Bomb Effects

From the September 1945 issue of Popular Science.

Popular Science

On August 6th, 1945, the American B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima, Japan. It was the second atomic weapon ever detonated, and the first used in actual war. A few weeks earlier, Manhattan Project researchers detonated the first atomic weapon in a remote New Mexico desert, but it was the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ushered in the nuclear age with a blinding flash . Here's how Popular Science covered the attack.

An important piece of context: this was a cover story in the August 1945 issue of Popular Science [warning: contains ethnic slur]:  

August 1945 Magazine Story

While touted on the cover of the issue, the story came with a disclaimer that this was a controversial opinion, and the editors would welcome letters from readers in support or against it.

Popular Science

Despite the appearance of "Major" before his name, George Fielding Eliot wasn't a serving member of any military at the time of publication. Instead, he was a retired officer, who worked as a naval correspondent and wrote science fiction, as well as military commentaries. He was famously wrong in 1938 when he wrote a piece titled "The Impossible War With Japan," published at the American Mercury. Not only did the piece declare such a war was impossible, but in it, Eliot specifically said "a Japanese attack upon Hawaii is a strategical impossibility." In "Should We Gas?," Eliot's argument foreshadows one commonly used in defense of the atomic bombings, highlighting Japan's perceived inability to see its own inevitable defeat, and the high casualties that come with land invasions. President Truman, who ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, echoed this when explaining his rationale in a letter to Professor James L. Cate. He wrote:

Ultimately, gas was not the weapon of mass destruction used against Japan. 

In the September 1945 issue of Popular Science, following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the editors published a statement titled "Annihilation Bomb: Friend or Foe?" It focuses heavily on the science of the weapon and the long term implications of using it, while curiously ignoring the considerable number of people who died (estimates near 200,000 dead and injured). "Annihilation Bomb" compares the power of the bombs to that of a star; it touches upon the effects of radiation, both through cancer treatments and as a harmful after-effect. There's even a suggestion of deriving energy from nuclear power: "Popular Science's editors are confident, nevertheless, that scientists can learn to control this new source of power as they have controlled fire and electricity." It ends, optimistically, with this:

Read "Annihilation Bomb" below: 

Annihilation Bomb, Page One

From the September 1945 issue of Popular Science

Popular Science

It continues, paired with an advertisement for a wrench:

Annihilation Bomb, Page Two

Popular Science

A concept image of the Orion spacecraft docking with the robotic asteroid redirect vehicle.

NASA

At first, the concept behind NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) sounds nifty.

In the early 2020s, the space agency will send a robotic vehicle equipped with an enormous bag to capture a 10-meter-diameter piece of a near-Earth asteroid and tug it into lunar orbit. Then, astronauts will travel to the foreign boulder, where they will explore and retrieve rock samples to bring to Earth.

The problem is that practically everyone thinks this is a terrible idea, and some notable critics are now starting to voice their opinions about the project.

On July 30 at NASA's 11th Small Bodies Assessment Group meeting in Washington, for example, MIT professor Richard Binzel presented a scathing takedown of the ARM program, claiming it could ultimately destroy NASA's Planetary Science Division.

"I love the idea of humans going to asteroids, but the retrieval idea is a dead end," Binzel, a planetary scientist who studies asteroids, tells Popular Science. "It's a one-and-done stunt."

Overall, ARM is touted as a way to advance NASA's much more significant goal of going to Mars. The space agency says that the mission will help astronauts become more familiar with a deep space environment (which has more cosmic radiation), as well as demonstrate flight capabilities that the Mars mission will inevitably use--notably, advanced solar electric propulsion.

Yet Binzel argues those reasons are, well, bogus. He says there's really no strategic merit for ARM, since bringing a small asteroid closer to Earth will do very little to lay the foundation for a manned mission to the red planet.

Additionally, retrieving a small sample of an asteroid wouldn't be exactly groundbreaking for science; 10-meter space objects pass between Earth and the Moon every week, and there are already tons of meteorite samples located in museums across the globe. Humankind has even retrieved samples of comet dust.

And to top things off, the entire ARM mission is set to cost billions of dollars.

"It really is an exercise of giving astronauts something to do that sounds cool and sounds important, but the scientific merit is not compelling," Binzel says.

When reached for comment, NASA declined to make a statement on the presentations made at SBAG.  They noted it would be "inappropriate" to say anything before NASA came out with their own official findings from the meeting.

In 2010, when President Barack Obama set the agenda for NASA, he challenged the agency to send astronauts to an asteroid and then to Mars. But a tight budget forced NASA to scale back the idea, and thus, ARM was born.

"Within the constraints the U.S. Congress put on NASA, this is the best use in the near term for getting humans into near-Earth orbit," says Charles Miller, president of NexGen Space LLC and former senior advisor for commercial space at NASA. "They don't have the money … so they get to fly to a point in space where there's really nothing there."

Both Miller and Binzel agree that in order to get to Mars, NASA is going to have to practice traveling to large objects in space. For Binzel, that means going to where the asteroids are found--not towing the goal post to Earth.

"I think doing something with asteroids in the future is important, but the magic words are 'asteroids in their native orbit,'" Binzel says. "They naturally exist between here and Mars, so if we build a ship with the capability to go to Mars, then we'll have the capability to go to an abundant number of asteroids."

Miller, on the other hand, is of a different mindset, and it's a growing sentiment among those in the scientific community: Return to the Moon first. NASA could mimic the design of a Moon mission to get to Mars or use Earth's satellite as a jumping off point, making the million-mile trip somewhat shorter. And Miller says a Moon trip won't necessarily break the bank.

"I led a NASA study that leveraged commercial launch and demonstrated we could return humans to the moon within NASA's existing budget," Miller says. "It would be a completely different strategy, using existing launch vehicles such as the Atlas V and Delta 4, but we could get to the moon in the next decade."

Regardless of which route to Mars is best, practically every person we've spoken to with a vested interest in human spaceflight (and who works outside NASA's walls) agrees that ARM has got to go. Even the National Research Council, the operating branch of the National Academy of Sciences, came out against ARM, saying it "failed to engender substantial enthusiasm either in the Congress or the scientific community."

"This sense that this mission doesn't cut the mustard is so widespread but so whispered about for fear of retribution that I felt it was important as a professor at a private university to speak what one sees as the honest truth," Binzel says.

Oil Spill.

A ship floats amongst the oil slick from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. Photo was taken in June 2010.

kris krüg via Flickr CC By 2.0

By day Arden Warner is a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, working on the next generation of particle accelerators. After hours, he has been devising a non-toxic way to clean up oil spills.

It began in 2010. Warner and his wife were troubled by what they were hearing and seeing in the news about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Like many others around the country at the time, they wondered if the clean-up process could be improved technologically. 

“My wife asked me, what would I try to do?” says Warner. “In my naïve way of thinking about things, I thought, 'there are four forces we know about, and only one I really know about: electromagnetic force.'” But how could he magnetize oil?

Later in the evening it came to him. “When you put magnetizable material in a solution, it's randomly caught up in the solution,” Warner explains. “Apply a magnetic field, and the particles will line up in the direction of the field. Orthogonally to that direction, the fluid becomes more rigid, and you can move or manipulate, it.”

That night Warner went to his garage. He shaved some iron off a shovel and mixed those filings into a bit of engine oil. Then he applied a small magnet to the solution and tried to move it – and it worked. This was proof enough of concept to fuel “countless hours” of experimentation. “When I started on it, I couldn't sleep for days,” he says, but would instead come home from an eight-hour work day to spend another 12 on devising an effective “pseudo-magnetorheostatic” fluid. “I spent, I'd say, almost every evening testing a different oil, a different way of doing it.”

Warner settled on using magnetite dust of about two to six microns in diameter, and tested it in over 100 oils. Crude oils turned out to have enough inherent viscosity – meaning a natural tendency to resist flowing – that they lent themselves pretty well to being magnetized and then cleared away with magnetic force. “You can size the particles to the depth you need to go,” Warner says, and “they will descend in the water and mix with the oil very well, and form a very nice bond. You can pull oil up from the bottom.” Then it's a matter of finding mechanical ways to gather up the oil – perhaps using booms with an electromagnetic charge – and remove it.

The magnetite particles themselves could be cleaned and re-used, he theorizes.

Warner envisions additional ways to apply the process, from cleaning up everyday small spills in garages to saving oil-soaked wildlife and natural environments. “A swamp is no different from water with lots of vegetation in it,” says Warner. “This stuff grabs onto the oil rather strongly, and doesn't grab onto the water, and grabs onto oil on other surfaces as well, and you can literally pull it out.” Warner has oiled bird feathers, then added magnetite and applied magnetic force to remove the oil. “It was very effective,” he says.

Fermilab helped Warner patent the process, but developing it further is beyond the lab's mission of accelerator physics. Thanks to coverage of his process in a recent lab newsletter, however, Warner says he has gotten email from several outside parties, including some plausible commercial development partners.

“I think that the environmentally friendly nature of this thing is worth, alone, makes it worth pursuing,” says Warner. “Adding magnetite to water seems more natural than adding chemicals” to clean up oil.

“I'm originally from the Caribbean, from Barbados, where the ocean is a part of me," Warner says, “Coming from an island - it does motivate you.”

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park

James St. John, via Wikimedia Commons

According to the National Park Service, a tourist crashed a camera-equipped drone into Grand Prismatic Spring, the park's largest geothermal hot spring. In May, the National Park Service banned drones from Yosemite National Park, and in June that ban expanded to include all national parks. The Prismatic Spring crash is not the first drone crash on a national park, and it's unlikely to be the last.

Civilian drones are cheap and getting cheaper, are easily controlled by smartphone or special remote control, and potentially operate in a legal gray area under American law. The park service's ban is at least clear, and promises that the ban is temporary until a service-wide regulation is adopted. It also has exceptions for "search-and-rescue work, fire operations, and scientific study," providing specific uses get prior approval. Ultimately, a new policy will address the needs of visitors, conservation, and animal protection better than both a blanket ban and a laissez faire approach.

In the meantime, park officials need to figure out how to find and extract the drone from the 121-foot-deep, 160-degree-Fahrenheit water. Perhaps they might want to use another, more stable drone for the search.

The Vizzies!

NSF/Popular Science

Here at Popular Science, we’re big fans of visualizations—those often beautiful and always illuminating intersections of science and art. So we’re thrilled to announce a new partnership with the National Science Foundation called The Vizzies.

The Vizzies is the newest iteration of the NSF’s annual International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, which has honored some amazing stuff in the past. They’ve hosted the contest for more than a decade, and this year we’ve joined forces with them so that you, dear reader, will have the opportunity to enter. Macrophotography, animations, data visualizations, even science games—we want them all! A panel of experts will judge the entries, and the winners in each of five categories will be featured in the pages of Popular Science (oh, and you’ll also get cash).

Click over to the NSF’s official Vizzies site for the entry form and complete rules. We're accepting submissions through Tuesday, September 30 at 11:59pm PST.

And, for a little inspiration, check out some of our favorite winners from the lastthreecompetitions. (E.g. 2013's first-place entry in photography, below, which shows the liquid vortices created by coral polyps.)

"Invisible Coral Flows"

This first-place winner in the photography category captures the fluid vortex created by cauliflower coral's cilia.

Vicente I. Fernandez, Orr H. Shapiro, Melissa S. Garren, Assaf Vardi, and Roman Stocker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

A red-footed tortoise

Ltshears

Tortoises are using their cleverness to do more than just win long distance races against hares–now they’re moving into the field of touchscreen technology.

Researchers from the U.K.'s University of Lincoln have successfully trained four red-footed tortoises (native to Central and South America) to touch different objects on a screen. In a video from the university, one of the test tortoises can be seen using his head to tap either a blue circle or a red triangle as they appear on a monitor.

The idea was to learn more about how reptiles navigate their environment.  A lot of research has been done on the spatial cognition of mammals and birds, which use the hippocampus to get around. However, reptiles lack this structure in their brains, so they are thought to rely on the medial cortex, which has a lot of the same functions as the hippocampus. Previous studies of tortoises in radial-arm mazes have shown they utilize a mixture of response-based strategies and visual cues to move through their environment.

In this latest study, the researchers wanted to know how these reptiles navigated a two-dimensional space compared to a 3-D one. The four tortoises were placed in front of a screen as various shapes popped up. Each time the tortoises correctly head-butted the object, they were given a treat such as a strawberry. (Apparently tortoises love treats, according to LiveScience.)

The tortoises figured out the touchscreen technology pretty quickly, and two of the subjects—Esme and Quin—went on to apply what they had learned to a real world scenario. During the initial testing, the tortoises were shown two blue circles on a screen, but they were only given treats of they consistently touched either the circle on the left or the circle on the right. Then, when Esme and Quin were given two food bowls that looked like the blue circles on the screen, they only ate from the bowls that were on the same side as the circles they were trained to touch.

“This tells us that when navigating in real space they do not rely on simple motor feedback but learn about the position of stimuli within an environment,” says lead researcher Dr. Anna Wilkinson. (That, or they just really wanted more strawberries.)

Wilkinson hopes the team's research will help them to better understand the evolution of the brain and cognition. It may also inspire a generation of kids to train their pet turtles to use an iPad.

When I told people I was going to a recent conference "about origami," I got some perplexed responses. Origami? Like paper cranes? Well, not exactly. Origami principles are now used in a wide variety of applications--from the design of satellites, to heart stents, to self-assembling robots, and much more.

But what does paper art have to do with these things, you may ask? Indeed, origami has been practiced for centuries and involves folding shapes like birds and boxes out of paper. Japanese origamist Akira Yoshizawa has been credited for helping to popularize it in the 20th century, developing a picture-based set of instructions that served as a universal language, fostering collaborations between artists and scientists.

But since the 1960s, and especially in the last few years, the overlap between origami, mathematics, engineering and other disciplines has grown. As I soon learned at the conference hosted by the University of Illinois, in Champaign, the mathematical processes that underly origami are quite complex, and the same analytical techniques and computer models that allow one to fold a piece of paper into an inordinate variety of shapes can be used to solve a wide array of vexing design problems.

According to Illinois researcher Glaucio Paulino, a chipper man who organized the conference, origami techniques can help make a 3-D object out of flat (sometimes basically 2-D) materials. Even more fascinating, these objects can range in scale from a microscopic nano-bot to shades on a skyscraper. Applying origami principles also help fit large objects into a smaller shape, and then, often, to expand again.

Without further ado, here are nine amazing origami-inspired applications, ranging from those unveiled in papers published this week to others from the past or that will come out soon.

Unfold thyself and prosper

These three images show the robot assembling itself, beginning in a flat state.

Seth Kroll, Wyss Institute

1. A self-assembling robot

You may be familiar with Transformers--especially if you're a teenage boy or a fan of Michael Bay. Well, MIT and Harvard researchers have designed something that is similar at its core: a robot that can assemble itself.

But it gets better. Initially, all the materials for the machine are quite flat, and they can fold to create a device that can move on its own and make turns. The flat panels are embedded with electronics and connected by hinges; they are also made of materials that contract and fold when heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). The machine takes four minutes to assemble, according to a study describing the work, published today (Aug. 7) in Science.

Such machines could have several applications. First, they could be used for "remote, autonomous assembly," the authors wrote--e.g. when putting satellites into space or building shelters in dangerous environments. Search-and-rescue bots are also a possibility, as the thin pre-machine could fit in a small hole and then be deployed. The concept could also be used to automate steps used in manufacturing.

2. Mirrors and solar panels in space

How do you get something into a compact shape for lift-off--and then quickly make it big again in outer space? By now, you can probably guess. Origami-type folding principles have been used to make folding mirrors, such as those on the James Webb Space Telescope (PDF), said Robert Lang, a physicist and origami artist. Lang is a perfect example of the overlap between origami artistry and science/engineering. A Cal Tech-educated physicist, he decided to forego a more typical science trajectory to pursue origami; he's now one of the better-known origami artists in the world, and he regularly collaborates with scientists of different disciplines from around the world. Lang for example worked with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to design the Eyeglass Telescope using computational origami to make a foldable lens. A prototype of this enormous telescope--which would have stretched the length of Manhattan--was built, although the final work was never completed.

The same general idea has been applied to make foldable solar panels and other contraptions that need to be tucked away and then unfurled. One way to do this is by using a Miura fold, a crease pattern named after Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura, who happened to be at the conference and is a legitimate legend in the field. When a piece of paper is folded into a small shape à la Miura, one needs only to hold on both ends and pull, and the paper unfolds. This simplicity allows the fold to be used in many of these origami-inspired applications; one solar array designed as such was used in a Japanese satellite that launched in 1995.

Zig-zag metamaterial

Jesse Silverberg et al

In another study, also published today in Science, Cornell University researcher Itai Cohen, graduate student Jesse Silverberg, and colleagues developed a special type of metamaterial (a material with properties not found in nature) using a variant of the Miura fold. Silverberg found that by altering the size of a repeating patterns of creases, he could change the stiffness of a material in a programmable way. This could be useful for a number of purposes, for example quickly creating strong 3-D objects from flat materials.

3. Other space devices

Besides solar panels, there are other uses for origami in space. Mark Schenk, a research fellow at the Surrey Space Centre in the United Kingdom, is building a cube satellite with an inflatable mast. This mast needs to be quickly elongated, which is a challenge; it's difficult to find a material that can be quickly deployed and then stay rigid. His solution has been to turn to origami principles, using a laminate material that unfolds very quickly in the span of six seconds. In the future these kind of "deployable structures" could be used for a range of space gadgets, Schenk said, such as for masts to connect solar panels or solar sails to satellites.

University of Illinois researcher Jimmy Hsia also said he is working on developing tiny spherical solar cells made from folded silicon, which would have a significant advantage: "Regardless of where sun comes, you have the same efficiency." Typically these cells are flat and have to be carefully aligned perpendicular to the sun, otherwise they are less efficient.

Janipewter via Wikimedia Commons

4. Designing air bags

Making an air bag is pretty tough. It's got to open in a split second and become rigid, but not too rigid; it can't be rock hard, after all. It turns out that the best way to model the inflation of a shape of this size is to figure out how to create a 3-D polyhedron from a flat sheet, using folds. Robert Lang helped a German company develop software to simulate the opening and folding-up of an air bag, and his algorithm has been used in the corporation's computer models to improve the product.

5. Heart stents

Japanese tradition holds that somebody who makes 1,000 cranes may be granted a wish--perhaps to save a life. But origami principles may actually save lives through science. Oxford University researcher Zhong You and colleagues developed a heart stint that works using the concept of a "waterbomb base," which is used in those inflated origami boxes you may have seen. The stent is made of plastic materials and can be contracted to be small enough to fit through a catheter, but then once it reaches its position, it can be inflated to open up arteries.

6. Architecture

Neil Katz, an architect with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in Chicago, said that origami-inspired work is increasingly being incorporated into architecture. It's being used to make folding, easy-to-assemble homes, for example. But on a higher level, it is increasingly being used to make adjustable screens or walls that can let light through in one shape, but are then more opaque in another formation. To this end, origami principles also allow architects to making "shading and cladding" that can keep out sunlight--and thus heat--during the hottest part of the day, and then can open up later when it's cooler. For example, the facade of the Beijing Greenland Dawangjing tower, "is origamic, for self-shading," a design which "saves a significant amount of energy."

DNA

Richard Wheeler via Wikimedia Commons

7. Nano-devices and machines robots

Researchers have used the folding properties of DNA to make a variety of super-tiny objects, including boxes and vessels used for drug delivery and to make nanobots. Some day such devices could crawl around your body diagnosing problems (although I wouldn't sign up). For now, though, the devices have been used inside living cockroaches.

"The fundamental laws of folding apply at any scale," Lang said.

8. Retinal implants

Cal Tech researcher Sergio Pellegrino is developing an origami-inspired retinal implant, to help people with age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosea--conditions that cause loss of photoreceptors. Pellegrino said his device would have several advantages over current models: It could be built flat at a lower cost; folding techniques could allow for a dense array of electrodes near the retina (to transmit electrical signals from a camera mounted near the eyeball); and it could be "elastically compliant to adapt to a variety of retina sizes."

9. Excellent pieces of art

As you might expect, origami is still used to make… origami. Here's a piece of work by Robert Lang:

Roosevelt Elk, opus 358

This was made using one uncut square of Korean hanji paper.

Robert Lang

Tomohiro Tachi, a researcher at the University of Tokyo and renowned origami artist, develops innovative 3-D sculptures using origami techniques. Below is a structure he made from metal, which he holds with gloves because of the sharp edges. This shape took only an hour to make, since he had help from a specialized printer. "It's so easy due to the simplicity of the structure," he said, in a typically humble fashion, speaking of something that looks neither simple nor easy at all.

Tomohiro Tachi answering questions about his origami creation.

Douglas Main

Tachi also showed a time lapse of himself folding a paper rabbit, which took him 10 hours.

And while we're at it, here is Miura with a copy of a Miura fold. In the early days, he had to hand-draw the distinctive crease pattern because there weren't computers to help design this kind of thing.

Koryo Miura and his famous fold.

Douglas Main

Robert Lang sums it up best. "If you look up into space, or the operating room, you're likely to see origami," Land said. "And it may one day save a life."

Twister

OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL)

First the good news: The number of days with a single tornado is going down in the United States.

Now the bad: The number of days with lots of really intense tornados is going up.

That's the major finding in a new study (login or payment required) by three researchers: James Elsner of Florida State University, Svetoslava Elsner and Thomas Jagger. Elsner and his co-authors detect signals in US tornado data suggesting "an increasing efficiency of the atmosphere to produce tornados," and they suggest further research is needed to find out whether global warming may be contributing to it.

Using the most complete set of tornado data in the United States--reports from 1954 to 2013 held by the US Storm Prediction Center--they found no change in the total number of tornados over time. The mean annual rate of twisters is 505 a year, and the median is 474, with a lot of variation from year to year. (Currently 2011 holds the record high of 896 tornados, and 1999 the record low of 311.)

However, days featuring at least 8, 16, or 32 twisters are increasing. “In particular before 1980 the number of days per year with at least 16 tornados averaged between three and four,” they write. “Since 2000 the average has doubled to seven.” While most years before 1990 saw no days with at least 32 tornados, every year since 2001 has had at least one 32-storm day. The year 2011 saw six days with at least 32 tornados (yikes).

Days on which a single twister occurs are becoming rarer, resulting in an overall decrease in the total number of “tornado days.” There is also a downward trend in the total number of days with at least four tornados.

The researchers also found upward trends in tornado clusters--multiple tornado touchdown locations that are relatively close to one another. (For the tornado geeks out there, this paper uses “partitioning around the mediods” to define a cluster.) From 1954 through 2013, days with at least four tornados saw a 123 percent change in the density of tornados per cluster, which means they more than doubled over time. Tornado density per cluster for days with at least 32 twisters changed by 200 percent--a threefold increase.

“These results are similar to increases in heavy precipitation days during the 20th century over the United States,” the authors note.

As with any active arena of scientific research, some things remain uncertain. Elsner and his team write that events recorded as tornados in the past might not rise past “strong winds” today, thanks to our improved abilities at determining wind speed from analyzing the damage left behind. This factor could account for some of the decline in single-tornado days over the years. However, they firmly conclude that the number of days every year with multiple tornados is on the rise, and that global warming must be considered as a cause.

The research was published in the August 6 issue of the journal Climate Dynamics.

Click here for more Popular Science coverage of tornado weather and science.

Geographic distribution of Spanish dialects, based on the different words Spanish-speakers use for terms like "computer" and "car."

Courtesy the researchers

Dialects say much more than where a person is from. They are also rife with information that can reveal a whole history behind a person's culture. A new study suggests your own cultural history might be talking through your tweets and other social media posts.

Linguistics researchers from France and Spain collected all tweets written in Spanish over the last two years – around 50 million in total. Each tweet's dialect was determined through word variations that are specific to certain regional dialects. For example, the word car in Spanish can be auto, automóvil, carro, coche, concho, or movi; each is more common in certain dialects than others.

Reserachers geographically mapped the dialect distribution of the tweets, and found a surprise. Spanish dialects can be organized in two major groups the authors call “superdialects”. The first is predominant to major Spanish and American cities across the world, which the authors attribute to language homogenization caused by increased globalization. The Internet has greatly sped up this phenomenon.

But it's the other superdialect, almost exclusive to rural communities, that has bigger implications. The authors say it reflects the settlement patterns of Spanish immigrants hundreds of years ago, indicating how settlers to the New World moved and established colonies. In this sense, tools like Twitter and Facebook -- new to the 21st century -- might help illustrate patterns in cultural history that could very well be thousands of years old.  

This certainly isn’t the first time researchers have crowdsourced data through social media. Twitter has a knack for tracking public health trends, and can even predict the spread of illnesses. And of course the way social media shapes our thoughts and emotions is a field of study itself (even over the objections of many).

[MIT Technology Review]

A hill kangaroo, or common wallaroo (Macropus robustus).

Michael Barritt & Karen May via Wikimedia Commons CC2.0

For thousands of years, Australian Aborigines have lit fires to help them hunt for animals like sand monitor lizards; burning the grassland helps expose the reptiles' holes. It doesn't exactly sound like a "sustainable" practice, but research has shown that these burns have a number of beneficial effects on the environment. 

Specifically, the fires make the landscapes more "patchy" (compared to un-torched terrain), creating a more diverse mix of habitats. This means different types of plants and animals can flourish, offering a wider variety of food sources for beasts and humans alike. Believe it or not, recent research has shown that this burning counteracts the hunting of lizards and actually increases the animals' populations, compared to areas without any Aboriginal burning. "Paradoxically, [sand monitor lizard] populations are higher where Aboriginal hunting is most intense," a December 2013 study found.

A new study just published in Human Ecology found that burning also increases populations of hill kangaroos (also known as common wallaroos, Macropus robustus) and offsets Aboriginal hunting of that animal, as well. 

"Where Aboriginal fires are more frequent, hill kangaroo population are significantly higher, even in the face of predation," said Brian Codding, a study author and researcher at the University of Utah. "The benefits kangaroo receive from burning outweigh the impacts of hunting at intermediate levels of interaction."

If only all such hunting could be so beneficial. Codding said that there is a larger pattern here: "Ecosystems may be adapted to human disturbance where people and the environment have a long history of interaction." In other words, land-use practices that have evolved over centuries and millennia tend to have positive environmental effects, especially in places occupied by people "who did not rely on agriculture, such as in Australia, Western North America, and parts of Africa," Codding added. "In these regions, environments may have co-evolved with hunter-gatherer land-use practices."

So long-lasting traditions of land use tend to have positive environmental impacts, the research suggests, but changes in these proven practices tend to cause problems.

"There are a number of examples of consistent short-term negative interactions that typically follow from changes like the addition of new technologies that make hunting more efficient, or with the introduction of markets that make animal products profitable for export," Codding said. "For example, consider the impact of Europeans utilizing trains and rifles to extirpate buffalo from the American West. Pangolin [a type of scaly, adorable mammals] were recently in the news because of their continued exploitation for profit driven by market demands." 

Researchers think that the reduction of fires by Aborigines (after the country was colonized by Europeans) may be a main reason for the high rate of extinction among Australian small mammals. Codding said that land managers "should consider facilitating traditional subsistence practices" -- like small-scale fires -- "or should enact protocols that have similar effects. The result may be a healthier ecosystem overall."

The Martu Aboriginal people of Western Australia, which this study analyzed, see themselves as part of the environment, with spiritual components known as the Dreamtime. These people stress the importance of obeying rules about how to behave and interact with their environment, which they believe has been passed down from their ancestors; thus they probably wouldn't be surprised that traditional hunting and burning activities would help populations of these animals and have positive environmental impacts, Codding noted. 

A Flock Of Red Knots

These birds migratory paths delayed drone testing off the New Jersey shore.

Dick Daniels, via Wikimedia Commons

Here's a roundup of the week's top drone news: the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

Birds Delay Drones

In December, the FAA selected New Jersey as one of six drone test sites. Those tests will have to wait for the original unmanned flyers to pass first, though: Piping Plovers and Red Knots are both threatened bird species, and their migratory paths, like that of many creatures, take them through the Jersey Shore. The tests were delayed out of concern from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the drones would collide with the birds in mid-air. The New Jersey Institute of Technology will likely attempt the tests again in the fall.

All Flying Blades, No Human Runners

"City of Drones" is a collaborative art project/game-like immersive experience soundtracked by legendary experimental musician John Cale. Users navigate the urban canyons between skyscrapers. It's a beautiful, austere world, and an interesting tool for imagining the flow of objects in a future city. From our coverage:

Busy Skyway, City Of Drones Screenshot

Liam Young, City of Drones

New Drone In Old War

Israel is both a major maker and user of military drones. During "Operation Protective Edge," the Israel Defense Forces latest counter-rocket war in the Gaza strip, an observer captured an IDF drone overhead, equipped with something new. As Popular Science noted earlier this week:

Down In Smokestacks

The 680 foot tall smokestacks at the Poolbeg power plant dominate the Dublin skyline. Inactive since 2010, an enterprising drone pilot flew over the smokestacks, capturing the towers and staring into their smoke-stained emptiness. Watch the exploration below:

K-Maximum Damage

The K-Max helicopter is an optionally manned cargo carrier used by Marines in Afghanistan. It can be flown remotely, making it a "sometimes" drone. One crashed last summer when it encountered a contrary wind while carrying 2,000 pounds of cargo. Recent investigations into the crash highlight one of the major challenges for unmanned aircraft: Onboard pilots can often comprehened the danger of a situation immediately, but that cockpit understanding doesn't always translate to the remote control consoles used by distant pilots. 

Yellow Stone, Sunken Drone

The National Park Service banned drones in June, but that hasn't stopped tourists from putting robots in places they shouldn't be. On Wednesday, one crashed into Yellowstone's Grand Prismatic Spring. Now park officials need to figure out how to find and extract the drone from the 121-foot-deep, 160-degree-Fahrenheit water.

Grand Prismatic Spring As Seen From Above

Jim Peaco, National Park Service, via Wikimedia Commons

Law Of The Low Sky

Los Angeles is considering limiting hobbyist drone use after a private citizen flew a drone over the parking lot of LAPD's Hollywood division and recorded the police officers' activity. The rules regarding private drone use, especially for small, model-airplane-sized drones flown within eyesight of the pilot, are somewhat vague, and in the absence of clear direction from the FAA, LAPD wants to set boundaries on their own. In this fight they may have an unlikely ally. International superstar Kanye West is worried that a paparazzi drone might fall into the pool where is one-year-old daughter North is swimming and electrocute her. If a paparazzi drone does electrocute North West, expect things to go south fast.

Did I miss any drone news? Email me at kelsey.d.atherton@gmail.com.

Ebola Virus Particles

Thomas W. Geisbert via Wikimedia Commons

In the wee hours of the morning, the World Health Organization officially declared that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern." Sounds pretty scary, right? So does that mean Americans should be hiding under their beds so the Ebola virus doesn’t get us? The short answer is: Definitely not.

The announcement basically reinforces what public health officials knew all along: That the outbreak is serious; that there’s a danger that it’ll spread to neighboring African countries; and that it’s going to take a concerted international effort to stop the disease in its tracks.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is bad—the worst the world has ever seen—with 1,779 cases of infection so far, including 961 deaths. Those cases have occurred in four countries: Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Though there’s a threat that it could spread into neighboring countries, the disease poses little threat of becoming a global epidemic. Here's why Americans shouldn't be afraid:

• Ebola spreads through physical contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids. It doesn’t have the pandemic potential of airborne diseases like the flu, where one person’s sneeze can infect a boatload of people.  As long as you don’t touch the blood, sweat or saliva of someone who has Ebola, you’re going to be fine.
• Airports are on the lookout for sick people, to stop Ebola patients from traveling to and entering other countries.
• Even if Ebola did sneak into America, it wouldn’t lead to a major outbreak, because doctors and epidemiologists have the resources to stop it. Since it spreads through physical contact, doctors can put infected patients in isolation wards, and as long as the doctors wear gloves, protective suits and surgical masks, no one else gets infected.
• In Africa, fears about Western medicine are causing people to turn to witch doctors for a cure. This means that instead of reporting to medical centers, infected people are crossing borders and spreading the disease.  Since Americans are accustomed to relying on Western medicine, that seems unlikely to happen if Ebola were to cross overseas.

Although there is little risk of Ebola spreading on a global scale, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world shouldn’t help. The U.S.’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that it has more than 30 experts on the ground in Africa, and 50 more on the way, to help track down Ebola cases and improve response.

For more information on Ebola, visit the CDC's Question and Answer page about the virus.

A tobacco field

Wikimedia Commons

Ebola is one of the world’s most lethal diseases, causing vomiting, kidney and liver failure, and hemorrhagic bleeding. The fatality rate is up to 90 percent, and there’s currently no cure. Infection is spread by direct contact with animals or people who have the disease, which is why proper quarantine methods are so important. Unfortunately, as the burial scene in Monrovia last weekend demonstrates, health officials have struggled to contain the disease.

Over the last several weeks, an outbreak that started in Guinea in March has spread to Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. More than 1,700 people have been infected, and the crisis ballooned last week, killing 170 people in just nine days. The virus is "moving faster than our efforts to control it," said Dr. Marget Chan, the director of the World Health Organization. If the situation continues to get worse, she said, the consequences could be "catastrophic."

Deaths in the medical community have heightened the growing fear of the disease. Dr. Kent Brantly, an American physician who was working at Liberia’s Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center, is one of the most recent doctors to contract the disease. Heavily dressed in a gown, an apron, three pairs of gloves, a hood covering his strawberry-blonde hair, and green plastic protective eyewear, Brantly looked vaguely alien as he bent over patients’ beds. But all that gear didn’t keep him safe.

Shortly after Brantly tested positive, an American nurse, Nancy Writebol, was also diagnosed. Writebol was in charge of the wash-down station in the ELWA Hospital’s 20-bed unit for Ebola patients. In the wash station, workers are sprayed with a chlorine solution, which is meant to decontaminate people entering and leaving the isolation ward. Neither Brently nor Writebol are sure just where they were exposed.

Ebola virus particles (blue) budding from a chronically infected VERO E6 cell (yellow-green).

Flicker CC by 2.0

Writebol was also given an experimental procedure, a dose of an untested serum. Initially there was only enough of the drug for one patient, and Brantly insisted it go to Writebol, who was in worse condition, but he’s since been treated with the drug also. Raising the question of who has access to top-quality care, the Americans are the only two patients who have been given the medicine, which had previously only been tested in lab animals.

The drug, ZMapp, is actually the collaboration between an American company, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, and a Canadian company funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, who were working on similar projects when the outbreak hit. Mapp employs just nine people and has been financed only by the U.S. government, but they’re trying to figure out how to scale up quickly. Larry Zeitlin, Mapp’s president, told the New York Times,“We are discussing with the FDA the right path to make the drug available as quickly as possible.”

ZMapp itself is made up of proteins called monoclonal antibodies, which bind to the Ebola virus rendering it harmless. The drug is made by infecting mice with a protein from the Ebola virus, and then modifying the mice’s antibodies to more closely resemble human ones.

The results then need to be produced in large volumes, so scientists have turned to an interesting ally: plants.  A gene from the modified antibodies is introduced to the leaves of tobacco plants, via a system developed by Icon Genetics. The leaves then produce the intended monoclonal “plantibody” proteins. It only takes about a week before the leaves can be harvested and the protein extracted and purified. Plus, it’s inexpensive compared to the traditional method of growing these genetically modified mouse cells in labs.

Currently, these modified antibodies are being grown in Kentucky tobacco plants by the tobacco company Reynold American. (Other industry giants, like Philip Morris, are also investing in medical plant-based technology.) “Pharming,” as the process is known, is particularly useful, because it’s easier to produce proteins in higher volumes. “It is grown in a greenhouse, and you can manufacture kilograms of the materials,” Erica Ollmann Saphire, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute toldReuters.

A doctor with Samaritan's Purse working with Ebola patients.

Courtesy of Samaritan’s Purse

This frenzy highlights a significant problem with the way pharmaceutical research and development currently works: Because Ebola was so rare, there wasn’t a financial incentive for big companies to work on finding a cure before this outbreak occurred. Many more may perish before the serum comes online.

In the meantime at least, both Brantley and Writebol’s conditions are improving. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent and an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory’s School of Medicine, said he thought the outbreak would continue to spread, adding, “We are going to see Ebola around the world.” But he thinks in the U.S. and other developed countries, it should be containable, an opinion the CDC echoes.

As Liberia totters toward renewed violence and Nigeria declares a state of emergency, the question is what will happen in the rest of the world—emphasizing how different access to medical care can be.

Carp with a cigarette butt

Wouter Hagens, via Wikimedia Commons

The electrical power of the future just might be waiting in ashtrays across the world. Researchers in South Korea discovered that, with a one-step conversion process, cigarette filters turn into great supercapacitors. This is great news for anyone who wants new electronics that smell like Bourbon Street at 3 A.M.

Supercapacitors are an electrical storage alternative to batteries. In batteries, energy is stored in chemical reactants, while in supercapacitors, it's stored as an electrical field between materials. Batteries are slow to charge and heavy, but they're also compact and store great amounts of energy, which means they've long held an advantage in consumer products. But supercapacitors work where space constraints matter less: Braking in a car generates a lot of electricity, and in some cars supercapacitors capture that energy and then release it to get the car going again. Unlike batteries, supercapacitors can release bursts of power more quickly, making them useful in electronics like defibrillators. Think of it like static electricity from wearing wool socks on carpet - the charge builds up quickly and is then released all at once in a spark.

Well it turns out that the collections of fibers in cigarette filters have a lot to offer a supercapacitor. Here's how the scientists described the process:

In essence, the scientists burned the filters in a nitrogen-rich environment, and this made the filter fibers grow pores, further increasing their surface area. According to their results, published in the journal Nanotechnology, these burnt-in-nitrogen fibers stored more energy than materials previously used in supercapacitors. With further research, this could be great news for both electrical storage and ashtrays everywhere.

RoboShipbuilder

Daewoo, via New Scientist

209: area, in square miles, that have been burned by wildfires in California since last week. The fires destroyed at least eight homes and disrupted SETI's search for extraterrestial life.

58: percent of California already said to be in "exceptional drought", which will exacerbate the risk of wildfires.

Last Transmission

The Allen Telescope Array’s webcam sent this transmission on August 2 at 7:43 p.m., just before the Internet went out.

34,000: speed, in miles per hour, at which both the Rosetta spacecraft and the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are circling the Sun, somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The View From Rosetta

European Space Agency/BBC News

200,000: estimated number of casualties caused by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 70 years ago. After the bombings, Popular Science published a statement that discussed the long-term implications of the "Annihilation Bomb."

Bomb Effects

From the September 1945 issue of Popular Science.

Popular Science

160 degrees Fahrenheit: the temperature of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. A camera-equipped drone crashed into the 121-foot-deep water this week. 

Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park

James St. John, via Wikimedia Commons

505: the average number of tornados that occur every year. New research indicates that climate change may be making twisters less frequent but more deadly.

896: the highest recorded number of tornadoes in a single season, from 2011.

199: the lowest recorded number of tornadoes in a single season, from 1999.

Twister

OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL)

9: approximate number of high-tech applications for folded paper that will blow your origami swan comletely out of the water.

Unfold thyself and prosper

These three images show the robot assembling itself, beginning in a flat state.

Seth Kroll, Wyss Institute

Wolf eel

Richard Salas

Richard Salas began studying photography in college the same summer Jaws was released. The ocean was a part of the cultural conversation, but the general feeling was of fear, not awe. Though Jaws may not look so fearsome now, alongside gruesome footage shown during Shark Week, that sentiment hasn't totally disappeared. In his third underwater photography book, Luminous Sea, Salas continues his quest to educate the public about what really happens below the surface. 

"When I got down underwater," he tells Popular Science, "I was blown away by a whole other world I had never really seen firsthand." He put off school for about nine months, bought dive gear, and started learning more about underwater photography. After graduating, though, Salas stopped diving. His focus shifted to studio work, assisting photographers in shooting products and still lifes, until about 10 years ago, when he was reunited with shooting marine life. 

"I want people to see these animals as more than just something in their aquarium swimming back and forth," Salas says. "They have personalities, just like a dog or cat. People don't think about that. The media plays up the sensationalism of sharks."

Sea of Light became his first book in the series, which includes images taken off the coast of the Channel Islands of California. The second book, Blue Visions, features images from the U.S.-Mexican border down to the equator. And finally, Luminous Sea, the third book, will cover Washington state through Alaska. To produce the first book, he emptied his savings account. This time, he's turned to crowdfunding on Indiegogo to release the final book in the series. The campaign lasts until August 24.

Preview some of the characters you'll find in Luminous Sea in the gallery. 

A violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas and dust is seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby supernova remnant.

Flickr CC by 2.0

For a bit of fun last Friday, we asked our Facebook and Twitter followers to show off their writing chops by composing science haikus. We didn't realize so many Popular Science readers are poets! Some of our favorite haikus are highlighted below, and one or two may even show up on the letters page of our October issue. 

.@PopSci - opposites attract. / magnetism and romance / easily summed up. - #Sciku

— Alan M (@nicehat) August 8, 2014

A supernova

Emits beauty in darkness

Explosions of light

--Stephanie Bliaya, via Facebook

I got life advice

From a lonely physicist

It's all relative.

--Leighton Meyers, via Facebook

This strange blue plant

a collective of creatures

evolving in sync

--Julie Barrera, via Facebook

@PopSci Evolution real / Me know 'cause six thousand years / Just not enough time

— Kevin K. (@KMKelleher) August 8, 2014

Winter, afraid of

Global warming

Ran to Antarctica

--Hitesh Sheth, via Facebook

Dividing atoms

A promise for the future

Many people died.

--Gabriel Cattan, via Facebook

Contract or expand?

Not the universe's size

But the human mind

--Cassandra Teas, via Facebook

@PopSci And Schrodinger spoke “So there’s a cat in this box. Alive? Well, maybe…”

— ThatPhysicsGirl (@ThatPhysicsGirl) August 8, 2014

This assay won’t work.

But it worked fine yesterday.

Another late night.

--Aleksey Morozov, via Facebook

More than just atoms

we all are buzzing systems

of star dust and breath

--Julie Barrera, via Facebook

.@PopSci - Haiku lines are like / atomic quanta. Rules to / move between are strict - #Sciku

— Alan M (@nicehat) August 8, 2014

Plastic bottles

jumpthemap / YouTube

You may have heard by now that bisphenol A, a chemical commonly used to make hard plastic and which is found in many water bottles, can have harmful health effects; some evidence suggests BPA can impair brain and reproductive development at certain levels. In 2012, the FDA stopped allowing it to be used in baby bottles and sippy cups, because manufacturers had stopped using it to make these products. Since then, evidence increasingly suggests that the chemical that manufacturers have replaced it with, bisphenol S, may be just as bad.

Many manufacturers made the switch to BPS because researchers thought that less of the material would leak out from the plastic. But, as Scientific American reports:

Other studies on BPS show that it can cause hyperactivity and abnormal neuron growth in fish, and lead to heart arrhythmias in rats. One 2012 study found that BPS mimics estrogen as effectively as BPA, which is concerning; chemicals that disrupt the activity of this sex hormone can cause altered behavioral and sexual development in animals. 

Obviously you're not going to immediately drop dead if you drink water from a plastic bottle. But studies suggest that using plastic in bottles may be a cause for concern and needs to be studied further. 

Correction (8/12/2014, 2:16pm ET): The original story misstated the reason why the FDA quit allowing BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups; it should have been stated that the reason for the move was because manufacturers quit putting BPA in these products, and not due to health concerns. It has been corrected, and we regret the error.

My Particle Clicker Lab

Free beer = more science? Yes please.

Particle Clicker, CERN

The only thing holding back scientific research at my virtual lab was not enough free beer. Thanks to a new game by a group of scientists at CERN, scientific discovery is reduced down to its most basic element: Doing the same repetitive action over and over and documenting any change. Particle Clicker, created at a CERN 48-hour hackathon, dresses up a popular time sink in researcher's clothing.

At the game's onset, you start with an abstracted image of the Large Hadron Collider. Then, each time you click on the particle accelerator, you generate data. With enough data, you can select projects that enhance your reputation. As data and reputation increase, so does funding, and with funding, you can hire workers like Postdocs or PhD students. You can also buy upgrades for those workers, like beer and coffee (true necessities for research).

A few hundred clicks of the mouse later, and you're laboratory is operating like a well-oiled machine.

If any of this feels familiar, it's because the game is an adaptation of another, less sciency time suck: Cookie Clicker. In Cookie Clicker, the "work" is done largely by grandmas and machines, not underpaid academics, and the terms are more fantastical. Still, both games revel in abstraction: Cookie Clicker eventually lets players buy a hive mind upgrade for their baking grandmothers, and in Particle Clicker, and endless supply of free beer and strong coffee turns into science. I don't know yet if original 4Loko is available in the game, but if it is, I expect my researchers to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything shortly after ingesting it.

Despite the humorous approach, Particle Clicker bakes laboratory science into the game. Data is spent on research projects, and these projects range from symmetry principle violations (a problem of matter versus antimatter) to research on the Top Quark, which is the heaviest of all quarks. This is intentional. Igor Babuschkin, the student who proposed the game, said the games' creators "thought it would be good to have an addictive game that sneaks in some physics content.” However, I learned more about the game's research projects by Googling them, rather than from the game itself.

Still, for all the activity possible, both clicker games reward a player who puts in place a powerful, automated machine, and then mostly lets it run itself. Players check in to purchase new upgrades, but actively tending to the game as the numbers climb is pretty boring. The end result is a game that is more fun the less it's played. Occasionally, great scientific progress is made by simply letting things be, like Alexander Fleming's fortuitous grossness letting him discover a mold that killed bacteria, and Particle Clicker encourages that kind of thinking. In fact, the only thing a diligent player can discover that a passive player can't is the answer to where their free time went.