fall at the MassKara Festival in the Philippines, Siacor sat with other photographers while dancers in costume performed onstage. To make his photos different, he used a long exposure that made the colors bleed. Victor Troyanov Sofia, Bulgaria While walking through Barcelona during a trip, Troyanov saw a street performer on stilts jumping and dancing to music. The performer…

Koa is the king of Hawaii’s endemic forests, the only places it grows. Reaching up to a hundred feet tall, these flowering trees once provided wood for native islanders’ canoes and surfboards. But more than two centuries of logging and clearing the land for grazing have reduced koa forests to about 215,000 acres, perhaps half their original expanse. To reverse this decline, private landowners and state and federal governments have planted hundreds of thousands of trees over the past 35 years. The new koa forests attract birds, insects, and plants— and improve watersheds, which helps humans too.…

The Future of FOOD natgeofood.com Hungry for information? Make a selection from our menu of food facts–and taste more at natgeofood.com. SLOW POUR It takes 40 gallons of maple tree sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. IDENTITY CRISIS Peanuts are not nuts; they’re legumes. AFRICAN CHOCOLATE West Africa produces nearly 70 percent of the world’s cocoa. SPATIAL POTATOES Potato plants were grown aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1995. A LITTLE SPICY Size is a general indicator of chili heat: the smaller, the hotter. FIRST COOKBOOK The year the first American cookbook–called, appropriately, American Cookery—was published PURPLE CARROTS Carrots were once largely yellow, red, or purple. Today’s orange color dates only from the 19th century.…

They had Stone Age technology, but their vision was millennia ahead of their time. Five thousand years ago the ancient inhabitants of Orkney—a fertile, green archipelago off the northern tip of modern-day Scotland—erected a complex of monumental buildings unlike anything they had ever attempted before. They quarried thousands of tons of fine-grained sandstone, trimmed it, dressed it, then transported it several miles to a grassy promontory with commanding views of the surrounding countryside. Their workmanship was impeccable. The imposing walls they built would have done credit to the Roman centurions who, some 30 centuries later, would erect Hadrian’s Wall in another part of Britain. Cloistered within those walls were dozens of buildings, among them one of the largest roofed structures built in prehistoric northern Europe. It was more than 80…

The Future of FOOD natgeofood.com Stranded in a Food Desert Tens of thousands of people in Houston and in other parts of the U.S. live in what’s called a food desert: Their homes are more than half a mile from a supermarket, and they don’t own a car, because of poverty, illness, or age. Public transportation may not fill the gap. How do they get nutritious food? Small neighborhood markets or fast-food restaurants may be within walking distance but may not accept food vouchers. And if they do, they may charge more and offer fewer nutritious options than supermarkets. Households lacking a car and located more than half a mile from a supermarket Help for the Hungry More than 48 million Americans rely on what used to be called food…

Every month this page features our staff picks of National Geographic Society products and events. For more go to nglive.org. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON TV Urban Jungle A coyote howling in the hills is one thing. A coyote prowling the streets of Chicago is another. This month the National Geographic Channel reveals a world of wildlife living in our midst. Join big cat tracker Boone Smith (left, surrounded by bats in Austin, Texas) as he tries to understand the many creatures now cohabiting with us, from raccoons in Toronto to baboons outside Cape Town. MOVIES DEEPSEA CHALLENGE Filmmaker James Cameron (left) is also an ocean explorer, driven by a dream to be the first man to dive solo to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Opening August 8, this film chronicles…

Wild Obsession To the folks who have so much passion for animals: Put your efforts into good programs to protect natural habitat, stop the illegal trade in animal parts, and support accredited sanctuaries. Listen to the former exotic-pet owners who realized that the best thing they could do for their beloved animals was to find a proper sanctuary. It’s difficult to hear the tragic stories of accidents that happen. Far too often it is the animal that pays the ultimate price of these accidents with its life or worse, isolation, because it was “bad.” There is nothing right about that at all. VALERIE SMITH San Diego, California In the early 1970s I visited a local pet store in southern California and on the spur of the moment decided to order…

Averting Attack Some of the newest innovations in beach gear deal with safety, not style. To ward off lurking sharks, wearable deterrent devices that emit a small electrical field have surged in popularity. The device—worn around the ankle or embedded in a surfboard (above, deactivated after a test) —drives sharks away but does not harm them. Its electrical pulses disturb small sensors in the shark’s snout that ordinarily detect the weak electrical field given off by living prey. The technology has been tested against species like blacktip and spinner sharks as well as the more dangerous great white. “Those are the ones we really want to protect against,” says biologist George Burgess. Research with large predators in the open ocean brings challenges, not least of which is finding willing human…

Flamingos likely stand on one leg to conserve body heat. “Drivers, you can make way for pedestrians,” booms a deep Darth Vader voice (in French) on Kinshasa’s busy Lumumba Boulevard. Cars halt, people cross safely. Incroyable. Meet the traffic cop of the future. It’s an eight-foot-tall aluminum robot with cameras for eyes and fists of green and red lights, deployed to pacify the gridlocked, ticket-evading capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its success delights Therese Izay Kirongozi of Women’s Technology, the engineering co-op that designed and built the robot for $15,000. So far the city has installed two. Kirongozi, who counts 600 bad intersections, expects to sell more. Some grouse that robots can’t make arrests. Then again, they don’t take bribes.…

Eight of the 15 fastest-growing large U.S. cities in 2011–12 were in Texas. The Cat Ba langur is one of the world’s most critically endangered primates. The population of the raccoon-size Vietnamese species has dwindled from an estimated 2,500 in the 1960s to roughly 55 today, primarily due to poaching. Researchers had noticed a decline but didn’t know how dramatic it was until a 1999 census was taken. But the species may be headed for a revival. To deter hunters, the Vietnamese government established a core protected area within a national park. Biologists with the Cat Ba Langur Conservation Project have moved two females to the area to spur more births. Some locals are even helping by recording sightings. “At this point,” says zoologist Rick Passaro, “the numbers are poised…

On April 3, 2014, Jane Goodall turned 80. The iconic blond ponytail has gone gray, but the sparkle of intelligence, sly humor, and fierce dedication still shines from her hazel eyes. My conversation with Jane began in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Gombe, Tanzania, chimp study (see “Jane: Fifty Years at Gombe,” October 2010) and resumed this year at National Geographic, where we riffled through Anup Shah’s photographs and Jane’s memories. Her work with chimps began in July 1960, and within months she had become familiar with several individuals. She soon made three major discoveries: Chimpanzees use tools, chimpanzees make tools, chimpanzees can be predators and eat meat. She also began to recognize the degree of individual difference—unique personality traits—between one chimp and another. Then, in 1962, she…

Feodor Romanenko raises his arms. “Dear colleagues,” he says, with his usual puckish smile, and then launches into his Russian-accented French. “Dear colleagues” aren’t quite the only words of English he knows, but they’re clearly his favorites, useful for summoning attention from a motley international group such as ours. Dear colleagues, I propose that we now climb up there, he says, indicating a precipitous, unstable, ugly hillside of scree. Dear colleagues, lunchtime! Let us enjoy it here atop the butte before high winds and the next snowstorm arrive. Dear colleagues, he brags cheerily to our evening assembly, today my group made five wondrous discoveries, including two kinds of basalt! and some Mesozoic sediments! and evidence of recent deglaciation! Romanenko is a geomorphologist based at Moscow State University, and after 28…

Invited for Dinner Every Saturday morning the cars lined up outside the Gateway Baptist Church on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, each waiting for a box of donated food. Photographer Kitra Cahana walked from car to car to ask if any of the families would let her see inside their lives. Cahana was one of three photographers who shot this month’s story on hunger in the United States. While she worked with families in Houston, Stephanie Sinclair shot in New York’s Bronx, and Amy Toensing in rural Iowa, each giving different faces to the same statistic: One-sixth of Americans don’t have enough food to eat. Photographing such an intimate story about people’s struggles required added empathy. “All three photographers had to know how to get people to allow them into…

Emirate of Abu Dhabi As the sun sets on the Liwa region, local tribesmen lead their camels to a grazing area in neighboring Saudi Arabia. These shifting sands create huge crescent-shaped dunes, which move slowly and can reach 500 feet high. England In the village of Box, George Purser, 77, waters geraniums on a century-old traction engine. He bought the self-propelled steam engine 33 years ago for $100. Before it became a flower bed, it was used to thresh corn and sterilize topsoil. Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com. Cyprus When Mediterranean mantises are startled, they wave their forelimbs and raise their wings to reveal vivid eyespot markings. These two adult females, each less than three inches long, were spotted in an alfalfa field near Nicosia.…

Watch the video of Food by the Numbers at nationalgeographic.com/foodbynumbers. A growing number of farmers are managing agricultural pests with biopesticides and biological control agents, including natural materials such as plants, bacteria, and fungi. Predatory and parasitic insects are a form of biological control. All these methods work to keep pest levels low enough to minimize crop losses without posing a major threat to the environment. Demand for produce free of pesticide residues is driving the increase in biopesticides, says Mark Davis of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Biopesticides are inherently less harmful to humans and break down more quickly than typical agrochemicals. According to Davis, some beneficial fungi even go beyond pest killing by liberating soil nutrients that promote plant growth.…

About 95.6 million cats and 83.3 million dogs are household pets in the United States. The 1990 movie Edward Scissorhands has had a brush with science. Researchers discovered a pincered marine animal that lived 500 million years ago and named it after Johnny Depp—the actor who played Scissorhands. Called Kootenichela deppi, it likely used its clawlike extremities for foraging. K. deppi is the ancestor of all arthropods, says paleobiologist David Legg, “a group that’s conquered most of Earth’s ecosystems, including the depths of the Mariana Trench and the slopes of Mount Everest.” THE LIST Good Luck Often originating in hunting or the performing arts, modern idioms for good luck frequently incorporate wishing exactly the opposite—to avoid a jinx. —Johnna Rizzo ITALY in bocca al lupo in the mouth of the…

We’ve come a long way, baby. In 1931 doctors promoted cigarettes (left). In 1965, the year after Surgeon General Luther Terry’s landmark report linked smoking to lung cancer and heart disease, 42 percent of U.S. adults puffed daily. By 2012, just 18 percent were lighting up. Now for the bad news. Smoking can also cause diabetes, liver and colorectal cancer, pregnancy problems, and many other ills, says Jonathan Samet, editor of this year’s report. It’s killed 20 million in 50 years. Changes like ventilated filters make cigarettes more toxic than ever. And smoking is bad for fiscal health, costing $300 billion a year in medical bills and lost productivity. Smokeless options like e-cigarettes—their safety is not yet known, but federal regulation is pending—could be less harmful, says David Abrams of…

On a gold-gray morning in Mitchell County, Iowa, Christina Dreier sends her son, Keagan, to school without breakfast. He is three years old, barrel-chested, and stubborn, and usually refuses to eat the free meal he qualifies for at preschool. Faced with a dwindling pantry, Dreier has decided to try some tough love: If she sends Keagan to school hungry, maybe he’ll eat the free breakfast, which will leave more food at home for lunch. Dreier knows her gambit might backfire, and it does. Keagan ignores the school breakfast on offer and is so hungry by lunchtime that Dreier picks through the dregs of her freezer in hopes of filling him and his little sister up. She shakes the last seven chicken nuggets onto a battered baking sheet, adds the remnants…

The entrance is a wet hole in the earth little bigger than an animal burrow, obscured by thorny brush in a secluded wood in northeastern France. I’m following Jeff Gusky, a photographer and physician from Texas who has explored dozens of underground spaces like this one. Together we slither through the muddy hole into the darkness below. Soon the passage opens up, and we crawl forward on hands and knees. The glow from our headlamps wavers along the dusty chalk walls of the century-old tunnel, which slopes away from us down into the shadows. After a few hundred feet the tunnel ends at a little cubicle hewed out of the chalk, reminiscent of a telephone booth. Here, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War—which began a hundred years…

French troops during World War I prepare a Caquot observation balloon, likely inflating it with hydrogen for launch. One of the craft’s stabilizing fins, deflated, droops over the side. Balloons like this did not travel across the sky but were tethered to the ground and could rise as high as 4,000 feet. A wicker basket dangled beneath, manned with a lookout to direct fire or report on enemy activity. The January 1918 National Geographic (in which this photo appeared) was devoted entirely to articles about the war—which the United States had entered only in April of the previous year—and flight. Stories included “Aces of the Air,” “Flying in France,” and “Italy’s Eagles of Combat and Defense.” “Aviation is a game—an amazing game,” wrote Capt. Jacques De Sieyes in the issue,…