scientificamerican--2020-11-20--Arecibo Observatory to Close Its Giant Eye on the Sky

After more than a half-century of supporting breakthrough scientific work—and providing a scenic backdrop for Contact , GoldenEye and other blockbuster Hollywood films—the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is going dark .
The U.S. National Science Foundation ( NSF ) , which owns the observatory , announced on November 19 that it will begin the process of planning for “ controlled decommissioning ” of the 305-meter telescope .
Over the past several months the instrument has suffered two catastrophic failures of cables that support its 900-ton ( 817-metric-ton ) central receiving platform .
“ This decision is intended to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prevent the loss of the entire Arecibo Observatory , including the visitor education center , in the event of an unexpected and uncontrolled collapse , ” said Sean Jones , assistant director of the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the NSF , during a press conference .
“ This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make .
But safety of people is our number-one priority.
” Ralph Gaume , director of the NSF ’ s Division of Astronomical Sciences , says that although the telescope is being decommissioned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arecibo Observatory.
” Instead the plan is to retain as much as possible of the surrounding infrastructure in hopes that it still might fulfill various research and educational purposes .
According to the NSF ’ s November 19 statement the decision came after evaluating “ multiple assessments by independent engineering companies that found the telescope structure is in danger of a catastrophic failure and its cables may no longer be capable of carrying the loads they were designed to support.
” Any attempts at repairs , the agency noted , “ could put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even if repairs proved successful , engineers had “ found that the structure would likely present long-term stability issues.
” The NSF does not yet have a fully formed plan for the decommissioning , Gaume says .
But such a plan should emerge in coming weeks , he adds , and it could rely on explosive demolition for some of the structure .
At present , it is anyone ’ s guess as to how long the decommissioning would take and at what expense .
An NSF estimate from 2016 , however , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ observatory at between $ 10.6 million and $ 18.7 million .
“ Our engineers are not able to tell us when the structure would collapse on its own , and so we ’ re working against the clock , ” Gaume says .
With regard to farming out Arecibo science investigations to other observatories , he adds , “ certainly some subset of the science that is being done on Arecibo could , potentially , transfer to other facilities and , in particular , to other NSF facilities.
” But the observatory ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it a one-of-a-kind resource .
For many applications in astronomy and planetary science , there is simply no other available facility to fill the research void Arecibo ’ s decommissioning will leave behind .
Without question , the past few years have not been kind to Arecibo .
Back in September 2017 the radio telescope took a beating from Hurricane Maria .
The observatory lost one of its catwalk floors , and the fall of line feed damaged dozens of the radio dish ’ s more than 38,000 aluminum panels .
But those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ havoc wrought by an auxiliary cable break on August 10 , followed by a main cable failure on November 6 .
“ Each of the structure ’ s remaining cables is now supporting more weight than before , increasing the likelihood of another cable failure , which would likely result in the collapse of the entire structure , ” explained a University of Central Florida statement earlier this month .
( The university manages the facility through a contract with the NSF . )
Engineers have also observed additional signs of excess wear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cables , creating a dynamic “ industrial failure ” situation that poses severe safety risks for workers .
Despite these woes , Francisco Cordova , Arecibo ’ s current director , had expressed cautious optimism about the observatory ’ s eventual recovery in an October 12 statement : “ We continue to make progress , ” he wrote , “ but the process is slow as we develop a comprehensive plan for facility repairs while prioritizing the safety of our staff ... .
Bottom line ... we are making significant progress towards restoring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Built in 1963 , Arecibo was the world ’ s largest operational single-dish radar/radio telescope until it was shuttered by the broken cables earlier this year .
Scientists regularly used its outsize dimensions to pull off otherwise impossible feats of telescopic derring-do , such as constructing detailed radar maps of asteroids , comets and planets , studying the exotic physics of whirling pulsars , and even beaming detailed messages into intergalactic space as part of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence ( SETI ) .
Every year roughly 200 scientists have taken advantage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their investigations .
Jill Tarter , chair emeritus for SETI research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View , Calif. , spoke to Scientific American prior to the NSF ’ s decommissioning decision .
At that time , she hailed Arecibo as a one of a kind resource , noting that even today it still possesses the world ’ s most powerful planetary radar transmitter .
“ Some of the science can be switched to other facilities , ” Tarter added , although Arecibo ’ s sensitivity is required by certain projects—such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and study nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves .
“ I think in debating repairs versus closing it down , the cost arguments will have to include that unique capability that will be lost , ” she said .
The situation is a quandary , says Dan Werthimer , a radio astronomer and SETI researcher at the University of California , Berkeley .
“ They don ’ t quite understand how this happened , so you don ’ t know how to fix the facility in a safe and guaranteed way.
” Like many researchers who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ observatory as a singular source of profound discoveries that has played a critical role in piecing together the puzzle of humankind ’ s place in the universe .
It has also served a vital science-outreach role , even outside of its Hollywood allure , by its contributions to SETI @ home .
That initiative , spearheaded by Werthimer , enlisted millions of volunteers donating computer time to analyze Arecibo data in a global science project seeking to answer that most daunting query : “ Are we alone ?
” In Arecibo ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will continue with ongoing collaborative work now underway at China ’ s newly commissioned Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope ( FAST ) , which , as its name suggests , boasts a dish even larger than Arecibo ’ s .
“ It ’ s a spectacular radio telescope , but it can ’ t do the things that Arecibo does because FAST doesn ’ t have a transmitter , ” Werthimer says .
Meanwhile China recently announced it is opening up FAST to other collaborators , making the telescope more readily available to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ open skies ” approach is the ideal way to get the best science on the telescope , Werthimer says .
Through funding from NASA ’ s Near-Earth Object ( NEO ) Observations Program , Arecibo has also served as one of the globe ’ s foremost assets in studying potentially hazardous NEOs that could strike Earth .
Thanks to Arecibo ’ s powerful radar transmitter , researchers have fully characterized the precise orbits , sizes and shapes of many NEOs during the space rocks ’ close encounters with our planet .
In a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decision , NASA said that its Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California—which also boasts a potent planetary radar—recently returned to full operations after upgrades to its high-power transmitter .
Because the space agency only uses Goldstone and Arecibo alike for studying known NEOs rather than discovering new ones , the statement noted , “ NASA ’ s NEO search efforts are not impacted by the planned decommissioning.
” “ It is obviously a very difficult situation for the NSF and Arecibo , ” says Anthony Beasley , director of the NSF-funded National @ @ @ @ @ @ @ include Arecibo in its purview .
“ In this kind of situation , you can ’ t have a whole lot of engineers crawling all over the telescope figuring out what ’ s wrong , ” he says .
“ They have to diagnose the problem in a safe way , and that ’ s a bit of a challenge.
” Could the observatory have been saved ?
Scientists and historians will likely debate the circumstances of Arecibo ’ s death knell for years to come .
Beasley notes one thing is indisputable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very unique facility , ” he says , “ and its capabilities are not going to be reproduced anywhere else quickly .
”

After more than a half-century of supporting breakthrough scientific work—and providing a scenic backdrop for Contact, GoldenEye and other blockbuster Hollywood films—the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is going dark.
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the observatory, announced on November 19 that it will begin the process of planning for “controlled decommissioning” of the 305-meter telescope. Over the past several months the instrument has suffered two catastrophic failures of cables that support its 900-ton (817-metric-ton) central receiving platform.
“This decision is intended to preserve life and safety of people and prevent the loss of the entire Arecibo Observatory, including the visitor education center, in the event of an unexpected and uncontrolled collapse,” said Sean Jones, assistant director of the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the NSF, during a press conference. “This decision is not an easy one for NSF to make. But safety of people is our number-one priority.”
Fears of Life-Threatening Danger
Ralph Gaume, director of the NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences, says that although the telescope is being decommissioned, the agency is “not closing Arecibo Observatory.” Instead the plan is to retain as much as possible of the surrounding infrastructure in hopes that it still might fulfill various research and educational purposes.
According to the NSF’s November 19 statement the decision came after evaluating “multiple assessments by independent engineering companies that found the telescope structure is in danger of a catastrophic failure and its cables may no longer be capable of carrying the loads they were designed to support.” Any attempts at repairs, the agency noted, “could put workers in potentially life-threatening danger.” And even if repairs proved successful, engineers had “found that the structure would likely present long-term stability issues.”
The NSF does not yet have a fully formed plan for the decommissioning, Gaume says. But such a plan should emerge in coming weeks, he adds, and it could rely on explosive demolition for some of the structure. At present, it is anyone’s guess as to how long the decommissioning would take and at what expense. An NSF estimate from 2016, however, gauged the total cost of deconstructing the observatory at between $10.6 million and $18.7 million.
“Our engineers are not able to tell us when the structure would collapse on its own, and so we’re working against the clock,” Gaume says. With regard to farming out Arecibo science investigations to other observatories, he adds, “certainly some subset of the science that is being done on Arecibo could, potentially, transfer to other facilities and, in particular, to other NSF facilities.” But the observatory’s gargantuan dimensions and specialized hardware make it a one-of-a-kind resource. For many applications in astronomy and planetary science, there is simply no other available facility to fill the research void Arecibo’s decommissioning will leave behind.
Catastrophic Cable Failures
Without question, the past few years have not been kind to Arecibo. Back in September 2017 the radio telescope took a beating from Hurricane Maria. The observatory lost one of its catwalk floors, and the fall of line feed damaged dozens of the radio dish’s more than 38,000 aluminum panels.
But those damaging blows pale in contrast to the havoc wrought by an auxiliary cable break on August 10, followed by a main cable failure on November 6.
“Each of the structure’s remaining cables is now supporting more weight than before, increasing the likelihood of another cable failure, which would likely result in the collapse of the entire structure,” explained a University of Central Florida statement earlier this month. (The university manages the facility through a contract with the NSF.) Engineers have also observed additional signs of excess wear and tear on two of the remaining cables, creating a dynamic “industrial failure” situation that poses severe safety risks for workers.
Despite these woes, Francisco Cordova, Arecibo’s current director, had expressed cautious optimism about the observatory’s eventual recovery in an October 12 statement: “We continue to make progress,” he wrote, “but the process is slow as we develop a comprehensive plan for facility repairs while prioritizing the safety of our staff.... Bottom line... we are making significant progress towards restoring the operational capability of this historic facility.”
An Irreplaceable Resource
Built in 1963, Arecibo was the world’s largest operational single-dish radar/radio telescope until it was shuttered by the broken cables earlier this year. Scientists regularly used its outsize dimensions to pull off otherwise impossible feats of telescopic derring-do, such as constructing detailed radar maps of asteroids, comets and planets, studying the exotic physics of whirling pulsars, and even beaming detailed messages into intergalactic space as part of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Every year roughly 200 scientists have taken advantage of Arecibo’s prowess to pursue their investigations.
Jill Tarter, chair emeritus for SETI research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., spoke to Scientific American prior to the NSF’s decommissioning decision. At that time, she hailed Arecibo as a one of a kind resource, noting that even today it still possesses the world’s most powerful planetary radar transmitter. “Some of the science can be switched to other facilities,” Tarter added, although Arecibo’s sensitivity is required by certain projects—such as NANOGrav, which seeks to directly detect and study nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves. “I think in debating repairs versus closing it down, the cost arguments will have to include that unique capability that will be lost,” she said.
The situation is a quandary, says Dan Werthimer, a radio astronomer and SETI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “They don’t quite understand how this happened, so you don’t know how to fix the facility in a safe and guaranteed way.”
Like many researchers who have utilized Arecibo, Werthimer defends the observatory as a singular source of profound discoveries that has played a critical role in piecing together the puzzle of humankind’s place in the universe. It has also served a vital science-outreach role, even outside of its Hollywood allure, by its contributions to SETI@home. That initiative, spearheaded by Werthimer, enlisted millions of volunteers donating computer time to analyze Arecibo data in a global science project seeking to answer that most daunting query: “Are we alone?”
In Arecibo’s absence, Werthimer’s SETI research will continue with ongoing collaborative work now underway at China’s newly commissioned Five-Hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), which, as its name suggests, boasts a dish even larger than Arecibo’s. “It’s a spectacular radio telescope, but it can’t do the things that Arecibo does because FAST doesn’t have a transmitter,” Werthimer says.
Meanwhile China recently announced it is opening up FAST to other collaborators, making the telescope more readily available to researchers from other nations. This “open skies” approach is the ideal way to get the best science on the telescope, Werthimer says.
Through funding from NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program, Arecibo has also served as one of the globe’s foremost assets in studying potentially hazardous NEOs that could strike Earth. Thanks to Arecibo’s powerful radar transmitter, researchers have fully characterized the precise orbits, sizes and shapes of many NEOs during the space rocks’ close encounters with our planet.
In a November 19 statement reacting to the NSF decision, NASA said that its Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California—which also boasts a potent planetary radar—recently returned to full operations after upgrades to its high-power transmitter. Because the space agency only uses Goldstone and Arecibo alike for studying known NEOs rather than discovering new ones, the statement noted, “NASA’s NEO search efforts are not impacted by the planned decommissioning.”
“It is obviously a very difficult situation for the NSF and Arecibo,” says Anthony Beasley, director of the NSF-funded National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which does not include Arecibo in its purview. “In this kind of situation, you can’t have a whole lot of engineers crawling all over the telescope figuring out what’s wrong,” he says. “They have to diagnose the problem in a safe way, and that’s a bit of a challenge.”
Could the observatory have been saved? Scientists and historians will likely debate the circumstances of Arecibo’s death knell for years to come. Beasley notes one thing is indisputable, however: “Arecibo is a very unique facility,” he says, “and its capabilities are not going to be reproduced anywhere else quickly.”


scientificamerican--2020-11-20--The COVID Cold Chain: How a Vaccine Will Get to You

Two drug companies have now reported highly successful results from phase III trials of COVID-19 vaccines .
On November 18 Pfizer and partner BioNTech said their vaccine was 95 percent effective at preventing the disease , based on full trial results .
Two days earlier Moderna reported its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective , based on interim data .
Both Pfizer and Moderna use the same genetically engineered vaccine approach , which involves messenger RNA molecules .
Assuming the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorizes the vaccines for “ emergency use , ” each firm will have to ramp up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to produce up to 50 million doses worldwide in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion in 2021 .
Moderna intends to manufacture approximately 20 million doses in 2020 and 500 million to one billion in 2021 .
A person receiving either vaccine will need two doses , administered three or four weeks apart .
Multiple steps are needed to deliver so many little glass vials of vaccine to local hospitals and pharmacies , where the medication can be injected into a person ’ s arm .
Moderna ’ s vaccine has to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ degrees Fahrenheit ) , and it can then be stored at that temperature for six months .
Once thawed and kept in a refrigerator between two and eight degrees C ( 36 to 46 degrees F ) it is good for up to 30 days .
Pfizer ’ s vaccine must be kept at –70 degrees C ( –94 degrees F ) —a much greater challenge .
Once transferred to a refrigerator , it must be administered within five days .
In the U.S. , Moderna will manufacture its vaccine in New Hampshire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ship vials to McKesson Corporation ’ s distribution center in Irving , Tex.
, the hub of the federal government ’ s Operation Warp Speed vaccination initiative .
Moderna also plans to manufacture the intervention in Switzerland and Spain .
Pfizer will make its U.S. vaccine in Kalamazoo , Mich .
It is not distributing through Operation Warp Speed , so it will ship large thermal boxes of filled vials , jammed with dry ice , via companies such as UPS and FedEx to locations around the country .
Pfizer also has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ company launched a pilot program to test its delivery plan to four states : Rhode Island , Tennessee , Texas and New Mexico .
The system for distributing products ( including meat and chemicals ) at low temperatures is known as the “ cold chain.
” What will it take for this network to successfully disperse massive numbers of vials ?
How is vaccine safely preserved ?
How many facilities can even handle the challenge , and how will that affect who gets vaccinated and when ?
Scientific American asked Julie Swann , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of industrial and systems engineering at North Carolina State University , to reveal the details .
Swann specializes in health care supply chains , and she was on loan to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the emergency response to the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic .
[ An edited transcript of the interview follows . ]
Moderna ’ s shipping temperature will be –20 degrees C. Is that typical for frozen products ?
And is Pfizer ’ s temperature of –70 degrees C extreme ?
There are different cold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deep freeze , is the one at –70 degrees C. There ’ s the “ frozen ” chain , at –20 degrees C , which is more like a regular freezer .
And then [ there is ] the refrigerated chain : Many vaccines , like flu vaccines , are refrigerated between two and eight degrees C. Only a couple have to be frozen to –20 C , such as [ those for ] varicella and zoster .
The Ebola vaccine did have an ultracold supply chain .
Some animal vaccines , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , too .
What kind of facilities can handle –70 degrees C ?
Not that many .
Large universities certainly have such storage in their research labs , and some large hospitals [ do ] —but not the average physician ’ s office or pharmacy .
Pharmacy chain distribution centers may have that storage—the “ sub-80 freezers ” [ boxes that can refrigerate down to –86 degrees C ] .
So they could possibly send vaccines from there to their retail stores , all of which will have preplanned who is going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have to stay frozen right up to the time of inoculation .
The CDC has a playbook for states , publicly available , that lays out what you can do with vaccine type A or vaccine type B .
It says once a facility receives a thermal shipper [ such as that from Pfizer ] , it has to replace the dry ice within 24 hours and again every five days .
And you can only open the box one or two times a day .
After day 15 from when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be transferred to refrigerated temperatures and used within five days .
So there is some time to vaccinate people .
Pfizer ’ s thermal shipper holds 975 vials .
Trucks will take the shippers to planes that will fly them in all directions .
About half of medical products are shipped on commercial flights , though , and those flights are way down .
Will that be a problem ?
I don ’ t see that as a challenge in the U.S .
Cargo companies need to make money right now , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they need to get the 50 million doses to the locations .
You can imagine a hub-and-spoke system shipping direct to centers around the country .
They want to cut the extra two days off the lead time : Moderna vaccine first goes to the McKesson distribution center and , from there , goes to the providers—that probably adds a couple of days .
Worldwide , however , the challenge of a Pfizer vaccine is quite significant .
One study estimated there are only 25 or 30 countries that have the ultracold infrastructure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doses .
How is that handled ?
The place doing immunization adds a dilutant , creating five doses .
At that point the solution is good for six hours .
So a clinic has to figure out how many health care workers or customers will be vaccinated , and it starts the dilution process for that day .
It sounds like places need to line up a lot of recipients so vaccine is not wasted .
What I ’ ve seen is that each Pfizer tray has 195 vials , each with five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1,000 doses .
And a box can hold up to five trays .
If , in the beginning , you are prioritizing by vaccinating just frontline workers who are handling COVID-19 patients , you ’ d want to line up enough people at one location to use a tray of vaccines within five days , or have people from the region come to you .
States could also purchase sub-80 freezers .
The New York State plan says it will set up several regional distribution centers .
If they do that , then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each location .
I don ’ t know if their plan will change now that Moderna has come out with more information .
I think most states will not have the resources to set up regional distribution centers .
What I would do if I were them is look for large hospitals that do have the freezers and use those as the points of distribution .
I would certainly partner with the regional pharmacies .
And I would look at models where you drive some of it around : ship it to one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around with refrigeration that can store vials for five days .
And you can ask people to drive to locations to get vaccinated .
I think all of these [ steps ] will happen .
Of course , there will be questions of equity , at least in the beginning , when vaccination is dependent on just the Pfizer vaccine .
What about spoilage ?
Pharmaceutical companies report that from 5 to 20 percent of other vaccines spoil during distribution .
That will have be factored in .
There is a way to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ probe .
In the ideal world , the monitoring would go down to the individual vial , but I don ’ t know if current technology will allow that .
We could look at how Ebola vaccine has been distributed around Africa ; it is a specialized cold chain .
In usual vaccine production and shipping , potency and stability are checked .
Certainly , Pfizer and Moderna are doing that .
All of this is complicated by the fact that each person has to receive two injections , three or four weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of people who could be vaccinated is cut in half .
Right .
And for each person , your second dose has to be the same as your first dose , either Pfizer or Moderna .
But does that persist over time ?
What if scientists find that people need a booster after two years ?
Does it matter , then , if I had Pfizer or Moderna the first time around ?
I ’ m hoping that it does not , but I ’ ve not gotten a clear answer .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information side of the supply chain .
The companies are sending product to distributors , but they are not responsible for who gets vaccinated .
That ’ s the hospitals and pharmacies .
How do the manufacturers know when and where to ship product ?
The different [ players ] have to do a lot of information sharing .
That ’ s largely how public health works .
There ’ s one system for ordering and shipping vaccines , but it doesn ’ t tell you anything after a vaccine has arrived at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each state uses its own system for registering who receives vaccine—that ’ s called the immunization registry .
Those two systems do n't talk to each other , so without the addition of another layer , it ’ s difficult for states to know this location has 50 doses left , this location is completely out—that kind of information .
The federal government did invest in a system that would allow such capability , but states may be using their own .
There are systems that can do this—like those that coordinate diagnostic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be rolled out .
They provide two real advantages : One is that you can tell consumers where they can go to get [ a ] vaccine—not where it ’ s been shipped but if there ’ s any left .
And if companies know where the inventory is , they can make better decisions about where to send the next batch .
Or localities can increase public messaging to raise demand for a vaccine , because we know there will be issues with people being hesitant to get it .
I imagine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re just hearing about could make information tracking even harder—you know , frontline workers should get the vaccines first , then teachers , and so on .
The National Academy of Medicine recommends phases : first high-risk workers in health care facilities plus first responders , then people with underlying conditions that put them at high risk , then , later , teachers , then young adults , then the rest of us .
There is also talk about sending the early vaccines to areas of high prevalence of disease .
All of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccination challenge .
Because it ’ s likely that only large institutions could provide ultracold storage , it has been suggested that Pfizer ’ s vaccine could end up going to cities and Moderna ’ s vaccine could end up going to less densely populated areas .
But these are commercial companies .
Why would they limit their markets ?
You can imagine that the Pfizer boxes might be more appropriate for densely populated cities .
When we have sufficient supply of any vaccine you want , then the market will choose Moderna @ @ @ @ @ @ @ efficacy are high enough—because of the refrigeration difference .
But in the early stages , with so many people everywhere needing vaccine , I think a lot of decisions will be made based on what is best for the system .
If we find there is a difference in safety and efficacy , however , then we get into questions of equity : Are you sending an inferior vaccine to the cities or to the rural areas ?
Read more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here .
And read coverage from @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Two drug companies have now reported highly successful results from phase III trials of COVID-19 vaccines. On November 18 Pfizer and partner BioNTech said their vaccine was 95 percent effective at preventing the disease, based on full trial results. Two days earlier Moderna reported its vaccine was 94.5 percent effective, based on interim data.
Both Pfizer and Moderna use the same genetically engineered vaccine approach, which involves messenger RNA molecules. Assuming the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorizes the vaccines for “emergency use,” each firm will have to ramp up production and distribution tremendously. Pfizer expects to produce up to 50 million doses worldwide in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion in 2021. Moderna intends to manufacture approximately 20 million doses in 2020 and 500 million to one billion in 2021. A person receiving either vaccine will need two doses, administered three or four weeks apart.
Multiple steps are needed to deliver so many little glass vials of vaccine to local hospitals and pharmacies, where the medication can be injected into a person’s arm. Moderna’s vaccine has to be shipped at –20 degrees Celsius (–4 degrees Fahrenheit), and it can then be stored at that temperature for six months. Once thawed and kept in a refrigerator between two and eight degrees C (36 to 46 degrees F) it is good for up to 30 days. Pfizer’s vaccine must be kept at –70 degrees C (–94 degrees F)—a much greater challenge. Once transferred to a refrigerator, it must be administered within five days.
In the U.S., Moderna will manufacture its vaccine in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Indiana. It will ship vials to McKesson Corporation’s distribution center in Irving, Tex., the hub of the federal government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccination initiative. Moderna also plans to manufacture the intervention in Switzerland and Spain. Pfizer will make its U.S. vaccine in Kalamazoo, Mich. It is not distributing through Operation Warp Speed, so it will ship large thermal boxes of filled vials, jammed with dry ice, via companies such as UPS and FedEx to locations around the country. Pfizer also has a production site in BelgiumOn November 16 the company launched a pilot program to test its delivery plan to four states: Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas and New Mexico.
The system for distributing products (including meat and chemicals) at low temperatures is known as the “cold chain.” What will it take for this network to successfully disperse massive numbers of vials? How is vaccine safely preserved? How many facilities can even handle the challenge, and how will that affect who gets vaccinated and when? Scientific American asked Julie Swann, a professor and head of the department of industrial and systems engineering at North Carolina State University, to reveal the details. Swann specializes in health care supply chains, and she was on loan to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the emergency response to the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
Moderna’s shipping temperature will be –20 degrees C. Is that typical for frozen products? And is Pfizer’s temperature of –70 degrees C extreme?
There are different cold chains. The ultralow chain, the deep freeze, is the one at –70 degrees C. There’s the “frozen” chain, at –20 degrees C, which is more like a regular freezer. And then [there is] the refrigerated chain: Many vaccines, like flu vaccines, are refrigerated between two and eight degrees C. Only a couple have to be frozen to –20 C, such as [those for] varicella and zoster. The Ebola vaccine did have an ultracold supply chain. Some animal vaccines, like vaccines for chickens, are kept ultracold, too.
What kind of facilities can handle –70 degrees C?
Not that many. Large universities certainly have such storage in their research labs, and some large hospitals [do]—but not the average physician’s office or pharmacy. Pharmacy chain distribution centers may have that storage—the “sub-80 freezers” [boxes that can refrigerate down to –86 degrees C]. So they could possibly send vaccines from there to their retail stores, all of which will have preplanned who is going to get vaccinated.
The vaccines don’t have to stay frozen right up to the time of inoculation.
The CDC has a playbook for states, publicly available, that lays out what you can do with vaccine type A or vaccine type B. It says once a facility receives a thermal shipper [such as that from Pfizer], it has to replace the dry ice within 24 hours and again every five days. And you can only open the box one or two times a day. After day 15 from when the vials were produced, they have to be transferred to refrigerated temperatures and used within five days. So there is some time to vaccinate people.
Pfizer’s thermal shipper holds 975 vials. Trucks will take the shippers to planes that will fly them in all directions. About half of medical products are shipped on commercial flights, though, and those flights are way down. Will that be a problem?
I don’t see that as a challenge in the U.S. Cargo companies need to make money right now, so they’ll run extra flights if they need to get the 50 million doses to the locations. You can imagine a hub-and-spoke system shipping direct to centers around the country. They want to cut the extra two days off the lead time: Moderna vaccine first goes to the McKesson distribution center and, from there, goes to the providers—that probably adds a couple of days. Worldwide, however, the challenge of a Pfizer vaccine is quite significant. One study estimated there are only 25 or 30 countries that have the ultracold infrastructure.
Each Pfizer vial actually supplies five doses. How is that handled?
The place doing immunization adds a dilutant, creating five doses. At that point the solution is good for six hours. So a clinic has to figure out how many health care workers or customers will be vaccinated, and it starts the dilution process for that day.
It sounds like places need to line up a lot of recipients so vaccine is not wasted.
What I’ve seen is that each Pfizer tray has 195 vials, each with five doses, so that’s about 1,000 doses. And a box can hold up to five trays. If, in the beginning, you are prioritizing by vaccinating just frontline workers who are handling COVID-19 patients, you’d want to line up enough people at one location to use a tray of vaccines within five days, or have people from the region come to you. States could also purchase sub-80 freezers. The New York State plan says it will set up several regional distribution centers. If they do that, then they will probably have sub-80 freezers at each location. I don’t know if their plan will change now that Moderna has come out with more information.
I think most states will not have the resources to set up regional distribution centers. What I would do if I were them is look for large hospitals that do have the freezers and use those as the points of distribution. I would certainly partner with the regional pharmacies. And I would look at models where you drive some of it around: ship it to one place, then drive a local van around with refrigeration that can store vials for five days. And you can ask people to drive to locations to get vaccinated. I think all of these [steps] will happen. Of course, there will be questions of equity, at least in the beginning, when vaccination is dependent on just the Pfizer vaccine.
What about spoilage? Pharmaceutical companies report that from 5 to 20 percent of other vaccines spoil during distribution.
That will have be factored in. There is a way to monitor the thermal shipper with a temperature probe. In the ideal world, the monitoring would go down to the individual vial, but I don’t know if current technology will allow that. We could look at how Ebola vaccine has been distributed around Africa; it is a specialized cold chain.
What about production quality control?
In usual vaccine production and shipping, potency and stability are checked. Certainly, Pfizer and Moderna are doing that.
All of this is complicated by the fact that each person has to receive two injections, three or four weeks apart. So immediately, the number of people who could be vaccinated is cut in half.
Right. And for each person, your second dose has to be the same as your first dose, either Pfizer or Moderna. But does that persist over time? What if scientists find that people need a booster after two years? Does it matter, then, if I had Pfizer or Moderna the first time around? I’m hoping that it does not, but I’ve not gotten a clear answer.
We’ll all need accurate records.
There are a lot of challenges with the information side of the supply chain. The companies are sending product to distributors, but they are not responsible for who gets vaccinated. That’s the hospitals and pharmacies. How do the manufacturers know when and where to ship product? The different [players] have to do a lot of information sharing.
That’s largely how public health works. There’s one system for ordering and shipping vaccines, but it doesn’t tell you anything after a vaccine has arrived at a location. Then, typically, each state uses its own system for registering who receives vaccine—that’s called the immunization registry. Those two systems don't talk to each other, so without the addition of another layer, it’s difficult for states to know this location has 50 doses left, this location is completely out—that kind of information. The federal government did invest in a system that would allow such capability, but states may be using their own.
There are systems that can do this—like those that coordinate diagnostic testing. But they will have to be rolled out. They provide two real advantages: One is that you can tell consumers where they can go to get [a] vaccine—not where it’s been shipped but if there’s any left. And if companies know where the inventory is, they can make better decisions about where to send the next batch. Or localities can increase public messaging to raise demand for a vaccine, because we know there will be issues with people being hesitant to get it.
I imagine the vaccination prioritization schedules that we’re just hearing about could make information tracking even harder—you know, frontline workers should get the vaccines first, then teachers, and so on.
The National Academy of Medicine recommends phases: first high-risk workers in health care facilities plus first responders, then people with underlying conditions that put them at high risk, then, later, teachers, then young adults, then the rest of us. There is also talk about sending the early vaccines to areas of high prevalence of disease. All of that complicates the information side of the vaccination challenge.
Because it’s likely that only large institutions could provide ultracold storage, it has been suggested that Pfizer’s vaccine could end up going to cities and Moderna’s vaccine could end up going to less densely populated areas. But these are commercial companies. Why would they limit their markets?
You can imagine that the Pfizer boxes might be more appropriate for densely populated cities. When we have sufficient supply of any vaccine you want, then the market will choose Moderna over Pfizer—as long as the safety and efficacy are high enough—because of the refrigeration difference. But in the early stages, with so many people everywhere needing vaccine, I think a lot of decisions will be made based on what is best for the system. If we find there is a difference in safety and efficacy, however, then we get into questions of equity: Are you sending an inferior vaccine to the cities or to the rural areas?
Read more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here. And read coverage from our international network of magazines here.


scientificamerican--2020-11-19--Legendary Arecibo Telescope Will Close Forever, and Scientists Are Reeling

One of astronomy ’ s most renowned telescopes—the 305-metre-wide radio telescope at Arecibo , Puerto Rico—is permanently closing .
Engineers can not find a safe way to repair it after two cables supporting the structure suddenly and catastrophically broke , one in August and one in early November .
It is the end of one of the most iconic and scientifically productive telescopes in the history of astronomy—and scientists are mourning its loss .
“ I don ’ t know what to say , ” says Robert Kerr , a former director of the observatory .
“ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ devastated , ” says Abel Mendéz , an astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo who uses the observatory .
The Arecibo telescope , which was built in 1963 , was the world ’ s largest radio telescope for decades and has historical and modern importance in astronomy .
It was the site from which astronomers sent an interstellar radio message in 1974 , in case any extraterrestrials might hear it , and where the first known extrasolar planet was discovered , in 1992 .
It has also done pioneering work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ puzzling celestial blasts known as fast radio bursts , and studying many other phenomena .
All of those lines of investigation are now shut down for good , although limited science continues at some smaller facilities at the Arecibo site .
The cables that broke helped support a 900-tonne platform of scientific instruments , which hangs above the main telescope dish .
The first cable smashed panels at the edge of the dish , but the second tore huge gashes in a central portion of it.A high-resolution satellite image , produced at Nature @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Earth-observing company , shows the extent of the damage wrought by the second cable ; the green of the vegetation below shows through large holes in the dish .
A second photograph , released this week by observatory officials , also reveals the destruction .
They are the only public glimpses of the damage to date .
If any more cables fail—which could happen at any time—the entire platform could crash into the dish below .
The US National Science Foundation ( NSF ) , which owns Arecibo Observatory , is working on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a controlled fashion .
But those plans will take weeks to develop , and there ’ s no telling whether the platform might crash down uncontrollably in the meantime .
“ Even attempts at stabilization or at testing the cables could result in accelerating the catastrophic failure , ” said Ralph Gaume , the NSF ’ s head of astronomy , at a 19 November media briefing .
So NSF decided to close the Arecibo dish permanently .
“ This decision is not an easy one to make , but safety is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jones , head of NSF ’ s mathematical and physical sciences directorate .
The closure is likely to come as a shock to the wider astronomical community .
“ Losing the Arecibo Observatory would be a big loss for science , for planetary defense , and for Puerto Rico , ” said Desireé Cotto-Figueroa , an astronomer at the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao , in an email prior to the announced closure .
NSF officials insist that the cable failures came as a surprise .
After the first , engineering teams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the second cable , which was more crucial to holding up the structure , but they did not see it as a major problem because the weight it was carrying was well within its design capacity .
“ It was not seen as an immediate threat , ” says Ashley Zauderer , programme manager for Arecibo at the NSF .
Over the years , external review committees have highlighted the ongoing need to maintain the telescope ’ s ageing cables .
Zauderer said that maintenance had been completed according to schedule .
Before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problems at the observatory were in January 2014 , when a magnitude-6.4 earthquake caused damage to another of the main cables , which engineers repaired .
The ageing structure has suffered other shocks in recent years , including Hurricane Maria in 2017 and a series of smaller earthquakes in January of this year .
There is no estimate yet on the cost of decommissioning the telescope .
Some of the observatory ’ s scientific projects may be able to be transferred to other facilities , Gaume said—and that he expects scientists to propose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Science does continue at other portions of the Arecibo observatory , which encompasses more than the 305-metre dish .
They include two lidar facilities that shoot lasers into the atmosphere to study atmospheric phenomena .
Arecibo had been regularly upgraded , with several new instruments slated to be installed in the coming years .
“ The telescope is in no way obsolete , ” says Christopher Salter , an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank , West Virginia , who worked at Arecibo for years .
The observatory is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rico , fostering the careers of many astronomers and engineers .
And it has become a part of the pop culture lexicon , featuring in major movies such as Contact , based on a Carl Sagan novel , and the James Bond film GoldenEye .
The last major radio telescope disaster happened in 1988 , when a 300-foot-wide antenna at the observatory in Green Bank , West Virginia , collapsed one night due to structural failure .
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on November 19 2020 .

One of astronomy’s most renowned telescopes—the 305-metre-wide radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico—is permanently closing. Engineers cannot find a safe way to repair it after two cables supporting the structure suddenly and catastrophically broke, one in August and one in early November.
It is the end of one of the most iconic and scientifically productive telescopes in the history of astronomy—and scientists are mourning its loss.
“I don’t know what to say,” says Robert Kerr, a former director of the observatory. “It’s just unbelievable.”
“I am totally devastated,” says Abel Mendéz, an astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo who uses the observatory.
The Arecibo telescope, which was built in 1963, was the world’s largest radio telescope for decades and has historical and modern importance in astronomy. It was the site from which astronomers sent an interstellar radio message in 1974, in case any extraterrestrials might hear it, and where the first known extrasolar planet was discovered, in 1992. It has also done pioneering work in detecting near-Earth asteroids, observing the puzzling celestial blasts known as fast radio bursts, and studying many other phenomena. All of those lines of investigation are now shut down for good, although limited science continues at some smaller facilities at the Arecibo site.
Assessing the damage
The cables that broke helped support a 900-tonne platform of scientific instruments, which hangs above the main telescope dish. The first cable smashed panels at the edge of the dish, but the second tore huge gashes in a central portion of it.A high-resolution satellite image, produced at Nature’s request by Planet, an Earth-observing company, shows the extent of the damage wrought by the second cable; the green of the vegetation below shows through large holes in the dish. A second photograph, released this week by observatory officials, also reveals the destruction. They are the only public glimpses of the damage to date.
If any more cables fail—which could happen at any time—the entire platform could crash into the dish below. The US National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns Arecibo Observatory, is working on plans to safely lower the platform down in a controlled fashion.
But those plans will take weeks to develop, and there’s no telling whether the platform might crash down uncontrollably in the meantime. “Even attempts at stabilization or at testing the cables could result in accelerating the catastrophic failure,” said Ralph Gaume, the NSF’s head of astronomy, at a 19 November media briefing.
So NSF decided to close the Arecibo dish permanently. “This decision is not an easy one to make, but safety is the number-one priority,” said Sean Jones, head of NSF’s mathematical and physical sciences directorate.
The closure is likely to come as a shock to the wider astronomical community. “Losing the Arecibo Observatory would be a big loss for science, for planetary defense, and for Puerto Rico,” said Desireé Cotto-Figueroa, an astronomer at the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao, in an email prior to the announced closure.
NSF officials insist that the cable failures came as a surprise. After the first, engineering teams spotted a handful of broken wires on the second cable, which was more crucial to holding up the structure, but they did not see it as a major problem because the weight it was carrying was well within its design capacity. “It was not seen as an immediate threat,” says Ashley Zauderer, programme manager for Arecibo at the NSF.
Over the years, external review committees have highlighted the ongoing need to maintain the telescope’s ageing cables. Zauderer said that maintenance had been completed according to schedule.
Before this year, the last major cable problems at the observatory were in January 2014, when a magnitude-6.4 earthquake caused damage to another of the main cables, which engineers repaired. The ageing structure has suffered other shocks in recent years, including Hurricane Maria in 2017 and a series of smaller earthquakes in January of this year.
There is no estimate yet on the cost of decommissioning the telescope.
A legendary site
Some of the observatory’s scientific projects may be able to be transferred to other facilities, Gaume said—and that he expects scientists to propose where to shift their research to. Science does continue at other portions of the Arecibo observatory, which encompasses more than the 305-metre dish. They include two lidar facilities that shoot lasers into the atmosphere to study atmospheric phenomena.
Arecibo had been regularly upgraded, with several new instruments slated to be installed in the coming years. “The telescope is in no way obsolete,” says Christopher Salter, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, who worked at Arecibo for years.
The observatory is also a major science-educational centre for Puerto Rico, fostering the careers of many astronomers and engineers. And it has become a part of the pop culture lexicon, featuring in major movies such as Contact, based on a Carl Sagan novel, and the James Bond film GoldenEye.
The last major radio telescope disaster happened in 1988, when a 300-foot-wide antenna at the observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, collapsed one night due to structural failure.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on November 19 2020.


scientificamerican--2020-11-21--Readers Respond to the July 2020 Issue

Readers Respond to the July 2020 Issue

In “ Treating Patients without the Scale , ” Virginia Sole-Smith describes physician Louise Metz 's approach to issues around weight and eating that affect individuals ’ health .
I could not agree more with Metz , whose technique involves encouraging healthier behaviors rather than focusing on weight .
During the past 27 years of my practice of internal medicine before my retirement , I treated many hundreds of people with eating disorders whose body mass index ( BMI ) ranged from malnourished to morbidly obese .
They taught me much about how to treat all of my patients .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ racial , cultural , ethnic and socioeconomic groups , there are huge disparities in societal attitudes and acceptance , as well as in treatment received from the medical community .
In addition , I believe one of the greatest disparities is manifested in gender : Men are far less likely to experience bias against overweight people than women .
Men also have eating disorders that are not as often recognized as they would be in women .
In “ The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity , ” Sabrina Strings and Lindo Bacon assert @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conditions on ‘ obesity ’ ignores ... critically important sociohistorical factors.
” They also say that prescribing weight loss is ineffective and that “ the most effective and ethical approaches ... should aim to ... [ tackle ] racism , sexism and weightism.
” That strategy provides only a partial solution to improve African-American health .
As a Black woman and a physician , I have personally and professionally seen the deleterious effects of obesity that extend beyond subjective aesthetics .
I agree that forcing individuals to conform to specific body types that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexism is unhealthy and potentially harmful .
But given the evidence of the increased all-cause mortality associated with obesity—especially at a BMI greater than 35—it would be a disservice not to address it in African-Americans .
The work Strings and Bacon describe does not invalidate the need for obesity treatment in African-American patients with diseases related to the condition .
Rather it reemphasizes that such treatment must comprehensively address nutrition , physical activity , behavior and , if needed , medication or bariatric surgery .
Additionally , for Black people globally , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personal and systemic racism , as well as other psychosocial factors , into obesity-treatment planning to truly create lasting weight loss and optimal health .
“ The Darkest Particles , ” by William Charles Louis and Richard G. Van de Water , describes how neutrinos emanating from the sun transition from one of the three known “ flavors ” to another en route to Earth .
The “ Neutrino Flavors ” box illustrates how the cumulative contribution of a neutrino 's three mass states determines its flavor during the course of its travel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sharply defined mass state combination associated with an electron neutrino at its source and one indicating a tau neutrino at its destination .
But the graphic seems to suggest that between those points , the neutrino passes through a large number of mass state combinations .
Do the three flavors encompass a wide enough range of combinations to account for the entire transit ?
If not , what is the neutrino when it is not one of them ?
I assume that there is agreement that the tau and electron neutrinos are , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and least massive of the three known flavors .
In the “ Neutrino Flavors ” box , an illustration of the three mass states of the normal hierarchy produces the expected result .
Meanwhile the illustration of the inverted hierarchy seems to propose that the electron neutrino 's predominant mass state ( mass 1 ) is not the smallest state but the intermediate one .
Yet to maintain the expected rank order of the masses in the inverted hierarchy , the “ extremely small mass ” must be the electron neutrino 's second @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
If it were mass 3 , as the illustration shows , then the tau neutrino—which is dominated by that state—would easily be the least massive of the three flavors .
Is the illustration in error ?
THE AUTHORS REPLY : To answer Malinen : If the neutrino starts out as a pure electron neutrino , then it will be in a superposition of the three known flavors as it travels from its source .
Therefore , if the particle is detected downstream from that source , it will have different probabilities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tau neutrino .
If the sum of these probabilities is measured to be less than one , then that result would be evidence that the neutrino 's flavor is the possible fourth “ sterile ” type that we discuss in our article .
In reply to Van : The figures of the three mass states are correct .
As they show , the electron neutrino consists of a superposition of these different states rather than having a single mass .
The particle 's most dominant mass state is mass 1 , followed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Neutrino oscillation experiments have shown that mass 2 is heavier than mass 1 .
Yet it is not known at present whether mass 3 is heavier than mass 1 ( the normal hierarchy ) or lighter ( the inverted hierarchy ) .
Because the muon and tau neutrinos consist of different superpositions of these three states , it is not correct to say the tau neutrino is either heavier or lighter than the electron or muon neutrinos .
In “ Justice for Rape Victims ” [ Science Agenda ] , the editors indicate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are not using completed rape kits to arrest perpetrators .
It would be extremely helpful if you would make a list of the local and state governments that are failing to act on the completed kits .
Then your readers could contact the appropriate agency and request action .
THE EDITORS REPLY : We would like to thank Passanise for his request .
In fact , we have created a data visualization showing where each state stands in processing its kits , which you can see online at www.scientificamerican.com/untested-rape-kits “ One Million Seed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Accurat [ Graphic Science ; July 2020 ] , includes a legend that states , “ Area indicates number of seeds for that genus.
” It seems more likely to me that it indicates the number of seed samples .
Otherwise the circles would not fall into neat size units .
THE EDITORS REPLY : The circle sizes in the graphic reflect the number of seeds per genus ( as correctly labeled ) rather than the number of seed samples .
But LeVay brings up an excellent point that we did not address @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do fall into suspiciously “ neat size units.
” To fit them on a grid—and to make the smallest seed collections visible—the scale that informed their size was based on ranges instead of continuous values .
Each circle 's area was calculated according to seed numbers .
But those numbers were first consolidated into discrete bins for best fit , with the aid of an algorithm .

OBESITY AND PREJUDICE
In “Treating Patients without the Scale,” Virginia Sole-Smith describes physician Louise Metz's approach to issues around weight and eating that affect individuals’ health. I could not agree more with Metz, whose technique involves encouraging healthier behaviors rather than focusing on weight.
During the past 27 years of my practice of internal medicine before my retirement, I treated many hundreds of people with eating disorders whose body mass index (BMI) ranged from malnourished to morbidly obese. They taught me much about how to treat all of my patients. As the article notes, for different racial, cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic groups, there are huge disparities in societal attitudes and acceptance, as well as in treatment received from the medical community. In addition, I believe one of the greatest disparities is manifested in gender: Men are far less likely to experience bias against overweight people than women. Men also have eating disorders that are not as often recognized as they would be in women.
A. LEE TUCKER, JR. Nashville, Tenn.
In “The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity,” Sabrina Strings and Lindo Bacon assert that “blaming black women's health conditions on ‘obesity’ ignores ... critically important sociohistorical factors.” They also say that prescribing weight loss is ineffective and that “the most effective and ethical approaches ... should aim to ... [tackle] racism, sexism and weightism.” That strategy provides only a partial solution to improve African-American health.
As a Black woman and a physician, I have personally and professionally seen the deleterious effects of obesity that extend beyond subjective aesthetics. I agree that forcing individuals to conform to specific body types that are rooted in racism, classism and sexism is unhealthy and potentially harmful. But given the evidence of the increased all-cause mortality associated with obesity—especially at a BMI greater than 35—it would be a disservice not to address it in African-Americans. The work Strings and Bacon describe does not invalidate the need for obesity treatment in African-American patients with diseases related to the condition. Rather it reemphasizes that such treatment must comprehensively address nutrition, physical activity, behavior and, if needed, medication or bariatric surgery.
Additionally, for Black people globally, it is critical to incorporate the effects of personal and systemic racism, as well as other psychosocial factors, into obesity-treatment planning to truly create lasting weight loss and optimal health.
SYLVIA GONSAHN-BOLLIE via e-mail
FLAVOR COMBINATION
“The Darkest Particles,” by William Charles Louis and Richard G. Van de Water, describes how neutrinos emanating from the sun transition from one of the three known “flavors” to another en route to Earth. The “Neutrino Flavors” box illustrates how the cumulative contribution of a neutrino's three mass states determines its flavor during the course of its travel. The particle is shown with a sharply defined mass state combination associated with an electron neutrino at its source and one indicating a tau neutrino at its destination. But the graphic seems to suggest that between those points, the neutrino passes through a large number of mass state combinations. Do the three flavors encompass a wide enough range of combinations to account for the entire transit? If not, what is the neutrino when it is not one of them?
ALLAN W. MALINEN
Kingsburg, Nova Scotia
I assume that there is agreement that the tau and electron neutrinos are, respectively, thought to be the most and least massive of the three known flavors. In the “Neutrino Flavors” box, an illustration of the three mass states of the normal hierarchy produces the expected result. Meanwhile the illustration of the inverted hierarchy seems to propose that the electron neutrino's predominant mass state (mass 1) is not the smallest state but the intermediate one.
Yet to maintain the expected rank order of the masses in the inverted hierarchy, the “extremely small mass” must be the electron neutrino's second most prominent mass state (mass 2). If it were mass 3, as the illustration shows, then the tau neutrino—which is dominated by that state—would easily be the least massive of the three flavors. Is the illustration in error?
ERIC M. VAN
via e-mail
THE AUTHORS REPLY: To answer Malinen: If the neutrino starts out as a pure electron neutrino, then it will be in a superposition of the three known flavors as it travels from its source. Therefore, if the particle is detected downstream from that source, it will have different probabilities of being an electron, muon or tau neutrino. If the sum of these probabilities is measured to be less than one, then that result would be evidence that the neutrino's flavor is the possible fourth “sterile” type that we discuss in our article.
In reply to Van: The figures of the three mass states are correct. As they show, the electron neutrino consists of a superposition of these different states rather than having a single mass. The particle's most dominant mass state is mass 1, followed by mass 2 and then mass 3. Neutrino oscillation experiments have shown that mass 2 is heavier than mass 1. Yet it is not known at present whether mass 3 is heavier than mass 1 (the normal hierarchy) or lighter (the inverted hierarchy). Because the muon and tau neutrinos consist of different superpositions of these three states, it is not correct to say the tau neutrino is either heavier or lighter than the electron or muon neutrinos.
UNPROCESSED RAPE KITS
In “Justice for Rape Victims” [Science Agenda], the editors indicate that there are states and regions that are not using completed rape kits to arrest perpetrators. It would be extremely helpful if you would make a list of the local and state governments that are failing to act on the completed kits. Then your readers could contact the appropriate agency and request action.
JOE PASSANISE Holiday, Fla.
THE EDITORS REPLY: We would like to thank Passanise for his request. In fact, we have created a data visualization showing where each state stands in processing its kits, which you can see online at www.scientificamerican.com/untested-rape-kits
SEED OF DOUBT
“One Million Seed Types,” by Mark Fischetti and Accurat [Graphic Science; July 2020], includes a legend that states, “Area indicates number of seeds for that genus.” It seems more likely to me that it indicates the number of seed samples. Otherwise the circles would not fall into neat size units.
SIMON LEVAY West Hollywood, Calif.
THE EDITORS REPLY: The circle sizes in the graphic reflect the number of seeds per genus (as correctly labeled) rather than the number of seed samples. But LeVay brings up an excellent point that we did not address directly on the page: The circles do fall into suspiciously “neat size units.” To fit them on a grid—and to make the smallest seed collections visible—the scale that informed their size was based on ranges instead of continuous values. Each circle's area was calculated according to seed numbers. But those numbers were first consolidated into discrete bins for best fit, with the aid of an algorithm.


scientificamerican--2020-11-21--If It Smells like Dirt, Fire Ants Are Interested

You and a fire ant have something in common : you can both smell dirt , and , odds are , you both like it .
Although most humans agree that fresh dirt smells sweet , that is not a view universally shared .
Fruit flies hate the smell , apparently because it signals spoiled food .
On the other hand , mosquitoes like dirt smell and use it as a cue for egg laying .
And as I wrote last spring , tiny arthropods called springtails think dirt not only smells great , it ’ s the smell of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason , as I wrote here earlier this year , is that dirt doesn ’ t smell like dirt .
It smells like bacteria—actinobacteria , to be precise .
These bacteria generate the odors we think of as characteristic of dirt to ring the dinner bell for springtails to come eat and disperse their spores .
Why fire ants think dirt smells good , and how we even came to investigate this unorthodox question , is a different story .
For those of you keeping track at home , fire ants are one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up there with Dutch Elm Disease , salt cedar and dandelions .
The South America natives were introduced to the southern United States in the 1930s , and have proceeded to take over most of the Southeast , to the lasting distress of all the other inhabitants .
Fire ants are notorious for swarming and stinging , and their name is an apt description of the result of an encounter .
They ’ re also notorious for their extraordinary resilience .
Nest gets flooded ?
No problem .
Simply join legs to form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ safety , a strategy that evolved on the flood plains of South America .
Such ant balls were spotted floating in the floodwaters of Hurricane Harvey .
Over the last 90 years , fire ants have irrevocably altered the southeastern United States .
Some 30–60 percent of the human population there is stung every year , to say nothing of the wildlife and livestock .
In their quest for protein , swarms can kill calves and strip the bones .
The ants have displaced many native species , reduced biodiversity , spread disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lizard to evolve longer legs just to provide more leverage for flinging them off .
The costs are not just physical .
Fire ants cost the U.S. around $ 6.5 billion annually on a combination of control , medical treatments , livestock and crop loss , and vet bills .
We are not alone in our suffering .
In just the last 20 years , fire ants have colonized China , Taiwan , New Zealand , Hong Kong , Macao , the Caribbean and Australia .
That unfortunate turn of events may be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ look at the vital question of fire ant real estate preferences in research published in September in the journal PLOS Pathogens.. Because it turns out that fire ant queens have strong opinions , and one of their highly-desirables is , apparently , dirt perfume .
In China , scientists observed that some soils seemed to be favored by fire ant queens .
To investigate , the scientists placed samples of favored and nonfavored soils at the end of a Y-junction olfactometer in which each arm was scented by a different dirt .
Many @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the favored soil arm .
The scientists next tested favored soil for the chemical compounds actinobacteria make that give dirt its earthy smell : geosmin and 2-MIB .
Favored soil was rich in both .
Then they tested the ants ’ attraction to purified geosmin and 2-MIB .
Many more ants ended up in the tube arms scented by these chemicals than in control arms .
Ant antennae also produced an electrical response to both chemicals .
Upon probing the dirt ’ s bacterial content , favored soil was enriched in actinobacteria compared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dirt , the team isolated two strains of Streptomyces and one of Nocardiopsis , both types of actinobacteria .
When they spiked nonfavored soil with just these bacteria , it suddenly attracted ants .
So why might actinobacteria be so alluring to fire ants ?
These microbes are renowned for their antibiotic prowess .
Most of our antibiotic medicines were discovered in such bacteria ; streptomycin , for example , unsurprisingly hails from Streptomyces .
Actinobacteria are also talented manufacturers of antifungal chemicals .
Since soil bacteria have to compete with many other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arsenal helps actinobacteria thrive .
At the same time , fire ants have their own fungal woes .
The soil is full of pathogenic fungi just waiting for a nice juicy fire ant to blunder into them .
Queens are most vulnerable after mating and before the first workers—who can groom and clean them—are born , at precisely the time they select a nest site .
Just as antibiotics work as well for us as they do for bacteria , antifungals sprayed indiscriminately by actinobacteria may aid soil insects .
Any fire ant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conversation with springtails—could reap an advantage by shacking up with them .
To investigate that possibility , the scientists tested both soil types for fungal animal and insect pathogens .
They were enriched in nonfavored soil and impoverished in favored soil .
In laboratory experiments , fire ant queens also survived better in favored soil than in nonfavored soil .
Yet when nonfavored soil was simply mixed with the Streptomyces and Nocardiopsis bacteria they had isolated from favored soils , queens survived better .
The scientists also watched the corpses of queens that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and discovered they sprouted insect pathogenic fungi about seven days after death .
On the other hand , dead queens from favored soil grew either harmless decomposition fungi or none at all .
Finally , they grew the insect pathogenic fungi isolated from dead queens in culture dishes with their isolated strains of Streptomyces and Nocardiopsis bacteria , and discovered the bacteria inhibited the growth of the fungi .
So to fire ant queens , the smell of dirt may be the smell of a freshly scrubbed kitchen and bath with neatly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a dehumidifier , a couple of cute rubber duckies and a nonironic toilet paper cozy .
Or something like that .
For them , the smell of dirt is the smell of home sweet home .

You and a fire ant have something in common: you can both smell dirt, and, odds are, you both like it.
Although most humans agree that fresh dirt smells sweet, that is not a view universally shared. Fruit flies hate the smell, apparently because it signals spoiled food.
On the other hand, mosquitoes like dirt smell and use it as a cue for egg laying. And as I wrote last spring, tiny arthropods called springtails think dirt not only smells great, it’s the smell of steak night at the Sizzler.
The reason, as I wrote here earlier this year, is that dirt doesn’t smell like dirt. It smells like bacteria—actinobacteria, to be precise. These bacteria generate the odors we think of as characteristic of dirt to ring the dinner bell for springtails to come eat and disperse their spores.
Why fire ants think dirt smells good, and how we even came to investigate this unorthodox question, is a different story.
For those of you keeping track at home, fire ants are one of the original nasty invasive species, up there with Dutch Elm Disease, salt cedar and dandelions. The South America natives were introduced to the southern United States in the 1930s, and have proceeded to take over most of the Southeast, to the lasting distress of all the other inhabitants. Fire ants are notorious for swarming and stinging, and their name is an apt description of the result of an encounter.
They’re also notorious for their extraordinary resilience. Nest gets flooded? No problem. Simply join legs to form a giant ant raft and float to safety, a strategy that evolved on the flood plains of South America. Such ant balls were spotted floating in the floodwaters of Hurricane Harvey.
Over the last 90 years, fire ants have irrevocably altered the southeastern United States. Some 30–60 percent of the human population there is stung every year, to say nothing of the wildlife and livestock. In their quest for protein, swarms can kill calves and strip the bones. The ants have displaced many native species, reduced biodiversity, spread disease and even likely caused one species of lizard to evolve longer legs just to provide more leverage for flinging them off.
The costs are not just physical. Fire ants cost the U.S. around $6.5 billion annually on a combination of control, medical treatments, livestock and crop loss, and vet bills. We are not alone in our suffering. In just the last 20 years, fire ants have colonized China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Macao, the Caribbean and Australia.
That unfortunate turn of events may be what prompted Chinese scientists to take a look at the vital question of fire ant real estate preferences in research published in September in the journal PLOS Pathogens.. Because it turns out that fire ant queens have strong opinions, and one of their highly-desirables is, apparently, dirt perfume.
In China, scientists observed that some soils seemed to be favored by fire ant queens. To investigate, the scientists placed samples of favored and nonfavored soils at the end of a Y-junction olfactometer in which each arm was scented by a different dirt. Many more workers and queens ended up in the favored soil arm.
The scientists next tested favored soil for the chemical compounds actinobacteria make that give dirt its earthy smell: geosmin and 2-MIB. Favored soil was rich in both. Then they tested the ants’ attraction to purified geosmin and 2-MIB. Many more ants ended up in the tube arms scented by these chemicals than in control arms. Ant antennae also produced an electrical response to both chemicals.
Upon probing the dirt’s bacterial content, favored soil was enriched in actinobacteria compared to the non-favored soil. From this dirt, the team isolated two strains of Streptomyces and one of Nocardiopsis, both types of actinobacteria. When they spiked nonfavored soil with just these bacteria, it suddenly attracted ants.
So why might actinobacteria be so alluring to fire ants?
These microbes are renowned for their antibiotic prowess. Most of our antibiotic medicines were discovered in such bacteria; streptomycin, for example, unsurprisingly hails from Streptomyces. Actinobacteria are also talented manufacturers of antifungal chemicals. Since soil bacteria have to compete with many other bacteria and fungi, a well-stocked chemical arsenal helps actinobacteria thrive.
At the same time, fire ants have their own fungal woes. The soil is full of pathogenic fungi just waiting for a nice juicy fire ant to blunder into them. Queens are most vulnerable after mating and before the first workers—who can groom and clean them—are born, at precisely the time they select a nest site.
Just as antibiotics work as well for us as they do for bacteria, antifungals sprayed indiscriminately by actinobacteria may aid soil insects. Any fire ant that can smell actinobacteria—essentially eavesdropping on their conversation with springtails—could reap an advantage by shacking up with them.
To investigate that possibility, the scientists tested both soil types for fungal animal and insect pathogens. They were enriched in nonfavored soil and impoverished in favored soil. In laboratory experiments, fire ant queens also survived better in favored soil than in nonfavored soil. Yet when nonfavored soil was simply mixed with the Streptomyces and Nocardiopsis bacteria they had isolated from favored soils, queens survived better.
The scientists also watched the corpses of queens that had kicked the bucket in nonfavored soil, and discovered they sprouted insect pathogenic fungi about seven days after death. On the other hand, dead queens from favored soil grew either harmless decomposition fungi or none at all.
Finally, they grew the insect pathogenic fungi isolated from dead queens in culture dishes with their isolated strains of Streptomyces and Nocardiopsis bacteria, and discovered the bacteria inhibited the growth of the fungi.
So to fire ant queens, the smell of dirt may be the smell of a freshly scrubbed kitchen and bath with neatly folded towels, an air purifier, a dehumidifier, a couple of cute rubber duckies and a nonironic toilet paper cozy. Or something like that. For them, the smell of dirt is the smell of home sweet home.


The Noble Gases

High-born , not like those other elements , The common riffraff , the ones All too ready to mix it up .
From the right tower of the periodic table They appraise their inferiors , Arrayed in colored boxes as far as they can see .
Dancing lightly on the parapet , Helium waves her party balloons Of yellow , red , and blue .
A level down , in her flaming orange-red dress , Neon shows a leg and shouts into the darkness Her cry of freedom .
Argon chats with his neighbor below , Krypton explaining again she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nor a danger to anyone , caped or not .
Flashy and rakish ( but naturally so ) , Xenon Flaunts his electric suit of lavender , Nearly blinding all who look in his direction .
Radon draws something from his invisible pocket , Bows , and casts seeds on the unaware , Bids them gently into that good night .
And on the ground floor , Oganesson blinks out , Half her life gone in less than a millisecond , Happy to be in a poem—or in anything at all really .

Edited by Dava Sobel
High-born, not like those other elements,
The common riffraff, the ones
All too ready to mix it up.
From the right tower of the periodic table
They appraise their inferiors,
Arrayed in colored boxes as far as they can see.
Dancing lightly on the parapet,
Helium waves her party balloons
Of yellow, red, and blue.
A level down, in her flaming orange-red dress,
Neon shows a leg and shouts into the darkness
Her cry of freedom.
Argon chats with his neighbor below,
Krypton explaining again she's not a planet
That exploded, nor a danger to anyone, caped or not.
Flashy and rakish (but naturally so), Xenon
Flaunts his electric suit of lavender,
Nearly blinding all who look in his direction.
Radon draws something from his invisible pocket,
Bows, and casts seeds on the unaware,
Bids them gently into that good night.
And on the ground floor, Oganesson blinks out,
Half her life gone in less than a millisecond,
Happy to be in a poem—or in anything at all really.


scientificamerican--2020-11-22--We Need a National Institute of Climate Change and Health

If there was any lingering doubt that climate change threatens human health and well-being , this year put it to rest .
Wildfire smoke aggravated heart disease and lung disease up and down the West Coast and across the country .
A record-breaking hurricane season killed and injured people from North Carolina to Texas , and left tens of thousands homeless and at risk of PTSD and other mental health problems .
Oppressive heat across the Southwest imperiled outdoor workers and athletes , the elderly and the poor , and people with underlying health problems , with risks ranging from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
2020 reinforced another lesson : If we don ’ t prepare for health disasters and manage them skillfully , informed by the best evidence , then people suffer and die needlessly .
In confronting a novel virus , the United States failed in its response we continue to have one of the world ’ s highest COVID-19 death rates .
What is true for COVID is true for climate change .
We ’ re not prepared .
Part of the gap is a knowledge gap : We haven ’ t done the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information .
As former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ’ s National Center for Environmental Health , we are alarmed by this neglect of a major climate and public health emergency .
And so we recommend a solution : the urgent creation of a new National Institutes of Health division—the National Institute of Climate Change and Health .
With a budget of over $ 40 billion , the NIH is the largest , best funded health research institution in the world .
Yet currently a measly $ 9 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to climate change and health , according to the NIH ’ s own tally If the NIH budget were scaled to $ 100 , climate change and health funding would amount to two hundredths of one penny—what ’ s called “ budget dust.
” How could NIH spend so little on one of our greatest health threats ?
The longstanding culture of reductionist biomedical thinking—approaching health research as if an organ-by-organ approach meets population health knowledge needs—plays a role .
( If you ’ ve ever been shunted from specialist to specialist , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for you as a whole person , you ’ ll know how well that works . )
So does undue emphasis on disease over health , on treatment over prevention .
Lobbying by special interests such as disease advocacy groups , and in recent years political meddling , inappropriately shape priorities .
The result is long-standing neglect of what should be a health research priority .
A climate change institute within NIH would support research to answer critical questions related to climate and health .
This would help Americans be better prepared for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effective prevention and treatment strategies .
Research could quantify the health benefits , and cost savings , from cutting carbon emissions across the economy , to help chart the healthiest path forward .
It could provide a blueprint for reconfiguring hospitals and clinics to be climate-ready and to reach net zero carbon emissions as soon as possible , while delivering top quality care to all .
The United Kingdom ’ s National Health Service , for example , has already launched an ambitious plan to eliminate nearly all of its carbon emissions .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ funding helps train young researchers—a critical role .
For a comparison , consider the Pentagon , which robustly supports the nation ’ s military academies and other training infrastructure .
Military leaders know that failure to maintain a pipeline of smart , competent service members would undermine U.S. defense capability .
The same is true for health and medicine , particularly in the face of inexorable threats such as climate change .
We need a cutting-edge research workforce for years to come .
Today , dangerously , there is no research training pipeline @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate change institute at NIH could meet that need .
Nobody wants another government agency if it is not needed .
It ’ s fair to ask : Could an existing NIH institute deliver the needed research and training ?
NIH does have an environmental health institute , the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences .
But it is almost entirely focused on chemical toxins and pollutants .
Its history and expertise make it unsuited to a major climate change research effort .
We need a new NIH institute .
A climate change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at NIH .
Even with a midrange budget ( by NIH standards ) —say , $ 1 billion/year , smaller than 10 of the existing institutes—such an institute would revolutionize research on climate change and health .
It would deliver needed insights to protect the public from the ravages of climate change , and it would create a world-class research workforce .
Existential threats call for groundbreaking innovations .
It ’ s time for a National Institute of Climate Change and Health .

The climate catastrophes of 2020—wildfires, hurricanes, oppressive heat—left no doubt that climate change threatens health. And the COVID-19 pandemic left no doubt that preparing for predictable health challenges is essential to preventing needless suffering and dying. The two lessons are linked. We know climate change will increasingly affect health. Research shows, for example, that global temperature changes could lead to more heat-related deaths and deaths from diseases such as dengue fever and cholera that spread via insects and water. We urgently need to prepare. But we face critical knowledge gaps in areas such as diagnosis and prevention.
We recommend a solution: the immediate creation of a new unit at the National Institutes of Health—the National Institute of Climate Change and Health. With a budget of more than $40 billion, the NIH is the world's largest, best-funded health research institution. Yet it devotes a measly $9 million annually to research directly related to climate change and health, according to its own tally.
How could the NIH spend so little on one of our greatest health threats? The long-standing culture of reductionist biomedical thinking—organizing research with an organ-by-organ approach rather than looking at population health—plays a role. (If you've ever been shunted from specialist to specialist, yearning for a doctor who'd care for you as a whole person, you know how well that works.) Political meddling and special-interest lobbying by groups such as disease advocacy organizations also inappropriately shape priorities. The new institute would support research to answer critical questions such as these:
Diagnosis: How can climate change impinge on health? What infectious diseases are coming? Where will they emerge? What nutritional problems? How are allergies affected? Who is most vulnerable?
Treatment and prevention: What are the most effective, as well as cost-effective, ways to protect people?
Co-benefits: As we work to cut carbon emissions, what are the healthiest approaches, and how do we build them in? How do we avoid unintended adverse consequences?
The health-care system: How do we reimagine hospitals, clinics and supply lines so the health sector is climate-ready, delivers high-quality care to all and reaches net zero carbon emissions as soon as possible?
Research on climate change and health needs to draw on many disciplines: such an institute should coordinate closely and co-sponsor research with federal departments such as agriculture, energy and transportation. Climate change requires an all-of-government response.
In addition to supporting research, NIH funding helps train young researchers—a critical role. The Pentagon supports military academies because leaders know that a supply of smart, competent service members is crucial for U.S. defense capability. The same is true for health and medicine, particularly in the face of inexorable threats such as climate change. We need a cutting-edge research workforce for years to come. Today, dangerously, there is no training pipeline on climate change and health comparable to the network of postgraduate programs, funded academic research centers and training grants available to scientists studying, for example, genomics and pharmacology.
It's fair to ask whether an existing NIH institute could do this job. The Biden administration has moved to establish an office of climate and environmental justice at the Department of Health and Human Services, of which NIH is a part, but it will not have responsibility for research funding and training. The NIH has the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, but it is focused mostly on chemical toxins and pollutants. Even with a midrange budget (by NIH standards)—say, $1 billion per year, which is less than the funding for 10 of the existing institutes—a climate and health institute would deliver needed insights to protect the public from the ravages of climate change.