2011 10 Scientific American

Physics
On a
Subatomic
Quest
Medicine
Vaccines That
Fight Cancer
Geology
Afghanistans
Buried Riches
11
Chemistry
Wonders

S
P
E
C
I
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October 2011 ScientifcAmerican.com
Strange Efects on
the Milky Way
by Dark
Matter
2011 Scientific American
Untitled-10 1 8/29/11 3:24 PM
Untitled-10 2 8/29/11 3:24 PM
Volume 305, Number 4
ON T HE COVE R
2 Scientic American, October 2011 Photograph by Dan Saelinger
Its warped! The Milky Way galaxy, often depicted as a fat
disk containing a spiral pattern of stars and gas, actually has a
notable twist. The warp bafed astronomers until they real-
ized that dark matter might form clumps and wrest the ga-
lactic disk into this shape. Dark matter also makes sense of
other puzzles of our cosmic neighborhood.
Image by Kenn Brown, Mondolithic Studios.
FEATURES
ASTROPHYSI CS
36 The Dark Side of the Milky Way
Dark matter remains mysterious but is nonetheless
helping to explain odd things about the galaxy
we call home. By Leo Blitz
66
GEOLOGY
58 Afghanistans Buried Riches
Geologists working in the war-torn country say newfound
deposits there could fulll the worlds desire for rare-earth
and other critical minerals. By Sarah Simpson
MEDI CI NE
66 A New Ally against Cancer
The FDA recently okayed the rst therapeutic vaccine
against cancer, and other drugs that enlist the immune sys-
tem to ght tumors are under study. By Eric von Hofe
FORENSI CS
72 How Skulls Speak
As striking photographs show, the braincases of males and
females difer in predictable ways. By Anna Kuchment
PHYSI CS
74 Waiting for the Higgs
Even as the last protons spin through the most successful
particle collider in history, physicists hope to conjure
one nal triumph. By Tim Folger
PALEONTOLOGY
80 The Dinosaur Baron of Transylvania
A maverick aristocrats ideas about dinosaur evolution
turn out to have been decades ahead of their time.
By Gareth Dyke
BI OLOGY
84 Actuary of the Cell
Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth H. Blackburn explains why
she thinks she can assess a persons health by examining
tiny stretches of DNA at the tips of chromosomes.
Interview by Thea Singer
SPECI AL YEAR OF CHEMI STRY CELEBRATI ON
46 ATOM POWER
48 10 Unsolved Mysteries
The International Year of Chemistry reminds us
that many outstanding questions in science
and technology are, at their core, issues for
chemists to solve. By Philip Ball
54 The Scent of Your Thoughts
Like other animals, humans unwittingly
communicate by exchanging chemical signals.
By Deborah Blum
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4 Scientic American, October 2011
Scientifc American (ISSN 0036-8733), Volume 305, Number 4, October 2011, published monthly by Scientifc American, a division of Nature America, Inc., 75 Varick Street, 9th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10013-1917. Periodicals postage paid
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Copyright 2011 by Scientifc American, a division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.
DEPARTMENTS
6 From the Editor
8 Letters
12 Science Agenda
It is time to end invasive medical research
in chimps. By the Editors
14 Forum
Toxins are all around us and shouldnt be.
By Patricia Hunt
16 Advances
Born scientists. Safer water. A high-tech sports glove.
Buttery genetics. Tales of a cancer warrior.
Archimedes lost writings. Building a superfast Internet.
30 The Science of Health
Immigrants in the U.S. are often healthier than
those born here. Why is that? By Laura Blue
34 TechnoFiles
Praise for unsung trends in consumer electronics.
By David Pogue
88 Recommended
Seductive orchids. The magic of reality. By Kate Wong
90 Skeptic
Be very wary of claims that we live in
more violent times. By Michael Shermer
92 Anti Gravity
Riding the wave to birdbraindom. By Steve Mirsky
94 50, 100 & 150 Years Ago
100 Graphic Science
Disturbing trends in data hacking. By Mark Fischetti
ON THE WEB
Ten Years afer 9/11
A decade after the terrorist attacks on New York City and
Washington, D.C., how have passenger-screening systems,
surveillance networks and military technologies evolved?
And what vulnerabilities remain?
Go to www.ScienticAmerican.com/oct2011/terrorism
30
94
16
Untitled-3 1 8/17/11 4:15 PM
From the Editor
Mariette DiChristina is editor
in chief of Scientifc American. Find
her on Twitter @SAeditorinchief
6 Scientic American, October 2011 Illustration by Nick Higgins
BOARD OF ADVISERS
Leslie C. Aiello
President, Wenner-Gren Foundation
for Anthropological Research
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Co-Founder and Director,
The Science Network
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CEO, Burrill & Company
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Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor
of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania
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Distinguished Professor, University of
Maryland College Park and Johns Hopkins
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(Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004)
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of California, Berkeley
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Professor, Harvard Law School
Back to School
A
round the time you read
this, the popular Intro-
duction to Arti cial
Intel ligence course at
Stan ford University,
taught by Sebastian Thrun, director
of the AI lab there, and by Peter Nor-
vig, director of research for Google,
will be under way. As usual, a couple
of hundred Stanford students will be sit-
ting in the room. This year classmates sitting at com-
puters around the world will join them. The pupils who at-
tend virtually wont pay tuition (or get Stanford credit), but
they will all watch the same lectures, read the same textbook,
get the same homework and take the same tests. Software will
help analyze their submitted questions, so that the professors
can address the main themes each week.
I spoke to Norvig while attending the recent Sci Fooan invi-
tation-only unconference hosted by Google, the OReilly Media
Group and Nature Publishing Group (Scientic Americans parent
company). Just two weeks after he and Thrun announced the AI
course, more than 57,000 students had enrolled (70,000-plus at
press time). We hope our automated systems hold up, he joked.
Sci Foo hosts scientists and technologists from many elds,
who create the session schedule during the conference rather than
beforehand. This year nding exciting new approaches to im-
prove education was a frequent themeand those sessions were
packed. (Linda Rosen, CEO of
Change the Equation, and I ran
one, on how to inspire kids
about science.)
On the topic of education,
here are three updates on Sci-
entic Americans eforts to in-
spire by expanding the reach of sci-
ence (for more, click on the Education tab
on the www. Scientic American.com home page):
BRING SCIENCE HOME. Following our successful weekday
series of science activities for parents and kids ages six to 12, which
ran through May, we will post more fun projects, starting in October.
1,000 SCIENTISTS IN 1,000 DAYS. In May we invited scientists, engi-
neers, mathematicians, doctors and others to volunteer to visit classrooms as
part of our three-year (thats the 1,000 days) Change the Equation program.
More than 1,100 have stepped forwardin fewer than 100 daysand they are
in a variety of disciplines and located all around the country. This fall we plan to
ofer a service that connects these scientists with educators.
CITIZEN SCIENCE. One of the best ways to appreciate science, of course,
is to participate in it yourself. Working with Zooniverse and a researcher at
the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, we are launching a project that lets
students and adults alike help study whale songs.
How else can we engage kids in science? As always, we wel-
come your thoughts.
S
C
I
E
N
T
I
F
I
C

A
M
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R
I
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Helping to make better diagnoses
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) may become
an even more powerful tool for distinguishing
between normal aging and dementia, such as
Alzheimer's diseasethanks to a unique data-
base and analytics being developed by Hamamatsu.
For a number of
years Hamamatsu
has been building
an unusual database.
We now have PET
brain scans from
over 6,000 normal, healthy individuals, both men
and women, in a wide range of ages. And our
researchers have learned a lot about how healthy
brains look and how they change over time.
So, in the future, doctors may be able to spot
more subtle anomalies in brain health by com-
paring their patients' PET scans with Hamamatsu's
databasespecifically by sex and age!
Hamamatsu's aim is to provide clinicians with
new tools, to help them distinguish more clearly
between normal aging and the early stages of
dementia. Because earlier diagnoses may give
doctors more options for treatment.
And though there are no cures for Alzheimer's
disease at present, starting treatment earlier may
give patients and their caregivers precious extra
time to enjoy their quality of life.
It's one more way Hamamatsu is opening the
new frontiers of light to improve our world.
http://jp.hamamatsu.com/en/rd/publication/
A unique database of healthy-
brain scans may help distinguish
normal aging from dementia
Hamamatsu is opening
the new frontiers
of Light
PET brain scan images (color) overlay MRI images (gray) to provide a comprehensive
view of the brain's health. The upper row shows brain changes associated with normal
aging. The lower row shows the onset of dementia, one form of which is Alzheimer's
disease. Orange-to-yellow coloring indicates regions with reduced glucose metabolism.
...
Untitled-13 1 8/22/11 5:00 PM
Letters
[email protected]
June 2011
STICKING TO CLIMATE SCIENCE
As an undergraduate physics major in the
mid-1980s at the University of California,
Berkeley, I knew about Richard Muller
the physics professor who was the subject
of Michael D. Lemonicks interview, I
Stick to the Science and his controver-
sial theory that a death star was respon-
sible for major mass extinctions. Later, as
a graduate student studying climate, I be-
came aware of Mullers work attempting
to overthrow the traditional Earth orbital
theory of the ice agesthat, too, didnt
pan out. To be clear, there is nothing
wrong in science with putting forth bold
hypotheses that ultimately turn out to be
wrong. Indeed, science thrives on novel,
innovative ideas thateven if ultimately
wrongmay lead researchers in produc-
tive new directions.
One might hope, however, that a scien-
tist known for big ideas that didnt stand
the test of time might be more circum-
spect when it comes to his critiques of oth-
er scientists. Muller is on record accusing
climate scientists at the University of East
Anglia Climatic Research Unit of hiding
dataa charge that was rejected in three
separate investigations. In his interview,
Muller even maligned my own work on
the hockey stick reconstruction of past
temperatures. He falsely claimed the
hockey-stick chart was in fact incorrect
when in fact the National Academy of Sci-
ences afrmed our ndings in a major
2006 report that Nature summarized as
Academy afrms hockey-stick graph.
Scientic American itself recently ran an
article it billed as Novel analysis con-
frms climate hockey stick graph [Still
Hotter Than Ever, by David Appell,
News Scan; Scientific American, No-
vember 2009].
Rather than providing a platform for
Muller to cast aspersions on other scien-
tists, Lemonick could have sought some
introspection from him. How, for example,
have the lessons learned from his past fail-
ures inuenced the approach he has taken
in his more recent forays into the science
of human-caused climate change? More
than anything else, the interview was sim-
ply a lost opportunity. Not only can Scien-
tic American do better, it will need to.
Michael E. Mann
Pennsylvania State University
NO DEFENSE
Inside the Meat Lab, by Jefrey Bartholet,
failed to point out one major issue. Unlike
animals, the bioreactor-based meat he
proposes does not have an immune sys-
tem. Hence, the nutrient-rich cell-growth
systems would have to be run in a com-
pletely microbe-free environment, signi-
cantly raising costs. A single contaminant
could ruin tons of meat products. If the so-
lution is to introduce antibiotics, then one
has to weigh the benets of mass-produc-
ing ethical meat against the dangers of
generating antibiotic-resistant bacteria
an all too familiar dilemma.
Louis de Lsleuc
Infections and Immunity Group
National Research Council Canada
PROTEST TARGETS RESPONSE
Quotable [Advances] took a line out of
context from an editorial I wrote for the
newspaper of the American College of Sur-
geons concerning new ndings in the bio-
chemistry of semen. Research had shown
that the seminal uid might have mood-
enhancing efects on women after unpro-
tected sex and promote stronger bonding
between partnersa gift from nature. The
lighthearted comment you quoted (that it
may be a better Valentines gift than choc-
olate) amused most readers of the newspa-
per but irritated others. Despite my apolo-
gies and resignation as editor, a group of
women threatened to protest at any medi-
cal meeting I attended, so I resigned as
president-elect of the organization. Steven
M. Platek, co-author of the semen study,
commented: How can someone be asked
to resign for citing a peer-reviewed paper?
Dr. Greeneld was forced to resign based
on politics, not evidence. His resignation
is more a reection of the feminist and anti -
scientic attitudes of some self-righteous
and indignant members of the American
College of Surgeons. Science is based on
evidence, not politics. In science, knowing
is always preferable to not knowing.
It also helps to know the whole story.
Lazar J. Greenfield
Professor emeritus of surgery
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
CONSCIOUS EFFORTS
Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi [A Test
for Consciousness] dened an experi-
mental method that seems likely to im-
prove signicantly on the Turing test as a
way to operationally dene and identify
intelligence. The use of sensible versus
nonsensical composite images would
surely pose challenges to machinestoday
and for the foreseeable future. I think the
article has two weaknesses, however. First,
I think the authors underestimate the rate
of progress that articial intelligence will
make in this area if it is deemed impor-
tant. As they point out, the human ability
to discern implausible relationships is
based on a vast amount of knowledge ac-
quired from experience. The foundations
for giving machines that experience have
been under development for decades and
are gaining traction in many application
areas today. It would be silly to take on
faith that these tasks are fundamentally or
nearly beyond what machines can do.
The second weakness, in my opinion,
One has to weigh
the benefts of ethical
meat versus the
dangers of generating
antibiotic-resistant
bacteria.
louis de lsleuc
national research council canada
Bu Bu Butt t
wh what at t iissss
PR PROJ OJEC ECTE TED D
RE RESA SALE LE
VA VALU LUE, E, ,
eexxaacctttllyy????
When shopping for a new car,
RESALE VALUE
is an admittedly strange thing
to think about.
And while some may consider projected to be a fancy
word for guess, well, they wouldnt be entirely wrong.
Just mostly wrong. See, its these carefully and extensively
crafed guesses that go into determining automotive
lease rates. Something, we assure you, dealers denitely
do their homework on.
Tu Tu Tu Turn rn rn rnss ss ou ou ou ou ou ou uuttttt tt t th th th th th th th th theee eeeee efe fe ffe fe fffeat at a ur ur uu es es es tttha ha ha ha h t t gi gi ggive ve ve aaa vvveh eh e ic icle le le hhhig ighe he h r rr
pr pr pr pr pr prooooj oj ojec ec ec ec ec ec ecte te te te te te te ted d re re r sa saa ssale le ll vvvval al allue ue aare re ttthe he h sa same me ffea ea atu ture res s
th th th th th th that at at at at at aa m mmmmmmmak ak ak ak ak ak ak ak keeeeee eit it t i s so ote te te emp mp m ti ti t ng ng nn in in in tthe he h rrst st ppla lace ce..
WWWh Wh Wh Wh Wh Wh WWhic ic ic ic ic c ic ic ch hhhma ma m ke ke e k s s Fo Ford rd FFus us u io ion nap appe peal al a in ingg to to ffut utur ure eow owne ners rs
an and d di di ist stan ant t fu futu ture re ooown wnner ers s ss al a ik ike.
Wel Wel Wel W ll, l, l, l, , it it it it i s c s c s c scomp omp omp omp omp plic lic lic licate ate ate ated. d. dd.
Bu Bu Bu But b t b t b t b t basi asi as asi sica cal cal ca c ly, ly ly, ly pr pr pr pr proje oje oje oje o cte cte cte cted d d d
res res res resale ale ale ale ale va va va value lue lue lue is is is is th th th the eee
res res res r ult ult ult t ult of of of of of tho tho tho thorou rou rou roughl ghl ghl ghly y y y
con con con consid sid sid sid s eri eri eri er ng ng ng ngal all all al a of of of of
a v a v a v a ehi ehi eh ehicle cle cle cle c s s s sfea fea fea fea eatur tur ur tur ures, es, es, s,
att att att attrib rib rib rib ribute ute ute utes a s a sand nd nd a s a s as a spri pri pri prinkl nkl nkl nkl k ee e e
of of of of its ts its pu pu pu pu p bli bbl bbl c p c p c c p perc erc erc erc ee ept ept ept pttion ion ion ion...
FUSION
T
H
E
ford.com.
To crunch the numbers, and
to see what real Fusion owners
are saying, visit
* Based on residual value data from Black Book
of 2011 models (straight average

of 12 months through June 2011 at 36 months). Black Book
is a registered
trademark of Hearst Business Media Corp.
So while you may now know more about resale
value than you ever thought you could, at least
now you also know why it matters.
Its quite the conundrum.
Yet its something worth bearing
in mind, especially if were talking
about the Ford Fusion. (Hint: we are.)
What you
should know
about selling
a car before
you buy it.
And why Fusion having
higher projected resale value
than Camry is news worth considering.
How can you think about
your baby moving out when you
havent even brought her home yet?
Not to mention,
a seemingly odd way
to convince folks to buy
a car in the rst place.

See, Fusion is projected to hold
its resale value better
than Toyota Camry.
*
And Camry is a car which, if were being completely
honest (hint: we are), one would expect to hold its
value quite well. So thats some seriously good
news for potential Fusion owners.
FORD
Untitled-9 1 8/22/11 3:44 PM
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is that it confuses consciousness with in-
tegrated knowledge. Requiring machines
to demonstrate that they understand vi-
sual elements and relationships seems a
straightforward and appropriate aspect
of intelligence. But it does not mean that
any machine that exhibited that kind of
perceptual and cognitive capability would
obviously be conscious.
At its core, consciousness is a term we
use to refer to our common human percep-
tion that we exist, are aware of ourselves
and are aware of our being part of the en-
vironment with which we are interacting.
Self-awareness and awareness of self ver-
sus our environment would seem to be im-
portant attributes of consciousness, re-
gardless of how it might ultimately be de-
ned and identied. The authors proposed
test neither depends on those attributes
nor distinguishes those having them from
those lacking them.
Rick Hayes-Roth
Professor of information systems
Naval Postgraduate School
OUR QUANTUM WORLD
In Living in a Quantum World, Vlatko
Vedral insists that quantum mechanics
is not just about teeny particles. It ap-
plies to things of all sizes: birds, plants,
maybe even people. But all his examples
of entanglement refer to the teeny parti-
clesatoms and molecules. The fact that,
in some examples, the entangled parti-
cles are located within organismsbirds,
plantsdoes not prove that these organ-
isms themselves are entangled. Do the
particles and the bodies behave accord-
ing to the laws of quantum mechanics?
Vedrals answer is afrmative. But that
something appears that way to the au-
thor and his colleagues is not a sufcient
base for sweeping generalizations.
Alexander Yabrov
Princeton, N.J.
ERRATUM
Jefrey Bartholet wrote in Inside the Meat
Lab that Willem van Eelen and H. P.
Haags man published the rst peer-re-
viewed article on cultured meat in the
journal Tissue Engineering. The sentence
should have read: the rst peer-reviewed
article on the prospects for industrial pro-
duction of cultured meat.
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Untitled-4 1 7/21/11 2:07 PM
Science Agenda by the Editors
Opinion and analysis from Scientifc Americans Board of Editors
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Ban Chimp Testing
Why it is time to end invasive biomedical research on chimpanzees
The testing began shortly after Bobbys
rst birthday. By the time he was 19 he
had been anesthetized more than 250
times and undergone innumerable bi-
opsies in the name of science. Much of
the time he lived alone in a cramped,
barren cage. Bobby grew depressed and
emaciated and began biting his own
arm, leaving permanent scars.
Bobby is a chimpanzee. Born in cap-
tivity to parents who were also lab
chimps, he grew up at the Coulston
Foundation, a biomedical research facil-
ity in Alamogordo, N.M., that was cited
for repeated violations of the Animal
Welfare Act before it was shuttered in
2002. He is one of the lucky ones. Today
he lives in a sanctuary called Save the
Chimps in Fort Pierce, Fla., where he can
socialize and roam freely. Last year the
National Institutes of Health announced
plans to put some 180 ex-Coulston chimps currently housed at
the Alamogordo Primate Facility back in service, to rejoin the
roughly 800 other chimps that serve as subjects for studies of hu-
man diseases, therapies and vaccines in the U.S., which is the only
country apart from Gabon to maintain chimps for this purpose.
Public opposition is on the rise. In April a bipartisan group
of senators introduced a bill, the Great Ape Protection and Cost
Savings Act, to prohibit invasive research on great apes, includ-
ing chimps. And when the NIH announced its plans for bringing
the Alamogordo chimps out of retirement, objections from the
Humane Society, primatologist Jane Goodall and others prompt-
ed the agency to put the plans on hold until the Institute of
Medicine (IOM) completes a study of whether chimps are truly
necessary for biomedical and behavioral research. The IOM
project itself has been criticized: the NIH instructed it to omit
ethics from consideration.
In April, McClatchy Newspapers ran a special report based on
its review of thousands of medical records detailing research on
chimps like Bobby. The stories painted a grim picture of life in
the lab, noting disturbing psychological responses in the chimps.
Then, in June, Hope R. Ferdowsian of George Washington Uni-
versity and her colleagues reported in PLoS ONE that chimps
that had previously sufered traumatic events, including experi-
mentation, exhibit clusters of symptoms similar to depression
and post-traumatic stress disorder in humans.
That chimps and humans react to trauma in a like manner
should not come as a surprise. Chimps
are our closest living relatives and
share a capacity for emotion, including
fear, anxiety, grief and rage.
Testing on chimps has been a huge
boon for humans in the past, contribut-
ing to the discovery of hepatitis C and
vaccines against polio and hepatitis B,
among other advances. Whether it will
continue to bear fruit is less certain. Al-
ternatives are emerging, including ones
that rely on computer modeling and iso-
lated cells. In 2008 pharmaceutical man-
ufacturer Gla xo Smith Kline announced
it would end its use of chimps.
In our view, the time has come to end
biomedical experimentation on chim-
panzees. The Senate bill would phase
out invasive research on chimps over a
three-year period, giving the research-
ers time to implement alternatives, af-
ter which the animals would be retired to sanctuaries.
We accept that others may make a diferent moral trade-of. If
the U.S. elects to continue testing on chimps, however, then it
needs to adopt stricter guidelines. Chimps should be used only
in studies of major diseases and only when there is no other op-
tion. Highly social by nature, they should live with other chimps
and in a stimulating environment with room to move around.
And when a test inicts pain or psychological distress, they
should have access to treatment that eases those afictions.
The Animal Welfare Act afords chimps some protection. But
clearly more is needed. To develop and enforce tighter regula-
tions, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which enforces the An-
imal Welfare Act, should establish an ethics committee specical-
ly for biomedical research on chimps. The committee would need
to include not just medical researchers but also bioethicists and
representatives from animal welfare groups. Such measures
would no doubt make medical testing on chimps even more ex-
pensive than it already is. Yet if human lives are going to benet
from research on our primate cousins, it is incumbent on us to
minimize their sufering, provide them with an acceptable qual-
ity of lifeand develop techniques that hasten the day when all
of Bobbys fellow chimps can join him in retirement.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE
Comment on this article at ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011
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THIS IS HOW
SPACE EXPLORATION MAKES EARTH
INNOVATION TAKE OFF
Untitled-1 1 2/25/11 11:59:08 AM
Forum by Patricia Hunt
Commentary on science in the news from the experts
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Patricia Hunt is professor of genetics
in the School of Molecular Biosciences
at Washington State University, Pullman.
Toxins All around Us
Exposure to the chemicals in everyday objects poses a hidden health threat
Susan starts her day by jogging to the edge of town, cutting back
through a corneld for an herbal tea at the downtown Starbucks
and heading home for a shower. It sounds like a healthy morn-
ing routine, but Susan is in fact exposing herself to a rogues gal-
lery of chemicals: pesticides and herbicides on the corn, plasti-
cizers in her tea cup, and the wide array of ingredients used to
perfume her soap and enhance the performance of her sham-
poo and moisturizer. Most of these exposures are so low as to be
considered trivial, but they are not trivial at allespecially con-
sidering that Susan is six weeks pregnant.
Scientists have become increasingly worried that even ex-
tremely low levels of some environmental contaminants may
have signicant damaging efects on our bodiesand that fetus-
es are particularly vulnerable to such assaults. Some of the chem-
icals that are all around us have the ability to interfere with our
endocrine systems, which regulate the hormones that control
our weight, our biorhythms and our reproduction. Synthetic
hormones are used clinically to prevent pregnancy, control insu-
lin levels in diabetics, compensate for a decient thyroid gland
and alleviate menopausal symptoms.
You wouldnt think of taking these drugs
without a prescription, but we unwit-
tingly do something similar every day.
An increasing number of clinicians
and scientists are becoming convinced
that these chemical exposures con-
tribute to obesity, endometriosis, diabe-
tes, autism, allergies, cancer and other
diseases. Laboratory studiesmainly in
mice but sometimes in human sub jects
have demonstrated that low levels of
endocrine-disrupting chemicals in duce
subtle changes in the developing fetus
that have profound health efects in
adulthood and even on subsequent gen-
erations. The chemicals an expecting
mother takes into her body during the
course of a typical day may afect her
children and her grandchildren.
This isnt just a lab experiment: we
have lived it. Many of us born in the
1950s, 1960s and 1970s were exposed in
utero to diethylstilbestrol, or DES, a
synthetic estrogen prescribed to preg-
nant women in a mistaken attempt to
prevent miscarriage. An article in the June issue of the New
England Journal of Medicine called the lessons learned about
the efects of fetal human exposures to DES on adult disease
powerful.
In the U.S., two federal agencies, the Food and Drug Adminis-
tration and the Environmental Protection Agency, are responsi-
ble for banning dangerous chemicals and making sure that
chemicals in our food and drugs have been thoroughly tested.
Scientists and clinicians across diverse disciplines are concerned
that the eforts of the EPA and the FDA are insufcient in the face
of the complex cocktail of chemicals in our environment. Updat-
ing a proposal from last year, Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of
New Jersey introduced legislation this year to create the Safe
Chemicals Act of 2011. If enacted, chemical companies would be
required to demonstrate the safety of their products before mar-
keting them. This is perfectly logical, but it calls for a suitable
screening-and-testing program for endocrine-disrupting chemi-
cals. The need for such tests has been recognized for more than a
decade, but no one has yet devised a sound testing protocol.
Regulators also cannot interpret the
mounting evidence from laboratory
studies, many of which use techniques
and methods of analysis that werent
even dreamed of when toxicology testing
protocols were developed in the 1950s.
Its like providing a horse breeder with
genetic sequence data for ve stallions
and asking him or her to pick the best
horse. Interpreting the data would re-
quire a broad range of clinical and scien-
tic experience.
Thats why professional societies rep-
resenting more than 40,000 scientists
wrote a letter to the FDA and EPA ofering
their expertise. The agencies should take
them up on it. Academic scientists and
clinicians need a place at the table with
government and industry scientists. We
owe it to mothers everywhere, who want
to give their babies the best possible
chance of growing into healthy adults.
Cuppa disrupters: Chemicals in
disposable cups may mimic hormones.
Comment on this article at
ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011
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ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/advances FURTHER READINGS AND CITATIONS
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BI OLOGY
More Than Childs Play
Young children think like researchers but lose the feel for the scientifc method as they age
If your brownies came out too crispy on top but undercooked
in the center, it would make sense to bake the next batch at a
lower temperature, for more time or in a diferent panbut not
to make all three changes at once. Realizing that you can best
tell which variable matters by altering only one at a time is a
cardinal principle of scientic inquiry.
Since the 1990s studies have shown that children think sci-
enticallymaking predictions, carrying out mini experiments,
reaching conclusions and revising their initial hypotheses in
light of new evidence. But while children can play in a way that
lets them ascertain cause and efect, and even though they have
a rudimentary sense of probability (eight-month-olds are sur-
prised if you reach into a bowl containing four times as many
blue marbles as white ones and randomly scoop out a stful of
white ones), it was not clear whether they have an implicit grasp
of a key strategy of experimental science: that by isolating vari-
ables and testing each independently, you can gain information.
To see whether children understand this concept, scientists
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford
University presented 60 four- and ve-year-olds with a chal-
lenge. The researchers showed the kids that certain plastic
beads, when placed individually on top of a special box, made
green LED lights ash and music play. Scientists then took two
pairs of attached beads, one pair glued together and the other
separable, and demonstrated that both pairs activated the ma-
chine when laid on the box. That raised the possibility that
only one bead in a pair worked. The children were then left alone
to play. Would they detach the separable pair and place each
bead individually on the machine to see which turned it on?
They did, the scientists reported in September in the journal
Cognition. So strong was the kids sense that they could only g-
ure out the answer by testing the components of a pair indepen-
dently that they did something none of the scientists expected:
when the pair was glued together, the children held it vertically so
that only one bead at a time touched the box. That showed an im-
pressive determination to isolate the causal variables, says Stan-
fords Noah Goodman: They actually designed an experiment
to get the information they wanted. That suggests basic scien-
tic principles help very young children learn about the world.
The growing evidence that children think scientically pre-
sents a conundrum: If even the youngest kids have an intuitive
grasp of the scientic method, why does that understanding
seem to vanish within a few years? Studies suggest that K12 stu-
dents struggle to set up a controlled study and cannot gure out
what kind of evidence would support or refute a hypothesis. One
reason for our failure to capitalize on this scientic intuition we
display as toddlers may be that we are pretty good, as children
and adults, at reasoning out puzzles that have something to do
with real life but ounder when the puzzle is abstract, Goodman
suggestsand it is abstract puzzles that educators tend to use
when testing the ability to think scientically. In addition, as we
learn more about the world, our knowledge and beliefs trump
our powers of scientic reasoning. The message for educators
would seem to be to build on the intuition that children bring to
science while doing a better job of making the connection be-
tween abstract concepts and real-world puzzles. Sharon Begley
ADVANCES
Dispatches from the frontiers of science,
technology and medicine
Untitled-1 1 8/30/11 10:32 AM
ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011 COMMENT AT
ADVANCES
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ENVI RONMENT
Is It Safe to Drink?
The government may not be doing enough
to regulate contaminants in tap water
More than 6,000 chemicals
pollute U.S. drinking water, yet
the U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency has added only
one new pollutant to its regu-
latory roster in the past 15
years. Environmental groups
have long raised questions
about this track record, and
the U.S. Government Account-
ability Ofce recently joined
the chorus, releasing a report
that charges the agency with
taking actions that have im-
peded . . . progress in helping
assure the public of safe drink-
ing water.
Among other things, the
GAO report says, the EPA relies
on awed data. To determine
the level of a particular pollut-
ant in drinking waterwhich
the EPA does before making a
regulatory ruling on itthe
agency relies on analytic test-
ing methods so insensitive
that they cannot identify the
contaminants at levels expect-
ed to cause health efects. In
addition, since 1996 the EPA
has been required to make
regulatory decisions about ve
new pollutants each year, rul-
ing on those that might pose
the biggest threats to public
health. The GAO report asserts
that the agency has been rul-
ing only on the low-hanging
fruitcontaminants for
which regulatory decisions are
easy rather than those that
might be the most dangerous.
Theyre not actually doing
anything to protect public
health, says Mae Wu, an attor-
ney at the Natural Resources
Defense Council.
For its part, the EPA has
pledged to review the nations
drinking-water standards and
to add at least 16 new contam-
inants to the list of those it
regulates. This past February
the agency reversed a long-
standing decision to not regu-
late the rocket-fuel ingredient
perchlorate, making the chem-
ical the rst new drinking-wa-
ter contaminant to be regulat-
ed since 1996. In its response
to the GAO, the EPA stated that
no action was necessary to
better prioritize the contami-
nants on which the agency will
rule in the future, nor did it ac-
knowledge the need for im-
provements in data collection.
The agency did, however,
agree to consider improving
its methods for alerting the
public when there are drink-
ing-water advisories.
Melinda Wenner Moyer
PATENT WATCH
Controlled heat transfer with mammalian bodies: In the 1990s Stanford University biologists Dennis Grahn and
H. Craig Heller discovered a novel way of treating patients with a condition known as postanesthetic hypothermia, in which pa-
tients emerging from anesthesia are so cold that they shiver for up to an hour. The condition develops in part because anesthesia
reduces the bodys ability to control its own temperature. Applying heat alone does not always help, so Grahn and Heller tried an-
other approach: they increased the volume of blood fowing to the skin of patients hands and then applied heat to the same area.
These people were fne within 10 minutes, Grahn says. Then the question was, What the heck is going on here?
They had stumbled on a feature of mammalian biology that can be manipulated for a wide array of other applications, includ-
ing ones requiring cooling. Among these uses is increasing athletic endurance, because overheating is one of the primary factors
limiting physical performance. One of the main ways the human body regulates internal temperature is by controlling the amount
of blood fow through nonhairy skin areas, such as the palms, the cheeks, the nose and the soles of the feet. Underneath the skin of
these areas are unique vascular structures designed to deliver large volumes of blood to the surface. When the body needs to re-
lease heat, it expands these vessels and foods the area with blood, throwing of heat through the skin. The body holds in heat by
constricting blood fow to these areas.
Patent No. 7,947,068 outlines a variety of ways to
manipulate these processes. One, called the Glove, is
already in use by the San Francisco 49ers. Players
stick their hand into the cofeepot-size device, which
creates an airtight seal around the wrist. The Glove
then uses a pressure diferential to draw blood to the
palm and rapidly cool it, which leads to an overall de-
crease in body temperature. The device can be used
at any point during a game and takes only a few min-
utes to work. Tests in the lab, Grahn says, have shown
that devices like the Glove can dramatically increase
athletic output and reduce heat stress. Adam Piore
October 2011, ScienticAmerican.com 19

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WHAT I S I T?
Disguise genes: Many animals
fool predators by changing colors to
mimic their surroundings or the
traits of other species. Two teams re-
cently identifed genes that control
this process in a large genus of tropi-
cal butterfies known as Heliconius.
Several Heliconius species evolved a
similar array of patterns over thou-
sands of years despite their varying
geographic locations. One study
found 18 genes regulate seven difer-
ent wing patterns, which warn birds
of the butterfies toxicity. Another
study described a single genes con-
trol of the red patterns on many spe-
cies (including H. erato, magnifed 15
times at the right). Arnaud Martin, a
University of California, Irvine, grad-
uate student involved in this re-
search, says the work helps to ex-
plain how changes in DNA can gen-
erate new features such as a bigger
brain, an oppositional thumb [or] a
colorful butterfy. Ann Chin
sad1011Adva3p.indd 19 8/24/11 6:23 PM
Shell is posing provocative questions to start a lively
conversation about this important topic.
The Energy for the Future Poll measures global and
regional opinions on where to place our energy and
transportation priorities. Go online, tell us what you
think and add your comment to the growing discussion.
Look for the Energy for the Future Poll on scienticamerican.com/sponsored/energyforthefuture
More efcient fossil fuels
More advanced vehicles
Electric/hydrogen vehicles
Better engine oils/lubricants
Public behavior change
Alternative fuels (e.g. biofuels)
Other
Q
How can we solve tomorrows transport problems
today?
At 32%, stimulating the market for electric or hydrogen
fuel cell-powered vehicles was the top choice. 18%
of respondents think we should change the publics
driving behavior, while 14% look to advanced vehicle
technologies.
Yes: World needs energy supplies
No: Focus on alternative energy
Other
No: More research needed
No: Safety risks too high
Yes: With government restrictions
Yes: Secures Arctic's economic future
Q
Should energy companies be allowed to explore
and develop oil resources in the Arctic?
Most global respondents think energy companies should
focus on investing in alternative energy sources. But
nearly 16% of North American respondents said yes
if there are government restrictions to ensure safety
and protect the environment and the local people.
WHATS THE FUTURE OF ENERGY?
HERES WHAT YOURE TELLING US.
PROMOTION
Shell HPH Bleed SciAm.indd 1 22/08/2011 10:15
Untitled-1 1 8/22/11 11:34 AM
Untitled-1 3 8/30/11 11:20 AM
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WHAT I S I T?
Disguise genes: Many animals
fool predators by changing colors to
mimic their surroundings or the
traits of other species. Two teams re-
cently identifed genes that control
this process in a large genus of tropi-
cal butterfies known as Heliconius.
Several Heliconius species evolved a
similar array of patterns over thou-
sands of years despite their varying
geographic locations. One study
found 18 genes regulate seven difer-
ent wing patterns, which warn birds
of the butterfies toxicity. Another
study described a single genes con-
trol of the red patterns on many spe-
cies (including H. erato, magnifed 15
times at the right). Arnaud Martin, a
University of California, Irvine, grad-
uate student involved in this re-
search, says the work helps to ex-
plain how changes in DNA can gen-
erate new features such as a bigger
brain, an oppositional thumb [or] a
colorful butterfy. Ann Chin
ADVANCES
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20,817
Days in spacethe highest of
any countryclocked by Russian
astronauts as of July 24
14,820 Days in space clocked
by Americans on the same date
STAT
FI ELD NOTES
Outsmarting
Cancer
A biologist talks about what makes
disease-causing proteins so difcult
to target with drugs
There really is a crisis now occurring in the phar-
maceutical industry. For the past 10 to 15 years the
number of new drugs has been declining because
its becoming harder and harder to create new
medicines.
A lot of people have speculated about why. One
ex planation I support is that weve run out of pro-
teins that can be targeted with drugs. The targets
that are left are undruggable.
Proteins that are considered undruggable dont
have large pockets or cavities inside them and in-
stead are relatively at on their surfaces. Theres no
obvious site for a small molecule, a therapeutic
candidate, to interact. Fifteen percent of proteins
are considered druggable. What percent of pro-
teins modify disease? It might be somewhere
around 10 to 15 percent. Theres no correlation be-
tween whether a protein is druggable and whether
its disease-modifying. Most proteins that drive dis-
ease processes are actually undruggable.
The reason I wrote The Quest for the Cure [Co-
lumbia University Press, 2011] was that I thought
this was an important problem that most people
are not aware ofeven in science, let alone the gen-
eral public. And if we can get the best minds to
tackle this question, I am optimistic that we will ul-
timately be successful in nding solutions to most,
if not all, of these proteins.
In my lab, our goal is to nd proteins that con-
trol cell-death mechanisms in cancer and neuro-
degenerative diseases and then to nd small mole-
cules that can inhibit or activate those proteins.
Were at a relatively early stage, but we have
tried to target one class of proteins called E3 ligas-
es, which are involved in pretty much every disease
and cellular process. They have been considered
undruggable, however, because there are no small
molecules that can block their activity. Our strategy
was to model, on a computer, the way a small mole-
cule interacts with a particular E3 li-
gase and to predict small molecules
that might interact favorably. Then
we picked the best 2,000 compounds
to test experimentally.
Out of that came a very striking,
potent inhibitor on which well be
publishing a paper in the next few
months. We are now using this same
strategy on other proteins. I think its
going to become more and more ap-
parent in the next ve to seven years
that we really are running out of drug
targets. Then, in the 10- to 15-year ho-
rizon, some of these new approaches
will be successful, and that will lead
to some powerful new drugs. It will
take some time to get there, though.
As told to Francie Diep
ScienticAmerican.com/oct2011 COMMENT AT
ADVANCES
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
O
F
B
R
E
N
T
S
T
O
C
K
W
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L
L
20,817
Days in spacethe highest of
any countryclocked by Russian
astronauts as of July 24
14,820 Days in space clocked
by Americans on the same date
STAT
FI ELD NOTES
Outsmarting
Cancer
A biologist talks about what makes
disease-causing proteins so di cult
to target with drugs
There really is a crisis now occurring in the phar-
maceutical industry. For the past 10 to 15 years the
number of new drugs has been declining because
its becoming harder and harder to create new
medicines.
A lot of people have speculated about why. One
ex planation I support is that weve run out of pro-
teins that can be targeted with drugs. The targets
that are left are undruggable.
Proteins that are considered undruggable dont
have large pockets or cavities inside them and in-
stead are relatively at on their surfaces. Theres no
obvious site for a small molecule, a therapeutic
candidate, to interact. Fifteen percent of proteins
are considered druggable. What percent of pro-
teins modify disease? It might be somewhere
around 10 to 15 percent. Theres no correlation be-
tween whether a protein is druggable and whether
its disease-modifying. Most proteins that drive dis-
ease processes are actually undruggable.
The reason I wrote The Quest for the Cure [Co-
lumbia University Press, 2011] was that I thought
this was an important problem that most people
are not aware ofeven in science, let alone the gen-
eral public. And if we can get the best minds to
tackle this question, I am optimistic that we will ul-
timately be successful in nding solutions to most,
if not all, of these proteins.
In my lab, our goal is to nd proteins that con-
trol cell-death mechanisms in cancer and neuro-
degenerative diseases and then to nd small mole-
cules that can inhibit or activate those proteins.
Were at a relatively early stage, but we have
tried to target one class of proteins called E3 ligas-
es, which are involved in pretty much every disease
and cellular process. They have been considered
undruggable, however, because there are no small
molecules that can block their activity. Our strategy
was to model, on a computer, the way a small mole-
cule interacts with a particular E3 li-
gase and to predict small molecules
that might interact favorably. Then we
picked the best 2,000 compounds to
test experimentally.
Out of that came a very striking, po-
tent inhibitor on which well be pub-
lishing a paper in the next few months.
We are now using this same strategy on
other proteins. I think its going to be-
come more and more apparent in the
next ve to seven years that we really
are running out of drug targets. Then,
in the 10- to 15-year horizon, some of
these new approaches will be success-
ful, and that will lead to some powerful
new drugs. It will take some time to get
there, though.
As told to Francie Diep
NAME
Brent Stockwell
TITLE
Associate professor,
Columbia University
Early career scientist,
Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
LOCATION
New York City
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Untitled-3 1 8/22/11 12:08 PM
Untitled-1 4 8/30/11 11:22 AM
NAME
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TITLE
Associate professor,
Columbia University
Early career scientist,
Howard Hughes
Medical Institute
LOCATION
New York City
PROFI LE


PHARMACEUTI CALS
Clearing the Smoke
Marijuana remains tightly
controlled, even though its
compounds show promise
Preliminary clinical trials show marijuana might
be useful for pain, nausea and weight loss in cancer and
HIV/AIDS and for muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis. Medical
marijuana studies in the U.S. are dwindling fast, however, as funding for
research in Californiathe only state to support research on the whole
cannabis plantcomes to an end this year and federal regulations on ob-
taining marijuana for study remain tight.
In July the Drug Enforcement Administration denied a petition, frst
fled in 2002 and supported by the American Medical Association, to
change marijuanas current classifcation. So marijuana remains in the
administrations most tightly controlled category, Schedule I, defned as
drugs that have a high potential for abuse and have no currently ac-
cepted medical use in treatment in the U.S. Many medical cannabis pro-
ponents see a catch-22 in the U.S.s marijuana control. One of the DEAs
reasons for keeping marijuana in Schedule I is that the drug does not
have enough clinical trials showing its benefts. Yet the classifcation may
limit research by making marijuana difcult for investigators to obtain.
Even as prospects for whole-plant marijuana research dim, those who
study isolated compounds from marijuana
which incorporates more than 400 diferent
types of moleculeshave an easier time. The
drugs main active chemical, delta 9-tetrahydro-
cannabinol (THC), is already FDA-approved for
nausea and weight loss in cancer and HIV/AIDS
patients. The Mayo Clinic is investigating the com-
pound, trade-named Marinol, as a treatment for irritable
bowel syndrome. Researchers at Brigham and Womens Hospi-
tal in Boston are studying Marinol for chronic pain.
Compared with smoked or vaporized marijuana, isolated cannabis
compounds are more likely to reach federal approval, experts say. Phar-
maceutical companies are more likely to develop individual compounds
because they are easier to standardize and patent. The results should be
similar to inhaled marijuana, says Mahmoud ElSohly, a marijuana chemis-
try researcher at the University of Mississippi, whose lab grows the na-
tions only research-grade marijuana.
Other investigators say a turn away from whole-plant research would
shortchange patients because the many compounds in marijuana work
together to produce a better efect than any one compound alone. Inhal-
ing plant material may also provide a faster-acting therapy than taking
Marinol by mouth. While ElSohly agrees that other marijuana compounds
can enhance THC, he thinks just a few chemicals should re-create most of
marijuanas benefts. Francie Diep
Illustrations by Thomas Fuchs
sad1011Adva3p.indd 21 8/24/11 6:22 PM
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Untitled-1 5 8/30/11 11:24 AM
PHARMACEUTI CALS
Clearing the Smoke
Marijuana remains tightly
controlled, even though its
compounds show promise
Preliminary clinical trials show marijuana might
be useful for pain, nausea and weight loss in cancer and
HIV/AIDS and for muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis. Medical
marijuana studies in the U.S. are dwindling fast, however, as funding for
research in Californiathe only state to support research on the whole
cannabis plantcomes to an end this year and federal regulations on ob-
taining marijuana for study remain tight.
In July the Drug Enforcement Administration denied a petition, frst
fled in 2002 and supported by the American Medical Association, to
change marijuanas current classifcation. So marijuana remains in the
administrations most tightly controlled category, Schedule I, defned as
drugs that have a high potential for abuse and have no currently ac-
cepted medical use in treatment in the U.S. Many medical cannabis pro-
ponents see a catch-22 in the U.S.s marijuana control. One of the DEAs
reasons for keeping marijuana in Schedule I is that the drug does not
have enough clinical trials showing its benefts. Yet the classifcation may
limit research by making marijuana difcult for investigators to obtain.
Even as prospects for whole-plant marijuana research dim, those who
study isolated compounds from marijuana
which incorporates more than 400 diferent
types of moleculeshave an easier time. The
drugs main active chemical, delta 9-tetrahydro-
cannabinol (THC), is already FDA-approved for
nausea and weight loss in cancer and HIV/AIDS
patients. The Mayo Clinic is investigating the com-
pound, trade-named Marinol, as a treatment for irritable
bowel syndrome. Researchers at Brigham and Womens Hospi-
tal in Boston are studying Marinol for chronic pain.
Compared with smoked or vaporized marijuana, isolated cannabis
compounds are more likely to reach federal approval, experts say. Phar-
maceutical companies are more likely to develop individual compounds
because they are easier to standardize and patent. The results should be
similar to inhaled marijuana, says Mahmoud ElSohly, a marijuana chemis-
try researcher at the University of Mississippi, whose lab grows the na-
tions only research-grade marijuana.
Other investigators say a turn away from whole-plant research would
shortchange patients because the many compounds in marijuana work
together to produce a better efect than any one compound alone. Inhal-
ing plant material may also provide a faster-acting therapy than taking
Marinol by mouth. While ElSohly agrees that other marijuana compounds
can enhance THC, he thinks just a few chemicals should re-create most of
marijuanas benefts. Francie Diep
Illustrations by Thomas Fuchs
ADVANCES
B
R
A
D
W
I
L
S
O
N

G
e
t
t
y
I
m
a
g
e
s
(
c
h
i
m
p
)
;
A
P
P
H
O
T
O
/
S
E
O
U
L
N
A
T
I
O
N
A
L
U
N
I
V
E
R
S
I
T
Y
(
f
r
o
g
)
;

S
H
A
U
N
L
O
M
B
A
R
D

G
e
t
t
y
I
m
a
g
e
s
(
e
l
e
p
h
a
n
t
s
)
;
G
E
T
T
Y
I
M
A
G
E
S
(
a
t
o
m
) NEWS SCAN
Searching remote mountains in Borneo,
scientists discover a group of brightly
colored rainbow toads, a species last
seen in 1924 and believed to be extinct.
Good news: the wage gap between
men and women in science is small-
er than in other felds. Bad news:
women still earn 12 percent less.
A Swedish man was arrested for unauthorized posses-
sion of nuclear materials after trying to split atoms in
his kitchen. It is just a hobby, he wrote on his Web site.
Elephants have social networks rang-
ing from four to 16 friends. As with
people, the smaller the circle, the
stronger and more loyal the bond.
Genius
Folly
EVOLUTI ON
Ive Got Your Back
New evidence shows that chimpanzees arent
as selfsh as many scientists thought
Charles Darwin had more in
common with chimpanzees
than even he realized. Before
he was universally known for
his theory of natural selection,
the young naturalist made a
decision that has long been
hailed as the type of behavior
that fundamentally separates
humans from other apes.
In 1858, before Darwin
published On the Origin of
Species, his friend Alfred Rus-
sel Wallace mailed Darwin his
own theory of evolution that
closely matched what Darwin
had secretly been working on
for more than two decades. In-
stead of racing to publish and
ignoring Wallaces work, Dar-
win included Wallaces outline
alongside his own abstract so
that the two could be present-
ed jointly before the Linnean
Society the following month.
I would far rather burn my
whole book than that [Wal-
lace] or any man should think
that I had behaved in a paltry
spirit, Darwin wrote.
This kind of prosocial be-
havior, a form of altruism that
seeks to benet others and
promote cooperation, has now
been found in chimps, the spe-
cies that Darwin did more
than any other human to con-
nect us with. (On page 12, the
Science Agenda, about medical
testing in chimps, notes other
similarities that have been
documented in chimps and
humans.) In the study, pub-
lished in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences
USA, primatologist Frans de
Waal and his colleagues at the
Yerkes National Primate Re-
search Center at Emory Uni-
versity presented chimps with
a simplied version of the
choice that Darwin faced.
Pairs of chimps were
brought into a testing room
where they were separated
only by a wire mesh. On one
side was a bucket containing
30 tokens that the chimpanzee
could give to an experimenter
for a food reward. Half of the
tokens were of one color that
resulted in only the chimpan-
zee that gave the token receiv-
ing a reward. The other tokens
were of a diferent color that
resulted in both chimpanzees
receiving a food reward. If
chimpanzees were motivated
only by selsh interests, they
would be expected to choose a
reward only for themselves (or
it should be 5050 if they were
choosing randomly). But indi-
viduals were signicantly
more likely to choose the pro-
social outcome compared with
the no-partner control.
De Waal says that previous
studies showing chimps to be
selsh may have been poorly
designed. The chimps had to
understand a complex food-
delivery system, De Waal
wrote via e-mail, and were of-
ten placed so far apart that
they may not have realized
how their actions beneted
others. De Waal added that
his study does not rule out the
possibility that chimpanzees
were inuenced by reciprocal
exchanges outside the experi-
mental setting such as groom-
ing or social support.
This latter possibility ofers
exciting research opportuni-
ties for the future. Chimpan-
zee society, like the greater sci-
entic community that studies
them, is built around such re-
ciprocal exchanges. Science is
a social activity, and sharing
the rewards from one anoth-
ers research allows scientists
to improve their work over
time. Like the chimpanzees he
would bond us with, Darwin
recognized the utility of shar-
ing rewards with others. Be-
having in a paltry spirit was
not the proper choice for a co-
operative ape.
Eric Michael Johnson
Adapted from The Primate Dia-
ries, part of Scientic Ameri-
cans blog network at http://
blogs.ScienticAmerican.com
Earth may have had a second, smaller
moon that smacked into the larger one,
which explains why one side of the
moon is more rugged than the other.
George Hackett
Untitled-1 1 8/29/11 10:26 AM
Y
A
D
I
D
L
E
V
Y

R
e
d
u
x
P
i
c
t
u
r
e
s
ENGI NEERI NG
Instant Health
Checks for
Buildings and
Bridges
Sensors can detect damage that
may be invisible to the naked eye
During 2011s deadly onslaught of earth-
quakes, oods and tornadoes, countless
buildings had to be evacuated while
workers checked to make sure they were
stable. The events served as a reminder
that most structures are still inspected by
a decidedly low-tech method: the naked
eye. To speed the process and make it
more accurate, investigators are research-
ing electronic skins, evolutionary algo-
rithms and other systems that can moni-
tor the integrity of bridges, buildings,
dams and other structures in real time.
To automatically detect tiny faults
and relay their precise locations, civil en-
gineer Simon Laamme of the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology and
his colleagues are devising a sensing
skinexible patches that glue to areas
where cracks are likely to occur and con-
tinuously monitor them. The formation
of a crack would cause a tiny movement
in the concrete under a patch, causing
a change in the electrical charge stored
in the sensing skin, which is made of
stretchable plastic mixed with titanium
oxide. Every day a computer attached to
a collection of patches would send out a
current to measure each patchs charge,
a system that Laamme and his col-
leagues detail in the Journal of Materi-
als Chemistry.
Another engineer is applying a simi-
lar concept to bridges. To monitor dete-
rioration inside suspension bridge ca-
bles, Raimondo Betti of Columbia Uni-
versity and his collaborators are testing
40 sensors in cables in New York Citys
Manhattan Bridge (above). The sensors
track temperature, humidity and corro-
sion rate.
Although these sensors can detect
damage that occurs after they have been
installed, what about damage a struc-
ture had beforehand? Roboticist Hod
Lipson of Cornell University and his col-
leagues have developed a computer
model that simulates an intact structure
and runs algorithms that evolve this
model until it matches data that sensors
provide, which can reveal a broader
scope of damage.
Others are not yet convinced of these
projects benets. There does not exist,
yet, enough research and data that eco-
nomically support continuous and time-
ly maintenance, La amme says. Anoth-
er concern might be the yet to be studied
long-term performance of the systems,
especially in harsh environmentsa
matter for future research.
Charles Q. Choi
Y
A
D
I
D
L
E
V
Y
R
e
d
u
x
P
i
c
t
u
r
e
s
ScienticAmerican.com/oct2011 COMMENT AT
ENGI NEERI NG
Instant Health
Checks for
Buildings and
Bridges
Sensors can detect damage that
may be invisible to the naked eye
During 2011s deadly onslaught of earth-
quakes, oods and tornadoes, countless
buildings had to be evacuated while
workers checked to make sure they were
stable. The events served as a reminder
that most structures are still inspected by
a decidedly low-tech method: the naked
eye. To speed the process and make it
more accurate, investigators are research-
ing electronic skins, evolutionary algo-
rithms and other systems that can moni-
tor the integrity of bridges, buildings,
dams and other structures in real time.
To automatically detect tiny faults
and relay their precise locations, civil en-
gineer Simon Laamme of the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology and
his colleagues are devising a sensing
skinexible patches that glue to areas
where cracks are likely to occur and con-
tinuously monitor them. The formation
of a crack would cause a tiny movement
in the concrete under a patch, causing
a change in the electrical charge stored
in the sensing skin, which is made of
stretchable plastic mixed with titanium
oxide. Every day a computer attached to
a collection of patches would send out a
current to measure each patchs charge,
a system that Laamme and his col-
leagues detail in the Journal of Materi-
als Chemistry.
Another engineer is applying a simi-
lar concept to bridges. To monitor dete-
rioration inside suspension bridge ca-
bles, Raimondo Betti of Columbia Uni-
versity and his collaborators are testing
40 sensors in cables in New York Citys
Manhattan Bridge (above). The sensors
track temperature, humidity and corro-
sion rate.
Although these sensors can detect
damage that occurs after they have been
installed, what about damage a struc-
ture had beforehand? Roboticist Hod
Lipson of Cornell University and his col-
leagues have developed a computer
model that simulates an intact structure
and runs algorithms that evolve this
model until it matches data that sensors
provide, which can reveal a broader
scope of damage.
Others are not yet convinced of these
projects benets. There does not exist,
yet, enough research and data that eco-
nomically support continuous and time-
ly maintenance, La amme says. Anoth-
er concern might be the yet to be studied
long-term performance of the systems,
especially in harsh environmentsa
matter for future research.
Charles Q. Choi
G
E
T
T
Y
I
M
A
G
E
S
ADVANCES
STAT
Days in space clocked by Japanese astronauts
as of July 24, the day Japan surpassed
Germany to take third place. (By October 1
Japan will have clocked 563 days thanks to
astronaut Satoshi Furukawas mission onboard
the International Space Station)
493 Days in space clocked by
German astronauts as of July
494
sad1011Adva3p.indd 24 8/24/11 6:21 PM
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ADVANCES
STAT
Days in space clocked by Japanese astronauts
as of July 24, the day Japan surpassed
Germany to take third place. (By October 1
Japan will have clocked 563 days thanks to
astronaut Satoshi Furukawas mission onboard
the International Space Station)
493 Days in space clocked by
German astronauts as of July
494

PHYSI OLOGY
The Trouble with Armor
The steel plates worn by medieval soldiers may have led to their wearers demise
On August 13, 1415, the 27-year-old
English king Henry V led his army into
France. Within two months dysentery
had killed perhaps a quarter of his men,
while a French army four times its size
blocked escape to Calais and across the
English Channel. Winter approached;
food grew scarce. Yet in one of the most
remarkable upsets in military history,
a force of fewer than 7,000 English sol-
diersmost of them lightly armed
archersrepulsed 20,000 to 30,000
heavily armored French men-at-arms
near the village of Agincourt, killing
thousands. Shakespeares play Henry V
attributed the victory to the power of
Henrys inspirational rhetoric; the re-
nowned military historian John Keegan
has credited the self-defeating crush of
the French charge. But a study by exer-
cise physiologists now suggests a new
reason for the slaughter: suits of armor
might not be all that great for fghting.
Researchers at the University of
Leeds in England placed armor-clad
volunteers on a treadmill and moni-
tored their oxygen consumption. The
armor commonly used in the 15th cen-
tury weighed anywhere from 30 to 50
kilograms, spread from head to hand to
toe. Because of the distributed mass,
volunteers had to summon great efort
to swing steel-plated legs through each
stride. In addition, breastplates forced
quick, shallow breaths. The researchers
found that the suits of armor doubled
volunteers metabolic requirements,
compared with an increase of only
about 70 percent for the same amount
of weight carried in a backpack.
Of course, medieval battles did not
happen on treadmills. The felds at Agin-
court were thick with mud, having re-
cently been plowed for winter wheat
and soaked in a heavy October shower.
The French charged across 300 yards of
this slop, all while sufering fre from the
English archers. Combine the efort re-
quired to run in armor with that needed
to slog through mud, says Graham As-
kew, one of the studys leaders, and youd
expect at least a fourfold increase in en-
ergy expenditureenough, it seems,
to change history. Michael Moyer
PHYSI OLOGY
The Trouble with Armor
The steel plates worn by medieval soldiers may have led to their wearers demise
On August 13, 1415, the 27-year-old
English king Henry V led his army into
France. Within two months dysentery
had killed perhaps a quarter of his men,
while a French army four times its size
blocked escape to Calais and across the
English Channel. Winter approached;
food grew scarce. Yet in one of the most
remarkable upsets in military history,
a force of fewer than 7,000 English sol-
diersmost of them lightly armed
archersrepulsed 20,000 to 30,000
heavily armored French men-at-arms
near the village of Agincourt, killing
thousands. Shakespeares play Henry V
attributed the victory to the power of
Henrys inspirational rhetoric; the re-
nowned military historian John Keegan
has credited the self-defeating crush of
the French charge. But a study by exer-
cise physiologists now suggests a new
reason for the slaughter: suits of armor
might not be all that great for ghting.
Researchers at the University of
Leeds in England placed armor-clad
volunteers on a treadmill and moni-
tored their oxygen consumption. The
armor commonly used in the 15th cen-
tury weighed anywhere from 30 to 50
kilograms, spread from head to hand to
toe. Because of the distributed mass,
volunteers had to summon great eort
to swing steel-plated legs through each
stride. In addition, breastplates forced
quick, shallow breaths. The researchers
found that the suits of armor doubled
volunteers metabolic requirements,
compared with an increase of only
about 70 percent for the same amount
of weight carried in a backpack.
Of course, medieval battles did not
happen on treadmills. The elds at Agin-
court were thick with mud, having re-
cently been plowed for winter wheat
and soaked in a heavy October shower.
The French charged across 300 yards of
this slop, all while suering re from the
English archers. Combine the eort re-
quired to run in armor with that needed
to slog through mud, says Graham As-
kew, one of the studys leaders, and youd
expect at least a fourfold increase in en-
ergy expenditureenough, it seems,
to change history. Michael Moyer
G
E
T
T
Y
I
M
A
G
E
S
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E
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2011 Scientific American 2011 Scientific American
ADVANCES
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HI STORY OF SCI ENCE
A Tale of Math Treasure
An exhibition traces the reconstruction of a
long-missing collection of writings by Archimedes
There is much cheesy lore about the an-
cient Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syr-
acuse: that he popularized the word eureka;
that he used mirrors to set Roman ships on fre;
that a Roman soldier killed him in 212 B.C.
while he was tracing diagrams in the sand. Not
only is the lore probably untrue, historians say,
but it also fails to capture the true signifcance
of his achievements, which spanned mathe-
matics, science and engineering and inspired
the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo and
Isaac Newton. Some credit him with having
essentially invented the basic ideas of calculus.
An exhibit opening in October at the Wal-
ters Art Museum in Baltimore will showcase a
decade-long efort to restore some of his long-
lost texts and unearth some of his previously
unknown contributions. Lost and Found: The
Secrets of Archimedes
focuses on a parchment
book known as the Ar-
chimedes Palimpsest.
At one point in histo-
ry, all of Archimedes
works that survived
through the Dark Ages
were contained in just three tomes made by
10th-century copyists in Constantinople. One,
called Codex C, disappeared some time after
Western European armies sacked the Byzan-
tine capital in 1204. Then, in 1906, Danish phi-
lologist Johan Ludvig Heiberg found a book of
prayers at a monastery in the city and noticed
that it was a palimpsestmeaning that the
parchment had been recycled by cutting up the
pages of older books and scraping them clean.
Among those older books, Heiberg realized,
was Codex C. Armed with a magnifying lens,
Heiberg painstakingly transcribed what he
could read of the older text, including parts of
two treatises that no other eyes had seen in
modern times. One was the Method of Me-
chanical Theorems, which describes the law of
the lever and a technique to calculate a bodys
center of gravityessentially the one still used
today. Another, called the Stomachion, ap-
peared to be about a tangramlike game.
Soon, the book disappeared again before
resurfacing in 1998 at an auction in New
York City. There an anonymous collector
bought it for $2 million and lent it to the
Walters museum. When the palimpsest re-
emerged, says Will Noel, who is its curator,
it was in appalling condition.
As the exhibition will display on panels
and videos, imaging experts were able to
map much of the hidden text using high-tech
toolsincluding x-rays from a particle accel-
eratorand to make it available to scholars.
Reviel Netz, a historian of mathematics at
Stanford University, discovered by reading
the Method of Mechanical Theorems that
Archimedes treated infnity as a number,
which constituted something of a philosophi-
cal leap. Netz was also the frst scholar to do
a thorough study of the diagrams, which he
says are likely to be faithful reproductions of
the authors original drawings and give cru-
cial insights into his thinking. These will be
on display, but the studies go on.
Netz is now transcribing the texts con-
tained in the palimpsest, which he estimates
at about 50,000 words, most written in a
shorthand typical of medieval copyists. He
plans to publish a critical edition in the origi-
nal Greek. It will take probably several de-
cades to translate it into English, he says.
Davide Castelvecchi
ADVANCES
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
O
F
A
R
C
H
I
M
E
D
E
S
P
A
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I
M
P
S
E
S
T
/
J
O
H
N
D
E
A
N
P
H
O
T
O
G
R
A
P
H
Y
HI STORY OF SCI ENCE
A Tale of Math Treasure
An exhibition traces the reconstruction of a
long-missing collection of writings by Archimedes
There is much cheesy lore about the an-
cient Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syr-
acuse: that he popularized the word eureka;
that he used mirrors to set Roman ships on fre;
that a Roman soldier killed him in 212 B.C.
while he was tracing diagrams in the sand. Not
only is the lore probably untrue, historians say,
but it also fails to capture the true signifcance
of his achievements, which spanned mathe-
matics, science and engineering and inspired
the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo and
Isaac Newton. Some credit him with having
essentially invented the basic ideas of calculus.
An exhibit opening in October at the Wal-
ters Art Museum in Baltimore will showcase a
decade-long efort to restore some of his long-
lost texts and unearth some of his previously
unknown contributions. Lost and Found: The
Secrets of Archimedes
focuses on a parchment
book known as the Ar-
chimedes Palimpsest.
At one point in histo-
ry, all of Archimedes
works that survived
through the Dark Ages
were contained in just three tomes made by
10th-century copyists in Constantinople. One,
called Codex C, disappeared some time after
Western European armies sacked the Byzan-
tine capital in 1204. Then, in 1906, Danish phi-
lologist Johan Ludvig Heiberg found a book of
prayers at a monastery in the city and noticed
that it was a palimpsestmeaning that the
parchment had been recycled by cutting up the
pages of older books and scraping them clean.
Among those older books, Heiberg realized,
was Codex C. Armed with a magnifying lens,
Heiberg painstakingly transcribed what he
could read of the older text, including parts of
two treatises that no other eyes had seen in
modern times. One was the Method of Me-
chanical Theorems, which describes the law of
the lever and a technique to calculate a bodys
center of gravityessentially the one still used
today. Another, called the Stomachion, ap-
peared to be about a tangramlike game.
Soon, the book disappeared again before
resurfacing in 1998 at an auction in New
York City. There an anonymous collector
bought it for $2 million and lent it to the
Walters museum. When the palimpsest re-
emerged, says Will Noel, who is its curator,
it was in appalling condition.
As the exhibition will display on panels
and videos, imaging experts were able to
map much of the hidden text using high-tech
toolsincluding x-rays from a particle accel-
eratorand to make it available to scholars.
Reviel Netz, a historian of mathematics at
Stanford University, discovered by reading
the Method of Mechanical Theorems that
Archimedes treated infnity as a number,
which constituted something of a philosoph-
ical leap. Netz was also the frst scholar to do
a thorough study of the diagrams, which he
says are likely to be faithful reproductions of
the authors original drawings and give cru-
cial insights into his thinking. These will be
on display, but the studies go on.
Netz is now transcribing the texts con-
tained in the palimpsest, which he estimates
at about 50,000 words, most written in a
shorthand typical of medieval copyists. He
plans to publish a critical edition in the origi-
nal Greek. It will take probably several de-
cades to translate it into English, he says.
Davide Castelvecchi
Archimedes Palimpsest
sad1011Adva3p.indd 26 8/24/11 6:20 PM

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Archimedes Palimpsest

TECHNOLOGY
Gig.U Is Now in Session
Universities are piloting superfast Internet connections
that may fnally rival the speed of South Koreas
The U.S. notoriously lags other countries
when it comes to Internet speed. One recent
report from Web analyst Akamai Technologies
puts us in 14th place, far behind front-runner
South Korea and also trailing Hong Kong, Ja-
pan and Romania, among other countries. The
sticking point over faster broadband has been:
Who will pay for it? Telecommunications
companies have been leery of investing in in-
frastructure unless they are certain of demand
for extra speed. American consumers, for their
part, have been content to direct much of
their Internet use to e-mail and social net-
works, which operate perfectly well at normal
broadband speeds, and they have not been
willing to pay a premium for speedier service.
The exception lies at the seat of learning.
Universities and research institutes are always
looking for a quicker fow of bits. We think
our researchers will be left behind without
gigabit speeds, says Elise Kohn, a former
policy adviser for the Federal Communica-
tions Commission. Kohn and Blair Levin,
who helped to develop the FCCs National
Broadband Plana congressionally man-
dated scheme to ensure broadband access
to all Americansare leading a collection of
29 universities spread across the country in
piloting a network of one-gigabit-per-sec-
ond Internet connections. The group, the
University Community Next Generation In-
novation Projectmore commonly referred
to as Gig.Uincludes Duke University, the
University of Chicago, the University of
Washington and Arizona State University.
The average U.S. Internet speed today is
5.3 megabits per second, so Gig.Us Internet
would be many times faster than those avail-
able today, allowing users to download the
equivalent of two high-defnition movies in
less than one minute and to watch streaming
video with no pixelation or other interrup-
tions. By comparison, the average Internet
speed in South Korea is 14.4 megabits per sec-
ond, and the country has pledged to connect
every home to the Internet at one gigabit per
second by 2012.
The U.S. gigabit networks will vary from
site to site, depending on the approach that dif-
ferent Internet service providers propose to
meet the difering needs of Gig.U members.
All our members are focused on next-genera-
tion networks, although some will need more
than a gigabit, and others will need less, Kohn
says. Gig.Us request-for-information period
runs through November to solicit ideas from
the local service providers upgrading to faster
networks. These ideas will ultimately be funded
by Gig.U members, as well as any nonprofts
and private-sector companies interested in the
project. Gig.U intends to accelerate the deploy-
ment of next-generation networks in the U.S.
by encouraging researchersstudents and
professors aliketo develop new applications
and services that can make use of ultrafast
data-transfer rates. Larry Greenemeier
TECHNOLOGY
Gig.U Is Now in Session
Universities are piloting superfast Internet connections
that may nally rival the speed of South Koreas
The U.S. notoriously lags other countries
when it comes to Internet speed. One recent
report from Web analyst Akamai Technologies
puts us in 14th place, far behind front-runner
South Korea and also trailing Hong Kong, Ja-
pan and Romania, among other countries. The
sticking point over faster broadband has been:
Who will pay for it? Telecommunications
companies have been leery of investing in in-
frastructure unless they are certain of demand
for extra speed. American consumers, for their
part, have been content to direct much of
their Internet use to e-mail and social net-
works, which operate perfectly well at normal
broadband speeds, and they have not been
willing to pay a premium for speedier service.
The exception lies at the seat of learning.
Universities and research institutes are always
looking for a quicker ow of bits. We think
our researchers will be left behind without
gigabit speeds, says Elise Kohn, a former
policy adviser for the Federal Communica-
tions Commission. Kohn and Blair Levin,
who helped to develop the FCCs National
Broadband Plana congressionally man-
dated scheme to ensure broadband access
to all Americansare leading a collection of
29 universities spread across the country in
piloting a network of one-gigabit-per-sec-
ond Internet connections. The group, the
University Community Next Generation In-
novation Projectmore commonly referred
to as Gig.Uincludes Duke University, the
University of Chicago, the University of
Washington and Arizona State University.
The average U.S. Internet speed today is
5.3 megabits per second, so Gig.Us Internet
would be many times faster than those avail-
able today, allowing users to download the
equivalent of two high-denition movies in
less than one minute and to watch streaming
video with no pixelation or other interrup-
tions. By comparison, the average Internet
speed in South Korea is 14.4 megabits per sec-
ond, and the country has pledged to connect
every home to the Internet at one gigabit per
second by 2012.
The U.S. gigabit networks will vary from
site to site, depending on the approach that dif-
ferent Internet service providers propose to
meet the diering needs of Gig.U members.
All our members are focused on next-genera-
tion networks, although some will need more
than a gigabit, and others will need less, Kohn
says. Gig.Us request-for-information period
runs through November to solicit ideas from
the local service providers upgrading to faster
networks. These ideas will ultimately be funded
by Gig.U members, as well as any nonprots
and private-sector companies interested in the
project. Gig.U intends to accelerate the deploy-
ment of next-generation networks in the U.S.
by encouraging researchersstudents and
professors aliketo develop new applications
and services that can make use of ultrafast
data-transfer rates. Larry Greenemeier
Some core of the
Korean culture
has remained
intact over at least
1,500 years.
From a study in the New Journal
of Physics that found that the most
common Korean surname, Kim, has been
popular as far back as 500 A.D., when one
fth of the population shared the name.
QUOTABLE
sad1011Adva3p.indd 27 8/24/11 6:21 PM
LIFE, the UNIVERSE, and EVERYTHING fom BASIC BOOKS
A member of the Perseus Books Group www.basicbooks.com
Afer reading this
very enlightening,
informative and
entertaining book,
youll see why some
numbers are just a
bit more equal
than others.
John L. Casti
COSMIC NUMBERS
THE NUMBERS THAT
DEFINE OUR UNIVERSE
Nobel Prize-winning
physicist Robert B.
Laughlin examines
how we will power
our society once
fossil fuels are gone.
POWERING THE FUTURE
HOW WE WILL (EVENTUALLY)
SOLVE THE ENERGY CRISIS
AND FUEL THE CIVILIZATION
OF TOMORROW
Stewart is great
at communicating
wonder, but its ofen
his skepticism that
makes [this] such an
enjoyable read.
Boston Globe
THE MATHEMATICS
OF LIFE
Untitled-4 1 8/17/11 4:18 PM
Some core of the
Korean culture
has remained
intact over at least
1,500 years.
From a study in the New Journal
of Physics that found that the most
common Korean surname, Kim, has been
popular as far back as 500 A.D., when one
ffth of the population shared the name.
QUOTABLE
ADVANCES
R
Y
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N
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T
H
E
W
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M
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FOOD
Spherical Eats
The chemistry of encased mussels and other edible orbs
A few years ago the renowned
chef Ferran Adri presented
diners at his restaurant, elBul-
li, with a simple dish of bright-
orange caviaror rather what
looked like caviar: when the
guests bit into the orbs, they
burst into a mouthful of canta-
loupe juice. Since that legend-
ary bit of culinary trompe
loeil, Adri and other avant-
garde chefs have created many
more otherworldly dishes, in-
cluding mussels that Adri en-
cases in transparent globes of
their own juice.
Eating these spherical
foods can evoke childlike joy
as you roll the smooth balls
around your mouth and ex-
plode them with your tongue.
But making such confections is
not so simple; a lot of chemis-
try goes into the process.
Chefs have developed two
ways to go about it: direct and
reverse spherication. Both
methods exploit the fact that
some gelling mixtures do not
set unless ions, charged mole-
cules, are present.
In the direct approach, the
chef blends the food into a
puree or broth that contains a
gelling agent, such as sodium
alginate or iota carrageenan,
but that lacks coagulating
ions. The cook separately pre-
pares a setting bath that con-
tains a source of the missing
ions, such as calcium gluco-
nate. As soon as droplets or
spoonfuls of the food fall into
the bath, gelling begins.
Surface tension pulls the
beads into their distinctive
round shape. A short dip in
the bath yields liquid-lled
balls encased in tissue-thin
skin; a long soak produces
chewy beads. The cook stops
the gelling process by rinsing
the beads and heating them to
85 degrees Celsius (185 degrees
Fahrenheit) for 10 minutes.
Reverse spherication in-
verts the process: calcium lac-
tate or some other source of
calcium ions is added to the
edible liquid or pureeunless
the food is naturally rich in cal-
cium. The bath contains unset
gel made with deionized or dis-
tilled water, which is calcium-
free. When the food goes in,
the bath solution itself forms a
skin of gel around it. The culi-
nary team at our lab has used
spherication to make marbles
of crystal-clear tomato water
that enclose smaller spheres of
basil oil. We have also found
that this technique is a terric
way to make a very convincing-
looking raw egg out of little
more than water, ham broth
(for the white) and melon juice
(for the yolk). It tastes much
better than it looks. W. Wayt
Gibbs and Nathan Myhrvold
Myhrvold is author and Gibbs
is editor of Modernist Cuisine:
The Art and Science of Cook-
ing (The Cooking Lab, 2011).
MEDI CI NE
Putting Diabetes on Autopilot
New devices may spare patients from monitoring their blood glucose
For millions of diabetes suferers, life is a constant battle to keep their blood sugar balanced, which typically means they
have to test their glucose levels and take insulin throughout the day. A new generation of artifcial pancreas devices
may make tedious diabetes micromanagement obsolete. In healthy people, the pancreas naturally produces insulin,
which converts sugars and starches into energy. People with type 1 diabetes, however, do not produce any insulin of their
own, and those with type 2 produce too little. All type 1 and many type 2 diabetics have to dose themselves with insulin to
keep their bodies fueledand doing so properly requires constant monitoring of blood sugar because appropriate dos-
ages depend on factors such as how much patients eat or exercise. Stuart Weinzimer, an endocrinologist at Yale Universi-
ty, has devised an artifcial pancreas that combines two existing technologies: a continuous glucose monitor, which uses
an under-the-skin sensor to measure blood glucose levels every few minutes, and an insulin pump, which dispenses in-
sulin through a tube that is also implanted under the skin. The glucose sensor sends its data wirelessly to a pocket com-
puter a little bigger than an iPhone that is loaded with software developed by Minneapolis-based Medtronic. The pro-
gram scans the incoming data from the glucose monitor and directs the pump to dispense the correct amount of insulin.
At an American Diabetes Association meeting in June, Weinzimer and his colleagues reported that 86 percent of
type 1 diabetics they studied who used the artifcial pancreas reached target blood glucose levels at night, whereas
only 54 percent of subjects who had to wake up to activate an insulin pump reached their target levels. Other, simi-
lar systems are in development at Boston University, the University of Cambridge and Stanford University.
Some technical glitches still need to be worked out. For example, the device occasionally has trouble adapting to
drastic changes in glucose, such as those that occur after exercise. And it will have to go through more rounds of vetting,
which could take years, including large-scale patient trials that will be required before the Food and Drug Administra-
tion can approve the device. Nevertheless, Weinzimer says that the enthusiastic responses he has gotten from his trial
participants remind him why the long slog toward commercialization is worthwhile. Elizabeth Svoboda
Adris mussels
in their juice
INTRODUCING
Origins and Endings
3`ixi` xi`D new Special Edition for iPad
Take a journey from the origins of the universe to the end of time.
Explore interactive feature articles, expanded information graphics, videos,
audio interviews and slide shows. Download today!
Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
iPad is a trademark of Apple Inc. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
SA_OriginsEnd_Ad.indd 1 1/19/11 4:45 PM
The Science of Health by Laura Blue
Laura Blue is a Ph.D. student in
demography at Princeton University.
The Ethnic
Health Advantage
Two populations in the U.S. tend to outlive
their often richer neighbors. Why?
For decades scholars and public health ofcials have known that
people with greater income or formal education tend to live lon-
ger and enjoy better health than their counterparts who have less
money or schooling. The trend holds true wherever researchers
lookin poor countries or rich ones, in Europe, Asia or the Amer-
icasbut two notable exceptions stand out.
One is known as the healthy immigrant efect. Looked at as a
group, immigrants to countries as diverse as the U.S., Australia,
Germany and Canada live longer than their new native-born
neighbors. Yet immigrants also tend to be less well educated and
are often more likely to live in poverty in those countries.
The other exception is called the Hispanic paradox and is par-
ticular to the U.S. In study after study, people of Hispanic de-
scent (typically of Spanish, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, or
Central or South American origin) seem to live longer than non-
Hispanic whites, who on average happen to be richer and better
educated. In 2006, for example, life expectancy at birth in the
U.S. was 2.5 years higher for Hispanics than for non-Hispanic
whites. The paradox is real; data errors, such as small sam-
ple size or the underreporting of Hispanic ethnicity on
death certicates, cannot explain it. Yet the cause of the par-
adox has long been a mystery.
Recently I took a closer look at both the healthy immi-
grant efect and the Hispanic paradox with Andrew Fenelon,
a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. Fenel-
on studies sociology and, like me, demographya relatively
small eld that I often describe as the ecology of human pop-
ulations. Just like ecologists, demographers are interested in
the fertility, mortality and migration patterns of certain spe-
cies; in our case, that species is humans. Samuel Preston, one
of the worlds leading demographers (and Fenelons Ph.D.
adviser), had a hunch about what might cause the U.S. His-
panics longevity advantage in particular, and Fenelon and I
had some ideas about how to test that hunch and to see if it
applied as well to the immigrant advantage.
Today Fenelon and I believe we can largely explain
both anomalies. If our research is correct, then it largely
stems from just one factora factor that was hiding in
plain sight all along.
UNRAVELING A MYSTERY
Scholars have come up with many hypotheses to explain the
general immigrant advantage, and most of these ideas simultane-
ously attempt to account for the more specic Hispanic paradox
as well. They link the two phenomena because many Hispanics in
the U.S. are immigrants: according to the latest census data, two
out of ve Hispanics living in the U.S. were not born there.
Among the most popular explanations for the immigrant ad-
vantage is that such individuals might be unusually resilient,
both mentally and physically. They must, after all, need energy
and motivation to leave their homes and build a new life on for-
eign soil, the thinking goes. At the very least they are not likely to
be on their deathbeds when they move. Perhaps, therefore, immi-
grants are simply healthier than the average person when they ar-
rive in the U.S. Alternatively, maybe immigrants who get sick
leave the U.S. and return home for care, which would then leave
the population of remaining immigrants unusually healthy.
In addition to a putative immigrant advantage, proposed ex-
planations for the Hispanic paradox generally emphasize culture
and lifestyle. Hispanics in the U.S. could have stronger family ties
that may help steer them through periods of ill health and stress.
Another possibility: Hispanics might eat more nutritious foods.
Or their work and leisure activities might be more physically de-
manding, which promotes physical tness. All these notions are
plausible. Yet to date, no studies have been convincingly able to
link such behaviors to the Hispanic lifespan advantage.
One lifestyle factor, however, correlates with elevated death
rates in almost every mortality study of any population in the
world: smoking.
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The Science of Health
Could something as obvious as smoking explain immigrants
and Hispanics life expectancy advantage in the U.S.? This is the
theory that Fenelon and I set out to test. In 2009 and 2010 we
conducted two analyses of National Vital Statistics System and
Census Bureau data from 2000: one to compare Hispanics with
non-Hispanic whites (with no regard to birthplace) and a second
to compare immigrants with native-born Americans (with no re-
gard to ethnicity). Regrettably, we could not specically compare
immigrant and native Hispanics; there are not enough data about
older U.S.-born Hispanics to generate statistically valid estimates
of total life expectancy for the purposes of comparison. In each
analysis, we estimated the number of deaths attributable to
smoking for each group we were comparing and then checked
how much of the diference in total death rates could be ex-
plained by smoking. We used death from lung cancer as a marker
for smoking-related death because lung cancer is the condition
most strongly tied to smoking. We then used death from lung
cancer to extrapolate death from all smoking-related conditions.
The strength of the results, published this
year in the International Journal of Epidemi-
ology, surprised even us. We found that smok-
ing is the single best explanation of the His-
panic paradox and the general immigrant
advantage, at least among adults. Our results
show that in 2000 smoking explained more
than 75 percent of the diference in life ex-
pectancy at age 50 between Hispanic and
non-Hispanic white men and roughly 75 percent among women.
It also accounted for more than 50 percent of the diference in life
expectancy at age 50 between foreign- and native-born men and
more than 70 percent of the diference among women. We cannot
know from these estimates whether less smoking means that for-
eign-born Hispanics live longer than their U.S.-born Hispanic
counterparts, because we did not estimate death rates separately
for these groups. But recent data are not inconsistent with that
idea: Fenelon has found that foreign-born Hispanics do smoke
substantially less than U.S.-born Hispanics do.
People ask me how it is that no one noticed the role of smok-
ing before. Of course, people did know that smoking is bad for
health. But the extent of its role in health disparities between eth-
nic groups was not much recognized, perhaps because most stud-
ies of health habits in diferent populations have been based on
large-scale surveys, which typically do not include tremendous
detail about smoking and thus do not reveal diferences in smok-
ing habits between groups.
Consider, for example, a typical health survey, which some-
what resembles the health history form you often ll out when
you visit a new doctor. The form will probably ask whether you
smoke now and whether you used to smoke. But smokers and for-
mer smokers are rarely asked precisely how long they smoked
and how many cigarettes a day they consumed at every point in
their lives. Even if the questions were asked, people might misre-
member exactly how much they smoked several decades ago.
Nevertheless, a number of studies based on survey data have
picked up some ethnic diferences in smoking prevalence (wheth-
er or not people smoke)and this was exactly the kind of infor-
mation that inspired Fenelon and me to determine whether
smoking was the key factor in the Hispanic paradox. But those
surveys have generally failed to notice ethnic diferences in smok-
ing intensity and duration or how much smokers are smoking. At
least one set of data, however, does address such details. The Na-
tional Health Interview Survey, an annual questionnaire that
asks fairly detailed questions about tobacco use, has shown that
Hispanics are not only less likely to be smokers or former smok-
ers but that the smokers among them are also less likely to smoke
heavily. In 2009, for instance, only 9 percent of Hispanic women
were current smokers, compared with 21 percent of non-Hispanic
white women; 18 percent of Hispanic men smoked, compared
with 25 percent of non-Hispanic white men. Among smokers,
Hispanics also consumed far fewer cigarettes on average.
When I say that the answer to the immigrant and Hispanic
paradoxes may have been hiding in plain sight all along, I am
referring to the kind of information in the national health survey.
In the case of Hispanics in the U.S., scholars recognized that
smoking prevalence was unusually low among that group, and
the data were there to check whether smok-
ing intensity was low as well. But no one took
the next step of calculating whether difer-
ences in total cigarette consumption could
be so large as to drive the overall life expec-
tancy advantage among Hispanics. My re-
search with Fenelon has done that.
We estimated smoking-attributable deaths
not from survey data but instead from aggre-
gate national death data: records of every single death in the U.S.
in 2000. These data have plenty of their own drawbacks, to be
sure. Crucially, our methods depend on the assumption that re-
cords of deaths from lung cancer are equally reliable in all sub-
populations. To limit the impact of our assumptions on our nal
results, Fenelon and I used a few diferent methods to estimate
smoking-attributable deaths, and the methods all yielded similar
answers. We also took into account the possibility that immi-
grants may return to their home countries to die. We still found
that, yes, smoking makes the diference in longevity.
I cannot say why Hispanics historically have smoked less than
non-Hispanic whites. What is clear, however, is that millions of
Americans have turned away from smoking since its health ef-
fects became obvious in the second half of the 20th century.
Meanwhile cigarette consumption is on the rise in much of the
developing world, thanks in no small part to strong marketing
from tobacco companies. Together these two trends suggest that,
over time, immigrants life expectancy advantage in the U.S. may
erode. I expect that both the immigrant advantage and the His-
panic paradox may disappear within the next few decades.
No one who reads this article will be surprised to learn that
smoking kills. But sometimes we forget how profound its efects
on health can be. In the case of Hispanics in the U.S., low cigarette
consumption seems powerful enough to counteract a slew of so-
cioeconomic disadvantages that often result in poor health and
early death. That is a nding worth remembering for everyone.
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TechnoFiles by David Pogue
Big Progress on the Little Things
Lets take a step back and praise three unsung trends in consumer electronics
In the trenches of consumer technology, theres plenty to com-
plain about. Todays cell-phone contracts are exorbitant and il-
logical (why has the price of a text message doubled in three
years?). Those 15-second voicemail instructions still seem to
last forever and use up our expensive airtime (When you have
nished recording, you may hang upoh, really?). And laptop
batteries still cant last the whole day.
But here and there, in unsung but important corners of con-
sumer tech, some long-standing annoyances have quietly been
extinguished. These developments deserve a lot more praise
than theyve received.
Take the megapixel race. For years the camera industry brain-
washed us into believing that a cameras megapixel measure-
ment somehow indicates the quality of its photographs.
It doesnt. A lousy photo still looks lousyeven at 45 mega-
pixels. In fact, more megapixels can mean worse images because
the more photo sites (light-sensing pixels) you cram onto a sen-
sor, the smaller they get, the less light they collect and the more
heat they produce, resulting in noise (random speckles).
The megapixel myth was a convenient psychological cop-out
for consumers, who longed for a single, comparative statistic like
miles per gallon for a car or gigabytes for an iPod. The camera
companies played right along because it meant that they didnt
have to work on the factors that really do produce better pic-
tures: the lens, the software and, above all, the sensor size.
In the past two years, though, a quiet revolution has taken
place. The megapixel race essentially shut itself down. The mega-
pixel count came to rest at 10 or 12 megapixels for pocket camer-
David Pogue is the personal-technology columnist
for the New York Times and an Emmy Awardwinning
correspondent for CBS News.
sad1011Tech3p.indd 34 8/18/11 5:07 PM
as, maybe 16 or 18 for professional onesand the camera compa-
nies began putting their development eforts into bigger sensors.
Cameras such as the Canon S95, the Sony NEX-C3 and Micro
Four Thirds models pack larger sensors into smaller bodies.
Another example: power cords. Weve all griped at one time
or another about our drawers full of ugly, mutually incompatible
chargers. Every new cell-phone model, even from the same man-
ufacturer, used to require a diferent cord (and car and plane
adapters), racking up another $50 per phone sale per customer.
And then, one great morning, electronics executives must
have confronted themselves in the mirror, lled with shame,
and decided to shut down that extortionist, environmentally di-
sastrous prot center.
In Europe, for example, all the major cell-phone makers
agreed to standardize their cords. Today every phone model
uses exactly the same interchangeable micro USB power cord.
Similarly, the micro USBs cousin, the mini USB, has been
making its own conquests. Now you can charge up most Black-
Berries, Bluetooth headsets, e-book readers, music players and
GPS receivers by connecting a USB cable to either a power plug
or your laptop. You can also use the same 30-pin charging cord
on every one of the 200 million iPhones, iPads and iPod touch-
es ever made.
Finally, its time to give thanks for the
most important revolution of all: the sim-
plicity movement.
For decades the rule in consumer tech was that whoever
packs in more features wins. Our gadgets quickly became com-
plex, cluttered and intimidating.
But then came the iPod, a music player with fewer features
than its rivals (no radio, no voice recorder); it became the
800-pound gorilla of music players. Then the Flip camcorder
so simple, it didnt even have a zoomsnapped up 40 percent of
the camcorder market (until Cisco bought and, inexplicably,
killed it). And the Wii, a game console whose controller has half
as many buttons as the Xboxs or the PlayStations and whose
graphics look Fisher-Price crude, became a towering success,
outselling its rivals year after year.
Simplicity works because it brings you happiness. You feel a
sense of immediate mastery. Simplicity as a design goal makes
life harder for the gadget makers, of course, because designing
next years model is no longer as easy as piling on new features.
But simplicity is a goal worth sweating for.
In other words, some trends demonstrate maturity, brains and
good taste on the part of the manufacturers;
its worth taking a moment to celebrate them.
Okay, thats enough. Now lets go back
to complaining.
ITS TIME TO GIVE THANKS
for the most important revolution of all:
the simplicity movement.
Read about the tech worlds four worst trends
at ScienticAmerican.com/oct2011/pogue
sad1011Tech3p.indd 35 8/18/11 5:07 PM

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at ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/pogue
Galactic gong show: The disk of
the Milky Way has developed a
warp, which astronomers think
is not a static distortion but a
slow-motion wave, like the vibra-
tion of a gong or drumhead. The
author argues that the vibration
is set in motion by disturbances
in the galaxys dark matter,
which in turn are triggered by
two small satellite galaxies.
Illustrations by Don Dixon October 2011, ScienticAmerican.com 37
ASTROPHYSI CS
THE DARK SIDE
OF THE
MILKY WAY
Dark matter is not just a puzzle. It is a solution
By Leo Blitz
Leo Blitz wanted to be an astronomer since early elementary
school, when his favorite TV show was Watch Mr. Wizard.
He is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley,
and is former director of the Radio Astronomy Laboratory.
This study was one of many in the 1970s and 1980s that
forced astronomers to conclude that dark mattera mysterious
substance that neither emits nor absorbs light and reveals itself
solely by its gravitational inuencenot only exists but is the
dominant material constituent of the universe. Measurements
with the WMAP spacecraft conrm that dark matter accounts
for ve times as much mass as ordinary matter (protons, neu-
trons, electrons, and so on). What the stuf is remains as elusive
as ever. It is a measure of our ignorance that the most conserva-
tive hypothesis proposes that dark matter consists of an exotic
particle not yet detected in particle accelerators, predicted by
theories of matter that have not yet been veried. The most
radical hypothesis is that Newtons law of gravity and Einsteins
general theory of relativity are
wrong or, at the very least, re-
quire unpleasant modications.
Whatever its nature, dark
matter is already providing keys
to unlock some persistent puz-
zles about how the Milky Way
came to have certain of its features. For example, astronomers
have known for more than 50 years that the outer parts of the
galaxy are warped like a vinyl phonograph record left on a heat-
er. They could not make a viable model for the warpuntil they
considered the efects of dark matter. Similarly, computer sim-
ulations of galactic formation based on the assumed properties
of dark matter predicted that our galaxy should be surrounded
by hundreds or even thousands of small satellite galaxies. Yet
observers saw only about two dozen. The discrepancy led peo-
ple to question whether dark matter had the properties they
thought it did. But in recent years several groups of astrono-
mers have discovered troves of dwarf satellites, narrowing the
disparity. These newly located satellites are not only helping to
A
lthough astronomers only slowly came to realize
dark matters importance in the universe, for me per-
sonally it happened in an instant. In my rst project
as a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley,
in 1978, I measured the rotational velocities of star-
forming giant molecular clouds in the outer part of
the disk of our Milky Way galaxy. I worked out what
was then the most accurate method to determine those velocities,
and I sat down to plot out the results (by hand on graph paper) in the
astronomy department lounge. Two other experts on the Milky Way,
Frank Shu and Ivan King, happened by. They watched as I lled in
the velocities of the outermost clouds, and the pattern we saw made
it clear at once that the Milky Way was rife with dark matter, espe-
cially in its outermost parts. We sat and scratched our heads, imagin-
ing what the nature of the dark matter could be, and all the ideas we
came up with turned out in short order to be wrong.
Dark matter is one of the great scientif-
ic mysteries of our time, but once as-
tronomers accepted its existence, the
answers to many other cosmic myster-
ies fell into place.
Whatever this unknown material may
be, it seems to explain why the disk of
our Milky Way galaxy has such a pro-
nounced warp at its outer rim. Orbiting
satellite galaxies naturally tend to dis-
tort the galaxy, but their gravitational
efect would be too weak without the
amplifcation that dark matter provides.
Another question dark matter answers
is why the Milky Way appears to have
fewer such satellite galaxies than mod-
els predict it should. It turns out that the
satellites are probably out there, though
composed almost entirely of dark mat-
ter, making them hard to detect.
I N BRI EF
resolve a long-standing mystery of galactic structure; they may
also be teaching us something about the total cosmic inventory
of matter.
FACTORING IN THE WARP
a first step to understanding what dark matter tells us about
the Milky Way is to get a general picture of how the galaxy is or-
ganized. Ordinary matterthe stars and gasresides in four
major structures: a thin disk (which includes the pinwheel-like
spiral pattern and the location of the sun), a dense nucleus
(which also harbors a supermassive black hole), an elongated
bulge known as the bar, and a spheroidal halo of old stars and
clusters that envelops the rest of the galaxy. Dark matter has a
very diferent arrangement. Although we cannot see it, we infer
where it is from the rotation velocities of stars and gas; its grav-
itational efects on visible material suggest it is approximately
spherically distributed and extends far beyond the stellar halo,
with a density that is highest at the center and falls of approxi-
mately as the square of the distance from the center. Such a dis-
tribution would be the natural result of what astronomers call
hierarchical merging: the proposition that in the early uni-
verse, smaller galaxies accreted to build larger ones, including
the Milky Way.
For years astronomers could get no further than this basic
picture of dark matter as a giant, undiferentiated ball of un-
identied material. In the past several years, however, we have
managed to glean more details, and dark matter has proved
rather more interesting than we had suspected. Various lines of
evidence suggest that this material is not smoothly distributed
but has some large-scale lumpiness to it.
Such unevenness would explain the existence and size of
the galactic warp. When astronomers say the galaxy is warped,
we are referring to a specic distortion in the outskirts of the
disk. At distances beyond about 50,000 light-years from the
center, the disk consists almost entirely of atomic hydrogen
gas, with only a few stars. Mapped by radio telescopes, the gas
does not lie in the plane of the galaxy; the farther out you go,
the more it deviates. By a distance of about 75,000 light-years,
the disk has bent about 7,500 light-years out of the plane [see
box on next page].
Evidently, as the gas within the disk revolves around the ga-
lactic center, it also oscillates up and down, in and out of the
plane. These oscillations occur over hundreds of millions of
years, and we catch them at one moment in their cycle. In es-
sence, the gas disk acts as a kind of giant gong vibrating in slow
motion. Like a gong, it can vibrate at multiple frequencies, each
corresponding to a certain shape of the surface. In 2005 my col-
leagues and I showed that the observed warp is the sum of
three such frequencies. (The lowest is 64 octaves below middle
C.) The overall efect is asymmetric: gas on one side of the gal-
axy is much farther from the plane than gas on the other side.
The radio astronomers who rst noticed the warping in the
Large Magellanic Cloud, the biggest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, may be stirring up our galaxys dark matter.
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

E
C
K
H
A
R
D

S
L
A
W
I
K
SOLVED: MYSTERY#1
Sun
Dark matter halo
(purple haze)
An Old Hypothesis Revisited
A hypothesis dating to the 1950s attributed the warp to
the gravity of two satellite galaxies, the Large and Small
Magellanic Clouds. It fell into disfavor because those satellites
are too lightweight to have much efect on our galaxy.
Astron omers now know that the visible part of the Milky
Way is surrounded by a huge ball of dark matter. In recent
years they have shown that dark matter could amplify the
clouds gravitational infuence, explaining the warp.
Magellanic Clouds
Galactic Warp Factor
The disk of our Milky Way galaxy, which contains most of its
stars and gas, has roughly the proportions of a vinyl LP record
or compact disk. The warp in the galaxy looks like what hap-
pens when you mistreat an LP or CD.
Like a boat on a lake, the
Magellanic Clouds leave
a wake in the dark matter
as they pass through it.
The resulting gravitational
disturbance creates the
observed warp.
Classic view of Milky Way
Some warp explained by Magellanic Clouds
Vertical scale exaggerated
1950s thought it might result from gravitational forces exerted
by the Magellanic Clouds, the most massive galaxies in orbit
around the Milky Way. Because these satellite galaxies are or-
biting out of the plane of the Milky Way, their gravity tends to
distort the disk. Detailed calculations, however, showed that
these forces are too weak to explain the efect because the Mag-
ellanic Clouds are puny in comparison to the Milky Way. For
decades the reason for the pronounced warp remained an un-
solved problem.
DARK HAMMER
the recognition that the Milky Way contains dark matter, to-
gether with new estimates of the mass of the Magellanic Clouds
(which showed them to be more massive than thought), raised
a new possibility. If the gas disk acts as a giant gong, the orbit
of the Magellanic Clouds through the dark matter halo can act
as a hammer ringing the gong, sounding its natural notes or
resonant frequencies, albeit not directly. The clouds create a
wake in the dark matter, just as a boat forms a wake as it plows
through the water. In this way, the clouds create some uneven-
ness in the distribution of dark matter. That, in turn, acts as the
hammer to cause a ringing in the low-mass, outer parts of the
disk. The upshot is that even though the Magellanic Clouds are
puny, dark matter greatly amplies their efects.
Martin D. Weinberg of the University of Massachusetts Am-
herst put forward this general idea in 1998. He and I later ap-
plied it to observations of the Milky Way and found we could
reproduce the three vibration patterns of the gas disk. If the
theory is correct, the warp is an active feature of the Milky Way
with a shape that continually changes as the Magellanic Clouds
move through their orbits. The shape of the galaxy is not xed
but ever shifting. [Editors note: A video of this process is avail-
able at www.ScienticAmerican.com/oct2011/blitz.]
The warp is not the only asymmetry in the shape of the
Milky Way. One of the most striking is the lopsided thickness of
the outer gas disk, also discovered using radio telescopes. If
one drew a line from the sun to the center of the Milky Way
and extended it outward, one would nd that the thickness of
the gas layer on one side of this line is, on average, about twice
that on the other side. This large asymmetry is dynamically un-
stable and, left to its own devices, would tend to right itself; its
persistence requires some sort of mechanism to maintain it.
For 30 years astronomers knew about the problem but swept it
under the rug. They revisited it only very recently when a
much improved new survey of the Milky Ways atomic hydro-
gen, coupled with a better understanding of the noncircular
motions of the gas, made the asymmetry impossible to ignore
any longer.
The two leading explanations both involve dark matter. Ei-
ther the Milky Way is spherical but not concentric with its dark
matter halo, or as Kanak Saha of the Max Planck Institute for
Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching and several collaborators
recently argued, the dark matter halo is itself somewhat asym-
metric. Both call into question astronomers old view that the
Milky Way and the halo formed together from the condensa-
tion of a single gargantuan cloud of material; if it had, the ordi-
nary matter and the dark matter should be centered on the
same point. Therefore, the asymmetry is further evidence the
galaxy formed from the merging of smaller units or grew by
Vibrating Like a Giant Gong
The warp represents a wave motion captured at one
moment in time. The wave has three distinct components
corresponding to three natural frequencies of the diskas
though the galaxy were a giant gong. The gravity of the
Magellanic Clouds, aided by dark matter, acts as the hammer.
Large Magellanic Cloud
Small Magellanic Cloud
Dark matter disturbance
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continued merging or accretion of intergalactic gasprocesses
that need not be symmetric. The center of the galaxy could be
ofset from the center of the dark matter because gas, stars and
dark matter behave diferently.
A way to cross-check this idea is to study the long, thin
streams of stars that stretch through the outer reaches of the
galaxy. These formations are the elongated remains of former
satellite galaxies. The most common kind of galaxy to be
found in orbit about the Milky Way system is known as a dwarf
spheroidal because of its roundish shape and small mass of
starstypically only about one ten-thousandth that of the
Milky Way. Over time its orbit decays, and the satellite becomes
subject to the tidal forces of the Milky Way. These forces are the
same as those produced by the moon on Earth, stretching out
the mass of water on Earth as our planet rotates, producing the
twice-daily ocean tides. The dwarf galaxy gets stretched out
and can be reduced to a thin ribbon [see The Ghosts of Galax-
ies Past, by Rodrigo Ibata and Brad Gibson; Scientific Ameri-
can, April 2007].
Because the stars in these streams orbit the galaxy at large
distances, where the gravitational efects of dark matter are
large, the shapes of the streams probe the shape of the halo. If
the halo is not perfectly spherical but somewhat attened, it
will exert a torque on the orbits of stars in the stream and cause
a marked deviation from a great circle. As it happens, the
streams are observed to be very thin, and their orbits around
the galaxy are nearly great circles. Computer simulations by
Ibata and his colleagues therefore suggest that the dark matter
distribution is close to spherical, although it might nonetheless
be as lopsided as suggested by Saha and his colleagues.
GALAXIES GONE MISSING
if the destruction of dwarf galaxies raises questions, so does
their formation. In our current models, galaxies begin as ag-
glomerations of dark matter, which then accrete gas and stars
to form their visible parts. The process yields not only large gal-
axies such as ours but also numerous dwarfs. The models get
the properties of these dwarfs about right but predict far more
of them than observers see. Does the fault lie in the models or
with the observations?
Part of the answer comes from new analyses of the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey, a systematic scan of about a quarter of the
sky. The survey has turned up about a dozen new, extremely
dim galaxies in orbit around the Milky Way. Their discovery is
astonishing. The sky has been so completely surveyed for so
long that it is difcult to imagine how galaxies on our cosmic
doorstep could have lain undiscovered all this time. These gal-
axies, known as ultrafaint dwarfs, in some cases contain only a
few hundred stars. They are so feeble and difuse that they do
not show up on ordinary images of the sky; it requires special
data-handling techniques to identify them.
Had the Sloan survey covered the entire sky when the ultra-
faint galaxies were discovered, it might have discovered anoth-
er 35 or so more. Still, that would not account for all the miss-
ing dwarfs. So astronomers have sought other possibilities.
Perhaps more such galaxies are out there, too far away for exist-
ing telescopes to detect. The Sloan survey can nd ultrafaint
dwarfs out to a distance of about 150,000 light-years. Erik Toll-
erud and his collaborators at the University of California, Ir-
vine, predict that as many as 500 undiscovered galaxies orbit
the Milky Way at distances up to around one million light-years
from the center. Astronomers should be able to nd them with
a new optical telescope called the Large Synoptic Survey Tele-
scope, which will have eight times the collecting area of the
Sloan telescope. Construction began on the observatory this
past March.
Another hypothesis is that the Milky Way is orbited by gal-
axies even dimmer than the faintest ultrafaint dwarfsso dim,
perhaps, that they contain no stars at all. They are almost pure
dark matter. Whether such galaxies could ever be seen de-
pends on whether they contain gas in addition to the dark
matter. Such gas might be sufciently difuse that it cools only
very slowly, too slowly to have formed stars. Radio telescopes
surveying large patches of the sky might nonetheless detect
the gas.
If these galaxies lack gas, however, they would reveal their
presence only indirectly, by their gravitational efects on ordi-
nary matter. If one of these dark
galaxies hurtled through the
disk of the Milky Way or some
other galaxy, it might leave a
splash like that of a pebble
thrown into a quiet lake ob-
serv able as perturbations to the
distribution or velocities of stars
and gas. Unfortunately, this
splash would be very small, and
astronomers would have to con-
vince themselves that it could
not be made in any other waya
daunting task. All spiral galax-
ies show disturbances through -
out their atomic hydrogen disks
akin to waves in a rough sea.
If the dark galaxy is massive enough, a method devised by
Sukanya Chakrabarti, now at Florida Atlantic University, and
several collaborators, including myself, may provide the tools
to discern its passage. We recently showed that the largest dis-
turbances in the outskirts of galaxies are often tidal imprints
left by passing galaxies, which can be diferentiated from other
perturbations. By analyzing the disturbances, we can infer both
the mass and current location of the intrusive galaxy. This tech-
nique can discern galaxies as small as one-thousandth the mass
of the primary galaxy. Applying this method to the Milky Way,
our team inferred that an undiscovered possibly dark galaxy
lurks in the plane of the Milky Way, about 300,000 light-years
from the galactic center. Plans are now under way to hunt for
this galaxy in near-infrared light using data collected by the
Spitzer Space Telescope.
TOO LITTLE LIGHT
quite apart from the challenge of nding them, ultrafaint and
dark galaxies in the Milky Ways vicinity pose a deeper problem
for astronomers in regard to the relative amounts of material
they contain. Astronomers commonly measure the amount of
matter in a galaxy in terms of its mass-to-light ratio: the mass
of material divided by the total amount of light it gives of. Typ-
ically we give the ratio in solar units; the sun, by denition, has
A small
galaxy
consisting
purely of
dark matter
may now be
hurtling
through the
Milky Way.
a mass-to-light ratio of 1. In our galaxy, the average star is some-
what less massive and much dimmer than the sun, so the over-
all mass-to-light ratio of luminous matter is closer to 3. Includ-
ing dark matter, the total mass-to-light ratio of the Milky Way
jumps to about 30.
Josh Simon, now at the Carnegie Institution of Washington,
and Marla Geha, now at Yale University, measured the veloci-
ties of the stars in eight ultrafaint dwarfs to obtain the mass
and luminosity of these galaxies. The mass-to-light ratios in
some cases exceed 1,000by far the highest of any structure in
the known universe. In the universe as a whole, the ratio of
dark to ordinary matter is almost exactly 5. Why is the mass-to-
light ratio of the Milky Way system so much higher and the ul-
trafaint galaxies even more so?
The answer could lie in the numerator or denominator of
the ratio: galaxies with mass-to-light ratios higher than the
universal average either have more mass than expected or pro-
duce less light. Astronomers think that the denominator is to
blame. A huge amount of ordinary matter does not radiate
brightly enough to see, either because it has never been able to
settle into galaxies and coalesce into stars or because it did set-
tle into galaxies but was then expelled back out into intergalac-
tic space, where it resides in an ionized form that is undetect-
able by present-day telescopes [see The Lost Galaxies, by
James E. Geach; Scientific American, May]. Lower-mass galax-
ies, having weaker gravity, lose more of their gas, so their light
output is disproportionately reduced. What a curious irony
that the problems raised by one kind of unseen matter (dark
matter) should give rise to yet another set (ordinary but unde-
tected matter).
The puzzle of dark matter, which lay dormant for so many
years, is now one of the most vibrant research areas in both
physics and astronomy. Physicists are hoping to identify and
detect the particle that composes dark matter, and astrono-
mers are looking for more clues about how the stuf behaves.
But puzzle or no, the existence of dark matter has provided the
answer to a large range of astronomical phenomena.
ALMOST SOLVED: MYSTERY#2
Lost Sheep of the Galactic Family
Theories predict our Milky Way should be orbited by hundreds of satellite galaxies. Astronomers have long worried they could fnd only
two dozen or so, but new searches using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have closed the gap by spotting previously unseen satellites. They
are composed almost entirely of dark matter. (The positions of the predicted satellites are schematic, refecting their overall distribution.)
Area surveyed by
Sloan telescope (cone)
Milky Way
MORE TO E XP L ORE
A Magellanic Origin for the Warp of the Galaxy. Martin D. Weinberg and Leo Blitz in
Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 641, No. 1, pages L33L36; April 10, 2006. http://arxiv.org/
abs/astro-ph/0601694
The Vertical Structure of the Outer Milky Way H
I
Disk. E. S. Levine, Leo Blitz and Carl
Heiles in Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 643, No. 2, pages 881896; June 1, 2006. http://arxiv.org/
abs/astro-ph/0601697
Finding Dark Galaxies from Their Tidal Imprints. Sukanya Chakrabarti, Frank Bigiel, Philip
Chang and Leo Blitz. Submitted to Astrophysical Journal. http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.0815
For animated versions of the diagrams in this article, including a 3-D tour
of the Milky Way, visit ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/blitz
Known Satellite Galaxies Predicted Satellite Galaxies
Known satellites Predicted faint satellites Predicted dark satellites
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Y E A R | OF | C H E MI S T R Y | C E L E B R AT I ON |
2011 is the International
Year of Chemistry
a well-deserved celebration of
that sciences profound power
T
he popular idea that chemistry is now conceptually understood and that all we have
to do is use it is false. Sure, most of the products we use in our daily lives were made
possible by modern chemistry. But producing useful compounds is far from all chem-
ists do. In fact, many of the most pressing problems of modernityfrom making cars
cleaner to altering the fate of living cellsare, at heart, problems in chemistry and will
require chemists to solve them. So, too, will some of the most fundamental mysteries in science.
The International Year, a United Nations designation, has the theme of chemistryour life,
our future and is being honored with a range of activities globally. Our own celebration follows.
Learn about 10 open questions that all have chemistry at their core and about the surprising role
of chemical signaling in human interactions. These stories underscore how far and deep the sci-
ence of chemistry reaches into our modern life. The Editors
Illustration by George Retseck
1
How Did Life Begin?
the moment when the rst living
beings arose from inanimate mat-
ter almost four billion years ago is still
shrouded in mystery. How did relatively
simple molecules in the primordial broth
give rise to more and more complex com-
pounds? And how did some of those com-
pounds begin to process energy and rep-
licate (two of the dening characteristics
of life)? At the molecular level, all of those
steps are, of course, chemical reactions,
which makes the question of how life be-
gan one of chemistry.
The challenge for chemists is no longer
to come up with vaguely plausible scenari-
os, of which there are plenty. For example,
researchers have speculated about miner-
als such as clay acting as catalysts for the
formation of the rst self-replicating poly-
mers (molecules that, like DNA or pro-
teins, are long chains of smaller units);
about chemical complexity fueled by the
energy of deep-sea hydrothermal vents;
and about an "RNA world," in which DNAs
cousin RNAwhich can act as an enzyme
and catalyze reactions the way proteins
dowould have been a universal mole-
cule, before DNA and proteins appeared.
No, the game is to gure out how to
test these ideas in reactions coddled in
the test tube. Researchers have shown,
for example, that certain relatively sim-
ple chemicals can spontaneously react to
form the more complex building blocks
of living systems, such as amino acids
and nucleotides, the basic units of DNA
and RNA. In 2009 a team led by John
Sutherland, now at the MRC Laboratory
of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Eng-
land, was able to demonstrate the forma-
tion of nucleotides from molecules likely
Philip Ball has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Bristol in
England and was an editor at Nature for more than 20 years. He
is the award-winning author of 15 books, including The Music
Instinct: How Music Works, and Why We Cant Do without It.
CHEMI STRY
Many of the most profound scientifc questionsand
some of humanitys most urgent problemspertain
to the science of atoms and molecules
By Philip Ball
to have existed in the primordial broth.
Other researchers have focused on the
ability of some RNA strands to act as en-
zymes, providing evidence in support of
the RNA world hypothesis. Through such
steps, scientists may progressively bridge
the gap from inanimate matter to self-
replicating, self-sustaining systems.
Now that scientists have a better view
of strange and potentially fertile envi-
ronments in our solar systemthe occa-
sional ows of water on Mars, the petro-
chemical seas of Saturns moon Titan,
and the cold, salty oceans that seem to
lurk under the ice of Jupiters moons Eu-
ropa and Ganymedethe origin of ter-
restrial life seems only a part of grander
questions: Under what circumstances can
life arise? And how widely can its chemi-
cal basis vary? That issue is made richer
still by the discovery, over the past 16
years, of more than 500 extrasolar plan-
ets orbiting other starsworlds of bewil-
dering variety.
These discoveries have pushed chem-
ists to broaden their imagination about
the possible chemistries of life. For in-
stance, NASA has long pursued the view
that liquid water is a prerequisite, but
now scientists are not so sure. How about
liquid ammonia, formamide, an oily sol-
vent like liquid methane or supercritical
hydrogen on Jupiter? And why should
life restrict itself to DNA, RNA and pro-
teins? After all, several articial chemical
systems have now been made that exhib-
it a kind of replication from the compo-
nent parts without relying on nucleic ac-
ids. All you need, it seems, is a molecular
system that can serve as a template for
making a copy and then detach itself.
Looking at life on Earth, says chemist
Steven Benner of the Foundation for Ap-
plied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville,
Fla., we have no way to decide whether
the similarities [such as the use of DNA
and proteins] reect common ancestry or
the needs of life universally. But if we re-
treat into saying that we have to stick with
what we know, he says, we have no fun.
2
How Do
Molecules Form?
molecular structures may be a
mainstay of high school science classes,
but the familiar picture of balls and
sticks representing atoms and the bonds
among them is largely a conventional c-
tion. The trouble is that scientists dis-
agree on what a more accurate represen-
tation of molecules should look like.
In the 1920s physicists Walter Heitler
and Fritz London showed how to de-
scribe a chemical bond using the equa-
tions of then nascent quantum theory,
and the great American chemist Linus
Pauling proposed that bonds form when
the electron orbitals of diferent atoms
overlap in space. A competing theory by
Robert Mulliken and Friedrich Hund
suggested that bonds are the result of
atomic orbitals merging into molecular
orbitals that extend over more than one
atom. Theoretical chemistry seemed about
to become a branch of physics.
Nearly 100 years later the molecular-
orbital picture has become the most
common one, but there is still no consen-
sus among chemists that it is always the
best way to look at molecules. The reason
is that this model of molecules and all
others are based on simplifying assump-
tions and are thus approximate, partial
descriptions. In reality, a molecule is a
bunch of atomic nuclei in a cloud of elec-
trons, with opposing electrostatic forces
ghting a constant tug-of-war with one
another, and all components constantly
moving and reshufing. Existing models
of the molecule usually try to crystallize
such a dynamic entity into a static one
and may capture some of its salient prop-
erties but neglect others.
Quantum theory is unable to supply a
unique denition of chemical bonds that
accords with the intuition of chemists
whose daily business is to make and
break them. There are now many ways of
describing molecules as atoms joined by
bonds. According to quantum chemist
Dominik Marx of Ruhr University Bo-
chum in Germany, pretty much all such
descriptions are useful in some cases
but fail in others.
Computer simulations can now calcu-
late the structures and properties of mol-
ecules from quantum rst principles
with great accuracyas long as the num-
ber of electrons is relatively small. Com-
putational chemistry can be pushed to
the level of utmost realism and complex-
ity, Marx says. As a result, computer cal-
culations can increasingly be regarded as
a kind of virtual experiment that pre-
dicts the course of a reaction. Once the
reaction to be simulated involves more
than a few dozen electrons, however, the
Illustrations by Brown Bird Design
Molecular bonds are foun-
dational to all of chemistry,
but surprisingly, their
nature is not yet fully
understood. Computer
simulations, however, have
be come powerful enough to
give reasonably accurate
predictions. For example,
researchers have discov-
eredand verifed experi-
mentallythat two bucky-
balls can behave a little like
giant atoms, forming bonds
by sharing electrons the
way that two hydrogen
atoms do.
Electron cloud
calculations quickly begin to overwhelm
even the most powerful supercomputer,
so the challenge will be to see whether
the simulations can scale upwhether,
for example, complicated biomolecular
processes in the cell or sophisticated ma-
terials can be modeled this way.
3
How Does the
Environment Infuence
Our Genes?
the old idea of biology was that who you
are is a matter of which genes you have. It
is now clear that an equally important is-
sue is which genes you use. Like all of bi-
ology, this issue has chemistry at its core.
The cells of the early embryo can de-
velop into any tissue type. But as the em-
bryo grows, these so-called pluripotent
stem cells diferentiate, acquiring specic
roles (such as blood, muscle or nerve
cells) that remain xed in their progeny.
The formation of the human body is a
matter of chemically modifying the stem
cells chromosomes in ways that alter the
arrays of genes that are turned on and of.
One of the revolutionary discoveries
in research on cloning and stem cells,
however, is that this modication is revers-
ible and can be inuenced by the bodys
experiences. Cells do not permanently dis-
able genes during diferentiation, retain-
ing only those they need in a ready to
work state. Rather the genes that get
switched of retain a latent ability to
workto give rise to the proteins they en-
codeand can be reactivated, for instance,
by exposure to certain chemicals taken
in from the environment.
What is particularly exciting and chal-
lenging for chemists is that the control of
gene activity seems to involve chemical
events happening at size scales greater
than those of atoms and moleculesat
the so-called mesoscalewith large mo-
lecular groups and assemblies interact-
ing. Chromatin, the mixture of DNA and
proteins that makes up chromosomes,
has a hierarchical structure. The double
helix is wound around cylindrical parti-
cles made from proteins called histones,
and this string of beads is then bundled
up into higher-order structures that are
poorly understood [see illustration on op-
posite page]. Cells exercise great control
over this packinghow and where a gene
is packed into chromatin may determine
whether it is active or not.
Cells have specialized enzymes for re-
shaping chromatin structure, and these
enzymes have a central role in cell difer-
entiation. Chromatin in embryonic stem
cells seems to have a much looser, open
structure: as some genes fall inactive, the
chromatin becomes increasingly lumpy
and organized. The chromatin seems to
x and maintain or stabilize the cells
state, says pathologist Bradley Bernstein
of Massachusetts General Hospital.
What is more, such chromatin sculpt-
ing is accompanied by chemical modi-
cation of both DNA and histones. Small
molecules attached to them act as labels
that tell the cellular machinery to silence
genes or, conversely, free them for action.
This labeling is called epigenetic be-
cause it does not alter the information
carried by the genes themselves.
The question of the extent to which
mature cells can be returned to pluripo-
tencywhether they are as good as true
stem cells, which is a vital issue for their
use in regenerative medicineseems to
hinge largely on how far the epigenetic
marking can be reset.
It is now clear that beyond the genet-
ic code that spells out many of the cells
key instructions, cells speak in an entire-
ly separate chemical language of genet-
icsthat of epigenetics. People can have
a genetic predisposition to many diseas-
es, including cancer, but whether or not
the disease manifests itself will often de-
pend on environmental factors operat-
ing through these epigenetic pathways,
says geneticist Bryan Turner of the Uni-
versity of Birmingham in England.
4
How Does the
Brain Think and
Form Memories?
the brain is a chemical computer. Inter-
actions between the neurons that form
its circuitry are mediated by molecules:
specically, neurotransmitters that pass
across the synapses, the contact points
where one neural cell wires up to anoth-
er. This chemistry of the mind is perhaps
at its most impressive in the operation of
memory, in which abstract principles and
conceptsa telephone number, say, or an
emotional associationare imprinted in
states of the neural network by sustained
chemical signals. How does chemistry
create a memory that is both persistent
and dynamic, as well as able to recall, re-
vise and forget?
We now know parts of the answer. A
cascade of biochemical processes, leading
to a change in the amounts of neurotrans-
mitter molecules in the synapse, triggers
learning for habitual reexes. But even
this simple aspect of learning has short-
and long-term stages. Meanwhile more
complex so-called declarative memory (of
people, places, and so on) has a diferent
mechanism and location in the brain, in-
volving the activation of a protein called
the NMDA receptor on certain neurons.
Blocking this receptor with drugs pre-
vents the retention of many types of de-
clarative memory.
Our everyday declarative memories are
often encoded through a process called
long-term potentiation, which involves
NMDA receptors and is accompanied by
an enlargement of the neuronal region
that forms a synapse. As the synapse
grows, so does the strength of its con-
nection with neighborsthe voltage in-
duced at the synaptic junction by arriv-
ing nerve impulses. The biochemistry of
this process has been claried in the past
several years. It involves the formation of
laments within the neuron made from
the protein actinpart of the basic scaf-
folding of the cell and the material that
determines its size and shape. But that
process can be undone during a short pe-
riod before the change is consolidated if
biochemical agents prevent the newly
formed laments from stabilizing.
Once encoded, long-term memory for
both simple and complex learning is ac-
tively maintained by switching on genes
that give rise to particular proteins. It
now appears that this process can in-
volve a type of molecule called a prion.
Prions are proteins that can switch be-
tween two diferent conformations. One
of the conformations is soluble, whereas
the other is insoluble and acts as a cata-
lyst to switch other molecules like it to
the insoluble state, leading these mole-
cules to aggregate. Prions were rst dis-
covered for their role in neurodegenera-
tive conditions such as mad cow disease,
but prion mechanisms have now been
found to have benecial functions, too:
the formation of a prion aggregate marks
a particular synapse to retain a memory.
There are still big gaps in the story of
how memory works, many of which await
lling with the chemical details. How, for
example, is memory recalled once it has
been stored? This is a deep problem
whose analysis is just beginning, says
neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Eric
Kandel of Columbia University.
Coming to grips with the chemistry of
memory ofers the enticing and contro-
versial prospect of pharmacological en-
hancement. Some memory-boosting sub-
stances are already known, including sex
hormones and synthetic chemicals that
act on receptors for nicotine, glutamate,
serotonin and other neurotransmitters. In
fact, according to neurobiologist Gary
Lynch of the University of California, Ir-
vine, the complex sequence of steps lead-
ing to long-term learning and memory
means that there are many potential tar-
gets for such memory drugs.
5
How Many
Elements Exist?
the periodic tables that adorn the
walls of classrooms have to be constantly
revised, because the number of elements
keeps growing. Using particle accelera-
tors to crash atomic nuclei together, sci-
entists can create new superheavy ele-
ments, which have more protons and
neutrons in their nuclei than do the 92 or
so elements found in nature. These en-
gorged nuclei are not very stablethey
decay radioactively, often within a tiny
fraction of a second. But while they exist,
the new synthetic elements such as sea-
borgium (element 106) and hassium (ele-
ment 108) are like any other insofar as
they have well-dened chemical proper-
ties. In dazzling experiments, research-
ers have investigated some of those prop-
erties in a handful of elusive seaborgium
and hassium atoms during the brief in-
stants before they fell apart.
Such studies probe not just the physi-
cal but also the conceptual limits of the
periodic table: Do superheavy elements
continue to display the trends and regu-
larities in chemical behavior that make
the table periodic in the rst place? The
answer is that some do, and some do not.
In particular, such massive nuclei hold on
to the atoms innermost electrons so
tightly that the electrons move at close to
the speed of light. Then the efects of spe-
cial relativity increase the electrons mass
and may play havoc with the quantum en-
ergy states on which their chemistry
and thus the tables periodicitydepends.
Because nuclei are thought to be sta-
bilized by particular magic numbers of
protons and neutrons, some researchers
hope to nd what they call the island of
stability, a region a little beyond the cur-
rent capabilities of element synthesis in
which superheavies live longer. Yet is
there any fundamental limit to their
size? A simple calculation suggests that
relativity prohibits electrons from being
bound to nuclei of more than 137 pro-
tons. More sophisticated calculations
defy that limit. The periodic system will
not end at 137; in fact, it will never end,
insists nuclear physicist Walter Greiner
of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Univer-
sity Frankfurt in Germany. The experi-
mental test of that claim remains a long
way of.
6
Can Computers
Be Made Out
of Carbon?
computer chips made out of graphenea
web of carbon atomscould potentially
be faster and more powerful than sili-
con-based ones. The discovery of gra-
phene garnered the 2010 Nobel Prize in
Physics, but the success of this and other
forms of carbon nanotechnology might
ultimately depend on chemists ability to
create structures with atomic precision.
The discovery of buckyballshollow,
cagelike molecules made entirely of car-
bon atomsin 1985 was the start of
something literally much bigger. Six
years later tubes of carbon atoms ar-
ranged in a chicken wireshaped, hexag-
onal pattern like that in the carbon
sheets of graphite made their debut. Be-
ing hollow, extremely strong and stif,
and electrically conducting, these carbon
nanotubes promised applications rang-
ing from high-strength carbon compos-
ites to tiny wires and electronic devices,
miniature molecular capsules, and wa-
ter-ltration membranes.
For all their promise, carbon nano-
tubes have not resulted in a lot of com-
mercial applications. For instance, re-
searchers have not been able to solve the
problem of how to connect tubes into
Beyond genes, another
set of instructions infu-
ences which genes are ac-
tive in a cell. This epige-
netic code conveys infor -
mation through chemi-
cals attached to DNA or
to the histone proteins
that DNA winds around
in chromosomes. The
chemical markers help
to determine whether a
gene is hidden away in a
highly condensed part of
the chromosomes or is ac-
cessible for transcription.
DNA
Epigenetic marker
Epigenetic marker
Complex of
histone proteins
Chromosome
complicated electronic circuits. More re-
cently, graphite has moved to center
stage because of the discovery that it can
be separated into individual chicken
wirelike sheets, called graphene, that
could supply the fabric for ultraminiatur-
ized, cheap and robust electronic circuit-
ry. The hope is that the computer indus-
try can use narrow ribbons and networks
of graphene, made to measure with atom-
ic precision, to build chips with better
performance than silicon-based ones.
Graphene can be patterned so that
the interconnect and placement prob-
lems of carbon nanotubes are overcome,
says carbon specialist Walt de Heer of the
Georgia Institute of Technology. Methods
such as etching, however, are too crude
for patterning graphene circuits down to
the single atom, de Heer points out, and
as a result, he fears that graphene tech-
nology currently owes more to hype than
hard science. Using the techniques of or-
ganic chemistry to build up graphene cir-
cuits from the bottom uplinking to-
gether polyaromatic molecules contain-
ing several hexagonal carbon rings, like
little fragments of a graphene sheet
might be the key to such precise atomic-
scale engineering and thus to unlocking
the future of graphene electronics.
7
How Do We Tap
More Solar Energy?
with every sunrise comes a re-
minder that we currently tap only a piti-
ful fraction of the vast clean-energy re-
source that is the sun. The main problem
is cost: the expense of conventional pho-
tovoltaic panels made of silicon still re-
stricts their use. Yet life on Earth, almost
all of which is ultimately solar-powered
by photosynthesis, shows that solar cells
do not have to be terribly efcient if, like
leaves, they can be made abundantly and
cheaply enough.
One of the holy grails of solar-energy
research is using sunlight to produce fu-
els, says Devens Gust of Arizona State
University. The easiest way to make fuel
from solar energy is to split water to pro-
duce hydrogen and oxygen gas. Nathan
S. Lewis and his collaborators at Caltech
are developing an articial leaf that
would do just that [see illustration on op-
posite page] using silicon nanowires.
Earlier this year Daniel Nocera of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and his co-workers unveiled a silicon-
based membrane in which a cobalt-
based photocatalyst does the water split-
ting. Nocera estimates that a gallon of
water would provide enough fuel to pow-
er a home in developing countries for a
day. Our goal is to make each home its
own power station, he says.
Splitting water with catalysts is still
tough. Cobalt catalysts such as the one
that Nocera uses and newly discovered
catalysts based on other common metals
are promising, Gust says, but no one has
yet found an ideal inexpensive catalyst.
We dont know how the natural photo-
synthetic catalyst, which is based on four
manganese atoms and a calcium atom,
works, Gust adds.
Gust and his colleagues have been
looking into making molecular assem-
blies for articial photosynthesis that
more closely mimic their biological in-
spiration, and his team has managed to
synthesize some of the elements that
could go into such an assembly. Still, a lot
more work is needed on this front. Or-
ganic molecules such as the ones nature
uses tend to break down quickly. Where-
as plants continually produce new pro-
teins to replace broken ones, articial
leaves do not (yet) have the full chemical-
synthesis machinery of a living cell at
their disposal.
8
What Is the Best Way
to Make Biofuels?
instead of making fuels by cap-
turing the rays of the sun, how about we
let plants store the suns energy for us
and then turn plant matter into fuels?
Biofuels such as ethanol made from corn
and biodiesel made from seeds have al-
ready found a place in the energy mar-
kets, but they threaten to displace food
crops, particularly in developing coun-
tries where selling biofuels abroad can
be more lucrative than feeding people at
home. The numbers are daunting: meet-
ing current oil demand would mean req-
uisitioning huge areas of arable land.
Turning food into energy, then, may
not be the best approach. One answer
could be to exploit other, less vital forms of
biomass. The U.S. produces enough agri-
cultural and forest residue to supply near-
ly a third of the annual consumption of
gasoline and diesel for transportation.
Converting this low-grade biomass
into fuel requires breaking down hardy
molecules such as lignin and cellulose,
the main building blocks of plants.
Chemists already know how to do that,
but the existing methods tend to be too
expensive, inefcient or difcult to scale
up for the enormous quantities of fuel
that the economy needs.
One of the challenges of breaking down
lignincracking open the carbon-oxygen
bonds that link aromatic, or benzene-
type, rings of carbon atomswas recently
met by John Hartwig and Alexey Sergeev,
both at the University of Illinois. They
found a nickel-based catalyst able to do it.
Hartwig points out that if biomass is to
supply nonfossil-fuel chemical feedstocks
as well as fuels, chemists will also need to
extract aromatic compounds (those hav-
ing a backbone of aromatic rings) from it.
Lignin is the only major potential source
of such aromatics in biomass.
To be practical, such conversion of bio-
mass will, moreover, need to work with
mostly solid biomass and convert it into
liquid fuels for easy transportation along
pipelines. Liquefaction would need to hap-
pen on-site, where the plant is harvested.
One of the difculties for catalytic con-
version is the extreme impurity of the
raw materialclassical chemical synthe-
sis does not usually deal with messy ma-
terials such as wood. Theres no consen-
sus on how all this will be done in the
end, Hartwig says. What is certain is
that an awful lot of any solution lies with
the chemistry, especially with nding the
right catalysts. Almost every industrial
reaction on a large scale has a catalyst as-
sociated with it, Hartwig points out.
9
Can We Devise New Ways
to Create Drugs?
the core business of chemistry is
a practical, creative one: making mole-
cules, a key to creating everything from
new materials to new antibiotics that can
outstrip the rise of resistant bacteria.
In the 1990s one big hope was combi-
natorial chemistry, in which thousands
of new molecules are made by a random
assembly of building blocks and then
screened to identify those that do a job
well. Once hailed as the future of medici-
nal chemistry, combi-chem fell from fa-
vor because it produced little of any use.
But combinatorial chemistry could
enjoy a brighter second phase. It seems
likely to work only if you can make a
wide enough range of molecules and nd
good ways of picking out the minuscule
amounts of successful ones. Biotechnolo-
gy might help herefor example, each
molecule could be linked to a DNA-based
bar code that both identies it and aids
its extraction. Or researchers can progres-
sively rene the library of candidate mole-
cules by using a kind of Darwinian evolu-
tion in the test tube. They can encode po-
tential protein-based drug molecules in
DNA and then use error-prone replication
to generate new variants of the successful
ones, thereby nding improvements with
each round of replication and selection.
Other new techniques draw on natures
mastery at uniting molecular fragments
in prescribed arrangements. Proteins, for
example, have a precise sequence of ami-
no acids because that sequence is spelled
out by the genes that encode the proteins.
Using this model, future chemists might
program molecules to assemble autono-
mously. The approach has the advantage
of being green in that it reduces the un-
wanted by-products typical of traditional
chemical manufacturing and the associ-
ated waste of energy and materials.
David Liu of Harvard University and
his co-workers are pursuing this approach.
They tagged the building blocks with
short DNA strands that program the link-
ers structure. They also created a mole-
cule that walks along that DNA, reading
its codes and sequentially attaching
small molecules to the building block to
make the linkera process analogous to
protein synthesis in cells. Lius method
could be a handy way to tailor new drugs.
Many molecular life scientists believe
that macromolecules will play an in-
creasingly central, if not dominant, role
in the future of therapeutics, Liu says.
10
Can We
Continuously
Monitor Our
Own Chemistry?
increasingly, chemists do not want to
just make molecules but also to commu-
nicate with them: to make chemistry an
information technology that will inter-
face with anything from living cells to
conventional computers and ber-optic
telecommunications.
In part, it is an old idea: biosensors in
which chemical reactions are used to re-
port on concentrations of glucose in the
blood date back to the 1960s, although
only recently has their use for monitor-
ing diabetes been cheap, portable and
widespread. Chemical sensing could have
countless applicationsto detect con-
taminants in food and water at very low
concentrations, for instance, or to moni-
tor pollutants and trace gases present in
the atmosphere. Faster, cheaper, more
sensitive and more ubiquitous chemical
sensing would yield progress in all of
those areas.
It is in biomedicine, though, that new
kinds of chemical sensors would have the
most dramatic potential. For instance,
some of the products of cancer genes cir-
culate in the bloodstream long before
the condition becomes apparent to regu-
lar clinical tests. Detecting these chemi-
cals early might make prognoses more
timely and accurate. Rapid genomic pro-
ling would enable drug regimens to be
tailored to individual patients, thereby
reducing risks of side efects and allow-
ing some medicines to be used that to-
day are hampered by their dangers to a
genetic minority.
Some chemists foresee continuous,
unobtrusive monitoring of all manner of
biochemical markers of health and dis-
ease, perhaps providing real-time infor-
mation to surgeons during operations or
to automated systems for delivering re-
medial drug treatments. This futuristic
vision depends on developing chemical
methods for selectively sensing particu-
lar substances and signaling about them
even when the targets occur in only very
low concentrations.
MORE TO E XP L ORE
Beyond the Molecular Frontier: Challenges for Chemis-
try and Chemical Engineering. National Research Coun-
cil. National Academies Press, 2003.
Beyond the Bond. Philip Ball in Nature, Vol. 469, pages
2628; January 6, 2011.
Lets Get Practical. George M. Whitesides and John
Deutch in Nature, Vol. 469, pages 2122; January 6, 2011.
More International Year of Chemistry coverage
at ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/chemistry
Hydrogen
Oxygen
Hydrogen ion
Oxygen gas
Hydrogen gas
Electron
Mimicking plants,
chemists are develop-
ing new catalysts and
materials to capture
solar energy and
store it as hydrogen
gas. Here nano wires
exposed to sunlight
split water molecules
into hydrogen ions,
oxygen atoms and
electrons. The ions
and the electrons
travel down to the
other side of a mem-
brane. Then the
nanowires catalyze
the formation of hy-
drogen gas from the
electrons and ions.
T
he moment that started martha mcclintocks scientific career was a whim of
youth. Even, she recalls, a ridiculous moment. It is summer, 1968, and she is a
Wellesley College student attending a workshop at the Jackson Laboratory in
Maine. A lunch-table gathering of established researchers is talking about how
mice appear to synchronize their ovary cycles. And 20-year-old McClintock, sit-
ting nearby, pipes up with something like, Well, dont you know? Women do that, too.
I dont remember the exact words,
she says now, sitting relaxed and half-
amused in her well-equipped laboratory at
the University of Chicago. But everyone
turned and stared. It is easy to imagine
her in that distant encounterthe same
direct gaze, the same friendly face and y-
away hair. Still, the lunch-table group is
not charmed; it informs her that she does
not know what she is talking about.
Undaunted, McClintock raises the
question with some graduate students
who are also attending the workshop.
They bet that she will not be able to nd
data to support her assertion. She re-
turns to Wellesley and talks this matter
over with her undergraduate adviser, Pa-
tricia Sampson. And Sampson throws it
back at her: take the bet, do the research,
prove yourself right or wrong.
Three years later, now a graduate stu-
dent, McClintock publishes a two-page pa-
per entitled Menstrual Synchrony and
Suppression in the journal Nature. (Scien-
tic American is part of Nature Publishing
Group.) It details a rather fascinating efect
seen in some 135 residents of Wellesley
dormitories during an academic year. In
that span, menstrual cycles apparently be-
gan to shift, especially among women who
spent a lot of time together. Menstruation
became more synchronized, with more
overlap of when it started and nished.
Today the concept of human menstrual
synchronization is generally known as the
McClintock efect. But the idea that has
continued to shape both her research and
her reputation, the one that drives a still
ourishing eld of research, is that this
mysterious synchrony, this reproductive
networking, is caused by chemical messag-
ing between womenthe notion that hu-
mans, like so many other creatures, reach
out to one another with chemical signals.
It has been harder than expected to
single out specic signaling chemicals
and trace their efects on our bodies and
minds as precisely as entomologists have
done for countless insect pheromones.
But in the four decades since McClintocks
discovery, scientists have charted the in-
uence of chemical signaling across a
spectrum of human behaviors. Not only
do we synchronize our reproductive cy-
cles, we can also recognize our kin, re-
spond to others stress and react to their
moodssuch as fear or sadness or not to-
night, honeyall by detecting chemicals
they quietly secrete. As researchers learn
more about this web of human interac-
tion, they are helping to bridge an arbi-
trary dividing line between humans and
the natural world.
ANIMAL KINGDOM CHEMISTRY
the very intriguing idea of animals shar-
ing invisible chemical cues has a long
and illustrious history, at least as far as
other species are concerned. The ancient
Greeks talked enthusiastically of the pos-
sibility that female dogs in heat might
produce some mysterious secretion capa-
ble of driving male dogs into a panting
frenzy. Charles Darwin, pointing to sever-
al famously smelly species, proposed that
chemical signals were part of the sexual
selection process. Throughout the late 19th
I N BRI EF
Evidence suggests that humans unconsciously ex-
change chemical messages that help to synchronize
womens menstrual cycles, signify the presence of
kin, and convey moods such as stress or fear.
The signals may be akin to the pheromones found
in hundreds of animal species, including mammals.
Researchers are isolating the compounds secreted
by humans and attempting to decode their physio-
logical and psychological efects.
BI OCHEMI STRY
Although we are usually unaware of it,
we communicate through chemical signals
just as much as birds and bees do
By Deborah Blum
Deborah Blum won a Pulitzer Prize in
1992 and is author most recently of The
Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth
of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.
She frst learned about pheromones by
watching her father, an entomologist,
extract them from ants.
October 2011, ScienticAmerican.com 55 Illustration by Noma Bar
century the great French naturalist Jean-
Henri Fabre puzzled over evidence that the
siren call of chemistry could stir winged
insects into determined ight.
Still, it was not until 1959 that the sci-
ence really began to gain traction. In that
year Adolf Butenandt, a Nobel laureate in
chemistry, isolated and analyzed a com-
pound that female silk moths release to
attract males. Butenandt dissected the in-
sects and painstakingly extracted the
chemical from their microscopic secre-
tion glands. He collected enough to crys-
tallize it so that he could discern its mo-
lecular structure by x-ray crystallography.
He called the compound bombykol, af-
ter the Latin name for the silk moth.
It was the rst known pheromone, al-
though the term did not yet exist. Shortly
after, two of Butenandts col leagues, Ger-
man biochemist Peter Karl son and Swiss
entomologist Martin Lscher, coined that
name out of two Greek words: pherein
(to transport) and horman (to stimulate).
They dened a pheromone as a type of
small molecule that carries chemical mes-
sages between individuals of the same spe-
cies. The compounds must be active in
very tiny amounts, potent below a con-
scious scent threshold. When released by
one in div id u al in a species and received by
another, the two researchers wrote, they
produce a measurable efect, a specic re-
action, for instance, a denite behavior or
a de vel op mental process.
Since then, an astonishing array of
pher o monesthe best known and estab-
lished class of chemical-signaling mole-
cules exchanged by animalshave been
found in insects, not just in silk moths but
in bark beetles, cabbage looper moths, ter-
mites, leaf-cutter ants, aphids and honey-
bees. According to a 2003 report from the
National Academy of Sciences, entomolo-
gists have now broken the code for the
pheromone communication of more than
1,600 insects. And pheromones serve
many more purposes than simply attract-
ing mates: they elicit alarm, identify kin,
alter mood, tweak relationships.
By the late 1980s pheromones had also
been found to inuence a wide spectrum
of noninsect species, including lobsters,
sh, algae, yeast, ciliates, bacteria, and
more. As this new science of chemical com-
munication grewacquiring the more for-
mal name of semiochemistry, from the
Greek semion (meaning signal)scien-
tists extended the search to mammals. Al-
most immediately they ran into resistance
from their colleagues.
In the 1970s and 1980s people would
jump at you if you said mammalian
pheromone, recalls Milos Novotny, di-
rector of the Institute for Pheromone Re-
search at Indiana University. Theyd say,
Theres no such thing: mammals are not
like insects. Theyre too evolved and
complex to be spontaneously responding
to something like a pheromone.
But by the mid-1980s Novotny had not
only identied a pheromone in mice that
regulated intermale aggression, he had
synthesized it. Such compounds were also
veried in rats, hamsters, rabbits and
squirrels. And as the list lengthened, it also
became apparent that mammals pher o-
mones were very likeif not identicalto
those found in insects. As an example,
most researchers cite the stunning work of
the late Oregon Health and Science Uni-
versity biochemist L.E.L. Bets Rasmus-
sen, who showed in 1996 that a sex phero-
mone secreted by female Asian elephants
is chemically identical to one used by
more than 100 species of moths for similar
purposes of attraction.
McClintock had proposed a similar
idea in 1971 in her pioneering paper on
menstrual synchrony. Perhaps, she wrote
then, at least one female pheromone af-
fects the timing of other female menstru-
al cycles.
ODOROUS LANDSCAPE
mcclintock, now 63, is sitting in a small,
sunny room occupied by ling cabinets,
computers, racks of stoppered vials and
tubes, and scent sticksall contributing
to a faint, slightly sweet chemical aro-
maand a dark-haired graduate student
named David Kern. (All the other gradu-
ate students would climb over my dead
body to get in this room, he says.) Mc-
Clintocks lab is at the University of Chi-
cagos Institute for Mind and Biology, of
which she is a founding director. She
wears a tweedy jacket over a bright, pat-
terned shirt, and she is thinking over a
question: How far has the science of se-
miochemistry traveled since that day,
some four decades ago? The case for hu-
man chemical communication has been
made, she says, and our goal is to tackle
identifying the chemical compounds.
And then we can rene our understand-
ing of what fundamental roles they play.
That task is anything but easy. Human
body odor is estimated to derive from
about 120 compounds. Most of these com-
pounds occur in the water-rich solution
produced by the sweat glands or are re-
leased from apocrine, or scent, glands in
the oily shafts of hair follicles. The apo-
crine glands concentrate the most under
the arms, around the nipples and in the
genital regions.
It is a complicated landscape, made
even more complicated by our use of what
researchers refer to as exogenous com-
pounds, such as soap, deodorants and per-
fumes, as Johan Lundstrm of the Monell
Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia
points out. And yet Lundstrm marvels at
how adeptly our brains sort through this
chemical tangle. Neuroimaging work done
at his lab nds a 20 percent faster re-
sponse to known human chemical signals
compared with chemically similar mole-
cules found elsewhere in the environment.
The brain always knows when it smells a
body odor, Lundstrm says.
This capacity is already present in in-
fancy. Numerous studies in humans have
shown that, as is true in animals, mothers
and infants are acutely attuned to each
others scent. This scent knowledge is so
precise that babies even prefer the parts
of clothes worn by their mother (and their
mother only) touched by sweat com-
pounds. The recognition, interestingly, is
more acute in breast-fed infants than in
those raised on baby formula.
Were still just mapping the inuen-
tial compounds from those that are not,
Lundstrm says. I dont think were deal-
ing with one single compound but rather
a range of diferent ones that may be im-
portant at diferent times. Pheromones
operate under the radar, he says, and they
inuencebut do not necessarily com-
pletely controlnumerous behaviors. If
The steroid androstadienone is
a promising candidate for a human
pheromone. It has been shown to
infuence cognition, stress hormones
and emotional responses.
Illustration by Brown Bird Design
we compare these with social cues, they
may be less important than the obvious
ways we communicate, Lundstrm says.
But, he adds, the ability probably aided
survival as we evolved, keeping us more
closely attuned to one another.
Psychologist Denise Chen of Rice Uni-
versity also argues that this kind of chem-
ical alertness would have conferred an
evolutionary advantage. In her research,
she collects odor samples from individu-
als while they watch horror movies. Gauze
pads are kept in viewers armpits to col-
lect sweat released during moments of
fear. Later, the pads are placed under vol-
unteers nostrils. For comparison, Chen
has also collected sweat from people
watching comedies or neutral lms such
as documentaries.
One of her early experiments found
that participants could tell whether the
sweat donor was fearful or happy at the
time the sweat was produced. The sub-
jects guesses succeeded more often than
they would by pure chance, especially for
fear-induced sweat. Chen followed up with
research showing that exposure to fear
sweat seemed to intensify the alarm re-
sponseinclining participants to see fear
in the faces of others. These exposures even
enhanced cognitive performance: on word-
association tests that included terms sug-
gestive of danger, women smelling fear
sweat outperformed those exposed to neu-
tral sweat. If you smell fear, youre faster
at detecting fearful words, Chen explains.
In a study currently in press, she and
Wen Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sci-
ences compared the response of long-time
couples with people in shorter-term rela-
tionships. Those results indicatedper-
haps not surprisinglythat the longer cou-
ples are together, the better the partners
are at interpreting the fear or happiness
information apparently encoded in sweat.
What I hope that people will see in this is
that understanding olfaction is important
for us to understand ourselves, Chen says.
And evidence continues to accumulate
that unconscious perception of scents in-
uences a range of human behaviors, from
cognitive to sexual. In January, for in-
stance, a team of scientists at Israels Weiz-
mann Institute of Science in Rehovot, led
by psychologist Noam Sobel, reported that
men who snifed drops of womens emo-
tional tears felt suddenly less sexually in-
terested in comparison to those who
smelled a saline solution. Sobel found a
direct physical response to this apparent
chemosignal: a small but measurable drop
in the mens testosterone levels. The signal
may have evolved to signify lower fertility,
such as during menstruation. More gener-
ally, the discovery may help explain the
uniquely human behavior of crying.
HARD SCIENCE
a major goal now is to identify the key
chemicals that convey signals surrepti-
tiously and to learn much more about
how the body detects and reacts to those
signals. George Preti, a Monell chemist,
has mapped out a research project that
would include tracking these messengers
by analyzing sweat and apocrine secre-
tions and studies of hormone levels in
those who snif the chemicals. Weve yet
to identify the precise signals that carry
the information, Lundstrm agrees.
And if we want a solid standing for this
work, thats whats needed next.
McClintock also sees this as a priority.
In recent years she has focused on build-
ing a detailed portrait of one of the more
potent known chemosignals, a steroid
compound called androstadienone. She
believes that this particular small mole-
cule is potent enough to meet the require-
ments of being called a human phero-
mone: it is a small molecule that acts as a
same-species chemical signal and inu-
ences physiology and behavior. Over the
years labs, including McClintocks and
Lundstrms, have found that this partic-
ular compound shows measurable efects
on cognition and that it can alter levels of
stress hormones such as cortisol and
evoke changes in emotional response.
In one recent study McClintock and
her colleague Suma Jacob of the Universi-
ty of Illinois at Chicago explored andro-
stadienones propensity to afect mood.
They mixed a trace amount into the sol-
vent propylene glycol and then masked
any possible overt odor with oil of clove.
They then exposed one study group to a
solvent containing the compound and an-
other to a plain solvent. Subjects were
asked to smell gauze pads containing one
version; they were told only that they
were participating in olfaction research.
All the subjects went on to ll out a long
and tedious questionnaire.
Overall, the subjects exposed to andro-
stadienone remained far more cheerful
throughout the 15- to 20-minute test. A
follow-up study repeated the same process
but included brain imaging as well. The
neuroimages showed that brain regions
associated with attention, emotion and vi-
sual processing were more active in those
exposed to the chemosignaling compound.
McClintock sees this as a classic phero-
monal efect, the kind that she speculated
about decades ago.
Even so, she and other researchers
continue to carefully talk of putative
pheromones. Humans are complicated,
and any causal links between specic
chemicals and changes in behavior are
hard to demonstrate conclusively. Indeed,
no one can say for certain yet what chemi-
cal or chemicals account for McClintocks
original discovery, the synchronization of
womens menstrual cycles. Even the phe-
nomenon itself has proved somewhat elu-
sive: it has been conrmed in numerous
follow-up studies but contradicted by oth-
ers, and it is still not accepted unanimous-
ly by the scientic community.
Much of the discussion centers on
what exactly is being synchronizedper-
haps timing of ovulation, perhaps length
of cycle. A review of human data from the
1990s by the father-and-son team of Leon-
ard and Aron Weller of Bar-Ilan Universi-
ty in Israel found that synchrony some-
times occurs and sometimes does not. If
it exists, Leonard Weller reported, it is
certainly not ubiquitous.
Although she still retains the assertive-
ness of her college days, McClintock agrees
that the efect is subtler than she thought
at rst. But she also believes that the crit-
ics tend to miss the more important point:
that evidence for chemical communica-
tion between humans has steadily accu-
mulated since her study. And that it is not
surprising that our chemical messaging is
turning out to be as intricate as every oth-
er form of human communication.
MORE TO E XP L ORE
Menstrual Synchrony and Suppression. Martha Mc-
Clintock in Nature, Vol. 229, pages 244245; January 22, 1971.
Pheromones and Animal Behavior: Communication by
Smell and Taste. Tristram D. Wyatt. Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
Insect Pheromones: Mastering Communication to Con-
trol Pests. Margie Patlak et al. National Academy of Sci-
ences, 2009.
Fifty Years of Pheromones. Tristram D. Wyatt in Nature,
Vol. 457, pages 262263; January 15, 2009.
More International Year of Chemistry coverage
at ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/chemistry
Sarah Simpson is a freelance
writer and contributing editor
for Scientifc American. She
lives in Riverside, Calif.
GEOLOGY
AFGHANISTANS
BURIED RICHES
Geologists say newfound deposits in the embattled country
could fulfll the worlds desire for rare-earth and critical
minerals and end opiums local stranglehold in the process
By Sarah Simpson
T
he scene at first resembles many that
play out daily in the war-torn Red
Zone of southern Afghanistan: a pair
of Black Hawk helicopters descend on
a hillside near the countrys southern
border with Pakistan. As the choppers land, U.S. ma-
rines leap out, assault ries ready. But then geologists
sporting helmets and heavy ceramic vests jump out,
too. The researchers are virtually indistinguishable
from the soldiers except that they carry rock hammers
instead of guns. A human chain of soldiers encircles
the scientists as they step forward on the dusty ground.
The minute you get of, you go into geologist
mode, says Jack H. Medlin, director of the U.S. Geo-
logical Surveys activities in Afghanistan. You forget,
basically, that these guys are aroundunless you try to
get out of the circle.
Medlin's team has own many missions, each one
limited to an hour so that hostile forces do not have time
to organize and descend. Sixty minutes is a stressful,
eeting instant to geologists who would typically take
days to carefully sample and map a site. The rocks con-
I N BRI EF
Under military cover, U.S. geologists have mapped
Afghanistans deposits of critical minerals. Rich re-
serves of rare-earth elements exist in the south, where
Taliban control is tightest.
If mining of important minerals can take of in the
north, that success could create enormous commer-
cial and political momentum for opening the south.
New estimates indicate that rare earths could be triple
the initial predictions.
Overcoming the countrys opium and Taliban strong-
holds with a mining bonanza could change U.S. for-
eign policy and world stability.
Over the long term, Afghanistans geologists will have
to take charge. The U.S. Geological Survey is nearly
done training them.
M
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October 2011, ScienticAmerican.com 59 Illustration by Artist Name
Desolate hills in southern
Afghanistan could harbor
enough rare-earth elements to
supply the world for years.
taining a desirable elementsay, gold or neodymiumare in-
variably sandwiched between less interesting ones, all of which
were laid down long ago and since folded, buried and exhumed
so that they protrude only here and there, possibly in deeply
eroded streambeds or on opposite sides of a steep valley. Follow-
ing the trail takes expertise, stamina and concentration. The
marines know that their protgs pursue the clues like blood-
hounds, so the human circle moves with the scientists.
The latest of these gutsy excursions, carried out in February,
proved that the missions have been worth the risks. It revealed a
superlative cache of rare-earth elementsa coveted subset of so-
called critical minerals that have become essential to high-tech
manufacturing and yet are in short supply in the U.S. and many
nations. The prized deposit is comparable to the premier site
mined in China.
Geologists long had hints that Afghanistan was rife with mas-
sive, untapped stores of critical minerals worth billions or even
trillions of dollars. And political leaders knew that if the volume
of minerals was extractable, the wealth might allow Afghani-
stans economy to transition away from its dependence on opium
production, making the country more politically stable. But be-
fore any mining company will dig in, someone has to gure out
whether the deposits hold enough treasure to be worth the cost.
That means putting boots to dirt: collecting samples and map-
ping the rocks in detail. The USGS has now compiled reams of
data from its dangerous forays into regions around the country.
After high-level talks with Medlin about the latest information,
senior ofcials at the U.S. Department of Defense and Depart-
ment of State have become convinced that mineral riches could
well help to transform Afghanistan. Indeed, a land rush of sorts
has already begun. A major mining company from China has
called dibs on a huge copper deposit in a $2.9-billion venture that
is now Afghanistans largest development project. U.S. interests
have invested in gold. And Indian rms are the majority of al-
most two dozen that are clamoring for iron.
The USGSs latest assessments of the nations mineral bounty
were to be made public in a landmark report rolled out in Kabul
and at the Afghan embassy in Washington, D.C., at the end of
September. But as of August, when this article was being written,
Medlin and other USGS scientists had already told me that the
concentration and access of Afghanistans minerals could make
the country one of the most important mining centers on earth.
Notably, Afghanistan could become a major supplier of rare
earths as China hoards its own. How soon foreign investors will
be willing to mine for those elements is unclear, however. The
site examined in February lies in the southern part of the coun-
trythe most violent region, under the strongest Taliban con-
trol. Yet if mining of copper and other metals can take of in the
north, that surge could create an enormous commercial and po-
litical gold rush that could nally help drive out the opium and
Taliban strongholds, possibly creating a dramatic shift in U.S.
military action and foreign policy and a blow to terrorism.
Such a prospect could never have become a serious possibility
if geologists had not made extraordinary eforts to do science in
a war zonea story that has gone largely untold until now. Med-
lin and 50 other USGS scientists have been exploring Afghanistan
for seven years and have gone to great lengths to train the coun-
trys geologists to do the same work on their own. Medlin and
others will be back in Kabul in the coming months, helping Af-
Map by XNR Productions
Herat
Farah
Lashkar Gah
Sangin
Kandahar
Qalat
Chaman
Ghazni
Chaghcharan
Shiberghan
Kunduz
Baghlan
Chaharikar
Jalalabad
Torkham
Mazar-e
Sharif
Samangan
Maymana
Kabul
North Herat
BARITE,
LIMESTONE
Nalbandon
LEAD, ZINC
Kharnak-Kanjar
MERCURY
Khanneshin
RARE EARTHS,
CARBONATITE, URANIUM
Bakhud
FLUORITE
Chakhansur
LITHIUM
Godzareh
LITHIUM
Daykundi
TIN, TUNGSTEN
Aynak
COPPER
Dudkash
INDUSTRIAL
MINERALS
Takhar
EVAPORITES
North
Takhar
GOLD
Badakhshan
GOLD
Baghlan
CLAY,
GYPSUM
Ghunday Achin
MAGNESITE, TALC
Kundalan
COPPER,
GOLD
Balkhab
COPPER
Kunduz
CELESTITE
Panjshir
Valley
EMERALD,
SILVER
Nuristan
PEGMATITES
Haji-Gak
IRON
Zarkashan
COPPER, GOLD
Katawaz
GOLD
South Helmand
TRAVERTINE
Dusar-Shaida
TIN, COPPER
TOURMALINE,
TIN
Namaksar-e-Herat
LITHIUM
Namaskar-
Andkhoy
LITHIUM
Ab-e-Istada
LITHIUM
Dasht-e-Navar
LITHIUM
R
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n
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R
o
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d
R
i
n
g

R
o
a
d
R
in
g Road
H
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K
U
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T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A TT A T A TT A T J I J I J I J I J I J I J I J I J I JJ I J I J I J I JJJ I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N U Z U Z U Z U Z U Z U Z Z U Z ZZZ B E B E B E B E B E B E BB EE K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I I K I KK S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T T S T AAA N AAAA N AA N AAAA
T U T U T U T U T U T U T U TT U R K R K R K K R K K R K KKK MMMMM E M E M E M E M E M E M E N I N I N I NNN S T S T S T TTTTTTTTA N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A NN AA N
I R I R I R A NNN
P A P A P A P A P A P A P A P A P A P A P A PPPP K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S A N A N A N AAAAAAAAAAA
CH CHHHH CH CH CH CHHH CHH CH CHHIN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IIN IN INAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Capital
Existing road
Proposed road to facilitate development
Existing railway
Proposed railway
Existing transmission line
Proposed transmission line
Existing substation
Proposed substation
Substantial mineral deposits
Portions of deposit under lease
Deposit scheduled for bidding
Mineral resources
World-class mineral deposit
COPPER
IRON
0 40 80 miles
Kabul
More than 30,000
10,00030,000
1,00010,000
Less than 1,000
Poppy-free
Opium Cultivation
by Province (in hectares)
pppp
Kabul
HELMAND
Security Risk
Extreme
High
Medium
Low
Afghanistans Promise
as a Global Mining Center
An astounding variety of minerals lie buried in Afghanistan, includ-
ing seven world-class deposits (red labels). Based on recent science,
senior ofcials think mining could make the country economically
stable and cut its heavy dependence on foreign aid and illicit opium
trade. Outside nations have already invested in two sites, and six
more are scheduled for auction (key); infrastructure will have to be
improved, however. Production at a single large mine could provide
jobs for tens of thousands of Afghans.
MI NERAL WEALTH
SOURCES: USGS (base image and resource overlay information); U.N. DEPARTMENT OF SAFETY
AND SECURITY, AFGHANISTAN OPIUM SURVEY 2010, SUMMARY FINDINGS, U.N. OFFICE
ON DRUGS AND CRIME (security levels); GOVERNMENT OF AFGHANISTAN, AFGHANISTAN
OPIUM SURVEY 2010, SUMMARY FINDINGS, U.N. OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME (opium cultivation)
Tonnage of rare
earths here may
be triple the
current estimate
Science reveals
$29 billion in
copper alone
Herat
Farah
Lashkar Gah
Sangin
Kandahar
Qalat
Chaman
Ghazni
Chaghcharan
Shiberghan
Kunduz
Baghlan
Chaharikar
Jalalabad
Torkham
Mazar-e
Sharif
Samangan
Maymana
Kabul
North Herat
BARITE,
LIMESTONE
Nalbandon
LEAD, ZINC
Kharnak-Kanjar
MERCURY
Khanneshin
RARE EARTHS,
CARBONATITE, URANIUM
Bakhud
FLUORITE
Chakhansur
LITHIUM
Godzareh
LITHIUM
Daykundi
TIN, TUNGSTEN
Aynak
COPPER
Dudkash
INDUSTRIAL
MINERALS
Takhar
EVAPORITES
North
Takhar
GOLD
Badakhshan
GOLD
Baghlan
CLAY,
GYPSUM
Ghunday Achin
MAGNESITE, TALC
Kundalan
COPPER,
GOLD
Balkhab
COPPER
Kunduz
CELESTITE
Panjshir
Valley
EMERALD,
SILVER
Nuristan
PEGMATITES
Haji-Gak
IRON
Zarkashan
COPPER, GOLD
Katawaz
GOLD
South Helmand
TRAVERTINE
Dusar-Shaida
TIN, COPPER
TOURMALINE,
TIN
Namaksar-e-Herat
LITHIUM
Namaskar-
Andkhoy
LITHIUM
Ab-e-Istada
LITHIUM
Dasht-e-Navar
LITHIUM
R
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n
g
R
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d
R
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n
g

R
o
a
d
R
in
g Road
H
I
N
D
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S
H
T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A T A TT A T A TT A T J I J I J I J I J I J I J I J I J I JJ I J I J I J I JJJ I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N U Z U Z U Z U Z U Z U Z Z U Z ZZZ B E B E B E B E B E B E BB EE K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I I K I KK S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T T S T AAA N AAAA N AA N AAAA
T U T U T U T U T U T U T U TT U R K R K R K K R K K R K KKK MMMMM E M E M E M E M E M E M E N I N I N I NNN S T S T S T TTTTTTTTA N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A N A NN AA N
I R I R I R A NNN
P A P A P A P A P A P A P A P A P A P A P A PPPP K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K I K S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S T S A N A N A N AAAAAAAAAAA
CH CHHHH CH CH CH CHHH CHH CH CHHIN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IN IIN IN INAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Capital
Existing road
Proposed road to facilitate development
Existing railway
Proposed railway
Existing transmission line
Proposed transmission line
Existing substation
Proposed substation
Substantial mineral deposits
Portions of deposit under lease
Deposit scheduled for bidding
Mineral resources
World-class mineral deposit
COPPER
IRON
0 40 80 miles
Kabul
More than 30,000
10,00030,000
1,00010,000
Less than 1,000
Poppy-free
Opium Cultivation
by Province (in hectares)
pppp
Kabul
HELMAND
Security Risk
Extreme
High
Medium
Low
Commercial mining is more likely to begin in northern regions,
which have less risk for violence (top right), Taliban intrusion or opium
cultivation (bottom right). Success in the north, however, could create
strong economic and political pressure to develop the south as well.
Estimated to
hold $420
billion in iron
U.S. investors
have injected
$50 million into
a gold mine
A Chinese
company has
invested $2.9
billion
ghan scientists to interpret the latest reports and make practi-
cal determinations about dozens of new mineral deposits. And
plans are afoot to take an even deeper look at the rare-earth
nd, which they suspect is much larger than the initial esti-
mate suggests.
RARE (EARTH) FINDS
for decades most assertions about Afghanistans mineral worth
were guesswork. In 2007 Medlins team had identied the 24
most promising mining regions throughout Afghanistans arid
plains and high mountains, based on painstaking integration of
unpublished eld reports from the Soviet era and before. But the
governments of both the U.S. and Afghanistan basically ignored
the information until two years later, when Paul A. Brinkley took
notice. A U.S. under secretary of defense who had overseen the
Pentagons eforts to boost business in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Brinkley gured that minerals were the best bet for beating opi-
um, and he asked Medlin for help. Medlin knew it would take
much more sophisticated science to entice mining companies to
bid for sites. Companies typically invest lots of money determin-
ing whether to mine a given site, and most of them would not
send their own scientists into a war zone.
In 2009 Brinkleys task force called on Medlin to do just that.
Since then, the USGS has used satellite imagery, remote-sensing
surveys and on-the-ground eldwork under military cover to vet
old estimates and pinpoint the most promising new deposits.
Medlin can now say with certainty that at least half a dozen met-
al deposits are equivalent to those being exploited at the most
productive mines around the world.
The rocks ush with rare-earth elements are situated near
the heart of a dead volcano in the dry southern plains of Hel-
mand province, not far from the village of Khanneshin. The vol-
canic landscape would be tricky for a geologist to navigate on
foot even without the possibility of hostile militants hiding
around the next crag. USGS scientists have been motivated to risk
visiting the volcano, which is well within the Red Zone, in part,
by the groundswell of concern about how the worlds industries
will feed their ever increasing need for critical elements. China
currently provides 97 percent of the worlds rare-earth supply,
which makes other industrial countries nervous, particularly
considering its recent slashing of exports to Japan [see box on
page 64]. Global demand for other minerals is also soaring, and
prices are rising with it. A decade ago copper was about 80 cents
per pound; it is now roughly $4.
Medlins crew had tried, during two earlier marine-chaperoned
visits to the volcano, to verify Soviet-era claims that rocks contain-
ing the prized metals existed there. In February the team discov-
ered a sizable swath of rocks enriched in the so-called light rare-
earth elementsincluding the cerium used in at-screen TVs and
the neodymium used in high-strength magnets for hybrid cars.
So far the team has mapped 1.3 million metric tons of the de-
sirable rock in Khanneshin, holding enough rare earths to sup-
ply current world demand for 10 years. The Pentagon has esti-
mated its value at around $7.4 billion. Another $82 billion in oth-
er critical elements may be at the site. With more time on the
ground and the right kind of geophysical surveys, the scientists
suspect they would discover that the rare-earth deposit could be
two or three times more massive. Looking across a steep valley
they did not have time to explore, the geologists say they could
see what was almost certainly a continuation of the same rock
formation. High-altitude imagery that measures variations in
the magnetism and density of deeply buried rocks suggests the
desirable material probably goes much deeper as well.
Any mining at the Khanneshin volcano would probably still
be years of, however. Afghanistan has little experience with
heavy industry, no real railroads and hardly any electrical power
in rural areas. Those challenges are not the problem, though;
major mining companies are accustomed to pioneering unde-
veloped frontiers in remote parts of Indonesia, Chile and Austra-
lia, for example. The need for exceptional security against hos-
tile forces is the potential deal breaker. Coalition forces passed
control of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, to Afghan securi-
ty forces in July, making regional safety even more uncertain.
HEAVY METAL
right now the multibillion-dollar investments needed to open
mining in Afghanistan are more palatable in the northern half
of the country, where danger is less immediate, Medlin says.
And that is not a bad deal. Those areas harbor untapped masses
of rock containing copper, gold and iron worth hundreds of bil-
lions of dollars. Afghanistans Ministry of Mines is keen to in-
spire a landgrab for those commodities. The rst bite came in
2007, when China Metallurgical Group outbid four other for-
eign investors for a lease to develop a copper deposit known as
Aynak in the mountains south of Kabul. Expecting the deposit
to provide $43 billion over the life of the mine, the company
agreed to build two power plants to drive mining equipment
and supplement the regional power grid, as well as a portion of
the railroad needed to link the mine to existing rail lines in the
former Soviet republics to the north.
Further interest in the countrys minerals stalled, however,
until Brinkley got involved. Based on new details that Medlins
team collected, the Pentagon has reinvigorated interest by hiring
a major mining-consulting rm to compile information on the
most promising sites in a format attractive to foreign investors.
Late last year these eforts paid of. Western investors, led by the
chair of J. P. Morgan Capital Markets, injected $50 million into a
small artisanal gold prospect in an alpine valley east of Mazar-e
Sharif. The goal is to get a mine up and running with local labor
and modern equipment by early next year.
More activity may arise soon. With the help of the Pentagon
and the World Bank, Afghanistans Ministry of Mines intends to
begin auctioning of six other major mineral tracts by the end of
the year. First is Afghanistans most potentially lucrative stash:
iron concentrated in Haji-Gak, mountainous terrain about 130 ki-
lometers west of Kabul (and conveniently close to the planned
railroad northward from Aynak). Estimated at a whopping $420
billion, the resource could bring in $300 million in government
revenue each year and employ 30,000 people, according to the Af-
ghan ministry. Like many of the nations buried riches, portions of
this vast deposit, which crops out in easily visible, dark black
rocks, were discovered more than a century ago, but Afghanistan
has never had the right combination of wherewithal, inclination
and stability to start a major mining operation. Now it has taken
the rst step: enticing foreign investors. Bids were due in early
September from the 23 international mining companies that
lodged formal expressions of interest with the Afghan government
late last year, including the Chinese Aynak contract winners.
TAKING OVER
successfully closing these and other deals will require still more
geology, and Afghanistans scientists need to take charge. Bring-
ing them up to speed on modern science and information tech-
nology was the USGSs primary goal in rst entering the country
(and still is). That goal motivates Medlin and a close USGS col-
league, Said Mirzad, an Afghan-American geologist who visited
the Haji-Gak iron deposit more than 30 years ago when he was
director of the Afghanistan Geological Survey. Mirzad says he
had a clear vision of trucking Haji-Gaks iron ore to Pakistan or
possibly developing a local steel mill. But the 1979 Soviet inva-
sion and subsequent occupation cut that dream short. The Sovi-
ets imprisoned Mirzad multiple times before he nally ed to
the U.S. with his wife and two young sons in 1981. The countrys
scientic capacity stagnated in the decades of strife that ensued.
The 2001 U.S. invasion opened the door. Within three weeks of
the September 11 terrorist attacks, Mirzad and Medlin received
authorizationand, later, funding from the U.S. Agency for Inter-
national Developmentto help the Afghans rmly establish what
natural resources lay buried in their native soil and to train scien-
tists who could help advise the government about exploiting those
resources. Such activities are typical work of the USGS, which has
helped dozens of troubled countries rebuild their natural-resourc-
es sectors. Medlins team knew next to nothing about the world-
class potential of Afghanistans copper and rare-earth deposits, and
minerals certainly were not yet seen as a competitor to opium.
After 25 years of war, we had no idea if there would be any ge-
ologists in Kabul when we got there, recalls Mirzad, who accom-
panied Medlin and seven other Americans on the rst USGS visit
in 2004. When they arrived at the headquarters of the Afghani-
stan Geological Survey, they found a bombed-out, pockmarked
shell next to a slaughterhouse. There were no windows, doors,
plumbing or electricity. Bullet holes studded the walls; a rocket
had passed clean through the directors ofce. Still, roughly 100
geologists and engineers were coming into work a few hours a
day, mainly to sort old reports they had hidden at home during
the Taliban regime. Many of them cobbled together an income by
selling cigarettes or driving taxis. Happily, their basic science
training was very good. What they were missing was knowledge
of the scientic and technological advances that had been devel-
oped since the early 1980s. One Afghan chemist recoiled when
someone pulled out a laptop: She wouldnt touch it, because she
was afraid it would electrocute her, Medlin recalls.
Teaching the Afghan scientists the fundamental concept of
plate tectonics was central. This theorythat the planets crust is
broken up, like a jigsaw puzzle, into pieces that move and crash
togetherrevolutionized understanding of the earth in the years
after the Afghans were cut of from the outside world. It explains
why earthquakes occur, volcanoes erupt and mountains rise up.
It also explains why Afghanistan, slightly smaller than Texas, is
so unusually rife with minerals. Much of the now landlocked
country formed through collisions of four or ve crust pieces.
These convergent boundaries tend to be where many of the
worlds major metal deposits occur.
One exercise the scientists hope to carry out is a detailed geo-
physical survey over the Khanneshin volcano. Medlins crew,
with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, had conducted air-
borne surveys from a high-ying NP-3D aircraft based on craft
used for hunting down enemy submarines during the cold war.
By charting the earths magnetism and other properties, the geo-
physicists generated three-dimensional views of the uppermost
10 kilometers of Afghanistans bedrock. Flown slowly and at low-
er altitude, the same instruments could discern far greater de-
tail, revealing how specic mineral deposits extend down into
the ground. The $7.4-billion estimate for the rare earths there as-
sumes, very conservatively, that the rock is only 100 meters thick.
It could easily be thicker. Medlin had hoped to do that survey,
but the security clearance never cametoo much risk of the
plane being shot down, he assumes. So he convinced Brinkley to
buy the Afghanistan Geological Survey the same instruments
that can be carried on foot, and Medlin is bringing Afghan geolo-
gists to the U.S. to learn how to use them.
Medlin and Mirzad are both pleased with a $6.5-million reno-
vation of the Afghanistan Geological Survey headquarters build-
ing in Kabul, which has left it looking as good as its American
counterpart in northern Virginia, Mirzad says. And the cafeteria
is better, he adds with a wink. The Afghan agency now houses a
Geologists Said Mirzad (far lef) and Stephen Peters track
rare-earth elements in southern Afghanistan as U.S. Marines
guard against Taliban fghters. Deposits of copper (above)
much farther west could be worth $29 billion.
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y

O
F

U
S
G
S
state-of-the-art digital data center and employs 100 full-time sci-
entists and engineers who are conducting mineral-assessment
surveys on their own. The Afghans recent eld work at a copper
deposit near Dusar-Shaida is the main reason it is included
among those scheduled for upcoming bidding, Medlin says.
FORMIDABLE CHALLENGES
the advancing science makes it clear that lucrative mining is -
nally possible in Afghanistan, and for the rst time major inves-
tors are poised to commit. A national economy driven by mining
could end opiums dominance and help to stabilize the country,
which would give the U.S. and other nations good reason to scale
back their heavy military involvement there.
Even so, some Afghans worry about whether mining would
be good for the nations people. Major mineral exploitation in
some poor countries has been more curse than blessing. The dis-
covery of oil in Nigeria more than 50 years ago has earned bil-
lions of dollars for petroleum companies and the government,
but most Nigerians still live on less than $1 a day. Development
could fuel Taliban resurgence and government corruption. Med-
lin promotes an absolute imperative for transparency as one
safeguard; all the raw data the USGS has so carefully compiled
are owned by the Afghan government, which permits the U.S.
government to make the information available on the Internet.
Environmental protection is another concern. In many parts
of the world where massive open-pit mining operations exist, au-
thorities face decades of accumulated contaminants that must be
cleaned up. Standard procedures for extracting rare-earth ele-
ments, for example, leave rubble strewn with uranium and other
radioactive debris that threaten health. Transforming Afghani-
stan into one of the worlds major mining centers without similar
consequences will require serious forethought and accountability.
These challenges, and nal determinations about which spe-
cic deposits are worth mining, are expected to fall mainly to
Afghan scientists from now on. The USGSs Pentagon funding
runs out at the start of the new scal year in October, and with-
out military protection eldwork for USGS scientists will be next
to impossible. Native Afghan scientists travel more freely, so
Medlins team will do its best to advise them as they generate
more detailed information. To keep up the momentum, Medlin
has secured $8.7 million from USAID to continue processing the
satellite imagery and other remote-sensing data the USGS has al-
ready collected to spot more promising deposits. Its basically
like picking out a dime in a million pennies, Medlin says.
Were seeing mineral-deposit anomalies that the Soviets and
Afghans never knew existed.
Whether newly trained scientists and politicians can follow
through with business development is unclear. Luckily, the rocks
can wait. They have all the time in the world.
MORE TO E XP L ORE
Afghanistan Geological Survey: www.bgs.ac.uk/afghanminerals
Afghanistans Ministry of Mines: http://mom.gov.af/en
U.S. Task Force for Business and Stability Operations: http://tfbso.defense.gov
USGS Projects in Afghanistan: http://afghanistan.cr.usgs.gov
For a discussion about mining complications and a slide show on exploration,
see ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/afghanistan
What Are They Used For?
PLATINUM GROUP METALS
Platinum Catalytic converters, electronics, chemical processing
Palladium Catalytic converters, capacitors, carbon monoxide sensors
Rhodium Catalytic converters, chemical processing
Ruthenium Electronic contacts and resistors, superalloys
Iridium Spark plugs, alloys, chemical processing
Osmium Electronic contacts, electron microscopy, surgical implants
RARE-EARTH ELEMENTS
Scandium Aerospace components, aluminum alloys
Yttrium Lasers, TV and computer displays, microwave flters
Lanthanum Oil refning, hybrid-car batteries, camera lenses
Cerium Catalytic converters, oil refning, glass-lens production
Praseodymium Aircraft engines, carbon arc lights
Neodymium Computer hard drives, cell phones, high-power magnets
Promethium Portable x-ray machines, nuclear batteries
Samarium High-power magnets, ethanol, PCB cleansers
Europium TV and computer displays, lasers, optical electronics
Gadolinium Cancer therapy, MRI contrast agent
Terbium Solid-state electronics, sonar systems
Dysprosium Lasers, nuclear-reactor control rods, high-power magnets
Holmium High-power magnets, lasers
Erbium Fiber optics, nuclear-reactor control rods
Thulium X-ray machines, superconductors
Ytterbium Portable x-ray machines, lasers
Lutetium Chemical processing, LED lightbulbs
OTHER CRITICAL
Indium Liquid-crystal displays, semiconductors, solar thin flms
Manganese Iron and steel production, aluminum alloys
Niobium Steel production, aerospace alloys
RARE EARTHS AND CRITICAL MINERALS
Global Demand
Stresses Limited Supply
By Mark Fischetti, staf editor
A mere few countries control worldwide production of many miner-
als that have become essential to high-tech manufacturing: europi-
um for TV displays, neodymium for computer disk drives. And some
countries, such as China, have begun hoarding the resources for their
own companies.
As a result, industrial nations are becoming increasingly tense about
their sources of critical elementsminerals that are crucial but whose
supply could be restricted. Most critical for the U.S. are the six elements
in the platinum group of metals, the 17 elements known as rare-earth el-
ements, as well as indium, manganese and niobium, according to the
U.S. Geological Survey. Which nations have them (top right), and how
dependent the U.S. is (bottom right), could afect the American economy
and national security (in the case of military products) if trade is cur-
tailed or new deposits are not found. More mapping is needed to deter-
mine the impact of Afghanistans potentially vast resources.
Platinum only
*
* *
*
*
*Estimate not available
Includes certain former Soviet republics

Who Has Them?
Percent of World Production
and Known Reserves (2010)
How Dependent Is the U.S.?
What on earth can the U.S. do? China produces about
97 percent of the worlds rare-earth oxides. The overwhelming
U.S. source, the Mountain Pass mine in California, was closed
in 2002. Molycorp Minerals will reestablish volume production
there in 2012, but neither Molycorp nor other U.S. companies
will have the facilities needed to refne the oxides into useful
products; rebuilding that supply chain could take up to 15
years, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Ofce.
U.S. Dependence on Imports (20062009)
A
u
s
t
r
a
l
i
a
B
e
l
g
i
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a
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i
a
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e
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y
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u
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.
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i
m
b
a
b
w
e
O
t
h
e
r
PLATINUM
AND PALLADIUM
Total production:
380 metric tons
Total reserves:
66,110 metric tons
RARE-EARTH
ELEMENTS
Total production:
133,600 metric tons
Total reserves:
113,778,000 metric tons
Reserves
Production
INDIUM
Total production:
574 metric tons
Total reserves:
Estimate not available
MANGANESE
Total production:
Total reserves:
NIOBIUM
Total production:
63,000 metric tons
Total reserves:
SOURCE: MINERAL COMMODITY SUMMARIES 2011, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR AND USGS
Graphic by Jen Christiansen
South Africa
Germany
U.K.
Canada
Other
Russia
South Africa
U.K.
Belgium
Other
China
France
Japan
Austria
Other
China
Canada
Japan
Belgium
Other
South Africa
Gabon
China
Australia
Other
Brazil
Canada
Germany
Estonia
Other
U.S.
84%
9%
2%
2%
3%
35%
19%
11%
8%
27%
92%
3%
2%
1%
2%
35%
26%
16%
8%
15%
21%
17%
9%
4%
49%
44%
21%
17%
5%
13%
Import Sources (2006-2009)
Could come from a countrys
stockpile or recycling instead
of current production
*
Platinum Palladium
Indium Manganese Niobium
100% 100% 100%
58% 94%
Rare Earths
100%


66 Scientic American, October 2011 Photograph by Dan Saelinger
Eric von Hofe has spent his career in biotechnol-
ogy, investigating novel cancer therapies. He is
president of Antigen Express in Worcester, Mass.
MEDI CI NE
A New
Ally
against
Cancer
The FDA recently okayed the
frst therapeutic cancer vaccine,
and other drugs that enlist the
immune system against tumors
are under study
By Eric von Hofe
F
or decades cancer specialists have offered patients three
main therapies: surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. (Some
cancer survivors pointedly refer to this harsh trinity as
slash, poison and burn.) Over the years continual rene-
ments in these admittedly blunt instruments have made the
more severe side efects increasingly manageable. At the same time, ef-
fectiveness has improved markedly. And new, very targeted drugs (Her-
ceptin and Gleevec) have become available for a few specic cancers. All
told, the average ve-year survival rate for invasive cancers as a group
has risen from 50 percent to 66 percent in the past 30-plus years. In spite
of these gains, many cancer survivors will not have a normal life span.
Researchers have long suspected that they could add a weap-
on that would dramatically increase cancer survival rates with-
out producing serious side efects if they could just gure out
how to prod the bodys own immune system to do a better job of
ghting malignancies. But decades of efort met with one fail-
ure after another. In the 1980s, for instance, overheated hopes
that an immune system molecule called interferon would rouse
the bodys defenses to cure all or most cancers were dashed after
a few more years of research. Today interferon has a place but is
not the cure-all once envisioned. By the rst decade of this cen-
tury a great number of clinical trials were being conducted us-
ing lots of diferent types of vaccine-related approaches, but
nothing seemed to be working. It was starting to look as though
the long-hoped-for general weapon against a broad range of tu-
mors would never materialize.
It still has not. But something happened in the summer of
2010 suggesting that the age of false starts and blind alleys in
the efort to awaken the immune system may nally be drawing
to a close: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the
rst vaccine to treat a cancer. The drug, called Provenge, is not a
cure, but italong with standard chemotherapyalready has
given hundreds of men with advanced prostate cancer a few ex-
tra months of life.
This positive turn of events occurred after scientists reexam-
ined a few fundamental assumptions about how the immune
system works against cancer cells as well as how tumors ght
back against immunological attacks. Today cancer researchers
are cautiously optimistic that we can develop additional, very
specic immune-boosting therapies that can be used routinely
alongside surgery, chemotherapy and radiation to subdue cancer
while triggering side efects that are no worse than a bad cold.
A NEW ALLY
many of us are focusing particularly on therapeutic cancer vac-
cines. Unlike most familiar vaccines, which prevent certain infec-
tions that can lead to brain damage (measles), paralysis (polio) or
liver cancer (hepatitis B) from taking hold in the rst place, ther-
apeutic cancer vaccines train the body to recognize and destroy
cancer cells that already exist within its tissues and to keep kill-
ing those malignant cells long after treatment has ended.
Developing such vaccines is easier said than done. Most pre-
ventive vaccines trigger a simple antibody response, which is
usually pretty good for protecting against lots of diferent kinds
of infections. The antibodies just stick to u viruses, for example,
and stop them from infecting cells. In general, however, antibody
responses are not strong enough to kill cancer cells. For that
kind of job, the immune system needs to stimulate a group of
cells called T cells. There are two main types of T cells in the
body. Scientists often distinguish between diferent kinds by re-
ferring to various distinctive proteins, termed receptorssuch as
CD4 or CD8that sit on their outer membranes. The kinds of T
cells that are especially good at directly destroying malignant
cellsassuming they can be induced to recognize the cancer
cells as dangerousdisplay CD8 receptors. (These T cells are
called CD8+ cells because the CD8 receptor is present.)
Despite these complexities, creating a cancer vaccine is not a
new idea. In the waning years of the 19th century, long before any-
one had ever heard of a CD8+ cell, William B. Coley started inject-
ing cancer patients with a substance that came to be called Coleys
toxin. An orthopedic surgeon at what is now Memorial Sloan-Ket-
tering Cancer Center in New York City, Coley was intrigued by re-
ports of cancer patients who apparently had been cured of their
disease after a brief bout with a life-threatening infection. In an
attempt to simulate the infection without risking its potentially
deadly consequences, Coley prepared a solution that mixed two
strains of deadly bacteria. He gently heated the preparation so
that the bacteria were killed and rendered harmless. Enough of
the bacterial proteins remained in the brew, however, that the pa-
tients bodies responded by generating very high fevers.
Coley hypothesized that high fevers could jump-start his pa-
tients moribund immune systems into recognizing and attacking
the abnormal growths within their bodies. He extended the length
of his patients articial fevers with daily injections of increasing-
ly concentrated dead bacteria. Remarkably, long-term survival
was greater among the cancer patients who received the toxin
than among those who had not. Coley argued, with some justica-
tion, that his toxin had served as a kind of vaccine against cancer.
By the 1950s, however, physicians started getting more con-
sistent results with chemotherapy. As Coleys bacterial toxins fell
out of favor, the whole notion of creating vaccines to treat cancer
ground to a halt.
But study of the immune system and its possible role in cancer
did not stand still. Gradually researchers developed evidence to
support the idea, rst suggested by Paul Ehrlich in 1909, that the
immune system continually surveys and destroys newly arisen
cancer cells. This so-called immune surveillance theory gained
further credibility in the 1980s, when investigators calculated that
the high level of spontaneous mutation in human cells that they

PERSEVERANCE
The Long March
Boosting the immune systems cancer-fghting ability
has taken decades of research.
A
P

P
H
O
T
O
1890s
William B. Coley stimulates the immune
systems of cancer patients by injecting
them with mixtures of dead bacteria.
1909
Paul Ehrlich suggests that the
immune system may suppress
tumor development.
1975
Monoclonal antibodies are created,
allowing development of highly
specifc immunological tools.
I N BRI EF
Conventional treatments for can-
cersurgery, chemotherapy and radi-
ationhave increased survival rates
since the 1970s, but many survivors
still do not achieve a normal life span.
Researchers believe the results would
be better if they could recruit a new
ally against malignancy: the bodys
own immune system.
Over the past decade several at-
tempts to boost the immune response
artifciallythrough vaccination or
other drug developmenthave failed.
But the tide seems to be changing. A
cancer vaccine for treating prostate
cancer has been approved, and a new
generation of therapeutic cancer vac-
cines is now being tested.
were observing should have resulted in many more malignant
growths than were indeed detected. Somehow the body was regu-
larly nding and destroying numerous cancerous cells on its own.
Even after the occasional tumor managed to avoid eradica-
tion, the evidence suggested, the immune system kept ghting
just not as efectively. Pathologists had long noted that tumors
were frequently inltrated by immune cells, giving rise to the
concept that tumors were wounds that would not heal. In addi-
tion, further experiments showed that as a tumor grows, it releas-
es more and more substances that actively suppress T cells. The
question now became how to design cancer vaccines that would
tip the balance in favor of T cells able to eradicate the tumor.
An answer began to emerge in 2002, when a team of scien-
tists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) showed that another
immune T cell, known as a CD4+ cell, was a critical component
of an efective anticancer response. CD4+ cells are sort of like
the generals of the immune system: they give the orders about
who and what to attack to the foot soldierswhich, in this sce-
nario, are the CD8+ cellsthat do the actual killing. The NCI
team, led by Steven Rosenberg, took T cells out of 13 advanced
melanoma patients whose tumors had metastasized, or spread,
throughout their body. The researchers selectively activated the
removed immune cells to target and attack the melanoma cells
in a test tube. Then the scientists grew the activated cells in
large amounts and infused them back into the patient. The NCI
teams approach, referred to as adoptive immunotherapy, is, in
efect, a kind of self-transplantation of immune cells (altered ar-
ticially outside the body) and, as such, difers from vaccina-
tion, which causes the immune system to generate its own tar-
geted immune cells inside the body.
Previous adoptive immunotherapy treatments using just
CD8+ cells had shown no benet. But when the NCI team added
CD4+ cells to the mix, the results were remarkable. Tumors
shrank dramatically in six subjects, and blood tests from two of
the six showed that they were still making powerful anticancer
immune cells on their own more than nine months after the
treatment had ended. For the most part, patients experienced
temporary u-like symptoms as a result of the treatment, al-
though four of them also sufered a complex autoimmune reac-
tion that led to the loss of pigment from parts of their skin.
The NCI results ofered a convincing proof of concept: an im-
mune response based on T cells could, in fact, be boosted pre-
cisely enough to destroy tumors. The number of cloned immune
cells needed per patient in this experiment was staggering: more
than 70 billion CD8+ cells and CD4+ cellsor several hundred
milliliters in volume. But at least the scientic community now
believed that immunotherapy against cancer could work. The
next steps were to gure out how to obtain the same result in a
simpler fashionthat is, without having to remove cells from the
body, grow them in great numbers and reinfuse them later. In
other words, it should be possible to make the body grow most of
the additional cells it needed on its ownwhich is exactly what it
does in response to an efective vaccine.
MULTIPLE STRATEGIES
my colleagues and i at Antigen Express were gratied when
Rosenbergs group showed that a cancer vaccine would have to
elicit both CD4+ and CD8+ cells to be efective. We had previ-
ously argued the same point based on animal studies and had
essentially staked the future of our company on that belief.
Basically, there are three elements to making a cancer vac-
cine. The rst is to decide precisely what molecular feature, or
antigen, in a malignant tumor the immune system should recog-
nize as foreign and target for killing. The second is to decide how
to deliver a triggering agent (or vaccine) to the immune system
that ramps it up to attack cancer cells. And the third is to decide
which cancer patients to treat and when during the course of
their disease to administer the vaccine.
Over the past several years researchers in the biotech indus-
try have considered a wide range of proteins, as well as pieces of
proteins (called peptides), as the potential starting points for
driving an immune response robust enough to kill cancer cells.
(Other possibilities for priming the pump include using bits of
genetic material that encode cancer proteins or even whole can-
cer cells after they have been irradiated.) It turns out that the ge-
netic alterations that allow cancer cells to grow uncontrollably
also cause them to make some proteins in much higher amounts
than are found anywhere else in the body. About 10 companies,
including our own, have selected various examples of these pep-
tides to fulll the rst two requirements for making a cancer vac-
cine: the starting point and the delivery mechanism.
Part of what makes peptide vaccines particularly attractive is G
A
R
Y

R
E
T
H
E
R
F
O
R
D

P
h
o
t
o

R
e
s
e
a
r
c
h
e
r
s
,
I
n
c
.
(
l
e
f
t
)
;

P
H
O
T
O

R
E
S
E
A
R
C
H
E
R
S
,
I
N
C
.
(
r
i
g
h
t
)

2010
The FDA approves Provenge, the frst vac-
cine meant to elicit an attack on an exist-
ing tumor, for advanced prostate cancer.
1980
Researchers insert
a gene that codes
for interferon into
bacteria, allowing
the immune-stimu-
lating molecule to
be mass-produced
for the frst time.
1986
The Food and Drug Administration okays interferon,
the frst proved immunotherapy against cancer,
for the treatment of hairy cell leukemia.
1997
The FDA approves
the frst monoclo-
nal antibody treat-
ment against
cancer, with the
brand name Ritux-
an, for non-Hodg-
kins lymphoma.
1998
The FDA approves the monoclonal
antibody Herceptin for the treatment
of metastatic breast cancer.
2002
Researchers at the National Cancer
Institute prove that a T cellbased
treatment against cancer is possible
and requires the contribution of two
kinds of immune cell: CD8+ T cells
(gold, seen at left attacking cancer
cell) and CD4+ T cells.
that these bits of protein are small in size, inexpensive to synthe-
size and very easy to manipulate, which means that they can be
readily formulated into a vaccine that is simple to manufacture
in large amounts. Furthermore, since the peptides that have
been identied show up in many people with diferent types of
cancer, they can be used in formulations that would help many
people without doctors having to compose individual vaccines
for each person, which they have to do with cell-based immuno-
therapies. Finally, all the peptide vaccines tested so far produce
relatively mild side efects, such as temporary irritation at the in-
jection site and perhaps a fever or other ulike symptom.
Ten years ago scientists at Antigen Express made a few key
modications to a peptide that had been used in an experimen-
tal vaccine against breast cancer. Known as HER2, this particu-
lar protein is also the target of Herceptin, a monoclonal antibody
treatment against certain types of breast cancer. Our researchers
found that adding just four more amino acids to the peptide dra-
matically increased its ability to stimulate CD4+ cells, as well as
CD8+ cells, against breast cancer cells that make the HER2 pro-
tein. This nding was the innovation on which we bet the com-
panys future. Preliminary data published earlier this year from
an independent study that compared our HER2-enhanced vac-
cine against two other peptide vaccines designed to stimulate
only CD8+ cells suggests that we are on the right track.
Some companies, such as Dendreon, makers of the newly
FDA-approved Provenge, placed their bets diferently. Dendreon
and some other companies are providing targets specic for can-
cer cells directly to an immune cell known as a dendritic cell.
Scattered throughout the body, particularly in tissues that come
into contact with the outside world (such as the skin or the lin-
ing of the digestive tract), dendritic cells act like the immune sys-
tems sentinels and are among the rst defenders to alert the T
cells that something is wrong. Because immune cells take orders
only from other immune cells that are genetically identical to
them, however, the necessary dendritic cells must be harvested
from each individual patient, loaded with the cancer-specic
protein and then reinfused back into the patientall at a cost of
about $93,000 for a full course of treatment. Side efects include
chills, fever, headache and, less commonly, stroke. But a short-
term clinical study proved that people with advanced prostate
cancer who were treated with Provenge lived, on average, at least
four months longer than their untreated counterparts.
NEXT STEPS
the fdas approval of Dendreons Provenge plus promising pre-
liminary data from clinical trials conducted by various compa-
nies, including our own, suggests that we are entering a new era
in the development of cancer vaccines. As scientists venture fur-
ther in this promising new endeavor, however, we are discover-
ing that we cannot use the same yardsticks for measuring prog-
ress against cancer with immunotherapy as we do for chemo-
therapy or radiation. The latter two show their benets rather
quicklywithin a few weeks the tumors either shrink in size,
which is good, or they do not, which is bad. But data from sever-
al clinical trials suggest that it may take up to a year after treat-
ment with a cancer vaccine for the immune system to really start
making substantial progress against tumor growth.
This lag time is not entirely surprising, because the immune
system needs a good deal of coaxing to attack cells that look aw-
fully similar to normal cells in the body, as opposed to a bacteri-
um or virus. Breaking toleranceor the immune systems reluc-
tance to attack cells that have arisen from the hostis perhaps
the biggest obstacle in generating efective therapeutic vaccines
to ght cancer. Another surprise is that tumors may actually ap-
pear to grow in size after treatment with cancer vaccines.Analy-
sis of tumor tissue, however, shows that this increase can be the
result of invading immune cells, not of tumor cell replication.
The deliberate pace with which the immune system so far
seems to respond to the therapeutic cancer vaccines being devel-
oped, however, suggests two important intermediate conclu-
sions. One, individual cancer vaccines will probably be most ef-
fective in the near term in people at earlier stages of their disease,
when their tumors are not big enough to depress their immune
system and they have enough time to wait for a more powerful
immune response to kick in. Two, people with advanced disease
probably will usually need to have their tumors shrunk through
conventional treatment before they can benet from receiving a
cancer vaccine. Starting with a small tumor or shrinking existing
ones are important because large, long-lived tumors are just that
much better than smaller, younger ones at suppressing or evad-
ing the immune system. They have more cells that can release
greater amounts and types of immune-suppressing chemicals.
Late-stage cancer patients may simply have too much cancer
present for even a healthy immune system to dispatch.
In spite of these obstacles and complexities, the signs are clear:
a patients own immune system can be efectively enlisted to help
combat cancer. This realization has given tremendous encourage-
ment to investigators in academia and industry who have perse-
vered in the face of so many failures. Previous clinical trials that
had been written of as failures are being reexamined to see if per-
haps evidence of immune-related responses may have been over-
looked. Indeed, one such trial of a potential prostate cancer vac-
cine (Prost vac) showed that while the compound failed to meet its
original predetermined end pointlack of tumor growthit
boosted overall survival. Of course, this discovery came after the
small biotech company that developed Prostvac had already gone
out of business for having failed to meet the primary end point of
the trial. Fortunately, another company secured the rights to de-
velop the drug.
As for the survivors in the industry, we have been conditioned
by years of frustrating results to look beyond setbacks and not to
make too many promises. But the evidence from the research
and clinical trials over the past couple of years leads a growing
number of investigators to believe that therapeutic cancer vac-
cines will take a prominent role alongside surgery, chemothera-
py and radiation over the next decade as an efective treatment
for some of the most common cancers that plague humanity.
MORE TO E XP L ORE
A Malignant Flame. Gary Stix in Scientifc American, Vol. 297, No. 1, pages 6067; July 2007.
Strategies for Cancer Vaccine Development. Matteo Vergati et al. in Journal of Biomedi-
cine and Biotechnology, Vol. 2010. Published online 2010. www.hindawi.com/journals/
jbb/2010/596432
A New Era in Anticancer Peptide Vaccines. Sonia Perez et al. in Cancer, Vol. 116, No. 9,
pages 20712080; May 1, 2010. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ 20187092
Listen to Eric von Hofe talk about the future of therapeutic cancer vaccines
at ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/cancervaccine-podcast
October 2011, ScienticAmerican.com 71 Illustration by AXS Biomedical Animation Studio
Three Therapeutic
Vaccine Strategies
The immune system does not easily recognize cancer cells as dan-
gerous or foreign, as it generally does with microbes. Scientists have
shown that they can boost the response by fooding the body with
immune cells known as T cells that are artifcially grown outside of it.
But researchers would prefer to develop a therapeutic vaccine that
trains the immune system to mount a vigorous antitumor attack on
its own. The panels below depict three of the approaches that bio-
tech companies are pursuing to achieve this goal.
PLACE YOUR BETS
Basic Cellular Immune Response to Cancer
An immune cell called a dendritic cell ingests a tumor cell and then pre-
sents substances called antigens (red) from the tumor to two other im-
mune cells, the CD8+ and CD4+ T cells. The CD4+ cell releases cytokine
molecules that help to activate the CD8+ cell, prompting it to attack other
cells with the same antigen. Alas, the response is not always strong
enough to destroy an entire tumor.
Whole Cell Vaccine
One way to elicit an efective re-
sponse might be to train the im-
mune system to aim at an entire
cancer cell. Cells from a patients
tumor are removed, genetic materi-
al is added to them to make them
easier to spot and then they are ir-
radiated. The now dead cancer cells
are reinjected, giving the immune
system lots of big targets to attack.
Peptide Vaccine
Tweaking some of the cancer-spe-
cifc antigens makes them highly
visible to the immune system. Be-
cause the resulting protein bits, or
peptides, can be synthesized with-
out using any patient tissue, a suc-
cessful peptide vaccine would be
much less expensive than other
cell-based approaches.
Dendritic Cell Vaccine
A powerful immune response
could also be generated by
creating carefully primed dendritic
cells, as last years FDA-approved
vaccine does. A patients own
dendritic cells are removed and
loaded with antigens from the
tumor. The now mobilized
dendritic cells grow and divide
outside the body before being
reinjected, where they trigger a
powerful response by the T cells.
Tumor
CD4+ T cell
Cancer cell
Dendritic cell
(immature)
CD8+ T cell
Activated T cells seek and
kill other cancer cells with
matching antigens
Cytokines
Cancer-specifc antigen
Activated CD8+
Dendritic cell
(mature)
Whole cell vaccine
Peptide vaccine
Dendritic cell vaccine
FEMALE
Photographs by Floto + Warner
FORENSI CS
How Skulls Speak
New 3-D sofware is helping scientists identify the sex and
ancestral origins of human remains with greater speed and precision
By Anna Kuchment, staf editor
Jaw
A female jaw is of-
ten smaller than a
mans and is either
pointed or rounded.
Nuchal Crest
This area, where
the muscles from
the back of the
neck attach to the
base of the skull, is
smooth and round-
ed in women.
LIKE THE DETECTIVES on the CBS drama Cold Case,
anthropologist Ann H. Ross of North Carolina
State University spends many of her days
thinking about unsolved crimes. Her
most recent work has aimed at devel-
oping software that helps forensic sci-
entists determine the sex and an-
cestry of modern human skulls.
Typically forensic scientists
measure remains with sliding
rulers called calipers. Doing so
results in two-dimensional
measurements. Rosss soft-
ware, called 3D-ID and devel-
oped with a grant from the
U.S. Department of Justice,
relies on three-dimensional
measurements that scientists
take with a digitizera com-
puter and stylus. The stylus
allows you to place the coor-
dinates in real space, so you
get a better idea of the actual
biological form of whatever
youre measuring, Ross says.
In a paper published earlier
this year Ross and her col-
leagues found that womens
skulls had grown closer in size
to male skulls since the 16th
century in a Spanish sample
a fnding that likely translates to
other population groups. Unlike
older forensic software, 3D-ID
lets scientists remove the size
component in their analysis and
look only at shape for a more
accurate reading. The photo-
graphs at the right show some
of the features that 3D-ID uses
to determine if a skull belongs
to a man or a woman.
More images and a quiz at ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/skulls
MALE
Forehead
Womens foreheads
are more vertical
than mens, which
gives them a child-
like appearance,
Ross says. Men
tend to have slop-
ing foreheads.
Nuchal Crest
Because males have
thicker neck mus-
cles than females
and are generally
more muscle-
markedthis area
is more prominent.
It is typically rug-
ged and has a hook.
Jaw
Males typically have
a broad, square jaw.
Brow
An area called the
supraorbital mar-
gin, which is just
above the eye and
roughly follows the
brow line, is thin
and pointy in wom-
en. If you place
your thumb below
the outer edge of a
womans eyebrow,
youll feel that its
sharp, Ross says.
Women also have
either a small or
nonexistent brow
ridge. Men, in con-
trast, have a round-
ed supraorbital
margin, and their
brow ridge is more
pronounced than
womens.
PHYSI CS
WAITING FOR THE HIGGS
Even as the last protons spin through the
most successful particle accelerator in history,
physicists hope to conjure one fnal triumph
By Tim Folger
PHYSI CS
WAITING FOR THE HIGGS
Even as the last protons spin through the
most successful particle accelerator in history,
physicists hope to conjure one fnal triumph
By Tim Folger
Night falls: The Tevatron
particle accelerator outside
Chicago was for 27 years the
worlds most powerful window
into the subatomic universe.
U
nderneath a relict patch of illinois prairie, complete with a small herd of graz-
ing bufalo, protons and antiprotons whiz along in opposite paths around a four-
mile-long tunnel. And every second, hundreds of thousands of them slam together
in a burst of obscure particles. Its another day at the Tevatron, a particle accelera-
tor embedded in the verdant grounds of the 6,800-acre Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory complex in Batavia, about 50 miles due west of Chicago. There have
been many days like this one, some routine, some spectacular; of the 17 fundamen-
tal particles that physicists believe constitute all the ordinary matter and energy in the universe,
three were discovered here. But there wont be many more such days. By October 1 the power
supplies for more than 1,000 liquid-helium-cooled superconducting magnets will have been
turned of forever, the last feeble stream of particles absorbed by a metal target, ending the 28-
year run of what was until recently the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.
For several hundred physicists here who have spent nearly
two decades searching for a hypothetical particle called the
Higgs boson, the closure means ceding the huntand possible
Nobel gloryto their archrival, the Large Hadron Collider, a
newer, more powerful accelerator at CERN on the Swiss-French
border. With its 17-mile circumference and higher energies, the
LHC has displaced the Tevatron as the worlds premier particle
physics research instrument, a position it will retain well into
the next decade.
The U.S. Department of Energys decision to shut down the
Tevatron at the close of this scal year did not surprise anyone
at Fermilab. Some physicists had recommended that the DOE
fund the aging accelerator for another three years, giving it a -
nal crack at nding the elusive Higgs, a particle that theorists
believe is responsible for endowing all other particles with
mass. But even the most ardent Tevatron veterans admit that
the old machine has nally been made redundant. I dont have
sadness, says Dmitri Denisov. Its like your old car. The whole
history of science is one of new tools. This one lasted for more
than 25 years. Its time to move on.
That cant be an easy admission for Denisov, the co-spokes-
person for the team that runs D-Zero, one of two hulking detec-
tors that straddle the Tevatron. Two years ago, during a press
conference at the annual meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, Denisov said, We now have a
very, very good chance that we will see hints of the Higgs before
the LHC will. At the time, an electrical failure had closed the
LHC for several months, and Denisovs condence was shared
by many at Fermilab. But it was not to be. When the LHC came
back online in November 2009, it quickly ramped up to ener-
gies three times higher than the Tevatron could match.
For the past three decades D-Zeros main competition has
been the Tevatrons other enormous detector, the Collider De-
tector at Fermilab, or CDF, which sits atop the accelerator a
grassy mile away from D-Zero. Hundreds of physicists from
dozens of countries work at each.
This past spring physicists at the CDF announced that they
had found hints in their data of what appeared to be a new par-
ticle. Might the Tevatron, in its waning days, have found the
rst telltale signs of the Higgs? Denisov and his colleagues at
D-Zero immediately began to double-check the CDF results. As
Scientific American went to press, the issue remained unset-
tled. Yet one thing is clear: the intra-accelerator competition is
not yet over.
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I N BRI EF
The Tevatron, formerly the worlds most powerful
particle collider, will cease operations by October 1.
It has been supplanted by the Large Hadron Collider.
Despite the shutdown, physicists at the facility are
poring over data that might reveal evidence of the
long-sought Higgs boson.
Scientists at Fermilab hope to build a new accelera-
tor called Project X by 2020 and, after that, a succes-
sor to the LHC.
Tim Folger is an award-winning science
writer and the series editor of The Best Amer-
ican Science and Nature Writing, an annual
anthology published by Houghton Mifin.
I want to beat Dmitri, and vice versa, says Rob Roser, lead-
er of the CDF team. Were cordial; we talk; were friends. But
we always wanted to beat each other. Now the endgame is dif-
ferent. The LHC is the bad guy. It used to be Dmitri. I never
wanted the LHC to beat either one of us. Its like, you cant beat
up my little brotheronly I can.
With old rivalries ending (almost) and new projects just
starting, Fermilab is passing through an uncertain period. The
same could be said for the entire discipline of particle physics.
Physicists have been waiting a very long time for a machine that
might give them access to some new realm of physical reality.
Given that the LHC is expected to double its collision energies
within the next two years, there is no shortage of ideas about
what it might discover: extra dimensions, supersymmetry (the
idea that every known particle has a so-called supersymmetric
twin), the Higgs, of course. Best of all would be something com-
pletely unexpected. There is another possibility, however, usual-
ly dismissed but impossible to discount. And it simultaneously
worries and intrigues physicists: What if the LHC, as well as the
particle physics experiments planned at a Tevatron-less Fermi-
lab for the next decade, nds nothing unexpected at all?
DESTINATION UNKNOWN
there was a time, not long ago, when physicists had many of
the same hopes for the Tevatron that they now have for the
LHC. Fifteen years before the LHC was turned on, physicists at
Fermilab thought the Tevatron might bag the Higgs, nd evi-
dence for supersymmetry, identify the nature of dark matter,
and more.
Besides netting a Nobel Prize, the discovery of the Higgs
would provide the capstone to an illustrious era in physics. The
Higgs boson is the last missing piece of the Standard Model, a
complex theoretical edice that describes the universe in terms
of the interactions of the 17 fundamental particles. It unies
three of the four forces of nature: the strong force, which binds
atomic nuclei; the weak force, which is responsible for particle
decay; and the more familiar electromagnetic force. (Gravity is
the only force not described by the Standard Model.) Theorists
put the nishing touches on the Standard Model nearly 40
years ago, and since then every one of its predictions has been
conrmed by experiment.
In 1995 the CDF and D-Zero teams made one of the most
impressive conrmations with the discovery of the top quark
a massive elementary particle whose existence was rst pre-
dicted in 1973. In that race, the Tevatron beat a European col-
lider called the Super Proton Synchrotron, which is now used
to feed particles into the LHC. It was the Tevatrons greatest tri-
umph and established that the Standard Model was an incredi-
bly accurate description of the universe, at least at the energies
that physicists could probe with their best accelerators.
In 2001, after a ve-year upgrade, the worlds best accelera-
tor became even better. Physicists hoped that the new, improved
Tevatron would not only discover the Higgsthe last undiscov-
ered piece of the Standard Modelbut also uncover new phe-
nomena lying beyond the Standard Model. For all the Standard
Models predictive power, physicists know that it cannot be a
complete description of nature. Besides its failure to incorpo-
rate gravity, it has two other glaring shortcomings. The Stan-
dard Model provides no explanation of dark matter, which inu-
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MI LESTONES
Three Decades
of Discovery
JULY 5, 1979
The Department of Energy
authorizes Fermilab to build
a superconducting accelerator,
later named the Tevatron.
Most everything you need to know about a particle collider can be
summed up with just two numbers. The frst is its energyhigher
energies let scientists conjure up more massive particles (mea-
sured in gigaelectron volts, or GeV). The second is its luminosity, or
the number of collisions per second. Engineers spent the frst de-
cade of the Tevatron pushing up its energy; theyve spent the past
two opening a trickle of collisions into a frehose. Here are a few of
the more notable events in the life of the collider.
JULY 3, 1983
The Tevatron accelerates protons to
a world-record energy of 512 GeV.
OCTOBER 1, 1983
Experiments begin. At frst, a
single beam of protons strikes
a fxed target.
OCTOBER 13, 1985
The newly installed antiproton
beam begins to collide with
the protons. The CDF wit nesses
the frst proton-antiproton
collisions at 1,600 GeV.
MARCH 3, 1995
Scientists from the CDF and D-Zero
experiments announce the discovery
of the top quark.
AUGUST 31, 1992
The frst long run of collision
experiments begins at an energy
of 1,800 GeV.
JULY 20, 2000
The DONuT experiment reports
the frst evidence for the direct
observation of the tau neutrino.
MARCH 1, 2001
Upgrades push the energy up to
2,000 GeV, and the second collider
run begins. Over the next decade its
luminosity will more than quadruple.
AUGUST 4, 2008
Tevatron scientists announce that
the Higgs boson does not have
a high mass of 170 GeV. More
searching is required.
SEPTEMBER 30, 2011
The Tevatron produces its fnal
proton-antiproton collisions; data
analysis will continue for several years.
ences the motions of galaxies but otherwise does not seem to in-
teract with ordinary matter. It also fails to account for dark
energy, an utterly bafing phenomenon that appears to be ac-
celerating the expansion of the universe.
But despite the upgrade, the Tevatron failed to move beyond
the theory it had so spectacularly validated. Ten years ago we
anticipated cracking this nut, but we havent yet, says Bob
Tschirhart, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab. Theres a layer
of existence out there that we havent discovered. The Standard
Model has been so good at predicting so much, but it has such
obvious inadequacies. Its like an idiot savant.
In some sense, the legacy of the Tevatron is that the Standard
Model works really, really well. Its no small achievement, but it
was never intended to be the nal goal. We were supposed to
nd the Higgs, for sure, says Stephen Mrenna, a computational
physicist who came to Fermilab in the mid-1990s. And if super-
symmetry was there, we were supposed to nd it, too.
Physicists now hope that the LHC will succeed where the Te-
vatron failed by leading them into new territory and providing
clues that might eventually enable them to replace the Stan-
dard Model. Mrenna, like most of his colleagues, believes that
the LHC will nd the Higgs sooner rather than later. I think it
will happen this year or next. Thats where I would place my
bet, he says. If we dont nd it, my belief that we wont nd
anything will go up greatly.
This is the problem with exploration: perhaps nothing is out
there. Some physicists speculate that an energy desert exists
between the realms they are able to probe now and the realm
where truly new physics might emerge. If thats the case, new
discoveries might be decades away. The LHC might be the most
powerful accelerator ever built, but it is not so powerful that
physicists can be completely sure it will punch through to an-
other level of reality.
The real tool for that job was the Superconducting Super
Collider (SSC), a machine that, at 54 miles in circumference,
would have dwarfed the LHC. It would have been capable of
generating particle beams with nearly three times the LHCs
maximum energy. But cost overruns caused Congress to cancel
the project in 1993, even though construction had already start-
ed near the small town of Waxahachie, Tex. The SSC was de-
signed from the beginning so that it would
probe an energy scale where our expectations
were that something new absolutely, positively
had to happen, Mrenna says. It really was the
right collider to have built. The LHC is a cheap
cousin. But its good enough for now.
Unless, of course, it is not. If the LHC fails to
nd the Higgs or to make some other signicant
discovery, Mrenna says, it would become dif-
cult for physicists to justify the costs of a more
advanced accelerator. You can ask what nd-
ing the Higgs boson has to do with the U.S.
economy or the war on terror, or whatever, he
observes, and right now we get by saying the
knowledge benets everybody. People want to
know how the universe works. And were train-
ing lots of people, and its always a good idea to
take the cleverest people around and give them
a really hard problem because usually theres a
derivative that comes from it. But at some point
the physics becomes less and less relevant.
In other words, if the energy desert is real,
we may not be able to summon the will to cross
it. Im actually a hanger-on from the SSC,
Mrenna says. I was a postdoc in its last year.
And I have been waiting for a replacement for
it ever since then, surviving in a rather grim
job market. We need a success. We need to nd
something new.
NEXT LIFE
the worlds first particle accelerator was made
in 1929 by Ernest Lawrence, a physicist at the
University of California, Berkeley. He called it a
proton merry-go-round. It measured ve inch-
es across, was made of bronze, sealing wax and
glass, and likely cost about $25. The LHC,
which red up about 80 years later, cost $10
billion. Its construction required an interna-
The Race against the LHC
By Geof Brumfel
The Tevatrons operations may be ending, but the hunt for the Higgs boson,
the most elusive particle in physics, is charging forward. In a matter of
months, data from the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN near
Geneva should answer what one physicist describes as the Shakespeare
question: Is it to be? Or not to be?
For nearly half a century scientists have predicted the existence of the Higgs.
It is commonly said that the Higgs is the particle responsible for the mass of
all the otherswhich is truebut from a physicists perspective, the Higgs is
important because it serves as a unifer of forces. Physicists love to simplify, and
the Higgs provides an elegant way to combine electricity and magnetism with
the weak nuclear force to create a single electroweak entity.
The Higgs can only do this if it exists in the mass-energy range between 100
and 1,000 billion electron volts (GeV). The LHC and the Tevatron are closing in
on the most fertile ground. In July at a conference in Grenoble, France, Tevatron
scientists concluded that the Higgs cannot be between 156 and 177 GeV, while
the LHC knocked out a few broad swaths between 150 and 450 GeV.
Most physicists believe that if the Higgs exists, most likely it is hiding at
around 115 to 140 GeV. It is a particularly tricky energy range, however,
because such a light Higgs particle will often decay into common particles
that are difcult to pick out from other debris inside the giant collider. A few
Higgs decays may have already been seen, but telling the diference will
require many more times the data produced so far.
Even after its shutdown, the Tevatron will contribute yet to be analyzed data
to the hunt. But it will be up to the more powerful LHC to nail the discovery.
The larger European machines current run continues through October, and in
that time it should be able to frm up any faint signals. Still, physicists will not be
able to announce whether the Higgs is truly to be until the end of 2012, when
the machine will have collected around 50 petabytes of datathe equivalent
of the complete works of Shakespeare 10 billion times over.
Geof Brumfel is a reporter for Nature.
COMPETI TI ON
tional efort, and it covers an area the size of a
small town. Even if the LHC is wildly successful,
there is little chance for a similar leap in scale in
the foreseeable future.
We know how to go 10 times higher in energy,
but it would cost 10 times more, says Pier Od-
done, director of Fermilab. And were already at
the limit of what countries are willing to spend.
For the next decade and beyond the premier
physics facility in the U.S. will live in the shadow
of the LHC. Oddone says Fermilab will pursue a
variety of projects that might have been delayed
or canceled had the Tevatron remained in opera-
tion, but it is clear that the center of mass in the
world of particle physics has shifted. In an ideal
world, we would have kept the Tevatron running
without shutting down other stuf, he says. But
the money wasnt there. Experiments are now
under way at Fermilab that will study the physics
of neutrinosprobably the least understood of
all fundamental particlesby shooting them
from a source at Fermilab through 450 miles of
the earths crust toward a detector in a mine shaft
in Minnesota. Fermilab scientists will also take
part in the Dark Energy Survey, an astronomical
investigation into the nature of dark energy.
But the overriding institutional goal is to once
again host the worlds most powerful particle ac-
celerator. By 2020 Oddone hopes the lab will have
completed construction of an accelerator called
Project X. The near-term purpose of the mile-long
machine will be to generate neutrinos and other particles for ex-
periments at Fermilab. In the long term, the relatively small ac-
celerator will serve as a test bed for technologies that might one
day make it possible to build an afordable successor to the LHC.
Project X is a bridge to getting back to the high-energy fron-
tier of physics, says Steve Holmes, the project manager. Its an
opportunity to grab the leadership position and hold it. When
people at lunch ask me whats the future for us here, I say that the
U.S. led the world in high-energy physics for 70 years. Its the
most fundamental eld of physics, and as a great country we have
to aspire to do that. What I cant tell them is when well get there.
We may not have heard the last from the Tevatron itself. Den-
isov, Roser and their colleagues at the old accelerators two de-
tectors have collected enough data to keep them busy for at least
two years after the shutdown. The huge store of data could help
esh out initial discoveries made by the LHC. There is even an
outside chance that some new result lies buried on a hard drive
somewhere at Fermilab, just waiting to be analyzed. For a little
while this past spring, it looked as if the Tevatron might have giv-
en us the rst hint of physics beyond the Standard Model.
In April, Rosers CDF team announced that it had found very
tentative evidence for a new particle or force of nature in data
collected by the CDF. In a small but statistically signicant num-
ber of cases, the physicists found a bump in the data, an excess
of particles above what the Standard Model predicted. The par-
ticles appeared to be the decay products of some more massive
particle, perhaps an unexpected form of the Higgs boson.
By the end of May the CDF team had analyzed the data
again. The bump is still there, Roser said at the time. Less
than two weeks later, though, Rosers longtime colleague and ri-
val Denisov said that the D-Zero team had completed an inde-
pendent analysis of the CDF data. We saw nothing, he said at a
press conference.
It is not yet clear whether the bump will survive further scru-
tiny. The two groups are now comparing their results to see
where the CDF analysis may have erredif indeed it did err. For
now, it looks like a new era in physics is on hold, as it has been
for more than 30 years. It will be a shame if the bump vanishes.
Discovering the Higgs would have made for quite an exit for the
Tevatron. Within the next year or so we might all nd out if the
LHC can do any better.
MORE TO E XP L ORE
The Dawn of Physics beyond the Standard Model. Gordon Kane in Scientifc American,
Vol. 288, No. 6, pages 6875; June 2003.
The Coming Revolutions in Particle Physics. Chris Quigg in Scientifc American, Vol. 298,
No. 2, pages 4653; February 2008.
The Discovery Machine. Graham P. Collins in Scientifc American, Vol. 298, No. 2, pages
3945; February 2008.
Fermilab: Physics, the Frontier, and Megascience. Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb
and Catherine Westfall. University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science. Ian Sample.
Basic Books, 2010.
Three decades of discovery: Explore a visual history of the Tevatron
at ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/tevatron
Ready, aim: The Tevatron (central ring) is going dark, but physics contin-
ues at Fermilab. Scientists are generating neutrinos using the smaller injec-
tor ring (lower lef) and beaming them through the earth to an underground
detector in Soudan, Minn., 450 miles away.
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Gareth Dyke is a paleontologist at the University of Southampton in
England, where he studies the evolutionary history of dinosaurs and
birds. He is writing a novel inspired by Baron Franz Nopcsas life with
Istvn F
ozy of the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest.

PALEONTOLOGY
DINOSAUR
BARON
THE
OF TRANS YLVANI A
A maverick aristocrats ideas about dinosaur evolution turn
out to have been decades ahead of their time By Gareth Dyke
baron of Szacsal in Transylvania. In addition to being a nobleman,
he was an esteemed authority on dinosaurs and other fossil
animals. The baron had noticed that the Diplodocus toe bone
was oriented incorrectly and was simply trying to x it. Although
Nopcsa failed to garner the respect of the ofcials, history has
been somewhat kinder to him. Among paleontologists today, he is
well known for having discovered and described some of the rst
dinosaurs from central Europe. Yet the details of Nop csas personal
life have often overshadowed his intellectual legacy. Adventurous,
eccentric and wildly ambitious, Nopcsa was a colorful character.
He served as a spy in World War I and made a bid to become
king of Albania. He was also openly homosexual; his lover and
secretary was a much younger Albanian
man named Bajazid Elmaz Doda.
But there was much more to Nopcsa
than his fossil collection and his personal
and political afairs, as recent ndings
have underscored. He pioneered tech-
niques for fossil analysis that are still at
the forefront of paleontological research.
Moreover, his theories about dinosaur evolution turn out to have
been decades ahead of their time. Nopcsa insisted that his Tran-
sylvanian dinosaurs were key to understanding dinosaur evolu-
tion on a global scale. Only in the past few years, with new fossil
discoveries, have scientists begun to appreciate how right he was.
ISLAND OF DWARFS
nopcsa first encountered fossils in 1895, when his sister, Ilona,
happened on some large bones on one of the family estates in
Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary. He pounced on the
remains and brought some to Vienna, where he was attending
secondary school, to show to a geology professor. The professor
T
he year is 1906. a small, nattily dressed man walks over to the
giant Diplodocus skeleton in the entrance hall of the British Museum
of Natural History. He gently lifts one of the dinosaurs huge toe
bones out of its iron mount, ips it over and carefully slips it back
into place. Later he would note in correspondence to a colleague that
his efort was not appreciated. The museum ofcials should have
known better. The visitor was Franz Nopcsa (pronounced nop-cha),
Illustration by Jack Unruh October 2011, ScienticAmerican.com 81
informed him they were from dinosaurs and ofered him the as-
sistance of one of the department technicians to collect more re-
mains and to prepare a formal description. But although he had
hardly any training in paleontology, the 18-year-old Nopcsa de-
cided to go it alone, working day and night to learn anatomy. He
was quick: within a year he wrote a paper on Ilonas bones de-
scribing a new species of ornithopod dinosaur from Transylva-
nia, later dubbed Telmatosaurus.
It was the beginning of a long and productive career for
Nopcsa: over the next 35 years he published more than 100 sci-
entic papers on fossils, many of them cutting-edge. He was one
of the rst to investigate whether the anatomy of long-extinct an-
imals and how they had been fossilized together could be used to
understand how they interacted in life; he championed the Vic-
torian notion that birds were a kind of dinosaur, rather than the
distant reptilian relatives his colleagues believed them to bea
view that has since gained acceptance by the vast majority of
modern paleontologists; he charted the geology of enormous
swaths of central Europethe list goes on and on.
Nopcsa traveled far and wide in his scientic pursuits, but
his most important work derived from discoveries made in his
own backyard. The baron noticed, for example, that Telmato-
saurus, the dwarf sauropod Magyarosaurus (a genus name
coined by German paleontologist Friedrich von Huene to re-
place Nopcsas use of Titanosaurus) and other dinosaurs found
on the Nopcsa estates were signicantly smaller than other
closely related species. Magyarosaurus, for one, was just six me-
ters longtiny compared with other sauropods, which routine-
ly reached lengths of 15 to 20 meters. Because Nopcsa was an ac-
complished geologist, he knew that back when Magyarosaurus
roamed Transylvania some 70 million years ago, at the end of
the Cretaceous period, a warm, shallow sea called Tethys cov-
ered much of southern Europe, leaving only islands of elevated
regions suitable for terrestrial creatures. He also knew that
some island-dwelling mammals, such as the recently extinct
Mediterranean elephants, had evolved small bodies, presum-
ably an adaptation to the limited resources available in these
environments. Putting two and two together, he proposed in
1914 that the burial ground of his dinosaurs had once been part
of an island born of the ooding of Europe by the Tethys Sea. He
called this putative island Htszeg and argued that his dino-
saurs had attained their pint-size proportions as a result of is-
land dwarng.
Although Nopcsas contemporaries would have known
about the pony-size elephants from Crete and other Mediterra-
nean islands, no one had ever proposed that such shrinking
could occur in dinosaurs. The barons bold theory was largely
ignored. But starting in the late 1970s, renewed interest in the
Late Cretaceous beasts of Transylvania put Nopcsas dwarng
scenario back on the table. Since then, it has gained consider-
able support, in part because discoveries of other dinosaurs
have conrmed that the Htszeg dinosaurs were signicantly
smaller than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, as well as
those in Asia and North America.
Recently my own work has bolstered Nopcsas ideas. In
studying a collection of Early Cretaceous bones unearthed from
a Transylvanian bauxite mine in the 1970s, I discovered a num-
ber of very small birds and pterosaurs represented among the
remains. Judging from preserved wing elements, I surmised
that the creatures were probably capable of ying long distanc-
es. As I reported last year in a paper published in Palaeontolo-
gy, these are exactly the kinds of ying animals one would ex-
pect to nd on an isolated island. In fact, the species preserved
in the bauxite mine collection are similar to the ones Nopcsa
found in Htszeg, a few hundred kilometers to the east. The
bauxite mine locality was part of another earlier island in the
Cretaceous archipelago formed by the Tethys.
Fittingly, evidence obtained using a technique Nopcsa him-
self invented has provided some of the strongest support for his
island-dwarng theory. In the 1930s Nopcsa published a revolu-
tionary paper in which he described having exploited the mi-
croscopic structure, or histology, of bone to show that a fossil of
an allegedly new type of duck-billed dinosaur from North Amer-
ica was actually just a juvenile member of a previously known
species. He had gured out that he could estimate how old an
animal was when it died based on the histology visible in thin
slices of bone when viewed under high magnication, much as
one can count growth rings to determine the age of a tree.
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I N BRI EF
Franz Nopcsa was a turn-of-the-
century Transylvanian nobleman
who loved fossils.
Although best known for his personal
and political exploits, he also pio-
neered techniques for fossil analysis
and formulated theories about dino-
saur evolution and dispersal around
the globe.
Recent discoveries underscore that
Nopcsas scientifc ideas were remark-
ably prescient.
Map by Emily Cooper
Ancient islands such as Htszeg, formed by a sea that covered
much of southern Europe during the Late Cretaceous, served
as stepping-stones for dinosaurs on the move and allowed them
to evolve to a small body size.
TETHYS SEA
Htszeg Island
Modern
coastlines
(dotted)
One of the weak spots in Nopcsas dwarf dinosaur theory, when
he rst proposed it, was that he could not exclude the possibility
that his dinos were small simply because they were juveniles. He
passed away before he could apply his histology technique to the
problem. But recently a group of German, American and Roma-
nian paleontologists conducted histological studies on Magyaro-
saurus and concluded that the dainty sauropod was indeed fully
grown, upholding Nopcsas interpretation of the remains as those
of an island dwarf. The team published its ndings last year in
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
Bone histological studies, now standard among paleontolo-
gists, have also cast light on other subjects dear to Nopcsa, in-
cluding bird evolution. For example, in 2009 researchers from
Germany, the U.S. and China reported in PLoS ONE that some
early birdsthe 140-million-year-old Archaeopteryx among
themhave bone structures that show they grew up to a third as
fast as living birds do, exhibiting a pattern more in keeping with
cold-blooded reptiles than todays warm-blooded avians.
Thus, some of the hallmark characteristics of living birds, such
as their extremely fast growth rates, must have taken longer to
evolve than scientists previously thought.
DINOSAURS ON THE MOVE
the significance of Nopcsas Transylvanian dinosaurs extends
well beyond their implications for island-dwarng theories, as
the baron himself knew. Because most of Europe lay under the
Tethys Sea during the Late Cretaceous, the Transylvanian speci-
mens ofer a rare glimpse of European dinosaurs from this peri-
od. Intriguingly, many of the forms found thereincluding the
Htszeg ornithopod Telmatosaurushave counterparts only in
Asia or North Americanot in the Southern Hemisphere. This
distribution pattern suggests that Transylvania was an impor-
tant bridge between Europe and the Late Cretaceous landmass
comprising Asia and North America. Dinosaurs in Europe could
cross the Tethys into Asiamerica, and vice versa, by hopping
along Htszeg and the other islands that formed an archipelago
stretching from the European Alps to Southwest Asia.
New geologic data published last year in Palaeogeography,
Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology has shown that because Ht-
szeg was close to both the European continental margin and to
the open ocean, it probably provided a convenient stepping-stone
for animals moving from east to west. Thus, the dinosaurs of
Transylvania in general, and of Htszeg in particular, will most
likely prove critical to understanding the global distribution of
dinosaurs just before the zenith of their diversity 65 million
years agoa heyday cut short by a cataclysmic asteroid impact
that extinguished their kind.
Forged at a time when the sciences of paleontology and geolo-
gy were still young and evolution was still hotly debated, Nop csas
theories were astonishingly prescient. No doubt they beneted
from his standing as a member of the aristocracy. Because of his
wealth and inuence at the court of the emperor of Austria-Hun-
gary, Nopcsa had huge advantages over the average scholar of his
day. He could travel freely throughout the empire on fossil-hunt-
ing expeditions and make regular pilgrimages to the great muse-
ums of Europe. He seemed to relish these escapes from court life,
readily shedding his Viennese noblemans nery for rough, native
shepherd dress when he set out for the Balkans. Conversant in
several Albanian dialects, Nopcsa would disappear into the hills
of Albania, often for months or years at a time, with only his sec-
retary and lover, Doda, for company. Although he produced an
immense wealth of geologic, meteorological and ethnographic
data over more than a decade of Albanian travel, much of it pub-
lished in the leading scientic journals of the age, it is unlikely
that Nopcsa took leave from the court purely for academic rea-
sons: in 1923 he named a new 70-million-year-old fossil turtle he
had collected in Transylvania Kallokibotion bajazidi, the genus
name meaning beautiful and round, in honor of Doda.
Unfortunately for Nopcsa, world events conspired to strip
away his privilege. After the defeat in 1918 of Germany and its al-
lies, including Austria-Hungary, Transylvania was ceded to Ro-
mania. He lost his estates and income as a result and began to
worry about how he would continue to support his itinerant sci-
entic lifestyle. To make ends meet, he accepted a position as
head of the Hungarian Geological Institute and moved to Buda-
pest. The constraints of institutional life did not suit the free-
wheeling Nopcsa, however, and after just a few years he left his
post to resume traveling with Doda by motorcycle in the Alps
and in Italy, searching for fossils and mapping geologic features.
To raise money to live on, he sold most of his fossil collection, in-
cluding his treasured Transylvanian dinosaurs, to the British
Museum of Natural History (now known as the Natural History
Museum in London), a place he once had visited regularly as an
honored scientic guest.
In the months before he died, Nopcsa received an invitation to
address the Geological Society in Antwerp, Belgium. Although he
was running a high fever, he made the trip. But he fell seriously ill
the night before he was due to talk. Nevertheless, with no prepa-
ration, he delivered a lecture on the geology of Albania in French
to a packed hall. Whenever I talk, he later wrote to a friend back
in Budapest, the room is lled mostly with ladies who hope for
fewer scientic explanations than adventure stories. Surely the
swashbuckling dinosaur baron was happy to indulge them.
Alas, Nopcsas life ended in tragedy. On April 25, 1933, the
great fossil hunter, by now destitute and depressed, served Doda
a drug-laced cup of tea and then fatally shot his sedated lover in
the head before turning the gun on himself. The heartbreaking
suicide note he left for police said, The reason for my suicide is
my nervous system, which is at its end. The fact that I killed my
long-term friend and secretary, Mr. Bajazid Elmaz Doda, in his
sleep, without him having an inkling as to what was going on, was
because I did not want to leave him behind sick, in misery and in
poverty because he could have sufered too much. The baron
may be long gone, but his scientic legacy continues to grow.
MORE TO E XP L ORE
Was Dinosaurian Physiology Inherited by Birds? Reconciling Slow Growth in Archaeop -
teryx. Gregory M. Erickson et al. in PLoS ONE, No. 10; October 9, 2009.
Small Body Size and Extreme Cortical Bone Remodeling Indicate Phyletic Dwarfsm in
Magyarosaurus dacus (Sauropoda: Titanosauria). Koen Stein et al. in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA. Published online April 30, 2010.
European Island Faunas of the Late CretaceousThe Ha
,
teg Island . Special issues of
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Vol. 293, Nos. 34; July 15, 2010.
Early Cretaceous (Berriasian) Birds and Pterosaurs from the Cornet Bauxite Mine,
Romania. Gareth J. Dyke et al. in Palaeontology, Vol. 54, No. 1, pages 7995; January 2011.
See a timeline of Nopcsas discoveries and later work that validated his claims
at ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/dinobaron
Q
&
A SCIENCE TALK
BI OLOGY
Actuary
of the Cell
Building on her Nobel Prizewinning research
on cell function, Elizabeth H. Blackburn is trying
to fnd a simple measure of a persons health risks
Interview by Thea Singer
A
molecular timepiece that resides inside each cell still makes headlines,
decades after Elizabeth H. Blackburn conducted pioneering studies into how
it works. The most recent experiments by Blackburn and other researchers
have demonstrated that these cellular clocks, known as telomeres, may act as
barometers of whether a person will remain healthy or not.
Telomeres, stretches of DNA at the ends
of chromosomes, protect chromosomes from
fraying and sticking to one another. But ev-
ery time a cell dividesas immune and skin
cells dothe telomeres get a little shorter.
This shortening has made telo meres a mark-
er of cellular aging. In some cells, an enzyme
called telomerase replenishes lost segments.
In other cells, though, shortening goes on
unimpeded. When the telomere erodes past
a certain point, the cell stops dividing and ei-
ther enters an arrested state of senescence
or dies. Blackburn and her one-time gradu-
ate student Carol W. Greider, now at Johns
Hopkins University, along with Jack W.
Szostak of Harvard Med i cal School, won the
2009 Nobel Prize in Phys i ology or Medicine
for elucidating many of these processes.
Blackburn, who is based at the Univers i -
ty of California, San Francisco, has never
stopped to catch her breath. In 2004 she and
health psychologist Elissa S. Epel published
a paper linking psychological stress with
telo mere shortening in white blood cells. It
lit a re under telo mere research. Today nu-
merous studies show connections between
shorter telo meres and various diseases. Con-
versely, longer telo meres have been tied to
behaviors such as exercise and stress reduc-
tion. These studies have pointed to the di-
rect possibility of using telo mere length,
measured through a simple blood test, to
WHO
Elizabeth H. Blackburn
LINE OF WORK
A cell and molecular biologist,
Blackburn researches the structure
and functioning of the DNA that
caps the ends of chromosomes.
WHERE
University of California, San Francisco
BIG PICTURE
Blackburn has extended her Nobel
Prizewinning work on telomeres to
develop measures that aim to assess
overall risks for heart disease, cancer
and other chronic illnesses.
I N BRI EF
October 2011, ScienticAmerican.com 85 Photograph by Cody Pickens
Q
&
A SCIENCE TALK
provide a snapshot of overall health and
a glimpse into the aging process.
Last year Blackburn co-founded a
company, Telome Health in Menlo Park,
Calif., to ofer that blood test both to re-
search centers as well as to individuals
through medical providers. Another
group has launched a telomere-testing
company, Life Length, in Madrid. News
of the imminent release of these tests
ignited a controversy about their use-
fulness. Science writer Thea Singer re-
cently spoke to Blackburn about her
work. Excerpts follow.
Scientific American: Weve heard
a lot about how cells age as telomeres
shorten. But how does this shortening
relate to the aging of the whole body?
blackburn: Many studies show that telo-
mere shortness anticipates risk for con-
ditions such as cardiovascular disease,
diabetes, Alzheimers and certain can-
cersand even for mortality. In part of
my U.C.S.F col league Mary Whooleys
Heart and Soul Study that followed 780
people in their 60s and older for four
years, telo mere shortness proved a risk
for mortality. University of Utah geneti-
cist Richard Cawthon followed 143 peo-
ple for 15 to 20 years and found that the
mortality rate for those with shorter
telomeres was nearly double that of peo-
ple with longer telomeres.
Perhaps, then, we should change the
way we talk about telomere short en-
ing and replace words like aging
and cellular aging with phrases
like risk for diseases of aging.
Yep, I think so. I dont like the aging
idea, because I think that it is not quite
so helpful.
What evidence is there that life events
such as chronic stress and childhood
trauma relate to shorter telomeres?
Lets look at childhood trauma. The stud-
ies nd that the number of childhood
traumas relates, quantitatively, to the de-
gree of telo mere shortness in the adult:
the more traumas, the shorter the telo-
meres. Our study showed a striking cor-
relation between the number of years of
chronic stress experienced by the caregiv-
er mothers of a chronically ill child and
the degree of telo mere shortness.
Long-term studies also indicate that
we may be able to slow telo mere
shorteningor even lengthen our
telo meres through behaviors such as
diet and exercise. Tell me about this.
Looking at people with stable coronary
artery disease over ve years, we found
that those with higher levels of marine
omega-3 fatty acid in the blood had less
telo mere shortening overall and that
those whose telomeres actually length-
ened over the ve years were much
more likely to have started with higher
omega-3 levels. We have data on what
has happened to those people, but they
have not been published yet.
Should I up my dosage of omega-3?
These subjects are in their 60s by now
and have mild coronary disease, which
was steady at the onset of the study. So
these results relate to those people. It
may not be true for people who are 80 or
90 or who are 15 to 20.
Youve said that the old medical mod-
el focuses on running tests to decide
which treatments can best eradicate
an infectious agent. But today doctors
very frequently grapple with chronic
diseases that arise over time from a
complex of causes. How does telo mere
research contribute to this new model?
Telo mere research doesnt usually look at
a specic diagnosis per se. For most peo-
ple, what we see are statistical relations
with a set of progressive diseases that of-
ten go together and are more prevalent
with aging. We think they may have some
similar underlying biology. People are
very interested in the idea that chronic
in ammationwhich may be read out by
telo mere shortness in white blood cells or
perhaps even caused in part by telo mere
shortnessmight underlie some of these
things that we separately call, say, diabe-
tes and cardiovascular disease and treat
separately. Telo mere length is one num-
ber that captures a multitude of physio-
logical inuences.
Do you think clinicians are catching
up with this perspective?
I think clinicians want to nd out what
is actionable. I think the idea of using
telo mere length as a monitoring de-
vicethat might be actionable.
Your paper on cancer interception
using drugs and other active means
to stop cancer before it becomes estab-
lisheddovetails with this concept.
Thats right. The point is to intercept
earlybefore you get to the stage of full-
blown disease, which has huge human
and economic costs. Cancer research has
led us to understand earlier and earlier
stages of cancers and how cancers prog-
ress. So now we know that a particular
drug might actually work at a very early
stage in a given cancer. That idea, car-
ried to its extreme, would be: perhaps
we can think of what the risk factors are
for people to even develop certain can-
cers and can then treat them before dis-
ease strikes. Researchers are looking at
high-risk groups for some colon can-
cers, and there are certain ways of inter-
cepting them, for example.
Where do telomeres ft into
the interception picture?
In mice, its clear that telo mere shortness
is a dramatic cancer risk. We still have to
learn how that plays out in humans. But
its been seen in cohorts of people; if you
look at, say, risks for groups of cancers or
some individual cancers, telo mere short-
ness predicts later risk. This could be be-
cause the immune systemwhich is
what youre querying when you look at
telo meres in white blood cellsis getting
compromised. Or it could be that theres
a chronic inammatory state, which is
promoting the cancer. Or the cancer cells
themselves have genomic instability be-
cause their telomeres are too short, and
thats promoting cancer.
Is there a genetic component to
telo mere length and cancer risk?
Jian Gu of the University of Texas M. D.
Anderson Cancer Center led an interest-
ing study implying that the answer is
sometimes yes. He and his colleagues
took an unbiased look to see if telo mere
shortness and cancer risk went together
genetically. The paper they published
concentrated on bladder cancer. They
asked: What variance in the genome is
associated with risk of cancer? And they
found a genetic variant that went with
both telo mere shortness and cancer risk.
Then they looked for the gene itself and
found it was one associated with im-
mune cell function.
Recent headlines say that telo mere
tests for individuals will tell you how
long youll live. Please explain, based
on the science, what it is that telo mere
tests will tell us.
The business that somehow the test will
predict how long youll livethats what I
call silly. The test is not going to diagnose
a disease. And it wont tell you if youre
going to live to be 100. But over time, if
you look at it statistically, it tells you
probabilitiesthat, say, you have a likeli-
hood that you might or might not be
more prone to get some of the common
diseases of aging. A company in addition
to ours that formed to meas ure telo mere
length gave itself the name Life Length,
which I think started meaning certain
things to people. That was probably an
unfort un ate name.
Whats the most benefcial way to use
the tests measurements?
We dont know yet whether there is an
optimum way. We do know you can see
telomere-length changes in six months
or even four months but not in a week.
Based on scientic principles, the more
measurements you can plot on a curve,
the better you can see trends. So the six-
month approach seems reasonable.
The test sounds similar to cholesterol
tests: it gives you a percentilewhere
you fall relative to a norm for people
of similar age, gender, lifestyle
behaviors, and so on.
Thats right, although cholesterol more
specically relates to cardiovascular
disease. The telo mere test is more gen-
eral. You could think of it as weight:
weight can be an indicator of many as-
pects of health. Clearly, if its way too
high, thats not good. Likewise, if telo-
meres are really, really short, thats not
good. But then theres a whole range.
And doctors use weight, right? Its a use-
ful thing. And they look at it over time. I
think telo mere length is similar; its a
number that integrates many diferent
things. And clinically, you wouldnt use
it alone.
Critics of telo mere testing have said
that cholesterol tests are useful
because enough data exist to permit
scientists to establish norms for things
like high and low cholesterol but
that there are not enough data yet to
establish norms for telo mere length.
I dont think thats true. Scientists are so-
phisticated these dayswe dont have to
lump everyone together. We can put
people into groups. There are now hun-
dreds and thousands of telo mere lengths
in various cohorts, and I think we have a
decent idea of what sort of things to ex-
pect. Of course, more is always better.
But you have to start somewhere. There
was a very strong demand for getting
telo mere measures done both in re-
search settings and among individuals.
The idea was that we could start getting
these measures out there without over-
stating the precision of what you can de-
duce from them.
Why did you decide to start a com-
pany rather than doing the mea-
surements in your lab at U.C.S.F.?
It was important to have a responsible,
reliable technology for providing such
measurements. We were overwhelmed
in our ability to handle all the requests
at U.C.S.F., so we transferred the tech-
nology to the company.
How do you respond to concerns that
life and medical insurance companies
might use telomere-test results to
determine eligibility for coverage?
We cant hide information. But we can
certainly try to make sure that any clini-
cal information we provide is accurate
and is taken in the proper context and not
misused scientically for exclusionary
reasons. Besides, given that telomere-test
measurements provide only probabilities,
theyd be a poor source for making such
decisions. But its something that one has
to keep thinking about. Our aim is to pro-
vide the tests as a way to help people take
greater charge of their own health.
Critics compare telo mere tests with
the sometimes hyped direct-to-
consumer genetic tests that ofer
to fnd your genetic variations and
tell you your susceptibility to certain
diseases. How are these telo mere
tests diferent?
The telo mere tests are not direct-to-con-
sumer. We should be very clear. We plan to
start ofering them in October through
health professionals. Multiple cohorts and
multiple studies have established clear
statistical links with telo mere shortness
and risks for diseases. Telo mere science
has been emerging at a rapid pace recent-
ly, and its sometimes hard for scientists
not involved in such studies to keep up.
Are you getting your own
telomeres measured?
Yes, when the company starts ofering
individual tests. I look forward to it.
Thea Singer is a Boston-based science writer.
P
A
S
I
E
K
A

P
h
o
t
o

R
e
s
e
a
r
c
h
e
r
s
,
I
n
c
.
Harbingers of mortality: Telomeres
at chromosome tips glow brightly here.
MORE TO E XP L ORE
Stress Less. Thea Singer. Hudson Street Press, 2010. An
investigation of stress, telomeres and aging.
Decoding Immortality. A Smithsonian Channel doc-
umentary about Blackburns work: www.smithsonian-
channel.com/site/sn/show.do?show=137613
Elizabeth Blackburns 2009 Nobel lecture: http://nobel-
prize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/
blackburn-lecture.html
Read more of the interview with Blackburn at
ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/blackburn
Recommended by Kate Wong
C
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M
i
n
d
e
n
P
i
c
t
u
r
e
s
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The Sibling Efect: What the Bonds among
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by Jefrey Kluger. Riverhead, 2011 ($26.95)
America the Vulnerable: Inside the New Threat
Matrix of Digital Espionage, Crime, and Warfare,
by Joel Brenner. Penguin Press, 2011 ($27.95)
Galileos Muse: Renaissance Mathematics and the
Arts, by Mark A. Peterson. Harvard University Press,
2011 ($28.95)
The Great Sea: A Human History of the
Mediterranean, by David Abulafa. Oxford
University Press, 2011 ($34.95)
The End of the Beginning: Cosmology, Time
and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang,
by Adam Frank. Free Press, 2011 ($26)
The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial
Discoveries Changed Our View of Human
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Press, 2011 ($34.95)
The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic
Age, by Nathan Wolfe. Times Books, 2011 ($26)
Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate
Takeover of Life ItselfAnd the Consequences
for Your Health and Our Medical Future,
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Lifeblood: How to Change the World One
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ALSO NOTABLE
World in the Balance:
The Historic Quest for an Absolute
System of Measurement
by Robert P. Crease. W. W. Norton, 2011 ($26.95)
Philosopher Robert B. Crease of Stony Brook University
charts the evolution of measurement from the regional sys-
tems developed to serve local needs to the universal system
adopted by nearly every country on eartha shift as star-
tling as if the entire world came to speak one language.
How the Dog Became the Dog:
From Wolves to Our Best Friends
by Mark Derr. Overlook, 2011 ($26.95)
Thousands of years ago, probably somewhere in the an-
cient Near East, Fido got his start. Mark Derr, author of two
previous books on dogs, traces the origin and evolution of
mans best friend from its wild wolf ancestors and explores
how the bond between humans and dogs was forged.
The Magic of Reality:
How We Know Whats Really True
by Richard Dawkins. Free Press, 2011 ($29.99)
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins teams up with illus-
trator Dave McKean to create a graphic science book ad-
dressing questions ranging from Who was the rst person?
to What is a rainbow? For each phenomenon, Dawkins de-
tails both the mythologies people initially developed to make
sense of it and the actual explanation, as revealed by science.
Deceptive Beauties:
The World of Wild Orchids
by Christian Ziegler.
University of Chicago Press,
2011 ($45)
Orchids are experts in the art of seduction.
They have acquired all manner of adapta-
tions aimed at tricking insects into helping
them propagate. Photographer Christian
Ziegler captures these sex symbols of the
plant world in 150 portraits taken on ve
continents in environments ranging from
tropical cloud forest to semidesert.
Prosthechea chacaoensis
Cognizin
is a registered trademark
of Kyowa Hakko Bio Co., Ltd.
Copyright 2011 Kyowa Hakko U.S.A., Inc.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Follow Cognizin
Think Clearly.
Your brain. It makes up only 2% of your body weight, yet it consumes roughly 20% of your bodys energy when at rest.
That means the human brain needs a whole lot of nutrition to stay alert and focused throughout the day. Citicoline is
natures way of keeping the brains energy-producing centers firing. Clinically tested for efficacy, Cognizin
delivers a
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To learn more about Cognizin
visit www.cognizin.com
Look for Cognizin Citicoline
in these fine brands.
Cognizin_Rev4.indd 1 8/25/11 11:38 AM
Skeptic by Michael Shermer
Viewing the world with a rational eye Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic
magazine (www.skeptic.com). His new
book is The Believing Brain. Follow him on
Twitter @michaelshermer
90 Scientic American, October 2011 Illustration by Patrick Leger
The Decline
of Violence
Be skeptical of claims that we live
in an ever more dangerous world
On July 22, 2011, a 32-year-old Norwegian named Anders Behring
Breivik opened re on participants in a Labour Party youth camp
on the island of Utoya after exploding a bomb in Oslo, resulting
in 77 dead, the worst tragedy in Norway since World War II.
English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously argued in his
1651 book, Leviathan, that such acts of violence would be com-
monplace without a strong state to enforce the rule of law. But
arent they? What about 9/11 and 7/7, Auschwitz and Rwanda,
Columbine and Fort Hood? What about all the murders, rapes
and child molestation cases we hear about so often? Can anyone
seriously argue that violence is in decline? They can, and they
doand they have data, compellingly compiled in a massive 832-
page tome by Harvard University social scientist Steven Pinker
entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has De-
clined (Viking, 2011). The problem with anecdotes about single
events is that they obscure long-term trends. Breivik and his ilk
make front-page news for the very reason that they are now un-
usual. It was not always so.
Take homicide. Using old court and county records in Eng-
land, scholars calculate that rates have plummeted by a factor of
10, 50 and, in some cases, 100for example, from 110 homicides
per 100,000 people per year in 14th-century Oxford to fewer than
one homicide per 100,000 in mid-20th-century London. Similar
patterns have been documented in Italy, Germany, Switzerland,
the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The longer-term trend is even
more dramatic, Pinker told me in an interview: Violent deaths of
all kinds have declined, from around 500 per 100,000 people per
year in prestate societies to around 50 in the Middle Ages, to
around six to eight today worldwide, and fewer than one in most
of Europe. What about gun-toting Americans and our inordinate
rate of homicides (currently around ve per 100,000 per year)
compared with other Western democracies? In 2005, Pinker com-
putes, just eight tenths of 1 percent of all Americans died of do-
mestic homicides and in two foreign wars combined.
As for wars, prehistoric peoples were far more murderous than
states in percentages of the population killed in combat, Pinker
told me: On average, nonstate societies kill around 15 percent of
their people in wars, whereas todays states kill a few hundredths of
a percent. Pinker calculates that even in the murderous 20th cen-
tury, about 40 million people died in war out of the approximately
six billion people who lived, or 0.7 percent. Even if we include war-
related deaths of citizens from disease, famine and genocide, that
brings the death toll up to 180 million deaths, or about 3 percent.
Why has violence declined? Hobbes was only partially right in
advocating top-down state controls to keep the worse demons of
our nature in check. A bottom-up civilizing process has also been
under way for centuries, Pinker explained: Beginning in the 11th
or 12th [century] and maturing in the 17th and 18th, Europeans
increasingly inhibited their impulses, anticipated the long-term
consequences of their actions, and took other peoples thoughts
and feelings into consideration. A culture of honorthe readi-
ness to take revengegave way to a culture of dignitythe readi-
ness to control ones emotions. These ideals originated in explicit
instructions that cultural arbiters gave to aristocrats and noble-
men, allowing them to diferentiate themselves from the villains
and boors. But they were then absorbed into the socialization of
younger and younger children until they became second nature.
That second nature is expressed in the unreported 10,000
acts of kindness, as the late Stephen Jay Gould memorably styled
the number of typically benevolent interactions among people for
every hostile act. This is the glue that binds us all in, as Abraham
Lincoln so eloquently expressed it, every living heart and hearth-
stone all over this broad land through the mystic chords of
memory that have been touched again by these better angels of
our nature.
The writer would like you to con-
sider that peoples awakening to the
existence of a natural law has that
power. It is known as natures law of
absolute right.
For nearly two decades, this behav-
ioral law has often been explained
in one-page advertisements in sev-
eral national magazines, newspapers
and on TV and radio. More impor-
tant there is a Website where people
worldwide can learn how to get out
of trouble, stay out of trouble, and
start a new life.
This natural law exerts the power
of life and death for every person, as
is evidenced by the untold numbers
of people who previously had popu-
lated this planet.
Creations law of absolute right
states: Right action gets right
results; wrong action gets wrong
results. The law denes right ac-
tion as thinking and behavior that
are rational and honest, correctly
resolving each situation.
Peoples motivation consisting of
man-made laws, personal beliefs,
likes, dislikes, wants and dont wants
does not conform to creations law
of absolute right, and when wrong
results occur, people have not known
to look to themselves.
Laws of nature never play favor-
ites. People obey natural laws or they
suffer the consequences. That is the
awakening information for this gen-
eration. As people ignore natures
behavioral law, eventually they suf-
fer the eternal sleep from which there
is no awakening.
Whoever or whatever is the creator
revealed this behavioral law to the
mind of Richard W. Wetherill in 1929
in answer to his fervent appeal for an
understanding of humanitys plight.
And although Wetherill took no cred-
it for identifying this law, his efforts
to inform people of the aw in their
approach to life met with opposition
until he published his book, Tower
of Babel. In 1952 small study groups
were formed, later many members
relocated under Wetherills direction
in southeastern Pennsylvania.
So much for a brief history of the
group that now brings you the good
news of the created law of absolute
right, and to the awakening that it
brings to a world population in deep
trouble and chaos.
Centuries ago the Founding Fa-
thers of America did their best to
establish a country ruled in a God-
fearing way by representatives of the
people. Newcomers from other coun-
tries, willing to be governed by its
Constitution and Bill of Rights, came
in droves. Now, the divergence of
political thinking is causing turmoil
and confusion for the populace.
There is only one solution to this
problem: people must obey cre-
ations law of absolute right. Those
who do enjoy a life that is both fair
and well worth living.
ADVERTISEMENT
Concerned persons suggest that unless there is an awakening,
government in Americas republic will continue being
transformed into a foreign ideology. Ask yourself, is there
an awakening powerful enough to halt that juggernaut of
governmental control of what its citizens can and cannot do?
FREE On-Line
eBooks
Read, download, print!
www.alphapub.com
Natural-law Essays and Books de-
scribe the function of natures law of
absolute right. Read, download, print
books and essays FREE.
If you lack access to the Website,
our books are also available in print
at low cost. For an order form, write
to The Alpha Publishing House, PO
Box 255, Royersford, PA 19468.
This public-service message is from a self-nanced,
nonprot group of former students of Mr. Wetherill.
Untitled-1 1 8/17/11 3:53 PM
Anti Gravity by Steve Mirsky
The ongoing search for fundamental farces
Illustration by Matt Collins
Steve Mirsky has been writing the Anti Gravity
column since atmospheric carbon dioxide levels
were about 358 parts per million. He also hosts
the Scientifc American podcast Science Talk.
Surface Tension
Sit down, youre rocking the stadium
Its a beautiful afternoon at the ballpark, at which you have
plunked down good money to be a spectator. Then it starts head-
ing your way. From of in the distance, other members of the
crowd inexplicably sacrice their individuality and join together
to get up sequentially and then briey raise their arms to the
heavens before returning to their seats. The move rolls across
sections of the stands. It draws closer and closer. And then youre
engulfed. Whether you took part or just sat there waiting for it to
pass, youve been subsumed. You have drowned in the Wave.
But nowfor the second time in one summer!a reasonable
idea has emerged from Texas. The public address announcer of
the defending (as I write this in August, anyway) American
League champion Texas Rangers is trying to get fans to stop the
Wave. The team, though not ofcially endorsing a Wave ban, has
taken to displaying a warning on the scoreboard that states, em-
phatically and uppercasedly (printed verbatim):
SURGEONS HAVE DETERMINED THAT DOING THE WAVE WILL, YES, WILL
CAUSE TEARS TO THE SUPRAPINATUS MUSCLE AND THE INFRASPINATUS
MUSCLE FROM THE THROWING OF INDIVIDUALS ARMS RAPIDLY INTO THE
AIR. IN ADDITION, ANY CHILDREN DOING THE WAVE WILL BE SOLD TO THE
CIRCUS. DO NOT DO THE WAVE IN THE BALLPARK, DOING THE WAVE IS SAFE
AT PRO FOOTBALL GAMES AND MILEY CYRUS CONCERTS.
(The other good idea to come out of the Lone Star State re-
cently was the decision in July by the Texas Board of Education
to reject antievolution supplements to high school biology text-
books. The National Center for Science Education [NCSE] re-
ported that the supplements called intelligent design the sci-
entic communitys new default position, which is true if by
default position one means doubled over from Pagliacci-like
paroxysms of miserable laughter. The NCSEs Joshua Rosenau
also said that the supplements are not only laced with cre-
ationist arguments, they are also remarkably shoddy, teeming
with misspellings, typographical errors, and mistaken claims of
fact. The use of such materials in a biology class would have
been an insult to pedagogy and as antithetical to reason as
would be, say, a governor who has advocated for secession de-
ciding to then run for president.)
Now, Im not against the kinds of dynamics that lead to a
Wave. Some scientists have likened the Wave to the rapid and in-
tricate movements of ocks of birds or schools of shthe group
acts as a coordinated unit without the benet of any individual
leader. Or, looked at another way, each individual becomes a
leader, because its behavior informs its neighbor of the next
move immediately after it gets the news from its traveling com-
panion on the other side. Slow-motion videos conclusively show
that a turn moving through a wheeling bird ock or sh school
looks very much like a wave passing through a uid, when they
are not showing that an umpire has blown yet another close call.
Speaking of umpires, heres a realization I had: theyre un-
necessary. The obvious calls, for example, when a base runner is
out by a mile, dont require an umpire. And for the incredibly
close calls, the so-called bang-bang plays, the standard line is:
It could have gone either way. The hope here is that technolog-
ical ofciating will soon replace umpires. And any purists who
argue that human error is part of the game can be comforted
by the postgame sight of dozens of fans wandering around the
parking lot trying to remember where they left their cars.
Back to the billowing, uttering, undulating and annoying
Wave. As I mentioned at the outset, when I go to a game, I pay
to be a spectator. If Im actually providing entertainment to my
fellow fans, well, I want a piece of the gate. Seriously, the
worlds most skilled practitioners of their craft are at work on
the eld, and we mere mortals should pay attention. Texas is
correct: keep the Wave in schools of sh and keep creationism
out of schools of humans.
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Untitled-2 1 8/25/11 3:50 PM
50, 100 & 150 Years Ago compiled by Daniel C. Schlenof
Innovation and discovery as chronicled in Scientifc American
in which a local periodical refers to the
efect of ultra-violet beams on bacteria
and to the fact that such beams are
abundantly developed by mercury in-
candescent lamps, and relates that
through this medium milk may now be
sterilized in a few minutes. An apparatus
has been constructed whereby the milk
ows in a thin stream along an electric
light. It is said the water was puried
in a few minutes, without appreciably
increasing its temperature.
War from the Air
The rapid development of the aero-
plane for military and naval purposes
[see illustration] behooves us to consid-
er it most seriously in the problems of
seacoast and canal fortication. We like
to boast of our splendid isolation, of the
steel-throated monsters that guard the
entrances to our harbors. Suppose, for
instance, that ten years hence, every
battleship is equipped with ying ma-
chines; also that an enemys eet ap-
pears fty miles of New York. Would it
be necessary to pass our forts in order to
destroy the metropolis? Hardly; a eet of
aeroplanes would be dispatched; within
an hour they would be over the city,
obeying wireless orders from their com-
mander, and soon it would be a mass of
ames. Fantastic? Possibly so.
Full text of this article is at
www.ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/aeroplane
October 1861
Teatime
In consequence of
the scarcity of tea in
the South, the South-
erners are said to be
reviving the use of
the Yopon or Yaupon (Ilex cassine), of
which the North Carolina Indians made
their black drink, and which has been
more or less used ever since in that re-
gion, though mainly by the poorer class-
es. The plant grows on the coast from
Virginia southward, especially on the low
islands which enclose Pamlico Sound.
The leaves and twigs are gathered by the
inhabitants and bartered for corn, bushel
for bushel. It is a suggestive fact that it
contains the same principle which
is found in both tea and cofee and
is called theine or cafeine.
Arctic Expedition
Amid our national troubles the
public seems to have forgotten the
expedition of Dr. Isaac Israel Hayes
and his companions to the Arctic
regions, in search of more denite
information regarding the open
polar sea reported by Dr. Elisha
Kent Kane. Since the fall of 1860,
when the explorers were at Upper-
navic, nothing has been heard of
them. In the dismal regions of per-
petual snow these heroic Ameri-
cans are struggling to extend geo-
graphic science amid the icebergs
of the north, altogether uncon-
scious of the more painful struggle
between man and man now taking
place in their native land.
The day after this went to press, news
arrived by telegraph from Halifax that
Dr. Hayes had arrived there safely,
unsuccessful in his mission. S
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October 1961
Is Bad Air Bad?
Is air pollution in fact
a menace to public
health? The rst place
to look for damage by
unclean air would be the body surfaces
exposed to air: the skin, which is hardy
and mainly covered by clothing, and the
respiratory passages, which are not cov-
ered at all. There is evidence that a com-
monplace disorder of the bronchial tubes
and lungschronic bronchitis and em-
physemais showing an alarming in-
crease in some places. At the same time,
it cannot be said that any particular at-
mospheric pollutant is the cause of bron-
chitis-emphysema or other bronchopul-
monary disease, in the legal or scientic
sense of the term. If something is hap-
pening to the public health from the
widespread pollution of the air, it must be
happening to a large number of people.
Yet it must be something that goes on un-
dramatically in its individual manifesta-
tions; otherwise it would attract public
notice as an epidemic.
October 1911
Hail Costs
In the absence of any practical method
of actually averting the destructive efects
of hail, the agricultural population must
look to insurance to mitigate the loss to
the individual suferer. At the present
time, however, hail insurance, although
practiced for over a century, is founded
upon a far from secure basis of informa-
tion. Statistics of the distribution of hail-
storms in space and time, and of the dam-
age inicted thereby, are systematically
collected from year to year in but few
countries. The rst steps toward improv-
ing the organization of hail insurance and
extending its benets to all countries have
been taken during the past year by the In-
ternational Institute of Agriculture, Rome.
Clean Milk
We read in a Daily Consular Report a
note from Consul Mahin, of Amsterdam,
The airplane expands its role as a weapon
of war over land and sea, 1911
OCTOBER 11-12
SAN FRANCISCO
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ACADEMY OF
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Register now and
use code SCIAM50
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Confrmed Speakers:
Offcial Media Partner:
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Jurvetson
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UNLOCK THE
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A few innovative cleantech companies will be selected to present
on the main stage or in the investor boardroom as part of our
Innovator Showcase. Contact [email protected] to apply.
Presented by In Partnership with
Untitled-1 1 8/24/11 12:18 PM
SOLAR SCIENCE
Speaker: Pl Brekke Ph.D.
A Cosmic Voyage Through the Universe
Since the ancients observations and
Galileos discoveries, humans have been
driven to explore the universe. Deep-space
finds by sophisticated telescopes and
satellites stoke our curiosity. Using imagery
from modern space-based telescopes, take
a cosmic journey. Well boldly go where new
solar systems are born and visualize black
holes, neutron stars, and supernovas.
The Stormy Sun How Does it Affect
our Technology Based Society?
100 years ago, solar storms occurred without
humans noticing the damage they caused.
Today with satellite systems, GPS, and electrical
grids vulnerable to solar weather, its a different
story. Learn about the impact of solar weather
activity as well as forecasting, early-warning,
and prediction resources. Find out whats hot
in sun science!
The Northern Lights:
A Message from the Sun
What is more beautiful than the aurora borealis
dancing across the sky? Spanning the myths
and modern science behind the northern lights,
well discuss coronal mass ejections, the
magnetosphere and solar wind, and the Earths
magnetic eld and solar particles. Learn where
to see this phenomenon that has fascinated
through the ages, and how to predict its
appearances.
Does the Sun Contribute
to Climate Change?
In the last 150 years the Earth has warmed
~0.7C. In the same period both concentrations
of atmospheric greenhouse gases and the level
of solar activity increased. Related phenomena?
Its not a trivial task to untangle the two. Dr. Pl
Brekke summarizes current understandings
and discusses his opinion that the future
holds surprising answers on why solar activity
varies and the relationship of solar activity
and Earths climate.
ALPINE ARCHAEOLOGY
Speaker: Patrick Hunt, Ph.D.
Medicine in the Ancient Western World
What is the the most profound secret about
medicine in the ancient world? Arguably,
that while deep superstition and ignorance
were elements of medicine in antiquity, logic
and rationality entered medical practice
early on. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and
Rome have long medical traditions. Hear
how significant aspects of ancient medicine
are surprisingly familiar.
Science in Archaeology:
New Perspectives on Old Problems
tzi the Iceman was discovered as a frozen
5300 year-old ice mummy high in the
Alps in 1991. Through tzis case learn
how forensic investigations in microbiology,
chemistry, physics, and geology help bring
ancient wonders to life.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
Climatic Problems, Famine, Disease,
War, and Mass Death in History
Human history records apocalyptic cycles of
connected catastrophes through environmental
or human causation. Through such disasters,
humans have always been susceptible to food-
supply famine, which brings malnutrition and
at times disease. Dr. Hunt discusses history
and current work on paleoclimatic environments
as a potential model for understanding the
multifactorial and interconnected nature of the
impact of global warming. Learn why and what
big-picture thinking is required.
Tracking Hannibal
Where did Hannibal lead 38,000 infantry,
8,000 cavalry, and 37 war elephants through
the Alps in 218 BCE? The mystery of
Hannibals route has consumed archaeologist
Patrick Hunt for over a decade. Hear about
Dr. Hunts quest for the route, using scientic,
satellite imaging and historical materials,
and his own hair-raising explorations of the
Alpine passes.
BRIGHT HORIZONS 12
APRIL 12-20, 2012 ; RHINE RIVER CRUISE ; www.InsightCruises.com/sciam12
Curious how magic works? Ready to absorb the latest science, without
distraction? Join Scientic American for current science and immersion
into German culture and scenic beauty, on a river cruise sailing from
Amsterdam, The Netherlands to Basel, Switzerland on AMA Waterwayss
AmaCello, April 1220, 2012. Particle physics, cognitive neuroscience, solar
science, and alpine archaeology are on our itinerary, along with medieval
German cities and Strasbourg, France.
Take a close look at sensory perception and visual illusions. Dig into
medicine in the ancient world and the interplay of natural and physical
sciences in archaeology. Illuminate the profound Sun-Earth connection.
Capture evolving thought in subatomic physics. You can lose yourself in the
rich intricacies of science while the AmaCello and its English-speaking staff
provide gracious service, comfortable quarters, and superb regional cuisine.
Bright Horizons 12 offers distilled cutting edge science and local brews
together with long awaited relaxation with good friends. You can add
even more Aha! moments to your itinerary with an optional post-cruise
excursion to CERN, or nd your inner Parisian on an optional 1, 2, or 3-day
post-cruise visit to the City of Lights.
Game for ne times on the Rhine? Visit InSightCruises.com/SciAm-12 or
call our Concierge at 650-787-5665 for the full scoop. Make your reserva-
tion now, as capacity is limited.
The cruise fare is approximately $3,674 for either a Category A or B cabin, per
person. The Bright Horizons Program costs $1,195. Taxes and fees are $199
per person. Gratuities are 105. Program subject to change. For more info
please call 650-787-5665 or email us at [email protected]
Cologne
Koblenz
Rdesheim
Utrecht
Worms
Speyer
Strasbourg
Breisach
Basel
GENEVA (CERN)
FRANCE
CZECH
REPUBLIC
AUSTRIA
SWITZERLAND
BELGIUM
LUXEMBOURG
GERMANY
THE NETHERLANDS
AMSTERDAM
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Untitled-4 1 8/26/11 3:41 PM
HIGHLIGHTS
PARTICLE PHYSICS
Speaker: Frank Linde, Ph.D.
Quantum Questions
Welcome to the world of the infinitely small
and the weird phenomena that come with it,
like slow-running clocks and anti-particles.
Dr Linde leads us through the discoveries,
concepts, and studies in the puzzling world
of quantum mechanics in a session certain
to spark your curiosity about the paradoxes
and possibilities quantum physics poses.
Past and Present at CERN
To orient us to the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC)s significance, Dr. Linde recaps the
highlights of CERNs low energy LEP
accelerator which studied the Standard Model
of particle physics. Learn how physicists think
the LHC experiment will address current
challenges in particle physics: the origin of
particle masses; the mystery of dark matter
and the apparent absence of antimatter in
our everyday life.
Particle Physics Matters
What has particle physics done for you today?
Dr. Linde discusses the societal benets of his
research. Learn how the particle physics eld
leads to the development of novel technologies
and applications in medicine, information
technology, energy, nance and commerce,
and more. Find out how basic particle research,
whose signicance might not be obvious,
touches on all our lives.
Astroparticle Physics
Parked at the intersection of particle physics,
astronomy, and cosmology, astroparticle
physics is evolving rapidly. Dr. Linde guides
you through the strange terrain of astropar-
ticle physics research rooted at CERN. Hear
how deep-sea neutrino telescopes search for
ripples in the space-time fabric itself and how
huge cosmic-ray observatories are seeking
answers to the big questions.
COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Speakers: Stephen Macknik, Ph.D.
& Susana Martinez-Conde, Ph.D.
How the Brain Constructs
the World We See
All our understandings of our life experiences
are derived from brain processes, and are not
necessarily the result of an event in the real
world. Neuroscientists are researching the
cerebral processes underlying perception to
understand our experience of the universe.
Discover how our brain constructs, not recon-
structs, the world we see.
Windows on the Mind
Whats the connection behind eye movements
and subliminal thought? Join Drs. Macknik
and Martinez-Conde in a look at the latest
neurobiology behind microsaccades:
involuntary eye movements that relate to
perception and cognition. Learn how micro-
saccades suggest your bias toward certain
objects, their relationship to visual illusions,
and the pressing questions spurring visual
neurophysiologists onward.
Champions of Illusion
The study of visual illusions is critical to
understanding the basic mechanisms of
sensory perception, and helps with cures for
visual and neurological diseases. Connoisseurs
of illusion, Drs. Macknik and Martinez-Conde
produce the annual Best Illusion of the Year
Contest . Study the most exciting novel
illusions with them, and learn what makes
these illusions work.
Sleights of Mind
Magic fools us because humans have hardwired
processes of attention and awareness that
are hackable. A good magician uses your
minds own intrinsic properties against you.
Magicians insights, gained over centuries
of informal experimentation, have led to new
discoveries in the cognitive sciences, and
also reveal how our brains work in everyday
situations. Get a front-row seat as the key
connections between magic and the mind
are unveiled!
A FULL DAY IN AMSTERDAM
What makes Amsterdam a perennial favorite? InSight Cruises
invites you to nd out on a private, full-day tour of the Venice
of the North. Discover the unique charms of Amsterdam as
you get oriented with a coach tour of cultural touchstones.
Then anchor your vacation album with images from your
cruise through the citys tree-lined UNESCO World Heritage
canals, getting a superb view of 17th century gabled homes,
old bridges, and bicycles and more bicycles. We focus on the
nest, savoring an Old Dutch welcome and contemporary
cuisine at one of Amsterdams best restaurants, and then
paint ourselves into the scene at the Rijksmuseum with a
visit to The Masterpieces exhibit. Start your Bright Horizons
memories and fun and join us! $275 pp.
INSIDERS TOUR
OF THE MPIA
Private tours of Max Planck
Institute for Astronomy (MPIA)
and the newly opened Center
for Astronomy Education
and Outreach on April 16,
2012 (mid-cruise) ($275 pp,
includes elegant lunch)
Well board a bus to Heidelberg
right after breakfast. Our tour
will include a visit to the Max
Planck Institute for Astronomy, a presentation at the Center for Astronomy Education
and Outreach including a planetarium show about the latest astronomical research
done in Heidelberg, followed by a brief visit to the historical instruments of the
Landessternwarte founded by Max Wolf in 1898. Well conclude our excursion
with a memorable lunch in downtown Heidelberg.
PRIVATE, INSIDERS TOUR OF CERN
April 20, 2012 From the tiniest constituents of matter to the immensity of the
cosmos, discover the wonders of science and technology at CERN. Join Bright
Horizons for a private post-cruise, custom, full-day tour of this iconic facility.
Whether you lean toward concept or application theres much to pique your
curiousity. Discover the excitement of fundamental research and get a behind-
the-scenes, insiders look of the worlds largest particle physics laboratory.
Our full day will be led by a CERN physicist. Well have an orientation; visit an
accelerator and experiment; get a sense of the mechanics of the large hadron
collider (LHC); make a refueling stop for lunch; and have time to peruse exhibits
and media on the history of CERN and the nature of its work.
This tour includes. transfer from Basel (end of cruisej to our 0eneva hotel
(April 19j hotel (8 nightsj the nights of April 19, April 2O, and April 21
full oreakfasts (8j April 2O, 21, and 22 transfer from hotel to CERh and
oack to the hotel on April 2O lunch at CERh cocktail part] the evening
after our visit to CERh (April 2Oj free da] in 0eneva, transfers to/from
downtown provided (April 21j transfer to airport for return home (April 22j
The price is $799 per person (based on double occupancy). This trip is limited
to 50 people. NOTE: CERN charges no entrance fee to visitors
Untitled-5 1 8/26/11 3:50 PM
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STEVEN HAWLEY, PH.D.
The Legacies of the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was technically, scientifi-
cally, and culturally transformational. Re-live
the challenges, triumphs, and tragedies from
30 years of Space Shuttle operations from
the perspective of a former astronaut and
flight operations manager. Find out what
China, Russia, and others are accomplishing
in space, and explore potential directions
for space exploration that may build on the
Space Shuttles legacies.
My Life with the Hubble Space
Telescope (HST)
Dr. Steven Hawley was on hand when HST
was deployed from Space Shuttle Discovery
(STS-31), and on a record-setting Hubble
maintenance mission (STS-82). Hear a rst-
hand account of how HST both revolutionized
operations in Space and our understanding
STEPHEN P. MARAN, PH.D.
Galileo To Hubble and Beyond
How do Galileos mind-blowing first
telescopic discoveries contrast with current
knowledge of the same celestial phenom-
ena, examined with 21st century telescopes
and space probes? Both Galileo and Hubble
Space Telescope focus on centers of revolu-
tion, moons, planets, and rings, and galax-
ies. Find out how 17th and 21st century
optical astronomy compare and relate.
Mystery Forces in the Solar System
Astronomers have investigated puzzles and
discrepancies noted in the paths of moving
bodies, and discovered previously unknown
celestial objects and astrophysical phenomena.
While each mystery solved is just a footnote in
space discovery, together they demonstrate the
unforeseen benets of scientic exploration.
Get the details with Stephen Maran.
Through Time and Space With the
Hubble Space Telescope
What is the signicance of the Hubble Space
Telescope? Join Dr. Maran for a look at the
whats and hows, highs and lows of the Hubble
Space Telescope. The epic story spans vision,
disaster, innovation, and outstanding discovery,
much of which was unforeseen when the
Hubble project began. Listen in on missions
accomplished and new beginnings afoot.
Exoplanets and Life in Space
My, how things have changed! For years as-
tronomers largely denied the existence of exo-
planets. Now astronomers nd planets wherever
they look. Explore the stunning contributions
of NASAs planet-hunting Kepler mission to the
search for exoplanets and Goldilocks zones
where life could exist. Join the discussion about
the possibilities and implications.
MURRAY FELSHER PH.D.
Observing a Changing World
Geospatial imaging scientists use an array
of remote sensing technologies to image the
Earth from Space. Gain a basic understanding
and appreciation of how sensor technology
now aboard earth-orbiting spacecraft provides
data and information about planet Earth. Join
Dr. Felsher in a program which will test your
assumptions, expand your horizons, and pique
your curiosity.
Topics include:
s .ATURAL DISASTER MONITORING ASSESSMENT AND
mitigation: ood plain inundation, tsunami,
earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions
s 2ENEWABLE AND NONRENEWABLE RESOURCE
mapping: crop identication and yield, preci-
sion agriculture, and petroleum and mineral
exploration
s %NVIRONMENTAL APPLICATIONS DESERTIlCATION
and deforestation and oil spills
s 3CIENCE APPLICATIONS METEOROLOGY OCEANOG
raphy, and hydrology
s 0OLICY AND POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS LAND USE
planning, coastal zone management
s h4HE 6IEW &ROM 3PACE 0LANET %ARTH AS AN
!RTISTS 0ALETTEv A LOOK AT TERRESTRIAL IMAGES
from an aesthetic perspective
BRIGHT HORIZONS 14
JUNE 815, 2012 ; ALASKA CRUISE ; www.InsightCruises.com/SciAm-14
What awaits you in Alaska on Bright Horizons 14? The Great Land and
Scientic American present legacies and frontiers for your enjoyment.
Based on Celebrity Cruises Innity, roundtrip Seattle June 815th, 2012,
we head up the Inside Passage and get the inside scoop on the Hubble
Space Telescope, geospatial imaging, particle physics at CERN, and
social psychology. Sail into a state of Native cultures, Gold Rush
history, and rich, diverse habitats.
Powered by the midnight sun, surrounded by purple mountain majesty,
explore the complex terrain of emotion and consciousness with Dr. John
Cacioppo. Get details on the big picture of geospatial imaging with
Dr. Murray Felsher. Catch up on particle physics at CERN with Dr. James
Gillies. Get a rst-hand account of life on the space station with astronaut
Dr. Steven Hawley. Peer into the past and future of telescopic space
exploration with Dr. Stephen Maran. Launch your Bright Horizons 14 fun
with an optional pre-cruise sortie to the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
Connect to the science community on Bright Horizons 14. Inhale Alaskas
unabashed outdoorsy spirit. Enjoy Native art and historic places. Sample
unrivaled birdwatching. Glimpse bears on the beach and whales in the
waves. Share glacier-watching and hot cocoa with a friend. Bring home
the latest in planetary science, cognitive science, particle physics,
geospatial imaging, and space exploration. Please join us!
Cruise prices vary from $959 for an Interior Stateroom to $3,999 for a Royal
Suite, per person. For those attending our program, there is a $1,475 fee.
Government taxes and fees total $464.65 per person. Gratuities are $105 per
person (a little more for Suite cabins). For more info please call 650-787-5665
or email us at [email protected]
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of the Universe. From robotic arms to eyes on
the Universe, gain an astronomer-astronauts
unique perspective on Hubbles place in sci-
ence and technology.
Astromaterials and the
Space Environment
Astromaterials are particles, ranging from rocks
to microscopic dust, originating in outer space.
Learn how analysis of specimens in NASAs
astromaterials collection (including cosmic
dust, solar wind, comet particles, asteroids,
and meteorites) improves our understanding
of the solar systems origins and processes
that may have contributed to the start of life
on the Earth. Well also learn about man-made
components of the space environment and how
they constitute hazards to spaceight.
Mars and the Search for Life
Until 15 years ago, the odds for life on Mars
seemed small. A Martian meteorites suggestion
of life rekindled interest; subsequent exploration
hints at a hospitable environment. Is Mars
even the best place to look for life in our solar
system? Find out in a look at prospects for past
or present life on Mars and other discoveries
shaping the search for extraterrestrial life.
Dr. Steven Hawley
BH14_Shift_ 2A_LHP.indd 1 8/30/11 1:39 PM
HIGHLIGHTS
JAMES GILLIES, PH.D.
Particle Physics: Using Small Particles
to Answer The Big Questions
Particle physics is the study of the smallest
indivisible pieces of matter and the
forces that act between them. Join Dr. Gillies
and catch up on the state of the art and
challenges ahead as physicists continue a
journey that started with Newtons descrip-
tion of gravity. Well look at the masses
of fundamental particles, dark matter,
antimatter, and the nature of matter at the
beginning time.
The Large Hadron Collider:
the Worlds Most Complex Machine
The LHC is a machine of superlatives a
triumph of human ingenuity, possibly the most
complex machine ever built. James Gillies
traces particle physics technologies from the
invention of particle accelerators in the 1920s
to today, and then focuses on the LHC itself.
Youll get a perspective on how these tools
have allowed us to make phenomenal progress
in understanding the Universe, and how they
have revolutionized our everyday lives.
Angels, Demons, Black Holes, and Other
Myths: Demystifying the LHC
Along with humankinds natural curiosity comes
a fear of the unknown. As LHCs rst beam
day approached in 2008, a handful of self-
proclaimed experts struck up an end-of-the-
world tune and the whole world knew they
were there. Like its predecessors, the Large
Electron-Positron Collider (LEP) and Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the LHC never posed
the slightest risk to humanity. However, the
dangerous scientist has always made for
a good story and thats something that Dan
Brown exploited to the full when writing Angels
and Demons. Dr. Gillies will cover the fact
behind the ction of Angels and Demons and
black holes at the LHC, and share the behind-
the-scenes on how CERN lived with the hype.
JOHN CACIOPPO, PH.D.
The Architecture of Human Affect and
Emotion: Journeys in Evaluative Space
How can knowledge of the the neural
mechanisms of emotions lead to better deci-
sion making? Dr. John Cacioppo presents
studies of the affect system that provide a
surprising perspective on human feelings
and emotions. Well look at the complex
terrain between stimulus, evaluation, and
human behavioral response, finding more
questions than answers great food for
thought.
Human Nature and the Need
for Social Connection:
Loneliness and the Social Brain
Is it fundamental human nature to serve selsh
interests, or those of others? Explore how self-
ish genes have sculpted innate capacities for
social function. Well talk about how loneliness
evolved and relates to mental and physical well
being. Learn about the complex work of social
neuroscience and its implications for mind,
behavior and health.
Why Do I Like the Things I Like?
A Look Under the Hood of Attitudes
and Persuasion
How can learning about how attitudes form and
persuasion works lead you to make better deci-
sions? Can cognitive science help you be more
persuasive? Look under the hood of attitudes
and persuasion and see that not all attitudes
are created equal. Take home new insight on
snap decisions, careful consideration, and why
reasonable people may disagree.
Why Is Consciousness
Epiphenomenal, Or is It?
Recent work in philosophy, psychology,
psychiatry, and neuroscience questions the
validity of the idea of human free will. Sort
through provocative questions on conscious-
ness, perception, thought, and behavior. Well
reect on the legal and policy implications and
gain an understanding of the mechanisms
that orchestrate complex human behavior and
behavioral exibility.
INSIDERS TOUR OF THE MUSEUM OF FLIGHT
If you love vapor trails in the wild blue yonder and the thrill of take off,
join InSight Cruises in a day of fun and learning at the Museum of Flight at
legendary Boeing Field near Seattle. Go behind the scenes with the Senior
Curator. Explore The Boeing Companys original manufacturing plant. Get the
big picture of aviation in the 3 million cubic-foot, six-story Great Gallery.
An aviation historian will discuss the engineering and courage that took us
from straight-wing planes to swept-wing jets. Well do a refueling stop with a
catered lunch provided by McCormick and Schmicks. After lunch, off we go
into the Museums Personal Courage Wing, followed by a talk on the develop-
ment of aircraft carriers, and their technology and tactical use.
Please join us for an uplifting journey through aeronautical innovation. You may
see the ubiquitous oat planes of the great Northwest in a different perspective.
Lectures (60 minutes each):
Jet Propulsion and Jet Airplane Design Development
The design and development of the jet engine and the rst airplanes to use
them is an exciting and revealing story of personal determination in the face
of bureaucratic and political obstacles before and during a World War. The
remarkable transition from piston engined, straight winged airplanes to high
speed swept wing jets is illustrated during this presentation. The skill and
courage of the rst pilots to probe the transonic speed region is summarized
as a fascinating backdrop to what we take for granted as a part of modern life.
Carriers: Naval Aviation at Sea
The rst attempt to take off from an aircraft carrier was in 1910, followed
by a landing in 1911. This presentation will discuss the early development
of aircraft carriers as well as catapults and arresting gear. Carriers played a
signicant role in the Pacic Theatre during World War II and in the ultimate
success of the United States. Some of the most decisive carrier battles of
the War will be discussed as well as what life is like aboard a oating city.
The price is $395 and includes
all of the above (7 hours), an
elegant lunch at The Museum
of Flight, and roundtrip transfers
to/from our Seattle hotel. This
tour is limited to 25 people.
Visit inside the Air Force One jet used by Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson,
Kennedy, and Nixon.
Untitled-3 1 8/30/11 1:28 PM
Graphic Science
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Data Thef: Hackers Attack
Crooks may seek your identity, but hacktivists cause the blockbuster breaches
Heartland
Payment Systems
130 million
Jan. 20, 2009
TJX Companies,
Inc.
94 million
Jan. 17, 2007
TRW
90 million
June 1,
1984
Sony
Corporation
77 million
April 26, 2011
CardSystems
Solutions
40 million
June 19, 2005
RockYou
32 million
Dec. 14,
2009
U.S. Dept. of
Veterans Afairs
27 million
May 22, 2006
HM Revenue
and Customs
25 million
Nov. 20, 2007
Sony
Corporation
25 million
May 2, 2011
T-Mobile
17 million
Oct. 6,
2008
We are constantly warned to protect our
passwords, Social Security numbers and other
personal identifying information to thwart
thieves who may steal laptops or perpetrate
online fraud. Although such breaches have
soared since 2005 (right) as criminals try to
commit identity theft, the truly enormous
breaches (bottom) have increasingly been car-
ried out by hacktivistsindividuals or groups
who are angry about an organizations actions.
Hackers, for example, exposed data about 77
million Sony customers after the company
pursued legal action against other hackers.
More than 107 million people were afected
by hacking during the rst half of 2011, says
Jake Kouns, CEO of the Open Security Foun-
dation in Glen Allen, Va., which runs the Data-
LossDB project (the data source for graphics
on this page).
Will you be informed if your data are ex-
posed? Maybe not. Congress is considering bills
that would require companies to notify custom-
ers of breaches only if there was a reasonable
risk that personal information was taken.
Right now many states require companies to
disclose all breaches. Mark Fischetti
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ONLINE For a ranking of ways
data are stolen, see ScientifcAmerican.com/oct2011/data-breach
Graphic by Jen Christiansen
Methods Used
to Get Data
Unknown
Virus
Mail interception
E-mail interception or leak
Web search
Trash recovery of digital

device or paper record
Lost digital device or

paper record, opened
Fraud or scam
Theft of digital device

or paper record
Hacking of database

Data Breaches (incidents each month)*
= 1 incident
*Personal information beyond name or e-mail address,
such as Social Security, financial or medical data, was exposed.
Simple username or e-mail breaches are not included.
In July data about some 35 million users on Cyworld and Nate (South Korean sites) were swiped, but the types of data are still being verified.
Largest Breaches of All Time (records compromised, date reported)

Untitled-8 1 8/22/11 3:28 PM
2011 Porsche Cars North America, Inc. Porsche recommends seat belt usage and observance of all traffic laws at all times. The US EPA has not estimated fuel economy for the Panamera S Hybrid. Check porscheusa.com for updated information.
panamera.com/hybrid
What do you do after youve done the impossible?
Do it with less.
The new Panamera S Hybrid
The Porsche Panamera was the first vehicle to combine true race-bred driving
dynamics with executive-class comfort and amenities. A feat few thought possible.
But for Porsche, it was just the start. Introducing the Panamera S Hybrid. Beneath
its lightweight body, a supercharged V6 engine seamlessly combines output with
an electric motor for low fuel consumption and a 0 60 time of 5.7 seconds.
Less has never been more thrilling. Porsche. There is no substitute.
Untitled-3 1 8/26/11 1:10 PM

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