scientificamerican--2020-09-19--Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leaves a Nuanced Legacy on Environmental Issues

Ruth Bader Ginsburg , a champion of women ’ s rights and one of the Supreme Court ’ s most liberal justices , has died .
She was 87 .
Ginsburg , who had been the court ’ s eldest justice , had suffered from several health problems in recent years , including a recent recurrence of cancer in her liver ( Greenwire , July 17 ) .
She died “ surrounded by her family at her home in Washington , D.C. , due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer , ’ the Supreme Court said in statement released today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nation ’ s highest bench in 1993 .
She was the second woman to serve on the court .
Her death leaves an opening on the Supreme Court , which President Trump could fill .
Trump has already placed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the bench , and a third pick would more deeply entrench the court ’ s conservative majority .
The president recently released an updated list of prospective Supreme Court justices ( Greenwire , Sept. 10 ) .
Such a shift could affect how the court comes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration ’ s environmental agenda .
Trump ’ s efforts to roll back Obama-era vehicle emissions , water permitting and other standards could eventually reach the justices .
Best known for her advocacy for equality between the sexes , Ginsburg was also thought of as a reliable vote for environmental interests that argued before the high court .
In practice , her jurisprudence was much more complex .
In the landmark climate case American Electric Power Co. Inc. v. Connecticut , Ginsburg led the court ’ s unanimous opinion that said private entities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for their contributions to climate change under federal common law .
The 2011 case followed the court ’ s 5-4 decision—Ginsburg was in the majority—in Massachusetts v. EPA , which said that the federal government has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as “ air pollutants ’ under the Clean Air Act .
“ The Act itself thus provides a means to seek limits on emissions of carbon dioxide from domestic power plants—the same relief the plaintiffs seek by invoking federal common law , ’ Ginsburg wrote in American Electric Power .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ parallel track.
’ Similar questions have come into play in a recent set of lawsuits from cities , counties and one state that are attempting to get big oil firms to pay for the local impacts of climate change .
Attorneys for the municipalities have argued that their nuisance claims can move forward in state court .
Ginsburg also joined the court ’ s liberal wing in dissents in a pair of landmark Clean Water Act cases .
Those minority opinions in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support for a more expansive definition of jurisdictional waters under the Clean Water Act .
Before her appointment to the Supreme Court , Ginsburg served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after she was appointed by former President Carter .
Ginsburg started her career in academia .
She taught at Rutgers University and her alma mater Columbia Law School , where she transferred from Harvard Law School after her husband , Martin Ginsburg , took a job in New York City .
Martin Ginsburg died in 2010 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Cornell University and had two children , James and Jane .
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E & E News .
E & E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net .

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of women’s rights and one of the Supreme Court’s most liberal justices, has died. She was 87.
Ginsburg, who had been the court’s eldest justice, had suffered from several health problems in recent years, including a recent recurrence of cancer in her liver (Greenwire, July 17). She died “surrounded by her family at her home in Washington, D.C., due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer,’ the Supreme Court said in statement released today.
Former President Clinton appointed Ginsburg to the nation’s highest bench in 1993. She was the second woman to serve on the court.
Her death leaves an opening on the Supreme Court, which President Trump could fill. Trump has already placed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the bench, and a third pick would more deeply entrench the court’s conservative majority. The president recently released an updated list of prospective Supreme Court justices (Greenwire, Sept. 10).
Such a shift could affect how the court comes down on pending challenges to the Trump administration’s environmental agenda. Trump’s efforts to roll back Obama-era vehicle emissions, water permitting and other standards could eventually reach the justices.
Best known for her advocacy for equality between the sexes, Ginsburg was also thought of as a reliable vote for environmental interests that argued before the high court. In practice, her jurisprudence was much more complex.
In the landmark climate case American Electric Power Co. Inc. v. Connecticut, Ginsburg led the court’s unanimous opinion that said private entities and states could not sue power companies for their contributions to climate change under federal common law.
The 2011 case followed the court’s 5-4 decision—Ginsburg was in the majority—in Massachusetts v. EPA, which said that the federal government has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as “air pollutants’ under the Clean Air Act.
“The Act itself thus provides a means to seek limits on emissions of carbon dioxide from domestic power plants—the same relief the plaintiffs seek by invoking federal common law,’ Ginsburg wrote in American Electric Power.
“We see no room for a parallel track.’
Similar questions have come into play in a recent set of lawsuits from cities, counties and one state that are attempting to get big oil firms to pay for the local impacts of climate change. Attorneys for the municipalities have argued that their nuisance claims can move forward in state court.
Ginsburg also joined the court’s liberal wing in dissents in a pair of landmark Clean Water Act cases. Those minority opinions in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of Engineers and Rapanos v. United States expressed support for a more expansive definition of jurisdictional waters under the Clean Water Act.
Before her appointment to the Supreme Court, Ginsburg served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after she was appointed by former President Carter.
Ginsburg started her career in academia. She taught at Rutgers University and her alma mater Columbia Law School, where she transferred from Harvard Law School after her husband, Martin Ginsburg, took a job in New York City.
Martin Ginsburg died in 2010. The couple met as undergraduate students at Cornell University and had two children, James and Jane.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.


scientificamerican--2020-09-19--Who Benefits from Public Green Space?

Who Benefits from Public Green Space?

As cities around the world experience the effects of urbanization and increased density , how and where we provide green space to urban dwellers becomes more important .
Proximity to green spaces such as parks and biking trails helps to promote physical and mental health , and should be shared equally amongst urban communities .
However , like many public goods , new green space can create higher demand for housing in areas nearby , driving up living costs and displacing low-income groups that have been there for decades .
This phenomenon is known as eco-gentrification , and it leads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wealthy benefit from the designation of new urban green spaces .
To explore this phenomenon further , I and professor Katie Black of Kenyon College looked into New York ’ s High Line as a case study .
The park was created on an abandoned rail line in the Chelsea neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan .
Known originally as the West Side Elevated Line , the railway opened in 1933 and was used primarily by the National Biscuit Company—better known as Nabisco—whose warehouse is now the home of the popular Chelsea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end .
The railway was operational until the early 1980s , when the rise of trucking depressed rail use , and the line ultimately fell to disrepair .
In 1999 , two Chelsea residents formed the Friends of the High Line , a nonprofit group aiming to conserve the structure and repurpose it as a neighborhood amenity , culminating in a proposal to convert the existing structure into an elevated green space .
The High Line opened in three sections between 2009 and 2014 , and now spans nearly a mile and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Our paper set out to empirically gauge the impact of the High Line ’ s introduction on residential property values , in the context to the overarching social issue of eco-gentrification .
We used a regression analysis in order to understand the varying premiums associated with the introduction of green space on home prices by delineating three “ buffer zones ” to measure the increase on property value by distance .
Through our regression analysis , we found that homes within 0.1 miles of the High Line rose in value 35.3 percent more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ miles away .
In other words , the home price premium associated with green space proximity decreases as distance from the High Line increases .
Allocating green space without displacing the long-term , low-income residents of an area is an important consideration for policy makers as they seek to balance the positive effects of green space allocation and the negative affects of eco-gentrification .
In their book Just Green Enough : Urban Development and Environmental Gentrification , researchers Winifred Curran and Trina Hamilton pose their “ just green enough ” theory , examining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ green ” and thereby exacerbate the gentrification process .
Just green enough theory focuses on social justice and allowing communities to design their own environmental initiatives , with keeping the local population intact as an explicit goal .
It aims to uncouple urban greening projects from the telltale markers of gentrification like opulent waterfronts and luxury real estate development .
Quality-of-life improvements generated as a result of urban greening initiatives should be enjoyed by the existing residents of a neighborhood rather than pandering to the entry of wealthier , often whiter , households @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make this goal an explicit outcome can lead to excessive gentrification as an unintended consequence .
The stark increase in property values resulting from the High Line confirms the inequitable impact of the walkway ’ s introduction .
This reinforces eco-gentrification models in which green space access is only affordable to the wealthy , leaving poor communities bearing the weight of environmental disamenities .
Furthermore , lack of green space reinforces the urban heat island effect , causing low income areas to experience disproportionately higher temperatures and worse air quality than their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cities must take a more critical and community-centered approach to greening initiatives .
Too often , as was the case with the High Line , private funding and planning lends itself to private interests that do not focus on the public which the good is intended to serve .
The High Line is a mark of success for real estate developers and New York ’ s tourism industry , but it has also contributed to rising inequity among New York ’ s residents .
The affordability of accessible green space should be a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planners , and the retention of an area ’ s existing residents must be an explicit goal of greening projects in order to avoid the pitfalls of eco-gentrification .

As cities around the world experience the effects of urbanization and increased density, how and where we provide green space to urban dwellers becomes more important. Proximity to green spaces such as parks and biking trails helps to promote physical and mental health, and should be shared equally amongst urban communities. However, like many public goods, new green space can create higher demand for housing in areas nearby, driving up living costs and displacing low-income groups that have been there for decades.
This phenomenon is known as eco-gentrification, and it leads to a situation where only the relatively wealthy benefit from the designation of new urban green spaces. To explore this phenomenon further, I and professor Katie Black of Kenyon College looked into New York’s High Line as a case study. The park was created on an abandoned rail line in the Chelsea neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan. Known originally as the West Side Elevated Line, the railway opened in 1933 and was used primarily by the National Biscuit Company—better known as Nabisco—whose warehouse is now the home of the popular Chelsea Market, at the tracks’ southern end.
The railway was operational until the early 1980s, when the rise of trucking depressed rail use, and the line ultimately fell to disrepair. In 1999, two Chelsea residents formed the Friends of the High Line, a nonprofit group aiming to conserve the structure and repurpose it as a neighborhood amenity, culminating in a proposal to convert the existing structure into an elevated green space. The High Line opened in three sections between 2009 and 2014, and now spans nearly a mile and a half from Gansevoort to 34th Street.
The High Line, pre-development. Credit: Getty Images
Our paper set out to empirically gauge the impact of the High Line’s introduction on residential property values, in the context to the overarching social issue of eco-gentrification. We used a regression analysis in order to understand the varying premiums associated with the introduction of green space on home prices by delineating three “buffer zones” to measure the increase on property value by distance. Through our regression analysis, we found that homes within 0.1 miles of the High Line rose in value 35.3 percent more than homes in the range of 0.1–0.4 miles away. In other words, the home price premium associated with green space proximity decreases as distance from the High Line increases.
Allocating green space without displacing the long-term, low-income residents of an area is an important consideration for policy makers as they seek to balance the positive effects of green space allocation and the negative affects of eco-gentrification. In their book Just Green Enough: Urban Development and Environmental Gentrification, researchers Winifred Curran and Trina Hamilton pose their “just green enough” theory, examining how an area can become “too green” and thereby exacerbate the gentrification process. Just green enough theory focuses on social justice and allowing communities to design their own environmental initiatives, with keeping the local population intact as an explicit goal.
It aims to uncouple urban greening projects from the telltale markers of gentrification like opulent waterfronts and luxury real estate development. Quality-of-life improvements generated as a result of urban greening initiatives should be enjoyed by the existing residents of a neighborhood rather than pandering to the entry of wealthier, often whiter, households. As our paper shows, neglecting to make this goal an explicit outcome can lead to excessive gentrification as an unintended consequence.
The stark increase in property values resulting from the High Line confirms the inequitable impact of the walkway’s introduction. This reinforces eco-gentrification models in which green space access is only affordable to the wealthy, leaving poor communities bearing the weight of environmental disamenities. Furthermore, lack of green space reinforces the urban heat island effect, causing low income areas to experience disproportionately higher temperatures and worse air quality than their wealthier counterparts.
For these reasons, cities must take a more critical and community-centered approach to greening initiatives. Too often, as was the case with the High Line, private funding and planning lends itself to private interests that do not focus on the public which the good is intended to serve. The High Line is a mark of success for real estate developers and New York’s tourism industry, but it has also contributed to rising inequity among New York’s residents. The affordability of accessible green space should be a primary issue in the future for urban planners, and the retention of an area’s existing residents must be an explicit goal of greening projects in order to avoid the pitfalls of eco-gentrification.


scientificamerican--2020-09-20--Readers Respond to the May 2020 Issue

Readers Respond to the May 2020 Issue

An important through line in the special report on “ A New Era for Alzheimer 's ” [ The Future of Medicine ] is the potential impact of lifestyle in modulating the risk of cognitive decline and dementia .
Three European countries—Finland , France and the Netherlands—have completed pioneering dementia-prevention trials in community-dwelling seniors .
They show it is possible to reduce the risk of cognitive decline in older adults using a multidomain lifestyle intervention .
And in 2018 the SPRINT MIND study reported significant reductions in the risk of mild cognitive impairment and of the combination of such impairment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blood pressure .
Also , the Alzheimer 's Association U.S. Study to Protect Brain Health through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk ( U.S. POINTER ) is recruiting participants now .
Over two years this clinical trial will evaluate whether lifestyle interventions that target many risk factors simultaneously can protect cognitive function in older adults who are at increased risk for cognitive decline .
This line of research has exciting possibilities for Alzheimer 's and all other dementias—as is apparent from its inclusion in heart disease treatment and prevention .
The Alzheimer 's Association @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developments in Alzheimer 's , as we continue to drive science forward .
In “ The Human Toll of Alzheimer 's ” [ The Future of Medicine ] , Joel Shurkin describes the loss of his wife to the disease .
For 13 years and counting , I have accompanied my wife on her “ unwelcome journey ” with early-onset Alzheimer 's , so I have great empathy with Shurkin .
But my perspective is just a little different .
Kathleen , my sweetheart of 45 years , has forgotten how to walk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sentence together .
She is living as an eight-year-old , so she can not process her relationship to our daughter , grandkids or me .
But Kathleen is still Kathleen .
She has lost much , but she is the person I married .
None of us is the same person as we were years ago , as Kathleen often reminded me .
Fifty years ago I was young and stupid ; now I 'm not young .
People with dementia are exactly that : people , albeit changed .
They lose capabilities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personhood .
A year ago a physician told me , “ They 're gone .
There 's no point in visiting them.
” Seldom expressed so bluntly , this terrible notion is common and underlies much of the care for people in the late stages of Alzheimer 's or other dementias .
We should never stop respecting these individuals for who they still are .
And we should lovingly be with them as their unwelcome journeys conclude .
We have no cure , but we must never stop caring .
Claudia Wallis 's @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Euthanasia and a Final Gift ” [ The Science of Health ] , conflates euthanasia and MAID ( medical assistance in dying ) .
Doing so is likely to add confusion to an already fraught policy issue for people in the U.S. and possibly also in Canada .
There are immense legal , psychological and ethical differences between the two practices : Euthanasia refers to an action taken to end a patient 's life that is carried out by someone other than the patient ( typically a physician ) .
It is usually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an action taken by a patient who has requested and obtained lethal medication from a physician under a carefully controlled , legally mandated protocol .
The patient maintains full control over when to ingest the medication or whether to take it at all .
Wallis states that organ donation “ works well after MAID because patients die quickly from the intravenous euthanasia drugs.
” Yet whereas euthanasia is legal in Canada , it is illegal in all U.S. jurisdictions and is thus never an element of MAID in our country .
WALLIS REPLIES @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and MAID , as Rogatz notes .
But in Canada , which was the context of this column , the distinction is not so clear-cut , and the term “ euthanasia ” is sometimes used for MAID .
As of January 31 , the province of Ontario had processed 4,521 cases of MAID .
In all but two of them , medical personnel administered an intravenous cocktail to end life .
Self-administration , I learned , is rare in Canada .
In “ Massif Redo , ” William H. Sager describes his epiphany @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resulted from spreading tectonic plates , not from the “ layer cake ” buildup of eruptions that typically create such shield volcanoes on land .
But is n't the process he describes the same as the one that formed Iceland ?
SAGER REPLIES : That inference seems reasonable up to a point .
Iceland was formed by a hotspot centered on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge , and many scientists attribute this hotspot to a deep plume of molten material rising from the mantle .
There are indeed magnetic anomaly stripes that go through Iceland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's volcanoes perturbs those stripes , so they are hard to follow .
Tamu Massif may be similar .
But it formed within a much shorter time frame , and its stripes show it did so during a reorientation of the spreading direction ( which is not so much the case for Iceland ) .
Further , the stripes are more clearly expressed for Tamu Massif , and that volcano was never an island , whereas Iceland is a massive one .
For now we ca n't say whether Iceland and Tamu Massif @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Few undersea volcanoes are as well mapped as Tamu Massif , and our data set is a long way from being as good as we would like .
The editorial “ Get Out of Our Faces ” [ Science Agenda ] identifies many of the problems with facial-recognition technology and the need for regulation .
What it fails to highlight is the unwitting forfeiture of privacy we commonly enable with our use of technology .
It is quite possible for a corporation or government to , say , correlate pictures and names from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facial-recognition database .
There is no real privacy anymore with the current social standard of posting photographs of everything you and your friends do .
Along with the proliferation of ATM , traffic-control and security cameras , the futuristic films that deal with tracking a person 's movements with these images are not far off .
As the editors say , much of this is here already , and we are lacking both regulation and public enlightenment .
I commend Dava Sobel for her selection of Janet MacFadyen 's “ The Boulders of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I appreciate the introduction to a new major poet .
I am a retired teacher of poetry , and if I have any strengths , they are in the analysis of rhythm and of figurative language , the two most essential elements of excellent complex poetry .
This poem is an outstanding , astounding example .

LIVING WITH ALZHEIMER'S
An important through line in the special report on “A New Era for Alzheimer's” [The Future of Medicine] is the potential impact of lifestyle in modulating the risk of cognitive decline and dementia.
Three European countries—Finland, France and the Netherlands—have completed pioneering dementia-prevention trials in community-dwelling seniors. They show it is possible to reduce the risk of cognitive decline in older adults using a multidomain lifestyle intervention. And in 2018 the SPRINT MIND study reported significant reductions in the risk of mild cognitive impairment and of the combination of such impairment and dementia through aggressive lowering of systolic blood pressure.
Also, the Alzheimer's Association U.S. Study to Protect Brain Health through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk (U.S. POINTER) is recruiting participants now. Over two years this clinical trial will evaluate whether lifestyle interventions that target many risk factors simultaneously can protect cognitive function in older adults who are at increased risk for cognitive decline.
This line of research has exciting possibilities for Alzheimer's and all other dementias—as is apparent from its inclusion in heart disease treatment and prevention. The Alzheimer's Association and its collaborators appreciate your coverage on developments in Alzheimer's, as we continue to drive science forward.
MARIA C. CARRILLO Chief Science Officer, Alzheimer's Association
DEMENTIA AND PERSONHOOD
In “The Human Toll of Alzheimer's” [The Future of Medicine], Joel Shurkin describes the loss of his wife to the disease. For 13 years and counting, I have accompanied my wife on her “unwelcome journey” with early-onset Alzheimer's, so I have great empathy with Shurkin. But my perspective is just a little different. Kathleen, my sweetheart of 45 years, has forgotten how to walk, use a fork or string a sentence together. She is living as an eight-year-old, so she cannot process her relationship to our daughter, grandkids or me. But Kathleen is still Kathleen. She has lost much, but she is the person I married. None of us is the same person as we were years ago, as Kathleen often reminded me. Fifty years ago I was young and stupid; now I'm not young.
People with dementia are exactly that: people, albeit changed. They lose capabilities they once had but never lose their personhood. A year ago a physician told me, “They're gone. There's no point in visiting them.” Seldom expressed so bluntly, this terrible notion is common and underlies much of the care for people in the late stages of Alzheimer's or other dementias. We should never stop respecting these individuals for who they still are. And we should lovingly be with them as their unwelcome journeys conclude. We have no cure, but we must never stop caring.
JIM MANGI
Dementia Friendly Saline, Michigan
ASSISTED DYING
Claudia Wallis's otherwise thoughtful and informative article, “Euthanasia and a Final Gift” [The Science of Health], conflates euthanasia and MAID (medical assistance in dying). Doing so is likely to add confusion to an already fraught policy issue for people in the U.S. and possibly also in Canada.
There are immense legal, psychological and ethical differences between the two practices: Euthanasia refers to an action taken to end a patient's life that is carried out by someone other than the patient (typically a physician). It is usually performed by intravenous injection. MAID involves an action taken by a patient who has requested and obtained lethal medication from a physician under a carefully controlled, legally mandated protocol. The patient maintains full control over when to ingest the medication or whether to take it at all.
Wallis states that organ donation “works well after MAID because patients die quickly from the intravenous euthanasia drugs.” Yet whereas euthanasia is legal in Canada, it is illegal in all U.S. jurisdictions and is thus never an element of MAID in our country.
PETER ROGATZ Vice President, End of Life Choices New York
WALLIS REPLIES: Certainly there are differences between euthanasia and MAID, as Rogatz notes. But in Canada, which was the context of this column, the distinction is not so clear-cut, and the term “euthanasia” is sometimes used for MAID. As of January 31, the province of Ontario had processed 4,521 cases of MAID. In all but two of them, medical personnel administered an intravenous cocktail to end life. Self-administration, I learned, is rare in Canada.
FIRE AND ICELAND
In “Massif Redo,” William H. Sager describes his epiphany on realizing that the Tamu Massif volcano resulted from spreading tectonic plates, not from the “layer cake” buildup of eruptions that typically create such shield volcanoes on land. But isn't the process he describes the same as the one that formed Iceland?
VAN SNYDER La Crescenta, Calif.
SAGER REPLIES: That inference seems reasonable up to a point. Iceland was formed by a hotspot centered on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and many scientists attribute this hotspot to a deep plume of molten material rising from the mantle. There are indeed magnetic anomaly stripes that go through Iceland, although the activity of the island's volcanoes perturbs those stripes, so they are hard to follow. Tamu Massif may be similar. But it formed within a much shorter time frame, and its stripes show it did so during a reorientation of the spreading direction (which is not so much the case for Iceland). Further, the stripes are more clearly expressed for Tamu Massif, and that volcano was never an island, whereas Iceland is a massive one.
For now we can't say whether Iceland and Tamu Massif are siblings, cousins or unrelated. Few undersea volcanoes are as well mapped as Tamu Massif, and our data set is a long way from being as good as we would like.
FACING PRIVACY LOSS
The editorial “Get Out of Our Faces” [Science Agenda] identifies many of the problems with facial-recognition technology and the need for regulation. What it fails to highlight is the unwitting forfeiture of privacy we commonly enable with our use of technology. It is quite possible for a corporation or government to, say, correlate pictures and names from Facebook and other social accounts into a facial-recognition database.
There is no real privacy anymore with the current social standard of posting photographs of everything you and your friends do. Along with the proliferation of ATM, traffic-control and security cameras, the futuristic films that deal with tracking a person's movements with these images are not far off. As the editors say, much of this is here already, and we are lacking both regulation and public enlightenment.
MATHIEU FEDERSPIEL via e-mail
POETRY APPRECIATION
I commend Dava Sobel for her selection of Janet MacFadyen's “The Boulders of Lyell Canyon” for the Meter column. I appreciate the introduction to a new major poet. I am a retired teacher of poetry, and if I have any strengths, they are in the analysis of rhythm and of figurative language, the two most essential elements of excellent complex poetry. This poem is an outstanding, astounding example.
WILLIAM H. MOORE Professor of Humanities emeritus, Austin College


scientificamerican--2020-09-21--How Ginsburg's Death Threatens the Affordable Care Act and Reproductive Rights

On Feb. 27 , 2018 , I got an email from the Heritage Foundation , alerting me to a news conference that afternoon held by Republican attorneys general of Texas and other states .
It was referred to only as a “ discussion about the Affordable Care Act lawsuit.
” I sent the following note to my editor : “ I ’ m off to the Hill anyway .
I could stop by this .
You never know what it might morph into.
” Few people took that case very seriously —barely a handful of reporters attended the news conference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into ” the latest existential threat against the Affordable Care Act , scheduled for oral arguments at the Supreme Court a week after the general election in November .
And with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday , that case could well morph into the threat that brings down the law in its entirety .
Democrats are raising alarms about the future of the law without Ginsburg .
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , speaking on ABC ’ s “ This Week ” Sunday morning , said that part of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans to quickly fill her seat was to help undermine the ACA .
“ The president is rushing to make some kind of a decision because … Nov. 10 is when the arguments begin on the Affordable Care Act , ” she said .
“ He doesn ’ t want to crush the virus .
He wants to crush the Affordable Care Act.
” Ginsburg ’ s death throws an already chaotic general election campaign during a pandemic into more turmoil .
But in the longer term , her absence from the bench @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases to the Supreme Court toward invalidating the ACA and rolling back reproductive freedoms for women .
Let ’ s take them one at a time .
The GOP attorneys general argued in February 2018 that the Republican-sponsored tax cut bill Congress passed two months earlier had rendered the ACA unconstitutional by reducing to zero the ACA ’ s penalty for not having insurance .
They based their argument on Chief Justice John Roberts ’ 2012 conclusion that the ACA was valid , interpreting that penalty as a constitutionally appropriate tax .
Most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the law before the Supreme Court in 2012 and again in 2015 , find the argument that the entire law should fall to be unconvincing .
“ If courts invalidate an entire law merely because Congress eliminates or revises one part , as happened here , that may well inhibit necessary reform of federal legislation in the future by turning it into an ‘ all or nothing ’ proposition , ” wrote a group of conservative and liberal law professors in a brief filed in the case .
Still , in December 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Connor in Texas accepted the GOP argument and declared the law unconstitutional .
In December 2019 , a three-judge 5th Circuit appeals court panel in New Orleans agreed that without the penalty the requirement to buy insurance is unconstitutional .
But it sent the case back to O ’ Connor to suggest that perhaps the entire law need not fall .
Not wanting to wait the months or years that reconsideration would take , Democratic attorneys general defending the ACA asked the Supreme Court to hear the case this year .
( Democrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Trump administration decided to support the GOP attorneys general ’ s case . )
The court agreed to take the case but scheduled arguments for the week after the November election .
While the fate of the ACA was and is a live political issue , few legal observers were terribly worried about the legal outcome of the case now known as Texas v. California , if only because the case seemed much weaker than the 2012 and 2015 cases in which Roberts joined the court ’ s four liberals .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ validity of federal tax subsidies helping millions of Americans buy health insurance on the ACA ’ s marketplaces , both Roberts and now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy voted to uphold the law .
But without Ginsburg , the case could wind up in a 4-4 tie , even if Roberts supports the law ’ s constitutionality .
That could let the lower-court ruling stand , although it would not be binding on other courts outside of the 5th Circuit .
The court could also put off the arguments or , if the Republican Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arguments are heard , Republicans could secure a 5-4 ruling against the law .
Some court observers argue that Justice Brett Kavanaugh has not favored invalidating an entire statute if only part of it is flawed and might not approve overturning the ACA .
Still , what started out as an effort to energize Republican voters for the 2018 midterms after Congress failed to “ repeal and replace ” the health law in 2017 could end up throwing the nation ’ s entire health system into chaos .
At least 20 million Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since the start of the coronavirus pandemic —who buy insurance through the ACA marketplaces or have Medicaid through the law ’ s expansion could lose coverage right away .
Many millions more would lose the law ’ s popular protections guaranteeing coverage for people with preexisting health conditions , including those who have had COVID-19 .
Adult children under age 26 would no longer be guaranteed the right to remain on their parents ’ health plans , and Medicare patients would lose enhanced prescription drug coverage .
Women would lose guaranteed access to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But a sudden elimination would affect more than just health care consumers .
Insurance companies , drug companies , hospitals and doctors have all changed the way they do business because of incentives and penalties in the health law .
If it ’ s struck down , many of the “ rules of the road ” would literally be wiped away , including billing and payment mechanisms .
A new Democratic president could not drop the lawsuit , because the Trump administration is not the plaintiff ( the GOP attorneys general are ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could in theory make the entire issue go away by reinstating the penalty for failure to have insurance , even at a minimal amount .
However , as far as the health law goes , for now , nothing is a sure thing .
As Nicholas Bagley , a law professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in health issues , tweeted : “ Among other things , the Affordable Care Act now dangles from a thread.
” A woman ’ s right to abortion —and even to birth control —also has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high court for more than a decade .
This past term , Roberts joined the liberals to invalidate a Louisiana law that would have closed most of the state ’ s abortion clinics , but he made it clear it was not a vote for abortion rights .
The Louisiana law was too similar to a Texas law the court ( without his vote ) struck down in 2016 , Roberts argued .
Ginsburg had been a stalwart supporter of reproductive freedom for women .
In her nearly three decades on the court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abortion rights and birth control and led the dissenters in 2007 when the court upheld a federal ban on a specific abortion procedure .
Adding a justice opposed to abortion to the bench —which is what Trump has promised his supporters —would almost certainly tilt the court in favor of far more dramatic restrictions on the procedure and possibly an overturn of the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade .
But not only is abortion on the line .
The court in recent years has repeatedly ruled that employers with religious objections can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the lower-court pipeline are cases involving federal funding of Planned Parenthood in both the Medicaid and federal family planning programs , and the ability of individual health workers to decline to participate in abortion and other procedures .
For Ginsburg , those issues came down to a clear question of a woman ’ s guarantee of equal status under the law .
“ Women , it is now acknowledged , have the talent , capacity , and right ‘ to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in that 2007 abortion case .
“ Their ability to realize their full potential , the Court recognized , is intimately connected to ‘ their ability to control their reproductive lives . '
” HealthBent , a regular feature of Kaiser Health News , offers insight and analysis of policies and politics from KHN ’ s chief Washington correspondent , Julie Rovner , who has covered health care for more than 30 years .
This story was originally published by Kaiser Health News on September 21 2020 .
Read the original story here @

On Feb. 27, 2018, I got an email from the Heritage Foundation, alerting me to a news conference that afternoon held by Republican attorneys general of Texas and other states. It was referred to only as a “discussion about the Affordable Care Act lawsuit.”
I sent the following note to my editor: “I’m off to the Hill anyway. I could stop by this. You never know what it might morph into.”
Few people took that case very seriously —barely a handful of reporters attended the news conference. But it has now “morphed into” the latest existential threat against the Affordable Care Act, scheduled for oral arguments at the Supreme Court a week after the general election in November. And with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday, that case could well morph into the threat that brings down the law in its entirety.
Democrats are raising alarms about the future of the law without Ginsburg. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning, said that part of the strategy by President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans to quickly fill her seat was to help undermine the ACA.
“The president is rushing to make some kind of a decision because … Nov. 10 is when the arguments begin on the Affordable Care Act,” she said. “He doesn’t want to crush the virus. He wants to crush the Affordable Care Act.”
Ginsburg’s death throws an already chaotic general election campaign during a pandemic into more turmoil. But in the longer term, her absence from the bench could accelerate a trend underway to get cases to the Supreme Court toward invalidating the ACA and rolling back reproductive freedoms for women.
Let’s take them one at a time.
The ACA Under Fire —Again
The GOP attorneys general argued in February 2018 that the Republican-sponsored tax cut bill Congress passed two months earlier had rendered the ACA unconstitutional by reducing to zero the ACA’s penalty for not having insurance. They based their argument on Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2012 conclusion that the ACA was valid, interpreting that penalty as a constitutionally appropriate tax.
Most legal scholars, including several who challenged the law before the Supreme Court in 2012 and again in 2015, find the argument that the entire law should fall to be unconvincing. “If courts invalidate an entire law merely because Congress eliminates or revises one part, as happened here, that may well inhibit necessary reform of federal legislation in the future by turning it into an ‘all or nothing’ proposition,” wrote a group of conservative and liberal law professors in a brief filed in the case.
Still, in December 2018, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas accepted the GOP argument and declared the law unconstitutional. In December 2019, a three-judge 5th Circuit appeals court panel in New Orleans agreed that without the penalty the requirement to buy insurance is unconstitutional. But it sent the case back to O’Connor to suggest that perhaps the entire law need not fall.
Not wanting to wait the months or years that reconsideration would take, Democratic attorneys general defending the ACA asked the Supreme Court to hear the case this year. (Democrats are defending the law in court because the Trump administration decided to support the GOP attorneys general’s case.) The court agreed to take the case but scheduled arguments for the week after the November election.
While the fate of the ACA was and is a live political issue, few legal observers were terribly worried about the legal outcome of the case now known as Texas v. California, if only because the case seemed much weaker than the 2012 and 2015 cases in which Roberts joined the court’s four liberals. In the 2015 case, which challenged the validity of federal tax subsidies helping millions of Americans buy health insurance on the ACA’s marketplaces, both Roberts and now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy voted to uphold the law.
But without Ginsburg, the case could wind up in a 4-4 tie, even if Roberts supports the law’s constitutionality. That could let the lower-court ruling stand, although it would not be binding on other courts outside of the 5th Circuit. The court could also put off the arguments or, if the Republican Senate replaces Ginsburg with another conservative justice before arguments are heard, Republicans could secure a 5-4 ruling against the law. Some court observers argue that Justice Brett Kavanaugh has not favored invalidating an entire statute if only part of it is flawed and might not approve overturning the ACA. Still, what started out as an effort to energize Republican voters for the 2018 midterms after Congress failed to “repeal and replace” the health law in 2017 could end up throwing the nation’s entire health system into chaos.
At least 20 million Americans —and likely many more who sought coverage since the start of the coronavirus pandemic —who buy insurance through the ACA marketplaces or have Medicaid through the law’s expansion could lose coverage right away. Many millions more would lose the law’s popular protections guaranteeing coverage for people with preexisting health conditions, including those who have had COVID-19.
Adult children under age 26 would no longer be guaranteed the right to remain on their parents’ health plans, and Medicare patients would lose enhanced prescription drug coverage. Women would lose guaranteed access to birth control at no out-of-pocket cost.
But a sudden elimination would affect more than just health care consumers. Insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals and doctors have all changed the way they do business because of incentives and penalties in the health law. If it’s struck down, many of the “rules of the road” would literally be wiped away, including billing and payment mechanisms.
A new Democratic president could not drop the lawsuit, because the Trump administration is not the plaintiff (the GOP attorneys general are). But a Democratic Congress and president could in theory make the entire issue go away by reinstating the penalty for failure to have insurance, even at a minimal amount. However, as far as the health law goes, for now, nothing is a sure thing.
As Nicholas Bagley, a law professor at the University of Michigan who specializes in health issues, tweeted: “Among other things, the Affordable Care Act now dangles from a thread.”
Reproductive Rights
A woman’s right to abortion —and even to birth control —also has been hanging by a thread at the high court for more than a decade. This past term, Roberts joined the liberals to invalidate a Louisiana law that would have closed most of the state’s abortion clinics, but he made it clear it was not a vote for abortion rights. The Louisiana law was too similar to a Texas law the court (without his vote) struck down in 2016, Roberts argued.
Ginsburg had been a stalwart supporter of reproductive freedom for women. In her nearly three decades on the court, she always voted with backers of abortion rights and birth control and led the dissenters in 2007 when the court upheld a federal ban on a specific abortion procedure.
Adding a justice opposed to abortion to the bench —which is what Trump has promised his supporters —would almost certainly tilt the court in favor of far more dramatic restrictions on the procedure and possibly an overturn of the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade.
But not only is abortion on the line. The court in recent years has repeatedly ruled that employers with religious objections can refuse to provide contraception.
And waiting in the lower-court pipeline are cases involving federal funding of Planned Parenthood in both the Medicaid and federal family planning programs, and the ability of individual health workers to decline to participate in abortion and other procedures.
For Ginsburg, those issues came down to a clear question of a woman’s guarantee of equal status under the law.
“Women, it is now acknowledged, have the talent, capacity, and right ‘to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation,’” she wrote in her dissent in that 2007 abortion case. “Their ability to realize their full potential, the Court recognized, is intimately connected to ‘their ability to control their reproductive lives.'”
HealthBent, a regular feature of Kaiser Health News, offers insight and analysis of policies and politics from KHN’s chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, who has covered health care for more than 30 years.
This story was originally published by Kaiser Health News on September 21 2020. Read the original story here.


scientificamerican--2020-09-21--The Quantum Butterfly Noneffect

The Quantum Butterfly Noneffect

Chaos theory says that a tiny , insignificant event or circumstance can have outsized influence in shaping the way a large , complex system evolves into the future .
Many people are familiar with this so-called butterfly effect , an idea often traced to science fiction author Ray Bradbury ’ s 1952 story “ A Sound of Thunder.
” In that tale , a man who has time-traveled into the deep past to hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex inadvertently crushes a butterfly under his foot .
When he returns to the present , he discovers that this seemingly trivial act altered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good way .
In the early 1970s , meteorologist and mathematician Edward Norton Lorenz articulated the butterfly effect in science and launched the field of chaos theory .
In plain language , this version of the effect says that initial conditions strongly influence the evolution of highly complex systems .
In Lorenz ’ s metaphor , the flapping of a butterfly ’ s wings in Brazil could ultimately lead a tornado in Texas that wouldn ’ t have happened otherwise .
By implication , if you could go back and alter the past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evolve within the system .
The future containing your present would vanish .
The butterfly effect is well accepted in our everyday world , where classical physics describes systems above the atomic scale .
But in the submicroscopic world where quantum mechanics reigns , different—and very strange—rules apply .
Does the butterfly effect still hold true ?
If not , what happens instead ?
As we describe in a peer-reviewed article in Physical Review Letters , we explored this facet of quantum mechanics when we were developing a novel method to protect quantum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entanglement induced by a complex evolution , we wanted to put qubits ( quantum bits ) into a state where they would be immune to damage .
Then they could be retrieved without alteration , even if someone tried to damage or steal the information .
That ability would help secure quantum information and provide a method for hiding information , as well .
To do so , we started with a theoretical analysis using the equations of quantum mechanics—good old whiteboard work .
Then we ran an experiment on the IBM-Q quantum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we compared the evolution of a complex quantum system to an identically designed system , but with locally changed initial conditions , by measuring and therefore altering one qubit .
We expected a result similar to the classical result .
That is , as the system evolved over a sufficiently long time , we thought the local variables that described a particular qubit in the once-twin systems eventually would have very different values—in other words , the butterfly effect .
In our thought experiment , we recruited every quantum theorist ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our experimental avatars .
The evolution that they considered involved a circuit that evolves in a complex way .
The circuit applies many quantum gates randomly to many qubits .
The gates perform an operation on the qubits , and each gate represents a step in time , like the tick of a clock .
This is the forward-in-time travel operation in our theoretical “ world on a chip.
” Alice prepares one of her qubits in the present time and runs the circuit backwards , emulating travel back in time .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s polarization , which is the local information stored in Alice ’ s qubit .
Because measurement in the quantum world alters the state of the particle being measured , this measurement changes the polarization , which is the information in this case .
Also , by the laws of quantum dynamics , this invasive measurement destroys all of the qubit ’ s quantum correlations with the rest of the world on a chip .
So , we thought this past world was altered in such a way that a return to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ qubit—would change the entire world on a chip .
Next we ran the circuit forward in time to bring the world back to the present time .
According to Ray Bradbury ’ s vision , Bob ’ s small damage to the state of the qubit should have been quickly magnified during the complex forward-in-time evolution .
That would mean that Alice could not recover her information at the end .
The squashed butterfly should have drastically altered her information in the present .
For our next test of these results , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the IBM-Q quantum processor .
To simulate time travel , we sent qubits through the computer gates in reverse order .
The gates manipulate the qubits and represent time steps as well .
Then we damaged information in this simulated past by measuring just one local qubit , while all the other qubits maintained their quantum correlations and remained entangled .
After the damaging measurement , we ran our forward-in-time protocol and then measured the qubit ’ s state : it had returned to essentially the same state it had been in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ background noise .
Because the initial state of the whole system was strongly entangled in quantum correlations , the long complex evolution essentially recovered the information of the perturbed qubit .
To our surprise , we not only disproved the butterfly effect in a quantum system , but we also found a sort of no-butterfly effect , as if the system wants to protect the present .
Being strongly entangled in the quantum sense meant that the system initially had robust quantum correlations among its parts .
Entangled qubits share various properties , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ways act as one .
Even after changing the local information , purely quantum and global correlations across all the entangled qubits put guard rails on the quantum dynamics , guiding them to restore the damaged local variables .
The longer and more complex the evolution is , the more quantum correlations it generates , so the better our predictions become , and the more robust the present .
You could say reality in quantum mechanics is self-healing .
Our theory applies to a sufficiently complex quantum evolution in which quantum correlations among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the backward-in-time evolution .
This approach has practical applications , such as testing the quantumness of quantum computers .
Where it is uncertain whether a quantum computer is actually using quantum mechanics to get its results—it might still be relying on classical physics—our no-butterfly effect can be used to test it , because our effect is purely quantum mechanical .
Another potential application is protecting information , since a random evolution on a quantum circuit can protect a qubit from attack .
Next , we hope to experimentally verify the effect in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a laboratory ( not a quantum computer ) , probably using ultracold atoms , which behave quantum mechanically .
This will allow us to demonstrate the effect under conditions that could be applied to the practical problem of protecting quantum information .
Beyond these practical uses , the no-butterfly effect raises interesting questions about the differences between the quantum realm and the classical-physics world of our everyday experience .
Most physicists believe quantum mechanics apply to scale we can observe , anywhere we look , but it often produces the same predictions as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with how the classical world emerges from the quantum world in our everyday life .
To what extent the no-butterfly effect might apply in the macroscopic world of our lives is an open question , as is the degree to which the classical butterfly effect might apply in the quantum world .
We hope to answer those questions in future research .
Time will tell .
The research described here was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy , Office of Science , Basic Energy Sciences , Materials Sciences and Engineering Division , @ @ @ @ @

Chaos theory says that a tiny, insignificant event or circumstance can have outsized influence in shaping the way a large, complex system evolves into the future. Many people are familiar with this so-called butterfly effect, an idea often traced to science fiction author Ray Bradbury’s 1952 story “A Sound of Thunder.” In that tale, a man who has time-traveled into the deep past to hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex inadvertently crushes a butterfly under his foot. When he returns to the present, he discovers that this seemingly trivial act altered the course of history—and not in a good way.
In the early 1970s, meteorologist and mathematician Edward Norton Lorenz articulated the butterfly effect in science and launched the field of chaos theory. In plain language, this version of the effect says that initial conditions strongly influence the evolution of highly complex systems. In Lorenz’s metaphor, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could ultimately lead a tornado in Texas that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. By implication, if you could go back and alter the past even slightly, a different future would evolve within the system. The future containing your present would vanish.
The butterfly effect is well accepted in our everyday world, where classical physics describes systems above the atomic scale. But in the submicroscopic world where quantum mechanics reigns, different—and very strange—rules apply. Does the butterfly effect still hold true? If not, what happens instead?
As we describe in a peer-reviewed article in Physical Review Letters, we explored this facet of quantum mechanics when we were developing a novel method to protect quantum information. Exploiting the property of quantum entanglement induced by a complex evolution, we wanted to put qubits (quantum bits) into a state where they would be immune to damage. Then they could be retrieved without alteration, even if someone tried to damage or steal the information. That ability would help secure quantum information and provide a method for hiding information, as well.
To do so, we started with a theoretical analysis using the equations of quantum mechanics—good old whiteboard work. Then we ran an experiment on the IBM-Q quantum processor.
For the whiteboard theory phase, we compared the evolution of a complex quantum system to an identically designed system, but with locally changed initial conditions, by measuring and therefore altering one qubit. We expected a result similar to the classical result. That is, as the system evolved over a sufficiently long time, we thought the local variables that described a particular qubit in the once-twin systems eventually would have very different values—in other words, the butterfly effect.
In our thought experiment, we recruited every quantum theorist’s old friends, Alice and Bob, our experimental avatars. The evolution that they considered involved a circuit that evolves in a complex way. The circuit applies many quantum gates randomly to many qubits. The gates perform an operation on the qubits, and each gate represents a step in time, like the tick of a clock.
This is the forward-in-time travel operation in our theoretical “world on a chip.”
Alice prepares one of her qubits in the present time and runs the circuit backwards, emulating travel back in time. In the past, Bob measures the qubit’s polarization, which is the local information stored in Alice’s qubit. Because measurement in the quantum world alters the state of the particle being measured, this measurement changes the polarization, which is the information in this case. Also, by the laws of quantum dynamics, this invasive measurement destroys all of the qubit’s quantum correlations with the rest of the world on a chip. So, we thought this past world was altered in such a way that a return to the previous present—the future of this altered qubit—would change the entire world on a chip.
Next we ran the circuit forward in time to bring the world back to the present time. According to Ray Bradbury’s vision, Bob’s small damage to the state of the qubit should have been quickly magnified during the complex forward-in-time evolution. That would mean that Alice could not recover her information at the end. The squashed butterfly should have drastically altered her information in the present.
But it didn’t.
For our next test of these results, we ran a similar experiment in a simulation on the IBM-Q quantum processor. To simulate time travel, we sent qubits through the computer gates in reverse order. The gates manipulate the qubits and represent time steps as well. Then we damaged information in this simulated past by measuring just one local qubit, while all the other qubits maintained their quantum correlations and remained entangled.
After the damaging measurement, we ran our forward-in-time protocol and then measured the qubit’s state: it had returned to essentially the same state it had been in before backward evolution, plus some small background noise. Because the initial state of the whole system was strongly entangled in quantum correlations, the long complex evolution essentially recovered the information of the perturbed qubit.
To our surprise, we not only disproved the butterfly effect in a quantum system, but we also found a sort of no-butterfly effect, as if the system wants to protect the present.
Being strongly entangled in the quantum sense meant that the system initially had robust quantum correlations among its parts. Entangled qubits share various properties, such as polarization, and in some ways act as one. Even after changing the local information, purely quantum and global correlations across all the entangled qubits put guard rails on the quantum dynamics, guiding them to restore the damaged local variables. The longer and more complex the evolution is, the more quantum correlations it generates, so the better our predictions become, and the more robust the present.
You could say reality in quantum mechanics is self-healing.
Our theory applies to a sufficiently complex quantum evolution in which quantum correlations among the different qubits have time to appear during the backward-in-time evolution. This approach has practical applications, such as testing the quantumness of quantum computers. Where it is uncertain whether a quantum computer is actually using quantum mechanics to get its results—it might still be relying on classical physics—our no-butterfly effect can be used to test it, because our effect is purely quantum mechanical. Another potential application is protecting information, since a random evolution on a quantum circuit can protect a qubit from attack.
Next, we hope to experimentally verify the effect in an actual, physical quantum system in a laboratory (not a quantum computer), probably using ultracold atoms, which behave quantum mechanically. This will allow us to demonstrate the effect under conditions that could be applied to the practical problem of protecting quantum information.
Beyond these practical uses, the no-butterfly effect raises interesting questions about the differences between the quantum realm and the classical-physics world of our everyday experience. Most physicists believe quantum mechanics apply to scale we can observe, anywhere we look, but it often produces the same predictions as classical physics. Physicists are still grappling with how the classical world emerges from the quantum world in our everyday life. To what extent the no-butterfly effect might apply in the macroscopic world of our lives is an open question, as is the degree to which the classical butterfly effect might apply in the quantum world. We hope to answer those questions in future research. Time will tell.
The research described here was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, Condensed Matter Theory Program.


scientificamerican--2020-09-21--Mining Rare-Earth Elements from Fossilized Fish

In the western Pacific Ocean lies the tiny isle of Minami-tori-shima , the easternmost territory of Japan .
The triangular speck covers only one square mile , and due to an odd wall-like perimeter , most of the island is strangely below sea level .
There ’ s not much on it aside from an airstrip and a Japanese weather station .
The nearest land is over 1,000 kilometers away .
Yet in spite of its inauspicious qualities , the island is the key to something extraordinary : a treasure trove of rare earth elements .
Just where that treasure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lode is not on the island or in it .
It lies in the clay sediment to the south of the seamount the island sits on , in a superdeposit of bits of fish teeth , scales and bone .
The fish fossils are rare earth element traps .
There are so many of them and they have done their job so well that Japanese scientists have calculated that the mud in a 2,500-square-km zone south of this one tiny island could supply four of the world ’ s rare earth element needs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
And why ?
And , most importantly , what do we do about it ?
Rare earth elements are a set of chemical elements that occupy the broad gully of the periodic table .
We are in the middle of a technology boom in which rare earth elements are vital to a bewildering array of machines .
Many of them enable us to generate or capitalize on renewable energy .
Every time you purchase a TV , smartphone , LED , compact fluorescent bulb , or rechargeable battery ; every time a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every time Toyota builds a Prius , a spritz of rare earth elements is placed inside .
Many medical and military technologies use them as well .
As a result , consumption of the elements has increased in the past decade .
Somewhat ironically , at the moment most of the mines from which they come are in China , with the attendant environmental woes .
Yet rare earth elements aren ’ t actually that rare on Earth .
What is rare is finding these elements in a minable deposit .
As a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t often aggregate as rare earth minerals in such a way that they are easy to extract .
That ’ s where the fish come in .
In a paper published this June in Scientific Reports , a team of Japanese scientists sought to date the fish fossils at Minami-tori-shima—and at a second similar site southeast of the Manihiki Plateau in the South Pacific—to determine their origin and whether there might be more elsewhere .
They used details of the fossils themselves and ratios of osmium isotopes in clay , whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They calculated that the fossils are 34.4 million years old , and their concentration at the foot of Minami-tori-shima is a fluke result of the planetary cooling that generated the Antarctic ice sheet .
Around 34 million years ago a permanent ice sheet began forming on Antarctica following a warm period .
Shortly before ( geologically speaking ) , the Southern Ocean finally flowed freely around the continent with the opening of the Drake Passage at the bottom of South America and of the South Tasman Rise , which replaced a land @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concert with a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide , this circulation thermally isolated Antarctica from warmer air to the north and allowed it to grow colder , feeding ice formation .
As a result of the cooling , the Antarctic bottom water became colder and thus denser .
Since denser water sinks , it began to flow north under warmer , less dense waters .
This bottom water , which had been collecting and storing nutrients for millennia in the formerly sluggish southern sea , was stirred for the first time in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cold water hit the base of seamounts large , steep and high enough , it was forced up .
The influx of nutrients to sunlit water fed a bloom of life .
Similar but less intense productivity boosts around seamounts caused by upwelling of deep currents exist today .
The resulting bonanza lasted about 100,000 years .
When the nutrients stored around Antarctica ran out , it stopped .
In the meantime , the grim but inevitable result—teeth , bone fragments and toothlike scales called denticles—sank to the bottom .
Bone is made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phosphate , it turns out , is really good at capturing rare earth elements , according to Junichiro Ohta , a study co-author .
During the last 34 million years , the fossils slowly absorbed yttrium , europium , terbium , and dysprosium from the fluid trapped in the mud .
The large surface area of bone bits enhanced that ability .
As a result , the mud contains up to 20,000 parts per million of rare earth elements , although it is highly patchy .
What makes the Minami-tori-shima deposit special is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or that the fossils are special in any way , it ’ s that a one-time process generated by past climate change resulted in a superdense deposit of them .
The Japanese team calculated that there are 16 million tons of rare earth oxides south of Minami-tori-shima—enough of the aforementioned four elements to supply the world for 420–780 years at current rates of consumption , and that the deposit “ has the potential to supply these metals on a semi-infinite basis to the world.
” What this all implies , of course , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by no means unique .
Theoretically , any Pacific island or seamount sufficiently steep and high ( with at least several thousand meters of rise ) and in an ocean basin deep enough ( calculated to be greater than 5,000 meters by the scientists ) should point the way to a similar trove in a relatively small area near its base .
The Pacific contains hundreds of islands and seamounts with suitable bathymetry , and a map of potential targets generated by the scientists is splotched with red .
The question , then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Diversifying and massively increasing the planet ’ s supply of rare earth elements seems like a solid pro .
An increase in resources means we can build more devices that replace the need for fossil fuels .
And as the fish fossils are larger than the sediment they are entombed in , that makes their extraction a relatively simple matter of sorting by size , rather than applying toxic chemicals as with conventional surface mining .
Compared to terrestrial rare earth sources , the mud also has low levels of radioactive elements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fish fossils lie beneath over three miles of water , at a depth no commercial mining operation has yet been able to make profitable .
And then there are the questions of the consequences of deep-sea mining .
Efforts to mine the seabed for the notorious manganese nodules that litter the oceans of the world ( and that were infamously the pretext for the Glomar Explorer to attempt to raise a lost Soviet sub ) are now proceeding for the actual purpose of mining manganese nodules in an area of the Pacific potentially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case , the costs of disturbing the seabed of a such a large area are both likely underestimated and potentially high , according to a study published July 31 in Trends in Ecology & Evolution .
The same misunderstandings are likely to plague calculations of the costs of all deep-sea mining projects , they argue .
One might make the argument that since the fish fossils are contained in relatively small area , the benefits of extracting them outweigh any biological costs .
And yet , habitats immediately south of seamounts may be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same reasons that put the fish fossils there in the first place .
And , as humans are not omniscient , and the law of unintended consequences is ironclad , there may well be other unexpected costs .
How does all this weigh against the costs of continuing to obtain rare earth elements in China or through recent efforts to open new mines in the United States or elsewhere ?
A study published September 1 in Nature Communications discusses the very real possibility that threats to biodiversity created by surface mining for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they do in stemming climate change if they are not planned and executed carefully .
In short , it ’ s complicated .
Mining is not the enemy .
Society can not function without it .
My father , a retired mining engineer , likes to say that every good you touch is either mined or farmed , and if you add in harvested ( as with timber or fish ) , he is not wrong .
Rather , just like agriculture or fisheries , how we go about mining is what matters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prices .
Many people find it essential to get brand-new phones , computers or TVs on an annual or semi-annual basis without thinking twice , but with each purchase comes the consequences of obtaining the elements that make them work .
This author lugged around an increasingly decrepit and highly mocked iPhone 4 from 2013 to 2020 for this very reason .
We must be wise in the conservation of resources , but also judicious in the selection and operation of new mines , whether on Earth ’ s surface or the ocean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remembering the next time your cursor approaches the buy button for your next “ must-have ” device that its creation has consequences .
And in the meantime , we should consider carefully the possibilities that a quirky windfall of past cooling present for preventing the dire consequences of our current warming predicament .

In the western Pacific Ocean lies the tiny isle of Minami-tori-shima, the easternmost territory of Japan. The triangular speck covers only one square mile, and due to an odd wall-like perimeter, most of the island is strangely below sea level. There’s not much on it aside from an airstrip and a Japanese weather station. The nearest land is over 1,000 kilometers away.
Yet in spite of its inauspicious qualities, the island is the key to something extraordinary: a treasure trove of rare earth elements.
Just where that treasure is located is curiouser still. The lode is not on the island or in it. It lies in the clay sediment to the south of the seamount the island sits on, in a superdeposit of bits of fish teeth, scales and bone. The fish fossils are rare earth element traps.
There are so many of them and they have done their job so well that Japanese scientists have calculated that the mud in a 2,500-square-km zone south of this one tiny island could supply four of the world’s rare earth element needs for hundreds of years. But how? And why? And, most importantly, what do we do about it?
Rare earth elements are a set of chemical elements that occupy the broad gully of the periodic table. We are in the middle of a technology boom in which rare earth elements are vital to a bewildering array of machines. Many of them enable us to generate or capitalize on renewable energy.
Every time you purchase a TV, smartphone, LED, compact fluorescent bulb, or rechargeable battery; every time a utility erects a wind turbine; and every time Toyota builds a Prius, a spritz of rare earth elements is placed inside. Many medical and military technologies use them as well. As a result, consumption of the elements has increased in the past decade. Somewhat ironically, at the moment most of the mines from which they come are in China, with the attendant environmental woes.
Yet rare earth elements aren’t actually that rare on Earth. What is rare is finding these elements in a minable deposit. As a consequence of their chemical properties, they don’t often aggregate as rare earth minerals in such a way that they are easy to extract.
That’s where the fish come in. In a paper published this June in Scientific Reports, a team of Japanese scientists sought to date the fish fossils at Minami-tori-shima—and at a second similar site southeast of the Manihiki Plateau in the South Pacific—to determine their origin and whether there might be more elsewhere.
They used details of the fossils themselves and ratios of osmium isotopes in clay, whose abundance over time has been previously charted. They calculated that the fossils are 34.4 million years old, and their concentration at the foot of Minami-tori-shima is a fluke result of the planetary cooling that generated the Antarctic ice sheet.
Around 34 million years ago a permanent ice sheet began forming on Antarctica following a warm period. Shortly before (geologically speaking), the Southern Ocean finally flowed freely around the continent with the opening of the Drake Passage at the bottom of South America and of the South Tasman Rise, which replaced a land bridge between Tasmania and Antarctica. In concert with a decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide, this circulation thermally isolated Antarctica from warmer air to the north and allowed it to grow colder, feeding ice formation.
As a result of the cooling, the Antarctic bottom water became colder and thus denser. Since denser water sinks, it began to flow north under warmer, less dense waters. This bottom water, which had been collecting and storing nutrients for millennia in the formerly sluggish southern sea, was stirred for the first time in a long time.
When this rich, cold water hit the base of seamounts large, steep and high enough, it was forced up. The influx of nutrients to sunlit water fed a bloom of life. Similar but less intense productivity boosts around seamounts caused by upwelling of deep currents exist today.
The resulting bonanza lasted about 100,000 years. When the nutrients stored around Antarctica ran out, it stopped. In the meantime, the grim but inevitable result—teeth, bone fragments and toothlike scales called denticles—sank to the bottom.
Bone is made of calcium and phosphate. And fossilized phosphate, it turns out, is really good at capturing rare earth elements, according to Junichiro Ohta, a study co-author. During the last 34 million years, the fossils slowly absorbed yttrium, europium, terbium, and dysprosium from the fluid trapped in the mud. The large surface area of bone bits enhanced that ability. As a result, the mud contains up to 20,000 parts per million of rare earth elements, although it is highly patchy. What makes the Minami-tori-shima deposit special is not that it contains fish fossils, or that the fossils are special in any way, it’s that a one-time process generated by past climate change resulted in a superdense deposit of them.
The Japanese team calculated that there are 16 million tons of rare earth oxides south of Minami-tori-shima—enough of the aforementioned four elements to supply the world for 420–780 years at current rates of consumption, and that the deposit “has the potential to supply these metals on a semi-infinite basis to the world.”
What this all implies, of course, is that Minami-tori-shima and Manihiki Plateau are by no means unique. Theoretically, any Pacific island or seamount sufficiently steep and high (with at least several thousand meters of rise) and in an ocean basin deep enough (calculated to be greater than 5,000 meters by the scientists) should point the way to a similar trove in a relatively small area near its base. The Pacific contains hundreds of islands and seamounts with suitable bathymetry, and a map of potential targets generated by the scientists is splotched with red.
The question, then, becomes what to do about it. Diversifying and massively increasing the planet’s supply of rare earth elements seems like a solid pro. An increase in resources means we can build more devices that replace the need for fossil fuels. And as the fish fossils are larger than the sediment they are entombed in, that makes their extraction a relatively simple matter of sorting by size, rather than applying toxic chemicals as with conventional surface mining. Compared to terrestrial rare earth sources, the mud also has low levels of radioactive elements like uranium and thorium.
But the fish fossils lie beneath over three miles of water, at a depth no commercial mining operation has yet been able to make profitable. And then there are the questions of the consequences of deep-sea mining.
Efforts to mine the seabed for the notorious manganese nodules that litter the oceans of the world (and that were infamously the pretext for the Glomar Explorer to attempt to raise a lost Soviet sub) are now proceeding for the actual purpose of mining manganese nodules in an area of the Pacific potentially as big as Spain.
In this case, the costs of disturbing the seabed of a such a large area are both likely underestimated and potentially high, according to a study published July 31 in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. The same misunderstandings are likely to plague calculations of the costs of all deep-sea mining projects, they argue.
One might make the argument that since the fish fossils are contained in relatively small area, the benefits of extracting them outweigh any biological costs. And yet, habitats immediately south of seamounts may be valuable biological real estate for many of the same reasons that put the fish fossils there in the first place. And, as humans are not omniscient, and the law of unintended consequences is ironclad, there may well be other unexpected costs.
How does all this weigh against the costs of continuing to obtain rare earth elements in China or through recent efforts to open new mines in the United States or elsewhere? A study published September 1 in Nature Communications discusses the very real possibility that threats to biodiversity created by surface mining for renewable energy technologies could exceed the good they do in stemming climate change if they are not planned and executed carefully. In short, it’s complicated.
Mining is not the enemy. Society cannot function without it. My father, a retired mining engineer, likes to say that every good you touch is either mined or farmed, and if you add in harvested (as with timber or fish), he is not wrong. Rather, just like agriculture or fisheries, how we go about mining is what matters. Unfortunately, that usually means higher prices.
Many people find it essential to get brand-new phones, computers or TVs on an annual or semi-annual basis without thinking twice, but with each purchase comes the consequences of obtaining the elements that make them work. This author lugged around an increasingly decrepit and highly mocked iPhone 4 from 2013 to 2020 for this very reason.
We must be wise in the conservation of resources, but also judicious in the selection and operation of new mines, whether on Earth’s surface or the ocean’s bottom. It is worth remembering the next time your cursor approaches the buy button for your next “must-have” device that its creation has consequences. And in the meantime, we should consider carefully the possibilities that a quirky windfall of past cooling present for preventing the dire consequences of our current warming predicament.