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Why We Are Not Ready For Mars
After weeks of witnessing disturbing events that exemplify how angry, vindictive and dangerous humanity can be when it turns on itself, Mars -- as an escapist adventure situated enticingly in our near futures -- looks great in comparison.

Human exploration and eventual habitation of Mars is often described as the ultimate do-over, the proverbial slate wiped clean, a place where we can make a fresh start. When we get there, we will experience the unblemished purism of a new world and will have unprecedented opportunities to pursue science, increase our knowledge of the universe, extend our species beyond our native planet, perhaps even to preserve the human race if something untoward happens to our home planet Earth.

Yes, we may die trying (Musk seems pretty certain of this). It may take the next few decades to do it successfully (NASA's road to Mars is a long meandering one). We may adopt altruistic values and a commitment to off-planet diversity and get near-laughed off the playing field for spending too much time selecting the humans and not enough raising the money or acquiring the tech (Mars One).

The drive to get humans to Mars is real. Plans are afoot. Odds of success are being calculated. Money is being spent. Gobs of it. The primary emphasis is on the hardware needed to get there: sturdy conveyances, unfailing life support systems, radiation shielding and robust boosters to get the whole thing off the ground. We calculate our readiness factor on advancements in technology, while paying much less attention to the minds and spirits of the fragile humans who will be on board.

After a successful journey, safe landing, and initial check that pre-constructed habs and life support are operational, the forced unity and self-discipline required by a pressure-packed mission will begin to dissipate. Eventually, as more humans arrive, more infrastructure is put in place, and day-to-day survival becomes less stressful, some sort of social fabric will emerge. Will humans on Mars mirror and eventually become as divided and destructive as their Earthly counterparts?

"2016-07-21-1469121168-916716-MarsReady.jpg"

Will Mars become another Earth? (photo collage by author)

Susan Ip Jewell is an L.A.-based physician whose organization "Mars Without Borders" seeks to prepare humans for off-world exploration, primarily via "analog experiences" in Mars-like environments that are not so difficult to find on Earth. She's done numerous stints at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah and is preparing for an even longer stay at the Flashline Arctic Research Station.

"2016-07-21-1469121345-4167080-SusanJewell.jpg"

Susan Ip Jewell, M.D. with robot companion

Jewell insists we look at future space exploration -- and eventual human habitation of Mars -- as an opportunity to address the issues that divide humans on Earth. "We are so fractured, we are so disconnected from each other as a human race right now... How do you expect us to succeed on another planet?"

In an interview for the documentary Madame Mars: Women and the Quest for Worlds Beyond, Jewell describes the borders humans have constructed on Earth: geographical, political, cultural, belief-driven, racial and gender divides. "Earth normal" is distrusting those who are different from us. Our social values are built on divisiveness, not unity.

Clearly this won't work on Mars. Jewell argues that a successful human mission to Mars and other deep space destinations will depend on a "space without borders."

"If we have borders when we go out beyond space," Jewell said, "we would just replicate the disastrous systems that we have here on Earth."

Those who seek opportunities in distant lands are often trying to escape the difficulties or challenges disrupting their present-day lives, in favor of finding a better life elsewhere. If Mars represents a better life -- even one with intense radiation, blood-boiling atmospheric pressure, frigid temperatures and global sandstorms -- we need to ask ourselves, will those who settle on Mars still be better off than if they'd stayed on Earth?

Most debates to date over governance on Mars suggests the settlers will build their own society from within, develop and institute their own rules of behavior, and set up a way to settle the inevitable disputes. As much as all of humanity will be pulling for these first off-Earth settlers to succeed, many retain a nagging doubt over whether this will be possible. Humans may not be ready for Mars.

Before we climb on the expertly constructed spaceships, before we breathe the artificially generated air or reconstitute the dried packets of astronaut food, we need to repair the mental constructs that create Earth-based boundaries that have led to hatred of others, warfare, terrorism, subjugation of entire races or genders.

Before we go to Mars, certainly before we soil another planet, let's reframe the human associations we live with daily, with an eye toward how we will represent our species when we travel to other worlds. Let's do anything we can on Earth to boost our own confidence that humans will succeed when they put their off-Earth lives together and build communities on a whole new planet.

The early Mars settlers will be us, but they do not need to be like us.

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1469495619000

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The Remarkable Photograph of the First Solvay Conference
The first of the celebrated Solvay Conferences was an invitation-only conference, held at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels, Belgium, in the fall of 1911.

These conferences were named after Ernest Solvay, a successful Belgian industrialist and philanthropist, who founded an international school for physics and chemistry (as well as other important institutions).

While the most frequently described is the fifth conference (on Electrons and Photons), that took place in 1927, the photograph (Figure 1) of the participants in the first conference, on Radiation and the Quanta, is remarkable in its own right. Here are a few notable facts (clearly, some more important than others):

First, even though Ernest Solvay himself was not present when the photo was taken, his head (third from the left among the seated) was later pasted onto the photograph!

Second, of the 23 participants (other than Solvay), no fewer than nine won the Nobel Prize (one of them, Marie Curie, won it twice). Most of the others won other prestigious prizes, such as the Matteucci Medal, the RAS Gold Medal, the Smith's Prize, and more. The number of Nobel Laureates would have been even higher could four other original invitees (J. D. van der Waals, Lord Rayleigh, Joseph Larmor, Arthur Scuster) have attended. The first two of those won the Nobel Prize.

Third, there was only one woman in the group, Marie Skłodowska Curie. She was not only the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, but also the only woman to win it twice, the only person to win it in two different fields (physics and chemistry), and the first woman to be entombed in the Pantheon in Paris because of her own personal accomplishments.

Fourth, Albert Einstein was the second youngest participant in the conference. The youngest was British physicist Frederick Lindemann, who went on to become scientific adviser to Winston Churchill.

Finally, to end on an amusing note, you'll notice that with the exception of the British astrophysicist James Jeans, all the other men in the photograph wear mustaches!

Figure 1. Photograph of the participants in the First Solvay Conference.
Seated (L-R): W. Nernst, M. Brillouin, E. Solvay, H. Lorentz, E. Warburg, J. Perrin, W. Wien, M. Skłodowska-Curie, and H. Poincaré. Standing (L-R): R. Goldschmidt, M. Planck, H. Rubens, A. Sommerfeld, F. Lindemann, M. de Broglie, M. Knudsen, F. Hasenöhrl, G. Hostelet, E. Herzen, J. H. Jeans, E. Rutherford, H. Kamerlingh Onnes, A. Einstein and P. Langevin. Photograph is in the Public Domain.

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1469477894000

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Tracking Big Cats in India
When the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another Heaven and another Earth must pass before such a one can be again.--William Beebe

Celebrate International Tiger Day--July 29, 2016
In awe, we stopped dead in our tracks to gaze at the enormous impression in the wet sand. Our guide whispered, "Tiger - BIG tiger!" I could hear my heart pound. No other sounds were heard in the forest, except the wind whispering in the Cullenia tree canopy overhead. The track was significantly larger than my handprint, and evidently this large cat had walked ahead of us only 10 minutes earlier. It seemed almost too close for comfort, yet that was our mission--fostering forest conservation in India, which is directly linked to saving tigers. In India, tigers and forests are synonymous. The Kalaka Mandanthurai Tiger Reserve (called KMTR by locals), located in the Western Ghats, is a mountainous biodiversity hotspot, and one of nearly 50 official tiger reserves in India. These charismatic top predators of the forest numbered an estimated 1,411 individuals during a census in 2008 (National Tiger Conservation Authority), but this population estimate was anything but precise, ranging from 1,165 to 1,657 individuals.

Nearby we found claw marks on a tree trunk, clues that this tiger was not only large but also that we were trespassing in his territory. We practically tiptoed home, fearful yet anxiously hoping to glimpse this forest giant. In the KMTR, tigers are at the top of the food chain, and humans humbly defer to this "king of the jungle". But recently, eight tigers disappeared from the Ranthambore National Park in western India. Despite their endangered status, tigers are still poached for their skins, or for their bones, which constitute ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines.

Although technology can transmit information around the globe in seconds and photograph the farthest galaxies, many mysteries remain close to home. Scientists have not figured out the secrets of pollination of the Cullenia tree, an essential canopy species for tiger habitat, nor do we understand the complex ecosystem of the last remaining tiger reserve. A dwindling number of tigers and langur monkeys are dependent on humans learning about and protecting their habitat. Their survival not only depends on the continued fruiting of their keystone tree, but also our knowledge about how their forests work.

Exact estimates of tiger populations remain controversial. So why is it tough to count a few hundred tigers in a world that loves them so much? For one thing, tigers are cryptic and hide easily from humans. Second, scientists argue about accurate ways to estimate tiger populations. Camera traps, observations, footprints, nail marks on trees, and even feces are widely used to census mammals, but each is subject to error. Even worse, tigers may be double-counted by non-experts. And third, the accuracy of tiger surveys is fraught with politics. India's tourism industry prefers to over-estimate, because visitors won't pay big money to visit a tiger reserve without tigers. And biologists will only count exactly what they see, smell, or measure; so their counts likely underestimate the numbers from tourism-based sources. Tiger stories and legends persist, many without scientific basis. .

A recent headline in the Bangalore Mirror newspaper read, "Tiger spotted in Sahyadri reserve." One tiger sighting now ranks national headlines. In this case, biologists did not see a tiger but genetically analyzed tiger scat on a trail in the reserve. Only follow-up data with camera traps will confirm this big cat--its age, health, and whether there is more than one remaining in this region.

Will Princeton University be satisfied with an extinct mascot? Will circuses deploy videos of tigers as a substitute for live performances in the big top? And will National Geographic use animations in future Asian wildlife films? The world will never be the same if humans cause tigers to become extinct. But the next few years are critical ones for saving these noble creatures. In 2011, just five years ago, the United Nations declared the International Year of the Forests. For the sake of tigers and other forest denizens, make forest conservation a priority of your daily life.

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1469477891000

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How Obesity Rates Around The World Have Ballooned
Over the last 40 years, obesity rates around the world have ballooned. The average adult today is three times as likely to be obese as the average adult in 1975.

This map shows how it happened, country-by-country.

Each country's color corresponds to its adult obesity rate in the year shown.

Watch how the world became obese https://t.co/aC8jFBtiCv this map shows each country's obesity rate, 1975 to 2014https://t.co/iROotlGS8X
— Max Galka (@galka_max) July 18, 2016

The data for this map comes from an extensive study published earlier this year in The Lancet.

The researchers compiled data from 1,698 obesity-related studies, covering 19.2 million people in 186 countries. They then used the information to estimate the distribution of body mass index (BMI) for every country in the world, for every year from 1975 to 2014.

Between 1975 and 2014, the study estimates that worldwide age-standardized obesity rates (defined as a BMI of 30 or greater) increased from 3.2% to 10.8% for men, and from 6.4% to 14.9% for women.

Put another way, there were 105 million obese adults worldwide in 1975. As of 2014, that number has risen to 641 million, as shown in the chart below (during the same period the world population increased from 4 billion to 7.2 billion).

The rise of obesity (credit: Trends in adult body-mass index in 200 countries from 1975 to 2014)

The researcher also estimate that 2.3% of the world's men and 5% of the world's women are severely obese. In 1975, the rate of severe obesity for both genders was just a fraction of 1%.

The rise of severe obesity (credit: Trends in adult body-mass index in 200 countries from 1975 to 2014)

Obesity by country and gender

The chart below shows the age standardized obesity rates in 2014, broken down by country and gender. It includes all countries with a population of 10 million or greater.

It's interesting to notice how much difference there can be between male and female obesity depending on the country.

In the United States, obesity rates for men and women are roughly equal, 34% and 35% respectively. In contrast, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa have higher rates of female obesity than the U.S. But their obesity rates for males are 13% to 19% lower than the U.S.

"2016-07-19-1468963808-8233730-obesitygendercountrychart.png"

The study also makes a prediction of what global obesity may look like in the future.

If the post-2000 trends continue, by 2025, it projects a worldwide obesity rate of 18% for men and 21% for women. Of those, it estimates 6% of men and 9% of women will be severely obese.

For a related map showing the rise of obesity in the U.S. state-by-state, see: Crazy American Obesity in 4 Graphics

Credit:

Obesity-related data comes from Trends in adult body-mass index in 200 countries from 1975 to 2014, downloadable in tabular format from ncdrisc.org. Population estimates and gender ratios come from World Bank Open Data.
The figures visualized in the map are the average of the male and female obesity rates, weighted by each country's gender ratio.

This post originally appeared on Metrocosm

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Ectoplasm -- Ghostbuster To Science At The Fringe

"2016-07-21-1469116804-2952281-ghostbusterLogo.jpg"

"He slimed me!" Peter Venkman spits out in disgust, writhing in sticky ectoplasm in a memorable scene from the 1984 movie Ghostbusters.

Ectoplasm, the mysterious stuff of the supernatural world has long intrigued some of the world's greatest scientific minds. The goo is claimed to permit the spirit world to interact physically with the world of the living. But it is not always easy to separate fact from fiction in science that probes the fringe of what is known.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the paragon of analytical reasoning, was a firm believer in ectoplasm, having touched the clammy stuff in a séance and finding it hideously revolting. Other great minds have grappled with what the editors of Scientific American in 1922 called "this new science -- if it really is a science" of ectoplasm and psychic phenomena. H.G. Wells and Julian Huxley investigated ectoplasm and the mystical wonders it enables -- communicating with the dead, spirits levitating objects and leaving imprints on the physical world. H. G. Wells is the author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and other great works of literature. Huxley was a celebrated evolutionary biologist and science writer.

In their comprehensive book on biology, The Science of Life, published in 1931, H. G. Wells and Julian Huxley devote an entire section to ectoplasm, describing it quite vividly without the advantage of special effects available in Ghostbusters:

"2016-07-21-1469116185-3566770-ectoplasmfigure.jpg"

"Usually but not necessarily, the exudation occurs by mouth and nose; it may sometimes come out of the head and neck, the ears, or from other orifices of the medium. It has a quantitative abundance like the foam of bottled beer when the beer is "up". . . This ooze presently takes on forms and, it is asserted, organic structure also. . . Hands, feet, grotesque bestial forms and at last these crumpled paper-bag faces emerge from the accumulating stuff" (p. 1426).

Who ya gonna call?

Well, if you are scientifically minded you will turn to an authoritative source, such as the widely respected journal Nature. Quoting from Dr. R. J. Tillyard's 1928 paper in Nature, "Scientific proof of survival [of the spirit beyond death] has at last been obtained." In his Nature paper Tillyard describes one medium, Mrs. Crandon, who was able to communicate with her dead brother, Walter Stinson via ectoplasm. Tillyard presents the experimental data he obtained during these séances in his Nature paper and concludes definitively: "My own conclusion is that Walter Stinson, who died in 1912, has fully proved in a scientific manner his claim that his personality has survived his physical death."

Consider, for example, data in Figure 1 of that paper:

"2016-07-21-1469116088-9043041-NatureFigSeance.jpg"

There are five more figures with equally compelling data in this Nature paper.

Wells and Huxley caution that a scientist must never use the word "impossible." "Highly improbable," is the appropriate term to use, they insist. [Best said with a British accent.] "We do not hesitate to find Walter [Stinson] "highly improbable," they conclude.

Interestingly, six years earlier, in 1922, Scientific American had accepted a submission by James Black, denouncing ectoplasm as fakery. Black cited several vivid examples of ectoplasmic exudation and associated supernatural phenomena during séances, but he exposed them all as trickery. Chemical analysis revealed that ectoplasm consisted of "50% water, some sulfur and albumin, and gives the chemical formula of something resembling C120 H1134 N218 S5 O249." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, however, was unimpressed with such experimental evidence. He complained that scientists were taking a "scandalously skeptical" attitude toward ectoplasm, and that psychic research may be beyond the reach of verification by the scientific method.

The Scientific American editors quickly got cold feet. Black's article had been set up in type for printing when the editors received word of new scientific research from Dr. Richet, concluding that ectoplasm could not be the result of simple fraud. "To be frank," the editors wrote in their introduction to the September 1922 edition, "we spent several uneasy days, feeling that we might be on the wrong side of the fence."

Just as the issue was about to be mailed to subscribers, a letter reporting the results of another scientific investigation into ectoplasm conducted at the Sorbonne University in Paris reached Scientific American. The report concluded, "The experts declare that they see nothing except a substance that had been produced after prolonged efforts that could only be physiologically described as efforts to vomit and that the substance had no mobility of its own and was swallowed again almost immediately."

Fringe Science

The intrigue of psychic phenomena is strong. For hundreds of years, for example, there have been reports of people who can "see" with their fingers -- especially blind people. In 1966, Martin Gardner, the editor of the "Mathematical Games" column at Scientific American, published his investigation into "dermo-optical perception" in the journal Science. He concluded that the purported ability of some extraordinary people to see and even read text with their fingers while blindfolded was fraud. He ascribed all the reports to cheating by peeking in various ways around the blindfold. That Science paper put an end to dermo-optical perception.

But I know he was wrong.

Recently a colleague of mine analyzed a congenitally blind woman in an fMRI brain imaging machine. When images were flashed to her eyes through goggles, no activity at all registered in her brain. However, when the young woman scanned postcards with her fingers, some of which had images on them and some of which did not, the woman's brain lit up with activity when her finger tips scanned a card with an image on it. Interestingly, "seeing" with her fingers strongly activated her visual cortex. The woman demonstrated her ability to "see" with her fingers when I visited her in her home and handed her an 8X10 color photograph.

There is nothing supernatural about this dermo-optical perception ability. The woman illustrates the dramatic plasticity and untapped potential of the human brain, in her case to utilize imperceptible tactile cues -- slight differences in temperature or texture associated with pigments -- that the majority of us ignore. One third of the cerebral cortex of blind people has nothing to do, so the brain rewires itself to take whatever information it can extract, sound and touch for example, and process it using the enormous information processing capability that is normally devoted to vision, giving the person extraordinary perception abilities. She, like many blind people, can also discern speech sped up three to five times faster than a sighted person can possibly comprehend. "Highly improbable," but true, and explained by natural, not supernatural phenomena.

Research on ectoplasm seems ridiculous now, but only with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight. Given that these scientists and intellectuals applied the scientific method and used the best available techniques of the day, how did they fail? Cutting edge research at the boundary of what is known or that enters into new frontiers will always confront this problem. If it was so obvious, why did editors at Scientific American and Nature at the time find the matter so agonizing? I do not think they were less intelligent or deliberate than we are. "Ectoplasmic" research is published in major journals today -- "ectoplasmic" in the sense of work that nibbles at the edge of what is currently understood and will not stand the test of time. Still, it is important to keep an open mind.

Judge Wexler: I want to make one thing very clear: The law does not recognize the existence of ghosts, and I don't believe in them either. So I don't wanna hear a lot of malarkey about goblins, spooks, and demons. We're gonna stick to the facts in this case. Leave the ghost stories to the kiddies, understood?

Winston: Wow. Sounds like a pretty open-minded guy, huh?

Bias and prejudice inflict editorial decisions at journals in the same way bias undermines scientific research. You can't fool an fMRI, but don't expect to read about our dermo-optical research in a scientific journal. Journals are not interested, and conducting research on dermo-optical perception could be a "career limiting move."

References
Fields, R.D. (2010) Why Can Some Blind People Process Speech Far Faster Than Sighted Persons? December 13, 2010. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-blind-people-process/

Tillyard, R.J. (1928) Evidence of Survival of a Human Personality, Nature August 18, Vol. 122: 243-246.

Gardner, M. (1966) Dermo-optical perception: A peek down the nose. Science 151: 654-657.

Editors (1922) With the editors, Scientific American, September 1922, p. 147.

Black, J. (1922) Ectoplasm and ectoplasm fakers. Scientific American, September 1922, p. 162.

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1469464192000

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1469464132000

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Climate Change And The Complexity of Science
One of the most successful environmental treaties of all time was the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, an ozone-depleting substance mainly used in refrigeration and air conditioning. The ban was made feasible by the development of new refrigerants that would not deplete the ozone layer. According to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry:

In the 1980s, I remember that many scientists feared that ozone depletion was irreversible and the headlines in many newspapers declared that nations were powerless to stem the growing loss of ozone - the great hole in the ozone that threatened us all. But the Montreal Protocol proved that the pessimists and the naysayers were wrong. Virtually all the parties have met their obligations under the accord. Nearly 100 of the most ozone-depleting substances have been phased out. And as a result, the hole in the ozone is shrinking and on its way to repair. It's why we're here today... Now, that's the good news. The bad news is that in too many cases, the substances banned by the Montreal Protocol have been replaced by hydrofluorocarbons - HFCs - which are safer for ozone, but are exceptionally potent drivers of climate change - thousands of times more potent, for example, than CO2.

The diplomatic debate about phasing out HFCs has been underway for seven years, but the technology of refrigerant coolants appears to have finally caught up with the need for replacement technology. Once replacement technology is available, diplomacy becomes possible. According to Coral Davenport of the New York Times:

The Montreal treaty allows nations to amend it to ban substitute chemicals that have negative environmental effects even if they do not harm the ozone. And American chemical companies such as Dow, DuPont and Honeywell have already begun to patent climate-friendly HFC substitutes.

In many ways, this is a repeat of what happened when the Montreal agreement was reached. New chemicals can replace important chemicals that are dangerous to the environment as long as time, effort, and resources are devoted to developing those effective substitutes. Businesses are willing to cooperate and take advantage of the new business opportunities that are presented. Everyone is happy when they make money and protect the planet at the same time.

Even the precautionary principle might not have prevented this problem; testing technologies or drugs before they are used wouldn't have helped. When we test new technologies to understand their main side effects, we are dependent on the current state of scientific knowledge to gauge that impact. HFCs protected the ozone and were better to use than CFCs, but later on we found that HFCs caused global warming. At the time we adopted HFCs, we were ignorant about their impact on global warming. Had we known, we might have still decided back in the 1980s that protecting the ozone layer was more important than global warming, but our ignorance made such a choice unnecessary.

The technological world we live in inevitably creates impacts we can't predict. By definition, not all the dimensions of new, cutting-edge technology are well understood. As we struggle to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy technology, we should be prepared for the unanticipated impacts of solar cells, batteries, wind generators, smart grids and all the rest. Having stepped down the path of technologically based economic development, we should not expect a pristine planet. But we can expect and work toward an environmentally sustainable earth. There is no excuse for willful disregard of the facts and every reason to listen closely when someone finds that your breakthrough invention has some negative effects.

We should approach the introduction of new technology and our analysis of environmental impacts with care and humility. The ozone hole was an urgent crisis that perhaps pushed other considerations out of our mind as we focused on the problem at hand. The climate crisis is today's high priority crisis. What other challenges are we setting aside as we focus our attention on the urgent crisis of the moment?

What is key is that we integrate a concern for environmental impacts into the development and implementation of new technology. Human ingenuity fashions our technology to respond to the problems of human survival and wellbeing. The goal is to make products that transform our lives. The success stories are all around us: the air conditioning that comforts us during the current heat wave, the computer and wireless internet that carries this blog piece to you, and countless inventions that make our way of life possible.

But today we are seven billion humans and before our growth peaks we will hit nine billion. It's a big planet, but our lifestyles have still managed to transform it. We've lit it up, carved it up, built it up, and travel everywhere to see all of it. We need to understand that impact if we are to continue to ensure that the natural systems that provide us with air, water, and food remain viable. While our species is ingenious, we make mistakes and our learning process is far from perfect.

The process of negotiating this treaty amendment has been difficult with both China and India agreeing to a transition from HFCs, but arguing for a longer period of transition than desired by climate advocates due to cost. The transition will not be without financial cost, and while the costs are relatively low, for developing countries they may be significant. The compliance deadlines could be influenced by the development of newer, lower-cost substitutes. If the price of transition is lowered, then the time scale issue will become less important.

Both China and India are seeing greater environmental awareness among their young people, particularly the youthful elite. This is something we already saw in Europe, the U.S. and Japan. Once environmentalism takes hold among young people in China and India, we can expect to see less opposition to aggressive global environmental agreements and hopefully, less need for them in the first place. The key will be to connect future economic growth the health of the global ecosphere. Since the connection is true, the argument will be made with great impact.

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Nottingham's cloning success not usual, though

Obesity by country and gender

Credit: