Innholdsfortegnelse for Nov-14 i National Geographic Magazine

On the morning of April 18, a group of Sherpas and other Nepali climbers started out across the Khumbu Icefall, an unstable maze of frozen towers and crevasses that is the deadliest stretch between the base of Mount Everest and its summit. One thousand feet above them, a glacier estimated to weigh as much as 30 million pounds groaned, shifted, and crashed down the mountain. Suddenly 16 people lay dead, buried under ice blocks the size of trucks. Dozens of others were injured in the worst disaster in the history of mountaineering on the world’s highest peak. In “Sorrow on the Mountain” contributing writer Chip Brown—who over the past year with photographer Aaron Huey has traveled to Sherpa villages around Everest—retells the story of the tragedy. They also assess the…

As the capital of U.S. celebrity culture, Los Angeles thrives on buzz, though it’s not usually the kind that comes with stripes, wings, and a stinger. That may change with the city council’s recent step toward allowing beekeeping in residential neighborhoods. Beekeeping has surged in popularity nationwide as a way to counter the dramatic die-offs in honeybee populations; U.S. beekeepers lost a quarter of their bees last winter. Urban beekeeping advocates argue that city bees do better than farm bees because backyard gardens may contain fewer pesticides and more plant varieties than commercial fields. New hives may be a sweet addition to the starstruck city, but can they restore a lost population? “Locally, it will make a difference,” says Eric Mussen, a honeybee specialist with the University of California, Davis.…

Some 80 percent of U.S. fruits and vegetables are grown on large farms* and trucked hundreds of miles to their final destination. To track a crop’s travels, two National Geographic reporters followed a truck filled with strawberries from a central California field to a store near the magazine’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Their conclusion? Knowing exactly how a strawberry gets to market isn’t so intriguing at 3 a.m. on the highway. By design, this transport is orchestrated so that consumers never have to think about a fruit’s journey—until it arrives at the store, and they can inspect for bruises. FOOD ON THE ROAD 2.6 million NUMBER OF REGISTERED TRUCK TRACTORS ON U.S. ROADS EACH DAY Trucks traveling east tend to carry food. Those driving west usually carry nonperishables. 5,120 TOTAL…

Some 47 million years ago a tiny bird stuck its beak into a flower to sip nectar, swallowed clumps of pollen, and died shortly thereafter. Its fossilized remains preserve that last meal in its stomach— the earliest evidence of a bird that must have carried pollen from plant to plant. “It’s the only fossil bird we know for sure was a pollinator,” says Gerald Mayr, an ornithologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, who studied the specimen after its discovery in 2012 in the Messel oil shale pit. “Stomach contents are not that common in the fossil record, and they mainly consist of seeds and fish remains.” There’s only indirect proof for the second earliest known bird pollinators: fossils of hummingbirds from 30 million years ago.…

United States Lightning strikes in Grand Canyon National Park about 26,000 times each year. Most bolts hit the rim of the canyon in northern Arizona. But some—like this one, captured in a 25-second exposure— can hurtle from cloud to ground inside the canyon itself. England Dozens of muddy men clamber across ropes during the annual Tough Guy competition in Perton. The course— roughly eight miles of obstacles including fire, ice, mud, and barbed wire—draws thousands of hardy contestants each winter. Australia Felled by a power line and dead of a broken neck, an Australian pelican becomes an unlikely still life in Brisbane. To turn tragedy into tableau, the photographer made this image using a flashlight and a long exposure—then buried the bird in her garden. Order prints of select National…

THE 16 WHO PERISHED: MINGMA NURU, DORJE SHERPA, ANG TSHIRI, NIMA SHERPA, PHURBA ONGYAL, LHAKPA TENJING SHERPA, CHHIRING ONGCHU SHERPA, DORJE KHATRI, DORJE SHERPA, PHUR TEMBA SHERPA, PASANG KARMA SHERPA, ASMAN TAMANG, TENZING CHOTTAR, ANKAJI SHERPA, PEM TENJI SHERPA, ASH BAHADUR GURUNG On what would be the darkest day in the history of the world’s highest mountain, Nima Chhiring, a 29-year-old Sherpa from the village of Khumjung with sunburned cheeks and a thatch of black hair, marched to work at 3 a.m. He had a 65-pound canister of cooking gas on his back. Behind him was the temporary village of Everest Base Camp, where the members of some 40 international expeditions were asleep in their tents or tossing restlessly in the thin air of 17,290 feet. Above him a string…

The Barbary macaque is a monkey of many distinctions. It is the only primate, other than humans, north of the Sahara on the African continent, and it’s the only macaque living outside of Asia. Other macaque species once ranged from East Asia to northwest Africa; only the Barbary macaque weathered ecological changes to hold on in Africa. But it’s not just geography that makes this monkey stand out. With thick ginger fur and intelligent eyes, the toddler-size, tailless macaques have long been coveted—and captured—by passing travelers. Skeletal remains of macaques have been discovered in the ashes of Pompeii, deep within an ancient Egyptian catacomb, and buried beneath an Irish hilltop where the Bronze Age kings of Ulster once held court. These days the Barbary macaque’s range has dwindled to pockets…

Astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. He was also host of the National Geographic television series Cosmos. CAN SCIENCE SAVE US? I don’t know if science can save us. What I do know is that the absence of science will kill us. If you look at the improvement in quality of life around the world, it is entirely brought about by advances in science and technology. WHY IS IT CRUCIAL TO INTEREST ADULTS IN SCIENCE? In most adults I’ve met, there is some ember within that carries their soul of curiosity. For some it is almost extinguished and needs to be fanned. For others it’s like a pilot light.…

Less than a year after losing her left leg below the knee in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, professional ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis was performing the rumba again. She was aided by a prototype of a bionic leg designed specifically for dancing by Hugh Herr—a double amputee himself— and his biomechatronics team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. The biggest advantage of the robotic leg over the conventional prosthetic Haslet-Davis usually dances in is its bendable, motorized ankle. The leg has a dozen sensors that react to changing speed, torque, and position by stiffening or relaxing the ankle joint. Herr, who has also designed bionic prosthetics optimized for walking and running, hopes his research will lead to bionic limbs that are so intelligent that “the world can…

Make Way for Millet It ranks with buckwheat and quinoa as one of the great ancient grains. Still, for many people today millet calls to mind only one thing: bird food. True, the plant is used mainly as animal feed in the U.S. and Europe. But in parts of China, India, and Africa, millet—which is high in protein and needs little water to grow—is an important source of nourishment. It could also be key to feeding an expanding global population. Millet can withstand drought and extreme heat, so it’s an ideal crop in a changing climate, says agricultural scientist Hari Upadhyaya. What’s more, the nutty-tasting grain grows quickly and resists pests. All this tiny powerhouse needs is more exposure, says Tim Larsen, a spokesman for Colorado millet growers. “I feel…

Every worker, at some point, may imagine retiring. But for the next generation of the world’s workers, that dream is growing more distant. As nations reform pension systems in hopes of reducing future costs, more people will get smaller public pensions and stay on the job longer, says a 2013 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. By 2050 most of the 34 OECD-member countries will raise the retirement age to at least 67 years, says the Pensions at a Glance report. National pension systems face growing pressure as people live longer. Raising retirement ages and promoting private pensions will help address that problem, “but more needs to be done,” says Monika Queisser, the OECD’s head of social policy and one of the authors of the report. “More…

A hiking party poses at the rim of a crevasse on Mount Rainier in Washington State in this photo—which arrived at the Geographic in 1919. A look through the loupe shows one couple especially well prepared for a day on sunny slopes: Their faces are slathered with sunblock. “The guides will provide the calked shoes, clothing, alpenstocks, colored glasses, and face paints necessary for trips over snow and ice fields,” explains a National Park Service guidebook to Rainier from that year. “The climb is such a long one and the altitude gained so high that none but those who have previously prepared themselves by preliminary shorter climbs can hope to accomplish the feat with anything like genuine enjoyment.”…

When I was growing up in South Carolina, the oldest places I knew were also the wildest places. History and natural history cohabited in the antebellum rice-field country and the barrier islands, which began 35 miles south of Conway, where we lived, and stretched past Georgetown and Charleston and on to the Georgia line. History had populated these places, then depopulated them. Their sense of vanished human presence and their teeming life—fish, flesh, and fowl, to say nothing of snakes, sea turtles, and alligators—gave rise to two rumors. One was that cougars still lurked in the deepest swamps. The other was that ghosts hung around particular plantations. Reliable people saw unaccountable things. That is what other reliable people told you, and what you secretly wished to believe. I left South…

Brilliant, iridescent plumage is evolution’s way of helping peacocks lure the ladies. But when there are no peahens in sight, a peacock may draw them with a distinctive sound: a hoot that says he’s copulating, even though he isn’t. Researcher Roslyn Dakin spent four years studying how peahens choose a mate. On the lek, or courtship arena, where peacocks strut their stuff, most females choose sex with the same few males whose tail colors and eyespots make them most attractive, Dakin says. At the moment of rapture, males emit a one-of-a-kind hoot—so Dakin was surprised to hear some males make that sound with no females present. Then some peahens came to the lek, and Dakin realized they “might use that sound as a guide” to where the comeliest males are.…

How much food never makes it from the market to your mouth? According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report on food loss, quite a lot. In 2010, 21 percent of food at the consumer level went uneaten. USDA defines food loss as “the amount of edible food, postharvest, that is available for human consumption but is not consumed.” It includes half-eaten pasta left at a café, scraps from food preparation, and sour milk a family pours down the drain. “It’s lost in bits and pieces along the way,” says scientist Dana Gunders. That means, she says, that small changes by consumers will add up. —Lindsay N. Smith 1,160 LBS. is the annual average food loss for a U.S. family of four. A year’s worth of uneaten food, represented…

Air pollution exposure caused one in eight deaths on the planet in 2012, the World Health Organization reports. Now architects and scientists are creating air purifiers as big as buildings— because they are buildings. Mexico City’s Manuel Gea González Hospital (pictured) last year unveiled a “smog eating” facade covered with titanium dioxide (TiO2), a catalyst that can break down pollutants into less harmful compounds. The facade’s designers say it neutralizes the pollutants from up to a thousand cars each day. Though the jury is still out on whether TiO2 can make a dent in global air pollution, there is strong interest. TiO2 has been discussed for possible use in high-pollution areas of London. Next year Milan will open Palazzo Italia, a six-story pavilion with an “air cleaning cement” exterior. The…

Hungry for information? Make a selection from our menu of food facts—and taste more at natgeofood.com. 25¢ MENU According to the World Food Programme, just 25 cents a day is all it costs to provide a child with a nutritious school meal and extra food to take home. HUNGRY NIGHTS One in eight people— 805 million worldwide—goes to bed hungry every night. 1,000 HEALTHY DAYS Adequate nutrition in the first thousand days of life can protect a child from the lifelong effects of physical and mental stunting. BUG PROTEIN Consuming insects is a good way to boost protein intake, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. About two billion people around the world already eat bugs regularly. MIGHTY PEANUT A calorie-rich, vitamin-fortified form of peanut paste has saved millions of…

Fewer monarch butterflies are crossing North America to winter in Mexico, says the World Wildlife Fund Mexico. In 2004 an estimated 550 million completed the winter migration; last season an estimated 33 million made it, according to the fund’s count. Although illegal deforestation and severe weather contributed to the decline, recent research suggests that the biggest culprit is farms’ large-scale use of herbicides that destroy milkweed. Monarch caterpillars need to feed on the plant—but it decreased 21 percent in the United States between 1995 and 2013. That doesn’t bode well for the butterflies, whose life span is so short that those making the next migration will be the great-grandchildren of the previous migrators. For this winged orange icon, survival is a group effort. SNAKING THEIR WAY HOME Move over, homing…

It is as astonishing as it is sad to watch a ladybug turn into a zombie. Normally ladybugs are sophisticated and voracious predators. A single individual may devour several thousand aphids in a lifetime. To find a victim, it first waves its antennae to detect chemicals that plants release when they’re under attack by herbivorous insects. Once it has homed in on these signals, the ladybug switches its sensory scan to search for molecules released only by aphids. Then it creeps up and strikes, ripping the aphid apart with barbed mandibles. Ladybugs are also well protected against most of their enemies. Their red-and-black dome, so adorable to the human eye, is actually a warning to would-be predators: You will regret this. When a bird or some other animal tries to…

The Future of FOOD natgeofood.com By 2050 we’ll need to feed two billion more people. This special eight-month series explores how we can do that—without overwhelming the planet. Is America’s appetite for meat bad for the planet? Unhealthy. Nutritious. Cruel. Delicious. Unsustainable. All-American. In the beef debate there are so many sides. At Wrangler Feedyard, on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle, night was coming to an end, and 20,000 tons of meat were beginning to stir. The humans who run this city of beef had been up for hours. Steam billowed from the stacks of the feed mill; trucks rumbled down alleys, pouring rivers of steam-flaked corn into nine miles of concrete troughs. In one crowded pen after another, large heads poked through the fence and plunged into…