Scientific American - October 2014 USA
Scientific American - October 2014 USA
Scientific American - October 2014 USA
Celebrating
Martin Gardner
CELL BIOLOGY
A
Beacon
from the
W
D
ER
SI T
IN
Y P OW ER S
ON
State
of the
Worlds
Science
2014
VA
TI
AL REPO
HO
IV
CI
S
P
Bg
Bang
NO
ENVIRONMENT
Climate and an
Inconvenient Ice
ScientificAmerican.com
October 2014
It could reveal
insights about the
early universe and
maybe even the
theory of
everything
ON THE COVER
Earlier this year a group of astronomers announced a stunning discovery: evidence of gravitational waves that had
originated in the first instant after the big bang. If the finding is confirmed, it will be one of the most important in
decades, according to physicist Lawrence M. Krauss. He
explains what the waves might reveal about the birth of
our universeand others. Illustration by Mark Ross.
58
FEATURE S
The discovery of gravitational waves from the early universe could solve many mysteries surrounding the first
moments of time. If its not a dud. By Lawrence M. Krauss
AGRICULTURE
68 Saving Coffee
The crop we rely on to wake up each morning is precariously homogeneous and beset by disease. Scientists are
trying to shore it up with new genes. By Hillary Rosner
C EL L BIOLOGY
74 Twists of Fate
ENV IRONMENT
82 An Inconvenient Ice
52 Inviting Everyone In
Different circumstances demand different
strategies for generating diversity in the work
place and the classroom. By Victoria Plaut
54 Becoming Visible
By Brian Welle and Megan Smith
DEPARTMENT S
15 Forum
Educators need to think long-term about learning
technology. By Ben Nelson
19 Advances
Time-of-death progress. Virtual reality in therapy.
See-through rodents. The ultimate customs agent.
36 TechnoFiles
Million-dollar Internet stunt. By David Pogue
96 Recommended
Evolutions oddities. Where the atoms in the body
come from. Music and dementia. By Clara Moskowitz
19
97 Skeptic
A compelling mystery defeats skepticism (almost).
By Michael Shermer
98 Anti Gravity
When in ancient Rome, laugh as the Romans laughed.
By Steve Mirsky
96
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Youre Invited
hat is your vision? It was 2009, and my new boss, steer our course; you see them listed below this letter. We redeSteven Inchcoombe, had just inspired me with signed the magazine and Web site in 2010, the better to engage
the most wonderful invitation. I was executive our audiences. We launched a series of education initiatives in
editor of Scientific American at the time, and 2011 for families and educators. That year we also started our
what did I want to do if I could earn the privi- network of lively, independent bloggers to widen the communilege of becoming editor in chief? In my minds eye, the future ty discussion. In 2012 we added the Scientific American Science
opened before me. What did Scientific American need to become in Action Award, powered by the Google Science Fair. I began
now that it had not been in the past,
attending the World Economic Forum
and how could it do that?
meetings in Davos, Switzerland, and in
Like the seven editors in chief who
China to share news about innovation
preceded me since 1845, I believe science
with leaders in policy and business, who
is an engine of prosperity. The laptop Im
have always been part of our readership.
using right now, our food, clothing, buildIn July, I also spoke to the Senate Comingsthe expanse of human knowledge
mittee on Commerce, Science, and Transitselfall these things were improved
portation about the value of funding bathrough the process we call science. And
sic research.
science underpins the critical challenges
In our new Voices blog, edited by
that humanity wrestles with today, from
blogs editor Curtis Brainard, and in
SENATE SCIENCE witnesses Vint Cerf,
cures for our ailments to living sustainthis issues annual State of the Worlds
Googles Internet evangelist, and DiChris
ably in a finite world. Its just that, as I
Science, organized by executive editor
tina look at a facsimile of Scientific Amerirealized, people dont always call it sciFred Guterl, we take a special look at dicans first 1845 issue before their testimony.
ence, or they dont see the connection
versityhow bringing in different perbetween the things they care about and
spectives can power science innovation
science. My job, I decided, would be about inviting people into still more for a better future for us all. Turn to page 38.
science through Scientific American, so they could understand.
And it all started when I realized how inspiring an invitation
Immediately, I asked scientists to join as advisers, to help could be. (Thanks, Steven.)
BOARD OF ADVISERS
President, Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research
Roger Bingham
G. Steven Burrill
Arthur Caplan
George M. Church
Rita Colwell
Richard Dawkins
Drew Endy
Professor of Bioengineering,
Stanford University
Edward W. Felten
Kaigham J. Gabriel
Lawrence M. Krauss
Morten L. Kringelbach
Robert E. Palazzo
Carolyn Porco
Michael S. Gazzaniga
Steven Kyle
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
David J. Gross
Robert S. Langer
Lisa Randall
Mallinckrodt Professor of
Physics and of Applied Physics,
Harvard University
Danny Hillis
Daniel M. Kammen
Vinod Khosla
Christof Koch
Lawrence Lessig
John P. Moore
M. Granger Morgan
Martin Rees
John Reganold
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Miguel Nicolelis
Eugenie C. Scott
Martin A. Nowak
Terry Sejnowski
Michael Shermer
Michael Snyder
Michael E. Webber
Steven Weinberg
George M. Whitesides
Nathan Wolfe
R. James Woolsey
Anton Zeilinger
Jonathan Zittrain
Leslie C. Aiello
Letters
[email protected]
The dominant
global economic
paradigm is itself a
mega-Ponzi scheme.
June 2014
DILEMMAS OF FREE WILL
In The World without Free Will, Azim F.
Letters
their flora at birth, brought up in Gut Reactions, by Claudia Wallis [The Science of
Health], remains fascinating and unanswered. As a midwife, I do not rupture the
sealed fetal sac. It usually spontaneously
ruptures, but in 5 percent of my births, the
baby emerges in the intact sac, never directly exposed to the mothers vaginal or
intestinal flora. Breast-feeding is a possible route for the immediate colonization
of the intestines after birth.If so, how do
intestinal bacteria get into the milk?
Judy Slome Cohain
Certified nurse midwife
Alon Shvut, Israel
WALLIS REPLIES: To begin with, the uterine environment is not the pristine place it
was once thought to be; microbes are present there and in the placenta. Second, during birth it is likely there would be some
contact with the mothers microbes even
when the sac is unbroken. Third, according
to Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello of the
New York University School of Medicine,
the mothers nipples and milk ducts very
likely harbor bacteria that thrive in milk
and that these then colonize the infant gut.
L E T T E R S TO T H E E D I TO R
ESTABLISHED 1845
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ERRATA
Agenda], gives the generic name of Vioxx
as celecoxib. It is rofecoxib.
A Milestone on the Long and Winding Road to Fusion, by David Biello, states
that lasers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used to produce fusion require about 500 trillion joules. The figure
should be at least 190 million joules.
Summon the Rain, by Dan Baum, incorrectly refers to the volume of a small
cloud as topping 750 cubic kilometers. A
typical cloud is one cubic kilometer.
Stan Schmidt
Diane McGarvey
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Preferential
Treatment
Good intentions are not enough
to end racial and gender bias
Scientists pride themselves on their objectivity, yet when it comes
to gender and race, they are as partial as everyone else. A 1999
study, for example, found that academic psychologists were more
likely to recommend hiring a male job applicant than a female one
with an identical record. A rsum assigned the name Brad Baker
is more likely to lead to a job interview than one from Rasheed
Jones. Numerous studies have shown that women scientists get
weaker letters of recommendation. Whereas female applicants to
a faculty position at a medical school were called teachers and
students, men were researchers and professionals.
These kinds of biases are unconscious and subtle but invidious enough to suppress the diversity of students and faculty in
many university science, engineering and math departments
and in the scientific workforce at large. As of 2010, white men
made up 51 percent of all working scientists and engineers, in
contrast to white women (18 percent) and black and Hispanic
men and women, who each held 4 percent or fewer of these
jobs. As Katherine W. Phillips shows in How Diversity Works,
starting on page 42, diversity is not only socially just, it is an
essential ingredient in high-quality scientific work.
Asking individuals to check their own predispositions is a
worthy step, but it is insufficient. Unconscious biases cannot be
wished away. Institutions must strive to eliminate opportunities for implicit bias to affect decisions on hiring and promotions. Systemic changes are crucial.
One simple way to help ensure that rewards go to the most
deserving applicantsnot just the ones with the right names
is to strip critical documents of identifying information. Hiring
committees cannot favor white and male applicants if rsums
have only a number at the top. Peer reviewers cannot disproportionately reject journal papers from women and ethnic minorities if author identities are hidden.
A 2012 study of Swedish data on real-life job applications
showed that anonymous hiring practices increased the chances
that women and minorities made it to the interview stage. The
same thing happened in a 20102011 German pilot program
when participating companies removed personal details such as
age and gender from job applications. Symphony orchestras
have found that they are more likely to hire women when musicians audition from behind a screen.
University science departments can and should obscure the
identities of applicants on curricula vitae (CVs) and other materials during the first round of screening for new faculty members
Passing
the Midterm
Educators need to think long-term
about the role of technology in learning
The rampant spread of technology-mediated learning has set off
fits of hype and hand-wringingyet the U.S.s traditional centers
of higher education have mostly failed to confront the pace of
change and the implications for students. There is probably no
way anyone can keep up with this transformation: the technology is simply evolving too rapidly. Nevertheless, we keep trying.
Will these developments truly serve our goals for advanced education? We need to know urgently.
But reacting too quickly could be as bad as adapting too slowly. As soon as the newest experiment in higher-learning technology is announced, would-be experts race to declare its success or
failure. Even if their snap guesses prove correct in the near term,
any alleged breakthrough will likely be sent to the scrapyard
before long to make way for the next educational techno-marvel.
Given what we know about the progress of technology, we need
to ask which advances will persist longer than a few months.
Higher learning has three fundamental objectives: knowledge dissemination, intellectual development and experiential
growthmental maturation, in other words. As the field of educational technology grows, these functions must all be addressed.
The first itemdissemination of knowledgehas traditionally been the province of classrooms and lecture halls. Nowadays
even the most venerated names in education are touting what
they call MOOCs. These massive open online courses are the
online equivalent of brick-and-mortar lecture halls, only with
better functionality (such as the ability to pause and rewind),
free tuition and unlimited seating.
That sounds good, but to see the real future of knowledge dissemination, we must look even farther ahead. Although adaptive
learning technologies are still in their infancy, they are already
displaying huge promise. The idea is to tailor the teaching process to each students progress. As the tools develop, adaptive
learning will bring seismic shifts to the instruction process. Companies such as Knewton and systems such as the Open Learning
Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University are just a hint of whats
to come. These technologies will provide a whole new mode of
instruction, and it will be less expensive and more effective than
the old sage on a stage model. Although many traditional universities are addicted to the tuitions they draw with big lecture
halls, online institutions and companies such as Western Governors University, UniversityNow and StraighterLine have begun
demonstrating a viable alternative. The mainstream academic
world should take notice.
The second priority is students intellectual development. People often assume, mistakenly, that this area is beyond the scope of
technological improvement. They see no substitute for the oneon-one student-teacher bond exemplified by the high-touch methods of the so-called Oxbridge tutorial system. But can even a very
good mentor offset the shortcomings of most present-day institutions, where instruction is delivered course by course, with no
core curriculum? The scaffolded curriculum at Minerva Schools
at the Keck Graduate Institute, the San Franciscobased university that I helped to found in 2013, teaches a core set of concepts
and exercises them throughout all classes in every subject.
The third and final task remains the big challenge for educational technology: personal development via experiential learning. For students, this is the lifelong process of becoming a more
cultured, accomplished and compassionate human being. Traditional universities try to help students along through hands-on
work in laboratories and apprenticeships, and they encourage
undergraduates to take summer internships and spend semesters abroad. Nevertheless, students mostly remain anchored to
their campuses. Even now technology should make it possible
for a student to use the world as her or his campus.
Given the technological transformation taking place on all
sides, universities need to think seriously about their mediumterm strategic plans. What will universities look like in 2025? The
changes will be consequentialso consequential, in fact, that
stalling could jeopardize the future of higher education.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE
Comment on this article at ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014
ADVANCES
Dispatches from the frontiers of science, technology and medicine
NEUROSCI E N CE
As baby boomers acquire the neurodegenerative diseases that come with age, researchers
focus on a potential avenue to new treatments: targeting cell-to-cell transfer of misfolded proteins
The first step to treating or preventing
a disease is often finding out what drives
it. In the case of neurodegenerative disorders, the discovery two decades ago of
what drives them changed the field: all
of themincluding Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Huntingtons and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrigs disease)involve the accumulation of misfolded proteins in brain cells.
ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014/advances
W EA R A BL E TEC H
Safety
in a Sock
Albert La Spada, a geneticist at the University of California, San Diego, who was
A teenager wins big
not involved in the study. But if it turns
for an invention
out that traveling is essential, then therathat monitors
pies may be able to target the pathway.
Alzheimers
patients
If we can find out how its occurring,
La Spada says, then we might be
Fifteen-year-old Kenneth
According to
able to come up with treatments
Shinozuka of New York
the Alzheimers
to prevent it. And those treatCity won the $50,000
Association, more than
ments could potentially apply
Scientific American
to the other neurodegeneraScience in Action
tive diseases.
Award in August for
The next step is crucial.
his invention of a
Researchers will try to block
Americans have
wearable sensor for
the spread of misfolded proteins
Alzheimers
Alzheimers patients. The
and see if that improves symptoms
prize, part of the Google Scior slows progression. Finding ther
ence Fair, recognizes a teen for
apies for these diseases is paraan innovation that can make
mount. Approximately 50,000 new
a practical difference by
of them are
cases of Parkinsons alone are diagprone to
nosed every year in the U.S., and
wander
experts estimate the prevalence will
at least double by 2030 because of an
aging population. Tara Haelle
5.2
million
60%
COMMENT AT
ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014
Missing Something?
ADVANCES
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over thousands of miles.
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PHILOSOPHY
RELIGION
ENLIGHTENMENT
Our book,
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CO NSERVATION
Saving Bambi
As monarch butterflies migrate, a trilateral effort to save
their continental journey is under way
The monarch butterfly hits the peak of
its winter migration in October, and as it
makes its way from Canada and the U.S. to
Mexico, all three countries will be watching
its numbers closely. In February, President
Enrique Pea Nieto of Mexico, flanked by
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, announced
that they would set up a task force charged
with saving the continents monarchs. Then
in late May, the three countries devoted
several sessions to the butterfly at an annual wildlife conservation summit. That is
because the monarch is declining precipitously. In the past decade the population
east of the Rocky Mountains dropped from
an estimated one billion to the 33 million
that survived their journey last winter; the
5/7/13 11:50 AM
western population, which winters in California, has also dwindled in recent years.
We are on the verge of losing one of the
most magical animal migrations, says Dan
Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. Much of the monarch butterflys life
is spent migrating, a journey that for some
individuals can cover more than 3,000 miles.
Once called the Bambi of the insect
world, the monarch is the most recognized
butterfly in North America, but its popularity
alone will not save it. Researchers and wildlife officials say it will take a combination of
approaches to ensure a healthy population.
Task force members are now collaborating
on a conservation plan that they hope will
reverse the drastic decline. And each country has an important role. Roger Drouin
COMMENT AT
ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014
Searching for a
fresh perspective
on rationality and
ultimate consequence of our
physical world, life
and endeavors?
Threats
1. Loss of one billion milkweed stems in the
summer breeding range because of converted grasslands and herbicides. Monarch larvae eat milkweed exclusively.
2. Extreme weather, including colder
winters in central Mexico and droughts
in Texas.
3. Invasive flora on which monarchs lay
eggs. The hatched larvae are unable
to survive there.
4. Increased use of synthetic insecticides.
5. Increasing scarcity of nectar plants
along migration routes.
NEW VERSION
Solutions
MEXICO
The Mexican government has already
combated large-scale illegal deforest
ation in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere
Reserve, a 140,000-acre forested area in
central Mexico, where eastern monarchs
arrive starting in November and remain
until March. But officials are still working
on strengthening sustainable forest
practices within groups living on ejidos,
or small protected, communal lands.
Suggested alternatives include eco
tourism and mushroom cultivation.
U.S.
Creating more milkweed habitat is
paramount, according to fws director
Ashe. The most direct option is to build
living roadways of milkweed beside
highways such as Interstate 25 and
Interstate 35, which run through the
central U.S. Another task force objective
is to support the Conservation Reserve
Program, which protects private farm
lands as native environmentally sensitive
lands. Those farmlands could sustain
milkweed as well as native nectar plants.
CANADA
Fewer monarch offspring are returning
in the spring to Canada, where some
lay their eggs. The Canadian government
is exploring setting aside funds for
breeding habitat creation on farmlands,
roadsides and utility corridors. Canada
currently protects parts of the monarchs
staging habitat, where the butterflies
congregate as they prepare to migrate
south, but larger areas are needed.
ADVANCES
FORENS ICS
Amoebas on
Deathwatch
Testate amoebas
come in many shapes.
COMMENT AT
ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014
7,000
6,000
I n a corpse-free control
plot, testate amoeba
numbers fluctuated
considerably because
of the change of
seasons and weather.
5,000
4,000
3,000
SOURCE: CAN SOIL TESTATE AMOEBAE BE USED FOR ESTIMATING THE TIME SINCE DEATH? A FIELD EXPERIMENT
IN A DECIDUOUS FOREST, BY ILDIK SZELECZ ET AL., IN FORENSIC SCIENCE INTERNATIONAL, VOL. 236; MARCH 2014
8,000
2,000
1,000
0
0
15
22
33
64
132
TECHNOLOGY
Virtually Revolutionary
Albert Skip Rizzo of the University of
imagery in real time as the wearers head
Southern California began studying virtumoves. The kicker is the price: $350.
al reality (VR) as psychological treatment
(Laboratory systems start at $20,000.)
in 1993. Since then, dozens of studies, his
Rizzo has been among the first in line.
included, have shown the immersion tech- His work focuses on combat PTSD. In a
nique to be effective for everything from
2010 study, he placed patients into conpost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trolled traumatic scenarios, including a
anxiety to phobias and addiction. But a
simulated battlefield, so they could conlack of practical hardware has kept VR out front and process emotions triggered in
of reach for clinicians. The requirements
those situations. Of his 20 subjects, 16
for a VR headset seem simple
showed a reduction in symptoms,
a high-resolution, fast-reactsuch as moodiness and
ing screen,
depression, after 10
a field
sessions in Rizzos
of vision
homegrown VR
that is wide
setup; they mainenough to
tained those levconvince
els through a
patients they are in
three-month
another world and a
follow-up. In
reasonable price tag
August, Oculus
yet such a product has
began delivering
proved elusive. Says Rizzo,
close-to-final Rifts
Its been 20 frustratto researchers,
ing years.
which will allow Rizzo
In 2013 VR stepped into the consumer
to move his testing onto the device.
spotlight in the form of a prototype headOthers are using the Rift in therapy
mounted display called
for anxiety and phobias.
the Oculus Rift. InvenIn an unpublished clausOther
tor Palmer Luckeys goal
trophobia test, Fernando
was to create a platform
researchers
M. Tarnogol, psycholofor immersive video
gist and founder of
applying
games, but developers
VR company PsyTech,
virtual reality
from many fieldsmedwalked subjects into
to therapy:
icine, aviation, toura virtual closet. They
Max Ortiz Catalan
ismare running wild
reported near-complete
Chalmers University of
with possibilities. The
immersion, a response
Technology (phantom limbs)
Rifts reach is so broad
he corroborated with
Hillel Finestone
that Oculus, now owned
physiological data. He
Elisabeth Bruyere Hospital
(stroke rehabilitation)
by Facebook, hosted a
aims to release the platconference for developform close to the Rift
Page Anderson
ers in September.
debut. People who own
Georgia State University
(social anxiety)
The Rift, slated for
a Rift, however, will not
public release in 2015,
be self-administering
Patrick Bordnick
University of Houston
is built largely from offtherapy. Rather these
(heroin addiction)
the-shelf parts, such
systems promise cliniGiuseppe Riva
as the screens used in
cians an in-office tool
Italian Institute for Auxology
smartphones. A multione thats been stuck in
(eating disorders)
axis motion sensor lets
labs for decades.
Corinne Iozzio
the headset refresh
COMMENT AT
ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014
COURTESY OF OCULUS
ADVANCES
W H AT I S I T ?
B I OLOGY
See-Through
Science
CODE SCI-AM
ADVANCES
O N CO LO GY
IN REASON WE TRUST
real
Theres
poetry in the
real world.
Science is
the poetry
of reality.
Richard Dawkins
Evolutionary Biologist, Author
The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion
Honorary FFRF Director
1-800-335-4021
n
FFRF is a 501(c)(3) educational charity
8%
To understand
or more of the human
how endogenous
genome is made up
viruses factor
of endogenous
into cancer risk,
retroviruses
Katzourakis and his
team of researchers
studied the relation
between body size and the number of
endogenous retroviruses that had inte
grated into the genomes of 38mammal
species over the past 10million years.
The larger the animal, they found, the
fewer endogenous retroviruses it acquired.
For example, mice picked up 3,331, whereas
humans gained 348and dolphins, 55.
It seems that larger, longer-lived animals
have evolved a protective mechanism to
limit the number of these viruses. If an
animal evolves a large body size, theyve
got to make themselves more cancerproof, says Peto, who was not involved
in the study. Katzourakis and his team
have yet to identify the mechanism, but
Katzourakis predicts that animals such
as whales and elephants may have a
greater number of antiviral genes that
limit viral replication or ones that are
more effective. Theyve made a striking
observation, Peto remarks.
No single mechanism is likely to explain
Petos Paradox. Instead large animals prob
ably evolved a variety of ways to fend off
cancer. This is good news, says oncologist
Carlo Maley of the University of California,
San Francisco: It would mean there are
potentially many different solutions to
developing cancer prevention.
Annie Sneed
COMMENT AT
ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014
COURTESY OF GARY A. GLATZMAIER University of California, Santa Cruz, AND PAUL H. ROBERTS University of California, Los Angeles
I NSTA N T EGGH E AD
Earths
Impending
Magnetic Flip
The north pole is on a course
to Siberia and points south
logic history. The intensity of Earths magnetic field, though waning, now equals its
average strength over millions of years.
The field would need to weaken at its current rate for around 2,000years before the
reversal process actually begins.
It is hard to know how a geomagnetic
reversal would impact our modern-day civilization, but it is unlikely to spell disaster.
Although the field provides essential protection from the suns powerful radiation,
fossil records reveal no mass extinctions or
increased radiation damage during past
reversals. A flip could possibly interfere
with power grids and communications systemsexternal magnetic field disturbances
have burned out transformers and caused
blackouts in the past. But Glatzmaier is not
worried. A thousand years from now we
probably wont have power lines, he says.
Well have advanced so much that well
almost certainly have the technology to
cope with a magnetic-field reversal.
Annie Sneed
DFGF_ScientificAm_2.125x4.625_nonbleed.pdf
Adopt Me.
gorillafund.org/adopt-a-gorilla
1 (800) 851 0203
ADVANCES
Q&A
Life Guard
NASAs Office of Planetary Protection has just one officer,
Catharine Conley. Her job is to ensure that nasa and other U.S.
organizations that journey into space adhere to the regulations
put in place by the international Outer Space Treaty of 1967,
which aims to preserve scientists ability to study other worlds
in their natural states, avoid biological contamination of envi
ronments we explore and protect Earths biosphere in case alien
life exists. You could say the future of our solar system rests in
her hands.
Edited by Erin Biba
nasa is planning to
redirect an asteroid to
an orbit around the moon
in the 2020s. Are you
worried about what
astronauts may
encounter there?
Small asteroids have been
irradiated, baked by the sun
and floating around in
space for such a long time
that any organisms would
have died. We will still
evaluate any asteroid that is
proposed because we want
to keep the system clean,
especially if we eventually
have regular commercial
movement between Earth
and the moon.
There are a growing
number of commercial
space activities. Is nasa
able to regulate their level
of cleanliness?
Weve been spending
considerable taxpayer
money over the years to
protect other planets from
contamination. Now were
in the process of figuring
out how the U.S. can have
an appropriate level of
visibility into what our
nongovernmental groups
are doing. In a situation
in which nasa isnt provid
ing support, whos responsi
ble for oversight is cur
rently open.
Will we need a new law
to regulate these groups?
We have to consider that.
The Federal Aviation Ad
ministration already has
authority over launches
and landings, so we can
regulate activities within
the atmosphere, and
nasa has a framework
for providing input into
the faa process. But were
not a regulatory agency.
There are plans for non
governmental manned
missions to Mars in the
next few decades. That
must create a new set
of problems in terms of
protecting the Red Planet.
Absolutely. Will the humans
be alive by the time they get
COMMENT AT
ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014
E ASY ACCESS
time, the agency now requires all testosterone products to contain a warning label about the potential for blood clots.
As long as testosterone therapy was available only by injection, its use was largely limited to individuals with testicular
injuries or other severe ailments. The treatment markedly im
proves mood and libido in men with these conditions, and the
fda approved the drug for those situations. But fear of needles
no doubt kept some men from seeking treatment.
Individuals were more willing to consider their options once
pharmaceutical companies figured out how to deliver the drug
more easily. A transdermal patch that delivered the medicine
through the skin of the scrotum became available in 1993. (Subsequent patches could be applied to the arms, back and thighs.)
But the number of men taking supplemental testosterone really
began to soar in 2000, with the introduction of an even easier-touse gel that could be rubbed on the shoulders, thighs or armpits.
Greater ease of use also led to an expansion in the number of
conditions for which doctors considered testosterone therapy to
be a plausible treatment in spite of any supportive data. Perhaps
an extra dose of testosterone could be helpful for otherwise
healthy men whose hormone levels had faded with age or be
cause they were obese or suffered from diabetes? (It is unclear
precisely why testosterone levels decline for certain individuals
in these situations.) In addition, some men who did not have testicular injuries desired the sex hormone because they thought it
would treat erectile dysfunction or boost their mood.
B LIND GUIDES
The troubling spread of testosterone therapy in men has parallels to the early use of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women. Starting in the 1990s, a series of studies
suggested that many women who took a combination of estrogen and progestin as they grew older would suffer less from
heart disease. But by 2004, after researchers had completed two
major parts of the Womens Health Initiativewhich together
formed a massive study of 27,347women that compared treatment with a placebo in a scientifically rigorous waydoctors
realized hormone therapy does more harm than good in most
women over the long term.
The study initially prompted a dramatic drop in the number
of women taking prescription hormones. Since then, however, a
more nuanced view has come into focus: the proved benefit of
relieving menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes is worth the
risk for some women, provided they limit treatment to the first
several years after menopause. I think we are less naive than
before the Womens Health Initiative, says Bradley Anawalt, a
University of Washington professor of medicine and chair of the
Endocrine Societys Hormone Health Network. We are recognizing there is never a simple answer, and we have to discover
who benefits and who gets harmed.
For testosterone, some of those answers may soon be forthcoming. Results from a series of scientific studies detailing
exactly who might gain from testosterone therapy, and under
what circumstances, are expected to be published starting later
this year. The series started in 2009, when the U.S. government
funded a team of researchers to recruit and study participants
for the Testosterone Triala group of seven long-term studies of
how testosterone therapy affects sexual activity, energy level,
memory, heart and bone health, and the ability to walk a certain
distance. The trial followed 788 men, aged 65 and older, whose
testosterone levels in the blood were much lower than average.
Half the men (the experimental group) applied a gel with testosterone to their shoulders, abdomen or upper arms each day for a
year, and the other half (the control group) used a gel containing
a placebo. Researchers also monitored prostate cancer risk,
based on prostate-specific antigen levels and a rectal exam, and
stroke risk, based on red blood cell levels during the treatment
year and for at least a year afterward.
Studies of the risks of testosterone use would likely follow only
if the data on benefits were promising. Health researchers often
look first at benefits of a treatment because theses studies call for
fewer test subjects than risk studies do. Even though such randomized placebo-controlled trials can take years to conduct, they
offer the best hope for separating truth from wishful thinking.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE
Comment on this article at ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014
Million-Dollar Stunt
How to get rich with an Internet joke: be a goof
Kickstarter wasnt intended to be a platform for elaborate, participatory jokes. Its a Web site where entrepreneurs seek funding help from the public. You watch a video or read a pitch
about a project, and then, if compelled, you donate a few bucks
not because youre investing (youre not) but just to show your
support, maybe to feel like a part of someones quest.
In July, Ohio resident Zack Brown started what may have
been the silliest Kickstarter project ever. He set a fundraising
goal of $10to make a potato salad.
He didnt even bother with a video. His entire pitch was:
Basically Im just making potato salad. I havent decided what
kind yet.
The Internet loves a good joke. Within a couple of days, this
one went viral. Thousands of Web surfers thought of the same
punch line: contribute to the absurd campaign. The media
picked up on the gag, too; next thing anyone knew, Browns potato salad quest had racked up more than $70,000 in pledges.
Brown isnt a snake oil salesman or a huckster; he was absolutely transparent about what youd get for your contribution:
pretty much nothing. (For $1, hed say your name aloud while
making the salad. For $3, hed mail you a bite.) The Internet, in
other words, makes possible a scheme that has never existed
before: get rich quick through sincere goofiness. We, the public,
get to be part of the high jinks; they, the gagsters, get the profits.
THE
INCLUSION
EQUATION
Science and technology
are societys main
engines of prosperity.
Who gets to
drive them?
By Fred Guterl
COLLABORATION HAS BEEN A RECURRING THEME in science and technology
in recent years. The life of the mind is increasingly transnational in nature. It roams centers
of excellence from every continent, linked by communications of great speed and breadth.
Twice we have looked at collaboration in our State of the Worlds Science reports, last year
with a focus on innovation, the year before on basic research. Here we address it again, from
the standpoint of the individual.
The word diversity is shorthand for a vast effort to remake society to include everyonenot
just those in privileged positionsin politics, culture and the pursuit of happiness. This ambition goes well beyond the scope of this report; we have stayed within the realm of science and its
activities. Because we prefer to look at evidence, we take the opportunity to focus on the empirical grounding of diversity, which often gets lost in the larger conversation.
WHERE ARE
THE DATA?
Global figures on diversity
in the science and
engineering workforce are
hard to come by, but what
we know is not flattering
THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE engaged in
scientific re
search has been rising strongly.
China re
ports a tripling of researchers be
tween 1995 and 2008, with substantial growth
currently; South Korea doubled the number of
researchers between 1995 and 2006 and continues its upward swing. Even the U.S. and
Europe have posted gains. The research workforce grew by 36 percent in the U.S. between
1995 and 2007 and by 65 percent in Europe
between 1995 and 2010. Exceptions are Japan,
which is flat, and Russia, which is down. When
it comes to diversity, however, all we have are
snapshots. Here are the best ones.
F.G.
M O R E TO E X P L O R E
SOURCES: WOMEN, MINORITIES, AND PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING: 2013,
BY NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING STATISTICS. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, 2013
(U.S. demographics, workforce and disability status); CENSUS 2011: CENSUS IN BRIEF. STATISTICS SOUTH AFRICA, 2012
(South Africa demographics); SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL SURVEY OF RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT:
STATISTICAL REPORT 2011/12. CENTER FOR SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION INDICATORS AND HUMAN
SCIENCES RESEARCH COUNCIL, MARCH 2014 (South Africa workforce); WOMEN IN SCIENCE, UNESCO INSTITUTE
FOR STATISTICS (gender); LEADING THE WAY: INCREASING THE DIVERSITY OF THE SCIENCE WORKFORCE:
PROJECT TWO: EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC BACKGROUND ON CAREERS IN SCIENCE,
BY TBR. THE ROYAL SOCIETY, 2013 (socioeconomics)
U.S. (2010)
Resident Population (ages 1864)
5% Asian female
4% Hispanic male
3% Black male
2% Black female
2% Hispanic female
1% Other female
1% Other male
29%
71%
32%
38%
62%
40%
44%
46%
Sub-Saharan Africa
Arab States
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
With disability
20%
20%
Race and Ethnicity: Most census questionnaires sort their populations by national or ethnic
group. Yet definitions vary widely from one country to the next. (South Africa, for instance, has
used the mixed-race category coloured. ) When information is available, it is generally part
of broader demographic surveys, not ones focused on science and engineering education or
employment. A few countries track minority participation in science-related fields.
Male
80% East Asia, Pacic
Without disability
10%
Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population (ages 1864, 2010)
90%
8%
Nonscience and Engineering Occupations (2010)
92%
6%
Science and Engineering Occupations (2010)
94%
style only
HOW
DIVERSITY
WORKS
IN BRIEF
Decades of research by organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and demographers
show that socially diverse groups (that is, those with a
diversity of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation) are more innovative than homogeneous groups.
This is not only because people with different backgrounds bring new information. Simply interacting with
individuals who are different forces group members to
prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and
to expect that reaching consensus will take effort.
the top firms in Standard & Poors Composite 1500 list, a group
designed to reflect the overall U.S. equity market. First, they
examined the size and gender composition of firms top manage
ment teams from 1992 through 2006. Then they looked at the
financial performance of the firms. In their words, they found
that, on average, female representation in top management
leads to an increase of $42million in firm value. They also
measured the firms innovation intensity through the ratio of
research and development expenses to assets. They found that
companies that prioritized innovation saw greater financial
gains when women were part of the top leadership ranks.
Racial diversity can deliver the same kinds of benefits. In a
study conducted in 2003, Orlando Richard, a professor of man
agement at the University of Texas at Dallas, and his colleagues
surveyed executives at 177national banks in the U.S., then put
together a database comparing financial performance, racial
diversity and the emphasis the bank presidents put on innova
tion. For innovation-focused banks, increases in racial diversity
were clearly related to enhanced financial performance.
Evidence for the benefits of diversity can be found well be
yond the U.S. In August 2012 a team of researchers at the Credit
Suisse Research Institute issued a report in which they exam
ined 2,360companies globally from 2005 to 2011, looking for a
relationship between gender diversity on corporate manage
ment boards and financial performance. Sure enough, the re
searchers found that companies with one or more women on
the board delivered higher average returns on equity, lower
gearing (that is, net debt to equity) and better average growth.
HOW DIVERSITY
PROVOKES THOUGHT
SCIENCE EXPOSED
By Steven Bishop
projects need not be restricted to the affluent, (zooniverse.org) give millions of people access
literate and educated public. In his work with
to all manner of collaborations. At CERN near
the ethnic Baka groups in Cameroon, Jerome
Geneva and other large-scale scientific pro
Lewis of University College London uses sim
jects, people with a range of skills have come
ple images to document valuable trees.
together to work toward specified goals;
Methods of citizen science are being opened
through citizen science, this idea can be broad
up to projects in social science to study dis
ened, be it by classifying newly discovered gal
crimination and human-rights abuses and
axies or identifying plants. This adds a novel
to support local peoples in better represent
dimension to citizen science, letting the crowd
ing themselves to outsiders.
propose new solutions to unsolved problems.
Besides data gathering, many citizen
In Iceland, after the 2008 financial crash,
science projects change our perceptions.
city councilors had hard choices to make
The Annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count
about how to spend their limited budgets.
(birds.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count)
Better Reykjavik was set up to enable citi
gives information about population trends. It
zens to debate innovative ideas to improve
engages with society and in doing so pro
their communities. They crowdsourced
vides education that can help lead to cultural
potential projects, prioritized them and
change. The project was started to replace the decided what budgets to allocate. Such
tradition of shooting birds on Christmas day.
successes have opened our eyes to new
Ideas can also be readily scaled up. A pro
ways of funding science, such as the Experi
ject started in a classroom can soon become
ment crowdfunding platform (experiment.
a global initiative. Projects such as Leafsnap
com). How long will it be before such
(leafsnap.com), which identifies
approaches become de rigueur in
plants, feed information back to indi
scientific funding?
viduals, who become part of a twoWhen coupled with big data, citi
way process. This collective knowl
zen science projects will expand yet
edge may spark other ideas, leading
further. Open platforms will give indi
to new ways of doing science, as
Steven Bishop
viduals access to data, models and
seen, for instance, in solutions to the
is a professor
analyses, so they can pose their own
protein-folding puzzles put forward
of mathematics
questions and find solutions. This will
by the Foldit project (fold.it/portal).
at University
change the way we teach science in
Platforms such as Zooniverse
College London. schools and perform research.
TAKING IT PERSONALLY
By D. N. Lee
IN PURSUIT
OF THE
BEST IDEAS
How I learned the value
of diversity
By Stephanie C. Hill
70%
From 1
to 19,238
Male
Female
60%
50%
Earned S&E
bachelors degree
S&E graduate
enrollment
80
40%
Earned S&E
masters degree
Earned S&E Ph.D.
30%
70
60
50
40
30
20
Slovenia 38
Morocco 129
U.K. 18
Canada 20
Madagascar 56
4
Sweden
France (2009) 45
1
Iceland
Belgium 11
Austria 19
Greece 81
Germany 14
9
Switzerland
8
Denmark
Czech Republic 83
3
Norway
Lebanon 123
Georgia (2007) 86
Uganda (2004) 46
Colombia 35
Iraq (2004) NA
Iran 130
Armenia 94
Taiwan NA
Ph.D.-Granting
Country
GENDER
GAP
IN THE U.S., women are going to college and majoring in science and engineering fields in increasing numbers, yet here
and around the world they remain underrepresented in the
workforce. Comparative figures are hard to come by, but a disparity shows up in the number of Ph.D.s awarded to women
and men. The chart here, assembled from data collected by the
National Science Foundation, traces the gender gap at the doctoral level for 56 nations. The situation in individual countries
varies widely, but as the numbers make clear, there are interesting exceptions to the global trend.
M O R E TO E X P L O R E
Uruguay 77
Portugal 51
Lithuania 28
Argentina (2009) 34
Kyrgyzstan 63
Latvia 12
Ukraine (2011) 64
Macedonia 57
7
New Zealand
Croatia 49
Mongolia 33
Bulgaria 43
Italy (2007) 71
Thailand 65
Israel 53
Spain 30
Estonia 59
Turkey 120
Australia 24
Of the countries
included in this chart,
Lebanon, Iceland and
Uruguay awarded
the fewest total S&E
degrees: 21, 26 and
36, respectively.
Algeria 124
2
Finland
Romania 70
Chile 91
Mexico 68
Slovak Republic 74
U.S. 23
Hungary 87
Ireland
SOURCES: SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING INDICATORS 2014, BY NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, 2014 (education data); THE GLOBAL GENDER GAP REPORT 2013. WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM. 2013 (WEF index)
Science and Engineering Indicators 2014. National Science Board. National Science
Foundation, 2014. www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/index.cfm/home
The Global Gender Gap Report 2013. World Economic Forum, 2013. www.weforum.
org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2013
Nature Index of scientific research (to launch in Fall 2014): www.natureindex.com
INVITING
EVERYONE
IN
EVERY TIME I SPEAK with an audience about diversity, I get the same question: How
do we do it? All of my audiencesschools, academic departments, businesses, health care organizations and law firmsseem mystified. They want the secret recipe or a foolproof checklist. They hope I will say, Follow these simple steps, and you will have diversity and inclusion. So let me begin with this disclaimer: a simple, foolproof method for ensuring that a
group is well represented across racial, ethnic, socioeconomic or gender lines does not exist.
IN BRIEF
BECOMING VISIBLE
By Brian Welle and Megan Smith
forced what we already knew. Encouragement from a parent or teacher is essential for
them to appreciate their own abilities. They
need to understand the work itself and see
its impact and importance. They need exposure to the field by having a chance to give
it a shot. And, most important, they need to
understand that opportunities await them in
the technical industry.
The rapidly growing field of computer science careers is in overwhelming need of a
reputational and role-model overhaul. To that
end, in June, Google launched Made with
Code, a $50-million program over three years
that supports marketing campaigns and other
initiatives (including the Girls Scouts, Girls
Inc., and Girls Who Code) to bring computer
science education and access to girls. In 2012
we launched a professional developer organization, Women Techmakers, in part to in
crease the visibility of technical women and
minorities who are already working in teams
and, in some cases, leading them. Some are
among the most important and influential
founders of our industry, which reinforces the
notion that invisibility is a serious problem.
The cycle that keeps women and people
from underrepresented groups out of tech
fields can start much earlier than edu
cational programs can reach. It begins with
the biases that children learn at a very
young age and are reinforcedoften
unknowingly by their friends, parents, peers
and the media. These biases can find their
way into the behavior and decision making
white workers publicly espoused support for diversityregardless of how many persons of color actually worked in the department. Moreover, in the color-blind departments, individuals from underrepresented groups perceived more bias. In the
acknowledging departments, they perceived less.
Several studies indicate that unconscious bias, subject to
suggestion, may be at play here. For example, in 2004 Jennifer
A. Richeson, then at Dartmouth College, and her colleagues
measured the reaction times on certain psychological tests of
about 50 white college students after half of them had been given material that argued for color-blind policies to achieve interracial harmony and the other half received material favoring
the deliberate promotion of racial diversity. Richeson then
measured how quickly participants linked certain pairs of
words with ethnically suggestive names (for example, Jamal
and good or Josh and good versus Jamal and bad or
Josh and bad). Participants who were perfectly unbiased
should have been able to pick the equivalent word pairs equally
quickly, regardless of racial overtones. Faster reactions times
whenever the white-pleasant and black-unpleasant associa-
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE Discover more resources about diversity and innovation at ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014/diversity
EMBRACING
DIFFERENCE IN A
WAY THAT DOES
NOT STEREOTYPE
OR PIGEONHOLE
PEOPLE APPEARS
TO HOLD PROMISE
FOR ACHIEVING
DIVERSITY.
diversity task forces also increase the effectiveness of other programs, such as employee network groups that help people from
underrepresented groups to feel less isolated and diversity councils that address specific issues, such as the retention and development of employees from underrepresented groups. In addition,
multiple studies, including Dobbin and Kalevs, show that active,
targeted recruitment programs also boost workforce diversity.
Lest anyone think, however, that only systemic initiatives
make a differencea common belief related to the final blind
spot I would like to addressDobbin, Kalev and others have
shown that mentoring programs are the most effective in increasing the numbers of white and black women and Latino
and Asian women and men in management. Gains in proportions of managers for some of these groups reached almost 40
percent after such programs were launched.
Similarly, the importance of good mentoring cannot be understated in science education, where opportunities to get involved in a laboratory and learn about postcollege possibilities
often come through mentors, who may also help bolster the belonging processes described here. In his book Whistling Vivaldi,
social psychologist and University of California, Berkeley, provost Claude Steele, who is black, recounts how, as a Ph.D. stu-
M O R E TO E X P L O R E : D I V E R S I T Y
POLAR EYES: The BICEP2 telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station observed the same small patch of sky
from January 2010 through December 2012, searching for signatures of primordial gravitational waves in ancient light.
A
Beacon
fromthe
COS M O LO GY
Bg
Bang
If the recent discovery
of gravitational waves
emanating from the early
universe holds up under
scrutiny, it will illuminate
a connection between gravity
and quantum mechanics
and perhaps, in the process,
verify the existence
of other universes
By Lawrence M. Krauss
ments that will definitively confirm or refute the claim, most likely in the next year. Although the jury is out on whether we have
indeed seen a beacon from the infant universe, we will not have
to wait long to know. The present moment in our exploration of
the cosmos is one of heightened anticipation.
T HE ROAD TO INFLATION
How did we get to this dramatic moment? It started with two apparent paradoxes of the early universe, which this beacon (if it is
one) may help resolve.
The first paradox has to do with the large-scale geometry of
IN BRIEF
It could also provide indirect evidence for the existence of the multiversean infinite bubbling of physically separate universes.
PRECEDING PAGES: COURTESY OF STEFFEN RICHTER Harvard University; THIS PAGE: COURTESY OF NASA, ESA,
G. ILLINGWORTH, D. MAGEE AND P. OESCH University of California, Santa Cruz, R. BOUWENS Leiden University AND HUDF09 TEAM
In March a collaboration
UNIFORM UNIVERSE: On a grand scale, the universe appears largely the same in every direction we look. We find
a similar density of galaxies, on average, in any given patch of sky, such as this image of a patch called the eXtreme Deep Field.
Within an area smaller than the full moon, many hours of Hubble Space Telescope observations have revealed thousands
of galaxies. The universes sameness could be explained if space inflated rapidly just after the big bang.
the universe. In the 13.8 billion years since the universe formed in
the big bang, it has been expanding. Even after such a long period
of expansion, it has remained almost perfectly flat. A flat, threedimensional universe is the universe most of us might have imagined we live inin it, light travels, on average, in straight lines.
The trouble is, general relativity implies that a flat universe
is far from guaranteedin fact, it is a special, perhaps unlikely,
outcome. When matter or radiation is the dominant form of energy in the universe, as certainly has been the case for most of
its history, then a slightly nonflat universe will quickly deviate
from the characteristics of a flat universe as it expands. If it
were ever off by just a little bit, the universe today would look
openwhere space is curved like a saddleor closedwhere
space is curved like the surface of a sphere. For the universe to
still appear flat today, its early characteristics would have had to
have been absurdly fine-tuned.
The second paradox has to do with the fact that the universe
appears to be the same in all directionsit is isotropic. This is
odd. Light from one side of the vast observable universe has only
recently been able to reach the other side. This distance means
that far-off regions of the universe could not have previously
communicated with one another (physicists say they have not
been in causal contact). How, then, could they have evolved to
be so similar?
FINDINGS
1 Inflation
Before inflation, the universe would have
been incredibly dense and small. But in
the tiniest fraction of a second, inflation
would have expanded space by more
than 25 orders of magnitude.
nd
seco
0.01
Inatio
nd
-6 eco
10 s
ond
32 sec
10-
ng
a
Big b
2 Gravitational Waves
During inflation, tiny quantum
fluctuations in the gravitational field
pervading the universe would have been
stretched. The wavelength of some
fluctuations would get so big they would
require longer than the age of the (then very
young) universe to oscillate, so they would
freeze until the universe was old enough
for them to again oscillate. When inflation
ended, these oscillations had grown into
long-wavelength gravitational waves that
alternately stretched and compressed space
around them (ellipses below).
Compression of space (red)
tion
Ina
ntum
Qua
ns
ends
es
l wav
na
itatio
Grav
uatio
uct
BICEP2: E s
4 Pinwheels
Mo d
ern
erse
univ
55
50
60
Cosmic
55
microwave
background
65
60
The gravitational wave
with the largest amplitude
and longest wavelengths
(bottom) compresses and
expands space the most.
65
30
20
10
3 Polarization
Compression
of space (red)
Incoming
radiation
0
Right ascension [deg.]
10
Expansion of
space (blue)
Polarized
outgoing
radiation
(CMB light)
Declination [deg.]
utes
3 min
ears
00 y
380,0
50
SOURCES OF DOUBT
Contaminating Effects
The discovery of polarization in the cosmic microwave background
(mottled blue surface) is not yet definitive evidence of gravitational
waves, because other processes may account for the finding.
The paths of CMB photons (curved lines), for example, have bent
around massive galaxy clusters whose gravity warps the space
space. Those particles that interact with this fieldthe ones that
convey the weak force, for exampleexperience a resistance
that causes them to behave as massive particles. Those that do
not interact with the fieldfor example, the photon, carrier of
the electromagnetic forceremain massless. As a result, the
weak force and the electromagnetic force began to behave in
different ways, breaking the symmetry that otherwise unified
them. This fantastical picture was validated at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva in 2012, with the discovery of the Higgs boson.
Perhaps, Guth reasoned, a similar symmetry-breaking event
occurred even earlier in the universes past. Before this event,
three of the universes four fundamental forcesthe electromagnetic and weak forces, as well as the strong force (responsible for holding protons and neutrons together), but excluding
gravitymight have been connected. Indeed, a great deal of in
direct evidence suggests that such a phenomenon happened
back when the universe was approximately 1036 second old. As
the universe cooled, it might have undergone a phase transition
that also changed the nature of space involving a background
field that caused the electroweak force to begin to behave differently from the strong forcespontaneously breaking their symmetries, or connectedness.
As in the case of the Higgs field, this symmetry-breaking field
would lead to exotic and very massive particles, but the masses
involved would be much higher than the mass of the Higgs particle. In fact, one would need to build an accelerator 10 trillion
times more powerful than the LHC to directly explore the theories behind this phenomenon. We call them grand unified theories, or GUTs, because they unify the three nongravitational
forces of the universe into a single force.
Guth realized that such spontaneous symmetry breaking in
the early universe could solve all the problems of the standard
big bang if, for a short period at least, the field responsible for
this symmetry breaking got stuck in a metastable state.
Water goes into a metastable state when, say, the ambient
temperature drops quickly below freezing, but water on the
street does not freeze immediately; when it eventually does
freezewhen the phase transition is completedthe water releases energy, called latent heat.
During the exponential expansion of inflation, any initial quantum fluctuation with a small wavelength will be stretched along
with the expansion. If the wavelength becomes large enough, the
time the fluctuation takes to oscillate will grow larger than the
age of the (extremely young) universe. The quantum fluctuation
will essentially become frozen until the universe becomes old
enough for it to start oscillating again. During inflation, the frozen oscillation will grow, a process that amplifies these initial
quantum oscillations into classical gravitational waves.
Around the time when Guth was proposing inflation, two sets
of Russian physicists, Aleksei A. Starobinsky and Valery A. Rubakov and his colleagues, independently pointed out that inflation
always produces such a background of gravitational waves and
that the intensity of the background simply depends on the energy stored in the field that is driving inflation. In other words, if we
can find the gravitational waves from inflation, we get not only a
smoking-gun confirmation that inflation once took place but also
a direct view into the quantum processes that drove inflation.
S MOKE FROM THE GUN
This insight, which came in 1997, energized the CMB community because it meant that even if the direct temperature
variations that might be induced by primordial gravitational
waves were too small to be directly detected amid other temperature distortions in the CMB, a measurement of the polarization
of the CMB could identify a much smaller gravitational-wave
signal. Over the intervening decade or so, a host of experiments,
both terrestrial and space-based, have been designed to seek out
this possible holy grail of inflation.
Because experimentalists have already measured temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, re
searchers present their results in terms of a ratio: the ratio of a
possible gravitational-wave polarization signal to the magnitude of the measured temperature fluctuation signal. This ratio
is denoted by r in the literature.
T HE NEW RESULTS
Until this year, only upper limits on the polarization of the CMB
have been reportedthat is, we knew they could not be larger
than these limits, or we would have seen them. The European
Space Agencys Planck satellite reported that, according to its
measurements, r could be anywhere from zero, implying no gravitational waves, all the way to an upper bound of about 0.13.
Thus, the physics world was stunned in March, when the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization 2 (BICEP2)
experiment at the South Pole announced that it had found an r of
about 0.2larger than the limit indicated by Plancksuggesting
that gravitational waves exist. It also declared, at the time, that
the chance that a spurious background produced the observed
signal was less than one in a million. Everything about the signal
reflects the character of a signal expected from inflation.
Alas, as of this writing, the situation remains unsettled. Polarization observations are very difficult, and although statistically,
the signal is clear, other possible astrophysical processes could
produce effects that might mimic a gravitational-wave signal
from inflation.
While the BICEP2 team examined a number of possible contaminants, the hardest to discount is radiation emitted by polarized dust in our galaxy. The BICEP2 collaboration studied what
it envisaged were likely dust concentrations in our galaxy and
concluded that these sources did not strongly contaminate its
signal. But in the intervening months, the Planck satellite has
reported new measurements that indicate the Milky Way may
contain more dust than assumed by the BICEP2 team. Several
groups have tried to reanalyze the BICEP2 signal in light of
these new data, as well as incorporating more sophisticated
models of dust backgrounds from other experiments, and have
concluded that it is possible that dust could reproduce all (or
most of ) the claimed BICEP2 polarization signal.
Although these developments have dampened the exuberance of many in the physics community regarding the BICEP2
result, the BICEP2 team stands by its estimatesbut it now admits that it cannot rule out a dust explanation. The scientists
point out, however, that the shape of the observed spectrum fits
the inflationary prediction remarkably wellsomewhat better
than dust predictions do.
More important, a host of new experiments are coming on
line that can shed light on dust emission and explore for a polarization signal on different scales and in different directions. In
the best tradition of science, empirical confirmation or refutation of BICEP2 should be possible within a year or so after this
article appears.
W HAT GRAVITATIONAL WAVES REVEAL
If BICEP2 is
correct and if
it is measuring
gravitational
waves from inflation,
gravity must be
described by a
quantum theory.
forces in nature would come together in a grand unified theory
but only if a new symmetry of nature, called supersymmetry, ex
ists. The existence of supersymmetry, in turn, could imply the ex
istence of a plethora of new particles with masses in the range that
can be probed by the LHC when it turns on again in 2015. Thus,
if BICEP2 is correct, 2015 may be another banner year for particle physics, unraveling new phenomena that might explain the
nature of fundamental forces.
There is another, less speculative implication of the discovery of gravitational waves from inflation. As I described earlier,
such waves should be generated when primordial quantum
fluctuations in the gravitational field are amplified during in
flation. But if this is the case, then it suggests that gravity must
be described by a quantum theory.
This issue is particularly important because we have, as of yet,
no well-defined quantum theory of gravitythat is, a theory that
describes gravity using the rules governing the behavior of matter and energy at the tiniest scales. String theory is perhaps the
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE See a video about primordial gravitational waves at ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014/krauss
Supersymmetry and the Crisis in Physics. Joseph Lykken and Maria Spiropulu;
May 2014.
s c i e n t i f i c a m e r i c a n . c o m /m a g a z i n e /s a
A G R I C U LT U R E
Saving
Coffee
IN BRIEF
PAGE 68: LEVI BROWN Trunk Archive; PRECEDING PAGE: TOM SCHIERLITZ Trunk Archive
FINDINGS
Coffee in Crisis
Coffee crops around the world are incredibly alike genetically.
This homogeneity leaves cultivated coffee particularly susceptible
to threats from diseases, pests, and shifts in temperature and rainfall. And as global climate changes, these threats are worsening:
extreme weather events are becoming more common, and fungi
and insects are spreading into areas where they have never been
seen before. Wild coffee populations, with their greater stores
of genetic diversity, are better equipped to handle these menaces.
Yet they face trouble of their own: deforestation. Representative
examples of recently affected regions are shown below.
Threats
Disease: Fungi such as Hemileia
vastatrix (coffee rust) and
Colletotrichum kahawae have
devastated crops in Central America
and Ethiopia, respectively.
India
Ethiopia
Brazil
Central America
Colombia
Indonesia
Madagascar
Coee Production
(1,000 60-kilogram bags, 201314)
needed science to the business of making java. Today he oversees World Coffee Research, a new nonprofit funded by the coffee industry30 companies big and small, including Peets,
Allegro and Counter Culture. He has been called the Indiana
Jones of coffee, but presiding over the meeting in Turrialba, in
jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt, with black owl-frame
glasses and thick locks, Schilling bore a closer resemblance to
Andy Warhol. He asked the group how much research was currently available on climate change and coffee rust. A coffee
breeder in the room held up his thumb and index finger about
half an inch apart, the international sign for peanuts.
Experts worry the impact could be huge. The coffee rust fungus thrives in warm weather, and as temperatures rise, the fungus could spread to higher altitudes. Changes in rainfalltoo
much rain or even too littlemight also give the fungus a boost.
Fungicide sprays can combat roya, but the chemicals are expensive and may not work against emerging strains of the disease.
55,000
of the Indian seeds. Scientists identified 30 of the highest-yielding coffee strains from 10 countries for the study.
Taking advantage of the genetic variation within cultivated
coffee may help in the short term. But it almost certainly will
not be enough to save the crop. Commercially grown strains
contain only a tiny portion of the total genetic diversity in C.
arabica and C. canephora. Their wild counterparts, however,
are incredibly varied. Recent advances in coffee genome se
quencing have revealed what Bertrand calls a vast catalogue of
genes in these untamed cousins of the farmed beans, many of
which reside in gene banks around the world. He hopes to ex
ploit that rich genetic soup to make coffee crops more resilient,
productive and delicious.
Evidence of that genetic diversity abounds at CATIE. Across
campus from the meeting and down a dirt road, a wooden sign
with painted yellow letters reads Caf Coleccion de Etiopia
Schilling is certain that those breeding efforts will yield far better varieties for coffee farmers to growand for roasters to sell
and consumers to drink. But he and his collaborators have another ambition, too: to one-up Mother Nature by producing a new,
synthetic version of C. arabica. In essence, they want to develop a
plant that has the flavor of C. arabica and the temperament and
yield of C. canephora. The plan is to redo the original cross that
created C. arabica (that of C. canephora and another species, Coffea eugenioides), only with a far more diverse group of parents
this time. To manage this feat, they need to look beyond what
exists in gene banks. They need to go back to the wild.
There are roughly 125 known species of coffee on the earth,
each of which contains much more genetic
variation than can possibly be represented in a
gene banks small sample. And other species
surely remain to be discoveredassuming re
searchers can find them before they vanish.
When Aaron Davis began hunting for wild
coffee plants in 1997, he did not expect to find
anything new. The then recent Ph.D. graduate
was having tea one day at the Royal Botanic
Gardens in Kew, England, when a renowned
coffee taxonomist happened to sit nearby. Davis
asked her how many species of coffee there
were, where coffee grew and what its natural
range was. The answer to all his questions, she
replied, was that nobody knows. In short order, she sent him off to find out. Davis spent the next 15 years
traipsing around Madagascara country known for coffee diversitywhere he found a vast range of species, some already catalogued but a lot completely unknown to anybody apart from
some local villagers.
In Madagascar, he found the plant with the worlds largest
coffee cherry, or fruitabout three times the standard sizeand
the worlds smallest, about half the diameter of a pushpin. He
found two species whose seeds are dispersed via water, rather
than animals, and bear winged fruits that look like folded ribbons. He discovered a species called Coffea ambongensis, whose
beans resemble brains. Daviss expeditions showed that wild
coffee grows across a wide swath of the tropics, from Africa to
Asia and even as far as Australia. In Ethiopia, C. arabicas main
territory today, some forests are packed with arabica plants, as
many as 8,000 per acre. Those plants, Davis believes, have huge
potential for breeding.
But these wild plants, like their cultivated counterparts, are
in trouble. Up to 70 percent of them are in danger of extinction.
And 10 percent could be gone within a decade. Land conversion
poses the biggest threat. By the late 1990s more than 80 percent
of Ethiopias forests had already been cleared. In 2007 in Madagascar, where people continue to clear forests at an alarming
rate, Daviss team came across a new species growing in a patch
of forest no bigger than a baseball diamond. Where wild coffee
plants are concerned, he says, in many cases, climate change is
not going to have a chance to have an impact. The plants will
simply disappear, along with their habitat.
Davis worries that researchers are placing too much emphasis on what is already in gene banks while potentially vital ge
netic material is languishing in the wildor being bulldozed.
Theres this feeling, Yeah, weve got everything, were fine,
he says. But thats your storehouse of genetic resources, those
wild populations.
Ethiopia itself poses another problem. The country where coffee originated curates a large collection of coffee plants that exist
nowhere else in the world. But the government keeps them under
lock and key and will not allow foreign researchers access. Theres
been a lot of bad blood between Ethiopia and the coffee industry,
Davis explains. Its no wonder theyre guarded about their genetic resources. A few years ago, for instance, Ethiopia got into a
heated dispute with Starbucks over whether the country had the
right to trademark the names of Ethiopian coffee cultivars.
Access to the Ethiopian germplasmthe organic material
stored in gene bankscould give Schillings coffee-breeding
projects a huge boost. Perhaps it contains crucial genes for
adapting to higher temperatures or for growing more beans on
less land. Schilling hopes the country will relent. In the meantime, scientists are working with what they have.
Digging in the archives at Kew, Davis discovered records
showing that local people in Uganda and elsewhere have long
made coffee from wild varieties growing nearby. Some of it
may taste awful, but all of it produces a recognizable coffeelike aroma if you roast the beans. And, Davis says, some that
were used 100 years ago are reputed to be excellent. Were
going back and reinvestigating some of those early cultivated
species that could have potential in their own right or in
breeding programs.
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World.
Revised edition. Mark Pendergrast. Basic Books, 2010.
The Impact of Climate Change on Indigenous Arabica Coffee (Coffea arabica):
Predicting Future Trends and Identifying Priorities. Aaron P. Davis et al. in
PLOS ONE, Vol. 7, No. 11; November 7, 2012.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
TWISTS
C E L L B I O LO GY
OF
FATE
By Stefano Piccolo
THE
HUMAN
CELLS
IN BRIEF
Physical forces affect the human body on a microscopic level, acting on each of its cells. Those forces
can have impacts that are as profound as the effects of
genes, and they are generated by a cells surroundings.
A protein switch connects these physical and biological works, and flipping it can determine a cells des
tiny and whether it is normal or becomes a dangerous tumor.
opposed, this action would stretch the cell. The cell, however,
responds to such pulls with an equal inward contraction and a
restructuring of its cytoskeleton. This back-and-forth stabilizes
cell shape. But it is clearly dynamic: it can rapidly reset if the
cell encounters a different pattern of mechanical stresses, eventually changing the overall cell shape.
Starting in the late 1970s, scientists began to appreciate that
mechanical signals affecting these structures were essential for
the control of cell reproduction, also known as cell growth. Donald Ingber of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Fiona Watt of Kings College
London developed methods to engineer cell shape by attaching
ing. It also suggests new avenues for attacking cancer and for
advancing efforts to grow new organs in the lab.
F ORCES OF NATURE
ing the amount of YAP and TAZ produced by cells. For example, if
we raised YAP and TAZ levels in small rounded cells that had
stopped growing and dividing, we could restore proliferation.
The switch appears to work like this: Generally, YAP and TAZ
sit in the cytoplasm of the cell. When the cytoskeleton gets
stretched out, they move to the nucleus, park themselves on
selected spots of DNA and activate particular growth-inducing
genes. If levels of YAP and TAZ increase, more of the proteins can
make this move and become active. Conversely, in rounded cells
confined to small areas, YAP and TAZ remain in the cytoplasm
deteriorating while they are thereand stay out of the nucleus.
These two proteins are close siblings, although they have different names. Their molecular structures are very similar, and
they perform overlapping functions. Consequently, they are usually referred to as one: YAP/TAZ.
K EEPING ORGANS IN SHAPE
The importance of this YAP/TAZ switch for the bodys proper functioning becomes clear when it is studied in tissues and organs.
Consider what happens if tissues are wounded, such as skin getting a cut. When cells are lost because of this kind of injury, re
duced pressure on the remaining cells tells them that they have
more free room. So they spread out, stretching their cytoskeleton. This stretching seems to activate YAP/TAZ, fostering cell
proliferation. The process stops when the wounded area fills
with new cells, re-creating a more tightly packed, growth-suppressing environment.
Some experiments on mice show how this sequence operates
in real organs. Duojia (D. J.) Pan of Johns Hopkins University
New cells have to compensate for the death of old ones, or else
the organ will wither and die.
The balance in cell numbers is only one aspect of organ
maintenance, however. A second aspect is controlling where in
the organ those new cells grow. Organs are like tightly packed
apartment buildingsthey are a collection of various cell types,
each lodged within a sophisticated three-dimensional architecture. And this spatial organization is also replenished one cell
generation after another. Where is the information about what
goes where coming from? New findings suggest that, once
again, the answer involves YAP/TAZ and the way it responds to
the organs three-dimensional shape.
Organ architecture is complicated. It is a collection of various structures, such as pits, borders, convex or concave curves,
and flat layers, all defined by the way cells fit together in their
associated extracellular matrix scaffold. Because that scaffold
actually lives longer than the cells attached to it, it can work as
the spatial memory for new incoming cells, answering that
vital what goes where question.
The puzzle, though, has been how the scaffold does this. Celeste
Nelson, now at Princeton University, and Christopher Chen, now
at Boston University, as well as Mariaceleste Aragona, working in
my group, provided evidence that the answer lies in the scaffolds
varied shape. Such variations produce different mechanical forces
that affect cellular behavior. For example, when we engineered a
device that allowed us to curve a multicellular layer at particular
pointsthink of speed bumps rising up from a flat roadonly
cells that stretched around curved areas activated YAP/TAZ and
proliferated. This finding has led us to propose that local tissue
FINDINGS
Stretched
In a cell, the location of a key protein duo called YAP/TAZ (purple) can control
whether the cell will proliferate. The duos movements are influenced by physical forces that squeeze or stretch cells. Changes in those forces are communicated to YAP/TAZ by tension or looseness in the extracellular matrix, which
consists of fibers such as collagen (red). These fibers are anchored to molecules called integrins (yellow) that penetrate the cell membrane, where they
attach to the cells inner cytoskeleton, made up of fibers such as actin (green).
Actin harbors inhibitory factors (gold crescents) that restrict YAP/TAZ activity
when the fibers are relaxed, according to research from the Piccolo lab.
Collagen
Squeezed
When cells are crowded together, fibers in the extracellular matrix outside the cell
and in the cytoskeleton within the cell are relaxed. This appears to release inhibitory
factors that come together with YAP/TAZ. The contact prevents YAP/TAZ from
entering the nucleus and activating genes that control cell behavior.
Integrin
Collagen
Actin
Inhibitory factor
Cell membrane
Actin
YAP/TAZ
x te
ri o
Integrin
or
ll e
e ri
Ce
ll i
nt
Ce
Nu
cle
us
Unencumbered, YAP/TAZ
moves into the nucleus and
triggers cell growth
DNA
mechanical forces and affect a cells fate. A second is the different types of ground that a cell can encounter. The extracellular
matrix to which cells are secured is indeed not monotonous but
has different textures. Some tissues, such as bone, create a stiff,
dense matrix, like solid rock. Other tissues, such as brain tissue
or fat, develop a much softer version. In other words, each or
gans matrix has its own signature.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE Watch Donald Ingber explain why physical forces on a cell can be as important as genes at ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014/cell-forces
While researchers
working on stem cells
are looking to regrow
damaged tissue, cancer
researchers are struggling
to do just the opposite:
to restrict growth. Here,
too, the physical forces
tugging at cells may play
a decisive role.
the physical forces tugging at cells may play a decisive role. For
40 years the war on cancer has largely been ruled by the view
that genetic mutations drive tumor growth. Although some therapies that block the activity of such mutants have been effective,
it is uncertain whether this approach will translate into a wide
range of new treatments. Simply put, there are too many mutations, even in a single tumor, to chase and block all of them.
Cancer, however, is as much a disease of a disturbed microenvironment as it is a result of disturbed genes. Alterations of
cell shape and of the cells surroundings actually precede the
onset of tumors and may even initiate disease. For example,
work at Valerie Weavers lab at the University of California, San
Francisco, has shown that increasing the rigidity of the surrounding extracellular matrix prompted nonmalignant cells to
switch to a tumorlike program of aggressive growth.
In our experiments, we demonstrated that forced shape
changes translated into activation of YAP/TAZ and into more
M O R E TO E X P L O R E
Control of Stem Cell Fate by Physical Interactions with the Extracellular Matrix.
Farshid Guilak et al. in Cell Stem Cell, Vol. 5, No. 1; pages 1726; July 2009.
Reconstituting Organ-Level Lung Functions on a Chip. Dongeun Huh et al. in
Science, Vol. 328, pages 16621668; June 25, 2010.
Why Dont We Get More Cancer? A Proposed Role of the Microenvironment
in Restraining Cancer Progression. Mina J. Bissell and William C. Hines in Nature
Medicine, Vol. 17, pages 320329; March 2011.
Transduction of Mechanical and Cytoskeletal Cues by YAP and TAZ. Georg Halder
et al. in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, Vol. 13, pages 591600; September 2012.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
MAN-MADE NUGGET
f frozen methane hydrate
o
burns readily in air.
Ice
ENVIRONMENT
An
Inconvenient
Methane hydrates
could solve the worlds
energy challenge
or make global
warming worse
By Lisa Margonelli
Paull, me and others, perched on old airplane seats and overturned plastic buckets. All these minds and equipment would
bear down on the mounds secrets: How was it formed? Where
did its methane come from? And did it start emerging from the
seafloor 10years ago, or had it been growing for a million years?
The team was seeking basic information that might help
address larger issues. A recent geologic survey suggests that the
hydrates off the coasts of the lower 48 states alone hold the
IN BRIEF
Scientists are probing hydrate outcroppings to determine how easily the gas can be tapped for energy.
They are also examining how readily the methane
can escape on its own when heated by warming sea-
RESEARCHERS onboard the Western Flyer lower a submersible robot, Doc Ricketts, to methane hydrates 1,300 meters down
on the seafloor outside Vancouver. At the left, the robots arm inserts a laser probe into an icy hydrate mound off Santa Monica, Calif.
Paull, a tall man with a broad white moustache and a flat Rhode
Island accent, began studying hydrates in the 1970s, when they
were mainly known as a nuisance to the oil industry because their
ice crystals clogged pipes in deepwater wells. If you ask him a
question about hydrates, he nearly always starts, emphatically,
with a burst of facts, only to end with a pained grimace when he
gets to the things he does not know. During his career, hydrates
have gone from esoteric curiosities to potentially massive players
M E T H A N E H Y D R AT E B A S I C S
(bottom right). The gas can originate from deep in the earth or
from microbes that digest organic matter in the sediment. In
certain spots, pieces of hydrate may rise through the water, giving
off methane gas bubbles as they exit the stability zone (dotted
lines). Hydrates can also form in permafrost on land.
Methane Hydrate
Distribution
Shallower than 3,000 meters
Deeper than 3,000 meters
Gas sample obtained
Permafrost
Hydrate in
permafrost
Methane hydrate
Stability zone; inside the zone,
methane stays trapped in hydrate
Mound of hydrate
exposed on seafloor
Ice-crystal cage
Methane gas
from microbes
in sediment
Methane
gas from
deep in
the earth
Below the
stability
zone, hydrate
cannot form
Methane
accumulation
in sediment
Hydrate
Methane hydrate
in sediment
nificant, they pale against the billions of dollars that the global
oil industry spent on research and development in 2011 alone.
For a country that struggles with importing energy and is still
cleaning up the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the sheer quantity
of methane lying off Japans coast makes harvesting it attractive. Americans are less motivated to explore hydrates as an
energy source because the U.S. is already awash in inexpensive
shale gas, which makes hydrates seem very costly by compari-
SOURCES: GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION OF METHANE HYDRATE IN OCEAN SEDIMENT, BY JEFFERY B. KLAUDA AND STANLEY
I. SANDLER, IN ENERGY & FUELS, VOL. 19, NO. 2; MARCH 2005 (base map); USGS GAS HYDRATES PROJECT (recovered sample data)
Methane
molecule
(CH4)
Deep-sea hydrates
bordering the lower
48states could hold the
equivalent of 2,000years
of natural gas supply
at the countrys current
consumption rates.
Despite the relative success, ConocoPhillips has reassigned
the employees who were involved. The DOE is looking for a
new industry partner to continue the experiments.
To Paull, the experiment reflects our limited understanding
of hydrate behavior. In 2010 he led a National Academy of Sciences committee that reviewed the DOEs work on methane
hydrates as an energy resource. The panel concluded that engineers can probably surmount the technical challenges of producing fuel from hydrates but that many scientific, environmental and engineering questions remained to be answered before
informed decisions could be made about whether to proceed.
Unlike oil deposits, hydrates are inherently unstable and hard
to map, and their effects on surrounding ecosystems are poorly
understood. I dont think we know enough about what it would
mean to harvest them in an environmentally sound manner,
Paull says.
S TUCK IN A FROZEN AIRPORT LOUNGE
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE For details about the 2012 hydrate mining test in Alaska, see ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014/margonelli
AP PHOTO
Those insights could help settle a vigorous debate that scientists have held for more than a decade: whether warming seas
could trigger a massive release of methane and whether that
discharge would overwhelm the oceans ability to absorb it. An
early theory called the Clathrate Gun hypothesis suggested that
hydrates build up and then catastrophically release methane in
cycles that repeat over many thousands of years. This cyclical
scenario is not borne out by the fossil record, but the possibility
remains that a large, one-time release of methane from hy
drates could have contributed to the rapid warming of the
earth during its peak heatingthe thermal maximum 55 million years ago.
In contrast, modeling by David Archer of the University of
Chicago suggests that, over millennia, hydrates could continually release methane, leading to a big change in global warming, in which rising temperatures would cause some hydrates
to oxidize to CO2 in the ocean, prolonging the warming trend.
Hydrates that are trapped under permafrost on land in the
Arctic, along with those submerged under shallow seas just offshore, could be a more imminent threat. In November 2013 a
team led by Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska Fairbanks estimated that the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is venting
17million metric tons of methane into the atmosphere every
yeartwice previous estimates. Shakhova found significant
methane bubbles rising from permafrost-covered hydrate de
posits in just 50meters of seawater. During the areas frequent
M O R E TO E X P L O R E
M AT H E M AT I C S
Let the
GAMES
Continue
ike a good magic trick, a clever puzzle can inspire awe, reveal mathematical truths
and prompt important questions. At least that is what Martin Gardner thought.
His name is synonymous with the legendary Mathematical Games column he
wrote for a quarter of a century in Scientific American. Thanks to his own mathe
magical skills, Gardner, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday in October,
presented noteworthy mathematics every month with all the wonder of legerde
main and, in so doing, captivated a huge readership worldwide. Many people
obscure, famous and in betweenhave cited Mathematical Games as informing their deci
sions to pursue mathematics or a related field professionally.
IN BRIEF
S
October 2014, ScientificAmerican.com91
PUZZLE SAMPLER
Test Yourself
Recreational math puzzles fall into many broad categories and
solving them draws on a variety of talents, as the examples
here, some of which are classics, show. (For the answers,
go to ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014/gardner)
Some puzzles call for little more than basic reasoning. For
instance, consider this brainteaser: There are three on/off
switches on the ground floor of a building. Only one operates
a single lightbulb on the third floor. The other two switches are
not connected to anything. Put the switches in any on/off order
you like. Then go to the third floor to see the bulb. Without
leaving the third floor, can you figure out which switch is
genuine? You get only one try.
Cryptarithms serve up harder tests
of a puzzlers abilities. In these
problems, each letter corresponds
to a single digit. For instance, can you
figure out which digit each letter
represents to make the sum at the
right work?
SEVEN
SEVEN
SEVEN
SEVEN
SEVEN
SEVEN
+
SEVEN
____________
FOR T Y 9
A N U N S O LV E D P R O B L E M
both boxes gets $1,001,000; selecting only box B yields a bit less
($1,000,000).
But another argument says that the greatest winnings will always
come from taking only box B. It reasons that the player can ignore
the instances in which the players choice differs from the prediction
because those moves require the Predictor to make a mistake, which
this deity, by definition, is extremely unlikely to do. The choice then is
between taking both boxes for $1,000 or only box B for $1,000,000.
Gardners readers produced bags of commentary, delineating
various outcomes, but there is still no resolution as to whether
one strategy is ever better than the other. In his original coverage,
Nozick commented, To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and
obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people
seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers
thinking that the opposing half is just being silly.
PREDICTED CHOICE
ACTUAL CHOICE
PAYOUT
Both A and B
Both
$1,000
Both A and B
B only
$0
B only
Both
$1,001,000
B only
B only
$1,000,000
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE Find an unsolved puzzle, a DIY hexaflexagon cutout, an e-book of Martin Gardners columns, and more at ScientificAmerican.com/oct2014/gardner
WTF, Evolution?!
A Theory of
Unintelligible Design
by Mara Grunbaum.
Workman, 2014 ($12.95)
Alive Inside:
A Story of Music & Memory
by Michael Rossato-Bennett.
DVD available October 21, 2014
More than 35 million
people worldwide have
dementia, and many of
them become unreachable as their cognitive
impairment advances.
Incredibly, though, when these same people listen to personally meaningful music,
they can sometimes reconnect with their
emotions, memories and identities. Filmmaker Rossato-Bennett follows social
worker Dan Cohen as he brings iPods into
nursing homes around the country. One
resident with advanced dementia instantly awakens from a stupor when he hears
music from his past and recalls decadesold details about his favorite singer,
Cab Calloway. Cohens ultimate goal is to
make personalized music a standard tool
at the tens of thousands of elderly care
facilities in the U.S. We need to use music
to engage with people, Cohen says, to
allow them to express themselves, enjoy
themselves, and live again.
A.S.
WATER BEARS,
r tardigrades,
o
are just half
a millimeter long.
Infrequencies
I just witnessed an event
so mysterious that it shook
my skepticism
Often I am asked if I have ever encountered some
thing that I could not explain. What my interlocu
tors have in mind are not bewildering enigmas such
as consciousness or U.S. foreign policy but anoma
lous and mystifying events that suggest the exis
tence of the paranormal or supernatural. My answer
is: yes, now I have.
The event took place on June 25, 2014. On that
day I married Jennifer Graf, from Kln, Germany.
She had been raised by her mom; her grandfather,
Walter, was the closest father figure she had growing up, but he
died when she was 16. In shipping her belongings to my home
before the wedding, most of the boxes were damaged and sev
eral precious heirlooms lost, including her grandfathers binoc
ulars. His 1978 Philips 070 transistor radio arrived safely, so I
set out to bring it back to life after decades of muteness. I put in
new batteries and opened it up to see if there were any loose
connections to solder. I even tried percussive maintenance,
said to work on such devicessmacking it sharply against a hard
surface. Silence. We gave up and put it at the back of a desk draw
er in our bedroom.
Three months later, after affixing the necessary signatures
to our marriage license at the Beverly Hills courthouse, we
returned home, and in the presence of my family said our vows
and exchanged rings. Being 9,000 kilometers from family,
friends and home, Jennifer was feeling amiss and lonely. She
wished her grandfather were there to give her away. She whis
pered that she wanted to say something to me alone, so we
excused ourselves to the back of the house where we could hear
music playing in the bedroom. We dont have a music system
there, so we searched for laptops and iPhones and even opened
the back door to check if the neighbors were playing music. We
followed the sound to the printer on the desk, wondering
absurdlyif this combined printer/scanner/fax machine also
included a radio. Nope.
At that moment Jennifer shot me a look I havent seen since
the supernatural thriller The Exorcist startled audiences. That
cant be what I think it is, can it? she said. She opened the desk
drawer and pulled out her grandfathers transistor radio, out of
which a romantic love song wafted. We sat in stunned silence for
minutes. My grandfather is here with us, Jennifer said, tearful
ly. Im not alone.
Shortly thereafter we returned to our guests with the radio
A guy from the nitwit town of Kyme was swimming when it began to
rain, so he dived down to keep from getting wet.
I have taken the liberty to rework these jokes the way I might
tell them, which may actually be in the spirit of the Philogelosin
addition to being the kind of tract that a Roman might peruse in
the barbershop, the collection may have been what musicians call
a fake book, a compilation of simple versions of material that
the performer then embellishes with his or her personal style.
October 1964
Evolution
and Creation
Biblical fundamentalists are once
again in conflict
with biologists, this time as a result
of efforts by the National Science
Foundation to raise the level of high
school biology teaching. After five
years of preparation and classroom
testing, three new textbooks have been
offered to state and other educational
agencies across the nation. All were produced by a $5 million Biological Science
Curriculum Study (BSCS) project. All
present the theory of evolution as a logical explanation of the known facts in
biological history. Contrary to the practice of some publishers, none is issued
in regional editions re-written to avoid
conflict with local prejudices. During
the school year 19631964 some 250,000
copies of the three texts were sold, a
number sufficient to reach 12 percent
of the high school biology students in
the U.S. All three have been offered to
and accepted by state adoption boards
in Georgia and Florida. In Arizona an
effort by one church group to place a
referendum opposing atheistic teaching
on next months ballot failed to obtain
the required 55,000 petition signatures.
October 1914
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT, VOL. LXXVIII, NO. 2024; OCTOBER 17, 1914
Submarine
Warfare
It is certain that,
from the very declara
tion of war, German
submarines have been cruising at will in
the North Sea; and they have at last
scored a success, in the sinking of three
British armored cruisers of 12,000 tons
displacement, which must be recorded
as the most brilliant naval success thus
far achieved in the present war, and
which establishes, at a stroke, the deadly
efficiency of this, the latest form of
naval warfare. It is in the moral prestige
acquired, rather than in the material
October 1864
Iron Work
MARTHA, the last surviving
passenger pigeon, died in 1914
Public Electricity
To the high school of Rupert, Idaho,
belongs the distinction of being the first
large building in the world to be exclu
sively run by electricity. In this building
electricity is also used for a wide variety
Great improvement
has been made of
late years in forging
light work. Instead
of relying upon the
hand and eye of some skillful workman,
dies have been substituted, and the jobs
thus produced have all the accuracy of
castings while they are far superior in
strength. Drop-presses have been used,
also rapid-working trip-hammers, but
these make such a tremendous racket
that it is almost impossible to stay in
their vicinity.
Graphic Science
Family Histories
Space rocks tend to stick with their own kind
Asteroids are the oldest, most pristine samples of our early
solar system and hold clues about how the current lineup
of planets formed from what was once a giant cloud of gas
and dust. This plot of roughly 45,000 asteroids that orbit
between Mars and Jupiter reveals families of asteroids
that share characteristics such as chemical composition
(colors), orbit size (horizontal axis) and orbit tilt (vertical
axis). Rocks with the same chemical composition tend to
have similar orbital characteristics, which suggests a common originmost likely a single larger body. These bodies
Chemical Composition
Blue points represent C-type asteroids,
the most common variety, which are high in
carbon and have almost coal-black surfaces.
0.25
0.10
0.05
0
2.0
2.2
2.4
2.6
2.8
3.0
This smaller
group (orange), called
the Koronis family, includes
more than 300 known
asteroids that probably
originated3.2
three billion
to two billion
years ago.
Graphic by Jake VanderPlas
SOURCE: THE SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS OF ASTEROID FAMILIES IN THE SDSS MOVING OBJECT CATALOG 4, BY A. H. PARKER,
M. JURIC, R. H. LUPTON, M. D. SEKORA AND A. F. KOWALSKI, IN ICARUS, VOL. 198, NO. 1; NOVEMBER 2008
. IVEZIC,
These asteroids
(pink) are the large Eos
family, which includes more
than 4,000 known members
created during an asteroid
collision roughly 1.3 billion
years ago.