popular science - winter 2020

WINTER

2 0 2 0

59tales of

resilience

in the face

of disaster

transformcan

we

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CHARTED

10 A century of progress toward conquering cancer

12 In Colombia, invasive hippos are…good?

14 A dash of microbes makes our food taste better

16 The world’s most free-wheeling bike havens

18 How to be happy, with money or without

BIG QS

20 Sharing is caring—but is it in our nature?

22 The path to curing our illnesses from the inside out

22 A comfortable life in the harshest conditions

22 How genetic diversity breeds resilience

23 What we can do to make students alright

24 The hidden benefi ts of reviving ancient tongues

24 Can we quit our plastic habit for good?

26 The case for teaching old dogs new tricks

GOODS

30 This e-bike can tackle all conditions—even snow

32 Safe, comfy face cover-ings for any situation

33 The perfect purifi er to clean up your airspace

34 Meet your new favorite protein source

36 The bag to grab in the middle of a crisis

38 Stink-free home com-posting for any budget

40 Workout gear to maximize your gym time

41 Four tools that’ll mend your aching muscles

42 The most iconic offi ce chair out there

TALES FROM THE FIELD

117 The microbial network that fl avors sourdough

118 These jellyfi sh simply refuse to die

118 Why space rovers live beyond their years

119 When human adapta-tion goes to extremes

120 Can we brew a tasty beer on Mars?

121 After 100-plus years, this bulb’s still burning

122 Trees make excellent meteorologists

122 We’re all a little bit Neanderthal

HEAD TRIP

125 The funkiest facts about how our brains stay so darn resilient, from the power of doing nothing to those little tricks and talents we can never truly forget

BEHIND THE COVER

134 Why the monarch is our ultimate cover model

CONTENTS

The battle to reclaim a buried history

On the front line of pandemic prevention

Niche design tweaks that improve life for everyone

COVID-19 may propel sustainable fi shing

Atop the looming giants of the natural world

We can power big cities without polluting them

How to keep prisons from spreading disease

Does Earth need our help to heal?

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY THE VOORHES / ILLUSTRATION BY GABY D’ALESSANDRO

FEATURES

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thing that elevated the piece

rather than degraded it.

In many ways, life in 2020 is

not unlike that fractured pottery.

A pandemic-induced global cri-

sis has exposed every fault in our

communities, from the impact

dirty power has on the air qual-

ity of those living in the shadow

of electric plants (page 80) to

a seafood industry that greatly

disadvantages the artisanal

fishermen pulling the world’s din-

ner out of the ocean (page 108).

But each of these fissures is a

reminder that we can do better—

and an opportunity to do so.

How we fix those breaches

shapes our path to a stronger,

safer, healthier, and more eq-

uitable world. Like kintsugi,

these efforts require care and

diligence— not duct tape and

hasty patchwork. Each gleam-

ing gold line we create mends our

communities so that they’re im-

provements on the originals.

That tireless work is what this

issue is all about. And in the 11-

plus years I’ve worked at, with,

or for PopSci, it easily ranks as

one of our most ambitious and

wide-ranging. The stories reach

corners of the globe rarely seen

before in these pages and high-

light efforts to lift up stifled voices.

It explores how, even if we’re faced

with great adversity, we can use

our ingenuity to help humanity

not just survive, but thrive.

This is not a smokescreen—

it’s been a rough year. But it’s also

a season for hope. For PopSci, it’s

a chance to find the steps to what

we know can be a bright, glim-

mering future for all of us.

I N J A P A N , T H E R E ’ S A

method 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 tech-

nique 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. Some-

where we go from here

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W I N T E R 2 0 2 0

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EDITOR’S LETTER

5

1. Meera Subramanian

• While on a semester at sea in college, Meera Subramanian was ap-

palled 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 commu-

nity’s struggle to protect the ground where their enslaved ancestors lie.

3. Marryam Moma

• After moving to the US from Nigeria, collage artist Marryam Moma

found a gig as a mannequin- style model at Parsons School of Design

in New York City, a job that had students literally building garments

around her. That experience influences the meticulous lines of her cre-

ations. On page 60, her work accompanies Megan Gannon’s story.

4. Tom Fowlks

• At 24, after three years as a field biologist at the National Marine

Fisheries Service, Tom Fowlks felt he’d plateaued. Then an accident

that disabled a wrist kept him away from his job for a year and moved

him toward a new career: photography. The assignment on page 108

sees him back on the water, this time on a boat off the coast of Mexico.

CONTRIBUTORSBY S A N D R A G U T I E R R EZ G.

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/

Lung Before cigarettes came into vogue, this malady was rare. Today, it kills more than 150,000 Americans a year. But regular CT scans for smokers, which doctors use to identify tumors early, save thousands of lives annually. A decline in smoking rates, from 40 to 14 percent over the last 50 years, has helped too.

C H A R T E DW I N T E R 2020

in remission

BAR CHART+

FOR MUCH OF THE 20TH CENTURY,

cancer was an unspeakable diagnosis. Doctors often wouldn’t tell patients about their illness because they generally couldn’t treat it, and they considered it unethical to take away a per-son’s hope. The equation began to shift when Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act in 1971, authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding. Today, while the overall number of cases is increasing (we live

longer and are less likely to die from other dis-eases), biologists and oncologists have made some incredible strides. New screening tech-niques, genomic sequencing, and tactics like immunotherapy and stem cell treatments have saved lives. There’s still work ahead—Black men in particular are more likely to die from many major cancers than their white counter-parts—but zooming in on a selection of these malignancies shows how far we’ve come.

10 W I N T E R 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M

BY E L E A N O R C U M M I N S /ILLUSTRATION BY I N-H OU S E I N T.

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Uterine In 1930, this cancer was five times more likely to kill than it is today. That’s partly be-cause we now recognize one of the key symptoms: unusual vag-inal bleeding in postmenopausal patients. The birth control pill may also reduce risk, while hor-mone therapy and surgery offer potential treatment options.

Stomach Rates of this disease have declined almost every year since 1930. One reason: New an-tibiotics can treat Heliobacter pylori infections, which trigger inflammation that ups cancer odds. To avoid radical surgery, researchers are working on ways to identify the illness early, when less invasive options might work.

Breast Ancient Egyptians thought this ailment was incur-able. But post–World War II, researchers refined chemother-apy and radiation to better kill cancer cells. Hormone- blocking drugs can now cut the chance of recurrence. If all else fails, meds that stunt tumor growth can pro-long life by months or years.

Colorectal This affliction is rising in younger Americans, but it typically strikes adults older than 65. Fortunately, it’s more treatable than ever. During rou-tine colonoscopies, doctors can remove polyps before they de-velop further. If they find cancer, surgery can still be effective if the tumor hasn’t metastasized.

11P O P S C I .CO M / W I N T E R 2 0 2 0

block height indicates death rate per 100,000 people

IN 1981, NOTORIOUS

drug lord Pablo Escobar imported four hippos from Africa to his estate near Medellín, Colombia. Af-ter 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 environmen-tal 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 ecol-ogists think these hippos may have happened upon a valuable role: 100,000 years ago, semiaquatic hoofed mammals roamed South America, and Esco-bar’s pets may be filling the niche they left behind. Here are four ways they’re shap-ing their environment.

OVERVIEW

by G R AC E WA D E / illustration by JAC QU E L I N E OA K L EY

hungry hungry hippos

A/Forging paths At a whopping 3,500 pounds each, hippos’ bodies are able to create trails through shallow rivers, altering flow. This forms stream-like waterways where small fish can hide from preda-tors. Their survival supports a diverse ecosystem, which is generally more resilient than one with fewer species.

D/Stomping around The hooves of these chunky beasts dredge up sediment along waterbeds, resuspend-ing organic matter that algae living close to the surface can feed on. All this stomping also forms small, deep pools where fish can find shelter during the dry season when the river level drops.

C/Fueling fish Hippopotamuses expel waste while wading, and their poop provides a feast for aquatic microorganisms—and in turn a boost for the fish that eat them. But invasive animals never come without complications; waste can also prompt algae blooms that drop oxygen levels, killing swimmers en masse.

B/Snacking on shrubs In Africa, these ungulates’ hefty appetites keep grass height in check, spurring new growth. Fresh sprouts are lower in fiber and higher in nutrients like nitrogen, making them the perfect snack for smaller grazers like vicuna. A similar, unconfirmed effect may be at play in Colombia.


A

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STRING THEORY

station

fermentation

Natto

Soy sauceMiso

Appam

Tapai

Dosa

Pulque

Kombucha

Sumbala

Curtido

Atchara

Kimchi

Meigan cai

Sauerkraut

Gundruk

Poi

Zha cai

Beer

Ogi/akamu/uji

Mageu

Sowans/virpa

Vinegar

AgaveNére seeds

Papaya

West Africa Mesoamerica

Philippines

Tea

China

Various fruits & grains

Global

GochujangPeppers

Korea

Cabbage

Central Europe

Cabbage

Korea

Cabbage or mustard greens

ChinaMustard greens

China

Taro root

Hawaii

Leafy greens

Nepal

Cabbage or other veggies

Central America

Rice, cassava, or sweet potatoes

Southeast Asia/Austronesia

Rice or coconut

South India

Various grains

Nigeria, Kenya

Cereal grains

Europe, Middle East

TesgüinoCorn

Mexico

Oats

Scotland

InjeraTeff

Ethiopia

Corn

Southern Africa

Rice or lentils

India

TungrymbaiIndia

East AsiaJapan

TempehIndonesia

Japan

ChocolateCacaoCentral America

Condiment DrinkMain SnackSide dishSeasoning

or flavoring

OncomSoy pulp

Indonesia

WineGrapes

Global

Nata de cocoCoconutPhilippines

FOOD TYPE

STRING THEORY

fermenteddelights

NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE OR where you live, you’ve almost certainly eaten something fermented. Humans have been processing food this way for at least 13,000 years—since the earliest porridge-like beer predecessor—and in

cuisines on every populated continent. Microbes like bacteria and fungi flour-ish when feeding off carbohydrates, turning sugars into a wealth of new chemicals like the carbon dioxide in breads, the ethanol in alcoholic drinks,

and the lactic acid in dairy. The result is a transformed food with qualities ideal for human sustenance: prolonged shelf life, better digestibility, and en-riched nutritional and flavor profiles. Here’s a sampling of foods that our

H A N NA H S E O / M O NA C H A L A B I

Brem

Mursik

Matzoon

Ryazhenka

Salami

Nem chua

Ngapi

Surströmming

Worcestershiresauce

Bánh Cuôn

SakeJapan

Indonesia

Vietnam

KatsuobushiSkipjack tuna

Japan

BagoóngFish, krill, or shrimp

Philippines

Fish sauceVarious fish

East Asia

Various fish or shrimp

BurmaHerring

Sweden

Anchovies, grains, or tamarind

England

Pork

Vietnam

Pork

Italy

YogurtMilk

Global

Cow or goat milk

Kenya

AyranMilk

Central Asia, Middle East

AmasiMilk

South Africa, Lesotho

BlaandMilk whey

Scotland

KefirMilk

Eastern Europe,Central Asia

Milk

Armenia

Milk

Belarus, Russia, Ukraine

Sour creamMilk

Eastern Europe

ViiliMilk

Finland

KumisDonkey or horse milk

Central Asia

RakfiskTrout or char

Norway

HákarlSharkIceland

Igunaq/kopalhenWalrus or other mammals

Arctic

NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE OR

where you live, you’ve almost certainly eaten something fermented. Humans have been processing food this way for at least 10,000 years in cuisines on every populated continent. Microbes like bac-

teria and fungi flourish when feeding off carbohydrates, turning sugars into a wealth of new chemicals like the carbon dioxide in breads, ethanol in alcoholic drinks, and lactic acid in dairy. The re-sulting foods have qualities ideal for

human sustenance: prolonged shelf life, better digestibility, and enriched nu-tritional and flavor profiles. The buffet below represents just a sampling of the treats our species brines, brews, cures, and cultures around the world.



/

UTRECHT NETHERLANDS

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

ANTWERP BELGIUM

COPENHAGEN DENMARK

AMSTERDAM NETHERLANDS

MALMÖ SWEDEN

HANGZHOU CHINA

BERN SWITZERLAND

BREMEN GERMANY

HANOVER GERMANY

EVENTS Whether city has no-cardays • popularity of bike-related events

SHARINGNumber of bicycle sharing or rental stations • number of shared bikes

CRIME & SAFETYFatality rate • accident rate • bicycle theft rate

WEATHERNumber of sunshine hours • annual precipitation • number of days between 32°F and 86°F

INFRASTRUCTURENumber of bike shops • bicycle roads per person • investment

EVENTS

HIGHEST SCORE

POSSIBLE

SHARING

HIGHEST SCORE

POSSIBLE

RANK

SAFETY

HIGHEST SCORE

POSSIBLE

INFRASTRUCTURE

HIGHEST SCORE

POSSIBLE

WEATHER

HIGHEST SCORE

POSSIBLE

8917

31

89

15

33

10

48

20

84

24

98

72

90

82

88

77

83

78

92

80

85

87

77

59

64

63

61

63

59

54

53

59

59

58

51

34

55

56

47

33

65

60

54

MÜNSTER GERMANY

280

3460

446

1166

218

1019

433

477

482

335

773


ABSTRACTED

by A N D R EW S M A L L /illustration by M S JO N E S N YC

pedal pushers

AMSTERDAM WAS ONCE JUST as car-clogged as any other major city. But in 1995, bikers began to outnumber drivers. Copen hagen 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 en-couraged 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 excel-lent way to keep warm.

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4 Despite bone-chilling win-ters, Finland is the happiest country on Earth. It soars above Taiwan, which boasts a similar GDP per capita plus tropical breezes. Slimmer wage gaps and government mandates like long-term paid parental leave and free health care might be key; these perks relieve stressors, giving citi-zens fewer reasons to frown.

by CA N D I C E WA N G infographic by S A R A C H O D OS H

national pleasure


E A C H Y E A R , T H E M A K E R S

of the World Happiness Report survey people from more than 150 countries and try to pinpoint a recipe for bliss. Wealth, to some extent, tends to raise content-edness, but several regions are more

satisfied than their coffers alone can ex-plain. Some secrets to a cheery existence include solid social support, a long life ex-pectancy, plenty of freedom, and a lack of corruption. Those outliers exemplify how some countries rise above the mean.

3 Costa Rica’s Nicoya Penin-sula is a “Blue Zone”— a place where locals frequently live past 100. The national average is 81 years, which is already far above Latin America’s average of 75. This longevity varies relatively little across income levels: The poorest Costa Ricans die at a rate 1.5 times higher than the wealthiest, while in the US it’s closer to 3.4.

1 Somalis enjoy tight-knit families, as their national culture tends to prioritize kin above all else. The resulting support network of female rel-atives lessens the burdens of childcare (from birth through rearing) on working mothers. Despite a civil war that’s been going on since 1991, surveys suggest it’s one of the most contented countries in Africa.

2 Most Central Asian na-tions remain dictatorships, so Uzbekistan stands out within the region— and the World Happiness Report indicates that a sense of freedom is a big mood booster. The coun-try has taken some tentative steps against authoritarianism since long-term dictator Islam Karimov’s death in 2016, kin-dling hope among the Uzbeks.

Finland

Uzbekistan

Somalia

Costa Rica

$100 $1,000 $10,000 $100,000

GDP per capita

mo

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ap

py

less h

ap

py

East Asia & Pacific

Europe & Central Asia

Latin America & Caribbean

Middle East & North Africa

North America

South Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

REGION

Pakistan

Nigeria

Malta

New Zealand

USA

1

2

3 4

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Shown to reduce allergens 47%

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LEAVING PLASTIC BEHIND • LENDING A HAND • LEARNING BETTER • LIVING ON THE EDGE

B I G S

ABOUT SHARING?

QQQ

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 hu-

manity’s basest instincts: adultery, thievery, and pitilessness. Two

years later, physician Lewis Thomas recounted Turnbull’s find-

ings 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 identi-

fied a community that shared everything. “The general conception

was that the Ik were horrible,” says Aktipis, a professor of psychol-

ogy at Arizona State University. But Turnbull had visited Uganda

during a devastating famine. “All he saw is what happens when

people are starving.” Her teammate Cathryn Townsend’s fieldwork

revealed that despite living under pressure, the Ik placed a high

value on helping one another when they could.

Aktipis believes that altruism is more common—and beneficial—

than evolutionary social science has long presumed. “A lot of

existing work on our behavior is based on this decades-old frame-

work that assumes people are designed to only do things to help

themselves or their kin, or that they’ll get paid back for,” she says.

By studying the unique, selfless practices that helped nine com-

munities across the world endure, the experts from the Human

Generosity Project are looking to show that we are indeed capable

of widespread cooperation. Aktipis combines their long-term ob-

servations with data to quantify the outcomes of generous actions.

The Maasai ethnic group in Kenya provided one of the project’s

first focal points. The work, supervised by Rutgers graduate stu-

dent and Maasai member Dennis Sonkoi, has helped to show that

peer-to-peer altruism can benefit an entire population. Herders

rely on two-way friendships known as osotua, or “umbilical cord,”

for resources like food or livestock when they’re in need, without

expecting any repayment. Crunching data on average herd sizes

and losses, Aktipis designed computer models that outlined how

this method of sharing, compared to selfishness or quid pro quo,

led to better livestock survival and resource distribution among

families in times of drought, famine, or disease.

A world away, in the windblown Malpai Borderlands of Arizona

and New Mexico, the project is applying the same quantifying

methods to the time-tested rancher practice of “neighboring.”

While families often help one another brand or transport cattle

and receive support in return, folks will assist without repayment

if someone faces difficulties, such as an injury or the death of a

loved one. “You expect reciprocity for a planned event, but not for

unexpected hardship,” Aktipis explains.

Aktipis believes the modeling techniques and theoretical frame-

works she’s perfected through studying these groups can apply

broadly to any interdependent systems. “When you look at coop-

eration, whether you’re talking about humans or cells, there are

fundamental features that are very similar across scales,” she

says. In our bodies, for instance, cancerous tumors selfishly ditch

the social contract for short-term gain.

Her big goal, however, is to use the lessons from her work

to design social-service systems that support everyone. Take

market- based insurance in the United States as an example: It’s

priced based on individual risk factors such as health histories

and where people live, which means millions of Americans can’t

afford it. But in a system built on neighboring or osotua, pooled

costs would level the burden amassed during collective hardships

like natural disasters and pandemics. “Obviously, rethinking the

way insurance works is a big, big project,” Aktipis says.

For her, highlighting the cooperation that exists in tight-knit

communities all around the world also provides a sorely needed

mental shift from society’s obsession with individual success. Her

team’s work shows that there’s greatness in lifting each other up.

“It’s a good, legitimate instinct,” Aktipis says, “because it leaves

the whole group and every person in it more resilient.”

POV

BY RACHEL FELTMAN / PHOTOGRHPH BY CAITLIN O’HARA


BIG QS

our bodies

our guts?by K AT E S C H N E R

f o r e c a s t

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 Microb i o m e P ro j e c t , wh i c h 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 via a donor’s encapsulated poop. FMT can cure up to 90 percent of recurrent C. diff infections.

But the potential uses of similar therapies aren’t yet clear, because we don’t really know what all the microbes in healthy bellies actually do.

The next phase is seeing what else FMT can treat. Crohn’s and other bowel diseases will likely be targets in as little as five years. For now, though, finding applications is imprecise: Without a clear picture of which species do what, the best clinicians can do is try to replace ones that seem to hurt with ones that seem to help.

By studying the guts of people with certain conditions, experts anticipate we’ll pinpoint more connections between microbes and health within the next 10 years. Research building off the Human Microbiome Project hints that cancer, acne, and Alzheimer’s could all have something to do with our inner settlers.

Still, turning that info into medicine could take decades. Any magic pill will need to maintain the delicate balance of our microbial worlds—ecosystems we’re still working to understand.

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, micro-biologists have been searching the world’s driest, hottest, deepest, and darkest spots to find creatures that flourish in con-ditions 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 pres-sure (barophiles) and salt (halophiles). There are even some that withstand two or more factors at once (polyextremophiles).

These critters help explain how our first ancestors got their start 3.5 billion years ago, when our planet was remarkably hot. But they may also help us spot life beyond Earth: Astrobiolo-gists now know, for example, that organisms could theoretically exist below the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The orb’s temperatures dip below –150 degrees Fahrenheit, and its underground ocean is as salty as the Dead Sea. But Earthly halo-psychrophiles (microbes tolerant of both cold and salt) prove that such conditions aren’t necessarily as deadly as they seem.

e x p l s i n e x t r e m o p h i l e s

l i k e i ’ m 5 by S A N D R A G U T I E R R EZ G.

W H A T I F W E C O U L D

biologically 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 re

main 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 ra

pidity with which it has spread is little

short of wonderful, and its value can

not be overestimated.” These ideals

led to immigration and sterilization

policies that targeted poor, disabled,

and darkskinned 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 evi dence,

says Miriam Rich, a lecturer in the

history of medicine at Yale. “It’s of

fering this very reductive biological

solution to complex social, political,

and economic problems.”

DNA research has since shown

all that breeding can—and cannot—

influence. We know that diversity

creates resilience, and that the nar

rowing of a gene pool can flood a

population with mutations and

result in disorders like the protrud

ing Habsburg jaw in incestuous

Spanish royals. We also know that

biological building blocks make up

only a fraction of the human condi

tion, a fact Miller conceded in 1914:

“If a perfect eugenic system were in

vogue,” he wrote, “practically every

social problem which we are now

trying to solve would still remain.”

No amount of reproductive cherry

picking can change that.

CAN HUMANS BREED THEMSELVES TO PERFECTION?

w h e r e w e w e n t w r o n g

by sara kiley watson

When you’ve been publishing for

a century and a half, some off-

base ideas are going to creep into

your pages. We’re diving into the

archives to give you a fresher take

on “popular science.”

could we fix

by fixing


IN THE AMERICAN EDUCATION

system, the kids are not all right. Re-

cent tests show that high schoolers

haven’t improved in math or read-

ing 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 indi-

vidual growth, to mark progress and

groom students for college.

Expert educators contend that

schools need to infuse more flexi-

bility, 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 rad-

ical classroom transformation.

We need to turn away from defining students by deficit, disorder, and disabil-ity, which is currently how the system measures neurological conditions, and instead embrace individuals’ interests and strengths. Organizations in countries like the United Kingdom and Russia are building models where an educator can apply a student’s fascination with, let’s say, aviation to real-life mathematics and guide them to a career as a pilot.

—Stephen Shore,

assistant professor of education

at Adelphi University

The only way to prevent COVID-19 from deepening inequality for an en-tire generation is to equip families to support learning at home. The most recent study from McKinsey estimates that Black students may fall behind by 10.3 months and Hispanic students by 9.2 months due to school closures. But if we can get teachers to work together with parents to set learning goals, be supportive, and check in with each other more, we can reach a tipping point in changing the system for good.

—Alejandro Gibes de Gac,

CEO of the Springboard

Collaborative, a nonprofit

that trains teachers

City schools can break down walls with natural and cultural environments and take advantage of the social, emotional, and health-related benefits of learn-ing from rooftops, parks, cemeteries, and museums. Recent research finds that children who experience fresh air and sunshine during or between formal lessons tend to perform better academ-ically. In the pandemic, this may be even more true. Green Schoolyards America and Europe’s forest kindergartens are lighthouses that others should follow.

—David Sobel,

professor emeritus of education at

Antioch University New England

Each child is uniquely shaped by the conditions of their birth and the conse-quences of their lives. Estimates hold that around half of US students have experi-enced trauma. But studies also show that just one supportive adult in a kid’s life can blunt the impact of toxic stress on brain development and behavioral control. Schools that adopt a trauma-informed approach, where they prioritize personal relationships over curricula, can be a safe haven where children heal and grow.

—Jane Wettach,

professor emerita of education

law at Duke University

SOUND BITES

as told to sabrina imbler

what’s the secret to

BETTERBETTERSCHOOLS?SCHOOLS?

W I N T E R 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M24

WHY

SAVE DYING

LANGUAGES?

by H A N NA H S E O

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 in the next century or two. Losing them means letting go of ancient knowledge about littleknown places embedded within the words—and gleaned from multigenerational observations. “Each language holds clues that help us understand all people, but you don’t know until you look,” says Evans, who’s also a professor at Australian National University.

Take Australia, for example. As Kayardild and other Aboriginal tongues faded under British

rule, the communities lost the ability to pass on their understanding of natural patterns and island ecology. In Kune, which is spoken in the Northern Territory, manyawok refers to both longhorned grasshopper and yam; the shared name arose because the critters’ summer chirps cue when it’s time to harvest the tubers. Other terms help lay out precise directions with geographic cues.

From a global perspective, anthropologists can trace the evolution of speech patterns to help fill in our history. They can see how people migrated across islands and pinpoint when technologies like canoes emerged by tracking the emergence of seafaring terms.

On the individual level, working to preserve tongues offers a way to reclaim identity and share cultural pride. That’s been the case in Hawaii, where immersion schools run jointly by Native Hawaiians and the state government helped the number of Ōlelo fluent households jump from a few dozen to 24,000 between 1985 and 2010. Elsewhere, international groups like Terralingua and the Endangered Language Fund are helping Indigenous scholars launch their own campaigns. Each word they save imparts a lesson with the power to round out the human experience.

BIG QS

postcard

LITTLE Q

W H E R E W I L L

A L L T H E

P L A S T I C G O ?

W E ’ R E LO S I N G T H E WA R AG A I N S T WA S T E .

Although many Americans reflexively use recycling bins, less than onethird 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 polymerbased 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 greasy takeout boxes. But in 2018, worried about the amount of sheer junk like cling wrap coming in, China banned all rubbish imports save for 99.5 percent pure plastic.

Back in the US, plants are now chipping away at our mountain of garbage by improving automation. Some facilities use cameras to spot plastic bags that could tangle up sorting machines, or deploy robotic arms to shake bottles out of the irksome sacks. Others use blasts of air to separate paper from plastic based on weight. But those small tweaks won’t be enough. To handle our nation’s plastic trash—262 million tons a year, or 234 pounds per person, according to analysis by the global risk consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft—we’d need to increase our recycling capacity by more than tenfold.

Some experts argue that we should just waste less. “Not producing trash in the first place will always be better than having something to recycle,” says Jenna Jambeck, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia. To shrink our pool of wouldbe recyclables, US companies will have to prioritize selling longlasting objects over singleuse goods—and change the way they wrap them. Many products come in packaging designed for immediate disposal, Jambeck says, which accounts for 40 percent of plastic use. Consumers can pressure manufacturers to do better by seeking out companies that employ reusable or biodegradable wrappers. “Every time we can make a choice to not use singleuse plastic, it makes a difference,” Jambeck says.

Additional reporting by Rachael Zisk

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THE BIG Q

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 jour-

ney 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, educa-

tion 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

tools like MRIs and EEGs finally let neurologists

examine how those paths change as our minds

mature, and they revealed that ageist notions of

doddering seniors were quite mistaken.

Throughout life, our noggins constantly re-

wire themselves. Some scientists suspected as

much as far back as the late 1800s. But it wasn’t

until the late 1960s, when British neuroscien-

tist Geoffrey Raisman spied growth in damaged

cerebral regions of rats through an electron

micro scope, that anyone managed to catch them

forging new connections—an ability called neuro-

plasticity. “Molecular changes occur each time we

learn something new,” says Kaitlin Casaletto, a

neuropsychologist at the Memory and Aging Cen-

ter at the University of California, San Francisco

(UCSF). As we encounter novel information, our

brains release chemicals that subtly alter our

synapses and change the organ’s physical form by

blazing new neural pathways. Such tweaks stop

only with degenerative disease or death.

Of course, gray matter isn’t completely im-

pervious to the ravages of time. Just as stature

usually declines over the years, so does brain vol-

ume: Humans lose about 4 percent every decade

starting in their 40s. But that shrinkage doesn’t

necessarily make us slower on the uptake, says

Kristen Kennedy, a cognitive neuroscientist at

the University of Texas at Dallas. “As long as

we are alive and functioning,” she says, we can

alter our neurons with new information and ex-

periences. In ongoing studies in her lab, Kennedy


gives subjects ranging in age from 20 to

98 tests that measure reasoning, execu-

tive function, memory, and information

processing speed. She’s found compara-

ble dexterity across the board.

Starting in late middle age, though,

there does seem to be variation in which

cerebral regions do the work. “On the

outside it might look exactly the same,”

she says. Inside, though, the picture is

quite different. As areas like the cere-

bellum, hippocampus, and prefrontal

cortex— the seat of decision-making and

planning—get smaller, our brains auto-

matically recruit other locations, like a

left-brain region’s right-side partner, to

help carry the cognitive load. PET and

fMRI studies that track blood flow and

oxygenation have spied activity migrat-

ing into those areas during cognitive

tests. How long these cerebral detours

can continue varies from person to per-

son, but brains seem to generally get less

efficient at redirecting traffic as they age.

We can, however, buy more time.

Based on imaging and long-term cog-

nitive research, neuroscientists now

suspect that loading up on novel expe-

riences, facts, and skills can keep our

minds more plastic. New pathways can

strengthen our ever-morphing mental

scaffolding, even as gray matter shrinks.

Conventional fixes like crossword

puzzles and brain-training apps can con-

tribute to mental longevity. In a 2002

study published in Journal of the Ameri-

can Medical Association of 2,800 people

between ages 65 and 94, 87 percent of

the seniors given these games im-

proved processing speed over a six-week

training period. Three-quarters of the

participants assigned reasoning games

improved their scores over the same

period— and surviving subjects main-

tained those gains a full decade later.

Even something as simple as taking a

different route to the grocery store or go-

ing somewhere new on vacation can also

keep the noggin healthy, says Kennedy.

“Anything that’s novel drives your brain

to pay attention,” she says. “At the cel-

lu lar level, it spurs new expression, new

signaling. That’s really good for you.”

A lust for life can further boost brain-

power. Research about aging adults

who take on new enterprises like Latin

dance, quilting, or traveling with friends

show improved function and memory

as well as a reduced risk of dementia.

One 2002 study of elderly Swedes found

that people who participated in regular

social activities had a 40 percent lower

risk of exhibiting symptoms of dementia

over a nine-year period. And in a 2014

paper in the journal The Gerontologist,

60-to-90-year-old adults who learned to

use iPads performed better on memory

tests than those who didn’t play with the

tablets. “Challenging yourself might be

one of the activities that is most benefi-

cial,” says UCSF’s Casaletto.

Openness—a trait defined by curios-

ity and a desire for knowledge—may also

help folks ace cognitive tests. In one 20-

year study of Swedish adults published in

2010, a group of aging twins who scored

high on personality tests for openness

performed significantly better on vo-

cabulary, memory, and spatial reasoning

assessments than those who weren’t as

adventurous. And a group of middle-aged

and 65-plus adults in a 2019 Japanese pa-

per who reported enjoying trying new

things experienced fewer declines in ab-

stract thinking, logic, and knowledge

retention over a 13-year period than

peers who were more fixed in their ways.

Some folks are born with this take-in-

the-world attitude, but those who aren’t

as genetically gifted aren’t necessarily

out of luck. While genes can encourage an

interest in doing new things, a 2012 study

in the journal Psychology and Aging found

that completing reasoning tasks like puz-

zles and number games can enhance that

zeal for novel experiences—which can,

in turn, invigorate the brain. That’s why

neuroscientist Kennedy hopes we can

kick the “old dogs, new tricks” canard to

the curb. “It’s not that old dogs can’t learn

tricks,” she says, “it’s that maybe old dogs

don’t realize why they should.”

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W I N T E R

2 0 2 0

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pg

30

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the go- anywhere machine

by R O B V E RG E R

THE ONE


droplet stoppersCOVID-19 MADE FACE MASKS A CRUCIAL PART OF EVERY OUTFIT,

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Cool

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bug appétit

BY STA N H O R AC Z E K

1 Chirping chips

Roasted and pulverized

insects mingle with

stone-ground corn and

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Chirps tortilla crisps 1.5

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2 Crispy critters

Farm-raised Cricket

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grab’n’ goIT MAY SEEM OVERLY PARANOID TO

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BY R O B V E RG E R

OVERKILL

1 Outer layer

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2

3

1

2 Dental care

Your companions will thank you

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the head of the Radius Tour folds

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Three AAA batteries provide all

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directions and last for 100 hours,

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4


5 First aid

Treating minor injuries can pre-

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ing makeshift splints.

7 Gear bag

The water-repellent Eagle Creek

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feet of kit—enough for about a

week of clothes and some sup-

plies. If you need to walk a long

way, a pair of shoulder straps on

top convert it into a backpack.

5

6

6 Backup power

Gadgets can provide critical

information— and needed

distraction— when you’re in a

bad spot. The Anker Power-

Core’s 26,800 mAh battery can

deliver more than five phone

charges via its three USB ports.

8 Multitool

A magnetic latching system lets

you open and close the Leather-

man Free P2 with one hand. This

gives you quick access to 19

tools, including a knife, pliers,

and bottle opener for popping

open post-crisis brews.

8

7



waste watchers

LOW TECH / HIGH TECH

YOU CAN TURN FOOD SCRAPS INTO FERTILIZER IN ALMOST ANY CONTAINER. THESE BINS USE

THEIR OWN METHODS TO ENCOURAGE THE PROCESS, BUT BOTH KEEP BUGS AND STINK AT BAY.

Fancy

Vitamix’s $400 electric

FoodCycler FC-50 re-

duces 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.

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 col-

lar stops biodegradable

liner bags from slipping

under the crud.

*THESE CIGARETTES DO NOT PRESENT A REDUCED

RISK OF HARM COMPARED TO OTHER CIGARETTES

sweat

suit

YOUR MUSCLES DESERVE

BETTER THAN YOUR

RATTY OLD WORKOUT

GEAR. DECK YOURSELF

OUT IN THE RIGHT DUDS

AND YOU’LL UPGRADE

BOTH YOUR PERFOR-

MANCE AND YOUR STYLE.

by S A R A K I L EY WAT S O N

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.

4 Shirt

Rapha’s base layers are made

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than most synthetics. It’s also

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won’t stink up the place.

2 Headband

Feeling the burn doesn’t mean

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The Halo II headband uses a sili-

cone seal to channel perspiration

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Friction in your shoes can cause

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less rough than wool, so your feet

stay dry and unchafed.

THE GETUP

5 Pants

Avoid awkward sweatpants blow-

outs. Lulu lemon’s Nulux leggings

are knit with added Lycra, which

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while the material remains

opaque and moisture-free.


3

2

1

4

5

home

stretch

A HARD WORKOUT

SHOULDN’T LEAVE YOU

WITH LINGERING PAIN.

THE RIGHT RECOVERY

TOOLS WILL HELP

INCREASE BLOOD FLOW

AND FIGHT FATIGUE TO

SOOTHE YOUR ACHES.


1 Foam roller

As you run your sore body across

the 13-inch-long TriggerPoint

Grid, you can choose among geo-

metric 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.

4 Hot and cold pack

The silica gel inside the Arctic

Flex reusable therapy bag is pli-

able even straight out of the

freezer, so you can wrap it around

any sore area to reduce swelling.

For tight muscles, pop it in the

microwave for about 20 seconds

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2 Resistance band

Wrap one end of the Rogue Echo

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tionary object and pull away from

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and back. The 41 inches of natu-

ral latex expand to more than

double their length, gradually in-

creasing tension during a stretch.

3 Percussion massagerThe oscillating head on the mo-

torized Hyperice Hypervolt

rapidly pounds your muscles, in-

creasing blood flow and relaxing

knotted tissue. Preset routines in

the companion app automatically

apply the perfect amount of

power for each body part.

STARTER KIT

3

2

1

4

41


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.

sitting pretty

ICON

BY R O B V E RG E R

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W I N T E R 2 0 2 0

PHOTOGRHPH BY THE VOORHES

59

60 66 72 80 86 96 102 108

transform

ANCESTORS

ANCESTORS

VOICES

VOICES

A Black community

in Louisiana fi ghts

a new chemical fa-

cility that threatens

their health—and

the sanctity of their

long-hidden past.

By Megan I. Gannon

Collages by

Marryam Moma

popsci.com

Winter 2020

PG 61

OFOFTHEIRTHEIR

permits. Though a previous as-sessment had determined that no sites of historic or cultural sig-nificance were imperiled by the planned groundbreaking, the ex-cavators uncovered nails, coffins, and bones. The land had once been part of the Buena Vista estate, which had relied on hun-dreds of enslaved laborers—some of whom were likely buried there in unmarked graves. For mosa’s archaeologists recommended a fence to protect the area from any disturbance during construc-tion. Alternatively, their report concluded, the company could exhume the remains and rebury them somewhere else.

In the mid-1800s, this stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans was home to the country’s highest concentration of million-aires. Their fortunes were made possible by the sweat of enslaved Africans and their descendants, whose lives—and deaths—went largely unrecorded, though they had a profound influence on Amer-ican culture. They played music that laid the groundwork for blues, jazz, and rock ’n’ roll. They spoke of the trickster characters from West African folklore that mor-phed into Br’er Rabbit and Bugs Bunny. They cooked gumbo and jambalaya, which became essen-tial parts of local cuisine.

Many were buried in plots that are invisible today, and the con-flict in St. James Parish reflects a nationwide problem. Abandoned and overgrown Black cemeteries turn up during construction of highways, housing developments, and industrial plants, prompting calls for greater protections and new efforts at documentation. In add ition to helping archaeol-ogists study America’s hidden history, these sites are also sa-cred spaces for descendants. “Failing to show respect for the dead is in essence telling a com-munity they don’t matter,” says Joe Joseph, former president for

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 um-brellas and fan themselves withpaper stop signs. Some hold bou-quets of roses. With COVID-19 stilla 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 commem-orating emancipation in the United States, and the group is standing among what they believe are the graves of enslaved sugarcane plantation workers, discovered during Taiwan-ese plastics firm Formosa’s planning process for a new petro chemical complex. In 2019 the company hired archaeologists to check for remains, a required step in obtaining federal

62

the Society of Historical Archae-ology. “If we want to start healing the racial injustice in this coun-try, we’ve got to recognize that places of the African American past are significant resources that need to be protected.”

The Juneteenth visitors are supporters of a coalition called RISE St. James, which formed in 2018 to oppose the Formosa com-plex on the grounds that it might harm community health. The dis-covery of the graves, however, opened a new front in the battle. “Formosa’s not gonna come here and dig up our ancestors,” RISE founder Sharon Lavigne tells her small audience from the micro-phone. The parish, she says, “is our home. We’re not going anywhere.”

Before closing the festivities with “Victory Is Mine,” Lavigne addresses the crowd once more. She had been praying over the site regularly until Formosa threatened legal action. A judge ruled that RISE could hold this celebration just hours before. “Well, I’m here today,” she says with a fist pump as the audience cheers. “I’m here today to put roses on the graves.”

LAVIGNE has lived in St. James Parish all her life, and her eyes get dreamy when she talks about her childhood. Her family raised chickens, ducks, cows, and pigs, and picked their own figs and butter beans. Today Lavigne has six children and twice as many grandkids, but they haven’t grown up with the same reli-ance on the land. The fig and orange trees on her 20 acres have stopped producing. Her pe-cans are often hollow, fruitless shells. She sees very few birds. Some of Lavigne’s children have moved away, complaining of headaches and sinus problems. Over the past century, planta-tions have made way for facilities

LAVIGNE

Parish all her lifget drher childhood. Her fchickand pickbutter beans. six childr

permits. Thougsessment hano sites of historic or culturnificancplanned grcavaand bones. The land habeen part of the Buena Vestadreds of enslaof win unmararchafencany disturtion. AlternaININ THETHE

MORN-MORN-INGING

W I N T E R 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M

ARAR OUNDOUNDO

the plan was irreversible, but Lavigne felt differently. “I know something can be done about anything in this world,” she says. She founded RISE St. James and retired from her job as a special education teacher when it be-came clear that fighting Formosa would be full-time work.

As RISE saw it, the plants’ noxious emissions would be un-tenable. The complex would discharge carcinogens like ben-zene, formaldehyde, and ethylene oxide into the air. In January 2020, Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality ap-proved permits that would allow Formosa to release 800 tons of pollutants annually, along with 13.6 million tons of greenhouse gases. A month later, RISE joined several groups in filing an appeal, claiming the agency had under-estimated the facility’s potential output and that it would in fact violate federal and state air qual-ity standards. The groups cited a 2019 ProPublica investigation that suggested Formosa would triple the level of carcinogens in St. James. The report’s analysis indicates that the zone around the complex would have a greater concentration of cancer-causing

declining as a result.

are more likely to get cancer

Cancer Alley’s Black-dominant areas than in its whiter ones. Pub-lic records reveal that in 2014, the parish council rezoned St. James’ 4th and 5th Districts, both majority Black, as “Residential/ Future- Industrial.” Many locals say they were not informed of the change, which eased passage for companies like Formosa.

These potential health effects spurred Lavigne to learn about the threats of industrial pollution, and she got involved with activ-ists opposing the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, which ends in St. James’ wetlands and is the last leg bring-ing crude from the Dakota Access Pipeline to Louisiana’s oil refiner-ies. They lost that fight—it went into operation in 2019—but she found another cause.

In April 2018, Gov. John Bel Edwards smiled behind a podium as he announced that Formosa had purchased 2,400 acres in St. James to build a $9.4 billion complex to make the precursor chemicals for manufacturing plastic, potentially creating more than 1,200 permanent jobs and 8,000 temporary construction gigs. Lavigne was shocked: The site would be just two miles from her property. Many assumed

63

chemicals than 99.6 percent of indus-trialized areas of the country.

State and local officials who back the project cite employment in their reasoning, but RISE members doubt they’d see much of this benefit. Moreover, some industry analysts are skeptical the plants will prosper. As renewable energy becomes more affordable, oil and gas companies face a global decline in extraction profits, and they have increasingly turned to plastic production over the last decade. Those investments are unlikely to pay off, contends Tom Sanzillo, director of finance at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a sustainability think tank. At a virtual Energy Fi-nance conference panel in July 2020, Sanzillo explained that demand for plastic has dropped thanks to over-supply, improved recycling, and economic downturn. “The industry is in severe distress,” he said.

But RISE’s mission now extends beyond environmental concerns. In December 2019, a public records request by the facility’s opponents revealed that Formosa’s archaeol-ogists had uncovered slave-burial sites at the Buena Vista plantation. Lavigne’s fight transformed into one not just for the future of her home, but also for her community’s past.

HISTORIANS note that funerals were a source of anxiety for US plan-tation owners. Gabriel’s Rebellion, led by an enslaved Virginia blacksmith in 1800, was partly born out of a meet-ing of mourners. After preacher Nat Turner’s deadly 1831 insurrection, Virginia officials made it illegal for Black spiritual leaders to speak at burials without supervision. Some en-slavers outlawed such rites entirely, or desecrated the dead as a form of punishment. Simply burying loved ones could be an act of resistance. Usually the graves were marked not with headstones, but with more ephemeral offerings like wooden sculptures, broken pottery, field-stone, and plants—items less likely to survive the decades.

Even the remains of Black people who died after the Civil War were im-periled by legal segregation, a lack of resources, and gentrification. In Houston’s Sugar Land suburb, histo-rians recently fought to protect the graves of prisoners forced to work on 20th- century plantations in a convict- leasing system. In Tampa, Florida, a local reporter documented how the city’s first Black cemetery, established

in 1901, had been built over in the 1950s with whites-only housing. Since the Tampa Bay Times pub-lished the investigation in June 2019, University of South Florida archaeologists and local research-ers have revealed another eight potential sites nearby. “I think if there was a reporter in every city researching where African Amer-ican burial grounds were, we’d see this time and time again,” says ar-chaeologist Joe Joseph.

Examples stretch beyond the South. In 1991, Black New York-ers voiced outrage when they learned that hundreds of graves were being excavated from a 17th- and 18th-century African burial ground to make way for a 34-story federal office building in lower Manhattan. Many felt they hadn’t been properly con-sulted, and the controversy led to a redesign of the project with more Black scholars included. Among those spearheading the research was Michael Blakey, an anthropologist who was then leading a lab at Howard Univer-sity and is now director of the

Institute for Historical Biology at the College of William and Mary. “There were ethical obli-gations to allow the community its rights to determine whether there would be research or not,” Blakey recalls. The local descen-dant communities he conferred with felt the remains had an im-portant story to tell, and came up with the questions that would guide the work: Where did the deceased come from? What were their lives like? In the absence of archival records, the anthropol-ogists were able to reconstruct the geographic movements of individuals— learning which were born in New York and which in Africa or the Caribbean, for instance— based on signatures of elements like strontium in the bones, then a novel application of isotopic analysis. They also docu-mented that enslaved people in the North suffered just as much physical stress as those held on Southern plantations.

Blakey led the type of collab-orative study that regulations governing cultural resource man-

W I N T E R 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M64

DD

WWOSHSH

—Joe Joseph

FA IL ING

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65

agement are supposed to encour-age. Under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, any construction project on federal lands or that requires fed-eral permits must involve an ar-chaeological assessment. The process is intended to ensure that “the historical and cultural foun-dations of the Nation” are “pre-served as a living part of our community…to give a sense of ori-entation to the American people.”

The survey Formosa initiated in 2017 concluded that the St. James project wouldn’t put any histor-ically valuable sites at risk. Then an anonymous researcher no-tified the Louisiana Division of Archaeology about a map from 1878 indicating that below modern fields, there might be hidden cem-eteries for the former Buena Vista estate and neighboring Acadia Plantation, which the long par-cel also included. Formosa hired archaeologists to examine the property in 2018; they concluded that little remained of those sites and suggested the fence around the Buena Vista plot. But the independent researcher again no-tified authorities that For mosa’s search relied on outdated marks of latitude and longitude from old maps, and may have been di-rected at the wrong locations.

Over 10 days in May 2019, ar-chaeologists from the private firm TerraXplorations reexamined the area on Formosa’s behalf. They scraped away long trenches of soil across two target locations and found at least four burial plots, along with grave shafts. Due to the lack of headstones and historical references to the site, they wrote in their report, it was most likely a slave cemetery. The researchers concluded that whatever remained of the neighboring Acadia plan-tation’s graves must have been destroyed by previous owners.

At that point, Formosa was legally required to share its dis-covery of human remains only

with law enforcement and the Louisiana Division of Archaeol-ogy. In January 2020, a month after learning about the exca-vation results through a public records request, RISE and other advocacy organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade filed a lawsuit against the US Army Corps of Engineers. The activists accused the agency of wrongly granting Formosa its per-mits, partly on the grounds that the company failed to properly identify possible burials on the complex and inform the commu-nity. The Center for Constitutional Rights commissioned an archaeo-logical report from a third firm, Coastal Environments, Inc. That analysis, released in March 2020, found anomalies that could indi-cate an additional five gravesites. It also revealed that Formosa’s consultants had likely dug in the wrong spot when they examined the former Acadia plantation.

Janile Parks, director of com-munity and government relations for Formosa’s Louisiana subsidi-ary, FG LA, says the company has “always taken great care to re-spect, protect, and not disturb this recently discovered unmarked burial area” on the former Buena Vista plantation. She adds, “FG is, and has been, fully transparent and fully cooperative with the St. James Parish Council and with all state and federal agencies, includ-ing those charged with oversight of cultural resources and burial sites.” Parks also says that none of the additional anomalies in the Coastal Environments report have been conclusively proven to be cemeteries. “It is important to note that, despite assertions made by outside groups about ancestral ties to the site, no ar-chaeologist has been able to confirm the identity, ethnicity, or race of the remains.”

The uncertainty surrounding the St. James site isn’t unique.

Many burial plots may lie untallied beneath Cancer Alley. In the last decade, the Shell Oil Company identified more than 1,000 planta-tion graves as it surveyed land for its Convent refinery west of New Orleans. Some praised Shell for its efforts to document and avoid the sites, but the outcome doesn’t sit right with everyone. Residents whose ancestors lie in Shell’s prop-erty now need permission to visit.

Lavigne isn’t interested in see-ing a memorial for the Buena Vista gravesite sitting in the shadow of a massive petrochemical complex. For her, the plants pose too much of a threat to the living for such a ges-ture to hold any meaning. “There won’t be anybody here,” she says. “They’ll come put their facility here and watch us die off.”

EFFORTS to document and raise awareness about long-neglected Black gravesites have so far sprung up only from local communities. And without a database of such cemeteries, it’s unclear how many unmarked burial grounds exist across the country. But archaeologists, historians, and poli-ticians are starting to advocate for a more coordinated approach.

In February 2019, US representa-tives Alma Adams of North Carolina and Donald McEachin of Virginia introduced a bill to establish an African- American Burial Grounds Network within the National Parks Service. The measure would provide federal recognition for these locations and help collect information on them, which would be useful for descendant communities and developers alike. It could keep sites like the Buena Vista cemetery from being missed during compulsory digs. It could also help right disparities in how the US pre-serves its history. There are nearly 100,000 entries on the National Regi ster of Historic Places, but only 2 percent are devoted to the heritage of Black Americans, according to a

VOICES OF THEIR ANCESTORS

(CONTINUED ON PAGE 128)

PHOTOGRAPHS

BY

THE VOORHES

DESIGNING

WITH THE

MARGIN-

ALIZED

IN MIND

CAN IM-

PROVE ALL

OF OUR

LIVES.


FEW

NEEDS

THETHE

OFOF THE

BY

ELEANOR

CUMMINS


PICTOGRAMS

Painting a picture

The human brain processes images faster than letters, likely because alpha-bets and other writing systems have only been part of our lives for a few mil-lennia. That’s why the pictogram— a symbol standing in for a word or

phrase—is a common tool for helping people with intellectual disabilities. But they can also ease the way for any sighted traveler. People can recognize an image in as little as 13 milliseconds, compared to around 300 millisec-onds for a word. Now many of us take for granted that we’ll be able to quickly identify the nearest emer-gency exit or bathroom in a mall, or determine when it’s safe to cross a busy street, anywhere—even if we don’t speak the local language.

READING

MACHINES

Getting the message

In 1976, technologist Ray Kurzweil released a device for the blind and visually impaired that con-verted images into text it then read aloud—he called it, simply, “the reading machine.” That gad-get combined several new tools his eponymous company devised, including one of the first text-to-speech synthesizers, which evolved into an essential part of virtual as-sistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant; smart speak-ers with those voices are now in roughly one-quarter of US homes. The machine also featured an im-portant component of computer vision called optical character rec-ognition, which, by detecting street signs and house numbers, is help-ing build the maps that self-driving cars use to navigate the world.

CLOSED

CAPTIONS

Following the conversation

Sears launched the first TV with a built-in decoder that allowed deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers to read along with their favorite programs in 1980. Previously, only open captions— which producers burn directly onto video and appear no matter what—were available. In the

INthe 1940s, hundreds of

thousands of World War

II veterans returned home

with disabilities. Frus-

trated by the difficulties

they faced, Jack Fisher of

Kalamazoo, Michigan, peti-

tioned 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 down-

town. 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 that supporting marginalized groups

of people often ends up helping much larger swaths of soci-

ety. Whether it’s applied to accessible design, investments

in social welfare, or pioneering legislation, study after study

shows the effect has the power to uplift us all.



THE NEEDS OF THE FEW

LEVER-STYLE KNOBS

Opening new doorsTraditional doorknobs often end up keeping people out. Rounded ones, for example, can be hard for those with arthritis to grasp—and not everyone has hands with which to do the grasping. As of 1990, when the Americans with Disabilities Act

became law, doors in public areas must require less than five pounds of force—and only one hand—to open. That often means installing automatic options or broader, lever-style handles that folks can operate without twisting their wrist (or lifting a fin-ger, as an elbow or hip will often do the trick). These regulations increased and eased access for the one in seven Americans with a mobility disability. But they’ve also been a boon to older adults, young children, and people with their hands full. Touch-free ways to enter or exit a building can help keep germs from spreading, too.

A warm welcome

starts with a door

that everyone

can open—and

some designs are

more accessible

than others.

DEAFSPACE DESIGN

Keeping things quiet

There are more than 150 design elements that can make offices and public facilities better suited to the specific needs of people with auditory impairments. Those suggested tweaks come thanks to research by the DeafSpace Project, a universal design effort

from architect Hansel Bauman and Gallaudet University, the world’s only higher edu-cation institution specifically for the deaf and hard of hearing. One aim is to eliminate distracting ambient noises, which can make it difficult for people to use their limited auditory abilities or perceive vibrations, and can even distort the sounds coming from hearing aids. To achieve this, designers can incorporate dampening materials such as rubber or mossy plants into structures and decor to reduce echo. By keeping conver-sations and other aural disturbances from traveling and bouncing around the room, these tactics also make it easier for all sorts of students and workers to focus.


K8P0V4L


THE NEEDS OF THE FEW

1990s, text became increasingly ubiq-uitous as DVDs and, later, streaming services embedded the ability to switch the words on at will. A 2006 survey found that only around 20 per-cent of the people using subtitles had auditory impairments. Today, most people who switch on captions are watching sports in loud bars, making sure the kids stay asleep, learning new languages, or just trying to parse the thick Irish accents on Derry Girls.

TELECOMMUTING

Balancing work and life

In 1979, in an effort to reduce traf-fic on the office mainframe, IBM installed computer terminals in the homes of five employees, helping to usher in the era of remote work. The development of increasingly small and inexpensive personal

computers made the end of the of-fice seem attainable. By 1983, some 2,000 IBMers were logging on from home; in 2009, 40 percent of the firm’s 386,000 employees worked

remotely. The extra flexibility can make it easier to pick children up or take elderly rela tives to doctor ap-pointments. For those with injuries and physical disabilities, having a home office can remove many hurdles to a simple commute and productive workday. COVID-19 has shown just how many can get the job done in their sweatpants: In the spring of 2020, at least one-third of all employed Americans were WFH, with some companies eyeing long-term arrangements to reduce office overhead and lower disease transmission risk.

BIKE

LANES

Sharingthe street

The US has 4 million miles of roads, but as of 2018 had only 550 protected bike lanes, which physi-

cally separate traffic streams using barriers such as plastic buffers or secondary curbs. Activists argue every street should work this way. When pedalers are shielded from

cars, they’re 28 percent less likely to get hurt during a trip. Several local surveys, including one of San Fran-cisco Bay Area commuters, indicate that drivers like it better, too: They feel safer when bikers have their own space, and pedestrians find they have fewer wheels to contend with on the sidewalk when cyclists aren’t forced off the road. Accord-ing to a 2019 study in the Journal of

Transport & Health, protected lanes may even help lower the overall rate of traffic accidents—perhaps, the researchers posited, because the narrowed space makes motor-ists cruise more carefully.

ALL-GENDER

RESTROOMS

Welcoming everyone

Architects and business own-ers initially promoted family-style restrooms— which typically fea-ture a single toilet instead of many stalls—for people requiring more space, including those with physi-cal disabilities or kids in tow. By the early 2010s, it became clear these commodes could also benefit the 1.4 million or more transgender in-dividuals in America. In a 2016 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, the majority of respondents reported avoiding public restrooms for fear of being denied access, verbally harassed, or physically assaulted; many re-counted painful instances where other patrons perceived them as be-ing in the wrong space. As all- gender toilets have begun to proliferate in certain spaces like college cam-puses, it’s become clear that they can afford everyone more privacy.

Sound-dampening materials

such as mossy plants can help

reduce annoying ambient noise—

and look darn good doing it.

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 68)

L I F E O N

ON THE WESTERN edge of Borneo, a novel

provide the world with a blueprint to STOP

T H E L I N Econservation-minded health-care model could

THE NEXT PANDEMIC before it starts. BY BRIAN BARTH

POPSCI.COM / WINTER 2020 / PG 73

AS THE ASPIRING primatologist dissected dung samples to de-termine the animals’ feeding habits, the buzz of chainsaws and the thwuuuump of falling dipterocarp trees—some of the tallest species in the world, routinely rising more than 200 feet—broke through the great apes’ calls. Despite federal protection for the land, loggers illegally, and extensively, felled trees throughout the preserve, which sits on the western coast of Borneo. In fact, some of the local research assistants who helped Webb’s team uncover scat were former loggers, including a man named Tadyn (like most natives, he does not use a surname). One day, he came to her with a gaping cut in his hand, surprisingly distraught for someone who had once fought an attacking sun bear—and won. “It wasn’t that big of a wound,” Webb recalls. “His machete had slipped. But he had terror in his eyes, the most I’ve ever seen in a person.”

For locals, a minor injury could be life-threatening. They didn’t have access to tetanus shots or antibiotics, and getting to the nearest hospital entailed a day’s journey by dugout canoe, fol-lowed by another on a motorboat and another in a car. Accessing

treatment incurred costs that were astronomical rel-ative to their incomes, so, around Gunung Palung, medical emergencies brought out the chainsaws. Because the protected areas are off-limits to the wide-scale clearing that has created lucrative palm oil plantations across Borneo, villagers often cut and sell the virgin trees. One resident Webb met downed 60 to pay for a relative’s cesarean section. As Tadyn told her, “We don’t have any other choice.”

As she continued her work in the Bornean forests in the intervening decades, Webb would discover an-other consequence of the tree-chopping economy: Pervasive illegal logging can also threaten public health. Disease ecologists increasingly agree that human disturbance of wildlands increases the risk of zoonotic diseases—pathogens that jump from animals to people—which helps explain why spill-over events, as epidemiologists call them, are on the rise around the globe. The number of fauna-borne outbreaks quadrupled between 1980 and 2010, ac-cording to a 2014 analysis from Brown University, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that three-quarters of human illnesses discov-ered in recent decades originated in wildlife. The US Agency for International Development’s PRE-DICT program estimates that animals harbor some 700,000 as- yet- unidentified infectious baddies with the potential to make the jump to people. It takes only one of those to change the world.

We’ve traded pathogens with other creatures for millennia, but in the past, if an outbreak did occur, P

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IN THE EARLY 1990S,

Kinari Webb took a year off college to join a

in INDONESIA’S

Harvard researcher

rainforested GUNUNG


studying orangutans

PALUNG National Park.

FROM LEFT: Kinari Webb

walks through the old-

growth rainforest she

works to protect. An

orangutan swings through

the tropical canopy. A

vista of Borneo’s Gunung

Palung National Park.

geographic spread was limited. Not so in the era of globalization and population booms. Ecological disturbance—whether from deforestation, natural disasters, or climate change—often puts both people and animals on the move. Species that were not typ-ically in contact with one another may suddenly find themselves in close proximity and sharing pathogens.

Consider the Black Death, which in the 1300s killed up to half of Europe. In 1925, Malaysian physician Wu Lien-Teh con-firmed the source of the infamous disease—fleas in the fur of Central Asian rodents called tarbagans—which enabled later generations of scientists to unravel the social and environmental factors that conspired to spread the deadly illness. The advent of agriculture in the region offered an ample food supply, spurring a spike in the rodents’ population; demand for their furs made the creatures a lucrative target for hunters; and trade along the Silk Road eventually brought the plague to Europe.

More recent zoonotic spillover events—including AIDS, Eb-ola, MERS, and SARS—have followed a similar pattern, and COVID-19’s story comes from the same playbook. Some epide-miologists suspect that horseshoe bats passed SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the illness, to Sunda pangolins, armadillo- like creatures poached in Southeast Asian countries and sold live in markets in the now-infamous Hubei province, before the disease was ultimately transmitted to us. Brazilian biologist Gabriel Laporta was among the first to suggest that deforesta-tion may have driven the bats and pangolins to nest in the same caves—a novel opportunity for the coronavirus to hop species.

Webb doesn’t know what unknown diseases might be lurking in the forests of Borneo (Nipah virus, which inspired the movie Contagion, hails from the region), but she has spent much of her career developing a unique conservation model that may keep

zoonotic bugs in the shadows, rather than boarding planes. Her goal is to help local com-munities avoid risky practices surrounding logging, such as eating wild animals (often re-ferred to by Westerners as bushmeat).

This mindset puts Webb squarely within the emerging field of planetary health, an in-terdisciplinary movement of scientists who view the destruction of the environment as a top public health threat. “We need to think differently about how we manage our in-terface with wildlife,” says Samuel Myers, director of the Planetary Health Alliance, a consortium of more than 200 universities, NGOs, research institutes, and government entities. People, he says, often intrude into habitats because “they’re trying to feed their

families, so we need to give them an alternative.” Webb helps form the front line of pandemic pre-

vention. After her aha moment with Tadyn (who recovered after a little first aid), she dropped pri-matology and pursued a medical degree at Yale, eventually returning to Borneo to address rainforest conservation through a program that integrates sus-tainable agriculture, reforestation, and health care into an anti-logging economy. In 2007, she founded Alam Sehat Lestari or ASRI (loosely translated: Healthy Nature Everlasting), a nonprofit that oper-ates clinics in villages flanking Gunung Palung and Bukit Baka Bukit Raya national parks. (Webb is also midwifing similar programs in other rainforested regions around the globe.) With philanthropic back-ing from entities like the Disney Conservation Fund, the facilities offer a sliding price scale for their ser-vices based on an individual’s logging practices, or lack thereof; the latter qualifies for 70 percent off. The organization also offers a chainsaw buyback program and organic farming training, a popular initiative that has helped buoy incomes, further re-ducing the temptation to cut down trees.

In ASRI’s first decade of operation, the number of households that log in the surrounding land dropped by nearly 90 percent, 52,000 acres of Gunung Palung forest regrew, and infant mortality fell by two-thirds. The 122,000 residents in ASRI’s service areas now have access to a level of care largely unheard of in such remote locales—all the more essential once COVID-19 entered the region.


LIFE ON THE LINE

LONG NOTED a correlation between habitat loss and outbreaks of infectious diseases, from the plague-dispersing tarbagans to malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquitoes, warmth-loving insects that proliferate when tropical forests are reduced to denuded land pocked with mud-puddle breeding grounds. In the 1930s, parasitol-ogist Yevgeny Pavlovsky introduced the idea that spillover events are defined not just by biological forces but also by ecological ones, a theory informed by his decades of fieldwork studying illness- spreading lice and ticks in the Soviet hinterlands.

Ecological change, however, often comes as a result of social and economic catalysts. In the 1950s, American public health pioneers Hugh Leavell and E. Gurney Clark popularized the “epidemiologi-cal triad” model of infectious disease: A pathogen, its host, and the environment in which they come together dictate the severity of an outbreak. The pair considered a pathogen’s circumstances in broad terms—ecological, cultural (e.g., wild game consumption), and political (e.g., conspiracy theorists). They argued in their 1953 Textbook of Preventive Medicine that addressing the environmental arm, the part humans can control, was necessary “to intercept the causes of disease before they involve man.”

Since then, the link between human-made environmental changes and outbreaks has been increasingly well documented. In the 1990s, wife-and-husband ecologists Felicia Keesing and Richard Ostfeld began studying the dynamics of Lyme disease in the northeastern United States. Based, respectively, at Bard College and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in the Hud-son Valley— an area north of New York City known for its bucolic farms, vineyards, and escaping urbanites— the pair found that as forests gave way to McMansions, predators like snakes, owls, and foxes suffered steep declines and failed to keep white-footed mice, the critters that ferry Lyme-carrying ticks, in check.

These so-called weedy species proliferate in upended areas. “When we fragment or degrade or destroy habitat,” Ostfeld says, “we are essentially applying a filter where we’re getting rid of the species that help suppress pathogens and favoring those that tend to be good amplifiers.” Confirmed cases of Lyme in the US have doubled since the ’90s, when housing developments increasingly encroached into rural areas and created patchy forest remnants. In a 2003 study in Conservation Biology, Keesing and Ostfeld found that the risk of exposure to Lyme increases fivefold when canopied

areas cover less than five acres.Low biodiversity has led to numerous

other outbreaks, including instances of hanta virus, Lassa fever, leishmaniasis, and West Nile virus. (In the last case, import-ant vectors include invasive, opportunistic

species, such as European house sparrows, that pro-liferate in urban landscapes at the expense of less adaptable native birds.) Conversely, higher biodiver-sity helps dilute threats by ensuring an abundance of predators keep populations of weedy species in check, and thus help slow the spread of disease.

This picture is complex, and largely incomplete. But as David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, writes, the take-home is simple: “Ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree, and things fall out.”

Quammen provides an apt visual for the Nipah virus epidemic that emerged in Southeast Asia in 1998, one of the best-documented cases of “tree shaking” leading directly to an outbreak. Malaysian microbiologists traced the disease to flying foxes (bats that look like small dogs with the wingspans of eagles) on Tioman Island, across the South China Sea from Borneo. Habitat destruction to clear land for palm oil plantations, exacerbated by El Niño– induced drought, caused the bats to migrate out of the forests and forage near industrial pig farms. They gathered food in fruit trees above the pens, and the swine gulped down the guano and infected bits of grub that rained from above. Soon farm-hands and slaughterhouse workers were showing up at emergency rooms in Nipah- induced deliriums. The disease swept through the region with a fatality rate of up to 40 percent, killing more than 100. Of all cross-species interactions, sharing food with wild-life—or, worse, eating wildlife—provides pathogens with some of the best opportunities to spill over.

IN GUNUNG PALUNG National Park as an under-grad, Webb began to witness firsthand a pathway for zoonotic transfer. Her primary task was to study how orangutan digestion helps Bornean trees germinate. (She spent her days fishing fruit seeds

EPIDEMIOLOGISTS have

LEFT: Kinari Webb ex-

amines villagers on the

outskirts of Borneo’s

rainforests. RIGHT: The

HQ of ASRI, a nonprofit

that offers health care

alongside reforestation

and farming initiatives.

76

During her SOJOURN

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W I N T E R 2 0 2 0 / P O P S C I .CO M

LIFE ON THE LINE

“They’re PAYING for

CARE with SEEDLINGS,

because HEALTHY FORESTS

lead to HEALTHY PEOPLE.”

—KINARI WEBB

out of dung.) But illegal logging and the conversion of rainforest to palm oil plantations and other agriculture left the majestic primates critically endangered, in turn making any Homo sapi-ens presence most unwelcome to the great apes. “They do not like humans,” says Webb. “They would break off branches and throw them at us.” In Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park, where Webb later worked, she learned why: The villagers, she says, “had eaten nearly all the orangutans.”

There, the local Dayak tribes, like many indigenous groups around the world, historically subsisted on wild game, including primates, bats, and rodents—three groups of mammals epidemi-ologists say are prone to harboring diseases capable of attacking a human host. But these days such eating habits among the Dayak largely occur only when they’re away from home, says Webb. “It happens mainly when they’re logging: They go into the forest for weeks at a time, and they have to eat, so they hunt. It’s dangerous.”

When Webb founded ASRI in 2007, she began with a series of community meetings in the 44 villages surrounding Gunung Palung. “You are guardians of this precious rainforest that is valuable to the whole world,” Webb said to the Borneans. “What do you need as a thank-you from the world so that you can protect it?” The same two answers came up again and again. The first was access to affordable health care, a confirmation of her aha moment with Tadyn. The second? Training in organic farming.

For locals, the chemical-free approach was a practical matter, not some groovy plan to save the planet. The Indonesian gov-ernment had long promoted modern rice farming in the area, which requires expensive fertilizers and pesticides that left cul-tivators in debt— another incentive to keep logging. “They had heard that people in other places knew how to plant without chemicals,” says Webb, so she promptly hired an organic farmer from neighboring Java to train them.

Borneans have a tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture. As crops deplete the soil of nutrients, villagers constantly clear new plots of land. But the Javanese traditionally grow in one place year after year by enriching the earth with compost and cover crops that add nitrogen. Slash-and-burn was sustainable when populations were smaller and other pressures on the forest fewer, but in modern times it’s an ecological disaster. “They said, ‘It isn’t working for us anymore, we know we have to shift,’” Webb recalls.

HEADQUARTERS IN SUKADANA, the largest town in the vicinity of Gunung Palung, Jilli, the organization’s sustainable agriculture coordinator, walks barefoot past plantings of dragon fruit, bitter melon, and tomatoes propped up on a makeshift bamboo trellis. In an open-air shed, a device that resembles a pint-size rocket ship cobbled together with steel drums trans-forms coconut husks into a concentrated black liquid that, when sprayed on plants, helps keep pests at bay. In this demonstra-tion garden, Jilli coaches the 17 organic farming cooperatives that have sprung up in the area since ASRI started its training program in 2008; those plots now supply about 70 percent of the produce available in local markets.

Like many of the farmers, Jilli’s a former logger. “We try to convince our friends to transition to farm-ing,” he says through a translator. He sports a T-shirt reading “Bertani Organik— Sehat, sejahtera” (Or-ganic Farming— Healthy and wealthy).

Jilli’s garden lies behind ASRI’s sprawling health clinic, a cluster of airy, white buildings linked by a covered walkway. Built in 2015, it feels more like a tranquil jungle lodge than medical offices, but with 20 beds for overnight stays and facilities for childbirth and minor surgeries, it’s the closest thing to a hospi-tal in Sukadana. Green and purple scrubs dry on a clothesline. One building is now an isolation ward.

Hendriandi, ASRI’s reforestation coordinator and one of the few COVID-19 patients in the region to date, tends native syzygium seedlings in the nurs-ery next to Jilli’s garden. The organization pays local crews, including many former loggers, to plant the trees. Since 2007, they’ve put more than 200,000 into the ground, including many of the fruiting spe-cies like durian that orangutans adore.

The three threads of ASRI’s program— health care, organic farming, and tree planting— interweave in a single conservation economy. Febriani, ASRI’s executive director, approaches the cashier window to demonstrate how it works. Villagers who have given up logging (as verified by on-the-ground ob-servation by a team of “forest guardians”) receive a discount on health services; for the remainder of the bill, she says, with a wry grin, ASRI accepts a

FROM LEFT: A child re-

ceives medical care at

the ASRI clinic. Seed-

lings in the nursery await

planting. The effort’s

agriculture coordina-

tor, Jilli, tends his organic

demonstration garden.

At ASRI


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variety of alternative currencies: manure, tree seedlings, hand-icrafts, labor, and other noncash payments. A sign on the wall shows the conversion rate between Indonesian rupiah and var-ious goods and services. Manure, for instance, nets 700 rupiah (about 5 cents) per kilo. In 2019, villagers cashed in a total of 23,000 seedlings as payment, which supplied reforestation ef-forts. “The rarest species are worth the most,” Febriani says.

Webb points out that the system makes the interconnected-ness between health and the environment plain to the members of the community. “You can see it: I’m paying with seedlings because healthy forests lead to healthy people,” she says. “I’m paying with manure because manure can be used for organic farming, which is healthier for humans and for the planet.”

Pandemic prevention joins a mountain of good reasons to leave nature alone. Yet balancing conservation with population growth remains a challenge. Webb believes she’s hit upon a vi-able model, and she’s attempting to scale it up. In Borneo, she has a discount program in the works for families who forest guardians can confirm have stopped hunting protected species. And the program’s reach can cross borders: A lack of affordable health care drives destruction of habitats in rainforest commu-nities everywhere, she says. Already ASRI has more than 100 employees in Indonesia (twice that number in tree-planting sea-son), and Webb has recently established a similar program in Madagascar and is launching another one in the Amazon.

Her team is one of many working across the globe on interdis-ciplinary efforts considered part of the field of planetary health. An initiative in Senegal, for example, will reintroduce edible native river prawns that prey on the snails that transmit the par-asitic flatworm that causes schistosomiasis.

ASRI, says Planetary Health Alliance head Myers, “is a fantastic example of how to pre-vent the incursions into wildlife habitat that are at the heart of a lot of emerging infectious dis-ease.” The question, in his mind, is whether its model can be sufficiently scaled. “We need to be doing this in 10 million villages.” That degree of growth demands buy-in from governments.

A fiscal analysis published in Science in July 2020 put the global investment needed to reduce zoonotic disease risk at about $30 bil-lion per year—a pittance compared to the

estimated damage from COVID-19, which ranges from $3 to $80 trillion over the next five years. The paper addresses forest con servation and measures to reduce wildlife trafficking, as well as medical and technolog-ical solutions. In Brazil, for instance, an app allows residents to report dead and afflicted fauna in hopes of identifying emerging outbreaks.

For decades, many have been ignorant of the con-nection between ecosystem health and infectious disease. Now, with COVID-19, more people are con-necting the dots. “Part of our messaging right now is, ‘Hey, guys, you know how we’ve been telling you it’s not such a good idea to eat wild animals? Here’s some proof,’” says Webb, before recalling a sound-byte from director Febriani: “COVID-19 is a symptom of a sick planet. Planetary health is the cure.”

Hamisah, an ASRI health-care worker and chief of a nearby village (the first woman to hold the distinc-tion in the region), has never traveled farther than the overnight trek to Jakarta, but fully understands that her community’s actions can have global implica-tions. “When the wildlife have to go out of the forest, there’s a risk of transferring disease to humans,” she says, sitting on the floor of a medical storeroom, face mask looped around her neck. “If they are safe there and have things to eat, it’s safer for us.”

This article was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, an indepen-dent, nonprofit news organization.

LIFE ON THE LINE

BY ANDREW BLUM

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

CHRISTOPHER PAYNE

POPSCI.COM

WINTER 2020

PG 80

SWITCHTHE

WHEN A

NEW YORK CITY

POWER PLANT

SWAPS ITS DIRTIEST

GENERATORS FOR

BATTERIES,

THE SURROUNDING

NEIGHBORHOOD

WILL BREATHE

EASIER.

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 Pub-lic Health found that COVID deaths increased by 8 percent with each additional microgram per cubic meter of fine particulate matter, the con-taminant 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 per cubic meter, areas near heavy industries net a lot more deadly infections.

The residents of the Queensbridge Houses, the nation’s largest public housing project, worry this puts them at greater risk. “I’ve heard the

WHEN COVID-19 SWEPTTHROUGH NEW YORK CITY IN THE

SPRING OF

UNEVENLY.DID SO


conversation in the park over the last three months more than in the last five years,” says Suga Ray, a neighborhood activist and commu-nity builder. “People are talking about the plants over there,” he says of the Ravens wood Generating Station, whose iconic red-and-white-tipped smokestacks create an omnipresent frame for the skyline.

Queensbridge consists of 26 Y-shaped buildings in the shadow of the bridge that connects midtown Manhattan with the borough of Queens. Forty percent of its approximately 7,000 occupants live be-low the poverty line; 96 percent are nonwhite. Ravens wood, which can supply up to 20 percent of the city’s peak electricity needs, sits kitty-corner to these projects, and started generating power in 1963. The Queensbridge Houses opened in 1939. “That’s how you know it’s systemic,” Ray says. “They could have put it anywhere else. We cre-ate these structures in communities dominated by Black people.”

But in an American era defined by divisions and reckonings—both racial and environmental—Ravens wood is trying to clean up. That begins with its worst-offending units, the gas-fired plants known as “peakers,” turned on only to give the electric grid a boost on hot, or “peak,” days. The station can crank out some 2,050 megawatts of power (enough for around a million homes) in two ways. Four gi-ant gas-and-oil-fueled steam turbines—ranging in age from 16 to 57 years—are its tortoises, ramping up slowly and deliberately, but al-ways winning the race when it comes to total annual output. The hares are Ravens wood’s peakers, engines derived from the fuel- gulping jets on airliners, which, like similar systems around the United States, can spin up quickly to meet demand spikes. They don’t run often, but they run dirty. Most notably, according to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), they emit nitrogen oxide at levels 30 times higher than cleaner turbines (like Ravens wood’s big tortoises). They emit it at the worst time: on hot, high-ozone days. And in the worst place: alongside communities of color, already filled with truck tailpipe emissions and the accompanying health impacts.

At the moments of highest demand, congestion on the grid means that electricity needs to be made near where it’s most needed—in cities. But can that happen more cleanly? In 2019, New York state passed one of the most ambitious climate laws in the country, man-dating 100 percent carbon-free power by 2040. On top of that, the state DEC adopted a rule specifically targeting peakers, lowering their emission limits to a point that will force many into early re-tirement, Ravens wood’s included. Under the new legislation, the station’s three remaining units, all more than 50 years old and the last of an original fleet of 17, will be decommissioned by 2023.

In their place, Ravens wood’s owner—private equity firm LS Power—has received approval from New York state to build 316 megawatts of battery storage on-site, which will be among the larg-est such installations in the United States. The cells will physically

2020, IT

THE SWITCH

and functionally take the place of the aging peakers, ultimately charging up with renewable en-ergy from the grid and then dispatching it on the high- demand days. “The goal is to be able to maintain the same level of reliability that we have cur-rently but with a lower level of emissions,” says Clint Plummer, Ravens wood’s newly installed CEO. A former offshore wind executive, Plummer came on board in early 2020 with a man-date to redefine the high-profile plant as a paradigm of clean power, a key (and highly visi-ble) node in the Empire State’s bold climate efforts. Legislation may have forced Ravens wood’s hand, but the generating station is leaning into its green transfor-mation. (And LS Power expects the profits to follow.)

Ravens wood is not alone. Slowly but surely—like a supertanker being turned—giant batter-ies that leverage renewable power and redress long-standing environmental injustices are re-placing aging, dirty, expensive-to-operate gas plants across the US. This summer, LS Power activated a 230-megawatt battery system near San Diego, adding it to a portfolio that already included a 40-megawatt unit nearby, making LS Power the largest grid storage operator in the country. But not for long. Its competitors have even bigger projects in the works, including a 400-megawatt system near Monterey Bay, Cali-fornia, and a 409-megawatt installation in Flor-ida, adjacent to a 74.5-megawatt solar farm. Targeting peakers, often the dirtiest gas plants on the grid, gets at the low-hanging fruit; profit- driven power companies can check them off even as lithium- ion, the technology of today, remains relatively costly to implement.

What comes next for the grid will be harder. En-ergy providers will need to replace not merely the hares but also the tortoises, the large fossil- fueled plants that still supply around 60 percent of our electricity. Given that the greatest need for power will always be in places with the highest concen-trations of people, and given that the facilities that exist in those areas are unjustly located in the most vulnerable communities, how can urban operators like Ravens wood achieve a low-carbon—and low–

The nation’s largest public housing

project, Queensbridge, sits kitty- corner

to the Ravenswood power plant.

nitrogen oxide—future? Plummer intends to find out. “Our hope is that we can create a globally significant example of how to make this transition happen at a very practical, roll-up-your-sleeves, hands-in-the-mud, turning-wrenches perspective,” he says.

RAVENS WOOD GENERATING STATION IS A THREE-

block-long, approximately 27-acre rectangle hemmed in by a red-brick wall topped with razor wire. Shreds of snared plastic bags fleck the fence. Beside the entrance flies the company flag, a red R in the cen-ter of a black power-on circle laid against a white field stained gray by soot. Along with the Queensbridge Houses, the neighborhood holds a mix of taxi dealerships, ambulance repair shops, and old-fashioned lunch counters. A collision shop specializing in Teslas overflows with gleaming battery-propelled metal bodies that spill out across the bro-ken sidewalk. On Ravens wood’s western flank, along the East River, barges arrive with their cargoes of fossil fuels, while even more comes in via pipeline, all stored in tall cylindrical tanks until it gets burned to charge up our laptops and keep our ice cream cold.

“The US electric system is a duck-billed platy-pus,” Plummer explains between sips of Muscle Milk during a videoconference call from his home office, where he is working during pan-demic lockdown. “It is a highly evolved creature that involves a variety of very odd things coming together in one organism that is designed to do one thing really, really well: take fossil-fired gen-eration and ensure reliability at the lowest cost.”

How and when that happens at Ravens wood is organized on a spreadsheet, seven rows tall by 24 columns wide, Plummer says. Each day, staff-ers send its data to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), the not-for-profit or-ganization responsible for running the state’s grid. The columns indicate the hours of the day; the rows refer to the seven generating units on the site—the individual machines that make electricity, each of which has its own defining characteristics. The most famous among them is “Big Allis,” a 1,000-megawatt steam-powered plant named for Allis-Chalmers, the company that built it. Commissioned in 1965, it was for a time the largest steam turbine in the world. Alongside Big Allis, a smaller matched pair of steam generators also date from the 1960s, each producing approximately 400 megawatts, and a 2004 plant generates 250 megawatts using a state-of-the-art, relatively clean combined gas and steam system. The final three units are the peakers, active 50- somethings. Along with their already-decommissioned siblings, the peak-ers line up on the asphalt like mobile homes in a trailer park, each topped with a squat rectan-gular ventilation tower—a stovepipe hat. Rust peeks through their baby blue paint, while steam-punk dials and old-fashioned corporate marques show their Apollo-era origins.

On Ravenswood’s spreadsheet, each box gets a dollar value: the bid to operate that one machine for that one hour, derived from the price of fuel and other calculations Plummer and his staff make to ensure their profit. The captains of the grid at NYISO then submit their order for the following day, working to carefully balance expected sup-ply and demand for the 20 million people of the Empire State. The contract is crystal clear. The NYISO expects power plants to produce energy when the system operator calls on them, and we expect juice from the socket whenever we want it.

For it all to work, though, the grid needs peak-ers. To make sure it has them, Ravens wood and other New York stations collect “capacity pay-ments” just for keeping their turbines on standby,

as a kind of insurance policy for the days of highest demand. Be-tween 2010 and 2019, those payments totaled nearly $1.2 billion to Ravens wood alone, according to an estimate by PEAK Coalition, a group of social justice and environmental organizations advocating to close the city’s peaker plants well ahead of the state’s 2040 dead-line. That money, they say, could be better spent on clean technology. “It certainly doesn’t make sense that these ancient clunkers are get-ting paid these vast sums just to sit there,” says Rachel Spector, an environmental justice lawyer who worked on Dirty Energy, Big Money, the PEAK Coalition’s 2020 advocacy report.

Ravens wood is their poster child for what similar sites around the city must do. It won’t replace its last remaining peakers. In-stead, the battery units proposed for the site will step into their role, topping off the city’s energy supply, but without the emis-sions. “So much of our electricity system is built for literally the worst possible hour of the hottest day of the decade—because you have to keep the lights on,” explains Ray Hohenstein, a director at Fluence, a battery technology company that was formed as a joint venture between infrastructure giants Siemens and AES. Fluence is the sort of company that might compete for Ravens wood’s proj-


ect. The firm has worked on large installations around the world, and Hohenstein trumpets their transformative potential. “In networks of all kinds—food, commodities, data— storage is embedded in part to be a shock absorber be-tween supply and demand,” he explains. With the arrival, at long last, of large, grid-connected batteries, “You can really start to manage that demand in ways that don’t require you to build infrastructure that’s hardly ever used.”

But limitations remain. As of now, Ravens-wood’s cells are slated to be lithium- ion, the familiar technology already inside your phone and all those Teslas. At this point in time, the batteries that are similar in price to the peak-ers discharge all of their power in about four hours. But on days of peak demand, that won’t be enough. “Particularly in New York—and we expect in other densely populated urban areas— it’s highly likely that four hours is insufficient,” says Plummer. In order to provide electricity for longer and meet the grid’s requirements, Ravens wood will need to build two 316- megawatt systems that can run sequentially. But even get-ting that done will require approval from the Fire Department of the City of New York, which has so far eyed the volatility of large batteries warily. (A 2019 explosion at an installation in Arizona didn’t help matters any.)

Plummer is undeterred by the technology’s novelty. Before coming to Ravens wood, he worked for Ørsted, a Danish renewable energy giant in the midst of a big push to develop offshore

wind in the waters off the East Coast of the United States, includ-ing an 880-megawatt deal with the New York Power Authority— an eye- popping scale by American standards. The enthusiasm of environment- minded state lawmakers has bolstered both projects. New York’s climate legislation mandates 3,000 megawatts of grid storage by 2030, making Ravens wood’s 316 a healthy bite. “The fact that the state wants to do this is something that we take very seriously,” Plummer says. His concern isn’t how to get it built tech-nically or legally, but how to change the system as it exists now to ensure the plant’s future profits. Not for the first time, bold climate plans require modest financial risks.

THE BIG BATTERIES AREN’T THE FIRST GRAND PLAN

for Ravens wood. When the site was developed in the 1960s, engi-neers at the Consolidated Edison Company (ConEd) had their eye on the hot technology of their day: nuclear fission. In an application to the Atomic Energy Commission, ConEd proposed a million-kilowatt plant (about three times the size of the proposed batteries) across the street from a densely populated neighborhood two miles from Times Square. The city council introduced a bill prohibiting the con-struction of any atomic-powered generators, but the utility company pressed on. “Our faith in the future of nuclear power in the New York City area remains undiminished,” said Chairman Harland C. Forbes. The design was safe, the company claimed, insisting that its seven-foot-thick concrete shell could stand up to even a crashing airliner.

Today’s battery plan deserves a parade, it is so palatable in com-parison. But the larger promise isn’t just a change in how we meet energy needs on peak days, but rather the gateway to a total re-thinking of what urban plants like Ravens wood can do. The real challenge—and the big opportunity—is making the massive storage system not merely a replacement for the old peakers, but also the basis for the station to become a hub for the region’s transition to renewable power. Most notably, New York’s 2019 climate law calls for the installation of 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind farms by 2035, enough to satisfy roughly one-third of the state’s needs.

Wind is easy to bring ashore to the 8 million people in the Big Apple. Underwater cables can deliver electricity directly to Ravens wood’s prime riverfront real estate and already-jumbo grid connections—without having to traverse the region’s congested transmission lines. Marine surveys have already begun. The potential is a new kind of power station. Not merely a place where fossil fuel goes in and elec-tricity comes out, but something more like a distribution center, with clean electrons coming in from wind turbines or solar panels, then stored on-site and dispatched according to needs.

Under that model, batteries can do much more than peakers ever could. They can help to “synchronize” the grid, ensuring that supply and demand are precisely equalized—which they can do by both collecting power and discharging it.

FROM LEFT: One of Ravenswood’s

“peakers,” gas-fired generators that

give a boost to the grid when demand

spikes. The sunsetting peakers are

lined up on the station’s asphalt.

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In early 2020, Alexis

Triplett watched the

news coming out of

China, her gaze set

on a TV inside her

cell in La Vista

Correctional Facility

in Pueblo, Colorado.

INSIDE

In an overcrowded system, can prisons keep

inmates healthy and ready to reenter society?

AND OUT

People over there

were getting sick

with a mysterious

respiratory disease.

“I heard about it

coming to the States,

and I’m like, ‘Okay,

that kind of sucks,’”

she says. BY SARAH SCOLES


On March 5, the first

confirmed COVID-19

cases appeared in the

state.RESTRICTIONS SOON LOCKED

down the world beyond her walls. Denver canceled its St. Patrick’s Day parade; concert venues closed; ski re-sorts suspended operations, then bars, restaurants, and schools. Finally, the governor ordered everyone to stay home. Triplett, of course, had no choice but to remain where she was: a prison, where cramped conditions make even basic public-health guidance hard to implement. Just before Colorado’s out-break, La Vista housed 694 male and female inmates, slightly below its ca-pacity of 707; even so, seven other women shared Triplett’s cell.

Prisons’ crowded, communal na-ture is the stuff of transmission nightmares. People live, work, eat, and recreate together—often in poorly ventilated buildings. “There are con-stantly new people coming in and out of this very tightly occupied setting,” says Andre Montoya- Barthelemy, a doctor of occupational medicine who has studied inmate well-being for the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. “There are

Ohio, where an outbreak sickened more than 80 percent of inmates and 160 staff by the end of April, health officials traced around half of the county’s 112 cases outside of the prison back to it.

Local jails—where people have shorter stays, often while awaiting trial—present another risk. A June 2020 study published in Health Af-fairs found that arrestees cycling in and out of Cook County Jail in Chicago were associated with 15.7 percent of coronavirus cases state-wide. An April 2020 modeling report from the American Civil Liberties Union, in collaboration with data ex-perts from three universities, found that omitting jails from predictions (which most public models do) could mean underestimating forecasted deaths by between 19 and 98 percent, depending on how well communities practice social distancing.

Given the propensity for spread, governors, judges, and state and federal corrections departments in-creased options for early release during the first months of the pan-demic. Prisons stopped accepting new arrivals, and courts sent fewer peo-ple to the slammer, resulting in most of the overall decrease in the prison population between March and June 2020. Now inmate advocates and pub-lic health experts hope that officials will continue to reexamine who should

transfers from other facilities. There are medical and other staff who come in and have their own exposures.”

Even something as seemingly straightforward as the Centers for Dis-ease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggestions for hand hygiene present challenges. Prisons often ban alcohol- based sanitizer because of the potential for abuse. Inmates sometimes must buy soap from a commissary.

For those reasons, correctional fa-cilities have always been a disease’s dream environment. One of the first documented outbreaks of the 1918 influenza pandemic happened in San Quentin State Prison, the infa-mous and overpopulated penitentiary where Johnny Cash sang. Back then, the deadly pathogen swept through three separate times, when new in-mates brought it in as a passenger.

It’s no surprise that US prisons quickly became COVID hotspots. The bug sneaked inside San Quen-tin in late May 2020, when the facility took in 121 men from a Chino, Califor-nia, prison. The latter had not tested them recently enough to ensure they were virus-free. Within a month, more than one-third of San Quen-tin’s approximately 4,000 inmates and more than 100 of its 1,600-person staff had tested positive.

Infections within the correc-tional system don’t always stay there. They can drive community spread— especially through staff, who go home at the end of a shift. In Marion County,


INSIDE AND OUT

really be inside and for how long. Across the country, what prisons

have done right—and very wrong—to control the pandemic could point the way to a more just justice system. One that’s better for inmates like Triplett, who watched the news, wondering how long it would take COVID-19 to reach inside La Vista’s walls.

TRIPLETT HAD LIVED IN LA VISTA

since 2014. Then 29, she began a 20-year sentence for burglary and car theft as part of a crime ring that stashed hundreds of stolen items in a suburban Colorado storage unit. She’d be 49 when she got out. “I just felt every thing was hopeless,” she says.

She was mad at the system, at her place in it. She would cuss out correc-tional officers. Then one of them asked her about her life before La Vista.

No one with any authority had ever wanted to know her that way. And so she summed up her childhood: She’d often lived with extended family, be-cause her young mother had gotten hard into drugs. Triplett ran away twice, at 13 and 14, the latter time all the way to California.

She started smoking weed, then moved on to psychedelics, ecstasy, and finally meth. When she was high, she craved excitement. “I always need my mind stimulated,” she says. “When I got bored, I expressed it in an unhealthy way.” By which she means doing things like stealing cars and breaking into houses. The spoils supported her habit, spiraling into a vicious cycle that got her arrested more than a dozen times between ages 19 and 29.

“I just took it to the max,” she says, although along the way she also took herself to Pikes Peak Community College for business coursework. But then, in 2014, her crimes caught up with her. She doesn’t mind repeating this story, and she’s also not exactly mad anymore about her time at La Vista. “I have to abide by whatever to get out of it. I knew the consequences when I did what I was doing.”

Triplett detoxed in jail before she arrived at La Vista, where she went through a group-based rehabilitation program. She began working in the prison kitchen, serving food on the line, toiling in the dish pit, and even-tually becoming a “diet cook,” helping make meals for people with special nutritional needs. She earned just $0.80 per day, which she used to buy soap (typically about $1 in the com-missary) or phone calls (around $1.80 for 15 minutes for in-state numbers).

She also loved a job she had train-ing dogs, something she hopes to do again someday in her own house. “A lot of them came from shelters,” she says, “so they were broken. We helped them to regain their confidence and to un-derstand humans aren’t bad.”

In early 2019, Triplett joined the inaugural class of an eight-month program run by the nonprofit Defy Ventures Colorado, which trains in-carcerated people in business and self-awareness and helps them tran-sition back into society after release. Soon after the course ended, she became eligible under state parole guidelines to apply for early release into a group home, where she’d still be considered an inmate under Col-orado Department of Corrections custody. And so, in February 2020, as COVID-19 appeared on her TV screen and made its way to the Cen-tennial State, she submitted her

papers to the parole board. While she awaited its verdict, she watched the disease ravage the world.

Triplett didn’t believe the virus spread as easily or made people as sick as the news claimed (although federal statistics would beg to differ). But she did worry about the dispari-ties between the data and safeguards available to her inside and those avail-able to prison staff and locals. She says she didn’t ever hear from officials about La Vista’s testing or infection and quarantine rates. “They didn’t tell us anything,” she says. Annie Skin-ner, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Corrections, refutes that, saying, “Inmates have been pro-vided information from their facility leadership regarding their specific facility situation.” She contends staff posted educational guidance in com-mon areas and on screens where announcements are displayed.

Triplett also reports inequities in personal protective equipment. Management issued face coverings to guards ahead of prisoners. “You guys get masks, but we don’t, because we’re, like, subpar citizens?” she re-calls thinking. La Vista eventually corrected that in April, two weeks af-ter the governor asked all Coloradans to don facewear. Staff gave inmates masks that would do their job but that Triplett didn’t find particularly com-fortable. “They didn’t fit, and made their ears look like this,” she says, us-ing her hands to push her own into a protruding, elfin shape.

Staff then grouped inmates into fixed cohorts—of eight women, in Triplett’s case—so that if one person became ill, they’d expose only each other. But to Triplett’s thinking, the system had a flaw: Those assigned to maintenance or kitchen crews min-gled with people outside their cohorts. “They didn’t really keep people sepa-rated, but they wanted the illusion of separation,” she contends. Skinner says all work crews would have been canceled in the event of a positive case.

Meanwhile, authorities barred all visitors, including volunteers from programs like Defy Colorado, and did temperature screenings and

INFECTIONS IN

PRISONS DON’T

ALWAYS STAY THERE.

THEY CAN DRIVE

COMMUNITY SPREAD,

ESPECIALLY THROUGH

STAFF GOING HOME.

randomized testing of staff. That pre-vented some exterior hazards from entering, sure, but further isolated the already isolated. “They did give us free 10-minute phone calls once a month, which was cool,” says Triplett. “A lot of people in there don’t have any money.” The result of all these measures was that La Vista kept coronavirus under control. Throughout the spring and summer, no one tested positive.

When COVID does get behind bars, it can sweep through cramped interiors faster than on the outside, infecting the majority of people. In two Ohio prisons, for instance, nearly 80 percent of inmates were sick by late April. The American penal system was operating at around 99.8 percent ca-pacity in 2017, according to the World Prison Brief, a database maintained by the University of London. That was down from 104 percent a few years earlier, but still uncomfortably full when a spiky germ so easily slips from face to face. The American Cor-rectional Association recommends each prisoner have 25 square feet of “unencumbered” area to them-selves—in most cases, not enough to keep a safe social distance.

Comparing virus rates on the out-side with those on the inside, the COVID Prison Project, a website that tracks infections among the incarcer-ated, found inmates are about three and a half times more likely to get sick.

IT TOOK THREE WEEKS FOR

Triplett to hear she’d been approved for release and another three weeks to get her date, the tailest end of April. Her freedom would come with a lot of conditions. She’d have to re-side in a halfway house in metro Denver till November— in a room with more than a dozen others, an-other COVID risk. She couldn’t get a driver’s license or store her own food there. But she could get one “pass” a week: either four hours of freedom to go to a restaurant or store, or 12 hours to visit an approved friend or family member at home. After November, she would become an “intensive su-pervision parole inmate,” still a ward

of the state with an ankle monitor, but able to live independently.

As infections soared nationwide in March and early April 2020, a ma-jority of states, including Colorado, created rules that allowed the release of older people, inmates with little time to serve, those with underlying health conditions, and nonviolent of-fenders. La Vista let 58 people go. “We started this journey with 1 or 2 percent vacancy, and we’re now at over 18 percent vacancy,” says Dean Williams, the Department of Cor-rections’ executive director, about statewide incarceration levels.

Federal and state prison popula-tions dropped by 8 percent between March and June, from 1.3 million to 1.2 million, according to an analysis by the Associated Press and the Mar-shall Project, a nonprofit journalism venture focused on criminal justice. Some of that was because people like Triplett walked out the door. More significant was a relative pause on put-ting more people inside. According to analysis from the data firm Appriss, by the end of May, jail bookings were down by 45 percent. In some states, Colorado included, new policies en-couraged law enforcement to avoid arresting people for low- level offenses.

For those still locked up, the World Health Organization and the CDC is-sued a series of recommendations that would help prevent transmis-sion. New prisoners and those who have been exposed should quaran-tine for two weeks—and if solitary confinement rooms must be used for

that, maintain customary freedoms like TVs and phone calls. (During the early stages of the pandemic, use of solitary increased by 500 per-cent, according to a report from the Unlock the Box campaign, which ad-vocates ending the practice.) Prison staffs should make soap readily avail-able and create not-just-for-show cohorts. In addition to those agen-cies’ guidance, maintenance crews should bring air systems into the 21st century with state-of-the-art ventila-tion equipped with HEPA or MERV filters that trap pathogens. And ad-ministrators should figure out how to keep people connected virtually and control spread in hotspots.

“The other thing that has to be on the table is robust testing,” says Lau-ren Brinkley-Rubinstein, an assistant professor of social medicine at the Uni-versity of North Carolina who studies the intersection between health and incarceration. “Universal testing. And a long-term plan for repeated testing so you can continue to keep COVID out of the building.” Toward that end, she helps run the COVID Prison Proj-ect initiative to maintain a national database on screening.

Another priority is making test re-sults public: unshuttering prisons’ windows so that they’re accountable to their communities, not just state and federal corrections agencies. They could forge collaborations with local public-health organizations— especially important because the facilities aren’t islands. The people inside and those who drive past their gates live in the same superpod. “Jails and prisons are a part of our larger health system,” Brinkley- Rubinstein says.

I GOT OUT TO A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE,” TRIPLETT

JOKES. ACTUALLY, AFTER LIFE ON THE INSIDE

WITH FEW OPTIONS, SHE DOESN’T MIND HAVING

ONLY SLIGHTLY MORE AT FIRST.

“


FROM LEFT: In La Vista Correc-

tional Facility, Triplett (far right)

took an eight-month program to

learn business and self-aware-

ness skills. On the outside, she

moved into a halfway house and

got a job on a road crew.

INSIDE AND OUT

Imagine, she says, a world in which we had information about how many inmates got the flu, or had chronic dis-eases, and how they were being tested and treated. “That creates this overlay of accountability,” Brinkley- Rubinstein says, so that advocates, loved ones, and surrounding towns know whether incarcerated people—who can’t really advocate for themselves—are receiv-ing adequate care and protection. And so that prisons don’t contribute to ill-ness within the community.

One thing, though, remains con-stant, whether a state or the federal government or a for-profit company runs a prison, and whether soap is gratis and an air filter occupies a duct: If you decrease the surplus pop-ulation, those who remain are safer from respiratory illnesses. It’s as true behind bars as it is at entry-limited Whole Foods or half-capacity Chili’s.

TRIPLETT, RELEASED APRIL 29,

is glad to be part of the surplus that got out. She may be more prepared for life on the outside than most. That’s due in part to her participation in Defy Colorado, the program that helps people like her jump to their feet when released. Run by Stacey Putka, who used to provide counsel-ing to men on parole, it’s just one of many education schemes— public and private—to help those in US prisons have a better life once they’re not.

Putka cofounded the project in 2018 because she saw how many

recently released inmates had entre-preneurial mindsets but not the training or connections for solid em-ployment. “You’re completely cut off from community and society, and the only people you interact with are other incarcerated people and corrections officers,” she says. Plus, getting the requisite documents in order—driver’s license, Social Se-curity card, birth certificate— isn’t simple even under normal circum-stances. Defy Colorado helps its graduates get those papers so they can put their classes to use.

According to a RAND Corporation study, inmates who take part in “cor-rectional education programs” are 13 percent less likely to go back after release and 13 percent more likely to find a job. More than 80 percent of state prisons offer some sort of edu-cational option, although only around half of incarcerated people partici-pate. In most states, such programs net inmates “earned time”—basically days shaved off their sentences. Be-tween the start of Putka’s program and the onset of the pandemic, only nine of her 200 participants got out. Things picked up in early 2020, when La Vista released 10 of her graduates.

Defy Colorado helps participants

establish stable, hourly-wage lives. Many parolees used to walk door-to-door to restaurants looking for dishwashing or server positions. They often also went to libraries or work-force centers to search for jobs online. All of these are more difficult, if not im-possible, in COVID times. The program gave Triplett and the other graduates Chromebooks and smartphones for safe hunting and pointed them toward essential- worker positions.

On a shockingly hot day, the warmth radiating from a Denver strip mall’s asphalt, Triplett walks from her halfway house to meet me at Chili’s, texting that she’ll be the one wear-ing black leggings and a brown shirt. She’s excited about her food possibil-ities now; in prison, she’d sign up for different diets— kosher, vegetarian—just for the variety. She orders fajitas (yes to guacamole) and smiles, her long dark hair framing her face, un-masked but appropriately distanced.

“Six and a half years in, and I got out to a zombie apocalypse,” she says. It’s mostly a joke: She doesn’t mind this particular apocalypse, ac-tually. After life on the inside, with very few options, it’s kind of nice to have only slightly more at first.

Defy Colorado was key to teach-ing Triplett about herself and about how to be part of a business before perhaps starting her own. “They cov-ered everything from broken families to character development,” she says. “Applications, résumés, how to dis-close your felony to an employer.”

Local business leaders and poten-tial business lenders came to coach students on their own entrepreneur-ial ideas, which they pitched in a Shark Tank–style event at the end of the program. Triplett’s would be a hit on Etsy: art made by prisoners and re-covering addicts, printed on clothing and sold with a written story about how the painting or drawing came to be. “So often, you see art and you just think, ‘What was the artist thinking when they made that?’” she says.


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DUODYNAMIC

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 cl imate stable for more than 10,000 years. Nature, to its credit,

BY MEERA SUBRAMANIAN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

WILL DRAYSON

POPSCI.COM

WINTER 2020

PG 102

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 put-ting our ingenuity and resources toward science- based restoration efforts, we can complement na-ture’s ability to adapt—and even boost it further. The five catastro-phes on the following pages show it takes patience (and more than a little humility) to play Earth’s side-kick. But minding cues from when that symbiosis f lourished in the past could be the key to keeping the planet healthy and averting even bigger upheavals.

HUMANS AND EARTH

ARE OFTEN AT

ODDS, BUT WHEN

DISASTER STRIKES,

THEY CAN COMBINE

THEIR POWERS TO

BRING NEW LIFE TO

LANDSCAPES.


WAR AND PEACE

DISASTER: When ecologist Kenneth Tinley flew over Mo-zambique’s Rift Valley in 1972, he saw abundance. By his estimate, the nearly million acres of Goron-gosa National Park were home to upward of 30,000 large grazing animals, including buffalo, wilde-beest, and elephants—along with hundreds of lions. But in 1977,

after the African nation freed it-self from close to 500 years of Portuguese rule, Mozambique erupted in civil war. The two sides wouldn’t reach a truce until 1992, by which point 1 million residents had died and combatants had slaughtered more than 90 percent of some mammal populations to feed and fund the fighters.

poachers, allowing them to grow their numbers before they’d get released into the park.

But helping fauna reproduce wasn’t enough. People needed a hand, too. “Recovery depends on the interaction between human and natural forces,” says Marc Stalmans, the park’s director of scientific services.

To sustain the quarter- million or so Mozambicans who live in the area, the project sets up grants for ranger and tourist guide training programs, shade- grown- coffee micro enterprises, education, and medical ser-vices. All this eases pressure on the animals by providing food and health security for commu-nities. With poaching incidents down 72 percent, Gorongosa is now a literal textbook model for balancing ecology with economy: The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, a leader in conserva-tion research and partner of the Carr Foundation, cites the park in science curricula to show how multipronged efforts can nurse dying landscapes back to life.

RECOVERY INITIATED: 1995

PROGRESS: NEARLY COMPLETE

COMEBACK: The loss called for an ambitious experiment in ecologi-cal resurrection. On its own, the vast floodplain with fertile soil and abundant rainfall provided prime pasture for small grazers like water buck. But while some spe-cies could rebound quickly, larger wildlife like zebras and hippos needed an extra push. Although initial stewardship efforts began in 1995, in 2008 the Mozambique government and American non-profit Carr Foundation agreed to team up on a decades- long plan —called the Gorongosa Res-toration Project—to bolster biodiversity. A 15,000-acre enclo-sure christened the Sanctuario kept animals safe from lions and

GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK, MOZAMBIQUE

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DISASTER: In 1985, British Antarc-tic Survey researchers discovered that the region’s level of ozone (O3), the atmospheric molecule that shields earthlings from the sun’s radiation, had plummeted 40 percent between 1977 and 1984. The depleted air formed a “hole” that stretched up to 11.6 million square miles over the South Pole by the early 2000s. The team knew that the gas varied natu-rally with sunspots, seasons, and latitude, but this drop-off vexed them. Experiments by chem-ists in California revealed that chlorine emitted from chloro-fluoro carbons (CFCs), widely used

in refrigerants and aerosols since the 1920s, was breaking down ozone in the stratosphere at an unprecedented rate.

COMEBACK: International govern-ments acted swiftly once they saw the data from chemists and me-teorologists. In 1987, nearly 200 countries united to pass the Mon-treal Protocol, a ban that forced manufacturers to create CFC al-ternatives that wouldn’t tamper with ozone. It was a level of coop-erative environmental action that the world had never experienced before— and hasn’t seen since.

Once humans stemmed the flow of CFCs, the planet’s circula-tory system took over. We needed the help, says Susan Strahan, an atmospheric scientist with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center who’s spent her career studying the ozone hole. “We created these substances that are not naturally occurring,” she adds. “We can’t just go and suck them back out.” Instead, rafts of atmospheric wind deliver fresh ozone from the tropics, where it naturally forms, to the poles. As a result of our drop in emissions and this heavenly circulation, the concentration of O3 has spiked, causing the “hole” to shrink to 3.9 million square miles in 2019.

Still, the combined power of the CFC ban and the self- healing atmosphere might not prevail forever. Replacement chemicals, such as the tetrafluoroethane gas now used in car air conditioners, have been found to contribute to global warming. To counter, companies are developing new ozone- and climate- friendly for-mulas, hinting at the possibility of a future where we can cool our roasting planet and still preserve our protection from the sun’s rays.

105


PROGRESS: PARTIALLY COMPLETE

A WAY BACK

WASH-

OUT

HOME

DISASTER: On March 11, 2011, 41 minutes after the strongest earth-quake ever measured in Japan, the first wave of a tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Over the next 96 hours, three uranium fuel cores melted down, exposing a nearly 400-square-mile swath to intense radiation. Some 16,000 people died from the combined disasters. It was the world’s worst nuclear accident af-ter Chernobyl in Russia.

COMEBACK: Nuclear byproducts like cesium-137 take decades to de-cay into more stable elements, so humans had to do the heavy lift-ing. The Japanese government and the plant’s owners removed topsoil and spread potassium—which dis-places radioactive particles that

Polytechnic University, says that while juvenile swallow num-bers were low, initial studies on nestlings reveal limited genetic damage—a potentially good sign for radioactive ecosystems else-where. “As human communities regenerate, barn swallows, which frequently nest on buildings, also come back,” he says. “In the wake of this disaster, you realize how connected people and nature are.”

It could take up to 200 years for Japan to fully decommission the Fuku shima plant. But the costly catastrophe has already spurred countries to phase out nuclear power. Germany, for ex-ample, is on track to shut down all 17 of its facilities by 2022.

FUKUSHIMA, JAPAN

AJKA, HUNGARY

DISASTER: After weeks of tor-rential downpour in southwest Hungary in October of 2010, a crack in the corner of a reservoir at the Ajka alumina processing plant burst, inundating 2,500-plus acres of countryside with highly alka-line red mud. Locals described the flood of sludge, a byproduct from refining bauxite rock for industrial powder, as a “mini- tsunami.” Ten people died, including one child, and 700 residents were evacuated, marking the spill as the nation’s direst ecological fiasco.

COMEBACK: To keep the red mud at bay, the Hungarians pitted nat-ural elements against industrial ones. Workers dumped 11,000 tons of gypsum minerals into river beds filled with dangerously alkaline sludge to keep it from vegetation might otherwise draw

up—across the district. Today, con-crete barriers and a mile-long “ice wall” of frozen dirt largely keep the Pacific from flowing around the reactor buildings. So far, the fortress- like infrastructure is help-ing: Daily tests at the Fukushima Agricultural Technology Centre show that local food samples meet stringent safety standards.

Some parts of the blast site re-main a haunting landscape, with abandoned café counters still strewn with open magazines. But over time, evacuees have returned, along with several animals that were already in decline. Camera traps set up by ecologists in the re-gion have documented wild boars, raccoon dogs, and a dozen other mammal species. Birds have shown surprising resilience, too: Andrea Bonisoli Alquati, an environmen-tal toxicologist at California State




RECOVERY INITIATED:

2010

PROGRESS:

FULLY COMPLETE

MICROBES AND

LOUISIANA, US

University of Hull in England. A decade later, local govern-

ments have rebuilt towns with flood-proofing and sustainability in mind. The plant’s legacy also continues to inform global man-ufacturers, who as a result are switching to an alumina- refining process with drier byproducts (and therefore less red mud). Next on their list: a completely zero-waste system.

burning organisms. They also rinsed polluted areas with acids to neutralize the pH, removed and replaced contaminated top-soil in farming villages, and dredged bodies of water to catch any noxious debris. The entire cleanup took three years and cost $127 million, a bill the small coun-try largely footed itself.

If it weren’t for local tributar-ies, however, that price tag might

have been much higher. The Torna Creek and Marcal River, which ul-timately feed into the Black Sea, helped wash the mud into a less toxic mix of sediments. “While dilution is no real strategy for pol-lution management, the fact that downstream waterways around Ajka were so large meant that the spill material was diluted quite quickly,” says William Mayes, an environmental scientist from the

WAFFLE

DISASTER: Two days before the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig triggered the worst marine oil spill in American his-tory. It took nearly three months from the date, April 20, 2010, for the energy corporation BP to cap the undersea wellhead. By then, at least 134 million gallons of fuel had poured into the Gulf of Mexico. The shiny waves touched 1,300 coastal miles, devastating working beachside communities and killing up to 102,000 birds.

COMEBACK: Because the leak orig-inated about 50 miles offshore, ocean waters broke down some of the crude oil before it hit land. Meanwhile, the more volatile chem-icals like butane evaporated quickly. Recent estimates published by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Manage-ment hold that up to 40 percent of the spill dispersed in these ways. Hydrocarbon- degrading microbes also assisted by having a feeding frenzy near the wellspring.

“It points to nature’s resilience,” says Christopher Reddy, a ma-rine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who thinks the spill’s ultimate impact wasn’t as bad as feared.

As those natural processes un-folded, cleanup crews fueled up on Waffle House eggs before tack-ling the slick with sand- cleaning trucks, oil-corroding chemicals, and booms. A multibillion- dollar settlement fund from BP continues to bankroll the recovery. One of the direct recipients is GulfCorps, a Nature Conservancy and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-istration (NOAA) job program that trains local youth in restoration.

The spill also put a years-long delay on big offshore drilling proj-ects. To corral future leaks at rig sites, NOAA has built a satellite mapping program that can track how oil moves on open water. This technology, coupled with shored-up sandbars and wetlands that barri-cade businesses and homes, should make the region stronger in the face of disasters, old and new.

107

HOUSES



DYNAMIC DUO

LIFELINE

LANDING

A


BY VIRGINIA GEWIN


PHOTOGRAPHS BY

TOM FOWLKS

FOR THOSE WHOSE

LIVELIHOOD DEPENDS

ON THE OCEAN, A

COVID-SPURRED

INTERRUPTION IN THE

SEAFOOD MARKET

MIGHT SPEED PROGRESS

TOWARD A MORE

SUSTAINABLE FUTURE—

FOR THEM AND FOR FISH.

in Guaymas, Mexico, where a small cohort of locals launch mod-est fiberglass-and-wood boats from the rocky shore into waters that will gleam azure at sunrise. From their pangas, crafts about 20 feet long with little more than three bench seats and an out-board motor, the 38 members of the Sociedad Cooperativa de Producción Pesquera 29 de Agosto SCL cast baited hooks on longlines and pull in yellowtail, grouper, or snapper by hand. On most outings, each boat can catch as much as 220 pounds before it returns to dock in the afternoon.

Some 75 years ago, co-op president Andrés Grajeda Coronado’s great-grandfather, Celso Grajeda, handled his catch the same way. “He used the same as we do: a line and a hook,” says Coronado. A statue of Celso, one of Guaymas’ first fishermen, overlooks the town. Today, the city is the most productive seafood-producing community of the dozens that dot the Gulf of California, the strip of

WORKDAYS CAN

BEGIN HOURS

BEFORE DAWN


water separating the Baja peninsula from mainland Mexico, where thousands of laborers deliver fish from the ocean to cities.

In Celso’s day, he was one of only a few men selling catches directly to consumers on the docks, but today, a generation of artisanal workers often find themselves tangled at the bottom of a vast global supply chain. Ninety percent of the world’s 35 mil-lion fishermen operate on a small scale—with millions in remote, rural areas—yet they produce more than half of the global catch and a similar share of what hits their countries’ export markets. Many live hand to mouth, dependent on a string of middlemen to keep 91 million tons of perishable wild-caught fish cold, pro-cessed, and distributed to restaurants, hotels, and supermarkets.

On many remote docks, a single buyer sets the price, or a few collude to keep fishermen from demanding higher rates. And all the shuffling between parties from there onward provides ample opportunity for misconduct. Catches that are illegal, unreported, or unregulated (known in the trade as IUU) account for one of every five fish reeled in, injecting $23.5 billion worth of effectively stolen seafood into the market, according to Global Fishing Watch, an international nonprofit that uses satellites, infrared, and radar imagery to detect IUU. Such losses jeopardize food security for over 3 billion people and the livelihoods of small-scale fishermen.

To maintain incomes, they do whatever they can to catch more. In Guaymas, a majority use gill nets, which trap swim-mers by the gills in webbing—to devastating consequence. A 2016 assessment of 121 Gulf of California fisheries stocks by re-searchers at several entities, including the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, estimates that 69 percent have collapsed and another 11 percent are overexploited. Such indiscriminate methods also lead to losses of other species, notably the critically endangered vaquita, the world’s smallest

porpoise. There may be no more than 10 of them left. That’s in normal times. When COVID-19 shut down

most of the world in March 2020, it unleashed an economic tsunami on the $150 billion global seafood market. The shuttering of restaurants, where nearly 70 percent of catches ended up before the pandemic, dried up demand for high-end chef favorites such as lobster, abalone, and squid—as well as everyday fare like Guaymas’ yellowtail and grouper.

The global movement of fresh fish—the most traded food commodity in the world—has been sputtering ever since. The coronavirus is an “un-paralleled” disruption, says Paul Doremus, deputy assistant administrator for operations at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisher-ies, the US agency tasked with monitoring marine resources. “It is so comprehensive in scale and scope and so long in duration that it is going to have pro-found effects on seafood supply chains globally, in ways we don’t entirely understand yet.” The inter-ruption has undoubtedly complicated efforts to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal to end overfishing, illegal catches, and destructive practices by the end of 2020.

Amid the chaos, though, many see an opportunity to reshape seafood sales in ways that bolster adoption of more sustainable methods and create a more equita-ble future for fishermen like those in Coronado’s co-op. That starts with helping the little guys benefit from supplying the best of their goods to a growing market of home cooks and eco-conscious retailers. The secret weapon is transparency: the ability for the end con-sumer, and industry monitors, to verify the how, where, and by whom of each snapper, salmon, or shrimp.

Over the past few years, nonprofits, government agencies, and industry collectives have begun steady development of projects to rebuild depleted fish stocks, often by enlisting locals in managing catches. In addition, efforts are underway to test and adopt traceability technologies such as RFID chips, QR tags, and blockchain coding to carry information about a specific fish from hook to cook.

The fact that Coronado’s cooperative had always caught by ethical means attracted SmartFish, a La Paz, Mexico, company focused on championing sus-tainable fishing in the region. The organization’s nonprofit arm helps workers transition to eco-friendly


LEFT: A fisherman drops

anchor at the first stop

in a long night. BELOW: A

seafood market, or pes-

caderia, in a small town

outside the major fishing

port of Guaymas, Mexico.

LANDING A LIFELINE

practices, while its for-profit business sells their goods directly to high-end restaurants and the public.

When asked what his ancestor would think of a QR code slapped on a frozen hunk of yellowtail or snapper bound for California, Coronado’s serious demeanor suddenly erupts into a chuckle. “Are you crazy?” he quips, mimicking Celso’s imagined reaction. In his mid-50s with jet-black hair, Coronado is younger than most of his graying co-op members. With very few of their children interested in carrying on the family business, he knows that if something doesn’t change soon, there will be nothing but gill nets—and dangerously dwindling stock—left.

BEFORE THE CO-OP JOINED SMARTFISH IN 2019,

Coronado dealt with at least two middlemen—one in Tijuana and one in California—who bought the group’s catch. He knew the goods would shuffle about a lot before reaching a shelf or plate, but a fisherman’s main concern is simply moving stock off the dock.

The Byzantine global distribution of seafood resembles a bi-zarre game of cold potato: Unable to hold their catches on ice indefinitely, fishermen are beholden to third parties who can wait for ideal market conditions to unload inventory. While dis-tributors can stockpile frozen supplies of mahi-mahi for months or even years, folks like Coronado must often accept low prices simply to unload their perishables. Some 27 percent of fish gets lost, discarded, or wasted before it can reach the consumer,

according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In Mexico, some “fishers catch high-quality wild seafood, but with poor handling, it turns into sunbaked rotten mash,” says Cecilia Blasco, executive director of SmartFish, which partners with five cooperatives around the Baja peninsula.

Blasco estimates that in a conventional supply chain, up to 12 different parties might touch a yellowtail on its way to the consumer from Guaymas. Typically, fishermen offload their catch to a local entrepreneur, who takes it to the closest town and sells it to a small aggregator; from there, buyers from larger markets in Mexico City or Guadalajara purchase high-value species—all before the goods reach a distributor or exporter. Buyers at every stage command a cut, and those doing the actual fishing in western Mexico usu-ally receive only 18– 20 percent of the final price.

Shady practices on larger vessels further disadvan-tage the little guys. One of the most common schemes: Refrigerated cargo vessels, called “reefers,” stay in in-ternational waters, which allows them to circumvent regulations if, say, they aggregate legal and illegal fare from multiple smaller crafts. (The practice is most


FROM LEFT: Fishing

co-op president Andrés

Grajeda Coronado. A

statue of Coronado’s

great-grandfather, one

of the first anglers in the

area. A fishing town nes-

tled in the mountains.

LANDING A LIFELINE

prevalent off the coasts of Russia and West Africa and in the South Indian Ocean and the equatorial Pacific Ocean.) In effect, they’re laundering the catch.

Because all fish looks more or less the same once it reaches the shelf, it’s easy to hide ill-gotten goods. Even a fillet marked “wild caught” at the grocer might not be what it seems. A 2019 report from nonprofit con-servation organization Oceana DNA tested more than 400 samples from 250 stores across the US and found that 20 percent of labels misidentified things like spe-cies and origin. Worse yet, a 2015 investigation by the Associated Press revealed that some fish on Walmart and Kroger shelves had been caught by forced labor.

COVID-19 only exacerbated the chance of unsavory activity. Typically, governments require independent

observers to ride on vessels and verify crew are complying with regulations that stipulate the amount, size, sex, and species of the seafood. To avoid transmission of the virus on cramped crafts, however, many lifted the mandate. Without the usual eyes and ears on the water, it can be even easier for illicit catches to take place, says Global Fishing Watch CEO Tony Long. It’s unclear when observers will resume their duties.

Amid all this, the pressure to adopt traceability technologies is growing. Large, risk-averse retailers like Walmart and Kroger have, in the years since the forced labor revelations, begun adopt-ing increasingly stringent sustainability requirements. “Some distributors who sold to restaurants are now trying to pivot to retail,” says Teresa Ish, senior program officer of the Walton Family Foundation’s environment initiative. The shift creates a tremendous opportunity for change. And it only increases the appeal of projects like SmartFish, which are intended not only to shorten the supply chain but also to demonstrate that consum-ers show more interest in fish that comes with a story attached.

For their part, home cooks have bolstered retail demand during the pandemic. Amateur chefs have historically avoided buying fresh fish because they don’t know how to prepare it, says Martin Exel, managing director of Seafood Business for Ocean Steward-ship, a collective of 10 of the world’s top seafood companies as well as academics. “It’s had a stigma,” he explains.

With time on their hands, however, consumers are getting more adventurous with their home-dining options. In Maine, for example, a group of fishermen who’ve adopted sushi-grade han-dling techniques have been able to secure high-enough prices to sell pollock and monkfish domestically instead of exporting it. Niceland Seafoods, a company that specializes in Icelandic im-ports, sold out of a shipment of wolffish (it’s kind of like catfish)

EVEN A FILLET

MARKED ‘WILD

CAUGHT’ AT THE

GROCER MIGHT

NOT ALWAYS BE

WHAT IT SEEMS.


114

in a Denver supermarket in four days. And frozen sales surged more than 50 percent around the beginning of COVID lockdown, according to industry publication Seafood Source.

It’s too soon to tell if armchair gourmands can absorb a sig-nificant amount of the supply that used to go to restaurants. Changing Tastes, a culinary consultancy, predicts that two-thirds of sit-down, full-service eateries will not reopen after the pandemic. But with both supermarkets and consumers showing a new appetite for fish— and for insight into the provenance of what they’re buying— Coronado and his group are well posi-tioned to meet demand, and to do so at premium prices.

ABOARD HIS BLUE-AND-WHITE PANGA, GUAYMAS co-op member José Francisco Mendizábal follows a new routine after he lands a grouper or yellowtail. He plunges a knife into the top of its skull, bleeds it, then places it in an ice-water bath—steps that help preserve flavor and texture. On shore, he scrubs down his vessel while SmartFish processors fillet and freeze the catch. By comparison, a gill-net fisherman outside the co-op would dump seafood in the bottom of a boat, leaving it to decay in the sun until it reached shore. Mendizábal’s methods may be time consuming and leave him with less yield, he says, but it’s worth it: Working with SmartFish will net the co-op 50 percent of the final price, more than double what they made before. The system, says Coronado, rewards them for their skills.

When COVID-19 first hit, demand for fresh fish from Guaymas plummeted, and the only commercial link left was SmartFish. The organization packages the co-op’s goods with a QR label pointing to

details about where it was caught, by whom, and how. A Mexico City store sells the frozen, vacuum-sealed product and manages exports to the US, its yellowtail bound for San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. Sales jumped by 30 percent between March and May 2020.

SmartFish’s work in Guaymas is not an isolated ex-ample. Other communities have found a lifeline during the pandemic by using technology to replace disrupted supply chains. In South Africa, a smartphone app called Abalobi, developed by the University of Cape Town, has helped fishermen sell lobster directly to restau-rants that have remained open. In addition to securing higher prices, they also record their catches—and therefore provide data that will help improve fisheries management. Future of Fish, a nonprofit that supports small-scale sea harvesters, jumped in to help Chileans build online markets to sell their hake, and it will soon test the Abalobi app there as well.

As their reach grows, technologies that shine light on the sources of seafood are sure to be good for both bottom lines and fisheries. Consider, for example, the Tuna 2020 Traceability Declaration—signed in 2017 by the biggest retailers, processors, marketers, traders, and harvesters—specifying that, to curb overfishing, companies must make all products fully traceable to the vessel and date on which they were caught and comply with government- mandated reporting. Since the effort began, the market for responsibly sourced tuna has doubled, and the pro-portion of sustainable tuna stocks has rebounded from a 2014 low of 14 percent to 28 percent.

FROM LEFT:

A fisherman pulls in a

rockfish by moonlight

near Guaymas, Mexico.

Traditional longlines

and hooks let locals

snag seafood by hand.

The previous night’s

catch gets put on ice.


“Traceability is critical to our ability to manage for resil-ience,” says Mark Zimring, director of the Large Scale Fisheries Program at the Nature Conservancy, which helps manage a group of ocean- roaming species that transcend national juris-dictions. “Two-thirds of global fisheries are overfished,” he says.

Emerging technologies offer opportunities for retailers as well as oversight bodies to monitor what’s happening. Conserva-tionists are calling for onboard cameras equipped with artificial intelligence that can distinguish the weight and length of fish, as a replacement for absent human monitors. The European Union mandates the use of both electronic reporting and sat-ellite tracking on vessels longer than 12 meters (39.4 feet) so government regulators can better keep an eye on populations.

In the Gulf of Mexico, Del Pacifico, a wholesaler of shrimp certified as fair trade, equips its boats with a solar-powered tracker from a company called Pelagic Data Systems. Each device monitors the craft’s movements via satellite; prospec-tive customers can then enter a lot ID number to confirm, for instance, shrimpers were not in waters where endangered por-poises reside. Del Pacifico works with 1,500 stores, primarily in the United States—and retail has grown enough during the pandemic to cover the 25 percent of stock it would normally sell to restaurants. “Traceability helped us get more clients, and more high-end clients,” says founder and CEO Sergio Castro.

A growing number of efforts are joining the ranks of Del Pacif-ico in assuring consumers that fish are properly handled once they leave the water. Niceland Seafoods weaves sensor-equipped RFID tags into packaging to track temperatures. In New Zea-land, the World Wildlife Fund has developed a blockchain- based system to embed information on the movement of wild-caught tuna on tags and link the data to a QR code.

Still, adoption can be slow. Some fishermen may be reluctant to embrace public tracking of their vessels out of fear it might tip competitors to closely guarded information, like, say, their favorite hotspots. Yet oth-ers find valuable upsides. In Peru, mahi- mahi and squid harvesters are using a World Wildlife Fund–backed smartphone app to create historical records of their performance, which will allow them to claim their fair share of the catch should the government impose quotas—as happened with anchovies, one of the biggest natural stocks in the world.

Ultimately, digital oversight could rein in what is essentially a Wild West offshore. A 2019 study in the journal Fish and Fisheries surveyed 100 electronic mon-itoring trials and 12 fully implemented programs, such as those in the EU, and found that the devices were cost-effective, offered better coverage of a fleet than human observers, and generated more data on the amount and specific location of fishing activity.

Helping the people on the boats adopt transparent, sustainable methods yields a fruitful synergy: more swimmers in the ocean, more cash in locals’ pockets, and better seafood on dining tables. Coronado, for one, takes pride in maintaining the heritage practices his co-op has used for decades, and sees COVID-19 as a window of opportunity to expand traceability—and with it, their business. Without those kinds of changes, the fourth-generation fisherman worries there won’t be a fifth to carry on the tradition. “We have to prove to people that working the way we do, it’s possible to support a family,” he says. “That it’s possible to live.”

LANDING A LIFELINE


3-6-1-6-6-7-5-1-3

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By Jeffery Noldice

Health Writer

MYKONOS: According to the National Institute on Deafness, a staggering 89% of Americans will eventually have to deal with hearing loss. But now, a well-respected Greek inventor claims he’s perfected an eardrop that helps you hear better — without needing a hearing aid.

The eardrop is getting a lot of attention. After all, if a low-cost eardrop could reboot hearing, some predict the billion-dollar hear-ing aid industry could be out of business by 2023.

Hear What You’ve Been Missing

It’s reported that the drops are power-ful. Some say they can now hear things they couldn’t hear before. Others tell us they no longer struggle to hear the T.V. or ask people to repeat themselves anymore.

We tracked the inventor of the drops down to a small island just off the coast of Mykonos. He was very protective about his privacy. But the man, (who only goes by the name J.D.) was very excited to openly talk about his ear-drop formula.

J.D. cleverly calls his drops Phonics. Most users agree it really is remarkable.

“The drops let you hear sounds you may not have heard in a while, like the purring of a cat or the quiet hum of a small fan. But the biggest news is, Phonics works after the very first dose… no matter how bad your hearing is.”

But the inventor won’t reveal how it works. According to J.D., “Everybody is trying to get their hands on my formula. It wasn’t easy to come by and I definitely won’t let Big Pharma steal it from me. That’s for sure.”

The Earthquake That Clobbered His Hearing

For J.D., it all started in 1978 when his whole town was devastated by a massive earthquake. It was the same year he noticed his hearing seemed stuffy and clogged. He kept asking people to repeat themselves. And pretended to be in conversations he didn’t hear. It was embarrassing.

Frustrated Friends & Family

Ordinary conversation was impossible. “I’d

make my friends repeat every other word. It got so bad, some avoided me altogether. They would joke. “We can tell J.D. anything. He won’t say anything. He can’t hear a word you say.”

From Desperation to Discovery

J.D. tried every supplement and hearing de-vice he could find. Nothing worked. “Most of the time, my hearing was cloudy. But some-times I had no idea what was going on.” So the inventor began to experiment in his kitch-en “science lab.”

Old Family Remedy to The Rescue

J.D.’s great-grandmother proudly talked about the secret “miracle drops” too. After all, they were handed down for generations. She was delighted about all the people it helped over the years.

Through many conversations, J.D. learned about the ingredients used in the special ear drops. He discovered which herbs to use and not to use. How they were picked at distinct times of the year… and grown only in special soil.

“It Worked. It Really Worked.”

And then one day, “I finally discovered just the right combination.” J.D. became his own guinea pig.

He put the drop in his left ear and felt a pleasant WHOOSH. It felt great. Like a great blockage was removed. “I cried tears of joy. I got my clear hearing back!”

In fact, J.D. claims to have restored almost all the elders in his village of weak hearing. And now, he wants to share his joy with ev-eryone. That’s why you’re reading this article right now.

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Never Sold in Stores

It’s not easy but J.D. purposely keeps his secret recipe from Big Pharma. “They’d like nothing more than to see me go away.” So to keep his formula secret, J.D. made ar-range-ments with a small company that agrees to keep the formula secret and the price low. Phonics is never sold in retail stores that rely on middlemen to jack up the price.

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Greek Inventor’s Eardrops Could Make Hearing Aids Obsolete By 2023

Startling discovery reported to boost hearing with eardrops, not expensive & embarrassing hearing devices

Could this inventor’s “Miracle Eardrops” be the end of the multi-billion-dollar hearing aid industry? Reported to work no matter how bad your hearing is.

Untreated Hearing Loss Often

Leads to Depression

Researchers at the University of British Columbia report every 10-decibel drop in hearing sensitivity, the odds of social isolation increase by 52%. Left untreated, the loss of hearing results in feelings of depression and diminished quality of life.

The Great Big Hearing Aid Rip-Off

The dirty little secret about hearing aids is no matter how small they are, they still feel like an ant crawling in your ear. And contrary to the sales pitch… they’re embarrassing, because with those wires sticking out of your ears, everybody knows you’re hard of hearing.

Plus, they’re expensive…average cost is around $5,000 or more. And the cheaper models just give you an earful of buzzing and whistling noises.

Now I Watch TV Without Subtitles“I was totally Depressed. I could only watch TV with the subtitles on. Now it’s not a problem,” says Sofia K. age 71.

Everybody Stopped Yelling“I used to think people were speaking low, until I realized I had a problem. But now people don’t have to yell for me to hear them and it only took a few drops.” Darius K. age 53.

TALES FIELDFROM THE

DAT E: W I N T E R 2020P G 117 I L LU ST R AT I O N S BY M AS H A K R AS N OVA-S H A BA E VA

Like many Americans, I grew up on white bread and never sourdough.

These hefty loaves require a starter— a messy mix of flour, water, and microbes. Bacteria ferments the starches into sugar, which yeast then eats, producing

evidence in Switzerland dates it to at least 3700 BCE. If properly cared for, a starter with the right microbial mix can last forever, and will consistently give rise to quality loaves. However, we still know little about the organisms in-volved. So, in 2017, I created the Global Sourdough Project to find answers in starters from around the world.

We asked 1,000 participants to send in samples of their homebrews with notes about them. On an ecological level, we’ve found that while the blends have common components, some makeups differ by

know if those local species influence taste. The devotion people give their starters

always amazes me. Many mixtures we re-ceived had been passed down for generations, sometimes across centuries. One study participant shared a concoc-tion named “Herman,” which she’d received from her mother. Her own jar had gone bad, but while cleaning her mom’s fridge after her death, she found another container. Now we have some of this be-loved starter in our lab in Raleigh and we bake it often. Not everybody is a fan—it’s seriously tart. But I like Herman quite a lot.

kneads now

R O B D U N N , P R O F E S S O R

O F A P P L I E D E C O L O G Y AT N O R T H

C A R O L I N A S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y

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told

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M A R I A P I A M I G L I E T TA , P R O F E S S O R O F M A R I N E

B I O L O G Y AT T E X A S A & M U N I V E R S I T Y AT G A LV E S T O N

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 trans dif fer en tiation, adult cells reconfigure themselves into new ones. Uncovering how this change

My team and I have been sequenc-ing the adult’s genes, looking at which ones control the transdifferentiation process and how exactly they pull it off. We’ve found that in addition to loads of cellular repair, the jellyfish also prevent their telomeres— caps at the ends of DNA strands that protect against aging— from shortening, as they do in almost all other species on the planet. We believe that this could be key to keeping cells young.

Next, I want to pinpoint why this jelly can cheat death, while its nearly identi-cal sister species (T. nutricula) still succumbs to old age. I want to find and study those life-altering genes.

By the time the Opportunity and Spirit rovers touched down on

Mars in January 2004, my colleagues and I were already pondering new proj-

ects. We’d designed the pair of rovers knowing that the Red Planet is a gritty place. We weren’t sure exactly when Mars’ infamous dust clouds would coat their solar panels and block out the sun, rendering them powerless.

We planned for roughly 90 days of exploration, but no one told the rovers. Spirit traipsed the sandy plains for about six years, and Opportunity kept going for around 14. Our lucky streak started right away: Mars gave us what we called “cleaning events”—gentle winds that un-expectedly dusted off the rovers and boosted power production. Because the planet receives adequate sunlight, the solar panels we’d expected to fail actu-ally gave a nearly infinite energy source.

Fortunately, expecting a short mission hadn’t stopped designers from picking the most reliable components. Even after 14 years, most of Opportunity’s motors could have lasted for at least another decade. And when parts did act up, we

thought creatively. After a heater’s switch got stuck in the on position, for instance, our team reworked Opportu-

nity’s standard bedtime routine to force nonessential systems to shut down, which switched off the faulty part and saved needed power.

The team felt devoted to the rovers—like they were friends, pets, or even family members. We did whatever we could to keep them going. Ultimately, a spill into a sand trap hobbled Spirit in year six. If not for a Martian dust storm—the thickest we’ve ever seen—blotting out the sun in year 14, Opportunity

might still be rolling along as usual. The current generation of rovers,

Curiosity and Perseverance, run on nu-clear power and have more backup parts. That’s largely because Opportu-

nity and Spirit proved we could operate for far longer than 90 days, empower-ing mission designers to start planning expeditions that last for years.

the little rovers

that could

as

told

to C

ha

rlie W

oo

d

M AT T K E U N E K E , M A R S E X P L O R AT I O N R O V E R

M I S S I O N O P E R AT I O N S M A N A G E R AT N A S A


as

told

to S

ara

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on

HIGH ALTITUDE

Thousands of feet above sea level, thin air triggers the body to boost oxygen-rich red blood cell pro-duction. This helps us breathe until de-scent, but after too long turns blood vis-cous enough to clot. Tibetans and some Ethiopians, who live at up to 14,000 feet, have a gene that stops the surge to keep clots at bay.

Dry air traps less heat, causing daily temperature shifts from scorching hot

nights. Aboriginal Australians have genes associated with temperature-

ers are still studying them, but we think the genes help the arid dwellers thrive in both extremes.

EXTREME COLD

In coastal glacial cli-mates with subzero temperatures, food is limited to blubbery fare like seals, wal-ruses, and whales. High-fat diets typi-cally raise the risk of heart disease and cancer, but some lo-cals like Greenland’s Inuit have evolved genes that help them process the suste-nance without any of the downsides.

DEEP WATERS

The Bajau people of Southeast Asia plunge up to 200 feet to catch fish. Their secret is the huge size of their spleens.

blood cells and release a boost of oxy gen when we dive; a gene variant that tweaks hormones re-sponsible for spleen size means the Bajau people can tap a bigger reservoir.

WINTER 2020 / POPSC I .COM

no place like home as told to Marion Renault

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 technolo-

gies like genome sequencing, scientists are unraveling

how humans endure all kinds of treacherous conditions.

Here are four adaptations that show we can turn an

locale—hot, cold, wet, dry—into a humble abode.

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M E L I S S A I L A R D O ,

P O S T D O C T O R A L R E S E A R C H F E L L O W

AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F U TA H ’ S

M O L E C U L A R M E D I C I N E P R O G R A M


on mars

K E L L I E G E R A R D I ,

B I O A S T R O N A U T I C S R E S E A R C H E R

AT T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I N S T I T U T E

F O R A S T R O N A U T I C A L S C I E N C E

In 2014, I joined a team of six other scien-tists at the Mars Desert Research Station,

a Utah-based lab designed to mimic the condi-tions humans would experience on our nearby orb. One of our missions was to test how well sorghum and hops—two main ingredients in beer—might survive in Martian soil. After all, what’s life on the Red Planet if you can’t enjoy it?

We planted two sets of crops, one in regular soil and another in a NASA-made compound that mocks Mars’ dirt at a chemical level. The seeds sprouted and thrived in both systems, and the sorghum ones germinated two days earlier in the faux red clay.

Despite these promising results, we can’t say with certainty that we’d have similar success if we tried to take root off-world. Our experimen-tal dirt is a close dupe, but it’s not the real thing. In particular, the mixture doesn’t contain per-chlorates, toxic compounds that are present in all Martian soil. This is why I’m excited about the new Perseverance rover, which is set to reach the Red Planet in February 2021. The robot will extract samples that NASA plans to pick up and bring home on future missions. Analyzing that authentic grit could help us figure out once and for all if happy hour on Mars can be as enjoy-able as it is on our home planet.

The lightbulb hanging in the garage at the fire station in Livermore, California, never dies. When I began working there in the early 1970s we’d swat it for luck, but in 1972, a reporter dated it to the early twen-tieth century. More than a hundred years since it was made, the incandescent still shines, but no one knows exactly how.

The bulb came from the Shelby Electric Company, whose products were famous

for being the best around. The designers used a secret formula to craft filaments, the wiring inside the vacuum-sealed glass that produces light when electricity runs through it. Physicists at the US Naval Academy have identified the material as a cellulose- based substance that becomes pure carbon when baked, often reaching the hardness of a diamond. Filaments to-day are thinner and deteriorate faster, so

perhaps the thickness of Shelby’s coils makes them more durable. We also sus-pect our bulb has a perfect vacuum seal that further protects its innards.

Since the light’s novelty became appar-ent, we’ve discussed how to best protect it. My suggestion has always been to do nothing. It’s been batted, hit with foam balls, and ignored for decades. We’ll let it be—it clearly doesn’t need our help.

the bulb that

won’t burn out

as

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laire

Ma

lda

relli

T O M B R A M E L L , F O R M E R D E P U T Y F I R E

C H I E F F O R L I V E R M O R E - P L E A S A N T O N

F I R E D E P A R T M E N T

WINTER 2020 / POPSC I .COM

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Over the last half century, extreme

droughts and heavy rain have become increas-ingly 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 cur-rents. 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 mod-els 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, his-torical newspapers, and additional archival docu-ments, but there were many gaps. So we went to nature’s own data-base: We analyzed the rings of more than 13,000 trees from the Andes, drilling tiny cylindrical holes into the trunks and extracting samples of their cores. Each layer represents one year, and its size can tell us about conditions at the time. Wet seasons allow for growth spurts that create wider bands, whereas dry stretches produce much thinner ones.

The final map is both a time capsule and a tool to forecast and with-stand future swings.

M A R I A N O M O R A L E S , E N V I R O N M E N TA L S C I E N T I S T AT

T H E A R G E N T I N I A N I N S T I T U T E O F S N O W S C I E N C E ,

G L A C I O L O G Y, A N D E N V I R O N M E N TA L S C I E N C E S

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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 millen-nia, 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 en-codes for a specific receptor for progesterone (a hormone crucial to ensure healthy pregnancies) comes from Neanderthals. It is present in one-third of Euro-pean women, and those who possess it tend to have fewer miscarriages and give birth to more children.

We’ve also found that some of the ancient hominin’s genetic material seems to trigger an overactive immune response to the novel coronavirus, resulting in a more severe case of COVID-19. This troublesome gene likely stuck around because it helped our ancestors fight dis-ease, but now that we’ve identified it, we hope to understand it and open the doors to future treatments.

Of course, the bits of Neanderthal living in each of us aren’t all the same. About 1 to 2 percent of each hu-man’s genome is Neanderthal in origin, and genetic tests like 23andMe can reveal your number. I’ve still never taken one, though I think it’s cool to know there’s a little bit of our past within us all.

H U G O Z E B E R G , R E S E A R C H E R AT T H E M A X P L A N C K

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your brain on video chat

BY S A R A K I L EY WAT S O N

DATING, CATCHING UP WITH

family, and going to happy hour are

best in person. When those interac-

tions aren’t possible, loneliness and

even depression can creep in. How-

ever, we can still remain socially

healthy by hopping on video chat.

The modern means of commu-

nication can boost emotional and

psychological well-being in similar

ways to in-person mingling. A 2013

Cyber psychology study found that

video chatters expressed a higher rate

of emotional bonding than those who

talked on the phone or texted. (The for-

mat was beaten out only by in-person

meetups.) It seems the more immer-

sive our experiences with others are,

the more prone we are to bond. The

reason, says Alan Teo, an associate

professor of psychiatry at Oregon

Health and Science University, is likely

that some 80 percent of human com-

munication is nonverbal. Video chat,

unlike audio or text, still lets us convey

feelings via facial expressions.

When we make eye contact, we

notice movements like a slight smile,

raised cheeks, and squinted eyes,

which our brain senses, decodes, and

translates into readable emotional

messages. Suddenly, the word “hello”

becomes a spirited and genuine greet-

ing. A little bit of face time may be all

you need to keep your friends close

and your mind healthy.

H E A D T R I PT R I PILLUSTRATIONS BY ANA GALVAÑ


YWZZQQSF

spacing out is good for you

BY E L E A N O R C U M M I N S

C O N S TA N T LY C R A M M I N G knowl-

edge 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 shower-

ing, pulling weeds, or petting a dog—provides an

opportunity for what psychologists call wakeful

rest. The brief interludes allow for inward atten-

tion, 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 col-

laborative patchwork of gray matter called the

default mode network takes control. Neurosci-

entists still don’t completely understand how this

system works, but they think it connects disso-

nant parts of our brains, which can help us find

meaning in our chaotic lives. This clarity might

also reduce anxiety, boost creativity, and improve

memory, says Mary Helen Immordino- Yang, a

neuroscientist at the University of Southern Cali-

fornia’s Brain and Creativity Institute.

The trouble is, life’s endeavors leave little

room to let your mind wander. Many spend their

free time consuming entertainment, which may

feel relaxing but requires brainpower to enjoy.

Fortunately, there are ways to encourage your

default mode network to take over:


A WANDERING MIND REAPS BENE-

FITS YOU MIGHT NOT IMAGINE.

HOW TO DO

NOTHI NG

T H E S E P R O T I P S

W I L L H E L P C L E A R

Y O U R H E A D .

FIND YOUR BLISS

Casual hobbies that don’t overlap with your day job can help prevent out-of-office anxiety.

GET AWAY

New surroundings give your brain a break from environ-mental cues, like the sight of your desk and laptop, that tell it to work.

SWITCH OFF

Notifications can be too tempting to ignore. Turning off any and all devices helps maintain relaxation mode.

big animal brains are overrated

why can’t i forget how to ride a bike?

WHEN WE THINK, each of our brain cells fires signals

to as many as 1,000 neighboring neurons up to 200 times

per second. This enables complex decision-making like nav-

igating a four-way stop or solving an algebra problem. But

animals with tiny noggins (or none at all) also complete in-

volved tasks—no cerebral fireworks needed.

Ant brains are hundreds of thousands of times smaller than

ours, rendering them incapable of any significant individual

computing power. Instead, they employ an intricate hive mind

communication system, says New Jersey Institute of Tech-

nology entomologist Simon Garnier. The bugs emit chemicals

called pheromones when they encounter a resource, such as

food or a nesting site. Hundreds of fellow ants follow the smell,

leading to an organized army of satiated critters or the con-

struction of a giant (relatively speaking) anthill.

Even brainless, single-celled organisms called plasmodial

slime molds can comprehend simple lessons, says Audrey

Dussutour, a biologist at the University of Toulouse. She

taught these blobs to transverse salty patches of land by grad-

ually filling them with sodium. The more salt they contained,

the sooner they “realized” they could cross safely, proving an

elaborate neural network isn’t the only key to success.

LEARNING TO PEDAL IS NO EASY FEAT.

But forgetting is harder. For most people, even af-

ter decades-long hiatuses, cruising still feels like a

breeze. The key is how the brain remembers the task.

Mastering cycling requires a ton of higher-level

thinking: Your noggin’s motor cortices plan and exe-

cute precise muscle control, the cerebellum helps you

balance and time your pedal strokes, and the basal

ganglia keep these movements fluid rather than jerky.

It’s precisely this colossal load of cerebral coor-

dination that ensures the skill sticks around, says

Jürgen Konczak, a neuroscientist and biomechanics

expert at the University of Minnesota. We use every

muscle movement and subsequent brain connection

involved in bike riding during other activities, like

dancing, playing sports, and walking—just not all at

the same time. When the time comes to hop back on

the saddle, all the necessary moving parts are already

tuned and oiled. There’s never a bad time to start ped-

aling again. It’s truly a skill that lasts a lifetime.

BY CA N D I C E WA N G

BY H A N NA H S E O

GL

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2020 investigation by The New Yorker.“It ultimately will be a huge un-

dertaking,” says Angela Thorpe, who testified in support of the bill before a House hearing in May 2019. In her po-sition as director of North Carolina’s African American Heritage Commiss-ion , Thorpe constantly fields requests for help maintaining abandoned burial grounds. “I think that this work has the opportunity to build and heal com-munities in ways that I’ve never seen before,” she says. The issue represents a clear way to push against systems of racism and oppression, she adds, and can help preserve cultural traditions. In her state, that includes the coastal Gullah Geechee practice of covering graves with shells, a symbol of the water that brought them to the South-eastern US and the hope that it would bring them back to Africa in death.

“Of course a bill to protect Afri-can American cemeteries is a good thing,” William and Mary anthropol-ogist Blakey says, but he thinks more is required. “What we need is the empowerment of descendant commu-nities.” He notes that the legislation isn’t as ambitious as the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Re-patriation Act, which recognized Indigenous tribes’ rights to determine what happens to human remains and sacred objects found in excavations and held in museum collections.

A few weeks after the Juneteenth cere mony, RISE and its partners sought an injunction to block the facil-ity’s construction while court battles over permits await decisions. Formosa agreed to delay work, at least near the Buena Vista cemetery and other possible graves, until February 2021. Gov. Edwards has said he thinks the company will prevail, but Lavigne considers the pause a small but signifi-cant victory. Though she doesn’t know what the future holds for the ceme-tery, she recalls how on that hot June day, she felt deep happiness standing at the site—“like the ancestors were rejoicing that we did this, that we found them, that we discovered them.”

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They can smooth out the moment- to- moment spikes and dips in renewable generation, such as during periods of heavy winds or passing clouds. They can facilitate more deliberate finan-cial arbitrage, collecting energy at times of lower cost and selling it back when prices rise. And they can relieve congestion on the grid by temporarily holding electrons at pinch points.

Making all that fit together means transforming Plummer’s vision of a duck-billed platypus into something more like a swan. “Storage can meet your local demand when transmission constrains you from importing power, but it also can take extra power and store it,” says Jesse Jenkins, a professor at Princeton University. In a study published in Octo-ber 2020 in the journal Applied Energy, Jenkins and his co-authors modeled how the grid might respond to caching as part of a broader transition to re-newables. They found that as utilities deploy more storage, its value declines. But as variable generation like wind and solar increases, the batteries’ value increases again, working cheek to cheek with the daily fluctuations in production. For companies like Flu-ence, chasing to replace the hundreds of peaker plants across the country is the appetizer. The main course is the 60 percent of our supply produced by relatively efficient—but still fossil fuel–powered—turbines. Not Ravens-wood’s peakers, but Big Allis itself.

“Ravens wood has historically been a place where one form of energy is brought in and converted into an-other form of energy,” says Plummer. “I would anticipate that our future is something similar, although it will no longer be fossil fuels being brought in and distributed as electricity but rather connections to large-scale renewables.” On the ground in Queens, that means the rusting peakers on their field of cracked asphalt won’t be around for long. The disposal trucks are coming soon, and the batteries will take their place. Ravens wood isn’t going any-where, but emissions that poison the community will be gone forever.

THE SWITCH


INSIDE AND OUT

But Triplett, like all Defy Colo-rado graduates, can’t skip straight to startup life. First comes a job, and she’s managed to find herself a good option: She joined a road-construction crew, helping close down streets to traffic.

She likes the gig. She gets to be outside, and it pays $16 per hour—enough to treat herself to McDonald’s and pay for the unlimited phone plan she bumped up to after hitting her data cap watching movies. She loves having a phone. There’s a lot online, and in the physical world, that she can now explore 14 years earlier than she ever expected to. Once she’s in-dependently established, she’ll be eligible to join Defy Colorado’s busi-ness incubator, which connects graduates with the local business and funding community. Then she’ll be

ready to pursue her artwork idea.Someday, when she is allowed out

of state, she wants to travel some-place like Tennessee, which she’s heard is pretty. Or maybe Switzer-land. “I have never been camping,” she continues. “I want to go. I have never been fishing. I want to learn. I like hiking. I like boulder jumping.”

She describes a spot near a place called Palmer Lake, just north of Colo rado Springs, and pulls up pictures she’s downloaded to her smartphone, taken during the before times. Not the pre-pandemic years but her personal before times.

In one photograph, she’s sur-rounded by rocks, blue sky, open space. She is smiling, young, glad for the chance—then as now—to hop from one obstacle to the next.


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BEHIND THE COVER

• Butterflies may seem delicate, but they are

surprisingly tough. The monarch’s crisp col-

oring is what makes it turn heads, but the

creature’s greatest feat is its annual migra-

tion, 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 habi tat 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 taxi-

dermied, which allowed photography duo The

Voorhes to pose it just right. Construction rub-

ble from around their neighborhood in Austin,

Texas, completed the scene, along with an over-

head light and a sky-blue backdrop. The pair

used photo-editing software to add clouds and

some finishing touches, transforming the tiny

setup into a triumphant portrait of resilience.

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FALL 2018 // CARNEGIE MELLON ENGINEERING //

popular science - winter 2020

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