Wednesday on the NewsHour, the human cost of the novel coronavirus pandemic continues to rise worldwide, but there are some signs of hope. Plus: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., ends his presidential bid, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on his state’s pandemic response, an ER doctor in New York on treating and surviving COVID-19, homeless in a pandemic, U.S. Navy upheaval and coronavirus in Scandinavia. 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
Earlier this week, in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration relaxed automobile fuel efficiency standards that were put in place under the Obama administration to combat climate change. Coral Davenport, energy and environment policy reporter for The New York Times, joins Hari Sreenivasan for more on the potential consequences of the decision. 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
As the world stays home, will the environment improve?
As more and more people stay at home during the pandemic, millions of vehicles are no longer on the roads and the skies are comparatively free of airplanes. Many other human activities that cause air pollution also have been scaled back. But will this lull in activity make a difference in the air we breathe or the future of climate change? NewsHour Weekend’s Christopher Booker 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
@Al Jazeera English, we focus on people and events that affect people’s lives. We bring topics to light that often go under-reported, listening to all sides of the story and giving a ‘voice to the voiceless’. Reaching more than 270 million households in over 140 countries across the globe, our viewers trust Al Jazeera English to keep them informed, inspired, and entertained. Our impartial, fact-based reporting wins worldwide praise and respect. It is our unique brand of journalism that the world has come to rely on. We are reshaping global media and constantly working to strengthen our reputation as one of the world’s most respected news and current affairs channels. Subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera Check our website: http://www.aljazeera.com/#AlJazeeraEnglish#BreakingNews#AlJazeeraLive
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 and Asia while keeping track of stories from the rest of the world. Informative, entertaining and up-to-date – DW News, connecting the dots for our viewers across the globe. Deutsche Welle is Germany’s international broadcaster. We convey a comprehensive image of Germany, report events and developments, incorporate German and other perspectives in a journalistically independent manner. By doing so we promote understanding between cultures and peoples. #dwNews#LiveNews#NewsToday
Coronavirus Live Streaming: Breaking news, world Map and live counter on confirmed cases and recovered cases. I started this live stream on Jan 26th, and since Jan 30th I have been streaming this without stopping. Many people are worried about the spread of coronavirus. For anyone that wants to know the real-time progression of the worldwide spread of this virus, I offer this live stream. The purpose is not to instill fear or panic, nor is it to necessarily comfort; I just want to present the data to help inform the public of the current situation. The purpose of this stream is to show basic information and data to understand the situation easily. For detail information, please visit our reference sites.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a new virus.
The disease causes respiratory illness (like the flu) with symptoms such as a cough, fever, and in more severe cases, difficulty breathing. You can protect yourself by washing your hands frequently, avoiding touching your face, and avoiding close contact (1 meter or 3 feet) with people who are unwell.
HOW IT SPREADS
Coronavirus disease spreads primarily through contact with an infected person when they cough or sneeze. It also spreads when a person touches a surface or object that has the virus on it, then touches their eyes, nose, or mouth.
This newsletter usually opens with the U.S. death toll, but today let’s spend a moment on the day toll: The early days of the spread of the coronavirus in which crucial opportunities to respond were squandered by systemic federal government failures, as chronicled in several new stories.
Seventy days elapsedfrom the first time the White House was formally notified of the outbreak in China on Jan. 3 until President Trump began to treat the virus “as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens,” according to Washington Post reporting based on 47 interviews with administration officials, public health experts, intelligence officers and others.
Twenty-one days in February were lost as the administration relied on a coronavirus test known to be flawed and prevented private labs from deploying better ones, blinding doctors and scientists as the virus spread across the country. Read our deep dive into scientists’ alarm and exasperation during that period.
Eighteen months ago — longbefore the outbreak — “the Trump administration received detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic,” we report in another story. It was never built, and the U.S. government is now so desperate for masks it has asked 3M to stop sending them to Canada and other countries, prompting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to warn the United States would be “hurting itself as much as Canada” because essential goods and services flow both ways.
Eleven days from now, the country will need 32,000 ventilators, far more than are in the government stockpile, according to an estimate by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Because U.S. officials played down the virus for so long, Ford and General Motors only recently overhauled their factories to make the machines, and the bulk of their production won’t come on line until May. Read more here.
These cumulative problems mean “the United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation,” we write in our story on the 70 lost days.
And new signs of dysfunction: After a behind-the-scenes debate between officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and White House officials, Trump unenthusiastically announced the agency’s recommendation that Americans start wearing face coverings in public. Even as he shared the guidance, Trump said he would not follow it himself. Read more about that here.
“This is going to be the hardest and saddest week of most Americans’ lives,” Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams said on Fox News today, as hospitals in the New York region and other high-infection areas brace for an expected surge in patients and deaths. “This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the country.”
We sent reporters to the front lines: two rarely-seen treatment centers in New York, which already accounts for almost half the nation’s 9,000-plus coronavirus deaths. Read what it’s like inside Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, where 80 percent of patients have the virus, visitors are banned and an ICU nurse sings to the dying, though most can no longer hear her.
Then read about the surreal scene in Manhattan, where a 2.1 million-square-foot convention center has been turned into a militarized hospital: “Here, if someone ‘pops hot,’ as one soldier said, they’ll be descended upon by medics and rushed to an isolation tent.”
President Trump said 1,000 military doctors and nurses will deploy to New York City, and urged states to share any spare ventilators with others amid a national shortage. Oregon has pledged to donate most of its reserve supply of ventilators to New York — though those 140 machines will still leave the nation’s coronavirus epicenter far short of what state officials say are needed.
We have another insider piece, in the form of a column by David Ignatius, on the unusual ouster of Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, who was removed from command of a virus-stricken aircraft carrier in Guam after he wrote a plea for help to his superiors that leaked to the media. “Breaking news: Trump wants him fired,” Acting Navy secretary Thomas Modly reportedly told a colleague the day before he personally removed Crozier from the ship.
Mental health check: It’s not easy for any of us to contend with all the grim news while we watch everything that was familiar about our daily lives fade away. It can actually be dangerous, if we fail to recognize signs of serious maladies amid the chaos. We talked with mental health professionals about how you can take an honest look at yourself and determine what type of help you might need.Please read it, and be safe.
This week, London’s Natural History Museum announced the winners of its 55th Wildlife Photographer of the Year showcase. More than 48,000 amateur and professional photographers from 100 countries shared their best shots and a jury of nine experts selected the winners. Some of this year’s jurors included Kathy Moran, Senior Editor for Natural History at National Geographic Magazine; nature photographer Theo Bosboom; Melissa Dale, Acting Director of Photography at The Nature Conservancy; conservation photojournalist Paul Hilton; and writer and editor Rosamund ‘Roz’ Kidman Cox OBE, who chaired the committee.
The nineteen winners were selected across categories including animal behavior of mammals, birds, and invertebrates, along with animal portraits, plants and fungi, earth’s environment, and special categories for youth and emerging photographers. We’ve included 10 of our favorites here, including a golden eagle about to land by Audun Rikardsen, a life-or-death duel between a marmot and a fox by Yongqing Bao, and a hummingbird hawkmoth caught mid-sip by Thomas Easterbrook. To see more of the top finishers, check out our September coverage of this year’s finalists, and see the full show at the Natural History Museum in London now through May 31, 2020. Submissions for the 2020 competition open on October 21, 2019.
The architectural army by Daniel Kronauer, USA. Winner 2019, Behaviour: Invertebrates
The equal match by Ingo Arndt, Germany. Joint Winner 2019, Behaviour: Mammals
Tapestry of life by Zorica Kovacevic, Serbia/USA. Winner 2019, Plants and Fungi
Snow-plateau nomads by Shangzhen Fan China. Winner 2019, Animals in Their Environment
The moment by Yongqing Bao, China. Joint Winner 2019, Behaviour: Mammals
Early riser by Riccardo Marchgiani, Italy. Winner 2019, 15-17 years old
Face of deception by Ripan Biswas, India. Winner 2019, Animal Portraits
The huddle by Stefan Christmann, Germany. Winner 2019, Wildlife Photographer of the Year Portfolio Award
Humming surprise by Thomas Easterbrook, UK. Winner 2019, 10 years and under
Pennsylvania man captures all walks of life crossing log bridge
The video, taken year-round, shows bears, deer, bobcats, grouse, beavers and many other wildlife crossing the bridge, or swimming underneath in their natural habitats. Credit: Robert Bush.
A log in Pennsylvania has gotten a lot of foot—and talon and paw—traffic during the last year. In trail camera footage captured by photographer Robert Bush Sr., local wildlife is shown crossing the downed tree throughout 2018 and 2019. A black bear frequents the location, in addition to grouse, bobcats, deer, squirrels, and beavers, which all are caught scurrying over the log or wading through the water. Despite their regular visits, though, none of the species seem to run into each other. For more clips of the animals’ travel routines, head to Bush’s Facebook and YouTube pages. (via Laughing Squid)
On this edition for Sunday, March 22, the latest developments on
the coronavirus outbreak, social services adapt to continue to provide for
seniors, the psychological toll of social distancing and the trends that
researchers are seeing with the pandemic. 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 21, as the coronavirus spreads
hospitals and medical professionals are pushed to capacity, a growing number of
cities shut down services, and the music industry deals with cancellations from
the outbreak by performing online. 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
Novel coronavirus has, in just a few months, grown into a
full-blown pandemic. It has stressed governments and health systems around the
globe, ended an era of economic expansion and reshaped public life. To offer
context around these uncertain times, the PBS NewsHour will air “Confronting
Coronavirus: A PBS NewsHour Special” on PBS stations across the country on
Thursday, March 19, starting at 8 p.m. ET. PBS NewsHour anchor and managing
editor Judy Woodruff and our correspondents will shed light on what health
precautions everyone should take, as well as the pandemic’s economic impact.
The special will feature interviews with officials, dispatches on the crisis
from around the world, plus a virtual town hall with curated questions from
viewers like you across the United States. 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 To Identify Early
Symptoms Of COVID-19 | NBC News NOW
President Trump said that anybody who wants a COVID-19 test can
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@Al Jazeera English, we focus on people and events that affect
people’s lives. We bring topics to light that often go under-reported,
listening to all sides of the story and giving a ‘voice to the voiceless’.
Reaching more than 270 million households in over 140 countries across the
globe, our viewers trust Al Jazeera English to keep them informed, inspired,
and entertained. Our impartial, fact-based reporting wins worldwide praise and
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ABC News channel provides around the clock coverage of news events
as they break in Australia and abroad. Including the latest coronavirus
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Canadian Parliament will be holding an emergency session on
Tuesday to pass urgent legislation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. David
Akin and Mercedes Stephenson explain how the Liberal government will table a
bill aimed at giving it new, special powers. Also, Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau has issued a stern warning to Canadians refusing to abide by social
distancing guidelines. Mike Le Couteur reports on the prime minister’s message,
and what different provinces are doing to get people to stay in their homes.
Hospitals across Canada are bracing for the inevitable spike of COVID-19
patients that will strain resources and medical workers. Abigail Bimman reports
on Health Minister Patty Hajdu’s message to hospitals. Turning to the United
States, New York state has become the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in the
U.S., while a new outbreak is growing in Louisiana. As Jackson Proskow reports,
the White House is facing multiplying, urgent pleas to bail out the economy and
the healthcare system. After Canada and Australia refused to send their
athletes to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, veteran IOC member Dick Pound said he
expects the games will be postponed. Eric Sorensen explains when the next
Olympics could be held, and the reaction. Additionally, despite social
distancing guidelines to help flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic, many
people in the U.K. are still mingling in parks and cramming into commuter
trains. As Crystal Goomansingh reports, the British government is preparing to
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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
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our DW anchors in 15-, 30- and 60-minute shows. Correspondents on the ground
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Novel coronavirus Live Streaming: Breaking news, world Map and
live counter on confirmed cases, recovered cases(COVID-19). I started this live
stream on Jan 26th, and since Jan 30th I have been streaming this without
stopping. Many people are worried about the coronavirus spreading. For anyone
that wants to know the numbers and progression of the worldwide spread of this
virus, I offer this live stream. The purpose is not to instill fear or panic,
nor is it to necessarily comfort; I just want to present the data to help
inform the public of the current situation. At first, I tried to show only
official data from governments without any manipulation. But many people wanted
to apply an up-to-date format of data to stream. I added a procedure to
manually manipulate data with my computer. After seeing the inflicted countries
numbers had sharply increased, I realized that I could no longer keep up with
new information from 100 countries. So I made another procedure which enables
moderators the ability to manipulate the numbers on screen remotely. Not only
the moderators who willingly accepted the hard work, but also everyone that
gave us reliable information were able to add streaming data. The role of this
streaming is to show basic information to undertand situation easily. For
detail information, please visit our reference sites. References: 1.
WORLDOMETER: https://www.worldometers.info/coronav… 2. BNO News: https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02… 3. JHU CSEE: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/ap… 4. 1point3acres (for USA/CAN):https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en 5.
RiskLayer (DEU): http://www.risklayer-explorer.com/eve… 6. MorgenPost (DEU): https://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/coro… 7. DXY (CHN): https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneum… 8. J.A.G Japan (JPN): https://jagjapan.maps.arcgis.com/apps… 9. VG (NOR): https://www.vg.no/spesial/2020/corona… 10. Wiki – Brazil page (BRA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_co… I majored in life science and joined bioinformatics laboratory
for master degree. At that time I used python. Since I decided to change my
career as dentist, I have been stopped programming for 15 years. Now, I start
to learn more about python with googling. Because my job doesn’t allow
mistakes, I won’t try something new works. Still I am wondering how can i start
this live streaming. Sometimes python program doesn’t work as i intended. If I
can devote all my free time to this live stream, I would give more accurate and
faster information. But please understand that I can’t manipulate data all day.
While I am working and sleeping, data gathering is done automatically. I live
in South Korea. At the beginning of streaming, the number of confirmed cases
were not so high in South Korea. After sudden appearing local transmission that
can’t be trackable, the number has been dramatically increased. Please be
warned that COVID-19 is highly contagious disease. Although the stream started
off crude and basic, many people have supported me in improving and maintaining
this. It is because of your support that I am encouraged to keep streaming. I
especially appreciate all moderators for willingly accepting the role. They
have given their precious time to making this live stream better – Max
Mustermann, Stephanie Hughes, Random, Entrenched Trader, Droid Knight, Craft Fan,
Fries, jlpowell73, The NCV, Josh Leathers,The Eldritch God, srpk khin,
Hitz1001, Red Chiref, GildArt by Gilda, emmamec, lambi, AmberLeanne, DukeHeart,
Green Rock Films, Charlie and amithist57. I hope this live stream can be a
useful source of information for you. Please keep track of the numbers that
impact you and let them inform the decisions you make when you have to make
them. Please take care. Keeping good immunity is very important!!! Please
sleep, eat and rest fully for resilience. Keep those affected by this
unfortunate outbreak in your thoughts. Data1 – screen numbers https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/… Data2 – Daily numbers https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/… Eyes_of_Glory/ Heaven_and_Hell / Heaven_and_Hell_Part_2 /
Hero_Down/ Into_the_Sky / Lonely_Troutman / Lonely_Troutman_II / Parzival /
Mountain/The_Heartache Hero Down: http://incompetech.com/ from www.bensound.com from
www.epidemicsound.com
Mayibout
2 is not a healthy place. The 150 or so people who live in the village, which
sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe forest in
northern Gabon, are used to occasional bouts of diseases such as malaria,
dengue, yellow fever and sleeping sickness. Mostly they shrug them off.
But in
January 1996, Ebola, a deadly virus then barely known to humans,
unexpectedly spilled
out of the forest in a wave of small epidemics. The disease killed 21 of 37
villagers who were reported to have been infected, including a number who had
carried, skinned, chopped or eaten a chimpanzee from the nearby forest.
I
traveled to Mayibout 2 in 2004 to investigate why deadly diseases new to humans
were emerging from biodiversity “hot spots” like tropical rainforests and
bushmeat markets in African and Asian cities.
It took
a day by canoe and then many hours down degraded forest logging roads passing
Baka villages and a small gold mine to reach the village. There, I found
traumatized people still fearful that the deadly virus, which
kills up to 90% of the people it infects, would return.
Villagers told me how
children had gone into the forest with dogs that had killed a chimp. They said
that everyone who cooked or ate it got a terrible fever within a few hours.
Some died immediately, while others were taken down the river to hospital. A
few, like Nesto Bematsick, recovered. “We used to love the forest, now we fear
it,” he told me. Many of Bematsick’s family members died.
Only a
decade or two ago it was widely thought that tropical forests and intact
natural environments teeming with exotic wildlife threatened humans by
harboring the viruses and pathogens that lead to new diseases in humans like
Ebola, HIV and dengue.
But a
number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of
biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases like
COVID-19, the viral disease that emerged in China in December 2019, to
arise—with profound health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries
alike. In fact, a new discipline, planetary health, is emerging that focuses on
the increasingly visible connections among the well-being of humans, other
living things and entire ecosystems.
Is it
possible, then, that it was human activity, such as road building, mining,
hunting and logging, that triggered the Ebola epidemics in Mayibout 2 and
elsewhere in the 1990s and that is unleashing new terrors today?
“We invade tropical
forests and other wild landscapes, which harbor so many species of animals and
plants—and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses,” David Quammen,
author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next
Pandemic, recently
wrote in the New York Times. “We cut the trees; we kill the
animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we
shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a
new host. Often, we are it.”
INCREASING THREAT
Research
suggests that outbreaks of animal-borne and other infectious
diseases like Ebola, SARS, bird flu and now COVID-19, caused by a novel
coronavirus, are on the rise. Pathogens are crossing
from animals to humans, and many are now able to spread quickly to
new places. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates
that three-quarters of “new or emerging” diseases that infect humans originate
in nonhuman animals.
Some,
like rabies and plague, crossed from animals centuries ago. Others, like
Marburg, which is thought to be transmitted by bats, are still rare. A few, like
COVID-19, which emerged last year in Wuhan, China, and MERS, which is linked to
camels in the Middle East, are new to humans and spreading globally.
Other
diseases that
have crossed into humans include Lassa
fever, which was first identified in 1969 in Nigeria; Nipah from
Malaysia; and SARS from China, which killed more than 700 people and traveled
to 30 countries in 2002–03. Some, like Zika and West Nile virus, which emerged
in Africa, have mutated and become established on other continents.
Kate
Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at UCL, calls emerging animal-borne
infectious diseases an “increasing and very significant threat to global
health, security and economies.”
AMPLIFICATION EFFECT
In
2008, Jones and a team of researchers identified 335
diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004, at least 60% of which came from
non-human animals.
Increasingly,
says Jones, these zoonotic diseases are linked to environmental change and
human behavior. The disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, mining, road
building through remote places, rapid urbanization and
population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species
they may never have been near before, she says.
The
resulting transmission of disease from wildlife to humans, she says, is now “a
hidden cost of human economic development. There are just so many more of us,
in every environment. We are going into largely undisturbed places and being
exposed more and more. We are creating habitats where viruses are transmitted
more easily, and then we are surprised that we have new ones.”
Jones
studies how land use change contributes to the risk. “We are researching how
species in degraded habitats are likely to carry more viruses which can infect
humans,” she says. “Simpler systems get an amplification effect. Destroy
landscapes, and the species you are left with are the ones humans get the
diseases from.”
“There
are countless pathogens out there continuing to evolve which at some point
could pose a threat to humans,” says Eric Fevre, chair of veterinary infectious
diseases at the University of Liverpool’s Institute
of Infection and Global Health. “The risk [of pathogens
jumping from animals to humans] has always been there.”
The
difference between now and a few decades ago, Fevre says, is that diseases are
likely to spring up in both urban and natural environments. “We have created
densely packed populations where alongside us are bats and rodents and birds,
pets and other living things. That creates intense interaction and
opportunities for things to move from species to species,” he says.
TIP OF THE ICEBERG
“Pathogens
do not respect species boundaries,” says disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, an
associate professor in Emory University’s Department of
Environmental Sciences who studies how shrinking natural
habitats and changing behavior add to the risks of diseases spilling over from
animals to humans.
“I am not at all surprised about the
coronavirus outbreak,” he says. “The majority of pathogens are still to be
discovered. We are at the very tip of the iceberg.”
Humans,
says Gillespie, are creating the conditions for the spread of diseases by
reducing the natural barriers between virus host animals—in which the virus is
naturally circulating—and themselves. “We fully expect the arrival of pandemic
influenza; we can expect large-scale human mortalities; we can expect other
pathogens with other impacts. A disease like Ebola is not easily spread. But
something with a mortality rate of Ebola spread by something like measles would
be catastrophic,” Gillespie says.
Wildlife
everywhere is being put under more stress, he says. “Major landscape changes
are causing animals to lose habitats, which means species become crowded
together and also come into greater contact with humans. Species that survive
change are now moving and mixing with different animals and with humans.”
Gillespie
sees this in the U.S., where suburbs fragmenting forests raise the risk of
humans contracting Lyme disease. “Altering the ecosystem affects the complex
cycle of the Lyme pathogen. People living close by are more likely to get
bitten by a tick carrying Lyme bacteria,” he says.
Yet
human health research seldom considers the surrounding natural ecosystems, says
Richard Ostfeld, distinguished senior scientist at the Cary Institute of
Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. He and others are developing the
emerging discipline of planetary health, which looks at the links between human
and ecosystem health.
“There’s
misapprehension among scientists and the public that natural ecosystems are the
source of threats to ourselves. It’s a mistake. Nature poses threats, it is
true, but it’s human activities that do the real damage. The health risks in a
natural environment can be made much worse when we interfere with it,” he says.
Ostfeld
points to rats and bats, which
are strongly linked with the direct and indirect spread of zoonotic diseases.
“Rodents and some bats thrive when we disrupt natural habitats. They are the
most likely to promote transmissions [of pathogens]. The more we disturb the
forests and habitats the more danger we are in,” he says.
Felicia Keesing, professor of biology at Bard College, New York,
studies how environmental changes influence the probability that humans will be
exposed to infectious diseases. “When we erode biodiversity, we see a
proliferation of the species most likely to transmit new diseases to us, but there’s also good evidence
that those same species are the best hosts for existing diseases,”
she wrote in an email to Ensia.
THE MARKET CONNECTION
Disease
ecologists argue that viruses and other pathogens are also likely to move from
animals to humans in the many informal markets that have sprung up to provide
fresh meat to fast-growing urban populations around the world. Here animals are
slaughtered, cut up and sold on the spot.
The
“wet market” (one that sells fresh produce and meat) in Wuhan, thought by the
Chinese government to be the starting point of the current COVID-19 pandemic,
was known to sell numerous
wild animals, including live wolf pups, salamanders, crocodiles, scorpions,
rats, squirrels, foxes, civets and turtles.
Equally,
urban markets in west and central Africa see monkeys, bats, rats and dozens of
species of bird, mammal, insect and rodent slaughtered and sold close to open
refuse dumps and with no drainage.
“Wet
markets make a perfect storm for cross-species transmission of pathogens,” says
Gillespie. “Whenever you have novel interactions with a range of species in one
place, whether that is in a natural environment like a forest or a wet market,
you can have a spillover event.”
The
Wuhan market, along with others that sell live animals, has been shut by the
Chinese authorities, and the government in February outlawed
trading and eating wild animals except for fish and
seafood. But bans on live animals being sold in urban areas or informal markets
are not the answer, say some scientists.
“The
wet market in Lagos is notorious. It’s like a nuclear bomb waiting to happen.
But it’s not fair to demonize places which do not have fridges. These
traditional markets provide much of the food for Africa and Asia,” says Jones.
“These
markets are essential sources of food for hundreds of millions of poor people,
and getting rid of them is impossible,” says Delia Grace, a senior
epidemiologist and veterinarian with the International Livestock Research
Institute, which is based in Nairobi, Kenya. She argues that bans force traders
underground, where they may pay less attention to hygiene.
Fevre
and Cecilia Tacoli, principal researcher in the human settlements research
group at the International Institute of Environment and Development
(IIED), argue
in a blog post that “rather than pointing the finger at wet markets,” we
should look at the burgeoning trade in wild animals.
“[I]t
is wild animals rather than farmed animals that are the natural hosts of many
viruses,” they write. “Wet markets are considered part of the informal food
trade that is often blamed for contributing to spreading disease. But …
evidence shows the link between informal markets and disease is not
always so clear cut.”
CHANGING BEHAVIOR
So
what, if anything, can we do about all of this?
Jones
says that change must come from both rich and poor societies. Demand for wood,
minerals and resources from the Global North leads to the degraded landscapes
and ecological disruption that drives disease, she says. “We must think about
global biosecurity, find the weak points and bolster the provision of health
care in developing countries. Otherwise we can expect more of the same,” she
says.
“The
risks are greater now. They were always present and have been there for
generations. It is our interactions with that risk which must be changed,” says
Brian Bird, a research virologist at the University of California, Davis School
of Veterinary Medicine One Health Institute, where he leads Ebola-related
surveillance activities in Sierra Leone and elsewhere.
“We are
in an era now of chronic emergency,” Bird says. “Diseases are more likely to
travel further and faster than before, which means we must be faster in our
responses. It needs investments, change in human behavior, and it means we must
listen to people at community levels.”
Getting
the message about pathogens and disease to hunters, loggers, market traders and
consumers is key, Bird says. “These spillovers start with one or two people.
The solutions start with education and awareness. We must make people aware
things are different now. I have learned from working in Sierra Leone with
Ebola-affected people that local communities have the hunger and desire to have
information,” he says. “They want to know what to do. They want to learn.”
Fevre
and Tacoli advocate rethinking urban infrastructure, particularly within
low-income and informal settlements. “Short-term efforts are focused on
containing the spread of infection,” they
write. “The longer term—given that new infectious diseases will
likely continue to spread rapidly into and within cities—calls for an overhaul
of current approaches to urban planning and development.”
The bottom line, Bird says, is to be prepared. “We can’t predict
where the next pandemic will come from, so we need mitigation plans to take
into account the worst possible scenarios,” he says. “The only certain thing is
that the next one will certainly come.”
Australia-based
photographer Kristian Laine recently got a glimpse at a
particularly special underwater creature: the world’s only known pink manta ray. Spanning about 11 feet
and nicknamed Inspector Clouseau after The Pink Panther, the aquatic animal lives near Lady Elliot
Island, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef. “I had no idea there were
pink mantas in the world, so I was confused and thought my strobes were broken
or doing something weird,” Laine told National Geographic.
Project Manta has
been studying the male fish since he was discovered in 2015. After conducting a
skin biopsy, the organization concluded that the unusual hue is not due to diet
or disease but rather is likely a genetic mutation called erythrism, which
causes changes in melanin expressions. Most manta rays are black, white, or a
combination of the two.
For more of Laine’s
underwater shots, follow him on Instagram or Facebook. You also
can purchase one of his photographs of Inspector Clouseau and other ocean fish
from his shop. (via My
Modern Met)
PBS News: Mar 2 – 5, 2020, Washington state coronavirus outbreak ‘a
mystery so far’, How the Dallas Street Choir grants homeless residents a voice,
Greenland Melting (360°), and Yosemite ‘firefall’ slows to a trickle amid
drought
Thursday on the NewsHour, the global impact of novel coronavirus
continues to rise as countries close schools and restrict travel. Plus: A
former Obama campaign manager on the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race,
a troubling report on migrant families separated by the U.S. government,
Britain’s defense secretary on crisis in Syria and a preacher’s reminder that
“everybody is somebody.” WATCH TODAY’S SEGMENTS The IMF seeks to reduce novel
coronavirus’ economic fallout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oauQ5… News Wrap: Schumer denies threatening Supreme Court justices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kPth… How Obama’s campaign manager thinks Democrats can beat Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sU9M… Why HHS struggled to reunite separated migrant families https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCAcL… UK defense secretary on Syria crisis, U.S.-Taliban deal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jsm0… A Brief But Spectacular take on how ‘everybody is someb 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
Tuesday on the NewsHour, U.S. public health officials rush to
respond to the growing novel coronavirus outbreak. Plus: Super Tuesday results
reshape the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination as former Vice
President Joe Biden takes the delegate lead, deadly tornadoes slam Tennessee,
Iran struggles with its novel coronavirus outbreak and a naturalist inspired by
old-growth forests. 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 coronavirus has now spread to more than 60 countries and more
confirmed cases are being reported in the United States. Washington on Saturday
reported the first U.S. death from the virus as new cases continue to emerge in
the state. Los Angeles Times Seattle Bureau Chief Richard Read joins Hari
Sreenivasan for more on the state’s outbreak. 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
the Dallas Street Choir grants homeless residents a voice
The mantra of the Dallas Street Choir is “homeless, not
voiceless.” Some 2,000 singers have passed through the group in the last five
years, seeking support, artistic expression and community as they contend with
life on the streets. The organization also aims to raise awareness of Dallas’
growing homelessness problem, even as the city’s economy booms. 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
Greenland’s glaciers are melting faster and
faster. If they were all to disappear, the sea level around the world would
rise by 20 feet, scientists estimate. A FRONTLINE I NOVA I Emblematic
collaboration
What happens if you get infected with the coronavirus?
Who’s most at risk? How can you protect yourself? Public health expert David
Heymann, who led the global response to the SARS outbreak in 2003, shares the
latest findings about COVID-19 and what the future may hold.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference,
and was featured by our editors on the home page.
As Bernie Sanders’s runaway win in Nevada cements his position as
the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the Democratic Party
establishment and much of the mainstream media are openly expressing concern
about a self-described democratic socialist leading the presidential ticket.
His opponents have also attacked his ambitious agenda. Last week during the
primary debate in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders addressed misconceptions about
socialism. Invoking the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sanders decried
what he called “socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the
poor.” For more, we host a debate on Bernie Sanders and democratic socialism,
featuring two well-known economists. Paul Krugman is a New York Times op-ed
columnist and author of many books, including his latest, “Arguing with
Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future.” One of his
recent columns is headlined “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist.” Richard Wolff is
professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
and visiting professor at The New School. He is the founder of Democracy at
Work and hosts the weekly national television and radio program “Economic
Update.” He’s the author of several books, including “Understanding Socialism.”
#DemocracyNow Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on
nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream
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London-based
architect Margot
Krasojevic has just unveiled a futuristic art gallery that runs
on hydroelectric power. Slated for the coastal Russian region of Sochi, the
Hydroelectric Sculpture Gallery will harness enough wave energy to not
only be 100% self-sufficient, but it will also be able to channel surplus
energy back into the grid, powering around 200 nearby houses and businesses as
a result.
The art gallery will be located on
Sochi’s coastline, where it will use the exceptionally strong coastal swells
from the Black Sea to power a water turbine system. Krasojevic’s
vision depicts a sculptural volume that rises out of an existing wooden
promenade. The building, which will be partly submerged into the sea, will be
strategically angled at 45 degrees to the coastline for maximum wave exposure.
According to the design plans, the
building will “use the environment’s characteristics to generate clean,
sustainable energy, without affecting the quality and nature of the landscape.”
State-of-the-art engineering will allow the structure to harvest wave energy
through oscillating water columns as the waves crash against it. Generating up
to 300kW, the system will enable the gallery to operate completely off the grid
and channel surplus energy back into the grid. It could supply clean energy to
approximately 200 households and businesses in the same area.
Visitors
to the futuristic gallery will enter through a long walkway stretching out from
the shore. The robust exterior of the building will comprise various walkways
and ramps that wind around the steel structure. Sinuous volumes will conceal
the building’s many turbines, which will also be partially submerged
underwater.
Inside,
the spaces will reflect the building’s functions. The various galleries will be
laid out into a power plant format, with steel clad ceilings that mimic the
rolling waves that crash into the exterior. Irregularly shaped skylights will
also create a vibrant, kaleidoscope show of shadow and light throughout the
day.
We’re covering the
state of emergency in California and other responses to the
coronavirus outbreak, the latest in the Democratic presidential
race, and a rare rebuke from the Supreme Court’s chief justice, John
Roberts.
By Chris Stanford
California holds cruise ship offshore
A ship with suspected links to two coronavirus cases, one
fatal, was being held off the coast of San Francisco until everyone on
board could be tested, Gov. Gavin Newsom said. At least 21 people on the
ship had symptoms.
Federal health officials announced
new testing criteria, requiring only a doctor’s agreement. But it’s
unclear whether there are enough tests for everybody who’ll want one.
“The Daily”:Today’s
episode is about the outbreak in Washington State.
Related: New Jersey has announced its first
case, a man in his 30s who had been hospitalized just across the Hudson
River from New York City. Nine new cases in New York were
connected to a patient in Westchester County.
Closer look: Some patients
experienced no physical discomfort from Covid-19, the disease brought on by
the virus. Others are still coughing as they recover. Six Americans who
have tested positive spoke
to The Times about their experiences.
Chloe Lau, a high school student, doing her schoolwork at
home in Hong Kong. By Wednesday, 22 countries had announced school closures
of varying degrees. Lam Yik Fei
for The New York Times
The toll of the outbreak
The coronavirus has already disrupted
the education of nearly 300 million students worldwide,
according to the United Nations. A Seattle-area school district said on
Wednesday that it would cancel classes for two weeks, the largest
virus-related shutdown in the U.S.
Among other effects:
?
United Airlines became the first American carrier to announce
a widespread cut to domestic service, suggesting that fear was
eroding ticket sales even away from the epidemic’s hot spots.
Bernie Sanders, who seemed to have a clear advantage a week
ago, faces pressure to show that he can expand his political base,
and he
acknowledged on Wednesday that his campaign hadn’t
generated the turnout among young people that he had counted on.
What’s next: Most delegates
awarded after Super Tuesday are at stake in the East, where Mr. Sanders has
underperformed. Our Upshot columnist Nate Cohn looked at the
state of the race.
Another angle: Wall Street
executives are opening
their checkbooks for Mr. Biden. That could be a mixed blessing
for a candidate who presents himself as anti-elitist.
If you have 5
minutes, this is worth it
A police tool, and a plaything of the rich
Krista Schlueter for The New York Times
The Times reported in January about a groundbreaking facial
recognition system being used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies,
developed by a start-up called Clearview AI. In response to subsequent
criticism, the company said that its technology was “available only for law
enforcement agencies and select security professionals.”
But The Times has found multiple
other individuals with access to the technology among
Clearview’s investors, clients and friends. They include John Catsimatidis,
above, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery store chain in New
York, who used Clearview to surveil shoppers and to identify a man he saw
on a date with his daughter.
Here’s what else
is happening
Supreme Court rebuke: Chief Justice John Roberts denounced remarks by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, after the Democratic leader criticized President Trump’s two Supreme Court appointees. A spokesman for the lawmaker said his comments had been misrepresented.
Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex
Snapshot: Above, antennas in
Australia that are part of the Deep Space Network. The system, which lets
spacecraft communicate with Earth, will
be taken offline for almost a year starting Monday for
upgrades and repairs.
In memoriam:Javier
Pérez de Cuéllar, a two-term secretary general of the United
Nations during the 1980s and ’90s, died on Wednesday at 100. He helped
broker several peace agreements, including the end of a 10-year war between
Iran and Iraq, and the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.
Late-night comedy: After Jill Biden
confronted protesters who rushed onstage during her husband’s victory rally
on Tuesday, Jimmy
Fallon said, “Forget first lady — she should be secretary of
defense.”
A natural spectacle called “firefall” happens each
February in California’s Yosemite National Park when light from the setting sun
strikes the park’s Horsetail Falls, making it look like it’s ablaze with fire.
But this year the waterfall slowed to a trickle. NewsHour Weekend’s Christopher
Booker spoke with University of California Berkeley climate scientist Patrick
Gonzalez to learn more. 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
Firefall is one of Yosemite National Park most
amazing spectacles. Around the second week of February, the setting sun hits
Horsetail Falls at just the right angle, to illuminate the upper reaches of the
waterfall, and when conditions are perfect, Horsetail Falls glows orange and
red at sunset, giving the illusion it’s on fire. As the sun sets, and dips
behind the horizon line, everything will begin to go dark and it will seem, for
a moment, as if the Firefall has failed to ignite. But as the last of the sunlight
disappears, it will hit and reflect off the falls at the exact right angle,
creating a spectacular if short-lived effect, that looks like a beautiful
flowing cascade of fluid fire. The phenomenon known as “Firefall”
draws scores of photographers to a spot near Horsetail Fall, which flows down
the granite face of the park’s famed rock formation, El Capitan. Thanks for
watching ___________________________________________________________________
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Every year in February the
light hits Horsetail falls perfectly and creates a firey illusion. Firefall has
been captured many times over the years and continues to grow in popularity as
it becomes more and more well-known. In order to get a picture of this
phenomenon, the conditions have to be perfect. Even a single cloud can mess up
the colors and vibrancy of Firefall. The natural beauty of this phenomenon is
epic, but what I found even more outstanding was the effort, time and the sheer
number of people who made the trek out in the freezing cold to witness the
cascade of “fire” down El Cap. My feet froze the first and second
night, so by the third night, I was bundled up real nice and stayed warm while
watching the show. If you’re going to witness Firefall, it’s wise if you can
block out a few days, you might not get it first the first day… this gives
you a few chances to see and capture the falls. Even one cloud can hinder the
glow of the falls, as we experienced the last night we watched. Even if you
take the trip out to Yosemite and don’t get to witness the glow, the park and
people are amazing! I hope this gives y’all a better idea of what to expect and
what it takes to capture Firefall. Thanks for watching! Enjoy! Things to do in
Yosemite while you wait: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzKI0… Huge thanks to David Bobbitt for editing the footage!
“Horizontorium” (1832),
hand-colored lithograph, 22.5 x 16.5 inches
In 1832, artist John Jesse Barker added depth to a drawing by Philadelphia-based William G.
Mason to create an optical illusion titled “Horizontorium.” Part of a tradition of anamorphic works, this
depiction of the Bank of Philadelphia is one of the two surviving works looking
at the historic financial building designed by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe. At the time, it was the unofficial bank of
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that sat at the southwest corner of Fourth and
Chestnut streets. The structure was razed in 1836.
Horizontoriums became popular throughout England and
France in the 18th century, although this piece is the only one known to be
made in America. Viewers would set the lithograph on a flat surface and
perpendicularly position their face at the center of the work (note the
semicircle on this lithograph suggesting a spot for a chin) to peer over the
image. The sharp angle would produce a distorted perspective that appears to
project the building and its passersby upward. Sometimes, viewers even would
peek through a small hole carved out of paper or cardboard to block out their
peripheral vision and give the work a more distinct look. (via Graphic Arts Collection, The Morning News)
“Horizontorium” (1832),
hand-colored lithograph, 22.5 x 16.5 inches
“Horizontorium” (1832),
hand-colored lithograph, 22.5 x 16.5 inches
“Horizontorium” (1832),
hand-colored lithograph, 22.5 x 16.5 inches
“Horizontorium” (1832),
hand-colored lithograph, 22.5 x 16.5 inches
Artist Ramon Bruin (previously)
recently drew this fun anamorphic illusion that appears to be a 3D ship but
is actually a skewed drawing on three sheets of flat paper. You can see more of
his recent work over on deviantART. (via my modern met)
Charming new illustrations
by TRÜF
Creative (previously) combine a conservative color palette with wildly
imaginative interpretations of animals. An ongoing passion project by the Santa
Monica-based design studio, the series’s latest chapter is titled “Animals
Strike Curious Poses,” (which is a reference to Prince, for fans who are
wondering). The TRÜF team describes the project as “our minimalistic and
strange interpretation of the animal kingdom that only exists in our heads.” If
you’d like to make one of their geometric birds, whales, or fish your own, find
prints in their online store.
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.
On this edition for Sunday, February 16, the 2020 Democratic
presidential candidates turn to Nevada as early voting takes place ahead of the
upcoming caucuses, a look back at the historic Baldwin-Buckley race debate and
how it is still resonating, and in Arizona an experimental program is being
used to battle a decades-long drought. 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 February 15, 2020
On this edition for Saturday, February 15, new cases of the
coronavirus decrease in China, early voting begins in Nevada’s caucuses, the
intersection of politics and architecture in North Macedonia, the Trump
administration plans to ramp up enforcement in sanctuary cities, and a vital
tuna industry struggles to stay afloat amid a perfect storm of obstacles. 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
Syrian refugees at Zaatari camp
in Jordan and scientists from the University of Sheffield are working together
to create a way to grow healthy, fresh food with nothing but water and old
mattress foam.
These ‘recycled gardens’ use the mattresses in place of the
soil, which solves two problems in one: It reuses the mountain of plastic
mattresses that have piled up in the camp and it allows everyone to grow fresh
food in a crowded, desert environment.
Victoria Gill has been to the camp in Jordan to see how it’s
working.
Produced by Vanessa Clarke.
Filmed and edited by Stephen Fildes.
Fire and Rescue personnel
run to move their truck as a bushfire burns on December 19, 2019 near Sydney,
Australia. Fires in Australia were the most expensive weather-related disaster
so far in 2020, with damages estimated in the billions by insurance broker Aon.
Credit: David Gray Getty
Images
January 2020 was the planet’s warmest January since record
keeping began in 1880, said NOAA’s National
Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on
Thursday. Global ocean temperatures during January 2020 were the second
warmest on record, and global land temperatures were the warmest on record.
Global satellite-measured temperatures in January 2020 for the lowest 8 km of
the atmosphere were the warmest or second warmest in the 42-year record,
according to the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) and RSS, respectively.
January
2020 had the fourth highest departure of temperature from average of any month
since 1880. Only March 2016, February 2016 and December 2015 had a greater
temperature departure. Impressively, the warmth of January 2020
came without an El Niño event being present. Furthermore, we are
also near the nadir of one of the least active solar cycles in the past
century–a time when it is more difficult to set global heat records, due to
the reduced amount of solar energy Earth receives. Thus, the remarkable warmth
of January 2020 is a strong reminder that human-caused global warming is the
primary driver of our warming climate.
Figure
1. Departure of temperature from average for January 2020,
the warmest January for the globe since record keeping began in
1880. Record warm January surface temperatures were present across parts
of Scandinavia, Asia, the Indian Ocean, the central and western Pacific Ocean,
the Atlantic Ocean, and Central and South America. No land or ocean areas had
record cold January temperatures. Credit: NOAA National Centers for Environmental
Information (NCEI).
TWO BILLION-DOLLAR WEATHER
DISASTERS IN JANUARY 2020
Two billion-dollar weather-related disaster hit the Earth last
month, according to the January 2020 Catastrophe Report from insurance
broker Aon:
U.S. severe weather outbreak: A
powerful winter storm over central and eastern sections of the U.S. from
January 10 – 12 killed 12 and did $1.2 billion in damage. The storm brought a
multi-day severe weather outbreak to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri,
Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia, with
79 confirmed tornadoes.
Australia wildfires: Intense
heat and drought over much of Australia in January caused destructive wildfires
blamed for billions of dollars in damages. The combined death toll for the
2019/20 Australia bushfire season stands at 34, with more than 5,900 homes and
other structures destroyed. Guardian
Australia has launched the first of six very impressive immersive multimedia
features on climate change, reported through the experiences of people living
through it in Australia. The first episode–on
bushfires–is best viewed on a large screen (not mobile) with the
sound on.
NEUTRAL EL NIÑO CONDITIONS
REIGN
NOAA’s February 13 monthly discussion of the
state of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) stated that neutral ENSO
conditions existed, with neither an El Niño nor a La Niña event in progress.
Over the past month, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the benchmark Niño3.4
region of the eastern tropical Pacific, though warmer than average, have been
below the 0.5°C above-average threshold need to be considered El Niño
conditions.
Forecasters at NOAA and the International Research Institute for Climate and
Society (IRI) are calling for a roughly 60%
chance of neutral conditions continuing through Northern Hemisphere spring, and
a 50% chance of continuing through summer. They put the odds of an El
Niño event during the August-September-October peak of the hurricane
season at 23%, and the odds of a La Niña event during that period at 33%.
Figure
2. Departure of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the
benchmark Niño 3.4 region (in the equatorial Pacific) ending on February 13,
2020. Over the past month, SSTs were about 0.3°C above average, falling short
of the 0.5°C above-average threshold need to be considered El Niño conditions.
Credit: Levi Cowan, tropicaltidbits.com.
ARCTIC SEA ICE: EIGHTH LOWEST
JANUARY EXTENT ON RECORD
Arctic
sea ice extent during January 2020 was tied for eighth lowest in the 41-year
satellite record, according to the National Snow and Ice
Data Center (NSIDC). The ice extent was higher than seen in recent
years thanks to a strongly positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation (AO), which
kept cold air bottled up in the Arctic. Antarctic sea ice extent in January
2020 was the tenth lowest on record.
NOTABLE GLOBAL HEAT AND COLD
MARKS FOR JANUARY 2020
Hottest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere: 42.0°C (107.6°F)
at Vicente Guerrero, Mexico, 21 January
Coldest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere: -66.0°C (-86.8°F) at Geo
Summit, Greenland, 3 January (dubious data)
Hottest temperature in the Southern Hemisphere: 48.9°C (120.0°F)
at Penrith, Australia, 4 January
Coldest temperature in the Southern Hemisphere: -47.4°C (-53.3°F)
at Concordia, Antarctica, 31 January
(Courtesy of Maximiliano
Herrera.)
MAJOR WEATHER STATIONS THAT SET
(NOT TIED) NEW ALL-TIME HEAT OR COLD RECORDS IN JANUARY 2020
Among global stations with a period of record of at least 40
years, 28 set new all-time heat records in January, and 3 set all-time cold
records:
Canberra (Australia) max. 44.0°C, 4 January
Newcastle (Australia) max. 44.9°C, 4 January
Katoomba (Australia) max. 39.8°C, 4 January
Parramatta (Australia) max. 47.0°C, 4 January
Bankstown (Australia) max. 47.0 °C, 4 January
Taralga (Australia) max. 40.5°C, 4 January
Goulburn Airport (Australia) max. 42.0°C, 4 January
Albury (Australia) max. 46.1°C, 4 January
Burrinjuck Dam (Australia) max. 45.0°C, 4 January
Grenfell (Australia) max. 44.0°C, 4 January
Young (Australia) max. 44.9°C, 4 January
Gundagai (Australia) max. 45.2°C, 4 January
Cootamundra (Australia) max. 45.0°C, 4 January
Temora (Australia) max. 46.4°C, 4 January
Narrandera (Australia) max. 47.4°C, 4 January
Griffith (Australia) max. 47.2°C, 4 January
Calama (Chile) max. 31.2 °C, 12 January
Fraserburg (South Africa) max. 42.4°C, 16 January
Pofadder (South Africa) max. 43.0°C, 16 January
Willowmore (South Africa) max. 42.2°C, 16 January
Beaufort West (South Africa) max. 44.5°C, 16
January
Saint Raphael-Cargados Islands (Mauritius) max. 35.6°C, 9 January
Honiara Downtown (Solomon Islands) max. 35.4°C, 3 January
Veguitas (Cuba) min. 7.0 °C, 23 January
Pinares de Mayari (Cuba) min. 6.5°C, 23 January
Conakry Airport (Guinea) max. 38.0°C, 24 January
Kalewa (Myanmar) min. 6.6°C, 26 January
Cabramurra (Australia) max. 34.0°C, 31 January
Hobart Airport (Australia) max. 41.4°C, 31 January
Maydena (Australia) max. 38.2°C, 31 January
Gisborne (New Zealand) max. 38.2°C, 31 January
No all-time national heat or cold records have been set thus far
in 2020.
(Courtesy of Maximiliano Herrera.)
THIRTEEN MONTHLY
NATIONAL/TERRITORIAL HEAT RECORD BEATEN OR TIED IN 2020 AS OF FEBRUARY 13
As of
February 13, 13 national monthly all-time heat records have been beaten or
tied in 2020:
January (10): Norway, South Korea, Angola, Congo Brazzaville,
Dominica, Mexico, Indonesia, Guinea Bissau, Gambia, Sao Tome and Principe
February (3): Spain, Antarctica, Azerbaijan
No monthly national cold records have been beaten or tied in 2020.
(Courtesy of Maximiliano Herrera.)
HEMISPHERICAL AND CONTINENTAL
TEMPERATURE RECORDS IN 2020
Highest minimum temperature ever recorded the Northern
Hemisphere in January: 29.1°C (84.4°F) at Bonriki,
Kiribati, 17 January.
Highest
maximum temperature ever recorded in North America in January: 42.0°C (107.6°F)
at Vicente Guerrero, Mexico, 21 January.
Highest
temperature ever recorded in continental Antarctica and highest February
temperature ever recorded in Antarctica plus the surrounding islands: 18.4°C
(65.1°F) at Base Esperanza, 6 February.
(Courtesy of Maximiliano Herrera.)
The views expressed
are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific
American.
Jeff Masters worked as a hurricane scientist
with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990. After a near-fatal flight into category 5 Hurricane Hugo, he left
the Hurricane Hunters to pursue a safer passion–a 1997 Ph.D. in air pollution
meteorology from the University of Michigan. In 1995, he co-founded the Weather Underground, and served as its chief meteorologist until
the company was sold to the Weather Company in 2012. Since 2005, his Wunderblog
(now called Category 6) has been one of the Internet’s most popular sources of extreme
weather and climate change information, and he is one of the most widely quoted
experts in the field. He can be reached at weatherman.masters@gmail.com.
“Branding is the profound manifestation of the human
spirit,” says designer and podcaster Debbie Millman. In a historical
odyssey that she illustrated herself, Millman traces the evolution of branding,
from cave paintings to flags to beer labels and beyond. She explores the power
of symbols to unite people, beginning with prehistoric communities who used
them to represent beliefs and identify affiliations to modern companies that
adopt logos and trademarks to market their products — and explains how
branding reflects the state of humanity.
This talk was presented at an official TED
conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
“A political cartoon is a barometer of
freedom,” says Rayma Suprani, who was exiled from her native Venezuela for
publishing work critical of the government. “That’s why dictators hate
cartoonists.” In a talk illustrated with highlights from a career spent
railing against totalitarianism, Suprani explores how cartoons hold a mirror to
society and reveal hidden truths — and discusses why she keeps drawing even
when it comes at a high personal cost. (In Spanish with consecutive English
translation)
This talk was presented at an official TED
conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Check out more of Rayma Suprani’s political
cartoons and graphic work.
FOLLOW
Follow Rayma Suprani on Twitter.
TEDWomen 2019 | December 2019
We
need humor like we need the air we breathe, says editorial cartoonist Patrick
Chappatte. In a talk illustrated with highlights from a career spent skewering
everything from dictators and ideologues to selfies and social media mobs,
Chappatte makes a resounding, often hilarious case for the necessity of satire.
“Political cartoons were born with democracy, and they are challenged when
freedom is,” he says.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference,
and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Susan B. Anthony was an American social
reformer and women’s rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women’s
suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she
collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. Wikipedia
Susan Brownell Anthony
(February 15, 1820 to March 13, 1906), better known as Susan B. Anthony, was an
American writer, lecturer and abolitionist who was a leading figure in the
women’s voting rights movement. Raised in a Quaker household, Anthony went on
to work as a teacher. She later partnered with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and would
eventually lead the National American Woman Suffrage Association. #Biography Subscribe for more Biography: http://aetv.us/2AsWMPH Delve deeper into Biography on our site: http://www.biography.com Follow Biography for more surprising stories from fascinating
lives: Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Biography Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/biography Twitter – https://twitter.com/biography Biography.com captures the most gripping, surprising, and
fascinating stories about famous people: The biggest break. The defining
opportunity. The most shattering failure. The unexpected connection. The
decision that changed everything. With over 7,000 biographies and daily features
that highlight newsworthy and compelling points-of-view, we are the digital
source for true stories about people that matter. Susan B. Anthony –
Abolitionist | Mini Bio | BIO https://www.youtube.com/user/Biograph…
Susan B. Anthony knew from a
young age that women deserved the same rights as men, especially the right to
vote! Read along as Susan strives for equality through delivering speeches,
handing in a new declaration to Congress and even getting arrested! Come #readalong with us in SUSAN B. ANTHONY, FIGHTER FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS by
Deborah Hopkinson! To find more great Ready-to-Read books visit http://www.readytoread.com .
Grant
Wood, (born February 13,
1891, near Anamosa, Iowa, U.S.—died February 12, 1942, Iowa City,
Iowa), American painter who was one of the major exponents of Midwestern Regionalism, a movement that flourished in the United States during the
1930s.
Wood was trained as a
craftsman and designer as well as a painter. After spending a year (1923) at
the Académie Julian in Paris, he returned to Cedar Rapids, Iowa,
where in 1927 he was commissioned to do a stained-glass window. Knowing little
about stained glass, he went to Germany to
seek craftsmen to assist him. While there he was deeply influenced by the
sharply detailed paintings of various German and Flemish masters of the 16th
century. Wood subsequently abandoned his Impressionist style and began to paint in the sharply detailed, realistic
manner by which he is now known.
A portrait of his mother
in this style, Woman with Plants (1929), did
not attract attention, but in 1930 his American Gothic caused a sensation when it was exhibited
at the Art Institute of Chicago. The hard, cold realism of this painting and
the honest, direct, earthy quality of its subject were unusual in American art.
The work ostensibly portrays a farmer and his daughter—modelled for Wood by his
dentist, B.H. McKeeby, and Wood’s sister, Nan—in front of their farmhouse. As a telling
portrait of the sober and hardworking rural dwellers of the Midwest, the
painting has become one of the best-known icons of American art.
American Gothic, oil on beaverboard by Grant Wood, 1930; in the Art Institute of
Chicago.SuperStock
The meaning of American Gothic has been subjected to scrutiny
since Wood painted it. Was it meant to be an homage to the strong values in the
Midwest or was it a satire? Is it a husband and wife or a father and daughter?
Wood’s own statements on its meaning were wishy-washy, leading to further ambiguity and debate. Open to so much interpretation, the American Gothic trope lent itself to countless
parodies in popular culture as well as in the political arena, in advertisements, in
television shows such as The Simpsons, in albums, in comic books, on magazine covers, and by Jim Henson’s
Muppets.
Get exclusive access to
content from our 1768 First Edition with your
Wood became one of the
leading figures of the Regionalist movement.
Daughters of
Revolution
Painting by Grant Wood
Daughters of Revolution is a painting by
American artist Grant Wood; he claimed it as his only satire. Wikipedia
Dimensions: 50.8 cm × 101.4 cm (20.0 in × 39.9 in)
Another well-known
painting by him is Daughters of Revolution (1932),
a satirical portrait of three unattractive old women who appear smugly
satisfied with their American Revolutionary ancestry. In 1934 Wood was made assistant
professor of fine arts at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Among his other principal works are
several paintings illustrating episodes from American history and a series of
Midwestern rural landscapes that communicate a strong sense of American ambience by means of a skillful simplification of form.
This
article was most recently revised and updated by Naomi Blumberg, Assistant Editor.
LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles:
Wood,
Grant: stained glass window
Stained glass window designed by Grant Wood in the Veterans
Memorial Building, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Clarknova
Grant Wood American Gothic Paintings, Art….biography.com
From 1920 to 1928 he made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially impressionism and post- impressionism. Influenced by the work of Jan Van Eyck. From 1924 to 1935 he lived in the loft of a carriage house that he turned into his personal studio Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony near his hometown to help artists get through the Great Depression. He became a great proponent of regionalism in the arts.
Designed by Spanish
architects SelgasCano, a Los Angeles workspace has popped up in a
formerly empty parking lot in Hollywood. The recently opened SecondHome Hollywood boasts a 50,000-square-foot garden of 6,500 trees and
plants and 700 tons of soil and vegetation. It is Los Angeles’s densest urban
forest and is also home to 112 native species.
The Hollywood
location, which is the first in the United States, contains sixty yellow-roofed
office pods. It also encompasses the Anne Banning Community House, a ’60s building designed by prominent architect Paul
Williams who is known for
defining much of Los Angeles’s architectural aesthetic throughout the 20th
century. (via Jeroen Apers)
Second Home Hollywood, the first US location from the British
co-working company, is revealed in this captioned video produced by Dezeen for
Second Home. Spanish architecture practice SelgasCano transformed a former
Hollywood parking-lot into a sprawling co-working complex that will house 250
companies. It has previously worked with Second Home to create other spaces in
London and Lisbon. In Los Angeles, the architects filled the site with sixty
oval-shaped office pods of varying sizes, which are topped with bright-yellow
rooftops that resemble a cluster of lily pads when seen from above. The site
has been populated with more than 6,500 plants and trees from 112 species
native to Los Angeles, in order to create a tranquil working environment for
members. The site also incorporates the former Anne Banning Community House, a
historic 1960s building which SelgasCano renovated to accommodate 30 additional
office spaces for Second Home members. Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/?p=1442212 WATCH NEXT: Watch our talk with Thomas Heatherwick from Second
Home LA – https://youtu.be/Blx2gF63xJ4 Subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest architecture and
design movies: http://bit.ly/1tcULvh Like Dezeen on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dezeen/ Follow Dezeen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dezeen/ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dezeen/ Check out our Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/dezeen/
Food Artworks by Tatiana Shkondina & Sasha Tivanov
Published Oct 3,
2017
Food
stylist Tatiana Shkondina and
photographer Sasha Tivanov worked
in collaboration to produce incredible food artworks inspired by famous
paintings.
Tuesday on the NewsHour, voting is underway in New Hampshire, the
first state to hold a primary during the 2020 election cycle. Plus: Controversy
over Roger Stone’s sentence, how China is coping with its deadly novel
coronavirus outbreak, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir is closer to facing prosecution,
new efforts to clean India’s Ganga River and a woman helping perfect technology
for a bionic limb. 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 Sunday, February 9, Democratic presidential
candidates canvass New Hampshire in the final push ahead of Tuesday’s primary,
the death toll from the novel coronavirus continues to climb, a 15-year battle
heats up over Oregon’s Jordan Cove pipeline project, and a look at
misconceptions about race and culture. Alison Stewart 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 February 8, 2020
On this edition for Saturday, February 8, the Democratic
presidential candidates look to New Hampshire for support, new cases of the
novel coronavirus emerge, Louisiana oyster farmers feel a changing tide along
the Mississippi Delta, and internet satellites are launched into space with the
hope of expanding broadband coverage. 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
The disease caused by the novel coronavirus has a name:
COVID-19.
Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization,
announced the name Tuesday, giving a specific identifier to a disease that has
been confirmed in more than 42,000 people and caused more than 1,000 deaths in
China. There have been fewer than 400 cases in 24 other countries, with one
death.
In
choosing the name, WHO advisers focused simply on the type of
virus that causes the disease. Co and Vi come from coronavirus, Tedros
explained, with D meaning disease and 19 standing for 2019, the year the first
cases were seen.
The
virus that causes the disease has been known provisionally as 2019-nCoV. Also
on Tuesday, a coronavirus group from the International Committee on Taxonomy of
Viruses, which is responsible for naming new viruses, proposed designating the
novel coronavirus as SARS-CoV-2, according to a preprint of a paper posted online.
(Preprints are versions of papers that have not yet been peer-reviewed or
published in a scientific journal.) The name reflects the genetic similarities
between the new coronavirus and the coronavirus that caused the SARS outbreak
of 2002-2003.
In
selecting COVID-19 as the name of the disease, the WHO name-givers steered
clear of linking the outbreak to China or the city of Wuhan, where the illness
was first identified. Although origin sites have been used in the past to
identify new viruses, such a namesake is now seen as denigrating. Some experts
have come to regret naming the infection caused by a different coronavirus the
Middle East respiratory syndrome.
“Having
a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or
stigmatizing,” Tedros said. “It also gives us a standard format to use for any
future coronavirus outbreaks.”
Viruses
and the disease they cause do not have to have related names—think HIV and
AIDS—but more recently those responsible for the formal naming process have
kept them associated. For example, SARS, the disease, is caused by SARS-CoV,
the virus.
The
provisional name of the new virus stemmed from the year it was first seen
(2019), the fact that it was new (n), and a member of the coronavirus family
(CoV).
A clear
name could also stop the ad hoc identifiers that have sprung up in the press
and online, many of which, like the Wuhan virus or Wu Flu, linked the virus to
the city.
TED Fellow Alicia Eggert takes us on a visual tour of her
work — from a giant sculpture on an uninhabited island in Maine to an
installation that inflates only when people hold hands to complete an electric
current. Her work explores the power of art to inspire wonder and foster hope
in dark times. As she puts it: “A brighter, more sustainable, more
equitable future depends first on our ability to imagine it.”
This talk was presented at an official TED
conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
Alejandro Durán uses art to spotlight the ongoing
destruction of our oceans’ ecosystems. In this breathtaking talk, he shows how
he meticulously organizes and reuses plastic waste from around the world that
washes up on the Caribbean coast of Mexico — everything from water bottles to
prosthetic legs — to create vivid, environmental artworks that may leave you
mesmerized and shocked.
This talk was presented at “We the Future,”
a special event in partnership with the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations
Foundation.
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.
Venezuela is experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
Hunger is widespread and there is a severe shortage of medicines. The UN estimates
that more than four million people have now fled what was once South America’s
richest nation. Venezuela is in the grips of what is now the world’s second
largest refugee crisis after Syria. But unlike Syria, Venezuela is not mired in
civil war, and the country is sitting on the world’s largest proven oil
reserves. How could such a rich nation be driven into ruin? Where has the
country’s wealth gone, and why are its people starving? Corruption and
mismanagement are driving displacement worldwide. The majority of the world’s
refugees and migrants are fleeing from countries in the top 10 of Transparency
International’s Corruption Perception Index – places like Afghanistan, Syria,
South Sudan and Somalia. Venezuela was once one of the world’s wealthiest countries
and a showcase of democracy. The country enjoys an abundance of natural
resources, including oil, gold, diamonds and coltan. But rather than invest in
its people and economy, this wealth has been squandered. Today Venezuela is
mired in corruption, and deindustrialization, debt, political conflict,
authoritarianism and poverty are the order of the day. The billions in profits
generated by the oil business during the boom years between 2003 and 2014 have
largely ended up in private pockets. And once oil prices collapsed in 2014,
Venezuela was plunged into economic crisis. Nicolás Maduro, who rose to the
presidency after Hugo Chávez died in 2013, has installed loyal military
officers in key economic positions. Venezuela is now little more than a state-run
criminal enterprise. At the same time, the country has become a pawn in a
geopolitical contest over power and natural resources, with the US, Russia and
China all looking to assert their own interests. Every two seconds, a person is
forced to flee their home. Today, more than 70 million people have been
displaced worldwide. The DW documentary series ‘Displaced’ sheds light on the
causes of this crisis and traces how wealthy industrialized countries are
contributing to the exodus from the Global South. Tomatoes and greed – the
exodus of Ghana’s farmers: https://youtu.be/rlPZ0Bev99s Drought and floods — the climate exodus: https://youtu.be/PjyX5dnhaMw
——————————————————————– 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 For more visit: http://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 film ‘Mahatma — A Great Soul of 20th
Century’ is a documentary film which records the life of Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi and his social, political and spiritual influence on the country during
pre and post independence times. The film starts with Gandhi’s childhood, his
early influences, and his study at England and then goes on further to South
Africa to practice Law. When he attempted to claim his rights as a citizen, he
was abused and soon saw that all Indians suffered similar treatment. He developed
a method of action based upon the principles of courage, nonviolence and truth
called Satyagraha. Using the principles of Satyagraha, he led the campaign for
Indian independence from Britain. Gandhi had been an advocate for a united
India where Hindus and Muslims lived together in peace and helped free the
Indian people from British rule through nonviolent resistance, and is honored
by Indians as the father of the Indian Nation or ‘Mahatma’, meaning Great Soul.
This is a time lapse video of a dwarf sunflower growing from seed
to full flower, then wilting. A version with a beautiful musical score can be
found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKo5I… You can license this video for commercial purposes at my Gumroad
store at: https://gum.co/HkNjP
Unfortunately the flower was too heavy and it collapsed the plant at some
point. This video also illustrates the centripetal anthesis present in
sunflowers, where the outer flowers mature first and the maturation process
extends inwards. I would have attempted to get it to go to seed, but these
sunflowers tend to be self-infertile. Video took about 130 days from start to
finish. That means it’s slightly more than 1 second of video per day of growth.
Double-crested Cormorant
working on its catch, Bolsa Chica (CA)
Elegant Tern, Double
Crested Cormorant and a fish
Photographer Salah Baazizi has
an amazing knack for photographing birds up close and personal as they pluck
fish from the waters around Bolsa Chica in southern California. The
split-second shots of terns, herons, and cormorants give the illusion Baazizi
is sitting just inches away, practically sticking a camera down their beaks,
but in reality he uses a 400mm super telephoto lens and positions himself at
great distances. This is only the smallest fraction of the hobbyist
photographer’s wildlife photos, you can explore hundreds of additional shots
over on Flickr.
Elegant Tern, Bolsa Chica
(CA)
Great Blue Heron working
on its catch, Bolsa Chica (CA)
Elegant Tern losing its
fish, Bolsa Chica (CA)
Forster’s Tern doing the
contortionist, Irvine (CA)
Great Blue Heron working
on its catch, Bolsa Chica (CA)
Elegant Tern, Bolsa Chica
(CA)
Elegant Tern, Bolsa Chica
(CA)
Elegant Tern displaying
its acrobatic aerial skills after a fish escaped from its beak
Saint Petersburg-based paper artists Asya Kozina and
Dmitriy Kozin situate miniature worlds atop their towering paper wigs. The
detailed headdresses combine contemporary themes with historical elements,
resembling the extravagant hair and head pieces of the Baroque period. A recent
series crafted for Dolce & Gabanna features a whale and lobster with fins
and claws woven through and sticking out from the tops of the elaborate pieces.
Both have ships, as well, to add a human element. “We did this work and had
(the) idea to do works with various marine monsters,” Kozina says. “In the old
times, sailors believed in gigantic sea monsters… All characters are taken from
folk myths.”
Since Kozina last spoke with Colossal, the scale and complexity
of their monochromatic creations have changed, in addition to their public
perception. “Our works fell into collections of museums, became symbols of some
events related to the history and history of art and fashion,” she writes. “Our
work is perceived not as photo props, but as artworks, sculptures, exhibition
objects.” Head to Instagram or Behance to check out more of the artists’ sky-high
creations.
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:
www.facebook.com/BBCClick
We’re in LA to meet the company
with the biggest 3D printer in the world being used to print space rockets!
Subscribe HERE http://bit.ly/1uNQEWR Find us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick Facebook:
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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
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BBCClick
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: January 19 – 23, 2020, Shields and Brooks on Trump
impeachment evidence, Democratic debate, How Trump’s USDA wants to change rules
around school nutrition, Australian ecosystems left vulnerable in wake of
bushfire catastrophe, Kim Phuc’s Brief but Spectacular take on pain and
forgiveness, News Wrap: Virginia becomes
38th state to ratify Equal Rights Amendment, How war and misinformation are
complicating the DRC’s Ebola battle, and Disease threatens Italy’s once booming
olive oil industry
TED Talks: Shubhendu Sharma An
engineer’s vision for tiny forests everywhere?, and Mitchell Joachim Don’t
build your home grow it?
Thursday on the NewsHour, the Senate
impeachment trial of President Trump continues, with House managers turning
their prosecution to the charge of abuse of power. Plus: PBS NewsHour
co-founder Jim Lehrer, a giant of American journalism, dies at age 85, and
remembering Lehrer with his news partner Robert MacNeil, Justice Stephen Breyer
and Sharon Percy Rockefeller. 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 Sunday, January
19, the Trump administration responds to House impeachment filings as the
Senate trial is set to begin, violent clashes continue in Hong Kong and
Lebanon, and a NewsHour Weekend special on Ukraine, a country caught in the
crosshairs of conflict at home and the impeachment inquiry in the United
States. 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
Syndicated columnist Mark Shields
and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the
week’s political news, including the opening of President Trump’s Senate trial
and the announcement of his legal team, public opinion on impeachment, 2020
Democrats’ final debate before the Iowa caucuses and Michael Bloomberg’s
remarkable ad spend. 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 Trump’s USDA wants to change rules around school
nutrition
Improving school meals was among
Michelle Obama’s key initiatives during her tenure as first lady. Since then,
the Trump administration has rolled back Obama-era school nutrition policies
they argued went too far and were ineffective. Now, the Department of
Agriculture has made additional major changes. Crystal FitzSimons of the Food
Research and Action Center joins Amna Nawaz to discuss. 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
Firefighters in Australia are
finally getting some help from nature, in the form of lower temperatures and
rain. But many fires are still burning, and millions of acres have been lost.
The blazes have also caused tremendous damage to the surrounding ecosystems and
wildlife — some of which don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Science
correspondent Miles O’Brien joins Judy Woodruff to discuss. 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
Kim Phuc’s Brief but Spectacular
take on pain and forgiveness
A
photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc as a nine-year-old girl enduring a napalm
attack became a defining image of the Vietnam War. Healing has been a
decades-long process. Now living in Canada, Kim Phuc shares her Brief But
Spectacular take on pain and forgiveness. 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
In our news wrap Wednesday, Virginia
became the crucial 38th state to ratify the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment, which
bars discrimination on the basis of sex. Three-quarters of the states now approve
the amendment. Also, Russia’s government abruptly resigned after President
Vladimir Putin proposed sweeping constitutional changes that could keep him in
power after his current term ends in 2024. 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 war and misinformation are complicating the DRC’s
Ebola battle
An outbreak of the deadly Ebola
virus has plagued Democratic Republic of Congo for nearly a year and a half,
with more than 3,000 people getting sick and 2,000 dead. Major medical advances
in prevention and treatment have kept the disease’s toll from rising, but
ongoing war — and attacks on medical teams — have forced the response to a
standstill. Special correspondent Monica Villamizar 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
Disease threatens Italy’s once booming olive oil
industry
More than a third of olive oil in
the U.S. comes from Italy, which has kept a longstanding reputation for
quality. But the quantity of olive oil made in the south of Italy has been in
sharp decline. A disease in the region of Puglia has been attacking olive
trees, decimating the industry and causing Italy to import olive oil for the
first time. Special correspondent Christopher Livesay 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
A forest planted by humans, then
left to nature’s own devices, typically takes at least 100 years to mature. But
what if we could make the process happen ten times faster? In this short talk,
eco-entrepreneur (and TED Fellow) Shubhendu Sharma explains how to create a
mini-forest ecosystem anywhere.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
TED Fellow and urban designer
Mitchell Joachim presents his vision for sustainable, organic architecture:
eco-friendly abodes grown from plants and — wait for it — meat.
This talk was presented at an
official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
From avocado toast to guacamole,
this superfood has stolen the hearts of foodies and the health conscious around
the world. But where do avocados come from? Avocados have become a huge food
trend in the Western world, where the creamy fruit has become readily available
in shops, cafes and restaurants. The avocado is considered a superfood and is
popular in Europe because of its nutritional value. Avocados are high in
calories, contain mostly monounsaturated fat and are good for cholesterol. The
fruit is full of essential nutrients, including potassium and vitamin C. But
there’s a darker side to the fashionable fruit popular on toast or in salads.
In Chile, one of the world’s largest suppliers, avocado cultivation has
dramatic consequences and has been linked to water shortages, human rights
violations and an environmentally damage. The province of Petorca has a long
tradition of avocado farming. Once grown by small farmers, production has been
soaring since the global avocado boom of the 1990s. Big landowners now dominate
the avocado market there. And their business requires large amounts of water.
It takes up to 1000 liters of water to grow one kilo of the fruit (about three
avocados) – a lot more than for a kilo of tomatoes or potatoes. The region is
suffering an acute water shortage, exacerbated by climate change. The riverbeds
dried up years ago. Trucks bring tanks of water to families in need, while
thousands of hectares of avocado groves just next door are watered with
artificial reservoirs. Rodrigo Mundaca founded the NGO Modatima. He fights for
the right to water – a right that’s guaranteed by the UN and that Chile has
committed to. An aerial survey in 2012 revealed that 64 pipelines were
diverting river water underground, apparently to irrigate the avocado fields.
When the Modatima activists publicly voiced their criticism, they received
death threats. Water became a commodity in Chile in 1981 under the Pinochet
dictatorship, meaning it’s privatized. Those who offer the most money get water
licenses, even for life, regardless of the potential consequences for the
ecosystem. The avocado also has a pretty dire environmental footprint. They’re
packaged to prevent damage and transported in air-conditioned cargo ships to
Europe. The fruit then ripens in a factory in Rotterdam, before it’s sent
“ready to eat” to German supermarkets. “Europe wants to eat healthily
– at our expense,” says Mundaca. _______ Exciting, powerful and informative –
DW Documentary is always close to current affairs and international events. Our
eclectic mix of award-winning films and reports take you straight to the heart
of the story. Dive into different cultures, journey across distant lands, and
discover the inner workings of modern-day life. Subscribe and explore the world
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It’s not difficult to identify a mural that has been completed by Eduardo Kobra. The Sao Paulo-based street artist has a signature approach filled with vibrant colors and
geometric shapes that merge together to form the portraits of many very
prominent figures. He uses a combination of painting, airbrush, and spray paint
to produce the enormous works filled with a lively spirit.
His most recent large-scale work
will be featured as a solo show, entitled Peace,
beginning on May 9, 2014 through June 25, 2014 at Rome’s Dorothy Circus Gallery. The selected portraits will feature people like Nelson
Mandela, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, and the Dalai Lama.
Through his signature style of textured
layers, strong lines, and fragmented sections, Kobra gives new life to these
very important historical figures and topics which, according to the gallery,
include “the fight against pollution, global warming, deforestation, and war,
but also the ‘makeover’ of some icons of the time.”
A 2019 contest
organized by the Underwater Photography Guide has collected some of the best photographs of aquatic life
around the globe, from an image capturing a seal maneuvering through a chunk of
ice in Antarctic waters to another depicting an octopus resting on the ocean
floor. This year’s Ocean Art Underwater Photo Contest drew thousands of entires from 78
countries that were judged by renowned underwater photographers Tony Wu, Martin
Edge, and Marty Snyderman, along with Underwater Photography Guide publisher
Scott Gietler. It also handed out more than $85,000 to entrants.
We’ve included some of our favorite
photographs from across the 17 categories, including marine life behavior,
portrait, conservation, and reefscapes, although a full list of winners can be
found on the contest’s site. Stay tuned for information on the 2020 contest in September.
“Biodiversity” by Greg Lecoeur,
Reefscapes
“Gigantic Aggregation of Munk Devil
Rays in Baja California Sur” by Jason Clue, Marine Life Behavior
“Larval tripod fish” by Fabien
Michenet, Blackwater
“Radiography” by Stefano Cerbai,
Macro
“Strange Encounters” by Hannes
Klostermann, Marine Life Behavior
“A friendly ride” by Paula Vianna,
Marine Life Behavior
“Leopard Shark” by Jake Wilton,
Novice Wide Angle
“Treats from Maloolaba River” by
Jenny Stock, Nudibranchs
“Coconut Octopus” by Enrico Somogyi,
Compact Wide Angle
“The Hypnotist” by Dave Johnson,
Macro
“Eye of the Tornado” by Adam Martin,
Wide Angle
“Under the Pier” by Jose Antonio
Castellano, Wide Angle
No, this
isn’t a clip from the latest Miyazaki anime, this is the first sighting of a
real fluorescent turtle. Marine biologist David
Gruber of City
University of New York, was recently in the Solomon Islands to film a variety
of biofluorescent fish and coral, when suddenly a completely unexpected sight
burst into the frame: a glowing yellow and red sea turtle. The creature is a
critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle, and until this sighting last July,
the phenomenon had never been documented in turtles, let alone any other
reptile.
Biofluorescence is the ability for
an organism to reflect blue light and re-emit it as a different color, not to
be confused with bioluminescence, where organisms produce their own light.
Many undersea creatures like coral,
sharks, and some shrimp have shown the ability to show single green, red, or
orange colors under the right lighting conditions, but according to National Geographic, no organisms have shown the ability to emit two distinct
colors like the hawksbill. As seen in the video, the coloring appears not only
in mottled patterns on the turtle’s shell, but even extends within the cracks
of its head and feet. Gruber mentions this could be a mixture of both glowing
red glowing algae attached to the turtle, but the yellow fluorescence is
undoubtedly part of the animal.
Watch the video above to see the moment
of discovery and learn more on Nat Geo.
EXCLUSIVE: “Glowing” Sea Turtle Discovered |
National Geographic
While filming coral off the Solomon
Islands, David Gruber, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, encountered a
“bright red-and-green spaceship.” This underwater UFO turned out to
be a hawksbill sea turtle, which is significant because it’s the first time
that biofluorescence has ever been seen in reptiles, according to Gruber.
Gruber is now excited to learn more about this critically endangered species
and how it is using biofluorescence. ?
Subscribe: https://bit.ly/NatGeoSubscribe#NationalGeographic#SeaTurtles#Biofluorescence About National Geographic: National Geographic is the
world’s premium destination for science, exploration, and adventure. Through
their world-class scientists, photographers, journalists, and filmmakers, Nat
Geo gets you closer to the stories that matter and past the edge of what’s
possible. Get More National Geographic: Official Site: https://bit.ly/NatGeoOfficialSite Facebook: https://bit.ly/FBNatGeo Twitter: https://bit.ly/NatGeoTwitter Instagram: https://bit.ly/NatGeoInsta David Gruber: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/exp… Click here to read more: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/20… BIOFLUORESCENCE VIDEOGRAPHER: David Gruber SENIOR PRODUCER:
Jeff Hertrick EDITOR: Jennifer Murphy EXPEDITION FUNDED BY: TBA21 TBA21
CINEMAPHOTOGRAPHER: Barry Broomfield TBA21 PRODUCERS: Francesca Von Habsburg
and Markus Reymann TBA21 LINE PRODUCER: Lauren Matic ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE:
National Geographic Creative and Pawel Achtel EXCLUSIVE: “Glowing”
Sea Turtle Discovered | National Geographic https://youtu.be/9kmE7D5ulSA
National Geographic https://www.youtube.com/natgeo
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
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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
us online at www.bbc.com/click Twitter: @bbcclick Facebook:
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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
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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
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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.”
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