Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2020 i Popular Science

IN JAPAN, THERE’S Amethod of repairing shattered pottery called kintsugi, in which artisans rejoin shards with gold-laced epoxy. Once the repair is complete, the shimmering veins not only increase the value of the mended object, they also hold on to the beauty of its past life as it continues anew. Kintsugi builds on the philosophy of wabi-sabi, a belief that the aesthetic flaws of age—things like rust, breakage, and discoloration—enhance an object’s overall splendor. Legend holds that the technique arose in the 15th century, when a shogun was displeased with a first attempt at fixing his favorite tea bowl. Conventional practices had clumsily joined the broken pieces with staples, so he instructed craftsmen to find a more elegant solution. Something that elevated the piece rather than degraded it. In many…

IN 1981, NOTORIOUS drug lord Pablo Escobar imported four hippos from Africa to his estate near Medellín, Colombia. After his death in 1993, the herd meandered into the nearby Magdalena River. Ecologists estimate there are now 65 to 80 swimming around, and that number could reach 800 by 2050. Introducing new species often causes environmental mishaps. Toads released to eat crop-loving beetles took over Australia, and ivy brought to the New World for decoration has toppled native trees. But some ecologists think these hippos may have happened upon a valuable role: 100,000 years ago, semiaquatic hoofed mammals roamed South America, and Escobar’s pets may be filling the niche they left behind. Here are four ways they’re shaping their environment. A/Forging paths At a whopping 3,500 pounds each, hippos’ bodies are…

EXTREMOPHILES ARE WEE ORGANISMS THAT PERSIST IN conditions so harsh—so hot, so cold, so alkaline—that the creatures redefine our notion of what it takes to eke out a living. Biologist Thomas Brock first discovered these beings when he encountered the bacteria Thermus aquaticus in the boiling hot springs of Yellowstone Park in the 1960s. Ever since, microbiologists have been searching the world’s driest, hottest, deepest, and darkest spots to find creatures that flourish in conditions once thought uninhabitable. We’ve identified classes of microbes that thrive in incredibly high and low temperatures (thermophiles and psychrophiles), in shockingly acidic and basic pHs (acidophiles and alkaliphiles), and in crippling levels of pressure (barophiles) and salt (halophiles). There are even some that withstand two or more factors at once (polyextremophiles). These critters help explain…

LINGUIST NICHOLAS EVANS had heard the Kaiadilt people, an Aboriginal group in Northern Australia, utter “malji” on the beach many times. He knew the term meant “schools of mullet” and “holes of a fishing net,” but they would say it even when pointing at empty water. It wasn’t until he saw a local artist’s painting of malji—a blue canvas covered in pink and red eyelets—that he realized the word also described the bubbles of light that indicate where the catch might be. As with many small, remote cultures, the Kaiadilt’s native Kayardild vocabulary got muffled by Europeans and missionary teachings. In modern history, the tongue’s never had more than a few hundred speakers. Today, according to UNESCO, about 40 percent of the world’s 7,000 languages are at risk of vanishing…

1 Chirping chips Roasted and pulverized insects mingle with stone-ground corn and chia seeds to give Chirps tortilla crisps 1.5 times more protein per serving than the typical salsa-slathered snack. A dusting of cheddar or sriracha powder adds an extra kick of flavor. 2 Crispy critters Farm-raised Cricket Flours Cricket Bites don’t undergo any fancy processing: The bugs are roasted whole and divvied into packages of around 75 insects each. They come in five varieties, including Cheesy Ranch, Spicy Cayenne, and original (it’s nutty). 3 Smoothie sting Chomping into a thorax after exercising might not sound appetizing. Näak’s protein powder combines ground crickets with soy and pea protein to hit 24 grams of protein—about half of an average person’s recommended daily dose—per 30-gram scoop. 4 Buggy bar The 10 grams…

1 Sports bra Six hundred hours of tests helped Nike determine where to tighten and loosen the weave on the FE/NOM Flyknit bra. As a result, its cups and racerback stay firmly in place but don’t hinder movement. 2 Headband Feeling the burn doesn’t mean the sting of sweat in your eyes. The Halo II headband uses a silicone seal to channel perspiration away from your face like a rain gutter, so you can stay focused. 3 Socks Friction in your shoes can cause painful blisters. The blended synthetic fibers in Drymax’s Hyper Thin socks are 88 percent less rough than wool, so your feet stay dry and unchafed. 4 Shirt Rapha’s base layers are made with merino wool, which wicks away moisture more efficiently than most synthetics. It’s also…

AROOUND 11 IN THE MORNING ON a 90-degree day in June 2020, a few dozen people walk across a field in Louisiana’s St. James Parish on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Tall grass brushes their waistbands as they head for a plot surrounded by a chain-link fence. They block the blazing sun with umbrellas and fan themselves with paper stop signs. Some hold bouquets of roses. With COVID-19 still a threat, all wear masks. When they reach their destination, they break out into song—“Oh, Freedom”—accompanied by a lone trumpet. It’s Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating emancipation in the United States, and the group is standing among what they believe are the graves of enslaved sugarcane plantation workers, discovered during Taiwanese plastics firm Formosa’s planning process for a new petrochemical…

WHEN COVID-19 SWEPT THROUGH NEW YORK CITY IN THE SPRING OF 2020, IT DID SO UNEVENLY. HARDEST HIT BY FAR WERE communities of color, where the death rate was roughly double that of white neighborhoods. Overlapping constellations of reasons drove this—such areas house more essential workers, living in more crowded homes, with less access to health care—but among the more insidious was chronic exposure to air pollution. A nationwide study from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health found that COVID deaths increased by 8 percent with each additional microgram per cubic meter of fine particulate matter, the contaminant most closely linked to highways, truck traffic, and power plants. Given that the dirtiest and cleanest neighborhoods in New York City have an annual difference of about 4 micrograms…

IN THE SLIVER OF TIME SINCE the Industrial Revolution, human enterprise has turned disastrous, ramping up extinctions, causing nuclear meltdowns, and altering the atmosphere that’s kept Earth’s climate stable for more than 10,000 years. Nature, to its credit, always tries to claw back, like a fire-resistant seed sprouting to life after the flames. But in many cases, the damage we’ve wrought runs too deep for an organic fix. There is hope, however. By putting our ingenuity and resources toward science-based restoration efforts, we can complement nature’s ability to adapt—and even boost it further. The five catastrophes on the following pages show it takes patience (and more than a little humility) to play Earth’s sidekick. But minding cues from when that symbiosis flourished in the past could be the key to…

In my youth, on the shores of southern Italy, I’d constantly play with Turritopsis dohrnii, a tiny jellyfish discovered in the Mediterranean Sea in 1883. Today you can find the species all over the world’s oceans because they reproduce like crazy—and it’s no exaggeration to say they live forever. When T. dohrnii reaches mature size, it can curl into a tiny ball and split itself into a colony of newborns, sometimes as many as hundreds of baby jellies. In this process, called transdifferentiation, adult cells reconfigure themselves into new ones. Uncovering how this change happens can give us clues on how to keep our own cells alive and healthy. My team and I have been sequencing the adult’s genes, looking at which ones control the transdifferentiation process and how exactly…

About half a million years in the past, modern humans split from Neanderthals, our closest relatives. But when the two species saw each other again 60,000 years ago in what is now the Middle East, they interbred. Those romances left their mark. In 2010, before I started in the field, anthropologists sequenced the Neanderthal genome using samples from fossilized bones and found that parts of its DNA still exist in humans. We now believe that more than 50 percent of our evolutionary cousin’s genes have survived the millennia, and we’re currently trying to understand why these prehistoric chromosomes have persisted for so long—and if they provide us with any evolutionary benefit. In 2020, my lab found that a gene variant that encodes for a specific receptor for progesterone (a hormone…

CONSTANTLY CRAMMING knowledge and experiences into your brain may seem like the quickest path to self-optimization. But sometimes the best thing you can do for your noggin is absolutely nothing at all. Taking time to space out—whether by showering, pulling weeds, or petting a dog—provides an opportunity for what psychologists call wakeful rest. The brief interludes allow for inward attention, a time when you can put immediate tasks like how you’ll meet that work deadline on hold and instead focus on current feelings, reflect on the past, and contemplate the future. In these voids, MRI brain imaging shows a collaborative patchwork of gray matter called the default mode network takes control. Neuroscientists still don’t completely understand how this system works, but they think it connects dissonant parts of our brains,…

1. Meera Subramanian • While on a semester at sea in college, Meera Subramanian was appalled that the ship’s waste ended up in the ocean. That revelation led her to tell stories about our stewardship of the planet. On page 102, she assesses the aftermath of some of our worst environmental disasters, exploring how human beings have the power to help nature heal. 2. Megan I. Gannon • A double major in English and art history helped prepare Megan Gannon for a career reporting on archeology. She typically writes short pieces about the discovery of old bones, but loves the chance to research the topic in depth. On page 60, she details a Black community’s struggle to protect the ground where their enslaved ancestors lie. 3. Marryam Moma • After…

WHEN BRITISH-AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST COLIN Turnbull published The Mountain People in 1972, he dubbed his subjects—a Ugandan group called the Ik—“the loveless people.” After two years of observations, he decided that they reflected humanity’s basest instincts: adultery, thievery, and pitilessness. Two years later, physician Lewis Thomas recounted Turnbull’s findings in The Lives of a Cell. “They breed without love or even casual regard,” he wrote. “They defecate on each other’s doorsteps.” But when Athena Aktipis and her collaborators from the Human Generosity Project, a research network she founded in 2014 with Rutgers anthropologist Lee Cronk, took a deeper look, they identified a community that shared everything. “The general conception was that the Ik were horrible,” says Aktipis, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University. But Turnbull had visited Uganda during…

WHAT IF WE COULDbiologically weed out all of society’s ills? At the turn of the 20th century, mainstream academics believed that if certain people didn’t reproduce in the United States, the genetic “stock” of the population could remain pure, thus leading to a perfect civilization. Sociologist Herbert Adolphus Miller wrote about the field, dubbed eugenics, in the April 1914 issue of Popular Science: “The rapidity with which it has spread is little short of wonderful, and its value cannot be overestimated.” These ideals led to immigration and sterilization policies that targeted poor, disabled, and dark-skinned individuals—all pinned to very scant science. Eugenics leaders used rank and power to push their movement, but their methods weren’t backed by any lab- or field-based evidence, says Miriam Rich, a lecturer in the history…

WE’RE LOSING THE WAR AGAINST WASTE.Although many Americans reflexively use recycling bins, less than one-third of plastics are reworkable. Even that figure is misleading, since particles like food residue can get materials rerouted to the trash. In 2017, just 8.4 percent of all plastics found new life, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The unfortunate truth is that recycling can’t keep us from drowning in polymer-based refuse. For more than 20 years, Chinese companies helped hide the problem by buying about 700,000 tons of paper and plastic from the US every year. Cheap labor there meant people could sort objects, which made it simple to separate trash from treasure. In the case of tricky combos like bags full of mixed materials, for instance, workers could pull bottles from heaps of…

1 Foam roller As you run your sore body across the 13-inch-long TriggerPoint Grid, you can choose among geometric textures that replicate the long strokes or focused pressure points of a therapist’s hands and fingers. A stiff plastic tube inside supports up to 500 pounds. 2 Resistance band Wrap one end of the Rogue Echo Resistance Band around a stationary object and pull away from it to loosen up your shoulders and back. The 41 inches of natural latex expand to more than double their length, gradually increasing tension during a stretch. 3 Percussion massager The oscillating head on the motorized Hyperice Hypervolt rapidly pounds your muscles, increasing blood flow and relaxing knotted tissue. Preset routines in the companion app automatically apply the perfect amount of power for each body…

IN the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of World War II veterans returned home with disabilities. Frustrated by the difficulties they faced, Jack Fisher of Kalamazoo, Michigan, petitioned his city commission to install an experimental curb cut—a gentle slope that brings the end of a sidewalk down to meet the level of the street—at the corners of several blocks downtown. A few months into the pilot project, Fisher reported that even residents without wheelchairs were enjoying the impact of the little ramps: Older adults leaning on canes, parents pushing strollers, and kids pulling wagons benefited from the human-made hills, too. Today, these shallow slants are an essential feature of the pedestrian landscape across the United States. They’ve also spurred a titular design concept: the “curb-cut effect,” which refers to the fact…

IT TAKES CENTURIES OF SLOW GROWTH FOR THE world’s tallest trees to reach heights far beyond the tops of their surrounding forests. As they stretch for the sky, the giants nurture ever-changing ecosystems of plants and animals. Since 2015, Steven Pearce and Jennifer Sanger, a Tasmanian photographer-and-ecologist duo, have been documenting Earth’s unique and underappreciated behemoths. The pair use rock climbing gear to ascend hundreds of feet from the trees’ roots to their wind-punished crowns. With the help of a homemade dual-camera rig attached to a pulley system, Pearce shoots dozens of photos over several weeks at each site and combines them into massive gigapixel panoramas. The resulting images capture the long-standing beauties before human interference can diminish or destroy them. BY THE SEA • A Sitka spruce, located just…

AMSTERDAM WAS ONCE JUST as car-clogged as any other major city. But in 1995, bikers began to outnumber drivers. Copenhagen reached that same milestone in 2016. Like other modern pedaling paradises, they invested hundreds of millions in making roads safe and convenient for two-wheelers. Introducing bike sharing has encouraged an influx of casual riders, and installing infrastructure like protected, designated cycle lanes has helped prevent crashes. This chart breaks down the five major factors that have gotten—and kept—gears turning in the top 10 velophile havens around the world. One surprising finding? Weather isn’t everything. As daily cyclists in snowy Bern and rainy Antwerp will happily attest, pedaling is an excellent way to keep warm. KEY EVENTS Whether city has no-car days • popularity of bike-related events SHARING Number of bicycle…

EVERY PERSON HOSTS as many microbial cells as human ones—bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other organisms that help keep us healthy. “It’s like another organ system,” says Lita Proctor, former director of the National Institutes of Health’s Human Microbiome Project, which identified many of the tiny critters. Cultivating an ideal mix might be key to feelin’ good. But there’s a lot to learn before we can pop probiotics for all our woes. The first step is knowing exactly what’s inside us. Since the ’90s, genomic sequencing has helped pinpoint species in our guts—the most complex colonies. We’ve learned some play an outsize role in health. Excess Clostridium difficile, for example, can trigger gastrointestinal distress. For now, the best way to restore balance is with fecal microbiota transplants (FMT), which introduce microbes…

IN THE AMERICAN EDUCATION system, the kids are not all right. Recent tests show that high schoolers haven’t improved in math or reading for the past 20 years, and middle schoolers have gone backward in their comprehension skills. All this comes after years of expensive education programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, which prioritized standardized test scores, not individual growth, to mark progress and groom students for college. Expert educators contend that schools need to infuse more flexibility, creativity, and community into their practices in order for a diverse student body to succeed. We asked them to lay out the steps for this radical classroom transformation. We need to turn away from defining students by deficit, disorder, and disability, which is currently how the system…

SINCE AT LEAST THE 1500s, THE ADAGE “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” has preached the impossibility of schooling older folks. The trope still manages to color stereotypes of aging as more of a downhill slide than a journey toward wisdom. But 16th-century know-it-alls didn’t have access to 21st-century neuroscience, and a growing body of research suggests that late-in-life learning is likelier than Renaissance pundits could ever have imagined. In fact, education does an aging noggin good. Our brains are bafflingly complex at any age. The average adult has around 86 billion neurons, connected by synapses—tiny gaps where these cells exchange chemical signals. Each head hums with hundreds of trillions of these connections, all sending and receiving tiny bits of information and instructions. During the 20th century, imaging…

THE AVERAGE PERSON TAKES AROUND 20,000 breaths per day. The Dyson Pure Humidify+Cool aims to ensure that each one contains the right amount of moisture and as little yucky stuff as possible. This device relies on three internal systems, each with its own role to play in keeping air refreshing and squeaky-clean.…

Simple The $40 OXO Easy-Clean Compost tub holds 1.75 gallons of leftovers—about a week’s worth. A gasket seals the lid shut to keep out vermin and lock in stink, while a plastic collar stops biodegradable liner bags from slipping under the crud. Fancy Vitamix’s $400 electric FoodCycler FC-50 reduces up to a half-gallon of refuse by up to 90 percent in as little as three hours. It heats the material while a fan pulls air through the chamber to dry it all out. A slowly rotating agitator then pummels the scraps.…

AN OLD-SCHOOL OFFICE CHAIR DOES LITTLE—IF anything—to combat the sweat and stiffness that come from today’s marathon desk sessions. Thankfully, the sitting game changed in 1994 when Herman Miller released the Aeron Chair. Designers Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf fashioned the throne with breathable mesh that conforms to almost any back and butt. The company relaunched the seat in 2016 with some technical tweaks, but its renowned appearance stayed much the same.…

People have inhabited some gnarly landscapes throughout history. Innovations like fire and clothing have helped us conquer these inhospitable places, but so has our DNA. With the aid of technologies like genome sequencing, scientists are unraveling how humans endure all kinds of treacherous conditions. Here are four adaptations that show we can turn any locale—hot, cold, wet, dry—into a humble abode. EXTREME COLD In coastal glacial climates with subzero temperatures, food is limited to blubbery fare like seals, walruses, and whales. High-fat diets typically raise the risk of heart disease and cancer, but some locals like Greenland’s Inuit have evolved genes that help them process the sustenance without any of the downsides. HIGH ALTITUDE Thousands of feet above sea level, thin air triggers the body to boost oxygen-rich red blood…

Over the last half century, extreme droughts and heavy rain have become increasingly common in the countries that hug the Andes. The mountain chain, which stretches along the western coast of South America, blocks incoming moisture and wind from ocean currents. This drenches the land on the seaside and leaves the inland regions in long dry spells. We know that climate change may affect these currents, and we want to prepare for the shifts in weather. Computer models can help predict future events, but data about past fluctuations can make the models more robust and accurate. So in 2011, my team started creating an atlas of the region’s floods and dry spells going back 600 years. We collected weather station logs, historical newspapers, and additional archival documents, but there were…

• Butterflies may seem delicate, but they are surprisingly tough. The monarch’s crisp coloring is what makes it turn heads, but the creature’s greatest feat is its annual migration, which takes it from southern Mexico to the Canadian border. Over the last several decades, however, the insect’s population has fallen nearly 90 percent due to habitat loss. Yet there’s reason to hope: It lays up to 400 eggs in one sitting, so small conservation efforts have been enough to prevent it from going extinct. The fluttery specimen on the cover is taxidermied, which allowed photography duo The Voorhes to pose it just right. Construction rubble from around their neighborhood in Austin, Texas, completed the scene, along with an overhead light and a sky-blue backdrop. The pair used photo-editing software to…