scientificamerican--2020-11-04--Science Sound(E)scapes: Amazon Pink River Dolphins

Today we ’ re going to do something completely different : We ’ re going to offer you a break in the pandemic and politics by taking you on a three-part sound journey to the Amazon .
We will eavesdrop on some incredible creatures in the world ’ s largest rain forest .
Think of it as a soundscape turned into a sound escape .
Today episode one : into the river .
Our guide for this audio trip is Tim Weaver .
Tim is a professor of emergent digital practices and a multimedia and sound artist at the University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Tim .
“ Thanks , Jeff , for that intro .
We ’ re going to be listening to some far-reaching soundscape ecologies today from research that I ’ ve been conducting off of the main stem of the Amazon on the Peruvian border with Brazil.
” Tim , could we start out by talking a little bit about what you do ?
Tell us about soundscape ecology .
“ One way of looking at ecological stability , or what ’ s happening in the dynamics of ecologies , is by looking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the acoustic ecology .
It ’ s a newer area , in terms of looking at an exchange of information in ecologies and diversity .
And with recording technology , there ’ s amazing ways to look at this .
And so we ’ re looking at everything from the resonances of forests—so how does a forest that has been cut sound ?
And how does sound reflected into a native forest that still has its native , somewhat intact , primary forest—communication between species .
So bioacoustics is a big piece of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the forest—how things reflect .
“ And the tools that we use are everything from recording in three-dimensional sound with new innovative multiple microphone devices so we can record somewhat three-dimensionally with microphone arrays .
We ’ re using hydrophones underwater and just standard stereo microphones that we can deploy and then also some that we can schedule and leave out there for up to a month and go back and get them and bring them back in and then analyze the soundscapes and the communication going on with artificial intelligence .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in our research.
” Now let ’ s talk about some of that research , specifically , into the pink river dolphin .
The pink river dolphin is now endangered .
I guess you had a hard time actually finding them , right Tim ?
“ So this is about 140 kilometers upriver , on the main stem of the Amazon in a side tributary .
This event is recorded the same time of year that Jeff and I are having a conversation in October/November .
And the Amazon river is rising , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Andes .
There ’ s a lull in it , so it ’ s coming up .
So what that means is : there ’ s migratory catfish coming all the way from the mouth of the Amazon—all the way up to this interface with the Andes and where the upper Amazon drops—and then they ’ re laying their eggs there .
It is one of the largest migrations of fish in the world .
And with that , pink river dolphins want to go in there , and it ’ s a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maybe with their young and slurp up these catfish eggs or other types of fish .
“ The interesting thing about the pink river dolphins is they then go into the forest to hunt , which is wide open .
And with that , they ’ ve evolved from being toothed whales .
When the Andes rose up , they were trapped in the Amazon and evolved .
And they ’ re obligate freshwater ; they 're not saltwater at all , and they can also flex their bodies almost in half to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They ’ re different from ocean dolphins in that their beaks are longer , and they have small cilia , or small things to feel on the end of their beaks .
And it ’ s a very low visibility environment , so they ’ re communicating by echolocation.
” A drowned Amazon forest is a difficult place for them to move , so how did you get into position to capture them on tape ?
“ We go in with small boats and the water hyacinths and everything being pushed down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ got to hack your way through it .
Once you get into the oxbow lakes , which change every year , the dolphins can operate in there really well .
They tend to hang out in there as the water comes up .
And it will rise 20 to 30 feet to submerge the forest .
Then they can go to the forest and then come out .
“ I ’ ve been down there multiple seasons to record and over four different times of field recording down there .
I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seconds recording .
And in the last time , when it was just the right moment where they ’ re going into start to hunt in these fish nests , I got five hours of recording.
” So what are we actually hearing when we listen to the audio ?
“ So there ’ s a mixture of sounds , and there are not surface sounds .
It ’ s recorded with a hydrophone .
On the surface , you ’ re hearing the dolphins .
And a lot of people that have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ air—they are mammals—you ’ ll hear the blow happen .
But when they go subsurface , then they ’ re communicating in this whole array of more ultrasonic sounds , so we ’ re catching the edge of that .
But there ’ s also sounds of croaking of—Amazonian freshwater fish are not well characterized—what should be catfish that we ’ re hearing .
So you ’ re hearing this kind of mixture of croaking of these fish and then communication of the dolphins to pinpoint where there ’ s really good things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beginning they are a very endangered species .
Do you have a feeling that making these recordings is important because maybe , as a species , they might not exist in the future ?
“ The pressure that ’ s going on right now is kind of astounding .
And it ’ s happening all over the Amazonian basin with the countries there , so Brazil , Peru , Colombia , Venezuela and then all the way down into Bolivia as well .
There ’ s a lot of colonists that have gone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re landless , and they want to farm catfish because there ’ s a big market for them .
“ So the biggest piece of protein to put in that aquaculture is pink river dolphins .
So they ’ ll shoot them or hack them up into bits and raise catfish , then send them out to any export market , maybe in Columbia or something like that .
And that ’ s happening all over the Amazon basin right now .
It ’ s kind of horrific , and you see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you can see them surface .
And it ’ s pretty remote down there , so it ’ s hard to enforce .
It ’ s definitely illegal in Peru to kill a river dolphin , but it happens .
So we ’ re trying to raise consciousness with these recordings and then bring this into new works , creative works and scientific works to start to document that.
” Let ’ s stand back and let the dolphins speak for themselves .
Thank you , Tim , for sharing your work with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thank you , Jeff .
And I hope that everybody can gain a perspective of the sounds around us—and also that incredible possibilities for listening and the diversity of acoustic ecologies on our planet.
” And thank you to all the listeners for taking this trip with us .
Make sure to join us for the next episode of this Amazon sound escape , coming soon to the podcast .
In the next episode : inside the dark embrace for the rain forest night .
[ The above text is a transcript of @ @ @ @

Full Transcript
This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Jeff DelViscio.
Today we’re going to do something completely different: We’re going to offer you a break in the pandemic and politics by taking you on a three-part sound journey to the Amazon. We will eavesdrop on some incredible creatures in the world’s largest rain forest. Think of it as a soundscape turned into a sound escape.
Today episode one: into the river. Our guide for this audio trip is Tim Weaver. Tim is a professor of emergent digital practices and a multimedia and sound artist at the University of Denver. Thanks for joining us, Tim.
“Thanks, Jeff, for that intro. We’re going to be listening to some far-reaching soundscape ecologies today from research that I’ve been conducting off of the main stem of the Amazon on the Peruvian border with Brazil.”
Tim, could we start out by talking a little bit about what you do? Tell us about soundscape ecology.
“One way of looking at ecological stability, or what’s happening in the dynamics of ecologies, is by looking at the sound of spaces, or the acoustic ecology. It’s a newer area, in terms of looking at an exchange of information in ecologies and diversity. And with recording technology, there’s amazing ways to look at this. And so we’re looking at everything from the resonances of forests—so how does a forest that has been cut sound? And how does sound reflected into a native forest that still has its native, somewhat intact, primary forest—communication between species. So bioacoustics is a big piece of it, as well as the resonance of the forest—how things reflect.
“And the tools that we use are everything from recording in three-dimensional sound with new innovative multiple microphone devices so we can record somewhat three-dimensionally with microphone arrays. We’re using hydrophones underwater and just standard stereo microphones that we can deploy and then also some that we can schedule and leave out there for up to a month and go back and get them and bring them back in and then analyze the soundscapes and the communication going on with artificial intelligence. So we're using all those tools in our research.”
Now let’s talk about some of that research, specifically, into the pink river dolphin. The pink river dolphin is now endangered. I guess you had a hard time actually finding them, right Tim?
“So this is about 140 kilometers upriver, on the main stem of the Amazon in a side tributary. This event is recorded the same time of year that Jeff and I are having a conversation in October/November. And the Amazon river is rising, then, from the runoff from the Andes. There’s a lull in it, so it’s coming up. So what that means is: there’s migratory catfish coming all the way from the mouth of the Amazon—all the way up to this interface with the Andes and where the upper Amazon drops—and then they’re laying their eggs there. It is one of the largest migrations of fish in the world. And with that, pink river dolphins want to go in there, and it’s a great time to go in pods and maybe with their young and slurp up these catfish eggs or other types of fish.
“The interesting thing about the pink river dolphins is they then go into the forest to hunt, which is wide open. And with that, they’ve evolved from being toothed whales. When the Andes rose up, they were trapped in the Amazon and evolved. And they’re obligate freshwater; they're not saltwater at all, and they can also flex their bodies almost in half to get around trees and things like that. They’re different from ocean dolphins in that their beaks are longer, and they have small cilia, or small things to feel on the end of their beaks. And it’s a very low visibility environment, so they’re communicating by echolocation.”
A drowned Amazon forest is a difficult place for them to move, so how did you get into position to capture them on tape?
“We go in with small boats and the water hyacinths and everything being pushed down the river tributaries. You’ve got to hack your way through it. Once you get into the oxbow lakes, which change every year, the dolphins can operate in there really well. They tend to hang out in there as the water comes up. And it will rise 20 to 30 feet to submerge the forest. Then they can go to the forest and then come out.
“I’ve been down there multiple seasons to record and over four different times of field recording down there. I’ve gotten 10 seconds of recording, 30 seconds recording. And in the last time, when it was just the right moment where they’re going into start to hunt in these fish nests, I got five hours of recording.”
So what are we actually hearing when we listen to the audio?
“So there’s a mixture of sounds, and there are not surface sounds. It’s recorded with a hydrophone. On the surface, you’re hearing the dolphins. And a lot of people that have seen dolphins when they come up for air—they are mammals—you’ll hear the blow happen. But when they go subsurface, then they’re communicating in this whole array of more ultrasonic sounds, so we’re catching the edge of that. But there’s also sounds of croaking of—Amazonian freshwater fish are not well characterized—what should be catfish that we’re hearing. So you’re hearing this kind of mixture of croaking of these fish and then communication of the dolphins to pinpoint where there’s really good things to eat.”
You said at the beginning they are a very endangered species. Do you have a feeling that making these recordings is important because maybe, as a species, they might not exist in the future?
“The pressure that’s going on right now is kind of astounding. And it’s happening all over the Amazonian basin with the countries there, so Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela and then all the way down into Bolivia as well. There’s a lot of colonists that have gone down to the Amazon basin because they’re landless, and they want to farm catfish because there’s a big market for them.
“So the biggest piece of protein to put in that aquaculture is pink river dolphins. So they’ll shoot them or hack them up into bits and raise catfish, then send them out to any export market, maybe in Columbia or something like that. And that’s happening all over the Amazon basin right now. It’s kind of horrific, and you see these beautiful animals, and you know you can see them surface. And it’s pretty remote down there, so it’s hard to enforce. It’s definitely illegal in Peru to kill a river dolphin, but it happens. So we’re trying to raise consciousness with these recordings and then bring this into new works, creative works and scientific works to start to document that.”
Let’s stand back and let the dolphins speak for themselves.
[CLIP: Dolphin sounds]
Thank you, Tim, for sharing your work with us in the 60-Second Science podcast
“Thank you, Jeff. And I hope that everybody can gain a perspective of the sounds around us—and also that incredible possibilities for listening and the diversity of acoustic ecologies on our planet.”
And thank you to all the listeners for taking this trip with us. Make sure to join us for the next episode of this Amazon sound escape, coming soon to the podcast. In the next episode: inside the dark embrace for the rain forest night.
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]


scientificamerican--2020-11-04--To Understand Gravity, Toss a Hard Drive into a Black Hole

We probably think we know gravity pretty well .
After all , we have more conscious experience with this fundamental force than with any of the others ( electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces ) .
But even though physicists have been studying gravity for hundreds of years , it remains a source of mystery .
In our video Why Is Gravity Different ?
We explore why this force is so perplexing and why it remains difficult to understand how Einstein ’ s general theory of relativity ( which covers gravity ) fits together with quantum mechanics .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to study directly at the quantum level .
We can not scrutinize it using particle accelerators like we can with the other forces , so we need other ways to get at quantum gravity .
Enter black holes .
In a paper in the early 1970s the late physicist Jacob Bekenstein investigated the question of what happens to entropy—a measure of disorder , or randomness , in a system—when matter succumbs to a black hole ’ s massive gravitational pull and falls through its event horizon .
Bekenstein noted that the matter ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black hole .
Yet this would violate the second law of thermodynamics , which states two things : information can not be destroyed , and entropy can only increase .
Thus the entropy of the black hole must compensate for the loss .
Bekenstein argued that this black hole entropy must not be proportional to the black hole ’ s volume , but to the area of its event horizon .
If we are describing the contents of black holes in terms of area instead of volume , we should think about laws @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well .
This would mean a theory of everything ( gravity included ) should be able to play out in fewer than three spacetime dimensions .
Now let ’ s imagine the information that describes the state of the entire universe—all stored on a single hard drive .
And then throw that hard drive into a black hole .
The stored information can not be lost , so it must be contained in the surface area of the black hole ( albeit scrambled ) .
This scenario leads to a dramatically new way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effectively be a hologram , a seemingly 3-D object that is actually just a projection from a 2-D surface .
Our ostensibly three-dimensional experience of the world would then be an illusion , convincingly generated by a fundamentally lower-dimensional reality .
Maybe we ’ re all just paper-thin cutouts drifting in gravity ’ s cosmic breeze .

We probably think we know gravity pretty well. After all, we have more conscious experience with this fundamental force than with any of the others (electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces). But even though physicists have been studying gravity for hundreds of years, it remains a source of mystery.
In our video Why Is Gravity Different? We explore why this force is so perplexing and why it remains difficult to understand how Einstein’s general theory of relativity (which covers gravity) fits together with quantum mechanics.
Gravity is extraordinarily weak and nearly impossible to study directly at the quantum level. We cannot scrutinize it using particle accelerators like we can with the other forces, so we need other ways to get at quantum gravity.
Enter black holes. In a paper in the early 1970s the late physicist Jacob Bekenstein investigated the question of what happens to entropy—a measure of disorder, or randomness, in a system—when matter succumbs to a black hole’s massive gravitational pull and falls through its event horizon.
Bekenstein noted that the matter’s entropy seems to disappear inside the black hole. Yet this would violate the second law of thermodynamics, which states two things: information cannot be destroyed, and entropy can only increase. Thus the entropy of the black hole must compensate for the loss. Bekenstein argued that this black hole entropy must not be proportional to the black hole’s volume, but to the area of its event horizon.
If we are describing the contents of black holes in terms of area instead of volume, we should think about laws of physics in terms of area as well. This would mean a theory of everything (gravity included) should be able to play out in fewer than three spacetime dimensions.
Now let’s imagine the information that describes the state of the entire universe—all stored on a single hard drive. And then throw that hard drive into a black hole. The stored information cannot be lost, so it must be contained in the surface area of the black hole (albeit scrambled).
This scenario leads to a dramatically new way of thinking in which the universe could effectively be a hologram, a seemingly 3-D object that is actually just a projection from a 2-D surface. Our ostensibly three-dimensional experience of the world would then be an illusion, convincingly generated by a fundamentally lower-dimensional reality.
Maybe we’re all just paper-thin cutouts drifting in gravity’s cosmic breeze.


scientificamerican--2020-11-04--The Problem with Honey Bees

The Problem with Honey Bees

To many people , honey bees symbolize prosperity , sustainability and environmentalism .
But as a honey bee researcher , I have to tell you that only the first item on that list is defensible .
Although they are important for agriculture , honey bees also destabilize natural ecosystems by competing with native bees—some of which are species at risk .
The rise in hobby beekeeping , now a trendy activity for hundreds of thousands of Americans , followed strong awareness campaigns to “ save the bees.
” But as a species , honey bees are least in need of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over native pollinators , and murky messaging has led many citizens—myself once included—to believe they are doing a good thing for the environment by putting on a beekeeper ’ s veil .
Unfortunately , they are probably doing more harm than good .
“ Beekeeping is for people ; it 's not a conservation practice , ” says Sheila Colla , an assistant professor and conservation biologist at Toronto ’ s York University , Canada .
“ People mistakenly think keeping honey bees , or helping honey bees , is somehow helping the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of extinction . ''
Colla recently published an analysis of nearly a thousand comments submitted by citizens in response to Ontario ’ s draft Pollinator Health Action Plan—a proposal that involved a plan for stricter neonicotinoid pesticide regulations .
Despite intense public interest in bees and pollination and strong support of tighter pesticide regulations , Colla and her colleagues found that citizens had a surprisingly poor understanding of the diversity of pollinators and their roles in pollination .
“ The focus on neonics [ a kind of pesticide ] and honey bees has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conserving wild pollinators from their most important threats , ” Colla says .
She is justifiably frustrated at the misappropriated attention on saving honey bees when , from a conservationist ’ s point of view , native bees are the ones in more dire need of support .
And while honey bee–centric businesses often support initiatives that benefit native bees , such as developing bee-friendly habitat , the financial contributions pale in comparison to what could be achieved if funds were applied to these initiatives directly .
“ Beekeeping companies and various non-science-based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of native pollinators , ” Colla explains .
“ These resources thus were not allocated to the actual issue people are concerned about.
” For some reason , maybe because they are small , honey bees are not generally viewed as the massively distributed livestock animal that they are .
There are millions of honey bee colonies in North America , 2.8 million of which are in the U.S. Approximating around 30,000 bees per colony ( the size of a pollination unit ) , that ’ s roughly a billion honey bees in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of people .
High densities of honey bee colonies increase competition between native pollinators for forage , putting even more pressure on the wild species that are already in decline .
Honey bees are extreme generalist foragers and monopolize floral resources , thus leading to exploitative competition—that is , where one species uses up a resource , not leaving enough to go around .
But determining honey bees ' influence on natural ecosystems requires empirical testing .
It is possible , for example , that alternate foraging habits of native bees—differences in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plants , for example—could lead to little effective competition .
Honey bees are so ubiquitous , though , that it has been hard to test exactly how their introduction , and subsequent resource monopolization , affects ecosystem networks .
Not so for the Canary Islands .
Alfredo Valido and Pedro Jordano , researchers from the Spanish National Research Council in Tenerife and Sevilla , respectively , saw an opportunity to use these islands—a Spanish archipelago off the northwestern coast of Africa—to study how the introduction of honey bees affects the native pollinating community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ Teide National Park , thousands of honey bee colonies are introduced seasonally for honey production and removed again at the end of the nectar flow , creating an excellent scenario for experimentation .
Their results , published in Scientific Reports , do not make honey bees look like the sustainability celebrities they have become .
Bringing in honey bees reduced the connectedness of the plant-pollinator networks .
Nestedness and modularity , two indicators of ecosystem resilience , also declined .
While some plant species enjoyed higher fruit set , fruits sampled nearest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The impact of the beehives is so dramatic , ” says Valido , “ You can detect disruption between plants and pollinators just the day after beehive installation.
” “ By introducing tens or hundreds of beehives , the relative density of honey bees increases exponentially compared with wild native pollinators , ” Valido explains .
This causes a drastic reduction of flower resources—pollen and nectar—within the foraging range .
“ Beekeeping appears to have more pervasive , negative impacts on biodiversity than it was previously assumed , ” says Jordano .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the Canary Islands are generally applicable to other ecosystems where honey bees are introduced , but they note that the specific impact of beekeeping in other locations may differ .
Indeed , honey bees are not always the top competitor in a pollinator network : Whether they succeed at outcompeting the native bees depends on other factors .
For example , Nicholas Balfour and his colleagues at the University of Sussex , England , found that native bumble bees were superior competitors on the tubular flowers of lavender , owing in part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In still other ecosystems , honey bees appear not to be as influential as in the Canary Islands .
After introduction in northern Patagonia , nonnative bumble bees and honey bees overtook the native bees as the most frequent floral visitors , but this had no effect on the native bees ’ actual visitation rates .
While every ecosystem has its own quirks—with different pollinator players and participating plants—pollination network studies conducted closer to home tend to agree with the findings in the Canary Islands .
“ There have been studies in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ honey bees , ” says Colla .
“ Honey bees also are very effective at pollinating certain weedy species , which changes the overall plant communities.
” Many of those weedy species are also invasive , including Scotch broom , dandelions , Himalayan blackberry and Japanese knotweed , among others .
And beekeepers secretly love invasive plants .
Their intense proliferation provides a lucrative and predictable nectar flow—perfect for the honey bees , and beekeepers , to capitalize on—but the plants , too , disrupt native ecosystems .
Even with this boost of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough to go around amongst honey bees , let alone native bees .
In the lower mainland surrounding Vancouver , Canada , I kept a small research apiary with 15–20 hives .
It was my first year keeping research colonies in a high-density area , and I have never struggled so much to keep my bees alive .
The hives were riddled with diseases .
I even euthanized one colony with symptoms of American foulbrood—standard protocol , as it ’ s one of the most destructive , contagious diseases that honey bees face @ @ @ @ @ @ @ destructor—a devastating parasitic mite—at the start of the season , the hives required miticide treatments by late summer .
And the colonies did not produce a crop of honey .
Colony densities in some locations have become too high , facilitating the spread of disease and exacerbating problems with poor nutrition .
If it was this hard to keep my honey bees healthy , I ’ m not sure I can bear to think about the wild bees .
But think about them , we must .
I used to believe that honey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that concern over their health and prosperity would spill over onto native bees , benefitting them , too .
While this may have happened in some cases , evidence is mounting that misguided enthusiasm for honey bees has likely been to the native bees ’ detriment .
Beekeeping doesn ’ t make me feel good , anymore .
In fact , quite the opposite .

To many people, honey bees symbolize prosperity, sustainability and environmentalism. But as a honey bee researcher, I have to tell you that only the first item on that list is defensible. Although they are important for agriculture, honey bees also destabilize natural ecosystems by competing with native bees—some of which are species at risk.
The rise in hobby beekeeping, now a trendy activity for hundreds of thousands of Americans, followed strong awareness campaigns to “save the bees.” But as a species, honey bees are least in need of saving. Media attention disproportionately covers them over native pollinators, and murky messaging has led many citizens—myself once included—to believe they are doing a good thing for the environment by putting on a beekeeper’s veil. Unfortunately, they are probably doing more harm than good.
“Beekeeping is for people; it's not a conservation practice,” says Sheila Colla, an assistant professor and conservation biologist at Toronto’s York University, Canada. “People mistakenly think keeping honey bees, or helping honey bees, is somehow helping the native bees, which are at risk of extinction."
Colla recently published an analysis of nearly a thousand comments submitted by citizens in response to Ontario’s draft Pollinator Health Action Plan—a proposal that involved a plan for stricter neonicotinoid pesticide regulations. Despite intense public interest in bees and pollination and strong support of tighter pesticide regulations, Colla and her colleagues found that citizens had a surprisingly poor understanding of the diversity of pollinators and their roles in pollination.
“The focus on neonics [a kind of pesticide] and honey bees has taken a ton of resources away from conserving wild pollinators from their most important threats,” Colla says. She is justifiably frustrated at the misappropriated attention on saving honey bees when, from a conservationist’s point of view, native bees are the ones in more dire need of support.
And while honey bee–centric businesses often support initiatives that benefit native bees, such as developing bee-friendly habitat, the financial contributions pale in comparison to what could be achieved if funds were applied to these initiatives directly. “Beekeeping companies and various non-science-based initiatives have financially benefitted from the decline of native pollinators,” Colla explains. “These resources thus were not allocated to the actual issue people are concerned about.”
For some reason, maybe because they are small, honey bees are not generally viewed as the massively distributed livestock animal that they are. There are millions of honey bee colonies in North America, 2.8 million of which are in the U.S. Approximating around 30,000 bees per colony (the size of a pollination unit), that’s roughly a billion honey bees in Canada and the U.S. alone—almost triple the number of people.
High densities of honey bee colonies increase competition between native pollinators for forage, putting even more pressure on the wild species that are already in decline. Honey bees are extreme generalist foragers and monopolize floral resources, thus leading to exploitative competition—that is, where one species uses up a resource, not leaving enough to go around.
But determining honey bees' influence on natural ecosystems requires empirical testing. It is possible, for example, that alternate foraging habits of native bees—differences in their active times of day or preferred plants, for example—could lead to little effective competition. Honey bees are so ubiquitous, though, that it has been hard to test exactly how their introduction, and subsequent resource monopolization, affects ecosystem networks.
Not so for the Canary Islands. Alfredo Valido and Pedro Jordano, researchers from the Spanish National Research Council in Tenerife and Sevilla, respectively, saw an opportunity to use these islands—a Spanish archipelago off the northwestern coast of Africa—to study how the introduction of honey bees affects the native pollinating community.
In the highlands of the islands’ Teide National Park, thousands of honey bee colonies are introduced seasonally for honey production and removed again at the end of the nectar flow, creating an excellent scenario for experimentation. Their results, published in Scientific Reports, do not make honey bees look like the sustainability celebrities they have become.
Bringing in honey bees reduced the connectedness of the plant-pollinator networks. Nestedness and modularity, two indicators of ecosystem resilience, also declined. While some plant species enjoyed higher fruit set, fruits sampled nearest the apiaries contained only aborted seeds. “The impact of the beehives is so dramatic,” says Valido, “You can detect disruption between plants and pollinators just the day after beehive installation.”
“By introducing tens or hundreds of beehives, the relative density of honey bees increases exponentially compared with wild native pollinators,” Valido explains. This causes a drastic reduction of flower resources—pollen and nectar—within the foraging range. “Beekeeping appears to have more pervasive, negative impacts on biodiversity than it was previously assumed,” says Jordano.
Valido and Jordano suspect that their findings on the Canary Islands are generally applicable to other ecosystems where honey bees are introduced, but they note that the specific impact of beekeeping in other locations may differ.
Indeed, honey bees are not always the top competitor in a pollinator network: Whether they succeed at outcompeting the native bees depends on other factors. For example, Nicholas Balfour and his colleagues at the University of Sussex, England, found that native bumble bees were superior competitors on the tubular flowers of lavender, owing in part to their longer proboscis (tongue).
In still other ecosystems, honey bees appear not to be as influential as in the Canary Islands. After introduction in northern Patagonia, nonnative bumble bees and honey bees overtook the native bees as the most frequent floral visitors, but this had no effect on the native bees’ actual visitation rates.
While every ecosystem has its own quirks—with different pollinator players and participating plants—pollination network studies conducted closer to home tend to agree with the findings in the Canary Islands. “There have been studies in North America showing pollination system disruptions by honey bees,” says Colla. “Honey bees also are very effective at pollinating certain weedy species, which changes the overall plant communities.”
Many of those weedy species are also invasive, including Scotch broom, dandelions, Himalayan blackberry and Japanese knotweed, among others. And beekeepers secretly love invasive plants. Their intense proliferation provides a lucrative and predictable nectar flow—perfect for the honey bees, and beekeepers, to capitalize on—but the plants, too, disrupt native ecosystems.
Even with this boost of forage, there is sometimes still not enough to go around amongst honey bees, let alone native bees. In the lower mainland surrounding Vancouver, Canada, I kept a small research apiary with 15–20 hives. It was my first year keeping research colonies in a high-density area, and I have never struggled so much to keep my bees alive.
The hives were riddled with diseases. I even euthanized one colony with symptoms of American foulbrood—standard protocol, as it’s one of the most destructive, contagious diseases that honey bees face. Despite being entirely free of Varroa destructor—a devastating parasitic mite—at the start of the season, the hives required miticide treatments by late summer. And the colonies did not produce a crop of honey.
Colony densities in some locations have become too high, facilitating the spread of disease and exacerbating problems with poor nutrition. If it was this hard to keep my honey bees healthy, I’m not sure I can bear to think about the wild bees.
But think about them, we must. I used to believe that honey bees were a gateway species, and that concern over their health and prosperity would spill over onto native bees, benefitting them, too. While this may have happened in some cases, evidence is mounting that misguided enthusiasm for honey bees has likely been to the native bees’ detriment. Beekeeping doesn’t make me feel good, anymore. In fact, quite the opposite.


scientificamerican--2020-11-04--U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord after Trump Stalls Global Warming Action for Four Years

The U.S. ’ s exit from the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement takes effect today , capping four years of President Donald Trump aggressively rolling back the Obama administration ’ s climate-change-mitigation policies .
The acceleration of the country ’ s greenhouse gas emissions on Trump ’ s watch has been blunted by state- and city-level efforts , a burgeoning renewable energy market and the COVID-19 pandemic ’ s economic downturn .
But the Trump-era rollbacks could still ultimately lead to more heat-trapping carbon entering the atmosphere over the next decade or more .
The U.S. ’ s position contrasts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rest of the world .
Other industrialized nations “ are crafting detailed policies that are suited to their individual national context and making commitments that are high-ambition and delivered in many different ways with the policies that they will enact , ” says Rachel Cleetus , policy director of the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists .
Just last week , for example , Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga pledged to reduce his country ’ s carbon emissions to zero by 2050 .
And China and the European Union @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this moment , the U.S. is globally isolated , ” Cleetus adds .
“ No other country has left the agreement.
” When the Paris Agreement was concluded in 2015 , it was hailed as a historic commitment , among nearly 200 nations , to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stave off the worst effects of climate change .
The pact ’ s stated aim was to keep global average temperatures from increasing by more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of this century and to pursue efforts to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ C. Contrary to Trump ’ s assertions , the agreement ( which took effect in November 2016 ) , is not prescriptive ; signatory countries are asked to implement their own emissions-reduction strategies .
Signing the agreement was something of a capstone to the ambitious climate policies championed by President Barack Obama .
U.S. emissions had steadily increased for decades before he was elected , and his administration reversed this trend .
It took actions such as setting stricter fuel economy standards for vehicles and setting out a Climate Action Plan that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sector of the economy , ” says Kate Larsen , a director at the Rhodium Group , an independent research organization .
Larsen recently co-authored an analysis that found Trump ’ s climate policy rollbacks could add the equivalent of one third of the country ’ s 2019 greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere by 2035 .
“ We estimate that had all of the Obama policies been put in place , the U.S. would have come close to meeting the [ 2009 ] Copenhagen [ Accord ] commitment of a 17 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ levels ] in 2020 , ” she says .
Obama ’ s policies would not have brought about the Paris Agreement ’ s more rigorous goal of 26 to 28 percent reductions below 2005 levels by 2025 , but they “ would have been an important first start.
” Trump began attempting to unravel his predecessor ’ s legacy almost immediately after taking office .
In March 2017 he ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to scrap the Clean Power Plan—an Obama-era policy that aimed to reduce U.S. emissions from power generation by 32 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this directive , the agency replaced it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule .
According to the Rhodium Group analysis , that policy change alone could result in as much as an extra 624 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 .
The Trump administration has also weakened fuel efficiency requirements and rolled back numerous regulations related to methane , a potent greenhouse gas , among other actions .
Collectively , those rule changes will result in an excess 1.8 billion metric tons of CO equivalent by 2035 , according to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four years of the Trump administration has not only been a reversal of many of the Obama policies that would have put us on track with meeting our initial obligations , ” Larsen says , “ [ it has also been ] four years of lost opportunities to continue the progress of the Obama administration.
” Despite that lost time , a confluence of factors has prevented Trump ’ s rollbacks of emissions standards from manifesting their worst possible outcomes .
Efforts by states and municipalities to fill the gap—along with the growing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ curb emissions in the absence of federal regulations .
Joseph Aldy , an economist at Harvard University ’ s John F. Kennedy School of Government , who served as Obama ’ s special assistant for energy and the environment from 2009 to 2010 , says the result is that emissions output has plateaued , rather than spiked , during Trump ’ s tenure .
“ The Trump administration has slowed progress considerably , but they haven ’ t reversed progress , ” Aldy says .
“ They ’ re certainly not consistent with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back coal ” as an energy source .
( Coal-fired power plants produce more than twice as much CO emissions as natural gas plants . )
The combined market forces of cheap natural gas , wind and solar power mean “ there ’ s just no economic reason ” to be investing in coal , he says .
COVID-19 shutdowns have also dampened the U.S. ’ s 2020 emissions output .
According to a study published in Nature Climate Change in May , global CO emissions decreased by about 17 percent in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the previous year .
The largest reductions were caused by sharp decreases in aviation and surface transport .
Another paper , published in October in Nature Communications , found CO emissions began to rise again in May and June 2020 , resulting in a global emissions decline of about 9 percent , compared with 2019 .
Eri Saikawa , an environmental scientist at Emory University , who was not involved in either study , says the fact that the COVID-19 shutdowns were the single largest factor in reducing emissions is rather bleak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do everything we can to reduce [ emissions ] , ” she says .
“ COVID can not do that.
” If the federal government continues to ignore climate change after the pandemic subsides , grassroots movements could pressure local governments to move forward on their own , she adds .
Federal climate change action now depends largely on who takes office in January 2021 .
The Trump administration is continuing to enact rollbacks to emissions regulations and appointing officials who have made statements casting doubt on widely accepted climate science to key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Joe Biden has pledged to enact climate-change polices that are even more ambitious than Obama ’ s .
He has also said he will bring the U.S. back into the Paris pact .
Doing so would be a relatively simple process and would take place 30 days after Biden sends notification of his intent to rejoin .
But even if a Biden administration aggressively tackles carbon emissions , Trump ’ s impact on climate policy could be lasting .
“ There is a longer-term effect of failing to act over the past four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We need a serious , whole-of-the-economy , whole-of-the-government approach to public policy [ on climate change ] .
It ’ s the delay in getting that going which makes it all the more challenging .
But as [ Trump has ] demonstrated with COVID , it ’ s hard for him to actually do hard work to deal with challenges .
”

The U.S.’s exit from the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement takes effect today, capping four years of President Donald Trump aggressively rolling back the Obama administration’s climate-change-mitigation policies. The acceleration of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions on Trump’s watch has been blunted by state- and city-level efforts, a burgeoning renewable energy market and the COVID-19 pandemic’s economic downturn. But the Trump-era rollbacks could still ultimately lead to more heat-trapping carbon entering the atmosphere over the next decade or more.
The U.S.’s position contrasts starkly with that of much of the rest of the world. Other industrialized nations “are crafting detailed policies that are suited to their individual national context and making commitments that are high-ambition and delivered in many different ways with the policies that they will enact,” says Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Just last week, for example, Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga pledged to reduce his country’s carbon emissions to zero by 2050. And China and the European Union have made similar commitments. “At this moment, the U.S. is globally isolated,” Cleetus adds. “No other country has left the agreement.”
When the Paris Agreement was concluded in 2015, it was hailed as a historic commitment, among nearly 200 nations, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stave off the worst effects of climate change. The pact’s stated aim was to keep global average temperatures from increasing by more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the end of this century and to pursue efforts to keep that temperature rise below 1.5 degrees C. Contrary to Trump’s assertions, the agreement (which took effect in November 2016), is not prescriptive; signatory countries are asked to implement their own emissions-reduction strategies.
Signing the agreement was something of a capstone to the ambitious climate policies championed by President Barack Obama. U.S. emissions had steadily increased for decades before he was elected, and his administration reversed this trend. It took actions such as setting stricter fuel economy standards for vehicles and setting out a Climate Action Plan that “outlined systematic emission reductions for almost every sector of the economy,” says Kate Larsen, a director at the Rhodium Group, an independent research organization. Larsen recently co-authored an analysis that found Trump’s climate policy rollbacks could add the equivalent of one third of the country’s 2019 greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere by 2035. “We estimate that had all of the Obama policies been put in place, the U.S. would have come close to meeting the [2009] Copenhagen [Accord] commitment of a 17 percent reduction [in carbon emissions below 2005 levels] in 2020,” she says. Obama’s policies would not have brought about the Paris Agreement’s more rigorous goal of 26 to 28 percent reductions below 2005 levels by 2025, but they “would have been an important first start.”
Trump began attempting to unravel his predecessor’s legacy almost immediately after taking office. In March 2017 he ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to scrap the Clean Power Plan—an Obama-era policy that aimed to reduce U.S. emissions from power generation by 32 percent of 2005 levels by 2030—and under this directive, the agency replaced it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule. According to the Rhodium Group analysis, that policy change alone could result in as much as an extra 624 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. The Trump administration has also weakened fuel efficiency requirements and rolled back numerous regulations related to methane, a potent greenhouse gas, among other actions. Collectively, those rule changes will result in an excess 1.8 billion metric tons of CO 2 equivalent by 2035, according to the Rhodium report. “The last four years of the Trump administration has not only been a reversal of many of the Obama policies that would have put us on track with meeting our initial obligations,” Larsen says, “[it has also been] four years of lost opportunities to continue the progress of the Obama administration.”
Despite that lost time, a confluence of factors has prevented Trump’s rollbacks of emissions standards from manifesting their worst possible outcomes. Efforts by states and municipalities to fill the gap—along with the growing economic competitiveness of renewable energy sources—have helped curb emissions in the absence of federal regulations. Joseph Aldy, an economist at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who served as Obama’s special assistant for energy and the environment from 2009 to 2010, says the result is that emissions output has plateaued, rather than spiked, during Trump’s tenure. “The Trump administration has slowed progress considerably, but they haven’t reversed progress,” Aldy says. “They’re certainly not consistent with their [campaign] rhetoric to bring back coal” as an energy source. (Coal-fired power plants produce more than twice as much CO 2 emissions as natural gas plants.) The combined market forces of cheap natural gas, wind and solar power mean “there’s just no economic reason” to be investing in coal, he says.
COVID-19 shutdowns have also dampened the U.S.’s 2020 emissions output. According to a study published in Nature Climate Change in May, global CO 2 emissions decreased by about 17 percent in the first four months of 2020, compared with the previous year. The largest reductions were caused by sharp decreases in aviation and surface transport. Another paper, published in October in Nature Communications, found CO 2 emissions began to rise again in May and June 2020, resulting in a global emissions decline of about 9 percent, compared with 2019. Eri Saikawa, an environmental scientist at Emory University, who was not involved in either study, says the fact that the COVID-19 shutdowns were the single largest factor in reducing emissions is rather bleak news. “We really need to do everything we can to reduce [emissions],” she says. “COVID cannot do that.” If the federal government continues to ignore climate change after the pandemic subsides, grassroots movements could pressure local governments to move forward on their own, she adds.
Federal climate change action now depends largely on who takes office in January 2021. The Trump administration is continuing to enact rollbacks to emissions regulations and appointing officials who have made statements casting doubt on widely accepted climate science to key government positions. But former vice president Joe Biden has pledged to enact climate-change polices that are even more ambitious than Obama’s. He has also said he will bring the U.S. back into the Paris pact. Doing so would be a relatively simple process and would take place 30 days after Biden sends notification of his intent to rejoin. But even if a Biden administration aggressively tackles carbon emissions, Trump’s impact on climate policy could be lasting.
“There is a longer-term effect of failing to act over the past four years,” Aldy says. “We need a serious, whole-of-the-economy, whole-of-the-government approach to public policy [on climate change]. It’s the delay in getting that going which makes it all the more challenging. But as [Trump has] demonstrated with COVID, it’s hard for him to actually do hard work to deal with challenges.”


scientificamerican--2020-11-03--Frog Vocals Lead to Small Preference

Frog Vocals Lead to Small Preference

In the shadow of Huangshan Mountain in southeastern China lives a beige frog with black stripes .
The concave-eared torrent frog , or Odorrana tormota , gets its name from its unusual hearing apparatus .
`` It has kind of [ an ] ear canal-like structure like humans , and like most mammals .
For most frog species , the eardrums are located on the body 's surface , on the lateral part of the body surface .
But here the eardrum is invisible because it is embedded deep inside the head , in the skull . ''
Biologist Albert @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Urbana-Champaign .
Back in 2006 , Feng and his colleagues discovered that this unusual anatomy allows the frogs to hear ultrasound , which includes frequencies greater than 20 Kilohertz .
Biologists had always assumed that ability was restricted to some mammals because it was only known in bats , whales , dolphins , and some rodents .
We can ’ t hear in that range .
The streams that the frogs live in are quite noisy , but most of those sounds are low frequency .
By restricting their vocalizations to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frogs are better able to hear each other .
`` The higher the frequency , the less that signal is distorted , or at least masked , by the ambient noise . ''
In many animals , females prefer mating with larger males , usually because that 's a sign of health and strength .
And bigger males tend to produce lower frequency vocalizations .
But with higher frequency calls being more effective in this habitat , Feng wondered if females might actually prefer smaller males .
Over the course of several nights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frogs engaged in what biologists call amplexus .
Which means while having sex .
The biologists measured the length of each male , as well as the length of those males found nearby who were unlucky enough to be caught and also not having sex .
Turns out , size really does matter .
`` The females are very unusual in that they really prefer smaller males over larger males . ''
Next , the researchers brought the frogs into the lab .
Each female was placed alongside two males .
Here , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smaller-bodied males .
And an analysis of the mating calls showed that the smaller males did use higher frequency sounds .
The study was published in the Journal of Zoology .
[ F. Zhang et al , Female concave-eared torrent frogs prefer smaller males ] '' We are thinking by females preferentially choosing small-sized males , that actually we can see the trend over generations…you can see the gradual evolutionary changes in the trait .
Over multiple generations you gradually develop these ultrasonic capabilities . ''
What is n't clear yet is whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for their size , or whether they just have an easier time hearing their higher-frequency calls—making them more likely to mate with smaller males .
That 's exactly what Feng 's team is testing now , by broadcasting mating calls to the females in a laboratory—with the lights out .

Full Transcript
In the shadow of Huangshan Mountain in southeastern China lives a beige frog with black stripes. The concave-eared torrent frog, or Odorrana tormota, gets its name from its unusual hearing apparatus.
"It has kind of [an] ear canal-like structure like humans, and like most mammals. For most frog species, the eardrums are located on the body's surface, on the lateral part of the body surface. But here the eardrum is invisible because it is embedded deep inside the head, in the skull."
Biologist Albert Feng, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Back in 2006, Feng and his colleagues discovered that this unusual anatomy allows the frogs to hear ultrasound, which includes frequencies greater than 20 Kilohertz. Biologists had always assumed that ability was restricted to some mammals because it was only known in bats, whales, dolphins, and some rodents. We can’t hear in that range.
The streams that the frogs live in are quite noisy, but most of those sounds are low frequency. By restricting their vocalizations to the higher frequencies, including ultrasound, the frogs are better able to hear each other.
"The higher the frequency, the less that signal is distorted, or at least masked, by the ambient noise."
In many animals, females prefer mating with larger males, usually because that's a sign of health and strength. And bigger males tend to produce lower frequency vocalizations. But with higher frequency calls being more effective in this habitat, Feng wondered if females might actually prefer smaller males.
Over the course of several nights, the researchers captured thirty-five pairs of frogs engaged in what biologists call amplexus. Which means while having sex. The biologists measured the length of each male, as well as the length of those males found nearby who were unlucky enough to be caught and also not having sex. Turns out, size really does matter.
"The females are very unusual in that they really prefer smaller males over larger males."
Next, the researchers brought the frogs into the lab. Each female was placed alongside two males. Here, too, females opted to mate with smaller-bodied males. And an analysis of the mating calls showed that the smaller males did use higher frequency sounds. The study was published in the Journal of Zoology. [F. Zhang et al, Female concave-eared torrent frogs prefer smaller males]
"We are thinking by females preferentially choosing small-sized males, that actually we can see the trend over generations…you can see the gradual evolutionary changes in the trait. Over multiple generations you gradually develop these ultrasonic capabilities."
What isn't clear yet is whether the females are visually assessing the males for their size, or whether they just have an easier time hearing their higher-frequency calls—making them more likely to mate with smaller males. That's exactly what Feng's team is testing now, by broadcasting mating calls to the females in a laboratory—with the lights out.
—Jason G. Goldman
(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)


scientificamerican--2020-11-03--An Expert on Voting Machines Explains How They Work

Serious political tensions and fears of COVID-19 have led record-breaking numbers of Americans to vote early this year , either by mail or in person .
Now the process of counting these votes—whether in states that did so on a rolling basis as they came in or those that waited until Election Day—relies on machines that vary a great deal from state to state and even from county to county .
Although the technology used in voting continues to evolve , it remains vulnerable to both malicious and unintentional errors .
To protect the systems against both , explains Douglas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the University of Iowa and co-author of the book Broken Ballots , election officials need to be able to check and double-check the election ’ s results .
“ There ’ s a nice dictum that that [ computer scientist and electronic-voting-security researcher ] David Dill came up with at Stanford University : if we do it right , the Devil himself could build the voting machines , and we could hold an honest election , ” Jones says .
“ And doing it right means having genuinely auditable technology—with ballots where the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made on their ballot express their real intent.
” Scientific American spoke with Jones about how voting machines work , their vulnerabilities , and what to expect on and after Election Day .
[ An edited transcript of the interview follows . ]
What kinds of machines are in use across the U.S. today ?
We ’ ve gotten rid of the punch card and mechanical lever voting machines .
Those are now not so ancient history .
What we ’ re left with are two categories of voting machines , both of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1970s .
Optical scan voting machines are the ones that are closely related to standardized test scoring machines , where you fill in a bubble on the ballot next to the candidate names .
Those are , at this point , the most widely used voting technology in the U.S .
The other category we have are the direct-recording electronic voting machines .
The first of those was actually deployed in the 1970s in Illinois , but the vast expansion in the use of those machines happened after the Help America Vote Act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s very clear [ that ] the authors of the Help America Vote Act anticipated that direct-recording electronic voting machines would become the new normal .
But , in fact , they were extraordinarily problematic for security reasons .
A fundamental flaw of direct-recording voting machines—that is , ones where you pull the lever on an old mechanical machine or you touch the touch screen on a modern one—all of those machines end up being completely impossible to audit .
There ’ s no way to know whether the machine was honest or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and actually being able to inspect the mechanism .
We have no good way of doing that with software .
The complete lack of any auditable record of the count , so that you had to completely trust programmers , was a real problem .
[ But ] the vast majority of votes in the U.S. today are being recorded on paper ballots that are filled in by hand .
That makes me feel reasonably good .
And furthermore , a growing number of states have some kind of an audit law .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ modern voting machines ?
This is an old rule in computer security that I first learned in the 1970s , no less true today .
And that is : the biggest threat to all of our systems is not the malicious outside hacker but rather the fact that there are lots of perfectly honest normal people making errors .
We humans have an amazing ability to be remarkably accidentally inventive with the mistakes we make .
With fill-in-the-bubble ballots , a typical error would be printing the ballot with the candidates in one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidates in a different order .
There was a famous incident of this happening [ in ] Pottawattamie County , [ Iowa ] , in 2006 in its June primary .
The net result was that the numbers that came up were pretty nonsensical and bore no relationship with anyone ’ s expectation of the outcome of the race .
The election officials noticed .
They did a hand count , and that completely resolved the problem .
And they could because they had paper ballots .
In-person voters can feed their paper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ automatically counted .
But how are absentee ballots tallied up ?
Late into the night on Election Night , at the election office , they ’ ve been counting absentee ballots all day , piling them up and putting them through high-speed scanners that scan 800 ballots per minute—speeds like that .
Some jurisdictions have automatic envelope openers where you just take a whole stack of absentee ballot envelopes , stack them up neatly , put them in the machine , and it goes up and takes a sixteenth of an inch off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ballots can easily be shaken out of the envelopes .
You have signature-verification software being used by some jurisdictions , where the envelope gets sucked into the machine , put in front of a camera , and the signature is—either by software or displayed on someone ’ s remote computer screen—checked .
These actually resemble very closely the machinery used by the Post Office for automatically reading mail addresses , except the purpose is to verify the signature .
And that ’ s another whole can of worms , because in many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ govern how we check signatures .
It turns out that the mathematics of signature acceptance and rejection ends up being horrible .
If you reject any signatures , chances are you ’ re rejecting more signatures of honest , valid voters than you are catching invalid signatures .
Does the counting process continue after Election Day ?
We have long-standing traditions of things like a postmark deadline on the eve of the election .
That ’ s how it ’ s been in Iowa for as long as I ’ ve been here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election , late mail is still dribbling into the election office—and all those late envelopes are checked for their postmarks and , if the postmarks are acceptable , counted .
Now there ’ s a problem there , as the Post Office , over the past few decades , has been reducing the frequency with which it applies postmarks of any kind to letters .
Yet the Post Office does automatically bar code every envelope that goes through its scanners these days .
The Post Office has the records to tell you when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ computer system is really good at this , but it ’ s not acceptable under some state laws .
So postmark deadlines are a real problem because the Post Office has reduced the extent to which classical postmarks are still used .
There ’ s this period after the election during which the counts are checked and cross-checked , [ a process called the canvass ] .
For example , in Miami , they have this giant spreadsheet showing one column for each candidate for each office ; one row for each precinct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then they would go through the tapes printed out by the voting machines at the precinct—the summary tapes that showed the total number of votes—and they would compare it with that spreadsheet for the purpose of ruling out any error in their central tabulating software because there have been such errors .
This can take several days after the election , even if they aren ’ t handling late absentee ballots .
At that point , the Board of Elections then signs off on the report of canvass .
And the report @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state , which goes through the same process .
A growing number of states do postelection audits before they sign the official canvass reports , and in other states , like Iowa , we do a postelection audit after signing the report of canvass .
Although the Iowa law says that the audit can not change the outcome of the election , at least you discover [ if ] you made a mistake .
So it can take several weeks after the election to put the election to bed .

Serious political tensions and fears of COVID-19 have led record-breaking numbers of Americans to vote early this year, either by mail or in person. Now the process of counting these votes—whether in states that did so on a rolling basis as they came in or those that waited until Election Day—relies on machines that vary a great deal from state to state and even from county to county.
Although the technology used in voting continues to evolve, it remains vulnerable to both malicious and unintentional errors. To protect the systems against both, explains Douglas W. Jones, a computer scientist at the University of Iowa and co-author of the book Broken Ballots, election officials need to be able to check and double-check the election’s results.
“There’s a nice dictum that that [computer scientist and electronic-voting-security researcher] David Dill came up with at Stanford University: if we do it right, the Devil himself could build the voting machines, and we could hold an honest election,” Jones says. “And doing it right means having genuinely auditable technology—with ballots where the average voter knows that the marks they made on their ballot express their real intent.” Scientific American spoke with Jones about how voting machines work, their vulnerabilities, and what to expect on and after Election Day.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What kinds of machines are in use across the U.S. today?
We’ve gotten rid of the punch card and mechanical lever voting machines. Those are now not so ancient history. What we’re left with are two categories of voting machines, both of which were introduced in the 1960s and 1970s. Optical scan voting machines are the ones that are closely related to standardized test scoring machines, where you fill in a bubble on the ballot next to the candidate names. Those are, at this point, the most widely used voting technology in the U.S. The other category we have are the direct-recording electronic voting machines. The first of those was actually deployed in the 1970s in Illinois, but the vast expansion in the use of those machines happened after the Help America Vote Act was passed in 2002. It’s very clear [that] the authors of the Help America Vote Act anticipated that direct-recording electronic voting machines would become the new normal. But, in fact, they were extraordinarily problematic for security reasons.
A fundamental flaw of direct-recording voting machines—that is, ones where you pull the lever on an old mechanical machine or you touch the touch screen on a modern one—all of those machines end up being completely impossible to audit. There’s no way to know whether the machine was honest or not, short of taking it apart and actually being able to inspect the mechanism. We have no good way of doing that with software. The complete lack of any auditable record of the count, so that you had to completely trust programmers, was a real problem. [But] the vast majority of votes in the U.S. today are being recorded on paper ballots that are filled in by hand. That makes me feel reasonably good. And furthermore, a growing number of states have some kind of an audit law.
What other problems do we see with modern voting machines?
This is an old rule in computer security that I first learned in the 1970s, no less true today. And that is: the biggest threat to all of our systems is not the malicious outside hacker but rather the fact that there are lots of perfectly honest normal people making errors. We humans have an amazing ability to be remarkably accidentally inventive with the mistakes we make. With fill-in-the-bubble ballots, a typical error would be printing the ballot with the candidates in one order but programming the scanner with the candidates in a different order. There was a famous incident of this happening [in] Pottawattamie County, [Iowa], in 2006 in its June primary. The net result was that the numbers that came up were pretty nonsensical and bore no relationship with anyone’s expectation of the outcome of the race. The election officials noticed. They did a hand count, and that completely resolved the problem. And they could because they had paper ballots.
In-person voters can feed their paper ballots directly into a scanner to be automatically counted. But how are absentee ballots tallied up?
Late into the night on Election Night, at the election office, they’ve been counting absentee ballots all day, piling them up and putting them through high-speed scanners that scan 800 ballots per minute—speeds like that. Some jurisdictions have automatic envelope openers where you just take a whole stack of absentee ballot envelopes, stack them up neatly, put them in the machine, and it goes up and takes a sixteenth of an inch off the edge of each envelope so that the ballots can easily be shaken out of the envelopes. You have signature-verification software being used by some jurisdictions, where the envelope gets sucked into the machine, put in front of a camera, and the signature is—either by software or displayed on someone’s remote computer screen—checked. These actually resemble very closely the machinery used by the Post Office for automatically reading mail addresses, except the purpose is to verify the signature. And that’s another whole can of worms, because in many cases, none of our laws really govern how we check signatures. It turns out that the mathematics of signature acceptance and rejection ends up being horrible. If you reject any signatures, chances are you’re rejecting more signatures of honest, valid voters than you are catching invalid signatures.
Does the counting process continue after Election Day?
We have long-standing traditions of things like a postmark deadline on the eve of the election. That’s how it’s been in Iowa for as long as I’ve been here. So for the week after the election, late mail is still dribbling into the election office—and all those late envelopes are checked for their postmarks and, if the postmarks are acceptable, counted. Now there’s a problem there, as the Post Office, over the past few decades, has been reducing the frequency with which it applies postmarks of any kind to letters. Yet the Post Office does automatically bar code every envelope that goes through its scanners these days. The Post Office has the records to tell you when that bar code was applied. Its computer system is really good at this, but it’s not acceptable under some state laws. So postmark deadlines are a real problem because the Post Office has reduced the extent to which classical postmarks are still used.
There’s this period after the election during which the counts are checked and cross-checked, [a process called the canvass]. For example, in Miami, they have this giant spreadsheet showing one column for each candidate for each office; one row for each precinct. After they had all those data, then they would go through the tapes printed out by the voting machines at the precinct—the summary tapes that showed the total number of votes—and they would compare it with that spreadsheet for the purpose of ruling out any error in their central tabulating software because there have been such errors. This can take several days after the election, even if they aren’t handling late absentee ballots. At that point, the Board of Elections then signs off on the report of canvass. And the report of canvass is then forwarded to the state, which goes through the same process. A growing number of states do postelection audits before they sign the official canvass reports, and in other states, like Iowa, we do a postelection audit after signing the report of canvass. Although the Iowa law says that the audit cannot change the outcome of the election, at least you discover [if] you made a mistake. So it can take several weeks after the election to put the election to bed.


scientificamerican--2020-11-03--Climate Change--and Research--Raced Forward as Trump Turned His Back

The Trump administration has spent four years consciously ignoring—and often working against—scientists ’ efforts to raise the alarm about climate change .
In the wake of hurricanes , floods , wildfires and extreme heat , President Trump has continually questioned the science of global warming .
A deep cynicism of scientists flavored his policy decisions , such as withdrawing the U.S. from a global climate agreement and unraveling dozens of environmental regulations .
Trump ’ s unchanging stance on climate is punctuated against the backdrop of historic disasters and momentous scientific strides that have occurred since he took office .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ understanding of climate change has rapidly advanced .
At the same time , the effects of rising temperatures are steadily intensifying in the U.S. and globally .
In the U.S. , the last four years have brought one climate-fueled disaster after another .
Trump ’ s first year in office , 2017 , was marked by the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Harvey on the Texas coast and hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico .
All three storms rank among the five costliest storms in U.S. history , and studies have suggested that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extent , by climate change .
On the opposite side of the country , raging wildfires have plagued Western states each year Trump has been in office .
California ’ s fires alone burned more than 4 million acres in 2020 , the largest area ever recorded and more than double the previous record .
The August Complex Fire , which raged in and around the Mendocino National Forest in Northern California this summer , was the largest in the state ’ s known history and the first on record to burn more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the moniker “ gigafire.
” The previous record for California ’ s largest fire was also set under Trump ’ s watch , in 2018 .
Trump has repeatedly pinned the blame for worsening wildfires on bad forest management .
Wildfires are complex disasters , and it ’ s true that certain forest management practices can increase the severity of a blaze .
But scientists emphasize that rising temperatures and drought are making Western wildfires bigger and more destructive .
In fact , research suggests that climate change has already been influencing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rainfall and record-breaking floods have plagued other parts of the country over the last few years .
Parts of the Midwest and Great Plains region , including Nebraska , South Dakota , Wisconsin and Iowa , were hit by historic floods in 2019 .
Experts pointed to a snowy winter , followed by an unusually wet spring , as the culprit .
As the region continues to warm , scientists expect more precipitation and more severe spring flooding across much of the Midwest .
The past four years have brought a string of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well .
The rapidly warming Arctic , in particular , has become the poster child for global climate change in recent years .
As the Trump administration has studiously averted its eyes , each year has brought new extremes to the far north , from record temperatures to historic melting in Greenland in 2019 to record-breaking wildfires in Siberia the last few years .
And throughout the rest of the world , temperatures are steadily rising .
Each full year the Trump administration has been in office , from 2017 through 2019 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hottest years on record .
Experts believe 2020 will likely rank first or second .
As historic climate events make headlines around the world , scientists are also rapidly advancing their understanding of climate change .
The same disasters that have rocked the nation the last four years are getting easier to link to global warming .
Scientists have made strides in a field known as attribution science , a type of research that investigates the extent to which climate change has influenced an individual weather event , like a hurricane or a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years , scientists have made particular advancements in the speed at which they ’ re able to conduct these studies .
In years past , attribution studies could take months to complete .
Now , scientists are able to conduct them almost in real time ( Climatewire , July 19 , 2019 ) .
As attribution science has advanced , researchers are discovering that certain climate events would never have happened at all in a world without human-caused warming .
In 2017 , scientists published some of the first attribution studies suggesting that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible without climate change .
These included record-breaking temperatures in 2016 , extreme heat in Asia and unusually warm water off the coast of Alaska .
Multiple studies since then have come to similar conclusions about other events .
In polar science , recent studies have clarified just how quickly the world ’ s frozen places are melting away .
In the past four years , scientists have concluded that Greenland is now melting at least six or seven times faster than it was just a few decades ago .
According to one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ approaching its fastest rate in 12,000 years ( Climatewire , Oct. 1 ) .
Recent research has found that melting is speeding up in Antarctica , too .
Scientists believe the melt rates there have tripled in just a couple of decades , and may have as much as sextupled since the 1970s ( Climatewire , June 14 , 2018 ) .
Several major international polar expeditions have launched since Trump took office , bringing in data that will help scientists better understand the changes taking place in both the Arctic and Antarctica @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scientists .
The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration officially launched in 2018 .
A collaboration between U.S. and British science agencies , the ongoing project aims to investigate the changes taking place at one of West Antarctica ’ s largest and fastest melting glaciers .
Thwaites Glacier is believed to be losing about 50 billion metric tons of ice each year .
Meanwhile , the MOSAiC Arctic expedition—a mission spearheaded by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and involving collaborations from hundreds of scientists around the world—just concluded .
The expedition spent a year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the central Arctic .
More generally , scientists are honing their estimates of how quickly the world will warm in the future .
Earlier this year , a groundbreaking study claimed to have significantly improved scientists ’ estimates of the Earth ’ s climate sensitivity , a measure of how much the planet will warm in response to a given increase in greenhouse gas emissions .
One scientist told E & E News it was “ the most important climate science paper that ’ s come out in several years ” ( Climatewire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same time , research groups around the world have spent the last few years developing the next generation of global climate models .
These models will allow scientists even greater certainty when making projections .
It ’ s an international effort known as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project , or CMIP .
Every few years , scientists work together to release a suite of updated models , which are then used to inform new reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .
The newest CMIP models are still being submitted , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more advanced than the older versions .
That said , research—including one notable study published last year—suggests that climate models have been doing a good job of simulating global warming for decades now ( Climatewire , Dec. 5 , 2019 ) .
As scientists have improved their understanding of climate change , they ’ ve also started adjusting the way they communicate their recommendations to policymakers .
In the last few years , experts have begun advocating for clearer benchmarks for global climate action .
Under the terms of the Paris Agreement , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius of their preindustrial levels .
Many recent studies have focused on the carbon budget for these targets—that is , exactly how much carbon the world can emit before overshooting its temperature goals .
But recently , experts have begun to suggest that the carbon budget may not be the most useful concept when it comes to promoting climate action .
Instead , some have begun pushing for a net-zero timeline—a concrete time period over which global emissions must fall to zero .
That ’ s just what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ report on the 1.5 C temperature target .
The report—one of the biggest climate documents of the past four years—warned that global emissions must fall by half over the next decade , and hit zero by 2050 , to avoid overshooting the target .
Whether 1.5 C is still within reach is a matter of debate .
While it ’ s technically possible , many experts are skeptical that emissions can fall fast enough .
If not , that still leaves the Paris Agreement ’ s 2 C target to aim for .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ heavily on global action—and U.S. participation—in the next few years .
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E & E News .
E & E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net .

The Trump administration has spent four years consciously ignoring—and often working against—scientists’ efforts to raise the alarm about climate change.
In the wake of hurricanes, floods, wildfires and extreme heat, President Trump has continually questioned the science of global warming. A deep cynicism of scientists flavored his policy decisions, such as withdrawing the U.S. from a global climate agreement and unraveling dozens of environmental regulations.
Trump’s unchanging stance on climate is punctuated against the backdrop of historic disasters and momentous scientific strides that have occurred since he took office.
In just four years, scientists’ understanding of climate change has rapidly advanced. At the same time, the effects of rising temperatures are steadily intensifying in the U.S. and globally.
Warming around the world
In the U.S., the last four years have brought one climate-fueled disaster after another.
Trump’s first year in office, 2017, was marked by the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Harvey on the Texas coast and hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico. All three storms rank among the five costliest storms in U.S. history, and studies have suggested that they were all influenced, to some extent, by climate change.
On the opposite side of the country, raging wildfires have plagued Western states each year Trump has been in office.
California’s fires alone burned more than 4 million acres in 2020, the largest area ever recorded and more than double the previous record. The August Complex Fire, which raged in and around the Mendocino National Forest in Northern California this summer, was the largest in the state’s known history and the first on record to burn more than a million acres, earning it the moniker “gigafire.”
The previous record for California’s largest fire was also set under Trump’s watch, in 2018.
Trump has repeatedly pinned the blame for worsening wildfires on bad forest management. Wildfires are complex disasters, and it’s true that certain forest management practices can increase the severity of a blaze.
But scientists emphasize that rising temperatures and drought are making Western wildfires bigger and more destructive. In fact, research suggests that climate change has already been influencing the Western fire season for decades.
Intense rainfall and record-breaking floods have plagued other parts of the country over the last few years.
Parts of the Midwest and Great Plains region, including Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa, were hit by historic floods in 2019. Experts pointed to a snowy winter, followed by an unusually wet spring, as the culprit.
As the region continues to warm, scientists expect more precipitation and more severe spring flooding across much of the Midwest.
The past four years have brought a string of record-breaking climate events elsewhere around the world as well.
The rapidly warming Arctic, in particular, has become the poster child for global climate change in recent years. As the Trump administration has studiously averted its eyes, each year has brought new extremes to the far north, from record temperatures to historic melting in Greenland in 2019 to record-breaking wildfires in Siberia the last few years.
And throughout the rest of the world, temperatures are steadily rising. Each full year the Trump administration has been in office, from 2017 through 2019, has ranked among the top five hottest years on record.
Experts believe 2020 will likely rank first or second.
Climate science strides
As historic climate events make headlines around the world, scientists are also rapidly advancing their understanding of climate change.
The same disasters that have rocked the nation the last four years are getting easier to link to global warming. Scientists have made strides in a field known as attribution science, a type of research that investigates the extent to which climate change has influenced an individual weather event, like a hurricane or a heat wave.
Over the last few years, scientists have made particular advancements in the speed at which they’re able to conduct these studies. In years past, attribution studies could take months to complete. Now, scientists are able to conduct them almost in real time (Climatewire, July 19, 2019).
As attribution science has advanced, researchers are discovering that certain climate events would never have happened at all in a world without human-caused warming.
In 2017, scientists published some of the first attribution studies suggesting that some extreme events wouldn’t be possible without climate change. These included record-breaking temperatures in 2016, extreme heat in Asia and unusually warm water off the coast of Alaska.
Multiple studies since then have come to similar conclusions about other events.
In polar science, recent studies have clarified just how quickly the world’s frozen places are melting away.
In the past four years, scientists have concluded that Greenland is now melting at least six or seven times faster than it was just a few decades ago. According to one recent study, its current melting is approaching its fastest rate in 12,000 years (Climatewire, Oct. 1).
Recent research has found that melting is speeding up in Antarctica, too. Scientists believe the melt rates there have tripled in just a couple of decades, and may have as much as sextupled since the 1970s (Climatewire, June 14, 2018).
Several major international polar expeditions have launched since Trump took office, bringing in data that will help scientists better understand the changes taking place in both the Arctic and Antarctica. These projects include contributions from U.S. scientists.
The International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration officially launched in 2018. A collaboration between U.S. and British science agencies, the ongoing project aims to investigate the changes taking place at one of West Antarctica’s largest and fastest melting glaciers. Thwaites Glacier is believed to be losing about 50 billion metric tons of ice each year.
Meanwhile, the MOSAiC Arctic expedition—a mission spearheaded by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and involving collaborations from hundreds of scientists around the world—just concluded. The expedition spent a year collecting data on the climate system in the central Arctic.
More generally, scientists are honing their estimates of how quickly the world will warm in the future.
Earlier this year, a groundbreaking study claimed to have significantly improved scientists’ estimates of the Earth’s climate sensitivity, a measure of how much the planet will warm in response to a given increase in greenhouse gas emissions. One scientist told E&E News it was “the most important climate science paper that’s come out in several years” (Climatewire, July 23).
At the same time, research groups around the world have spent the last few years developing the next generation of global climate models. These models will allow scientists even greater certainty when making projections.
It’s an international effort known as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, or CMIP. Every few years, scientists work together to release a suite of updated models, which are then used to inform new reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The newest CMIP models are still being submitted, but scientists say many of them are significantly more advanced than the older versions.
That said, research—including one notable study published last year—suggests that climate models have been doing a good job of simulating global warming for decades now (Climatewire, Dec. 5, 2019).
As scientists have improved their understanding of climate change, they’ve also started adjusting the way they communicate their recommendations to policymakers. In the last few years, experts have begun advocating for clearer benchmarks for global climate action.
Under the terms of the Paris Agreement, nations are working to keep global temperatures within 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius of their preindustrial levels. Many recent studies have focused on the carbon budget for these targets—that is, exactly how much carbon the world can emit before overshooting its temperature goals.
But recently, experts have begun to suggest that the carbon budget may not be the most useful concept when it comes to promoting climate action. Instead, some have begun pushing for a net-zero timeline—a concrete time period over which global emissions must fall to zero.
That’s just what the IPCC presented in a much-anticipated 2018 report on the 1.5 C temperature target. The report—one of the biggest climate documents of the past four years—warned that global emissions must fall by half over the next decade, and hit zero by 2050, to avoid overshooting the target.
Whether 1.5 C is still within reach is a matter of debate. While it’s technically possible, many experts are skeptical that emissions can fall fast enough.
If not, that still leaves the Paris Agreement’s 2 C target to aim for. Success on that front will likely depend heavily on global action—and U.S. participation—in the next few years.
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--2020-11-03--Science News Briefs from around the Globe

Hi , I ’ m Scott Hershberger , with Scientific American as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow .
And here ’ s a short piece from the October 2020 issue of the magazine , in the section called Advances : Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science , Technology and Medicine .
The article is titled “ Quick Hits , ” and it ’ s a rundown of some stories from around the globe .
From Mexico : In now flooded caves , researchers discovered the oldest known ochre mines in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Yucatán Peninsula extracted the red pigment , possibly for use as an antiseptic and sunscreen or for symbolic purposes such as body painting .
From Italy : A massive bloom of pink algae , triggered by low snowfall and high spring and summer temperatures , could accelerate the melting of the Presena glacier by causing the ice to absorb more sunlight .
From Botswana : At least 350 elephants have dropped dead in the Okavango Panhandle since March , and live elephants have acted disoriented or seemed partially paralyzed .
With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ causes , investigators suspect an unknown disease .
From Libya : A seven-million-year-old crocodile skull suggests the prehistoric animals may have traveled from Africa to the Americas .
Computerized tomography of the fossil , found in Libya , revealed a slight bump in the middle of the snout—a feature of modern American crocodiles but not their African counterparts .
From Polynesia : Through a genetic analysis of modern-day Polynesians and Indigenous people from South America ’ s Pacific coast , scientists concluded the two groups came into contact between A.D. 1150 and 1230 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unknown , but the team suspects eastern Polynesia .
And from the United Arab Emirates : The successful launch of a Mars orbiter called Hope marked the first interplanetary mission conducted by an Arab nation .
Carrying instruments to study the Red Planet ’ s daily and seasonal weather , the spacecraft is set to enter Martian orbit in February 2021 .
[ The above text is a transcript of this podcast . ]

Full Transcript
Hi, I’m Scott Hershberger, with Scientific American as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellow. And here’s a short piece from the October 2020 issue of the magazine, in the section called Advances: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Science, Technology and Medicine. The article is titled “Quick Hits,” and it’s a rundown of some stories from around the globe.
From Mexico: In now flooded caves, researchers discovered the oldest known ochre mines in the Americas. Around 12,000 years ago inhabitants of the Yucatán Peninsula extracted the red pigment, possibly for use as an antiseptic and sunscreen or for symbolic purposes such as body painting.
From Italy: A massive bloom of pink algae, triggered by low snowfall and high spring and summer temperatures, could accelerate the melting of the Presena glacier by causing the ice to absorb more sunlight.
From Botswana: At least 350 elephants have dropped dead in the Okavango Panhandle since March, and live elephants have acted disoriented or seemed partially paralyzed. With poaching and anthrax ruled out as potential causes, investigators suspect an unknown disease.
From Libya: A seven-million-year-old crocodile skull suggests the prehistoric animals may have traveled from Africa to the Americas. Computerized tomography of the fossil, found in Libya, revealed a slight bump in the middle of the snout—a feature of modern American crocodiles but not their African counterparts.
From Polynesia: Through a genetic analysis of modern-day Polynesians and Indigenous people from South America’s Pacific coast, scientists concluded the two groups came into contact between A.D. 1150 and 1230. Where the transoceanic encounter occurred remains unknown, but the team suspects eastern Polynesia.
And from the United Arab Emirates: The successful launch of a Mars orbiter called Hope marked the first interplanetary mission conducted by an Arab nation. Carrying instruments to study the Red Planet’s daily and seasonal weather, the spacecraft is set to enter Martian orbit in February 2021.
That was “Quick Hits.” I’m Scott Hershberger.
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]