PBS News: March 6 – 9. 2020, How painter
Jacob Lawrence reframed early American history with ‘Struggle’, What’s at stake
in Supreme Court’s Louisiana abortion law case, and How San Francisco is fighting
novel coronavirus — and the stigma that comes with it
The New York Times: By Chris Stanford, Monday, March 9, 2020 – Morning Briefing
TED Talks: The genius behind some of the
world’s most famous buildings – Renzo Piano, and Jill Seubert How a miniaturized
atomic clock could revolutionize space exploration
Bored Panda: NASA’s Curiosity Has Been on Mars For More
Than 7 Years And Here Are Its 30 Best Photos
My Modern Met: These
Exotic Trees Transform into Rainbows as Their Barks Shed
On this edition for Sunday March 8, the coronavirus outbreak
spreads and Italy imposes strict travel restrictions, and after years of
planning the 2020 census makes its debut this week. Also, a new approach in
Louisiana for prison reform focuses on rehabilitation. Hari Sreenivasan anchors
from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
On this edition for Saturday, March
7, concerns over coronavirus continue as the number of cases rise, the
presidential democratic candidates rally ahead of the upcoming primaries,
tensions escalate amid migrant push on Greece-Turkey border, and can women
landowners in Iowa help conservation efforts? Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New
York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find
more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Amid the McCarthy hearings and the launch of the civil rights
movement in the 1950s, painter Jacob Lawrence sought to frame early American
history the way he saw it. His ensuing work, the sprawling series “Struggle,”
has been reassembled and is now on a national tour, with its first stop at the
Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts. Special correspondent Jared Bowen of
WGBH visits the exhibit. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a case about access
to abortion doctors in Louisiana. The law in question is similar to a Texas one
struck down by the Court in 2016 — but decided by a different group of
justices. Lisa Desjardins talks to the National Law Journal’s Marcia Coyle and
Mary Ziegler, professor and author of “Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v.
Wade to the Present.” Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
How
San Francisco is fighting novel coronavirus — and the stigma that comes with it
On Wednesday, California officials confirmed the state’s first
death from novel coronavirus, as the number of infections nationwide continues
to rise. But beyond the serious medical implications of the virus, it is also
provoking fear, suspicion and ethnic stereotyping. Amna Nawaz reports from San
Francisco, a city long known for its ties to China and the Chinese-American
community. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)
Good morning.
We’re covering
updates in the coronavirus outbreak and the latest
in the Democratic presidential race. We also explain a dispute
over classified portions of the U.S. agreement with the Taliban.
By Chris Stanford
A plunge in stocks to start the week
Global markets fell sharply today, and Wall Street looked
set to follow suit, as the effects of the coronavirus outbreak deepened and
Saudi Arabia cut oil prices nearly 10 percent over the weekend. Here
are the latest market updates.
The
Saudi decision was in retaliation for Russia’s refusal to
join OPEC in a large production cut as the outbreak continues to slow the
global economy.
In the U.S., the number of coronavirus cases has grown to
more than 530. On Sunday, the country’s leading expert on infectious
diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said regional
lockdowns could become necessary and recommended that those
at greatest risk — older adults and people with underlying health
conditions — abstain from travel.
Related: A cruise ship that has been held off
California after 21 people aboard tested positive for the virus is set to
dock today in Oakland. More than 3,500 passengers and crew members will be
taken to military facilities around the country to be quarantined for 14
days. The State Department on Sunday advised
Americans against traveling on cruise ships.
Closer look: Dr. Fauci has
become the chief
explainer of
the epidemic, partly because other government scientists have
either avoided the spotlight or been reined in by the Trump administration.
News analysis: President
Trump, who seems at his strongest politically when he has a human target to
attack, has found it harder to confront the threat of an invisible
pathogen, our
chief White House correspondent writes.
?
Two members of Congress, including Senator Ted Cruz, said they would
self-quarantine after interacting at the Conservative Political Action
Conference with a
person who tested positive for the virus. Mr. Trump and Vice
President Mike Pence spoke at the meeting last week.
?
One of the world’s leading tennis tournaments has
been canceled. Qualifying matches for the BNP Paribas Open,
known as Indian Wells, were to have begun today.
As the site of the worst outbreak of the coronavirus outside
Asia, Italy has announced strict measures that limit the movements of about
a quarter of the population. To bolster the effort, the country’s
leaders have
appealed to Italians to reject “furbizia,” the sort of
cleverness typically channeled into getting around bureaucracy.
“We are the new Wuhan,” one woman in the closed-off northern
region of Lombardy said on Sunday.
Chocolate reduces stress. Fish stimulates the brain. Is there any
truth to such popular beliefs? The findings of researchers around the world say
yes: It appears we really are what we eat. A study in a British prison found
that inmates who took vitamin supplements were less prone to violent behavior.
And in Germany, a psychologist at the University of Lübeck has shown that
social behavior is influenced by the ingredients consumed at breakfast. But
what really happens in the brain when we opt for honey instead of jam, and fish
rather than sausage? Scientists around the world are trying to find out.
Neuro-nutrition is the name of an interdisciplinary research field that
investigates the impact of nutrition on brain health. Experiments on rats and
flies offer new insight into the effects of our eating habits. When laboratory
rats are fed a diet of junk food, the result is not just obesity. The menu also
has a direct influence on their memory performance. The role of the intestinal
flora has been known for some time, but scientists are currently discovering
other relationships. So-called “brain food” for example: The
Mediterranean diet that’s based on vegetables and fish is said to provide the
best nutrition for small grey cells. Omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in
fish, for example, protect the nerve cells and are indispensable for the
development of the brain – because the brain is also what it eats!
——————————————————————– DW
Documentary gives you knowledge beyond the headlines. Watch high-class
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Meet intriguing people, travel to distant lands, get a look behind the
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and global events. Subscribe and explore the world around you with DW
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Click checks out a new foldable
phone, but is the technology worth the hype? Also, we meet a man having a
microcomputer implanted into his heart. Subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1uNQEWR
Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick Facebook:
www.facebook.com/BBCClick
Legendary architect Renzo Piano
— the mind behind such indelible buildings as The Shard in London, the Centre
Pompidou in Paris and the new Whitney Museum of Art in New York City — takes us
on a stunning tour through his life’s work. With the aid of gorgeous imagery,
Piano makes an eloquent case for architecture as the answer to our dreams,
aspirations and desire for beauty. “Universal beauty is one of the few
things that can change the world,” he says. “This beauty will save
the world. One person at a time, but it will do it.” Check out more TED
Talks: http://www.ted.com
The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED
Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their
lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and
Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Follow TED
on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TEDTalks Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/TED
Ask any deep space navigator like Jill Seubert what makes
steering a spacecraft difficult, and they’ll tell you it’s all about the
timing; a split-second can decide a mission’s success or failure. So what do
you do when a spacecraft is bad at telling time? You get it a clock — an
atomic clock, to be precise. Let Seubert whisk you away with the revolutionary
potential of a future where you could receive stellar, GPS-like directions —
no matter where you are in the universe.
This talk was presented to a local audience
at TEDxUCLA, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature it
for you.
TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas
worth spreading.” It supports independent organizers who want to create a
TED-like event in their own community.
For us, mere mortals, Mars is a no man’s land
where survival seems like a distant dream. After all, no man has ever walked on
its surface (as far as we know) and plans to send one to the red planet are
only in the early stages of its development. However, humans have touched Mars
through the durable wheels of Mars rovers. We’ve had 4 successful robotically
operated Mars rovers (all of which were managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, NASA) so far: Sojourner, Opportunity, Spirit, and Curiosity.
As Opportunity’s mission was declared complete
on February 13, 2019 when NASA lost all contact with the vehicle, Curiosity
became the lone survivor on the red planet, rolling over its surface to examine
and explore the unknown land all by itself. The spacecraft first landed on Mars
on August 6, 2012 and started carrying out its objectives throughout the years.
In fact, Curiosity did its job so well and held on for so long that its
original mission duration of 687 days was expanded indefinitely.
Curiosity is approaching its 8 year
anniversary on Mars and while it is currently the only functional rover on the
planet (after we all, unfortunately, had to say goodbye to Oppy), NASA has plans to send it some company in
the shape of Mars 2020 rover. The 2020 mission is scheduled to start on 17 July
to 5 August 2020 when the rocket carrying the rover will be launched. NASA also
announced a student naming contest for the rover that was held in the fall of
2019. The final name will be announced in early March 2020, so we definitely
have something to look forward to!
As a writer and image editor for Bored Panda, Giedr? crafts
posts on many different topics to push them to their potential. She’s also glad
that her Bachelor’s degree in English Philology didn’t go to waste (although
collecting dust in the attic could also be considered an achievement of
aesthetic value!) Giedr? is an avid fan of cats, photography, and mysteries,
and a keen observer of the Internet culture which is what she is most excited
to write about. Since she’s embarked on her journalistic endeavor, Giedr? has
over 600 articles under her belt and hopes for twice as much (fingers crossed –
half of them are about cats).
Photo: Stock
Photos from Danita Delmont/Shutterstock
Eucalyptus trees are most known for their fragrant leaves and for
being the main food source for koalas, but did you know that they can also be quite
colorful? In fact, Eucalyptus deglupta is so colorful that
it’s known as the rainbow eucalyptus. When this incredible tree
sheds its bark, it almost looks like a colored pencil being sharpened. This
makes for a spectacle that is unforgettable.
Also known as the Mindanao gum or rainbow gum, the
rainbow eucalyptus is a tall tree that is unique in that it’s the only
eucalyptus to live in the rainforest and only one of four species found outside
of Australia. It can be found in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New
Guinea, where it can soar up to 250 feet in the air. While its height is
impressive, it’s really the tree’s multicolor bark that makes it stand out.
As the rainbow eucalyptus sheds, it first reveals a bright green
inner bark. Over time, this ages into different colors—blue, purple, orange,
and maroon. The colorful striations are created due to the fact that the tree
doesn’t shed all at once. Slowly, over time, different layers fall off, while
other exposed areas have already begun aging.
This process makes for a spectacular visual, with the rainbow
eucalyptus looking like it could be pulled from Alice in Wonderland.
Its unique appearance has also made it quite popular amongst garden
enthusiasts. It can be found in botanical gardens around the world and is often
planted as an ornamental tree in Hawaii, Texas, Louisiana, and Southern
California, where the frost-free climate allows it to thrive.
Interestingly, the rainbow eucalyptus also has a high commercial
value that has nothing to do with its color. The tree is often found at tree
plantations, as it’s an excellent source for pulpwood—the main ingredient in
making white paper. So the next time you pull out a blank sheet, just remember
that it may have originally been something much more colorful.
The rainbow eucalyptus gets its name from its colorful appearance.
Photo: Stock
Photos from Sean D.
Thomas/Shutterstock
Photo: Stock Photos from A. Michael
Brown/Shutterstock
Eucalyptus deglupta takes on different colors
as bark sheds and the inner bark slowly ages.
Photo: Stock
Photos from Martina
Roth/Shutterstock
Jessica
Stewart is a writer, curator, and art historian living in Rome, Italy. She
earned her MA in Renaissance Studies from University College London. She
cultivated expertise in street art led to the purchase of her photographic
archive by the Treccani Italian Encyclopedia in 2014. When she’s not spending
time with her three dogs, she also manages the studio of a successful street
artist. In 2013, she authored the book ‘Street
Art Stories Roma‘ and most recently contributed to ‘Crossroads: A Glimpse Into the Life of Alice
Pasquini‘. You can follow her adventures online at @romephotoblog
PBS News: February 25- 27.2020 and India’s
immigrant crackdown leaves nearly 2 million in limbo
BBC Click: Click At
CES in Las Vegas
BBC Horizon: Shock
and Awe: The Story of Electricity — Jim Al-Khalili
DW Documentary: Soyalism
My Modern Met: Bees Create Heart-Shaped Hive
When There Aren’t Frames Up to Guide Them
TED Talks: Annie Murphy Paul What we learn before
we reborn?, Laura Schulz The surprisingly logical minds of babies?, and How
fast are you moving right now? – Tucker-Hiatt – TED-Ed
Design
Bolts: Awe-Inspiring Nokia 5G Paper Cut Creative
Illustrations by Eiko Ojala
Immigration from Bangladesh into India’s northeastern state of
Assam has long been a contentious issue, often boiling over into violence. Last
year the government declared nearly 2 million people there to be non-citizens
in an effort that has been widely criticized. Many now fear similar measures
across the country. Hari Sreenivasan reports. Stream your PBS favorites with
the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Click comes from CES in Las
Vegas, the world’s largest tech show. With the latest announcements from the
show and a look at trends for the year ahead. Subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick Facebook:
www.facebook.com/BBCClick
Industrial agriculture is increasingly dominating the world
market. It’s forcing small farmers to quit and taking over vast swathes of
land. This documentary shows how destructive the lucrative agribusiness is.
Whether in the USA, Brazil, Mozambique or China, agricultural giants rule the
market. Food production has become a gigantic business as climate change and
population growth continue. This is having devastating consequences for small
farmers and for the environment. On the banks of North Carolina’s New River,
there’s a vile stench. Clean water activist Rick Dove takes a flight to show us
what’s causing the smell. Scores and scores of pigs are living upriver, in so
many pens the farms look more like small towns. “We have eight to ten
million pigs here. And the problem is that they are kept so close together and
their excrement pollutes and threatens the water and natural life on the North
Carolina coastline.” From above, you can see large cesspools everywhere,
shimmering red-brown in the sun. Dove is giving us a bird’s-eye view of
industrialized agriculture. In the late 1970s, companies in the US began to
industrialize farming. Large corporations like Smithfield built entire value
chains, from raising livestock to slaughter to packaging and sales. A Chinese
holding company bought Smithfield a few years ago. Industrial meat production
is supposed to support increased Chinese demand for meat as the country’s
prosperity grows. Dan Basse is the head of a company analyses global agriculture.
He says calorie demand will also increase in countries like India, Bangladesh
and Nigeria in the next few years.” And with it, the demand for even more
inexpensive meat of the kind agribusinesses produce and market.
——————————————————————– DW
Documentary gives you knowledge beyond the headlines. Watch high-class
documentaries from German broadcasters and international production companies.
Meet intriguing people, travel to distant lands, get a look behind the
complexities of daily life and build a deeper understanding of current affairs
and global events. Subscribe and explore the world around you with DW
Documentary. Subscribe to: DW Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW39… DW Documental (Spanish): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocumental DW Documentary ??????? ?? ?????: (Arabic): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocarabia
Part 1 – Spark 0:00 Part 2 – The Age of Invention 58:30 Part 3 – Revelations and Revolutions 1:56:50 ——— In this three-part BBC Horizon documentary physicist
and science communicator Jim Al-Khalili takes the viewer on a journey exploring
the most important historical developments in electricity and magnetism. This
documentary discusses how the physics (and the people behind the physics)
changed the world forever. ——— BBC Horizon 2011
If you ever
needed evidence that bees were artists, take a look at this incredible
photograph posted by The National Trust. Left to their own
devices, the bees at Bodiam Castle in Robertsbridge, United Kingdom made quite
the spectacle. Within the structure of their hive, they created a delightful
heart-shaped honeycomb that looks as sweet as it tastes.
This may
seem like an odd sight, but that’s only because we’re used to beekeepers
placing rectangular frames within the hive. The bees then deposit their honey
and build a comb directly onto the frame, which can be easily taken out and
harvested by the beekeeper. But the reality is, bees will use as much space as
they have to store honey. In fact, natural hives can take on all shapes and
sizes.
For
instance, sugarbag bees,
which are native to Australia, make hives that form large spiraling structures.
In temperate climates, some bees will even form an “open colony” where the
entire hive is exposed. These can hang off of trees, fences, or overhangs and
take on impressive oblong shapes.
Still,
the photograph from Bodiam Castle is fascinating because it was formed within
the wood frame of a hive. Beekeeper gregthegregest2 mentioned
on Reddit that this is a common occurrence when the bees are left a
large gap between the top of the frames and the roof of the hive. Of course, it
makes good sense that these hard workers would take advantage of every inch
given to them. While the shape is beautiful, this can be a headache for
beekeepers when looking to harvest their honey. They need to cut away the extra
honeycomb in order to free the frames below.
Of
course, the skill of bees is well known. In fact, even artists have taken
advantage of their capabilities by working with bees to create everything
from sculptures to embroidery. So the
next time you see a honey bee buzzing from flower to flower, just imagine what
interesting artistry might happen when it makes its way back to the hive.
When left
to their own devices, bees are incredible architects.
They can
create incredible shapes from their honeycomb, whether in boxes or out in
nature.
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-fast-ar… “How fast are you moving?” seems like an easy question,
but it’s actually quite complicated — and perhaps best answered by another
question: “Relative to what?” Even when you think you’re standing
still, the Earth is moving relative to the Sun, which is moving relative to the
Milky Way, which is…you get the idea. Tucker Hiatt unravels the concepts of
absolute and relative speed. Lesson by Tucker Hiatt, animation by Zedem Media.
Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are
born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows
how much we learn in the womb — from the lilt of our native language to our
soon-to-be-favorite foods.
This talk was presented at an official TED
conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
How do babies learn so much from so little so quickly? In
a fun, experiment-filled talk, cognitive scientist Laura Schulz shows how our
young ones make decisions with a surprisingly strong sense of logic, well
before they can talk.
Show 1 correction
This talk was presented at an official TED
conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Awe-Inspiring Nokia 5G Paper Cut Creative
Illustrations by Eiko Ojala
Hey there guys! So, we are back with yet
another interesting blog of ours and we are hopeful that you are going to love
it as much as we do – mainly because it is one of our favorite topics to cover
(and we are sure that you know this too!) and also because well, it feels so
great to come across artists who put in their brain, heart and hands to create
magic. Our today’s blog will cover Nokia 5G paper cut illustrations by Eiko
Ojala and we would like to get started right now.
Before we start explaining what paper cut illustrations really are and introduce you guys
with Eiko’s work, let’s have a look at Eiko Ojala as an illustrator first. So,
he is an Estonian artist who was born in 1982 in Tallinn. He has studied
interior design and it was prior to when he brought himself to the world of
creating illustrations (read: stunning). Eiko knows how to create amazing
digital paper cut illustrations by combining them with his traditional
techniques and making sure that his work speaks volumes.
We would also like to share this here
that Eiko has been working with The New York Times, the Harvard Business
Review, the Weird Magazine and has also been associated with the V&A
Museum. Oh, and just by the way the master of creating paper cut illustrations
has also won a Young Illustrators award in 2013 and an ADC Young Gun award by
the Art Directors Club.
Isn’t it just great that all the artists
around the world stun us with their creativity, imagination and work on a daily
basis and we share that here on our blog because we want to inspire you guys
and to encourage you too so that you can also get into the field and see if
that is working for you.
As far as the paper cut illustrations are
concerned, we believe that, this technique requires a lot of time, efforts and
patience especially when you are creating your illustrations on digital
mediums. There are a number of layers involved in order to recreate the
original idea by adding depth and meaning to the illustrations.
Now, we know that different artists have
different tricks to work on what they love to create but about Eiko’s
illustrations, one thing is for final that you will require a great deal of
time to tell if the illustrations were made using paper or did Eiko created
them using his digital editing skills. Yes, you read that right. That is how
clean and real his illustrations are that you
cannot differentiate between a paper one and a digital one.
You must be wondering that only a few
artists could create paper cut illustrations as this requires time, skills and
a lot more than that but believe us when we say this, that nothing is
impossible or too difficult if we really want to do it for ourselves and once
you find your peace and happiness in the things that you do and create then
there is no going back. It becomes interesting, it becomes fun and you want to
improve yourself in order to get to the bigger goal and that is how it should
be.
We can bet that even Eiko must have
created illustrations which he would not have considered anything, he must have
also discarded a few of his creations here and a few of them there because
well, we judge ourselves more than others do and while we are evaluating our
work and thought process, we tend to exclude most of the stuff because we want
perfection.
What we are trying to say here is that if
you think that you have it in you to try out a new skill in 2020 then make it
more about paper cut illustrations – both with actual paper as well as on
digital platforms like Illustrator. In this way, you will be able to know if
you can do it or not and although we know that you are going to ace it, we
would also want to say that go easy on yourself and also be patient if you fail
because that is going to help you in the longer run.
Coming back to Eiko’s illustrations, we
love each one of them and we are sharing them in our blog as well but let’s
take a cursory glance too before we leave you with the magical illustrations
for you to look at in detail. The first one is the Nokia 5G one in which you
can see the number and the alphabet and there is world in these two elements.
Vehicles, humans, trees and birds as well as the scenery is making this
illustration that has a story to tell.
Moving on, you can see multiple shapes
and backgrounds on which Eiko has used his imagination to create illustrations
that are significant and interesting to look at. And from building and
monuments to human beings and their cars, trees, birds and clouds – we think
that looking at these mind blowing illustrations is a treat for the eyes. So,
feel free to share the blog with your friends and family members too and we are
sure they are going to like it too.
Credit: be.net/eiko
Awe-Inspiring
Nokia 5G Paper Cut Creative Illustrations by Eiko Ojala
Ontario-based photographer Michael Davies timed this impressive shot of his friend
Markus hurling a thermos of hot tea through the air yesterday in -40°C weather.
At such frigid temperatures water freezes instantly to form a dramatic plume of
ice. For the last decade Davies has worked as a photographer in the fly-in
community of Pangnirtung in Canada’s High Arctic, only 20km south of the Arctic
Circle, a place that sees about two hours of sunlight each day during the
winter. He shares via email that almost nothing was left to chance in creating
the photo, as so many things had to be perfectly timed:
Around 1pm I jumped on my
skidoo along with my friend Markus and we drove 45 minutes to the top of a
nearby mountain where the light (which is almost always pink near the solstice)
would hit the hills. Prepared with multiple thermoses filled with tea, we began
tossing the water and shooting. Nothing of this shot was to chance, I followed
the temperature, watched for calm wind, and planned the shot and set it up.
Even the sun in the middle of the spray was something I was hoping for, even
though it’s impossible to control.
You
can see more of Davies’ most recent photography over on Flickr.
In a
short clip captured during
a blackwater night dive in the Lembeh Strait, a
blanket octopus unfolds
and displays a colorful web multiple times her original size. The aquatic
animal’s iridescent body and
tentacles glow against
the nighttime water before she releases her translucent blanket that connects
her dorsal and dorsolateral arms. Only adult females are equipped with the lengthy
membrane that reaches as long as six feet and dwarfs male octopi, which are
less than an inch in size and most often die immediately after mating.
Generally, the females only unfurl their color-changing blankets to appear
larger and more intimidating to potential predators. Shared by NAD Lembeh Resort, the underwater video was taken on a RED
Gemini with a 50 millimeter Zeiss Macro lens. You might also want to check out this footage of a blanket octopus in waters near the
Philippines. (via The Kids Should See This)
The Blanket Octopus,
shot in the Lembeh Straits on a Blackwater Night Dive with NAD Lembeh. Footage
shot on RED Gemini with 50mm Zeiss Macro lens. Copyright Simon Buxton 2019.
Tuesday on the NewsHour, Iowa’s delay in reporting Democratic
caucus results prompts questions and criticism and leaves candidates in limbo.
Plus: What senators are saying ahead of Wednesday’s vote to acquit or convict
President Trump of impeachment charges, how the novel coronavirus outbreak is
affecting the global economy and what’s happening in the sexual assault trial
of Harvey Weinstein. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at
https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube
channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
WFP
uses new tech to fight refugee food shortages in Jordan
Jordan is home to an estimated 3 million refugees, and the country’s
harsh terrain makes supplying food for them difficult. But to combat the food
shortages, the U.N. World Food Program is using technologies like iris scans to
track refugee spending habits and hydroponics to grow livestock feed.
Christopher Livesay reports as part of our “Future of Food” series
with Pulitzer Center support. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Imagine
waking in the middle of the night to an elephant ripping the roof from your
house in search of food. This is a reality in some communities in Africa where,
as wild spaces shrink, people and elephants are competing for space and
resources like never before. In this engaging talk, zoologist Lucy King shares
her solution to the rising conflict: fences made from beehives that keep
elephants at bay while also helping farmers establish new livelihoods.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference,
and was featured by our editors on the home page.
In the past decade, the US honeybee population has been
decreasing at an alarming and unprecedented rate. While this is obviously bad
news for honeypots everywhere, bees also help feed us in a bigger way — by
pollinating our nation’s crops. Emma Bryce investigates potential causes for
this widespread colony collapse disorder. [Directed by Lillian Chan, narrated
by Derek Gebhart, music by John Poon].
MEET THE EDUCATOR
Emma Bryce · Educator
ABOUT TED-ED
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the words
and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
417,578 views
TED-Ed | March 2014
Paul
Krugman Explains Why Cutting Taxes for the Wealthy Doesn’t Work
Click is in Bangladesh to see
how automation will impact over four million workers in the garment industry.
Plus new ways data will help teams at the Superbowl. Subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick Facebook:
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We’re in LA to meet the company
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Photographer Gareth Pon (previously) encourages his audience to join in his
reinvention of Where’s Waldo. His architectural photography relies on depth,
pattern, and symmetry, often framing a small piece of the city he’s visiting,
like the water-covered street below Chicago’s “L” or a multi-colored building
complex replete with balconies and air conditioners in Hong Kong. But every image
has one signature twist: Pon hides a small rocket in each of his structural
pieces. On his wildly popular Instagram, the photographer shares that his lifelong
dream is space travel, perhaps explaining his use of the flying object. To join
Pon’s ongoing game of spot the rocket, check out his Facebook.
OK, this is ridiculous, but in the best way possible.
Spending too much time describing this short film by French animator Nicolas Deveaux
would ruin it, so it’s probably best to just watch it. Created over a period of
1.5 years 5 Mètres 80
is a follow-up to a shorter animation he made 10 years ago about an elephant on a trampoline.
Deveaux is widely known for his realistic animation of animals for both film
and commercials, many more of which he shares on Vimeo. 5 Mètres 80 has toured film festivals around
the world since 2013 picking up numerous awards and nominations including the
Best in Show Award at SIGGRAPH Asia. (via Vimeo Staff Picks)
Netter Kurzfilm über Giraffen
Turnspringer im Hallenbad, ausgestrahlt auf arte HD am 31.12.2014. Von Auteur
Réalisateur Nicolas Deveaux Cube Creative Productions – Orange – 2012 Nice
short film about giraffes doing diving in an indoor swimming pool.
Cortometraggio carino su giraffe tuffatrici in piscina coperta.
Spanning from day to
night and from sunshine to rain and wind, “Story of Flowers”
shows the various stages of botanical growth and the help plants get along the
way. The instructional project—which was illustrated by Katie
Scott, animated by James Paulley, and
directed by Azuma Makoto—depicts the interconnected networks within
an ecosystem, like the organisms underground fertilizing the soil or a
bumblebee landing atop and pollinating a pistil. Each stage of the germination
process is shot with an enlarged view to magnify roots stretching out, sprouts
poking through the ground, and flowers opening up to bloom. As rain falls, the
petals drop and plants release their seeds, which then are embedded into the
soil, beginning the cycle once again. Head to Instagram to check out more work
from Scott, Paulley, and Makoto. (via The Kids Should See This)
AMKK
presents: Botanical animation “Story of Flowers” full ver.
AMKK Presents: Botanical animation “Story
of Flowers” The animation was developed for kids to show the life cycle of
flowers. -Story- Many different flowers are growing beautifully and strongly in
this world. Taking their roots in the earth, sprouting, blooming, pollination
by birds and insects, living on in spite of rain, wind and storms. They pass on
the baton of life, rebirth and decay. Everything is so in a continuous, endless
cycle. This is the story and message of this animation. Directed by : Azuma
Makoto Illustration by : Katie Scott Animation by : James Paulley Visual
Supervisor : Shunsuke Shiinoki Project Management by : Eri Narita
PBS News:
January 24 – 30, 2020, The extraordinary
legacy and unique voice of Jim Lehrer, and Idlib is the last refuge for Syrians
fleeing Assad — and it is barely livable,
TED Talks: Stuart Oda Are indoor
vertical farms the future of agriculture?, Mohammad Modarres Why you should shop
at your local farmers market, Wevita Davison how urban agriculture is transforming Detroit
BBC
Click: The Self-Driving Car Revolution
& More
Pocket: Invasion of the ‘Frankenbees’: The Danger of
Building a Better Bee
New York Times: Bricks Alive! Scientists Create Living
Concrete
Thursday on the NewsHour, senators continue asking questions in
President Trump’s impeachment trial as a pivotal vote on witnesses looms. Plus:
Legal experts analyze the latest impeachment trial developments, a preview of
the Iowa caucus, novel coronavirus is now a global health emergency, the
economic power of peer pressure, Malcolm Gladwell on meeting strangers and Gwen
Ifill forever remembered. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Wednesday on the NewsHour, carefully scripted legal arguments give
way to senator questions in President Trump’s impeachment trial. Plus: Legal
experts analyze the latest from the impeachment trial, how China and the global
health community are responding to the outbreak of novel coronavirus,
understanding traumatic brain injury, saving Australian wildlife after
bushfires and Now Read This. Editor’s Note: The first segment of tonight’s show
incorrectly identified the location of the bakery sending cakes to lawmakers in
the Senate. The cakes did not come from a bakery in Washington, D.C., but
rather from one in New York. The segment’s transcript has been corrected.
NewsHour regrets the error. WATCH TODAYS SEGMENTS Senators begin question
period in Trump impeachment trial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrVi0… 2 legal experts on the latest from Trump’s impeachment trial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BVXe… News Wrap: Trump touts USMCA trade deal at signing ceremony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IUnH… How China is responding to rapid spread of novel coronavirus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIROm… The challenge traumatic brain injury poses for U.S. troops https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAa8c… Australians rush to rescue wildlife imperiled by bushfires https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDKyy… ‘Heart Berries’ author Terese Mailhot on reader questions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y73WI… Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Monday on the NewsHour, President
Trump’s legal team presents its defense in his Senate impeachment trial. Plus:
China’s coronavirus is still spreading as the city of Wuhan remains closed,
previewing Trump’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan, remembering the horror
of Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2020 Democrats in Iowa, Politics Monday with Amy Walter
and Tamara Keith and the world grieves Kobe Bryant. Stream your PBS favorites
with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode January 26, 2020
On this edition for Sunday, January
26, President Trump’s impeachment trial enters a second week, retired NBA
superstar Kobe Bryant dies in a helicopter crash, new limits in China amid a
widening coronavirus outbreak, Philadelphia’s famed Sigma Sound Studios lives,
and award-winning vocalist Shemekia Copeland brings the blues into the 21st
century. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with
the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode January 25, 2019
On this edition for Saturday,
January 25, President Trump’s legal team lays out their defense in the Senate
impeachment trial, the wind energy industry faces the loss of decades-old tax
incentives, the coronavirus continues to spread internationally, and one young
lion dancer is impacting the Chinese Lunar New Year. Hari Sreenivasan anchors
from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Friday on the NewsHour, House
impeachment managers complete their third and final day of arguments in
President Trump’s Senate trial. Plus: China’s new coronavirus outbreak
continues to spread as new U.S. cases are confirmed, a drug company CEO is
sentenced to prison for his role in prescribing deadly opioid drugs and the
NewsHour family remembers co-founder, anchor, mentor and friend Jim Lehrer.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
The extraordinary legacy and unique voice of Jim
Lehrer
It is impossible to quantify Jim
Lehrer’s influence on this news program, American journalism, presidential
debates or the lives of so many of us. He was an extraordinary journalist,
writer, collaborator and friend. Robert MacNeil, Lehrer’s NewsHour co-founder,
longtime Lehrer friend Justice Stephen Breyer and Sharon Percy Rockefeller,
president and CEO of WETA, join Judy Woodruff to remember him. Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Idlib is the last refuge for Syrians fleeing Assad —
and it is barely livable
The war in Syria has waged for
almost nine years and claimed millions of lives. Northwest Idlib province is
the last refuge for Syrians fleeing attacks by President Bashar al-Assad’s
regime. But the crowded, muddy refugee camps there offer little shelter or
support, and to the north, Turkey’s border is closed to those seeking better
conditions. Nick Schifrin reports on Idlib’s “fragile stability.” Stream your
PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
By 2050, the global population is
projected to reach 9.8 billion. How are we going to feed everyone?
Investment-banker-turned-farmer Stuart Oda points to indoor vertical farming:
growing food on tiered racks in a controlled, climate-proof environment. In a
forward-looking talk, he explains how this method can maintain better safety
standards, save money, use less water and help us provide for future
generations.
This talk was presented at a TED
Salon event given in partnership with Brightline Initiative. TED editors
featured it among our selections on the home page. Read more about TED Salons.
Learn more about indoor vertical farming by joining a community
engagement event in your area. Learn more ?
About TED Salon
TED Salons welcome an intimate
audience for an afternoon or evening of highly-curated TED Talks revolving
around a globally relevant theme. A condensed version of a TED flagship
conference, they are distinct in their brevity, opportunities for conversation,
and heightened interaction between the speaker and audience.
he average farmer in America makes
less than 15 cents of every dollar on a product that you purchase at a store.
They feed our communities, but farmers often cannot afford the very foods they
grow. In this actionable talk, social entrepreneur Mohammad Modarres shows how
to put your purchasing power into action to save local agriculture from
collapse and transform the food industry from the bottom up.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
How to build a more inclusive dinner
tableIn his first TED Talk, Mohammad
Modarres discusses why he produced the Shabbat Salaam interfaith dinner series,
where he premiered Interfaith Meat to help Muslim and Jewish communities eat
from the same plate.
There’s something amazing growing in
the city of Detroit: healthy, accessible, delicious, fresh food. In a spirited
talk, fearless farmer Devita Davison explains how features of Detroit’s decay
actually make it an ideal spot for urban agriculture. Join Davison for a walk
through neighborhoods in transformation as she shares stories of opportunity
and hope. “These aren’t plots of land where we’re just growing tomatoes
and carrots,” Davison says. “We’re building social cohesion as well
as providing healthy, fresh food.”
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Click looks at the battle for
self-driving car supremacy between the USA and China. Subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick
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BLANKENFELDE, GERMANY – APRIL 25: Worker bees surround a queen, who is marked with a yellow spot on her back, in the colony of beekeper Reiner Gabriel in the garden of his home near Berlin on April 25, 2013 in Blankenfelde, Germany. Local beekeepers claim their yearly loss rates within their bee populations has gone from an average of 10% per year to 30% per year over the last 10 years, though they are unsure whether the cause lies with a mite and a virus it might be spreading or with the increased use of certain pesticides by local farmers. According to a recent report prepared by Greenpeace seven pesticides currently in use in Europe present a real danger to bees. Bees are essential in nature in pollinating a wide variety of plants and trees. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The spring of 2008 was brutal for
Europe’s honeybees. In late April and early May, during the corn-planting
season, dismayed beekeepers in Germany’s upper Rhine valley looked on as whole
colonies perished. Millions of bees died. France, the Netherlands and Italy
reported big losses, but in Germany the incident took on the urgency of a
national crisis. “It was a disaster,” recalled Walter Haefeker, German
president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. “The government
had to set up containers along the autobahn where beekeepers could dump their
hives.”
An investigation in July of that year concluded that the bees in Germany
died of mass poisoning by the pesticide clothianidin, which can be 10,000 times more potent than DDT. In the months leading up to the bee crisis,
clothianidin, developed by Bayer Crop Science from a class of insecticides
called neonicotinoids, had been used up and down the Rhine following an
outbreak of corn rootworm. The pesticide is designed to attack the nervous
system of crop-munching pests, but studies have shown it can be harmful to
insects such as the European honeybee. It muddles the bees’ super-acute sense
of direction and upsets their feeding habits, while it can also alter the queen’s
reproductive anatomy and sterilise males. As contaminated beehives piled up,
Bayer paid €2m (£1.76m) into a compensation fund for beekeepers in the affected
area, but offered no admission of guilt.
The die-off
forced a reckoning among European farmers. Hundreds of studies examined the
safety of neonicotinoids, known as neonics, and their links to colony collapse
disorder (CCD), in which worker bees abandon the hive, leaving the queen and
her recent offspring unprotected, to starve. In 2013, the evidence led to a
landmark European commission ruling, imposing a moratorium on clothianidin and
two other major neonics – the world’s most popular pesticides. In April 2018,
Europe went a step further. The commission extended the ban on the trio of
neonics to virtually everywhere outside greenhouses, citing evidence that by
harming pollinating insects, neonics interfere with the pollination of crops to the value of €15bn a year. Environmentalists cheered the victory. Regulators
beyond Europe plan to follow.
For Haefeker at the beekeepers
association, who had spent years campaigning against the use of neonics,
victory was sweet, but short-lived: faced with multiple threats from modern
farming methods, beekeepers know the insecticide ban alone is not enough to
save the honeybee.
Honeybees originated in Eurasia
roughly 35m years ago, and as long as they have had steady access to flowering
plants, they have thrived. But in the modern world, bees face all kinds of
dangers. Colony collapse
is not a single malady, but rather an amalgamation of different challenges.
Alongside the dangers of pesticides, diseases such as Israeli acute paralysis
virus, gut parasites and invasive parasites such as the varroa mite can
overwhelm the bees’ immune systems. Industrial agriculture imposes its own
threats: a mania for monocultures has led to shrinking foraging habitats,
while, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, bees employed in
commercial pollination, in which hives are stacked high on trucks and driven
around the country to pollinate almond trees and other crops, get highly
stressed, which damages their resilience and eating habits.
Since the EU began phasing out
neonics, in 2014, the honeybees’ recovery has not been as dramatic as hoped.
Neonics are probably not the biggest factor in the demise of bees, but they are
the easiest to outlaw. To farmers, this seems outrageously unfair. Citing an
industry-funded study, they say the ban will cost the EU agriculture sector
€880bn annually in diminished crop yields.
Another, more controversial,
response to the slump in bee populations is in the works. This is the plan to
create a more resilient strain of honeybee – a genetically modified superbee.
The technology for creating GM honeybees is in its infancy, and still confined
to the laboratory. But, if successful, it could lead to a hardier species, one
that is resistant to natural and manmade hazards: viruses, varroa mites,
pesticides and so on. If we can’t change modern farming practices, the thinking
goes, maybe we should change the bees.
The prospect horrifies many bee
people – from commercial beekeepers such as Haefeker to passionate amateurs –
who see a lab-made superbee as a direct threat to the smaller, struggling bee
species. Traditional beekeepers have a name for them that expresses their fear
and suspicion: Frankenbees.
Like many beekeepers, Haefeker is an
activist and conservationist. A kind of bearded Lorax, Dr Seuss’s valiant
spokesman for threatened trees, Haefeker speaks for the bees. For much of the
past two decades, he has sounded the alarm on declining bee health, bringing
his message to lawmakers in Brussels, Berlin and Munich, before judges at the
European court of justice in Luxembourg, to investor roundtables in London, to
beekeeper conferences in Istanbul, Austria and Rome, and to corporate
gatherings of the agrichemical industry around Europe.
When we met in Bavaria a week after
the EU extended its neonics ban, I expected Haefeker to be in celebratory mood.
But over lunch at a favourite roadway tavern an hour outside Munich, he
explained that he considers the development of GM bees – however long it takes
to get them in production – an even greater threat to the humble honeybee. “I
don’t expect it to be commercialised next week, but then I don’t want to leave
anything up to chance,” Haefeker said. “The public has been pretty late on a
whole bunch of bad ideas. We don’t want to be late on this one.”
Some beekeepers worry that, if the
agriculture industry succeeds in building and patenting a blockbuster,
mite-free, pesticide-proof superbee, it would dominate and destroy the vibrant
local market in conventional bee strains. There are health fears, too: the
sting of GM bees may introduce new allergy risks. And beekeepers are afraid
they would not be able to protect the gene pool of traditional strains such as
the beloved Apis mellifera, the scientific name for the European
honeybee, against a dominant, pesticide resistant, lab-designed version.
Jay Evans heads the bee research lab
at the US Department of Agriculture, where they are looking at various threats
to bee health. Designing a truly pesticide-resistant honeybee, a “bulletproof
bee”, as Evans calls them, would “throw a lot of nature under the bus”.
It is always hive-like – 30C and
humid – in the narrow, windowless
laboratory where genetically engineered honeybees are created on the campus of
Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. One June day, three students
in T-shirts were on the morning shift. Two of them silently inspected plastic
honeycomb discs. Each disc contained 140 tiny plug holes, in each of which a
single honeybee embryo was growing. These discs were then passed to a third
student at a separate workstation, where, with remarkable dexterity, she injected
each egg with an sgRNA gene-manipulation solution, a main ingredient in a
revolutionary new gene-editing technique called Crispr-Cas9.
Crispr technology has transformed microbiology in recent years by allowing scientists
to copy a desirable part of the DNA strand and insert it directly into the
chromosome of the target specimen. Now, with great precision, scientists can remove
harmful mutations or unwanted traits, or insert a desired trait. In the US, you
can buy a Crispr apple that doesn’t brown. Medical researchers, meanwhile, see Crispr as a promising
route to making mosquitos resistant to the malaria parasite.
The director of the Düsseldorf lab
is Martin Beye, a giant in the field of evolutionary genetics. In 2003, Beye
and his colleagues were the first to pinpoint the gene variants, or alleles,
that determine the sex of honeybees. Three years later (coincidentally, just as
scientists determined the likely causes of colony collapse disorder), Beye and
an international team of biologists decoded the Apis mellifera honeybee
genome, a breakthrough that transformed the field of bee biology. Scientists
now have an understanding of bee health down to the chromosomal level, enabling
them, for example, to analyse precisely how pathogens and parasites affect
their bee hosts. Genomics can take much of the guesswork out of breeding, too,
revealing the precise gene markers that make stocks more resilient to stressors
and disease. Once the genome was cracked, it was only a matter of time before
the scientific community would build a designer bee. In 2014, Beye’s lab
claimed that crown.
The gene-injection method Beye’s
team pioneered, and laid out in their 2014 research paper,
is painstaking and fraught with risk. To demonstrate, a student motioned for me
to peer into her microscope. The faint outline of a tiny needle and its
intended target, the egg, came into focus. Magnified, the egg looked like a
smooth grey balloon, the kind performers at children’s parties tie into poodles
and giraffes. Poke the egg at the wrong angle, or with too much pressure, or
with an imprecise dosage, and it will pop. And the injection has to be stealthy
enough to leave no marks. If the worker bees, the hive’s fastidious caretakers,
sense in any way the pupae are not perfect, they cast them from the nest,
leaving them for dead. Only the pristine survive.
To increase the odds of success,
Beye’s team keep their injected embryos away from the workers at first,
incubating in an artificial hive. Only after 72 hours do they slip the fittest
of their modified larvae specimens into a queen-rearing colony. What happens
next is similar to the conventional queen-breeding method. The researchers
graft the larvae into cell cups lined with royal jelly, the nutrient rich
compound that young larvae gorge on to become queens. Even so, the workers, on
average, rejected three out of four mutant larvae. But the survival rate was
enough to guarantee the birth, in 2014, of the world’s first genetically
modified honeybee queens.
I was also shown the transgenic
queens. Up close, they looked vigorous, but unremarkable. The researchers
affixed a magenta-coloured ID tag to the queen’s back, between the base of her
wings. She mingled with ordinary worker bees in a small wooden nucleus hive.
The sides were made of a hard plastic for viewing. Beye’s research team told me
their transgenic bees behave no differently than any other Apis mellifera
honeybees. The queen and the workers covered every inch of their cramped
confines, popping in and out of a small well containing water. After a week or
so, the queen would be moved outside to a flight cage.
Beye’s researchers believe
manipulating the genome of the European honeybee will lead to new insights into
what makes this species unique – which genes make them such meticulous
groomers, or which genes programme the worker bees’ super-assiduous attention
to looking after their young. They want to know why bees are so good to each
other. Is this instinct to work tirelessly for the good of the hive something
learned, or genetic?
Beekeepers, dismayed at the prospect
of GM bees becoming a reality, made a huge fuss about Beye’s work. Many
suspected his lab was bankrolled by the agriculture industry, or “Big Ag”.
“The beekeeper associations … ” Beye
said, shaking his head in lingering disbelief. In person, he is affable and
professorial. “They thought we were working with Bayer. I mean, they’re very
close by: Bayer’s headquarters is maybe 20km from here.” He insisted inferences
of a Bayer connection were totally false.
Beye and Marianne Otte, his research
partner, explained that the purpose of their work was to understand the genetic
basis for bee behaviour and health. It was never to build a pesticide-resistant
bee. Building a GM bee, Beye said, is “a stupid idea”. The world doesn’t need
chemical-resistant bees, he says. It needs farming practices that don’t harm
bees. “They should be working on that. Not on manipulating the bee.”
But the truth is that Beye’s highly
detailed paper serves as a kind of blueprint for how to build a bee. Thanks to
research like his, and the emergence of tools such as Crispr, it has never been
cheaper or so straightforward for a chemical company to pursue a superbee
resistant to, say, the chemicals it makes. Takeo Kubo, a professor of molecular
biology at the University of Tokyo, was the second scientist in the world to
make a genetically modified bee in his lab. He told me that he, too, is focused
on basic research, and has no ties to the agriculture industry. But, unlike
Beye, he welcomes the prospect of GM bee swarms buzzing around the countryside.
Lab-made, pesticide-resistant bees could be a real saviour for beekeepers and
farmers, he says. And, he adds, the science is no more than three years away.
“I’m now 57 years old,” he told me via email, “and completely optimistic to see
such transgenic bees in the marketplace in my lifetime!”
It is not yet legal to release
genetically engineered bees into the wild, but the private sector is already
watching closely. One US startup contacted Beye’s lab offering to help
commercialise their breakthrough research. Beye said no.
Beekeepers tend to see the world
through the eyes of their bees. After a few hours in their presence, you too
begin to re-evaluate your surroundings. The monochrome sameness of our
farmlands – that vast, neat checkerboard of green and brown that feeds us
mammals so well – can be a desert for foraging pollinators. The shocking yellow
brilliance of rapeseed in blossom each spring can be a reservoir of pesticides.
Beekeepers have learned to mitigate the risks and adapt, mainly by moving their
hives around an ever-dwindling patch of safe zones. But the genetically
modified bee, which can breed with other species and looks just like bees
hand-raised from carefully chosen strains, is an altogether more dangerous
challenge.
Jay Evans at the US agriculture
department, an entomologist and beekeeper, admires Beye’s work, but thinks his
breakthrough GM bee should remain confined to the lab. “The road to making a superbee
looks really long to me, and probably not necessary,” he said. “I don’t see the
justification.”
Haefeker, a former tech
entrepreneur, came to beekeeping late in life,
around his 40th birthday. After spending two decades in Silicon Valley, he, his
wife and two sons returned home to Germany in 2001, settling in a picturesque
village on Lake Starnberg, halfway between Munich and the Bavarian Alps. What
started as a backyard hobby quickly became an obsession, then a growing
business. Haefeker studied everything about beekeeping, from hive maintenance
to nutrition. Later, he developed an iPhone app for breeders called iQueen and
started a podcast called Bienenpolitik,
or Beekeeping and Politics. One of the few tech-savvy beekeepers in bucolic
Upper Bavaria, in 2003 Haefeker was recruited to join the local professional
beekeepers association where second- and third-generation beekeepers routinely
grumbled about modern farming practices gobbling up open space. His first
assignment was to investigate an issue that nobody at the organisation knew
much about: GM crops. “I had no opinion of GMOs (genetically modified
organisms),” he recalls. “But as the new kid on the block it was my job to
figure out: is this going to have an impact on us?”.
Haefeker’s investigations into GMOs
turned into a decade-long crusade. What began as a local case involving a
Bavarian beekeeper with GMO-contaminated honey grew into an epic battle,
pitting Europe’s beekeepers against two giants: Monsanto, the biotech giant
that markets MON810, the pest-resistant genetically modified maize, and the
World Trade Organization, which, at the time, was pressuring the EU to give GM
crops a chance. The beekeepers eventually won a huge victory in 2011 in the European court of justice, keeping European honey,
for now, virtually GMO-free. The fight continues, but the beekeepers’ message
was clear: don’t underestimate us.
A beekeeper in California with his
hives. Photograph: Brett Murphy
The agrichemical companies’ business
model is to dominate both ends of the market. They sell the farmer the chemical
that kills the pests, and then they sell them their patented seeds, genetically
engineered to withstand those very chemicals. (Monsanto’s top-selling line of
Roundup Ready herbicide-resistant seeds are marketed as the best defence
against Roundup, Monsanto’s top-selling herbicide.) The multinationals have locked
farmers into contracts that prevent them from manipulating the seeds to develop
their own cross-breed.
Beekeepers fear genetic engineering
of honeybees will introduce patents and privatisation to one of the last
bastions of agriculture that is collectively managed and owned by no one.
“Think about it,” Haefeker told me, “the one area Big Ag doesn’t yet control is
pollination.” And pollination is huge. The UN’s Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) estimates that pollinators help farmers grow crops worth up to $577bn (£437bn)
annually.
Damage to the bee population, by
harming a vital pollinator, is already threatening crops worldwide. Outside
FAO’s headquarters in Rome, a neon billboard flashes in English, Italian and
Arabic a series of urgent save-the-planet messages. Save the bees tops the
list. If bees disappear, food crops and animal feeds, not to mention the raw
materials for biofuels (from canola and palm oil), textiles (cotton) and
medicines, will simply vanish from much of the planet. It has got so bad in some parts of China that humans already pollinate some crops by hand. In what
feels like a riff on a Black Mirror episode,
Harvard researchers are working on the RoboBee,
a flying robotic pollinator that is half the size of a paperclip and weighs
less than one-tenth of a gram. In March 2018, Walmart filed a series of patents for its own tiny robotic pollinators.
Beekeepers and conservationists
believe bees should be left to evolve on their own, helped only by protection
of open spaces and best-practice natural breeding methods. Conventional bee
breeding has embraced technology in recent years via the introduction of apps,
tracking software and temperature-controlled “finishing” incubators. But the
method is otherwise little changed from ancient times. During the year,
beekeepers will perform what they call “splitting the hive”, or separating a
portion of the colony, frame by frame, and putting the frames in new hives with
new inhabitants. This can invigorate the gene pool by introducing hardy
newcomers.
“Before the introduction of
neonicotinoids,” Haefeker said, “about 15 years ago, you’d open up the hive and
it was bursting with healthy bees. That level of reproductive energy is really
crucial.”
During 2008, Germany’s infamous
season of heavy colony losses, the dead piled up on the ground under Haefeker’s
hives and along the hive’s inner floor. “It’s got better in recent years, since
the bans went into place. But we’re not yet back to where we were in the days
before neonics,” he said. “That will take years.” He tests the spring pollen
for traces of neonics and other chemicals. The level of contamination is much
improved, he says. On his property in Bavaria, he offered me a pinch of raw
pollen. The sharp, sweet taste lingered on my tongue. I peered down to get a
good look at the workers entering one of the hives. They streamed in one by
one, their thighs weighed down with yellow balls of dandelion pollen. “It’s
good, isn’t it?” Haefeker chuckled proudly.
By late July, cracks had appeared in
the new neonics law. More than a dozen EU member states sought loopholes to stay the ban, and Bayer pledged to appeal against its legal basis, warning that the ban would limit
our ability to grow the quantities of “safe, affordable” food we need.
Despite the setback, Haefeker
remains defiant. “Their business model is obsolete,” he told me on the phone in
July 2018. The “big six” companies of Big Ag are in the process of merging into
three, forming Bayer-Monsanto, Dow-DuPont and Syngenta-ChemChina. This historic,
quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar spending spree is a sign of market uncertainty,
Haefeker asserts, not strength. The future, he says, is big data. Sensor- and
computer-assisted crop care – digital crop protection, as it is known, in which
tiny robots and drones will tend to rows and rows of crops round the clock,
picking off pests and releasing super-precise flows of irrigation – will feed
the planet’s billions, not chemicals. “I’ve been telling them this for years.”
However ground down by Haefeker’s
tireless advocacy for bees they may be, Bayer officials told me they largely
concur with his view that the industry is beginning to grow less reliant on
chemicals, and investing more in big data and tiny robots. They even let
Haefeker in the building from time to time to discuss that digital future.
Humans have been consuming honey since our hunter-gatherer days. Not long after we began
farming, we started keeping bees (sugar came several millennia later). About
10,000 years ago artists depicted apiculture on the walls of Spanish caves, and, centuries after that,
demand for bees wax and honey drove commerce across the empires of ancient
Greece and Rome. In the 20th century, apiology, the study of bees, took off. In
the 1920s, Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch was the first to explain the
meaning of the honeybees’ waggle dance, which communicates to other bees the
direction and distance of a food source; a half-century later he won the Nobel
Prize. Honeybees are eusocial creatures, making them one of the most studied
insects on the planet. Researchers study the species to understand how the human brain works and to improve the design of supercomputers. Bees, it
turns out, can even do abstract maths.There are 22 million beekeepers across 146 countries,
estimates Apimondia, a 123-year-old organisation that protects and promotes the
livelihood of beekeepers, and lately they have been seeing a dramatic rise in
membership. “During a downturn in the economy of a country, the number of new
members increases,” Philip McCabe, an Irish beekeeper and president of
Apimondia, told me. The media attention around colony collapse and bee health
continues to bring in new members as well.
In October 2017, Haefeker delivered a presentation at Apimondia’s International
Apicultural Congress in Istanbul, unveiling Apimondia’s answer to Frankenbees.
Like Haefeker himself, the fix he proposes is geeky and left-leaning: an open-source license for honeybees. A software engineer, he takes inspiration from the free
software movement of the 1980s and 90s, which gave birth to the “open source”
concept. Now, he sees such a licence promoting open collaboration as the
perfect model to protect the beekeepers from a nightmare scenario – powerful
corporations building a genetically engineered bee that they then commercialise
and lock down with patents and trademarks.
In his opening remarks, Haefeker
launched into what he called “the big question”. “Did anybody ask our
permission before they took our bees, the bees we have been working on,
selecting and breeding within Apimondia, before the scientists decided to take
these bees and modify them?” The answer was, of course, no. Until that moment,
nobody, not even beekeepers, claimed an ownership stake on the bees’ genetic
code. Anyone can start a hive, which might explain why you can find beekeepers
tending to hives in Yemeni war zones, on the roof of Paris’ Bastille opera house and in Tanzanian refugee camps. The free exchange of breeding materials – from the queens
and her eggs to the drones’ sperm – has long been encouraged to keep colonies
genetically diverse. Through this free exchange, we preserve a common resource,
benefitting everyone and everything. The beekeepers get healthier colonies out
of the arrangement. We get flowers, food and honey.
To get around any attempt by the
agriculture industry to distribute and license superbees, Apimondia is seeking
to enshrine this freedom as a right in the form of an open-source contract,
establishing bee breeding as a public good that nobody can own outright.
“This is the most efficient way to
legally protect our bees from patenting and privatisation by commercial
interests,” Haefeker insists. Later, he told me, “we don’t want to get screwed,
the way farmers did by corporations and their GM patented seeds.”
Apimondia has minuscule lobbying
resources, but it has lined up powerful allies, including the FAO,
environmental NGOs and scientific advisers. Together, they press for
international treaties to protect vital pollinators. Now Apimondia, too, is
sounding the alarm on GM honeybees. Radical bee-breeding experiments don’t
always end well, McCabe reminded me. Beekeepers won’t soon forget the story of
the Africanised bee, a cross-breed between the African bee and European strains
introduced in South America in the 1950s. It escaped quarantine, mated with
indigenous species and then multiplied and multiplied, venturing thousands of
miles north into the US, breeding with local species and quickly coming to
dominate their gene pool. It landed the unfortunate, even nativist, nickname
“African killer bee” for the aggressive manner in which it defends its nest.
“That’s what we’re concerned with,” McCabe says, “any inter-breeding that
messes with the genetics of indigenous bee populations.”
Jay Evans keeps bees on the grounds
of his job at the USDA, at the government research facility in Maryland, 30
minutes north of Washington DC. I contacted him by phone and asked how things
were going.
“Terribly,” he said with a wry
laugh. “The losses have doubled in the last 10 years.” He blames a host of
factors, with disease and parasites such as the varroa mite chief among them.
Beekeepers, he added, are closely watching what happens next in Europe. “I go
to beekeepers’ meetings all the time. They’re suffering. They’re trying to keep
their operations afloat. They’re desperate for a new solution, or technology,
or regulation. Anything,” he says. But there’s consensus on what they don’t
want. “When I talk to a group, I talk a lot about genetics. And occasionally
they’ll say: ‘Are you making a transgenic bee, one of those Frankenbees?’”
Haefeker and his business partner, Arno Bruder, run their beekeeping enterprise on a field bordering
two organic farms in Upper Bavaria. Their colonies have recovered somewhat
since the neonics ban went into effect, he said, but they take steps to protect
their hives. A lot of beekeepers pack their hives on to trailers and position
them near nature reserves or in fields like the one in which we stood. “Over
time you learn where you have the worst exposure to whatever it is that harms
the bees,” Haefeker said.
He pulled out a frame to reveal a
queen. Like an awkward commuter on the tube, she brushed up against every
inhabitant near her as she made her way from one end of the frame to the other.
The jostling has a purpose; it reassures the cavorting masses. “It’s the
queen’s pheromones,” he explained. It makes them relaxed and productive. “The
pheromones affect us beekeepers, too.” He says he plans to harness this
anti-stress essence and build a kind of a bee-powered wellness centre on the
two-hectare property. I pictured Munich’s pampered classes soaking up queen-bee
pheromones in a lodge in the hills around Lake Starnberg. A moment later,
Haefeker put the frame back, closed the lid, and surveyed his hives with
satisfaction. He and Bruder then discussed what’s next.
Keeping bees safe from pesticides is
labour-intensive and requires specialist local knowledge. Bruder agreed to wake
before dawn the following morning and pack up some of the hives, load them on
to a trailer and drive the bees to higher ground. They had decided on a region
in the foothills of the Alps, about an hour away, near the Wieskirche,
an 18th-century church on the Unesco world heritage list. There would be fresh
dandelion flowers up there. The bees would be further away from intensive
agriculture, said Haefeker. “We’ve scouted out the locations.”
Meanwhile, it is possible that
humankind has even more extreme designs on bees. In October 2018, Haefeker sent
me a message pointing to something called Insect Allies, a $45m
research project sponsored by Darpa, the US Department of Defense’s military research
department. It proposes using insects to carry immune-boosting mutations
designed to protect crops from drought, flooding, pathogens and bioweapons. In
essence, the visiting insects would modify the plant’s genetic makeup. A group
of academics from universities in Germany and France declared the programme’s
existence alarming, saying it turns the insects themselves into bioweapons.
Darpa does not say what kind of
insects it plans to use, but Haefeker did not like the sound of it. “We need to
keep an eye on this craziness,” his text read, “in case they want to use bees
to transport their genetically modified viruses into crops.”
This article was originally
published on October 16, 2018, by The Guardian, and is republished here with
permission.
Bricks Alive! Scientists Create Living Concrete
“A Frankenstein material” is teeming
with — and ultimately made by — photosynthetic microbes. And it can reproduce.
Wil Srubar, left, a structural
engineer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and materials science and
engineering PhD student, Sarah Williams, holding bricks of building matter made
from cyanobacteria and other materials.Credit…CU Boulder College of
Engineering & Applied Science
By Amos Zeeberg Jan. 15, 2020
For centuries, builders have been making
concrete roughly the same way: by mixing hard materials like sand with various
binders, and hoping it stays fixed and rigid for a long time to come.
Now, an interdisciplinary team of
researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has created a rather
different kind of concrete — one that is alive and can even reproduce.
Minerals in the new material are
deposited not by chemistry but by cyanobacteria, a common class of microbes
that capture energy through photosynthesis. The photosynthetic process absorbs
carbon dioxide, in stark contrast to the production of regular concrete, which
spews huge amounts of that greenhouse gas.
Photosynthetic bacteria also give
the concrete another unusual feature: a green color. “It really does look like
a Frankenstein material,” said Wil Srubar, a structural engineer and the head
of the research project. (The green color fades as the material dries.)
Other researchers have worked on
incorporating biology into concrete, especially concrete that can heal its own
cracks. A major advantage of the new material, its creators say, is that
instead of adding bacteria to regular concrete — an inhospitable environment —
their process is oriented around bacteria: enlisting them to build the
concrete, and keeping them alive so they make more later on.
The new concrete, described
Wednesday in the journal Matter, “represents a new and exciting class of low-carbon,
designer construction materials,” said Andrea Hamilton, a concrete expert at
the University of Strathclyde, in Scotland.
To build the living concrete, the
researchers first tried putting cyanobacteria in a mixture of warm water, sand
and nutrients. The microbes eagerly absorbed light and began producing calcium
carbonate, gradually cementing the sand particles together. But the process was
slow — and Darpa, the Department of Defense’s speculative research arm and the
project’s funder, wanted the construction to go very quickly. Necessity,
happily, birthed invention.
An arch made from living building
materials in Dr. Srubar’s lab.Credit…CU Boulder College of Engineering &
Applied Science
Dr. Srubar had previously worked
with gelatin, a food ingredient that, when dissolved in water and cooled, forms
special bonds between its molecules. Importantly, it can be used at moderate
temperatures that are gentle on bacteria. He suggested adding gelatin to
strengthen the matrix being built by the cyanobacteria, and the team was
intrigued.
The researchers bought Knox brand
gelatin at a local supermarket and dissolved it in the solution with the
bacteria. When they poured the mixture into molds and cooled it in a
refrigerator, the gelatin formed its bonds — “just like when you make Jell-O,”
Dr. Srubar said. The gelatin provided more structure, and worked with the
bacteria to help the living concrete grow stronger and faster.
After about a day, the mixture
formed concrete blocks in the shape of whatever molds the group used, including
two-inch cubes, shoe box-size blocks and truss pieces with struts and cutouts.
Individual two-inch cubes were strong enough for a person to stand on, although
the material is weak compared to most conventional concretes. Blocks about the
size of a shoe box showed potential for doing real construction.
“The first time we made a big
structure using this system, we didn’t know if it was going to work, scaling up
from this little-bitty thing to this big brick,” said Chelsea Heveran, a former
postdoc with the group — now an engineer at Montana State University — and the
lead author of the study. “We took it out of the mold and held it — it was a
beautiful, bright green and said ‘Darpa’ on the side.” (The mold featured the
name of the project’s funder.) “It was the first time we had the scale we were
envisioning, and that was really exciting.”
When the group brought small samples
to a regular review meeting with officials from Darpa, they were impressed, Dr.
Srubar said: “Everyone wanted one on their desk.”
Stored in relatively dry air at room
temperature, the blocks reach their maximum strength over the course of days,
and the bacteria gradually begin to die out. But even after a few weeks, the
blocks are still alive; when again exposed to high temperature and humidity,
many of the bacterial cells perk back up.
The group can take one block, cut it
with a diamond-tipped saw, place half back in a warm beaker with more raw
materials, pour it in a mold, and begin concrete formation anew. Each block
could thus spawn three new generations, yielding eight descendant blocks.
The Department of Defense is
interested in using the reproductive ability of these “L.B.M.s” — living
building materials — to aid construction in remote or austere environments.
“Out in the desert, you don’t want to have to truck in lots of materials,” Dr.
Srubar said.
The blocks also have the advantage
of being made from a variety of common materials. Most concrete requires virgin sand that comes from
rivers, lakes and oceans, which is
running short worldwide, largely because of the enormous demand for concrete.
The new living material is not so picky. “We’re not pigeonholed into using some
particular kind of sand,” Dr. Srubar said. “We could use waste materials like
ground glass or recycled concrete.”
The research team is working to make
the material more practical by making the concrete stronger; increasing the
bacteria’s resistance to dehydration; reconfiguring the materials so they can
be flat-packed and easily assembled, like slabs of drywall; and finding a
different kind of cyanobacteria that doesn’t require the addition of a gel.
Eventually, Dr. Srubar said, the
tools of synthetic biology could dramatically expand the realm of
possibilities: for instance, building materials that can detect and respond to
toxic chemicals, or that light up to reveal structural damage. Living concrete
might help in environments harsher than even the driest deserts: other planets, like Mars.
“There’s no way we’re going to carry
building materials to space,” Dr. Srubar said. “We’ll bring biology with us.”
Indonesian artist Ono
Gaf works primarily with metallic junk reclaimed from a trash heap to create
his animalistic sculptures. His most recent piece is this giant turtle
containing hundreds of individual metal components like car parts, tools, bike
parts, instruments, springs, and tractor rotors. You can read a bit more about
Gaf over on the Jakarta Post, and see more of this turtle in this set of photos by Gina Sanderson. (via Steampunk Tendencies)
turtle gliding through the ocean.
The wooden work is composed of over six hundred parts which allow the creature
to elegantly tilt its fins, move its body up and down, and even crane its head
as if rising above the water for air. A single crank controls the complex
structure of gears and mechanisms which were designed to flow as organically as
possible.
“A non-trivial amount of time was
spent watching and studying videos of turtles swimming,” explains Hugger.
“Getting the motions of Carapace to closely resemble the motions of real
turtles was a true challenge. Countless hours were spent refining the
sculpture’s motion to be as lifelike as possible, even before any mechanisms
were developed to drive those motions.”
Hugger has also developed a hummingbird in addition to several abstract wood sculptures. You can
see these works in action on his website and Youtube.
Make your own! Woodworking plans are
available at http://www.derekhugger.com/carapace.html Carapace is a wooden kinetic sculpture that simulates the
motion of a sea turtle swimming. A complex series of mechanisms allows Carapace
to swim up and down, tilt forward or back, and even lift its head up for a
breath of air. As each mechanism is carefully linked to the next, each of
Carapace’s flowing motions are driven by turning a single crank. For more
videos and photos of Carapace, check out: https://www.facebook.com/derekhuggerk… The music is “Morning Mist” by Marika Takeuchi.
U-Ram Choe: New Urban Species is on
view at the Frist Center through May 16, 2010. Korean artist U-Ram Choes
kinetic sculptures are made of delicately curved sections of wrought metal,
joined together in movable parts that are driven by motors to expand, contract,
or otherwise suggest the autonomic motions of such primitive life forms as
plants and single-celled aquatic creatures. The intricate workmanship and
graceful movements of these mechanical sculptures offer viewers an unparalleled
visual delight.
Korean artist U-Ram Choe lives and
works in Seoul where he creates highly ornate kinetic that mimic forms and
motions found in nature. Choe uses various metals, motors, gears, and custom
CPU boards to control the precise motions of each sculpture that are at times
perfectly synchronized and other times completely random. With names like “Unicus
– cavum ad initium” and “Arbor Deus Pennatus” it’s clear the artist
treats each new work like a brand new species.
The artworks are so complex each
“organism” is shipped with a manual to show collectors and galleries how to
maintain and fix various components. Choe tells the Creator’s Project in one of the videos above how some of the works in his
studio live a complete lifecycle where they are at first born and put on
display, but after time begin to degrade as certain parts stop working.
Eventually he raids old artworks for parts and uses them to build new ones.
Watch the videos above to see a good
sampling of his work both old and new, and he has a huge archive of videos for
nearly 50 artworks over on Vimeo.
Directed and animated
by Hideki Inaba, this dense and intensely beautiful
music video was created for the track Slowly Rising, off the album Full
Circle by BEATSOFREEN. The 3-minute animation features an
unceasing barrage of seemingly infinite creatures, hybrids of flora and fauna,
that swarm and multiply in space like schools of fish or flowers in a field.
(via prosthetic knowledge)
Official music video for BEATSOFREEN ” Slowly Rising”
“Slowly Rising” suggested
to me the image of the sun.
A seed was born beneath the sun, the
source of all existence.
The seed absorbed the light. It created more seeds like itself, gradually
increasing in number.
Time passed, but still their numbers
slowly continued to rise,
and before long they were quietly swallowed up by their own shadows.
After everything that had lived had
perished, nothing but an empty world remained.
There, once again, an environment where the next living things could grow
silently began to spread.
PBS News: Jan 12 – 8, 2020, What’s in the $1.4 trillion federal
spending bill, This Paris program helps refugees tell their stories through art
TED Talks: Colette Pichon
Battle climate change will displace millions here’s how we prepare? And Kelsey Leonard
Why lakes and rivers should have the same rights as humans
Scientific American: To Stop Wildlife Crime,
Conservationists Ask Why People Poach
BBC Click: Best Of 2019, Tim Peake Talks Life In Space
On this edition for Sunday, January
12, the Trump administration defends a U.S. drone strike against Iran, House
Democrats prepare to deliver impeachment articles this week, and the Latin
Grammy-winning singer Concha Buika continues to defy genres with an eclectic
mix of musical styles and languages. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
PBS NewsHour Weekend full episode January 11, 2020
On this edition for Saturday, January
11, Iran says the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane last week was “human
error,” an influx of migrants attempting to head to the U.S. are stuck in
limbo in Mexico amid shifting immigration policies, and neuroscientist Daniel
Levitin explores how to age successfully. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New
York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Before leaving town for the
holidays, lawmakers came together to pass a huge federal spending bill that
illuminates the government’s policy priorities for 2020. The deal allocates a
total of $1.4 trillion to the military, education, a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico
border and much more. Lisa Desjardins joins Nick Schifrin to discuss where
American tax dollars will be going this year. Stream your PBS favorites with
the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
For years, refugees from the Middle
East and Africa have sought shelter in Europe, igniting debates there about
immigration, asylum and changing culture. But one Paris program has been using
the lens of art to help some of these refugees find community in France — and
to try to change the conversation around their plight. Jeffrey Brown reports.
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Scientists predict climate change
will displace more than 180 million people by 2100 — a crisis of “climate
migration” the world isn’t ready for, says disaster recovery lawyer and
Louisiana native Colette Pichon Battle. In this passionate, lyrical talk, she
urges us to radically restructure the economic and social systems that are
driving climate migration — and caused it in the first place — and shares how
we can cultivate collective resilience, better prepare before disaster strikes
and advance human rights for all.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Learn more about the Gulf South for a Green New Deal policy
platform.
Water is essential to life. Yet in
the eyes of the law, it remains largely unprotected — leaving many communities
without access to safe drinking water, says legal scholar Kelsey Leonard. In
this powerful talk, she shows why granting lakes and rivers legal
“personhood” — giving them the same legal rights as humans — is the
first step to protecting our bodies of water and fundamentally transforming how
we value this vital resource.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Learn more about the Navajo Water Project and how you can support the
work of Dig Deep to bring water and sanitation access to families across the
Navajo Nation.
Learn more about the efforts of Indigenous youth to promote Indigenous
water governance by bringing together diverse Indigenous water initiatives,
increasing access to knowledge, connections, information and approaches.
Most people imprisoned in Nepal for
wildlife crime share two things in common: they did not understand the
seriousness of their offense, and they had little conception of how profoundly
it would impact not only their lives but also the lives of their families. In
interviews with more than 100 people convicted of illegally killing or trapping
wildlife, researchers found some lost their businesses and land following their
imprisonment. A dozen men’s wives left them. Many respondents’ children had to
drop out of school, and family members of some took jobs in other countries to
survive. One man’s daughter found herself unable to marry because of the stigma
of his crime, and another said his mother committed suicide out of shame.
“People really underestimate the
risk of getting arrested and all of the social harm that comes from that
punishment,” says Kumar Paudel, who led the research and is co-founder and
director of Greenhood Nepal, a science-driven nonprofit organization that
focuses on the human dimensions of conservation. He is also a graduate student
in conservation leadership at the University of Cambridge.
Paudel and his colleagues uncovered
these gaps in awareness of the punishments for poaching as part of an effort to
better understand the motivations of, and impacts on, the people who are
arrested and prosecuted for wildlife crime. Such information is critical for
designing effective deterrent strategies yet is often lacking, despite the
hundreds of millions of dollars governments and nonprofits have poured into
combatting the illegal wildlife trade worldwide.
The researchers also took their findings, published
Friday in Conservation Science and Practice, a step further: they teamed
up with a well-known local musician to create awareness-raising songs that
share key messages from their study. They hope this effort will ultimately
benefit both people and wildlife. “I don’t think scientists should wait for decision
makers to come and read their paper,” Paudel says. “They should find ways to
inform policy and undertake conservation interventions on the ground.”
Prakash Gandharva performing “Ban Ko
Katha” at Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal. Credit: Kumar Paudel
“Full
Force” Crime Fighting
Nepal takes its antipoaching efforts
very seriously, particularly for charismatic megafauna such as tigers and
rhinoceroses, which receive the majority of global conservation funding and
attention. Nearly 7,000 military personnel patrol the country’s protected
areas, and wildlife-crime-related arrests increased more than eightfold between
2009 and 2014. Official data now report around 2,000 such arrests annually, and
these efforts do seem to be helping. Nepal celebrated zero rhino poaching for the
first time in 2011 and has repeated that achievement several times since. Yet
the possible social harms of the nation’s militarized conservation approach
have gone unexplored. “This is a country that’s going full force, but we don’t
know who they’re going full force against,” says Jacob Phelps, an environmental
social scientist at Lancaster University in England and senior author of the
new study.
Paudel, who has worked in
conservation in his native Nepal since 2010, wanted to tackle this question to
help develop targeted, fairer ways to combat poaching. Starting in 2016, after
securing special permission from the government, he visited seven prisons
across the country. He persuaded 116 people who had poached primarily rhinos
but also tigers, red pandas and other species to speak with him. Paudel
says it helped that he came from a similar rural background as most of the
interviewees, 99 percent of whom were men.
Their answers offer nuance to
experts’ understanding of the problem. Most respondents were from poor
backgrounds, but surprisingly, nearly 90 percent of them said they resorted to
breaking the law to make some extra money—not to meet basic economic and
nutritional needs. “A really popular narrative in conservation is that poor
people poach, but this overlooks other motivations by just blaming poverty,”
Paudel says. A lack of awareness also factored in the decision to do so, he
found. More than 90 percent of the interviewees said they knew wildlife
poaching and trade were illegal, but just 30 percent understood the steep
penalties involved, such as the possibility of a five- to 15-year prison
sentence. Nearly half of the respondents said their imprisonment had negatively
impacted their families’ livelihood, their children’s education or both.
Communities near protected areas
have been particularly affected. For example, more than 20 percent of inmates
in one prison near Chitwan National Park were jailed for wildlife crime,
compared with about 3 percent of Nepal’s total prison population. “That’s
mind-boggling, especially if you consider that many people are from the same
communities that were originally expropriated” from their land to make way for
the park, Phelps says. “We’re hitting them twice. That’s a huge social cost.”
Basudev Dhungana, who lives near
Chitwan and is former chair of the Mrigakunja Bufferzone User Committee (which
works with communities to use park revenue for local development), says he has
seen firsthand the impacts described in the study. He knows several people who
have been arrested for poaching, most of them heads of families. “Their arrest
affects the livelihood of the family and education of their children,” he says.
“Further, it affects the family’s prestige and dignity in society, because they
are seen as a family of poachers.”
According to Annette Hübschle, a
criminologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, who was not
involved in the Nepal research but has interviewed rhino poachers in South
Africa and Mozambique, the study provides “important, novel perspectives” on
the motivations, drivers and impacts of people who engage in wildlife crime in
Nepal. Yet she would have liked to see a deeper analysis on whether historical
injustices, land evictions and political marginalization motivated people to
retaliate or seek to reclaim land perceived as unfairly taken from them.
Hübschle also wonders whether offenders agree or disagree with antipoaching
rules. In southern Africa, for example, some communities contest the illegality
of poaching, pointing out that hunting was their right prior to colonization.
In Nepal, she says, “future research might want to explore this in more
detail.”
Maheshwar Dhakal, joint secretary of
Nepal’s Ministry of Forests and Environment, also believes the findings are
important for shining a light on the reasons why individuals in the nation
poach. While enforcement is necessary to curtail “greedy people who would like
to be rich overnight,” he says, education would go a long way toward stopping
others who are simply unaware of the seriousness of wildlife crime.
Singing
to Stop Poaching
Paudel and Phelps agree that
education could make a crucial difference on the ground, and they both say they
felt a responsibility to act on their findings. They launched a fellowship program between Greenhood Nepal and
Lancaster University to provide more opportunities to young Nepalese
conservationists. Paudel also initiated a collaboration with a musician from
the Gandharva ethnic group, whose traveling troubadours are famous in Nepal for
their sorrowful ballads, played on a stringed instrument called a sarangi.
Paudel wrote five songs based on his interviews. In “Shameful Name,” for
example, a farmer in prison for poaching recounts how greed led to the loss of
his freedom and his family’s dignity and implores the listener not to make the
same mistake.
The songs are now available online as music videos and are being played on
the radio and performed live in communities across Nepal. Paudel says more than
1,000 people have already seen the performances, and some were moved to tears.
“Music is one of the simplest ways to communicate,” he says. “Even illiterate
people can understand our songs.”
Dhungana attended a performance and
agrees people responded well to it. “We all love the sarangi music,” he says.
“This is a simple and an innovative approach to make communities aware of
wildlife conservation.” He wonders, though, whether his neighbors will actually
retain the songs’ messages over the long term. What’s really needed, he says,
is for the government to invest not only in conservation enforcement but also
in education and employment opportunities for communities near national parks.
“Local people should be empowered to take advantage of the potential for
conservation tourism and nature-based enterprises,” Dhungana says. “I think
people will poach less if they get significant benefits from conservation.”
Rachel Nuwer is a freelance
journalist and author of Poached: Inside the Dark World of Wildlife
Trafficking (Da Capo Press, 2018). She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The biggest tech stories and trends
of 2019, including space travel, electric cars, 5G and the increased use by the
police of facial recognition. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find
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A longer cut of Spencer Kelly’s
interview with British astronaut Tim Peake. Peake spent over 185 days in space
as part of a mission for the European Space Agency. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find
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The Samphran district
of Thailand holds one of the most unique Buddhist temples found in the country. The bright pink temple, called Wat Samphran, stands 17-stories high and is wrapped
in a scaly green dragon. The design of the structure came to the founder of the
temple during a 7-day fasting meditation, and is built 80 meters tall to honor
the number of years that Buddha lived.
Visitors can climb the great
building and touch the dragon’s beard or large talons from an access point on
the roof. You can get a 360 perspective on the gigantic temple in the Great Big Story video
below.
In the Samphran district of Thailand
sits one of the country’s most spectacular Buddhist temples. Wat Samphran is a
towering pink masterpiece scaling in at 80 meters high — an homage to the
number of years Buddha lived. Known for the hollow dragon’s head that encircles
the temple, visitors are welcome to ascend the 17-story superstructure to touch
the dragon’s beard, or climb inside the belly of the beast. SUBSCRIBE: https://goo.gl/vR6Acb This
story is a part of our Planet Earth series. From mammals to insects and birds
to reptiles, we share this great big world with all manner of creatures, large
and small. Come with us to faraway places as we explore our great big planet
and meet some of its wildest inhabitants. Got a story idea for us? Shoot us an
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Art director Jonathan Bréchignac of Paris-based design studio Joe & Nathan has been working on a series of drawn
carpets using ballpoint Bic pens. The first four drawings were completed last year and were made to approximate the
size of Muslim prayer carpets. Bréchignac says the various designs and patterns
found in each piece were inspired by an amalgam of artistic forms and
influences:
Painstakingly detailed, it explores
different ways and patterns to create a unique whole with only a simple tool:
the “Less is more” precept. The inspiration comes from different types of art
(French roman, traditional Japanese, native American and Mexican) and also
military camouflage and animal patterns. Together they create a mix of
civilizations and religions bringing forth a new meaning to them.
Cyril Rolando is a French psychologist that produces
incredible digital art as a hobby “I like the universe of Tim Burton and Hayoa
Miyazaki. I use Photoshop CS2 and a wacom intuos 4M graphic tablet.”
PBS News: December 10 – 15.2019, Dec 6,2019 – Shields and Brooks on
impeachment evidence, Pelosi’s powerful moment, and Why is a Nobel-winning
human rights activist defending Myanmar on Rohingya atrocities?
BBC Click:
A Vision of The World In 2040, Inside
Taiwan’s Tech Industry,
Pocket Worthy: Stronger Than Steel, Able to Stop a Speeding
Bullet
Nobel Women’s Initiative: Time to break the silence – Nobel Laureates to Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Women’s Initiative Statement on the persecution of Rohingya women, and Meet The Laureates
The Atlantic: Top 25 news photos
2019 – A wounded Syrian girl awaits rescue from under the rubble
next to the body of her sister (hands visible at right), who did not survive a
regime bombardment in Khan Sheikhun in the southern countryside of the
rebel-held Idlib province, on February 26, 2019. Five months after this photo,
the Syrian photographer who took it, Anas Al-Dyab, was killed in an air strike
in Khan Sheikhun. Al-Dyab was also a member of the “White Helmets,” a
group of volunteers carrying out search-and-rescue efforts in Syria.
On this edition for Sunday, December
15, the House prepares for a historic impeachment vote, how the decline of
local news is impacting civic engagement, a new documentary sheds light on
Border Patrol expansion, and the Italian town of Riace went from being a haven
for migrants to becoming a relative ghost town. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from
New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
On this edition for Saturday,
December 14, the House gets one step closer to impeaching President Trump, a
peace deal in Afghanistan faces new challenges, and how illusionist Derren
Brown is pushing the boundaries of mentalism. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New
York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Friday on the NewsHour, the House
Judiciary Committee passes two articles of impeachment against President Trump,
along party lines. Plus: What’s in the first phase of a U.S.-China trade deal,
Mark Shields and David Brooks on impeachment and other political news, the
Sahara’s nomadic musicians and a new book about how racists and vandals are
distorting the American conversation via social media. Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Thursday on the NewsHour, a
contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing over the case for impeaching
President Trump. Plus: A high-stakes election in the United Kingdom, how
Congress is looking to lower prescription drug costs, an unusual effort to
erase Americans’ medical debt, whether living near trees is better for our
health and a Brief But Spectacular take on getting happier with age. Stream
your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
A longer cut of Spencer Kelly’s
interview with film-maker Damon Gameau, whose film 2040 is a more positive take
on how our world might look in 20 years’ time. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick
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We head to Taiwan to find out what
‘Made in Taiwan’ really means in the 21st century; from healthcare artificial
intelligence to solving the pollution crisis. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick
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Abstract background like slice of wood timber natural. Tree ring.
New techniques for “densifying” wood
can turn the ubiquitous substance into a super-material suitable for
constructing buildings and body armor. Photo by mack2happy / Getty Images .
Some varieties of wood, such as oak
and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and
inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger
than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys. Besides taking a star turn
in buildings and vehicles, the substance could even be used to make
bullet-resistant armor plates.
Wood is abundant and relatively
low-cost—it literally grows on trees. And although it has been used for
millennia to build everything from furniture to homes and larger structures,
untreated wood is rarely as strong as metals used in construction. Researchers
have long tried to enhance its strength, especially by compressing and
“densifying” it, says Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of
Maryland, College Park. But densified wood tends to weaken and spring back
toward its original size and shape, especially in humid conditions.
Now, Hu and his colleagues say they
have come up with a better way to densify wood, which they report
in Nature. Their simple, two-step process starts with boiling wood in a
solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium sulfite (Na2SO3), a chemical
treatment similar to the first step in creating the wood pulp used to make
paper. This partially removes lignin and hemicellulose (natural polymers that
help stiffen a plant’s cell walls)—but it largely leaves the wood’s cellulose
(another natural polymer) intact, Hu says.
The second step is almost as simple
as the first: Compressing the treated wood until its cell walls collapse, then
maintaining that compression as it is gently heated. The pressure and heat
encourage the formation of chemical bonds between large numbers of hydrogen
atoms and neighboring atoms in adjacent nanofibers of cellulose, greatly
strengthening the material.
The results are impressive. The
team’s compressed wood is three times as dense as the untreated substance, Hu
says, adding that its resistance to being ripped apart is increased more than
10-fold. It also can become about 50 times more resistant to compression and
almost 20 times as stiff. The densified wood is also substantially harder, more
scratch-resistant and more impact-resistant. It can be molded into almost any
shape. Perhaps most importantly, the densified wood is also moisture-resistant:
In lab tests, compressed samples exposed to extreme humidity for more than five
days swelled less than 10 percent—and in subsequent tests, Hu says, a simple
coat of paint eliminated that swelling entirely.
A five-layer, plywoodlike sandwich
of densified wood stopped simulated bullets fired into the material—a result Hu
and his colleagues suggest could lead to low-cost armor. The material does not
protect quite as well as a Kevlar sheet of the same thickness—but it only costs
about 5 percent as much, he notes.
The team’s results “appear to open
the door to a new class of lightweight materials,” says Ping Liu, a materials
chemist at the University of California, San Diego, unaffiliated with the Nature
study. Vehicle manufacturers have often tried to save weight by switching from
regular steel to high-strength steel, aluminum alloys or carbon-fiber
composites—but those materials are costly, and consumers “rarely make that
money back in fuel savings,” Liu says. And densified wood has another leg up on
carbon-fiber composites: It does not require expensive adhesives that also can
make components difficult, if not impossible, to recycle.
Densified wood provides new design
possibilities and uses for which natural wood is too weak, says Peter Fratzl, a
materials scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in
Germany who did not take part in the study. “Instead of creating a design for
the material at hand, researchers can create a material to suit the design they
want,” he says, alluding to a familiar process among aerospace engineers who
have a long history of developing ever-stronger alloys to meet their needs.
One possible obstacle to the
widespread use of densified wood will be engineers’ ability to scale up and
accelerate the process, Liu notes. Hu and his team spent several hours making
each coffee-table book–size slab of densified wood used for testing. But there
are no practical reasons the process could not be sped up or used to make
larger components, Hu contends.
Although Hu and his team have sought
to enhance wood’s strength, other researchers have pursued more unusual
goals—such as making it transparent. One team, led by materials scientist Lars
Berglund at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, has come up with
a way to make windowpanes of wood. The first step in that process (as in Hu’s)
is to remove lignin, a substance that not only stiffens wood but also creates
its brownish color. The researchers infuse the lignin-free wood with a polymer
called methyl methacrylate (MMA), a material better known by trade names such
as Plexiglas and Lucite.
Because MMA’s index of refraction (a
measure of how much it bends light) matches that of the lignin-free wood, rays
of light pass right through the MMA-infused composite instead of getting
bounced around inside empty cells. This renders the material remarkably clear.
Berglund and his team described their feat two years ago in Biomacromolecules. Coincidentally, at the same time Hu and his colleagues
were also developing a method
for rendering wood transparent.
Research like Hu’s and Berglund’s
can only add to the wild prospects for the future of materials science. Someday
soon it might be possible to live in a home made almost completely from one of
Earth’s most abundant and versatile building materials—from floors to rafters,
walls to windows. In the garage there may be a car whose chassis and bumpers
could be composed of densified wood rather than steel and plastic—knock on
wood.
Sid Perkins, who writes most often
about Earth and planetary sciences, materials science and paleontology, is
based in Crossville, Tenn.
E-cigarettes and vapes have exploded
in popularity in the last decade, especially among youth and young adults —
from 2011 to 2015, e-cigarette use among high school students in the US
increased by 900 percent. Biobehavioral scientist Suchitra Krishnan-Sarin
explains what you’re actually inhaling when you vape (hint: it’s definitely not
water vapor) and explores the disturbing marketing tactics being used to target
kids. “Our health, the health of our children and our future generations
is far too valuable to let it go up in smoke — or even in aerosol,” she
says.
This video was produced by TEDMED.
TED’s editors featured it among our daily selections on the home page.
Cigarettes aren’t good for us.
That’s hardly news — we’ve known about the dangers of smoking for decades. But
how exactly do cigarettes harm us, and can our bodies recover if we stop?
Krishna Sudhir details what happens when we smoke — and when we quit. [TED-Ed
Animation by TED-Ed].
Meet the educator
Krishna Sudhir · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
TED-Ed | September 2018
When you eat something loaded with
sugar, your taste buds, your gut and your brain all take notice. This
activation of your reward system is not unlike how bodies process addictive
substances such as alcohol or nicotine — an overload of sugar spikes dopamine
levels and leaves you craving more. Nicole Avena explains why sweets and treats
should be enjoyed in moderation. [Directed by STK Films, narrated by Michelle
Snow, music by Michael Dow].
Meet the educator
Nicole Avena · Educator
About TED-Ed
TED-Ed Original lessons feature the
words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators.
TED-Ed | January 2014
Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams
brings tough love to the dream of world peace, with her razor-sharp take on
what “peace” really means, and a set of profound stories that zero in
on the creative struggle — and sacrifice — of those who work for it.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
OPEN LETTER TO AUNG SAN SUU KYI:
STOP THE PERSECUTION OF ROHINGYAS
Dear State Counsellor and sister
Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,
In the years leading to your final
release in 2010, your struggle for democracy was ours. Your defiant activism
and unimaginable sacrifices profoundly inspired us, and like the rest of the
world, we held you as a beacon of hope for Burma and for our human family.
Along with other fellow laureates, we worked tirelessly and diligently for your
personal freedom.
It is thus with deep shock, sadness
and alarm that we witness your indifference to the cruelty inflicted upon the
Rohingya minority today. Nearly 270,000 people have sought refuge into
neighbouring Bangladesh these past two weeks, and a recent UN report
has highlighted an all too familiar story: extrajudicial executions; enforced
disappearance and arbitrary detention; rape, including gang rape, and other
forms of sexual violence. Arson attacks are being launched on civilians and
entire villages burnt, leading to what the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights calls “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. This is an
assault on our humanity as a whole.
As Nobel Laureates working under the
banner of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, we have supported the groundbreaking work and courage of
women activists inside and along the borders of Burma for a decade. Their
tireless activism consistently highlights abuses committed by the Burmese
military. Just last November
the Women’s League of Burma denounced the ferocious militarism that plagues
Burma: “[…] we are gravely concerned for the security of women in conflict
areas. It is urgently needed for the government to end impunity for
state-sponsored sexual violence, and bring the military under civilian
control”.
As a fellow Nobel Laureate, a
worldwide icon for the universal freedom and human rights, and now State
Counsellor and de-facto Prime Minister of Burma, you have a personal and moral
responsibility to uphold and defend the rights of your citizens.
How many Rohingya have to die; how
many Rohingya women will be raped; how many communities will be razed
before you raise your voice in defense of those who have no voice? Your
silence is not in line with the vision of “democracy” for your country that you
outlined to us, and for which we all supported you over the years.
As women committed to peace, as your
sisters and fellow Laureates, we urge you to take a firm stand on this
unfolding crisis: recognize Rohingyas as citizens with full rights and take all
expedited measures possible to end the persecution of innocent civilians by the
Myanmar authorities.
In the words of fellow Laureate
Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If the political price of your ascension to the
highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too
steep.” The time is now for you to stand for the rights of Rohingya people,
with the same vigour and conviction so many around the world stood for yours.
Sincerely,
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace
Laureate, (1976) – Northern Ireland
Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Laureate
(1997) – United States
Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Laureate
(2003) – Iran
Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Laureate
(2011) – Liberia
Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Peace
Laureate (2011) – Yemen
International Day for the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination March 21, 2019 – Parliament Hill, Ottawa
In March 2018, Nobel Women’s
Initiative conducted a fact-finding delegation in partnership with Bangladeshi
organizations, and met with over 100 Rohingya women in two refugee camps, in
Kutapalong and Thyankhali. Sexual violence is one of the largest atrocities
committed in Myanmar, and we were able to witness, firsthand, how women are
systematically targeted by the Myanmar military.
The vast majority of women who
testified to the delegation were rape survivors. They provided first-hand
accounts of the high-levels of violence they endured. An alarming majority of
these women identified their perpetrators as members of the Myanmar Army. They
were raped openly, in broad daylight by men in military apparel, often in
public or just outside their home.
One of our partners Razia Sultana,
a lawyer and researcher with the Kaladan Press
—a Rohingya press network— has documented over 300 cases of women and girls raped in August 2017 alone. This
only represents a fraction of the total number raped at this time.
Women have been detained, tortured,
mutilated and killed in military camps, with the clear authorization of
camp commanders. Rape, as we know, is a common tool for genocide, and in
Myanmar the mutilation of women’s bodies, breasts and genitals was deliberately
aimed to destroy the very means of reproduction of the Rohingya.
In 2018, the UN Fact-Finding mission
on Myanmar, interviewed over 800 rape survivors and concluded
there was a ‘very clear chain of command’ within the Myanmar Army. It called
for the country’s military leaders to be investigated and prosecuted for
‘genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.’
The Myanmar Army’s latest atrocities
against the Rohingya are not new, and must not be seen in isolation.
Nobel Women’s Initiative has worked with multiple ethnic women’s groups in
Burma over the past ten years who have been documenting these patterns for
decades.
These latest atrocities are a
continuation of a decades-long policy to divide-and-rule, occupy and control
the ethnic territories, and seize their rich natural resources and land. In
fact, Myanmar has recently passed amendments to the VFV law, making it easier
for villagers’ lands to be confiscated.
To this date, the Myanmar Army
continues to harass and torture Rohingya villagers inside Rakhine State, and
continues to launch attacks and commit war crimes– including sexual violence,
in Northern and Eastern Myanmar, with impunity.
As the only country to have formally
recognized the Rohingya genocide, Canada is in a unique position to lead the
international community towards justice and meaningful support for Rohingya
women.
We call on the Canadian Government
to:
Increase humanitarian assistance to women refugee
survivors in Bangladesh through local women’s organizations who have been
responding to their needs, and are best equipped to continue doing so;
Stop ‘business as usual’ with Myanmar. Canada should
suspend all investments and direct aid, and redirect support to local
civil society and women’s groups who are the real agents of change;
Use all avenues available under international law to
bring both individual perpetrators of the Rohingya genocide, and the State
of Myanmar, to justice.
After three of her sister’s children
were killed during the violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern
Ireland, Mairead Maguire organized massive demonstrations and other action
calling for a nonviolent end to the conflict. Along with Betty Williams, she is
the co-founder of Peace People, and together the two women won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1976. She has spent her life since then to bearing witness to
oppression and standing in solidarity with people living in conflict, including
most in Syria.
Together, they co-founded the Peace People,
a movement committed to building a just and peaceful society in Northern
Ireland. They organized each week, for six months, peace rallies throughout
Ireland and the UK. These were attended by many thousands of people – mostly
women, and during this time there was a 70% decrease in the rate of violence.
Mairead currently serves as Honorary President.
Since receiving the award, Mairead
has dedicated her life to promoting peace, both in Northern Ireland and around
the world. Working with community groups throughout Northern Ireland, political
and church leaders, she has sought to promote dialogue, nonviolence and
equality between deeply divided communities.
A graduate from Irish School of
Ecumenics, Maguire works with inter-church and interfaith organizations and is
a councilor with the International Peace Council. She is a Patron of the
Methodist Theological College, and Northern Ireland Council for Integrated
Education. She is also the author of The Vision of Peace: Faith and Hope in
Northern Ireland.
“If we want to reap the harvest
of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow the seeds of
nonviolence, here and now, in the present.”
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a Mayan
k’iche’ activist born in 1959 in Chimel, a small Mayan community in the
highlands of Guatemala. As a young girl, Rigoberta traveled alongside her
father, Vincente Menchú, from community to community teaching rural campesinos their
rights and encouraging them to organize.
In 1960, ethnic and socioeconomic
tensions engrained since colonization spurred a brutal civil war against the
Mayan people. The military dictatorship, under the leadership of Efraín
Ríos Montt, and rich landowners initiated the bloodshed. By the time a
peace agreement was signed in 1996, 450 Mayan villages were destroyed, over
200,000 Guatemalans murdered and 1 million were displaced.
Rigoberta and her family mobilized
Guatemalans during the war to denounce government-led mass atrocities.
Their activism came at a great cost. At a peaceful protest held at the Spanish
Embassy in Guatemala City in 1980, Rigoberta’s father and thirty-seven other campesino
activists were murdered in a fire. Not long after, the Guatemalan army tortured
and murdered Rigoberta’s brother and mother. At age 21, Rigoberta fled
into exile.
Rigoberta spoke publicly about the
plight of the Mayan people in Guatemala while in exile. In 1983 she published I,
Rigoberta Menchú and catapulted the civil war into global
headlines. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 in recognition
of her work for social justice and ethno-cultural reconciliation based on
respect for the rights of indigenous peoples. After receiving the
prize Rigoberta returned to Guatemala and established the Rigoberta Menchú Tum
Foundation (FRMT) to support Mayan communities and survivors of
the genocide as they seek justice. Rigoberta and the Foundation have been key
in advocating for justice in several high profile cases in Guatemala,
including the trial against former dictator Efrain Ríos
Montt in May 2013, the Spanish Embassy massacre in January
2015, and the case of 14 survivors of sexual violence in Sepur Zarco in February 2016.
Rigoberta ran for President of
Guatemala in 2007 and 2011 under the banner of WINAQ, the first indigenous-led
political party founded by herself. In 2013 the Autonomous National
University of Mexico (UNAM) appointed her as a Special Investigator within
its Multicultural Nation Program. She continues to seek justice for
all Mayan people impacted by the genocide.
“Only together can we move
forward, so that there is light and hope for all women on the planet.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Jody Williams received the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines through the International
Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the Peace Prize with her that year. At
that time, she became the 10th woman – and third American woman – in its almost
100-year history to receive the Prize. Since her protests of the Vietnam
War, she has been a life-long advocate of freedom, self-determination and human
and civil rights.
Like others who have seen the
ravages of war, she is an outspoken peace activist who struggles to reclaim the
real meaning of peace – a concept which goes far beyond the absence of armed
conflict and is defined by human security, not national security. Williams
believes that working for peace is not for the faint of heart. It
requires dogged persistence and a commitment to sustainable peace, built on environmental
justice and meeting the basic needs of the majority of people on our planet.
Since January of 2006, Jody Williams
has worked toward those ends through the Nobel Women’s Initiative, which she
chairs. Along with sister Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi of Iran, she
took the lead in establishing the Nobel Women’s Initiative. They were
joined at that time by sister Nobel Laureates Wangari Maathai (Kenya),
Rigoberta Menchú Tum (Guatemala) and Betty Williams and Mairead Maguire
(Northern Ireland). The Initiative uses the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize
and the influence and access of the women Nobel Laureates themselves to support
and amplify the efforts of women around the world working for sustainable peace
with justice and equality.
Since 1998, Williams has also served
as a Campaign Ambassador for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Beginning in early 1992 with two non-governmental organizations and a staff of
one – Jody Williams, she oversaw the Campaign’s growth to over 1,300
organizations in 95 countries working to eliminate antipersonnel landmines. In
an unprecedented cooperative effort with governments, UN bodies and the
International Committee of the Red Cross, she served as a chief strategist and
spokesperson for the ICBL as it dramatically achieved its goal of an
international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines during a diplomatic
conference held in Oslo in September 1997.
Williams continues to be recognized
for her contributions to human rights and global security. She is the recipient
of fifteen honorary degrees, among other recognitions. In 2004, Williams was
named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world in
the publication of its first such annual list.
She holds the Sam and Cele Keeper
Endowed Professorship in Peace and Social Justice at the Graduate College of
Social Work at the University of Houston where she has been teaching since
2003. In academic year 2012-2013, she became the inaugural Jane Addams
Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Social Justice at the University of Illinois
at Chicago.
Her memoir on life as a grassroots
activist, My Name is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to
the Nobel Peace Prize was released by the University of California Press in
early 2013.
“We must teach ourselves to
believe that peace is not a ‘utopian vision’, but a responsibility that must be
worked for each and every day.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Shirin Ebadi, J.D., was awarded the
2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote human rights, in particular,
the rights of women, children, and political prisoners in Iran. She is the
first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and only the fifth Muslim
to receive a Nobel Prize in any field.
Dr. Ebadi was one of the first
female judges in Iran. She served as president of the city court of Tehran from
1975 to 1979 and was the first Iranian woman to achieve Chief Justice status.
She, along with other women judges, was dismissed from that position after the
Islamic Revolution in February 1979. She was made a clerk in the court she had
once presided over, until she petitioned for early retirement. After obtaining
her lawyer’s license in 1992, Dr. Ebadi set up private practice. As a lawyer,
Dr. Ebadi has taken on many controversial cases defending political dissidents
and as a result has been arrested numerous times.
In addition to being an
internationally-recognized advocate of human rights, she has also established
many non-governmental organizations in Iran, including the Million Signatures
Campaign, a campaign demanding an end to legal discrimination against women in
Iranian law. Dr. Ebadi is also a university professor and often students
from outside Iran take part in her human rights training courses. She has
published over 70 articles and 13 books dedicated to various aspects of human
rights, some of which have been published by UNICEF. In 2004, she was
named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world.
In January 2006, along with sister
Laureate Jody Williams, Dr. Ebadi took the lead in establishing the Nobel
Women’s Initiative.
“Human rights is a universal
standard. It is a component of every religion and every civilization.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Leymah Gbowee received the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2011 for her work in leading a women’s peace movement that
brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Gbowee shared the
prize with fellow Liberian Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Yemen-native Tawakkol
Karman. Gbowee and Sirleaf became the second and third African women to win the
prize, preceded by the late Wangari Maathai of Kenya.
Leymah is the founder and president
of Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa based in Liberia. Her foundation provides
educational and leadership opportunities to girls, women and youth in West
Africa.
Leymah was born in central Liberia
in 1972. She was living with her parents and sisters in Liberia’s capital,
Monrovia, when the First Liberian Civil War erupted. She recalls clearly the
day the first Liberian civil war came to her doorstep. “All of a sudden one
July morning I wake up at 17, going to the university to fulfill my dream of
becoming a medical doctor, and fighting erupted.”
Witnessing the effects of war on
Liberians, she decided to train as a trauma counsellor to treat former child
soldiers.
A second civil war broke out in 1999
and brought systematic rape and brutality to an already war-weary Liberia.
Responding to the conflict, Leymah mobilized an interreligious coalition of
Christian and Muslim women and organized the Women of Liberia Mass Action for
Peace movement. Through Leymah’s leadership, thousands of women staged
pray-ins and nonviolent protests demanding reconciliation and the resuscitation
of high-level peace talks. The pressure pushed President Charles Taylor into
exile, and smoothed the path for the election of Africa’s first female head of
state, fellow 2011 Nobel Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Documenting these
efforts in the Tribeca Film Festival 2008 Best Documentary winner Pray the
Devil Back to Hell, Leymah demonstrated the power of social cohesion
and relationship-building in the face of political unrest and social turmoil.
In 2007, Leymah earned a Master’s
degree in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University in the
United States. Meanwhile, she continued to build women’s agency in fighting for
sustainable peace. She is a founding member and former coordinator for
Women in Peacebuilding/West African Network for Peacebuilding (WIPNET/WANEP).
She also co-founded the Women Peace and Security Network Africa (WIPSEN-Africa)
to promote cross-national peace-building efforts and transform women’s
participation as victims in the crucible of war to mobilized armies for peace.
Ever-focused on sustaining peace,
Leymah continued working on behalf of grassroots efforts in her leadership
positions. She served as a member of both the African Feminist Forum and the
African Women’s Leadership Network on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, and as a
commissioner-designate for the Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Through these positions, Leymah addressed the particular vulnerability of
women and children in war-torn societies.
In her current position as President
of Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, Leymah pushes for greater inclusion of women
as leaders and agents of change in Africa.
Since winning the Nobel Peace Prize,
Leymah travels internationally to speak about the pernicious and devastating
effects of war and gender-based violence. She has been featured on a number of international
television programmes including CNN, BBC and France24, and speaks
internationally advocating for women’s high level inclusion in
conflict-resolution. She has received several honorary degrees from
universities, and is a Global Ambassador for Oxfam.
She serves on the Board of Directors
of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, Gbowee Peace Foundation and the PeaceJam
Foundation, and she is a member of the African Women Leaders Network for
Reproductive Health and Family Planning. She has received honorary degrees from
Rhodes University in South Africa, the University of Alberta in Canada,
Polytechnic University in Mozambique, and University of Dundee in Scotland.
After receiving the Barnard College Medal of Distinction in 2013, she was named
a Distinguished Fellow in Social Justice. Leymah is the proud mother of six
children.
When asked how she first found the
courage to become a peace activist, Leymah explained: “When you’ve lived
true fear for so long, you have nothing to be afraid of. I tell people I was 17
when the war started in Liberia. I was 31 when we started protesting. I
have taken enough dosage of fear that I have gotten immune to fear.”
“It is time to stand up,
sisters, and do some of the most unthinkable things. We have the power to turn
our upsidedown world right.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Tawakkol Karman was known as
“The Mother of the Revolution” and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
2011 in recognition of her work in nonviolent struggle for the safety of women
and for women’s rights to full participation in peacebuilding work in Yemen.
Upon being awarded the prize, Tawakkol became the first Yemeni, the first Arab
woman, and the second Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, as well as the
youngest Nobel Peace Laureate at the time, at the age of 32.
Karman is a mother of three as well
as a human rights activist, journalist, and politician.
Tawakkol was born in 1979 in Taiz,
Yemen’s third largest city. She studied an undergraduate degree in Commerce
from the University of Science and Technology in Sana’a before completing a
graduate degree in Political Science from the University of Sana’a.
Growing up in a politically
tumultuous country, Tawakkol witnessed the unification of North and South Yemen
in 1990, followed by a civil war between the two factions in 1994 in which the
North triumphed over the South. The civil war led to dissidence in the South as
the repressive Northern government assumed control over the country.
A journalist by profession and human
rights activist by nature, Tawakkol responded to the political instability and
human rights abuses in Yemen by mobilizing others and reporting on injustices.
In 2005, she founded the organization Women Journalists Without Chains, (WJWC)
which advocates for rights and freedoms and provides media skills to
journalists. In addition, the organization produces regular reports on human
rights abuses in Yemen, documenting more than 50 cases of attacks and unfair sentences
against newspapers and writers to date.
In 2007, Tawakkol began organizing
weekly protests in Yemen’s capitol, Sana’a, targeting systemic government
repression and calling for inquiries into corruption and other forms of social
and legal injustice. Tawakkol’s weekly protests continued until 2011, when she
redirected protesters to support the Arab Spring. Tawakkol even brought Yemen’s
revolution to New York speaking directly with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon
and organizing rallies at the UN headquarters.
Bold and outspoken, Tawakkol has
been imprisoned on a number of occasions for her pro-democracy, pro-human
rights protests. Amongst Yemen’s opposition movement, she is known as “mother
of the revolution” and “the iron woman.”
Since receiving the award, Tawakkol
has continued to support female journalists and rally Yemenis against
government corruption and injustice. Fiercely committed to change, Tawakkol
spends the majority of her time in a tent in Change Square, where she continues
her peaceful protests for justice and freedom.
“You have to be strong; you
have to trust yourself that you can build a new country. You have to know that
you have the ability to achieve your dream.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
Dr. Wangari Muta Maathai was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her actions to promote sustainable
development, democracy and peace and was the first African woman to receive the
Nobel Peace Prize. She passed away in September of 2011.
The first woman in East and Central
Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Professor Maathai was an active member of
the National Council of Women of Kenya from 1976 to 1987 and served as its
chairman from 1981 to 1987. In 1976 she introduced the idea of community-based
tree planting. She continued to develop this idea into a broad-based grassroots
organization whose main focus is poverty reduction and environmental
conservation through tree planting. The organization eventually became known as
the Green Belt Movement (GBM), and to-date has assisted women in planting more
than 40 million trees on community lands including farms, schools and church
compounds.
In December 2002, Professor Maathai
was elected to Kenya’s parliament with an overwhelming 98 percent of the vote.
Until 2007, she represented the Tetu constituency, Nyeri district in central
Kenya (her home region). From 2003 to 2007 Professor Maathai served as
Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resourcesin Kenya’s ninth
parliament.In September 1998, Professor Maathai launched and become co-chair of
the Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign, which advocates for canceling the debts of
poor African countries. Her campaign against land grabbing (illegal
appropriation of public lands by developers) and the rapacious re-allocation of
forest land received much attention in Kenya and the region.
In June of 2008 the Congo Basin
Forest Fund was launched. The fund protects the forests of the Congo Basin by
supporting projects that make the forest worth more as a living resource, than
it would be cut down. Professor Maathai acted as co-chair and goodwill
ambassador for the initiative.
Professor Maathai addressed the
United Nations on several occasions and spoke on behalf of women at special
sessions of the General Assembly for the five-year review of the 1992 Earth
Summit. In March 2005, she was elected as the first president of the African
Union’s Economic, Social and Cultural Council.
She authored four books; an
autobiography, Unbowed, and an explanation of her organizational method,
The Green Belt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience. The
Challenge for Africa and Replenishing the Earth were both released
in 2010.
“It’s the little things
citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting
trees.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
“The Nobel Peace Prize is not
awarded for what one has done, but hopefully what one will do.” These are the
words of Betty Williams, who in 1976 along with Mairead Maguire, was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to end the sectarian violence in her native
Northern Ireland.
Williams was one of the six founding
members of the Nobel Women’s Initiative in 2006. She currently heads the World
Centers of Compassion for Children International, which was founded in 1997 in
honour of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The organization is headquartered in the
Republic of Ireland, and is building the first City of Compassion for children
in the Basilicata Region of southern Italy. Williams left the Nobel Women’s
Initiative in 2011 in order to devote more time to her work there.
“Compassion is more important
than intellect in calling forth the love that the work of peace needs, and
intuition can often be a far more powerful searchlight than cold reason.”
For more information please visit
the following link:
TOPSHOT – EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / A wounded Syrian girl awaits rescue from under the rubble next to the body of her sister (hands seen-R) who did not survive regime bombardment in Khan Sheikhun in the southern countryside of the rebel-held Idlib province, on February 26, 2019. – Regime bombardment near Khan Sheikhun, in Idlib province, killed two civilians on Tuesday, raising the civilian death toll to 42 since February 9, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. (Photo by Anas AL-DYAB / AFP) (Photo by ANAS AL-DYAB/AFP via Getty Images)
A wounded
Syrian girl awaits rescue from under the rubble next to the body of her sister
(hands visible at right), who did not survive a regime bombardment in Khan
Sheikhun in the southern countryside of the rebel-held Idlib province, on
February 26, 2019. Five months after this photo, the Syrian photographer who
took it, Anas Al-Dyab, was killed in an air strike in Khan Sheikhun. Al-Dyab
was also a member of the “White Helmets,” a group of volunteers
carrying out search-and-rescue efforts in Syria.
Anas Al-Dyab
/ AFP / Getty
For more information please visit
the following link:
To All Syrians from the Golden
Swallowtail Butterfly
Beautiful Golden Swallowtail
Butterfly
Summersaults in the sky
Drinking sweet nectar
For the beautiful wings to fly
The golden wings span out
Showing the black accented lines
A highlight for your beautiful wings
Two perfect tails you have
But a broken wing
Knowing how far you came from
Do you pass by Syria lately?
No! No one cultivates the gardens
They are busy fighting with each
other
No trees, no plants
No flowers giving me the nectar to
drink
They are running away
From their homes and their land
One million children are refugees
now
What are you doing Syrian people?
Everybody stops fighting
Please come!
Plant your trees for butterflies and
bees
Show your children how nice
butterflies can be
They help to fertilize your plants
Producing fruits for your children
to enjoy
Syrian people you have a long
culture
Your arts and your country are
beautiful
Do not ruin your ancestors’ good
reputation
Preserve your culture for your
children to grow
Show your children your fruitful
gardens
And the beautiful Golden Butterfly
will visit you
The butterfly says,
You will see no tears
No fear on your children faces
But the sound of your children’s
laughter
The joy of seeing my beautiful wings
Everybody stops using weapons
Please come!
To enjoy your tasty food
Your dance, your music, your arts
And your ancient civilization
We want to visit you
Show us how civilized Syrian Society
can be
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts, Friday,
August 23, 2013, 9:45 pm
The Golden Swallowtail Butterfly was
captured by me on Saturday, August 17, 2013 at our backyard garden in downtown
Newark, New Jersey. I would like to dedicate this video to all the children in
Syria.
PBS News: November 22-25,2019, How these 2
economists are using randomized trials to solve global poverty, Is the
distinction between migrant and refugee meaningful?, and Winslow Homer’s long
love affair with the sea,
BBC Click: What’s The Impact Of 5G?
TED Talks: Daniel Bogre Udell How to save a language from
extinction?, Jimmy Nelson Gorgeous portraits of the world’s vanishing people,
Elian Silverman: Photo gallery: Stunning images of indigenous peoples
in their traditional splendor
On this edition for Saturday,
November 23, a look ahead at the next steps in the impeachment inquiry,
Minneapolis eliminates single-family zoning as it searches for a solution to
its housing crisis, and the Navy secretary downplays reports he may resign. Hari
Sreenivasan anchors from New York. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG
Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
More than 700 million people across
the globe live on extremely low wages. This year, a trio of economists won the
Nobel Prize for their work on addressing global poverty, using randomized
control trials to test and improve social policy. Economics correspondent Paul
Solman talks to two of those winners, husband-and-wife duo Abhijit Banerjee and
Esther Duflo, about their work. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Under President Trump, American
immigration policy has been in the spotlight. While Trump may talk the most
about stopping illegal entry into the U.S., he is also taking action to reduce
the volume of legal migrants the country accepts as refugees. But what makes
one immigrant a refugee and another simply a migrant? Writer Dina Nayeri offers
her humble opinion questioning that distinction. Stream your PBS favorites with
the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Renowned 19th century American
artist Winslow Homer began his journey in marine painting with a trip to
Europe, following his well-known work documenting the frontlines of the Civil
War as an illustrator. But it was back in the U.S., and specifically on the shores
of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where Homer became “enchanted” with land, sea and
sky. Jared Bowen of PBS station WGBH in Boston reports. Stream your PBS
favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Click investigates whether 5G
networks could damage our health as some fear, and whether 5G might take our
weather forecasting ability back to the 1980s? Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BBCClick
As many as 3,000 languages could
disappear within the next 80 years, all but silencing entire cultures. In this
quick talk, language activist Daniel Bögre Udell shows how people around the
world are finding new ways to revive ancestral languages and rebuild their
traditions — and encourages us all to investigate the tongues of our
ancestors. “Reclaiming your language and embracing your culture is a
powerful way to be yourself,” he says.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
When Jimmy Nelson traveled to
Siberia to photograph the Chukchi people, elders told him: “You cannot
photograph us. You have to wait, you have to wait until you get to know us, you
have to wait until you understand us.” In this gorgeously photo-filled
talk, join Nelson’s quest to understand — the world, other people, himself —
by making astonishing portraits of the world’s vanishing tribes and cultures.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Jimmy Nelson’s photographs of
vanishing tribes illuminate the indigenous cultures of our shared world.
Why
you should listen
In his quest to photograph
endangered cultures, Jimmy Nelson has endured Kalishnikov-toting Banna
tribesmen, subzero reindeer attacks, and thousands of miles of hard travel.
With a blend of humility and humor, Nelson won the trust of each of his
subjects, using an antique plate camera to create stunning portraits of 35
indigenous tribes.
The result is Before They Pass Away, a photo treasury that Nelson hopes will not only help
preserve the lifestyles of people the world over, but also perhaps inspire
readers in the developed world to ponder their own connections with their
ancestral environments.
What
others say
“There is a pure beauty in their
goals and family ties, their belief in gods and nature, and their will to do
the right thing in order to be taken care of when their time comes. Whether in
Papua New Guinea or in Kazakhstan, in Ethiopia or in Siberia, tribes are the
last resorts of natural authenticity.” — beforethey.com
In this session, “Lenses,”
speakers look through cameras and new lenses — at subjects from the very,
very big to the very, very small to the very, very far away. Wendy Freedman talks
about a remote location in the Andes, far from the lights of civilization,
where the stars can be seen clearly with the naked eye. In that location,
[…]
Lenses allow us to look at far away
worlds and to examine our own more closely. In this session hidden social and
scientific fabrics will be amplified by several orders of magnitude, bringing
us a richer and more vibrant experience than the naked eye can see on its own.
The speakers who’ll appear in this […]
Jimmy
Nelson has gone all over the earth to photograph native peoples at their
proudest moments and to show you their soul.
“This is us at our best” — that’s
the caption that could hover over these images from Dutch photographer Jimmy Nelson (TED talk: Gorgeous portraits of the world’s vanishing
people), who works to put the world’s
peoples and their rich traditions front and center in his pictures.
“I don’t think there’s anyone else
in the world who looks like us or does things the way we do,” says Mucathalepa
Tchombo, a 32-year-old Muchimba woman from southwestern Africa, and one of the
subjects of Nelson’s work. “I’m very proud of my culture, but the world is
changing fast, and we’re part of that too.”
Nelson is keenly aware that customs
can vanish in a flash. To document them before they do, he spends months
immersing himself in remote communities, connecting with people and really
learning about their lives. Later, he returns to share the finished pictures
with them. “In some cases, I’m not the first person to have photographed them,”
he says. “But, in most cases, I’m the first to return and show them the
imagery.”
While Nelson’s images are undeniably
beautiful, some critics have accused him of perpetuating stereotypes and
“othering” his subjects. But he disagrees. “I think a lot of judgement is based
on fear,” he says. “And that’s the antithesis of my project — it’s about trying
to break down those barriers and bring the people closer to you.”
Nelson’s new book, Jimmy Nelson: Homage to
Humanity, is his latest attempt to showcase
the pride, strength and resilience of the people he has come to know; all
shown, as he puts it, “standing at their most proud.” The book’s smartphone app
lets viewers access 360-degree images and videos, letting readers feel as if
they are witnessing these rituals firsthand. “The idea is that the whole world
can get access to what’s going on behind the pictures, see who these people
really are, and dispel myths about them,” he says. “I want to show you the soul
of these people.”
The
Huli people, Papua New Guinea
The Huli are believed to have laid
down roots in Papua New Guinea as far back as 45,000 years ago. The people
shown are from the town of Tari, and many still live according to the
traditional ways. “The Huli men are famous for their unique custom of creating
and wearing impressive wigs decorated with feathers. They also wear bright
facial paint in red, yellow and white — colors originally chosen to strike fear
into their enemy in times of conflict,” says Nelson. “Nowadays, they usually
wear them to sing and dance.”
The so-called Wigmen make their wigs
out of their own hair — yes, that’s right — and weave them with feathers from
the island’s 700 bird species. Each feather carries its own symbolic meaning
(such as strength and courage). The Huli who participated in Nelson’s
photographs did so in the hopes that their portraits will inspire their youth
to follow in their elders’ footsteps. But they also want their images to reach
people outside their community.
“The forest in which we live is
essential to us. It provides for all our needs, it is sacred, and I would do
anything in my power to protect it,” writes Mundiya Kepanga, a 53-year-old Huli
Wigman, in the foreword to Homage to Humanity. “I hope that by helping
people to better understand my culture, they will also respect our environment.”
XXXVIII_1.tif
The
Dolgan people, Siberia
The nomadic Dolgans roam one of the
coldest regions on earth, the tundra of the northern Anabar Republic of Yakutia
in Siberia. On a particularly brutal day, the temperature may drop to -76
degrees Fahrenheit. “Dolgan means ‘people who live close to water’ — or, in
this case, ice. They live on icy white plains that stretch out as far as the
eye can see,” says Nelson.
The herders move every few days to
find enough lichen for their reindeer to eat. For maximum efficiency, the Dolgan
put everything they need to carry with them — including their homes, which are
called balok — on skis. They travel with more than 1,500 animals,
including packs of herding dogs and herds of reindeer.
“We Dolgan have been the envy of
many people. During perestroika in the 1990s, the reindeer herders were the
only ones who were well-fed because the tundra always keeps providing,” says
Roman Dimitruvik Tupirin, a 44-year-old Dolgan who was interviewed by Nelson
and his team. “Now we’re fearful of losing our connection to nature because
people are coming here to hunt for diamonds and oil.”
XXIX_3.tif
The
Ngalop people, Bhutan
Buddhism is the most widely
practiced religion in Bhutan — an estimated two-thirds to three-quarters of the
population are adherents — so the Ngalop people hold a special place in their
country. “Ngalop means ‘the first risen,’ and they are known as the people who
brought Tibetan Buddhism to Bhutan when they migrated there in the ninth
century,” says Nelson. The Ngalop live mainly in the northwest region of the
country.
Shown are a group of Ngalop masked
dancers. Symbolizing different deities, demons and animals, the masks are used
when the Ngalop act out spiritual stories from their collective past. In this
photo, they’re dressed for the annual Tshechu festival. “Religious gatherings
such as the Tschechu festival are an important way to promote and share cultural
heritage between the people from remote villages,” Nelson says. The temple
complex seen on the left-hand side of the image is Paro Takstang or “The Tiger’s Nest.” Located more than 10,000 feet above sea level, it is is one
of the most sacred sites in Bhutan.
XXVI_22.tif
The
Marquesan people, the Marquesas Islands, Polynesia
When Captain Cook and his crew
arrived at the Marquesas Islands — a volcanic chain in the southern Pacific —
in the late 1700s, they were struck by the appearance of the inhabitants. A
crew member said they were “the most beautiful … people I ever beheld.”
Unfortunately, Cook and co. (and subsequent European settlers) ended up
bringing disease and conflict to the people they so admired. In a matter of
years, the Marquesan population shrunk from 80,000 to 2,000 — today, the population
of the 15 islands totals just over 9,000 people.
“The native inhabitants are known in
the local language as Enanaa, meaning ‘people,’” says Nelson. “Traditionally,
Marquesans wore clothing made of leaves and grasses that were decorated with
animal teeth and beads. Today, their skirts are more likely to be made of
cloth.”
Historically, Enanaa had no written
alphabet, so tattoos are an important part of their identities. Shapes and
symbols enable people to communicate their status and their genealogy. After a
child is born, parents start saving money — by raising pigs and growing crops —
to pay for their child’s tattoos in adulthood. Getting inked isn’t just a young
person’s game; it’s a lifelong pursuit. Subsequent tattoos are earned as people
accrue wealth and achieve higher status in their community. Today, even though
many Marquesans speak and write French, tattoos are still an important part of
their culture.
XL_15.tif
The
Q’ero people, Peru
The Inca empire is believed to be
the largest pre-European civilization in the Americas, numbering some 10
million. The Q’ero, shown here, are thought to be direct descendants of the
Inca, and their 2,000 members live in and around the community of Qochamoqo,
located in eastern Peru and perched over 14,000 feet above sea level in the
Andes Mountains.
Considered part of the Quechua
population group — with whom they share a language — “the Q’ero are one of the
most isolated Andean communities, moving with the seasons to live and work at
various altitudes, growing potatoes, corn and bamboo,” says Nelson. “They are
known for their weaving techniques, with which they make the colorful unkuña
carrying cloths.” The cloth is made from a blend of alpaca, sheep and llama
wool, and the fabrics’ designs communicate their people’s history and
mythology.
Some of the Q’ero’s other traditions
aren’t as visible. “We still believe there should always be equal exchange, a
sacred reciprocity we call ayni: I do something for you today; you do
something for me tomorrow,” says Fredy Flores Machacca, 30, the youngest-ever
president of the Q’ero nation, to Nelson. Added Machacca, “We Q’eros live close
to nature and we sleep close to the earth. I want to protect it like it
protects us. That is ayni.”
XXXI_59.tif
The
Muchimba people, Angola/Namibia
In recent times, the Kaokoveld
Plateau in southern Africa has become known for rare minerals such as shattuckite
and dioptase. Yet the culture of its native inhabitants — which includes
the semi-nomadic Muchimba people — is similarly rich. They spend much of their
time along the Cunene River, which is an important resource for them and their
herds of cattle and goats, and live in dome-shaped houses made from sticks,
clay, straw and cow dung.
Since water is so scarce, the
Muchimba reserve it for livestock. To keep clean, says Nelson, “the women cover
their skin and hair in a mixture of butterfat and ochre pigment known as otjize,
which also protects them from the sun.” Additional bonus: Otjize acts as a
moisturizer and insect repellant, too. Only the women wear it — not the men —
and they use it in their hair as well. “We rub the wet [ochre] paste into our
hair to make long braids. A few times a year, we wash it all out and redo it,”
Mucathalepa Tchombo, a Muchimba woman, tells Nelson. “If there’s a special
occasion coming up, we put on more ochre. It’s a kind of makeup.
The Kazakh people, Mongolia
Dalaikhan Boskay, the man shown
here, is an eagle hunter and one of the Kazakhs, the largest ethnic minority group
in Mongolia. The term doesn’t mean that he hunts down eagles; rather, he hunts
red foxes, rabbits and wolves withthe assistance of these powerful
birds of prey. His thick coat and hat are made from animal hides, fur and felt;
whenever a Kazakh hunts and kills an animal, they are careful to use every
piece of it — for utility and as a sign of respect to the creature.
The Kazakhs, who live in
northwestern Mongolia, rely primarily on golden eagles. And while this kind of
falconry was once the domain of men, the thousands-year-old tradition is open
to change — women, girls and boys are now taking it up. People start training
their eagles as fledglings, so human and bird develop an intense bond. “Hunters
usually keep their eagles for around 10 years, which is about a third of their
lifespan. We can feel when it’s time to give them back to the wild,” Boskay
tells Nelson. “We only use female eagles, and it’s important to release them so
they can have offspring and keep the natural balance.”
XXII_5.tif
The
Miao people, China
The mountainous province of Guizhou
in southwest China is home to more than 50 minority groups. However, few of
them still follow traditional customs, but among those who do are the Miao
people (sometimes called the Hmong or Guizhou people). But the 7 million-strong
Miao are not all the same — they’re split among distinct groups.
Shown is an 11-year-old girl, who is
one of the Longhorn Miao. “They’re named for their impressive headpieces, which
were originally made from the hair of their ancestors in order to keep them
close,” says Nelson. “Nowadays most headpieces are made of wool. Their shape is
derived from the oxen and water buffalo that play such an important part in
their agricultural life.” To form that distinctive shape, wool is wrapped
around a horn-shaped wooden comb. The headpieces are worn by the Miao during
their spiritual rituals. Most Miao people are animists and believe that rocks,
trees, rivers and human creations all possess their own spirits.
Watch Jimmy Nelson’s TED talk here:
About
the author
Elian Silverman is a writer based in New York City who covers science and
technology.
Jason M. Forthofer is a firefighter
and mechanical engineer at the U.S. Forest Service’s Missoula Fire Sciences
Laboratory in Montana. His research involves field, laboratory and
computational studies of heat transfer and fluid flow related to wildland
fires. Credit: Nick Higgins
In
Brief
Fire tornadoes, vortices of fire with tornadolike wind
speeds, are exceedingly rare but
deadly. The Carr Fire tornado near Redding, Calif., killed up to four
people.
Apart from fire itself, generation of a fire tornado requires a source of rotation in the atmosphere. The
fire can concentrate this vorticity into a spinning tube of air and stand
it up.
Scientists understand the physics of fire tornadoes rather well, but they cannot yet predict when and
where one might appear.
As the plane began its descent into
Medford, we dropped into the blanket of smoke that covered southwestern Oregon
and northern California. It was late July 2018, and several major fires were
burning in the region. I was en route to join a Cal Fire (California Department
of Forestry and Fire Protection) team investigating a fatal incident that had
taken place two days earlier. What the group leader told me over the phone had
sent chills up my spine: “A firefighter has been killed in a fire tornado. His
vehicle was thrown hundreds of feet across the ground.”
I, perhaps more than anyone, had
known that this might happen someday. Ten years earlier I had gotten my first
look at the aftermath of a fire tornado. The object, almost 1,000 feet in
diameter, had moved out of the Indians Fire in California and overrun a group
of firefighters. So strong was the wind that trying to get to safety felt like
running through chest-deep water, one of the survivors told me. Fortunately,
the men were standing on a paved two-lane highway, which probably saved their lives:
had they been even 10 feet away and among the trees and grass, they would have
died. When I reached the site, massive oak branches lay all around, and the
ground had been scoured of pebbles.
The scene left me impressed and
worried. A fire tornado could evidently harm firefighters taking refuge in
areas usually thought to be safe. It had been a close call. Many of us had seen
fire whirls, dust-devil-sized rotating columns of fire, and did not regard them
as particularly dangerous. In contrast, fire tornadoes—which combine the
destructive power of fire with that of winds as ferocious as in an actual
tornado—were so rare as to be almost mythical. Even I, a firefighter since 1996
and a fire-behavior researcher for eight years, had heard of only one, from a
story a veteran firefighter told me.
On returning to my home base at the
Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana, I conducted a literature survey.
It turned up reports, most rather sketchy, of several fire tornadoes that had
occurred around the world in the near and distant past. So scant was the
information on the subject that scientists did not even agree on what qualified
as a fire tornado. Massive forest fires can generate so-called pyrocumulonimbus
(pyroCb) clouds at high altitudes. These are ice-capped thunderclouds that
condense from the moisture released above a fire—from the vegetation it
consumed, from the water vapor in the atmosphere and as a by-product of
combustion itself. A few researchers held that only those fire vortices that
connect to overhead pyroCb clouds are true fire tornadoes. By that definition,
only one had ever been documented, in a 2003 firestorm near Canberra,
Australia. It had left a damage path almost 15 miles long.
That framework seemed far too
restrictive to be of much use to firefighters, however. Using the working
definition of a fire tornado as a fire whirl with tornadolike wind speeds, my
colleague Bret Butler and I had gathered up whatever documentation we could
find and consolidated it into firefighter-training manuals and classes. But now
I found myself driving south toward the Carr Fire just outside Redding, Calif.,
to investigate the death of a firefighter in a fire tornado—a tragedy I had
long sought to avert.
The
Carr Fire Tornado
The site looked like a war zone.
Neither the famous tornado researcher Josh Wurman, whom I had recruited for the
investigation, nor I had ever seen anything like this. Entire blocks of homes
had been leveled, with only the foundations remaining. Roofing and other debris
littered the area, and vehicles had been rolled multiple times over the ground.
Trees were uprooted or broken off, and flying particles of sand and rock had
stripped them of their bark. Three power-line towers built of metal lattice, each
roughly 100 feet tall, had been blown down, with one of them having been lifted
off its base and carried 1,000 feet through the air. A 40-foot shipping
container had been torn apart, and a steel pipe was wrapped around downed power
poles.
We estimated that the winds could
have reached 165 miles per hour, a speed that occurs in class 3 tornadoes on
the Enhanced Fujita scale. (This scale rates tornadoes on a scale ranging from
0 to 5, with 5 indicating the fastest and most destructive winds.) In California,
only two regular tornadoes of this strength had ever been recorded. Peak
temperatures of the burning gases inside the fire tornado may have reached
almost 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit. The object was more than 1,000 feet wide at
its base and, according to radar imagery, three miles high. It lasted for at
least 40 minutes, during which time it moved slowly across the ground, leaving
a path of destruction nearly a mile long.
Burning boards arranged in a rough
triangle allow air to swirl into the central area, where another fire gathers
the rotation into a vortex. Forest or urban fires of certain shapes can
similarly generate fire tornadoes. Credit: Spencer Lowell
Our team interviewed witnesses and
collected video evidence in the hope of learning from the event. The fire
tornado occurred on the evening of July 26, 2018, in the course of a forest
fire covering thousands of acres northwest of Redding. So extensive and intense
was the fire that it generated pyroCb clouds at altitudes higher than three
miles. Suddenly, at around 5:30 P.M., the flames raced eastward, killing
firefighting bulldozer operator Don Smith, as well as a civilian in his home.
As the wildfire neared the outskirts of Redding, it spawned a number of fire
whirls and threw embers more than a mile ahead of the fire and across the
Sacramento River. These started several “spot,” or small, isolated fires near
two subdivisions at the end of a dead-end road. An extremely chaotic scene
unfolded as firefighters tried to evacuate homeowners and save houses even as
their escape route was being cut off. People were literally running for their
lives.
Redding firefighter Jeremy Stoke
headed to the scene to help. Just as he was arriving, at about 7:30 P.M., the
fire tornado formed over the road, trapping residents and firefighters at the
subdivisions. It apparently caught Stoke on the road. He transmitted a mayday
call on his radio before powerful winds rolled his truck multiple times; it
eventually came to rest against a tree hundreds of feet away. Stoke was found
hours later, dead from traumatic injuries.
Two Cal Fire vehicles being driven
down the road had most of their windows blown out and were battered by flying
debris. Strangely, one of the trucks was damaged mostly on the driver’s side
and the other on the passenger side—even though they were only 150 feet apart
and facing the same direction—indicating the rotating motion of the air. The
occupants huddled on the floorboards to save themselves from projectiles. Three
nearby bulldozers also had their windows blown out, with one operator getting
glass in his eye and another receiving serious burns to his hands. A retired
police officer who was driving out realized his truck bed was on fire and
pulled over; he survived but sustained burns to his airways. Most tragically,
on the outer edge of the revolving inferno two children and their
great-grandmother perished inside their burned home.
In
the Laboratory
What can we learn from an event like
this? Can we predict when and where a fire tornado will occur so that we can evacuate
residents and firefighters? What causes fire tornadoes? A first step toward
answering these questions is to look back in history. In 1871 a town in
Wisconsin was devastated by what was probably a fire tornado, judging by the
massive amount of debris—which included a house—thrown around. In 1964 the Polo
Fire in California spawned one that injured four people and destroyed two
homes, a barn, three cars and an avocado orchard. One of the most horrific
occurred during the World War II incendiary bombing of Hamburg, Germany: the
resulting firestorm generated a fire tornado that, according to geographer
Charles Ebert, was up to two miles wide and three miles tall. More than 40,000
civilians died in the conflagration.
Fire tornadoes are terrifying forces
of nature. They’re rare, but as wildfires become bigger and more frequent, they
may grow more common. Thankfully, scientists are getting closer to predicting
when and where these lethal vortices will appear. Read the full story this
hellish phenomenon: https://bit.ly/2O4xJIK
In 1923 a major earthquake sparked
an urban fire in Tokyo. As it spread from building to building, residents
evacuated to an open area between the structures. A large fire tornado formed
over this area, killing an estimated 38,000 people in 15 minutes. For more than
half a century the accepted explanation for this terrible event was that a
regular tornado happened to form at the exact same time and location as the
fire. But in the 1980s and 1990s engineers S. Soma and K. Saito of the
University of Kentucky used historical records to construct a small-scale model
of the actual fire, painstakingly reproducing its geometry and ambient winds.
Their laboratory fire generated a vortex—proving that the original one was not
a coincidence but was caused by the fire itself.
This research built on pioneering
lab work conducted two decades earlier, when George Byram and Robert Martin of
the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station created small fire whirls at
their facility in Macon, Ga. Their apparatus consisted of a small circular pool
of burning alcohol surrounded by cylindrical walls with vertical slits, which
forced drafts into the fire to enter in a rotating motion. Significantly, the
resulting fire whirl caused the fuel to burn—and its energy to be released—up
to three times faster than in a nonrotating fire. The rotating wind appears to
have increased the rate of burning by pushing the flames down toward the
surface of the alcohol, heating it up. Subsequent research has found the
energy-release rate to be enhanced by up to seven times in such fires.
Something similar occurs in wildfire
whirls and fire tornadoes. A heated piece of wood generates hundreds of
different flammable gases, the further combustion of which yields flames. The
strong horizontal, rotating winds in the fire tornado can force the flames down
into the vegetation, causing it to burn more fiercely.
In 1967 Howard Emmons and Shuh-Jing
Ying of Harvard University surrounded a stationary lab fire with a cylindrical
wire screen that could be spun at various speeds, imparting rotation to the air
flowing into the flames. The researchers measured the wind velocity and temperature
distribution of the fire whirl thus generated, getting a glimpse into its inner
workings. They found that, apart from fire itself, the formation of such a
vortex requires a source of rotation and a mechanism to intensify it.
A fire tornado has essentially the
same hydrodynamics. Significant vorticity often exists in the
atmosphere—generated by wind curling around mountains or dragging along the
ground or by variations in density and pressure. The fire itself carries out
two other crucial functions: it concentrates the rotation and stands it up, so
that a tight tube of air ends up spinning around a vertical axis.
First the hot air rising above the
fire pulls in replacement air at the base, thereby gathering rotating air from
the surroundings. Some of the vorticity might originally be around a horizontal
axis, but once air is sucked up into the fire plume, its hot, buoyant upward
stream causes the axis to tilt to a vertical orientation. Second, although the
upwardly moving air starts out slow when it is near the ground, it heats up as
the gases in it burn. The air pressure all around the vortex forces the hot,
light air within the core upward. The accelerating air in the fire plume
stretches the fire whirl or fire tornado vertically along its axis, reducing
its diameter, much as pulling apart a clump of dough causes a long, thin neck
to form. The reduced diameter drives the air to turn faster to conserve its
angular momentum—the same effect seen when a spinning ice skater draws in his
or her arms.
It appears that when a fire whirl or
fire tornado moves over a burning area, it stretches to a considerable height
and spins tight and fast, but when it moves over an already burned area, it
spreads out and slows down into a diffuse cylinder of smoke. Sometimes the
rotating object is so wide and slow that firefighters fail to perceive it. The
direction of motion of the vortex across the ground depends on ambient winds
and details of terrain in ways that we have yet to understand.
Emmons and Ying also found that fire
vortices are remarkably efficient at conserving their rotational energy, which
makes them (unfortunately) rather long-lived. The Indians Fire tornado, for
example, lasted for about an hour. As the fire tornado spins up, two opposing
forces in the radial direction strengthen: centrifugal force pulling a parcel
of rotating air outward and, in opposition, low pressure in the core pulling it
inward. The resulting balance limits the movement of air in the radial
direction and therefore the loss of energy from the vortex. In contrast,
nonrotating fires exchange roughly 10 times more energy with the surrounding
atmosphere. This mechanism also makes fire whirls thinner and taller than
nonrotating fires because with practically no air being drawn in, except at the
base, less oxygen is available for combustion. Thus, some of the fuel gases
must travel high up the core before they encounter sufficient oxygen to burn.
Just as dangerous, the towering
column of hot, low-density gases induces very low pressure at the base of the
whirl. Drag near the ground slows the rotation, reducing the centrifugal force
pushing the air outward. Because the inward force generated by pressure remains
the same, however, the wind near the ground streams into the fire tornado. It
ends up acting like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking air and, often, burning
debris into the base, forcing it vertically up the core at extreme velocities
and spitting it out from high up—unpredictably generating spot fires.
In
the Field
Despite all this knowledge about the
physics of fire tornadoes, we still cannot predict where and when one will
occur. One thing is clear, however: given how rare fire tornadoes are even
though a large, intensely burning fire always has the capacity to concentrate
rotation, the essential factor for their appearance seems to be the presence of
a strong source of rotation.
Corona fire in Yorba Linda, Calif.,
in November 2008 generated a flaming vortex—possibly a fire tornado—that
threatened homes. Credit: David McNew Getty Images
We know from case studies, for
example, that one of the likeliest locations for fire tornadoes to form is on
the lee side of a mountain. Wind blowing around the mountain causes swirling
motions on the downwind side, like water moving around a large rock in a river.
A fire burning there can gather and stretch this rotation into a fire tornado.
But matters are in fact more complicated: Fiery vortices can also show up on
flat ground and in calm wind conditions. For example, a large fire whirl in Kansas
was likely generated by a cold front that collided with warm ambient air as it
passed over a fire in a field. And a 2007 study by Rui Zhou and Zi-Niu Wu of
Tsinghua University in Beijing showed that multiple fires burning in certain
specific configurations—which can happen when a fire throws embers ahead of
itself, starting new fires—may even generate their own rotation by inducing
jets of air to flow along the ground between them.
So where did the rotation that
caused the deadly Carr Fire tornado come from? Given the several fire whirls
that preceded the fire tornado, an abnormally high amount of rotation obviously
existed in the area. On a hunch, I asked Natalie Wagenbrenner, a colleague at
the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, to run some specialized computer simulations
of the weather that day. Her studies showed that cool, dense air from the
Pacific Ocean was being pushed eastward and over the top of a mountain range
west of Redding. This cool air was much heavier than the hot air in the
Sacramento Valley: the Redding airport reported a peak temperature that day of
113 degrees F, a record. So gravity caused the air to accelerate as it moved
down the slopes toward the valley, much like water flowing downhill. Oddly,
these strong surface winds stopped abruptly—right where the fire tornado
formed.
What happened to the wind? Finally,
I realized that a hydraulic jump was occurring—the atmospheric equivalent of
what happens to water when it flows down the spillway below a dam. When the fast-moving
water hits the low-speed pool below, the surface of the water jumps upward,
forming a breaking wave that stays in place and marks the boundary between the
two flows. This region contains intense swirling motions. In much the same way,
the cold, dense air speeding down the mountainside hit the slow-moving pool of
air in the Sacramento Valley, most likely generating the powerful rotation that
formed the Carr Fire tornado [see graphic above]. N. P. Lareau of the
University of Nevada and his colleagues speculated in a 2018 paper that the
pyroCb clouds overhead, which reached altitudes of up to seven miles even as
the fire tornado formed, helped to stretch the vortex to a great height,
thereby thinning it and spinning it up even more.
If wildfires continue to become more
extensive, we may encounter such lethal objects more frequently. The silver
lining is that lessons learned from studying them carefully might help prevent
future tragedies. I am hopeful that further research into fire tornadoes,
combined with advances in weather prediction and computing power, will, in the
near future, give us the ability to issue fire tornado warnings—possibly saving
lives.
Fire whirl is formed by rotating air
drafting into a pan of burning alcohol at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory
in Montana. Credit: Spencer Lowell
This article was originally
published with the title “Fire Tornadoes” in Scientific American 321,
6, 60-67 (December 2019)
On this edition for Saturday, September
7, Hurricane Dorian leaves devastation and destruction in the Bahamas, the
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order, says author and diplomat Kishore Mahbubani. In an insightful look at
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governments can use to recover power and improve relations with the rest of the
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Korea, Hyeonseo Lee thought her country was “the best on the planet.”
It wasn’t until the famine of the 90s that she began to wonder. She escaped the
country at 14, to begin a life in hiding, as a refugee in China. Hers is a
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Lucy Williamson reports from Seoul
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View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-s-the-… Vitamins are the building blocks that keep our bodies
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It’s been a year
since the trauma of separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border shocked people
around the world. Tragically, this humanitarian crisis continues, as documented
by journalists and photographers, as well the detained children themselves. Please join us in New York City on July 15, 2019 from
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Actias dubernardi, Chinese Luna
Moth. The film shows details of the full development of this moth. I strongly
recommend watching the movie on a TV screen 4K. Thank you, Adam Der Film zeigt
Einzelheiten der vollständigen Entwicklung dieser Motte. Ich empfehle den Film
auf einem 4K TV-Bildschirm beobachten. Danke, Adam
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Pan-American Highway. It leads through forests and deserts, through jungles and
across high mountain passes. To the right and left of the Pan-Americana, drug
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and stories.
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Valley, one of the last true wildernesses in Africa. It appears to be an
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Los Angeles-based
photographer Dan Marker-Moore (previously) flew south to document the solar eclipse
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also documented the event, most images capture the singular moment in one
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intelligence. Plus: The enduring emotional toll of Michael Brown’s death on
Ferguson, 2020 Democrats attend the Iowa State Fair, the latest politics with
David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, reviving Polish Jewish music and a
remembrance of the 31 people killed in last weekend’s mass shootings.
Wednesday on the NewsHour, President
Trump travels to the bereaved cities of El Paso and Dayton — but his arrival
is not without controversy. Plus: Puerto Rico’s political upheaval continues,
reactions from El Paso and Dayton to Trump’s visit, an interview with 2020
Democrat Tom Steyer, Grand Cayman’s health care tourism, director Ron Howard
and a vigil for victims of the El Paso mass shooting.
@Al Jazeera English, we focus on
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DW News goes deep beneath the
surface, providing the key stories from Europe and around the world. Exciting
reports and interviews from the worlds of politics, business, sports, culture
and social media are presented by our DW anchors in 15-, 30- and 60-minute
shows. Correspondents on the ground and experts in the studio deliver detailed
insights and analysis of issues that affect our viewers around the world. We
combine our expertise on Germany and Europe with a special interest in Africa
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Informative, entertaining and up-to-date – DW News, connecting the dots for our
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peoples.
The pair of strange, luminescent creatures at play in this image are actually galaxies — realms of millions upon millions of stars. This galactic duo is known as UGC 2369. The galaxies are interacting, meaning that their mutual gravitational attraction is pulling them closer and closer together and distorting their shapes in the process. A tenuous bridge of gas, dust, and stars can be seen connecting the two galaxies,, during which they pulled material out into space across the diminishing divide between them. Interaction with others is a common event in the history of most galaxies. For larger galaxies like the Milky Way, the majority of these interactions involve significantly smaller so-called dwarf galaxies. But every few aeons, a more momentous event can occur. For our home galaxy, the next big event will take place in about four billion years, when it will collide with its bigger neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy. Over time, the two galaxies will likely merge into one — already nicknamed Milkomeda.
The pair of strange, luminescent
creatures at play in this image are actually galaxies — realms of
millions upon millions of stars.
This galactic duo is known as UGC
2369. The galaxies are interacting, meaning that their mutual gravitational
attraction is pulling them closer and closer together and distorting their
shapes in the process. A tenuous bridge of gas, dust and stars can be seen
connecting the two galaxies, created when they pulled material out into space
across the diminishing divide between them.
Interaction with others is a common
event in the history of most galaxies. For larger galaxies like the Milky
Way, the majority of these interactions involve significantly smaller
so-called dwarf galaxies. But every few billion years, a more momentous
event can occur. For our home galaxy, the next big event will take place in
about four billion years, when it will collide with its bigger neighbor,
the Andromeda galaxy. Over time, the two galaxies will likely merge into
one — already nicknamed Milkomeda.
Text credit: ESA (European Space
Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Evans
Every now and then, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope glimpses a common object — say, a spiral galaxy — in an interesting or unusual way. A sharply angled perspective, such as the one shown in this Picture of the Week, can make it seem as if we, the viewers, are craning our necks to see over a barrier into the galaxy’s bright centre.
In the case of NGC 3169, this barrier is the thick dust embedded within the galaxy’s spiral arms. Cosmic dust comprises a potpourri of particles, including water ice, hydrocarbons, silicates, and other solid material. It has many origins and sources, from the leftovers of star and planet formation to molecules modified over millions of years by interactions with starlight.
NGC 3169 is located about 70 million light-years away in the constellation of Sextans (The Sextant). It is part of the Leo I Group of galaxies, which, like the Local Group that houses our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of a larger galactic congregation known as the Virgo Supercluster.
Every now and then,
the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope glimpses a common object — say,
a spiral galaxy — in an interesting or unusual way. A sharply angled
perspective, such as the one shown in this Hubble image, can make it seem
as if we, the viewers, are craning our necks to see over a barrier into the
galaxy’s bright center.
In the case of NGC 3169, this
barrier is the thick dust embedded within the galaxy’s spiral arms. Cosmic dust
comprises a potpourri of particles, including water ice, hydrocarbons,
silicates and other solid material. It has many origins and sources, from the
leftovers of star and planet formation to molecules modified over millions of
years by interactions with starlight.
NGC 3169 is located about 70 million
light-years away in the constellation of Sextans (the Sextant). It is part
of the Leo I Group of galaxies, which, like the Local Group that
houses our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of a larger galactic
congregation known as the Virgo Supercluster.
Text credit: ESA (European Space
Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Ho
The galaxy NGC 1156 resembles a delicate cherry blossom tree flowering in springtime in this Hubble Picture of the Week. The many bright “blooms” within the galaxy are in fact stellar nurseries — regions where new stars are springing to life. Energetic light emitted by newborn stars in these regions streams outwards and encounters nearby pockets of hydrogen gas, causing it to glow with a characteristic pink hue.
NGC 1156 is located in the constellation of Aries (The Ram). It is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy, meaning that it lacks a clear spiral or rounded shape, as other galaxies have, and is on the smaller side, albeit with a relatively large central region that is more densely packed with stars.
Some pockets of gas within NGC 1156 rotate in the opposite direction to the rest of the galaxy, suggesting that there has been a close encounter with another galaxy in NGC 1156’s past. The gravity of this other galaxy — and the turbulent chaos of such an interaction — could have scrambled the likely more orderly rotation of material within NGC 1156, producing the odd behaviour we see today.
The galaxy NGC 1156 resembles a
delicate cherry blossom tree flowering in springtime in this Hubble image.
The many bright “blooms” within the galaxy are in fact stellar
nurseries — regions where new stars are springing to life. Energetic light
emitted by newborn stars in these regions streams outwards and encounters
nearby pockets of hydrogen gas, causing the gas to glow with a characteristic
pink hue.
NGC 1156 is located in the
constellation of Aries (the Ram). It is classified as a dwarf irregular
galaxy, meaning that it lacks a clear spiral or rounded shape, as other
galaxies have, and is on the smaller side, albeit with a relatively large
central region that is more densely packed with stars.
Some pockets of gas within NGC 1156
rotate in the opposite direction to the rest of the galaxy, suggesting that
there has been a close encounter with another galaxy in NGC 1156’s past. The
gravity of this other galaxy — and the turbulent chaos of such an interaction —
could have scrambled the likely more orderly rotation of material within NGC
1156, producing the odd behavior we see today.
Text credit: ESA (European Space
Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, R. Jansen
Leafy greens are growing in space!
The Columbus laboratory module’s VEGGIE
botany research facility is the home to the International Space Station‘s gardening activities. The VEG-04 botany study is
exploring the viability of growing fresh food in space to support astronauts on
long-term missions. The salad-type plants are harvested after 28 days of
growth, with some samples stowed for analysis and the rest taste-tested by the
crew aboard the station.
Click checks out the tech producing
food with less environmental impact, 5G helping salmon farms in the Orkney
Islands, and a taste of new lab grown foods. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick
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Victor Vescovo is leading the
first-ever manned expedition to the deepest point of each of the world’s five
oceans. In conversation with TED science curator David Biello, Vescovo
discusses the technology that’s powering the explorations — a titanium
submersible designed to withstand extraordinary conditions — and shows footage
of a never-before-seen creature taken during his journey to the bottom of the
Indian Ocean.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Hank begins teaching you about your endocrine system by explaining how it uses glands to produce hormones. These hormones are either amino-acid based and water soluble, or steroidal and lipid-soluble, and may target many types of cells or just turn on specific ones. He will also touch on hormone cascades, and how the HPA axis effects your stress response. Table of Contents Endocrine System 2:32 Glands Produce Hormones 2:58 Amino Acid Based and Water Soluble 4:18 Steroidal and Lipid Soluble 4:44 Hormone Cascades 6:15 HPA Axis Effects Your Stress Response 6:30 *** Crash Course Psychology Poster: https://www.dftba.com/crashcourse
Christian Ludvigsen, Robert Kunz,
Jason, A Saslow, Jacob Ash, Jeffrey Thompson, Jessica Simmons, James Craver,
Simun Niclasen, SR Foxley, Roger C. Rocha, Nevin, Spoljaric, Eric Knight,
Elliot Beter, Jessica Wode ***SUBBABLE MESSAGES*** TO: Rachel FROM: Alex I Love
You! — TO: Crash Course FROM: James Earle I loved Subbable. I’ll see you on
Patreon. ***SUPPORTER THANK YOU!*** Thank you so much to all of our awesome
supporters for their contributions to help make Crash Course possible and
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LNB Groves Boasts Nearly 40 Years of
Growing a Wide Range Tropical Fruits in Homestead, FL – Jackfruit, Mamey
Sapote, Mangos, Carambola, Dragonfruit, Jaboticaba, Passionfruit, plus other
power-packed tropical crops, such as turmeric & sorrel (Hibiscus sabdariffa).
Take a tour with Levi Ellenby, as he shares the methods, the challenges &
the beloved tropical crops that LNB is known for. This our 3rd annual fruit
hunting trip to Homestead, Florida – the southernmost continental destination
in the U.S. & you can probably guess why we keep coming back. We are
obsessed with tropical fruit & are so happy to be able to bring you along
for the 2nd year in a row. We will have even more content coming up from this
latest trip, so be sure that you are subscribed & signed up for our
notifications (click the bell icon next to the subscribe button). To Learn More
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Nearly 30 years ago, Trees for Life
Founder, Alan Watson-Featherstone stood in the Universal Hall and in front of
300 people made a life-long commitment to restore the ancient Caledonian
Forest. He started with no resources, no knowledge, no access to land, no
funds, but his passion and inspiration have carried him forward and now Trees
for Life not only helps nature to restore the Scottish Highlands – it also
helps people reconnect with their spirit, with hope and with the land. Alan’s
talk also includes a wide range of his photography illustrating both the damage
to the land and the difference our work makes. This talk was given at a TEDx
event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local
community. Learn more at https://ted.com/tedx
Ronald Rael and Virginia San
Fratello
have long worked in activating structures in projects that blur the line
between art and architecture. The Oakland-based duo, who self-describe as pursuing “applied architectural
research”, also have a longstanding interest in the United States-Mexico border
wall. In 2009 Rael wrote Borderwall as Architecture, which features a conceptual drawing of a teetertotter. The
concept relocates the classic playground equipment to the border wall as its
fulcrum. Ten years later, this cover art came to life in the neighboring
communities of Sunland Park, New Mexico and Colonia Anapra, Mexico.
Constructed by Taller Herrería in
Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, neon pink teetertotters slot through the wall’s narrow
gaps, allowing citizens on both sides to playfully engage with their
cross-border counterparts. The fundamental design of the teetertotter, while
delightful and chuckle-inducing, also functions by each user literally feeling
the weight of humanity of the person on the other side. In an Instagram post
announcing the project Rael shared, “children and adults were connected in
meaningful ways on both sides with the recognition that the actions that take
place on one side have a direct consequence on the other side.”
Rael and San Fratello worked in
collaboration with Omar Rios to execute “Teetertotter Walls.” Rael is a
Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley and San
Fratello is an Assistant Professor at San José State University. Dive into an
archive of nearly twenty years of the duo’s socially engaged work on their website, and follow along with their latest
projects on Instagram.
Utagawa Yoshifuji aka ?? ??
(Japanese, 1828-1887, b. Japan) – Newly Published Applications for Cats, ca.
1868–1912 Woodblocks, Color Woodblock Print; 22 ½ x 16 inches. Courtesy of
Hiraki Ukiyo-e Foundation
We continue to be
transfixed by John Edmark’s (previously) infinite 3-D printed designs. The self-described artist,
designer, and inventor uses visual tricks to create cascading effects on
rotating textured white sculptural surfaces. His most recent video, “Blooms
Assortment”, features a noodle-like form, shifting cubes, and a hollow gridded
shape that resembles a geyser or mushroom cloud. Edmark has a bachelor’s
and master’s degree in computer science and has lectured at Stanford’s design
program for over fifteen years. See more of Edmark’s creations on Vimeo
and if you’d like to call one of his pieces your own, visit his online store.
A Monarch Butterfly and
Large Pink Flowers in our garden, Downtown Newark, New Jersey
Photographs by Ing-On
Vibulbhan-Watts
For more information
please visit the following link:
PBS News: July 23-27, 2019, BBC Click: NASA Meets Big Brother and The Moon Landing 50 Years On, DW Documentary: The New Silk Road, Part 1 & 2: From China to Pakistan and From Kyrgyzstan to Duisburg, Todd William: Why Keep Spending Money on Space Exploration?, TED Talks: where did the moon come from a new theory and how playing instrument benefits your brain, Metabolism & Nutrition, Part 1: Crash Course A&P #36, Colossal: Two Collaborative Murals by Pat Perry and Local Schoolchildren Connect Communities in Iraq and Maine, Black Swallowtail Butterfly and Ing’s Garden: Captured by Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts on Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at the Backyard Garden, Downtown Newark, New Jersey
Humans rely heavily on pollinator
bees to sustain food production globally. But for decades, the insects’
population has declined, in part because of pesticide use. If the die-off
continues, it will have huge economic and public health consequences for people.
William Brangham reports on groups that are working on innovative ways to save
the world’s jeopardized bee population — or supplement it.
How violinist Gaelynn Lea is redefining who can be a
musician
Gaelynn Lea is transforming our
cultural understanding of who can be a musician. A congenital disability called
osteogenesis imperfecta caused her bones to break more than 40 times while she
was in the womb. But the violinist is known for her haunting original songs,
innovative interpretations of traditional folk music and growing role as an
advocate for disability rights. Jeffrey Brown reports.
Tuesday on the NewsHour, Congress
and the White House reach a two-year budget deal that should avoid a government
shutdown but increases debt. Plus: Boris Johnson will become the next British
prime minister, questions for Robert Mueller, a former ally of Nicolas Maduro
in the U.S., how changing food stamp eligibility will affect working families
and a mobile classroom that brings school to kids. WATCH TODAY’S SEGMENTS: News
Wrap: Police and protesters clash in Puerto Rico https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSB1u… Is budget deal is a short-term fix for a long-term problem?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYTPM… For Boris Johnson, securing Brexit will be a difficult task
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BoXM… How lawmakers and Trump are preparing for Mueller testimony
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEDKS… Maduro’s former intelligence chief on crisis in Venezuela https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5qNw… Why Trump’s food stamp change will hurt working families https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpwPN… How a mobile classroom is expanding early education access https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6lKT…
How a classroom on wheels is expanding access to early
education
Although preschool can provide
children with a vital foundation for success later in life, only 43 percent of
four-year-olds nationwide have access to public preschool. The rate varies
widely, with no options available in some rural and low-income areas, sometimes
called “childcare deserts.” But a community outside Denver has found
an innovative way to bring education to kids. Amna Nawaz reports.
Why Trump’s new limit on food stamp eligibility will
affect working families most
More than 40 states currently allow
people who receive welfare benefits to become eligible automatically for food
stamps, or SNAP. But the Trump administration has announced new rules to
restrict that automatic eligibility, meaning 3 million may stop receiving food
stamps. William Brangham talks to the Urban Institute’s Elaine Waxman about why
the move could hurt the people SNAP aims to help. Stream your PBS favorites
with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
We get rare access to a lesser-known
division of Nasa, where astronauts are locked in a spacecraft for 45 days and
scientists study the effect of isolation. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BBCClick
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of
the moon landing, Click lifts off with technology which takes us back to the
moon as well as a little closer to earth. Subscribe HERE https://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick Facebook:
www.facebook.com/BBCClick
The New Silk Road is a mammoth
project intended to connect China with the West. It’s a gigantic infrastructure
project that Beijing says will benefit everyone. But this two-part documentary
shows China’s predominant self-interest and geopolitical ambitions. The old
Silk Road is a legend, whereas the New Silk Road is a real megaproject. China
wants to reconnect the world though a network of roads, railways, ports and
airports between Asia and Europe. A team of reporters travels by sea and land
along the New Silk Road and shows how China, with the largest investment
program in history, is expanding its influence worldwide. Their journey begins
in Shenzhen on the Pearl River Delta. This is where China’s legendary rise to
an economic superpower began 40 years ago. The private market economy
experiment unleashed forces that allowed Shenzhen to grow into a
mega-metropolis. The team takes a container ship towards Southeast Asia. Its
first stop is the port city of Sihanoukville in Cambodia. A joke is making the
rounds there these days: you can now travel to China without a passport and
without leaving your own country. Sihanoukville is now almost part of China
itself! The Chinese have financed practically everything built here in the
recent past: the extension of the port, new roads, bridges and factories. Many
Cambodians are unhappy and feel like losers in the boom. Rising prices and
rents are making the poor even poorer. But for land and house owners, on the
other hand, it’s a bonanza. In Myanmar, resistance is already growing. Locals
in Kachin have successfully blocked a new dam project, asking how the Chinese
could produce energy for their own country whilst leaving the locals themselves
without electricity? The Myanmar government pulled the emergency brake and the huge
Chinese dam project did not get beyond the first concrete piers in the river.
The Karakorum Highway from Kashgar in China across the Roof of the World to
Islamabad in Pakistan is one of the most difficult and dangerous roads in this
breathtaking mountain world. Once the road is finished, it often disintegrates
again, and rock falls and landslides block the highway as if the Karakorum
Mountains are trying to deny China strategic access to the Arabian Sea. The
first part of the report ends in Islamabad. ——————————————————————–
DW Documentary gives you knowledge beyond the headlines. Watch high-class
documentaries from German broadcasters and international production companies.
Meet intriguing people, travel to distant lands, get a look behind the
complexities of daily life and build a deeper understanding of current affairs
and global events. Subscribe and explore the world around you with DW
Documentary. Subscribe to DW Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW39… Our other YouTube channels: DW Documental (in spanish): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocumental DW Documentary ??????? ?? ?????: (in arabic): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocarabia For more documentaries visit also: https://www.dw.com/en/tv/docfilm/s-3610 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dwdocumentary/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dw.stories DW netiquette policy: https://p.dw.com/p/MF1G
The New Silk Road is a mammoth
project meant to connect China with the West. It’s a gigantic infrastructure
project that Beijing says will benefit all. But this two-part documentary shows
another side: of China’s self-interest and geopolitical ambitions. China’s path
to global power leads through the legendary trade road. Our authors travel west
on two separate paths: One team follows the sea route, along which China is
expanding its support bases, while the other follows the ancient Silk Road
through Central Asia. Their journey takes them through stunning landscapes and
to magical places with ancient caravanserais, where the lore of the old Silk
Road lives on. At the same time, they observe China’s overwhelming new influence
in immense construction sites and shipping hubs. People everywhere are hoping
the new trade will bring them and their children work and prosperity, just as
the old Silk Road did hundreds of years ago. But others fear that a future
dominated by China will bring them no good at all. “Clean water, the
mountains and nature are much more important than the money they give us,”
the filmmakers learn in Kyrgyzstan. Chinese investment has not only bestowed
the country with better roads, power lines and railway lines, but also with
environmental pollution, corruption and crippling debt. Oman is another stop on
the line, where Beijing has taken over large parts of a new Special Economic
Zone in the desert city of Duqm. You can still see traditional Arab dhows in
the old harbor at Sur, but they no longer have a place in today’s international
trade. Instead, the horizon is dotted with huge container ships, many of them
flying the Chinese flag. Meanwhile, the French port city of Marseille is aiming
to become the New Silk Road’s European bridgehead. A small container village in
the hills above the city is the first step. Cheap textiles from the Far East
are delivered here to the “Marseille International Fashion Center”. MIF 68
for short – 68 is considered a lucky number in China – is geared towards
distributing China’s products throughout Europe. The two-part documentary shows
the breathtaking dimensions of this gigantic project – one where, it would
seem, no stone will be left unturned. ——————————————————————–
DW Documentary gives you knowledge beyond the headlines. Watch high-class
documentaries from German broadcasters and international production companies.
Meet intriguing people, travel to distant lands, get a look behind the
complexities of daily life and build a deeper understanding of current affairs
and global events. Subscribe and explore the world around you with DW
Documentary. Subscribe to DW Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW39… Our other YouTube channels: DW Documental (in spanish): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocumental DW Documentary ??????? ?? ?????: (in arabic): https://www.youtube.com/dwdocarabia For more documentaries visit also: https://www.dw.com/en/tv/docfilm/s-3610 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dwdocumentary/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dw.stories DW netiquette policy: https://p.dw.com/p/MF1G
Todd William:Why Keep Spending Money on Space Exploration?
With so many problems here on earth requiring our attention, how is it possible to justify spending money to explore space? One of the best answers I’ve heard to this was found in a letter written over 40 years ago.
This question was posed to Dr. Ernst Stublinger, the associate director of Science at NASA in the early 1970s. It was asked by a Nun, who felt strongly that the money would better be spent helping starving children.
As part of Stublinger’s reply, he told the following story about a Count from the 1500s:
The Count
About 400 years ago, there lived a count in a small town in Germany. He was one of the benign counts, and he gave a large part of his income to the poor in his town. This was much appreciated, because poverty was abundant during medieval times, and there were epidemics of the plague which ravaged the country frequently.
One day, the count met a strange man. He had a workbench and little laboratory in his house, and he labored hard during the daytime so that he could afford a few hours every evening to work in his laboratory. He ground small lenses from pieces of glass; he mounted the lenses in tubes, and he used these gadgets to look at very small objects.
The count was particularly fascinated by the tiny creatures that could be observed with the strong magnification, and which he had never seen before. He invited the man to move with his laboratory to the castle, to become a member of the count’s household, and to devote henceforth all his time to the development and perfection of his optical gadgets as a special employee of the count.
The townspeople, however, became angry when they realized that the count was wasting his money, as they thought, on a stunt without purpose. “We are suffering from this plague,” they said, “while he is paying that man for a useless hobby!” But the count remained firm. “I give you as much as I can afford,” he said, “but I will also support this man and his work, because I know that someday something will come out of it!”
Indeed, something very good came out of this work, and also out of similar work done by others at other places: the microscope. It is well known that the microscope has contributed more than any other invention to the progress of medicine, and that the elimination of the plague and many other contagious diseases from most parts of the world is largely a result of studies which the microscope made possible.
The count, by retaining some of his spending money for research and discovery, contributed far more to the relief of human suffering than he could have contributed by giving all he could possibly spare to his plague-ridden community.
The Earth and Moon are like
identical twins, made up of the exact same materials — which is really
strange, since no other celestial bodies we know of share this kind of chemical
relationship. What’s responsible for this special connection? Looking for an
answer, planetary scientist and MacArthur “Genius” Sarah T. Stewart
discovered a new kind of astronomical object — a synestia — and a new way to
solve the mystery of the Moon’s origin.
This talk was presented at a TED
Salon event given in partnership with U.S. Air Force. TED editors featured it
among our selections on the home page. Read more about TED Salons.
When you listen to music, multiple
areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an
instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What’s
going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians’ brains
when they play, and examines some of the long-term positive effects of this
mental workout. [Directed by Sharon Colman Graham, narrated by Addison
Anderson, music by Peter Gosling].
Meet the educator
Anita Collins · Educator,
researcher, writer
Dr. Anita Collins is an educator,
researcher and writer in the field of brain development and music learning.
Metabolism & Nutrition, Part 1: Crash Course
A&P #36
Metabolism is a complex process that
has a lot more going on than personal trainers and commercials might have you
believe. Today we are exploring some of its key parts, including vital
nutrients — such as water, vitamins, minerals, carbs, fats, and proteins — as
well as how anabolic reactions build structures and require energy, while
catabolic reactions tear things apart and release energy. Anatomy of Hank
Poster: https://store.dftba.com/products/crash…
— Table of Contents Water, Vitamins, Minerals, Carbs, Fats and Proteins 3:47 Anabolic Reactions Build Structures and
Require Energy 2:59 Catabolic Reactions Tear Things Apart and
Release Energy 3:17 Metabolism 2:30 *** Crash Course is on Patreon! You can
support us directly by signing up at https://www.patreon.com/crashcourse
Thanks to the following Patrons for their generous monthly contributions that
help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever: Mark , Elliot Beter, Moritz
Schmidt, Jeffrey Thompson, Ian Dundore, Jacob Ash, Jessica Wode, Today I Found
Out, Christy Huddleston, James Craver, Chris Peters, SR Foxley, Steve Marshall,
Simun Niclasen, Eric Kitchen, Robert Kunz, Avi Yashchin, Jason A Saslow, Jan
Schmid, Daniel Baulig, Christian , Anna-Ester Volozh — Want to find Crash
Course elsewhere on the internet? Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/YouTubeCrashC…
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Detroit-based artist Pat Perry (previously) travels widely to create drawings,
paintings, and murals inspired by the diverse cultures and landscapes of
different parts of the world, often with an eye toward forgotten or
marginalized people and places. Partnering with aptART and the Good Works Foundation, Perry’s most recent project took him to Maine and Iraq,
where he collaboratively designed and painted a pair of murals with local
schoolchildren. The two fifth grade classes, located over 5,600 miles apart in
Biddeford and Slemani, got to know each other by exchanging videos and artwork.
They then assisted Perry with painting their own messages on the new murals.
The resulting project, OPENING
LINES, depicts a child in each mural holding a red telephone. Because their
backs are turned, the viewer can imagine whether each subject is speaking or listening.
Surrounding each figure are doodles and messages written in both English and
Arabic by Perry’s young collaborators. Samantha Robison of aptART tells
Colossal, “With cultural overlap across the globe unavoidable, the peril of
stereotype can be lessened by individual, personal acquaintances across
borders; a literal face rather than an idea of one. The most integral part of
equality is providing platforms for people to speak, to create, to be listened
to.”
The video below offers a glimpse
behind the scenes of OPENING LINES. You can follow along with aptART’s youth
programming on Instagram and explore more of Perry’s wide-ranging humanist work
(including limited edition prints) on his website and Instagram.
Corresponding murals painted with
groups of kids in Slemani, Iraq and Biddeford, Maine. An aptArts project in
conjunction with One Blue Sky/Good Works Foundation. video: Emad Rashidi
www.emadrashidi.com/ artwork: Pat Perry www.patperry.com/ www.aptart.org
Captured by Ing-On
Vibulbhan-Watts on Wednesday, July 24, 2019
At the Backyard
Garden, Downtown Newark, New Jersey
I usually see Yellow Swallowtail butterflies every year and hardly see any of Black Swallowtail butterflies, but this year I saw this Black Swallowtail butterfly before I saw the Yellow Swallowtail butterfly. I was lucky to capture the butterfly on my camcorder for only three minutes. Yellow Swallowtail butterflies usually stay to drink the nectar from the Butterfly bush flowers for about thirty minutes or more.
I enjoy
all kinds of flowers but every year I wait for these large pink flowers. The flower diameter is about ten inches. The flower will last only one day. If the weather is very hot then by the
afternoon the flower will wither away.
This year we were very lucky to see a lot of flowers blossom.
These white little daisies have a nice character of their own compared to the other larger flowers in the garden. They standout strongly and have a nice contrast to the green leaves around them.
